Fund Launch Live Guest Speaker: 427% IRR on his first 27 deals...

The premise is basically a culmination of my life leading up to this point. I've always been interested in entrepreneurship and startups. And so over the last 10 years, invested in 27 different startups, different syndications. And then the market cracked a little bit in venture capital. And so it's everything's on sale.

Yeah.

So we started the fund and we're investing in 50 more companies. Most companies coming out of universities that are—

They're saying his audio is not working very well. Can you fix that?

Sorry, guys.

Let's make sure his mic's turned on. Thank you guys in the chat. That's why we hop in a little bit early anyway.

Yeah, so that's, that's the premise. Everything's on sale. We are doing 50 companies because that's the best way to index venture capital. Is my cord still not working?

Let them fix it. Tom, talking to this one. This one seems to be working. Okay. Say hi in there.

Hey, guys, this is better.

We got Ryland on here. You know Ryland as well?

I know Ryland.

Yeah. So, so sorry, we're going to get this other mic set up here real quick. But tell us again, just kind of your backstory a little bit on All In Ventures. 30 seconds and we'll dive deeper. But just, yeah, the premise of All In Ventures.

So the premise of All In Ventures is in venture capital right now, everything's on sale. So just picture 2008, 2009 in real estate. That's what we're seeing in venture capital. So An enormous opportunity.

Well, and how many deals you guys done?

We've done 27 deals syndicated before this, and we've had 4 big winners, big, big pops for us. And we're hoping to deliver much more than that on this next fund.

Yeah, it's going to be pretty fun. Yes, we'll send a recording out. By the way, people in the chat, type in where you're calling in from. We'd love to hear from you. So Tom is going to be coming to speak at Fund Launch Live, which is, what, 28 days away? 27? 27 days away, which is pretty fun. So this is our 3rd big event we've thrown. This is in Orlando, Florida, just next month. Um, it's 3 days. Fund Launch Live is all around helping you launch and scale a fund going from, you know, $0 to $10 million, $20 million, $100 million fund. Um, which actually is funny enough is, Tom, you came to Fund Launch Live last year.

I did.

So a little bit while people are hopping in and saying hi, say hello in the chat. If you guys calling in, we got people from Florida and California and Bay Area, Pittsburgh.

Awesome.

Keep typing in there. Um, what's up, London? Okay, I love it. So we're calling in from, from Utah here. So Tom, though, give us a sense of last year. I know we're friends, so we knew each other in Utah. I said, you got to come to Funnel Launch Live. And you were like, I'm coming. So you came out to Funnel Launch Live. Walk us through last year, like Funnel Launch Live, what's happened over the last 12 months since you came to Funnel Launch Live, because you've had a pretty incredible story and journey. So, and we'll, I keep, we'll keep sharing mics until these guys tell us we're good to go.

Yeah, I don't mind sharing.

Yeah, we'll share a little mic.

We could share. Okay. So first of all, I went to support my friend. And I had an incredible experience. We'd done a bunch of syndications and I thought, you know, syndication is the way to go. And I just was so inspired by the people that were there, the types of funds that were being started. I met somebody that had an almond farm, like, fund business. I thought it was just so cool. And I had some, like, limiting beliefs about what I could accomplish and what I could do for myself going into that. And I just remember sitting down and just like— What were some of those on the fund? Limiting beliefs. I thought that I just didn't think that I had, I guess, what it took to be a fund manager. I thought maybe just, you know, I was just a small, you know, $200,000 SPV type of guy, you know? And then I just remember going in and being inspired by like all the other stories of guys that were, you know, came to Fund Launch the year prior. And, you know, one dude had raised $100 million for his real estate fund. And I'm like, man, I can do that. Like, so I started to see myself kind of in that spot. And yeah, I know, here we are a year later.

And you go to Funnel Hacks Live, you feel inspired to— yeah, you feel like— and I think I've shared the story last time I was on live, but with throwing big events like in other stuff and it wasn't fun specifically, but I've been to events where It's almost this. I don't know. It's call it crazy confidence, but you look at someone, you're like, well, if they could do it, I could do it. Yeah. And hopefully, I think people pride to be honest. Yeah, honestly.

Yeah.

I think people look at me like, well, Bridger can do it. I can. And I hope that's the case because it's like I'm I don't think I'm that special. I think you're that that special, even though you're you very very special in my heart. But you have this sense of like if they can do it, I can do it. So you go to Funnel Live, you're inspired, and then you come home though. And events can some people just come home for an event. A lot of people went to Funnel Live last year did nothing. You guys did a lot though. So walk me through the last twelve months. Kind of what's Happened. Now, you've already done syndications. We know that you already were doing that in the space, but walk me through the last 12 months of what's happened with All In Ventures.

Perfect. So I, yeah, I was sitting on like the 5th row. I just remember just being so pumped. But so came home at the event, I actually brought my partner Steven Smith and one of our interns named Chase, and he even was inspired too. So when we got home, we did one more syndication, which is a deal that we think is gonna, that we think is already 50x since we did it. We put $1 million in it. It's called Aratavir and it's a treatment for RSV. And anyway, super promising. So that right out of the gate was, you know, a huge win right after.

Wait, your intern found that, right?

Yeah, he found the deal. He felt inspired. He actually raised most of the money for that SPV. And so just to kind of see, a kid from Montana, you know, him, like what he was able to do after leaving the conference was really cool. But I'm the type of person, like if I'm going to go spend money to go to an event, like I actually want to get something out of it and then actually apply that. So we really tried to apply what we had learned and then we really just wanted to formulate, okay, we're going to do a fund. We know we want to do a fund. What is this going to look like? How are we going to model it? And we thought about doing, you know, doing real estate with the venture capital fund because I've done lots of real estate investing and went through a bunch of different iterations and then finally came down to, okay, let's just stick to what we're good at, like what we love to do, where we get the most deal flow. And started putting together a pitch deck and then we pitched just friends and family, people that we knew to kind of get some feedback on the deck and Gosh, I think when I knew we were onto something was when we sent our deck to your team and they like went through, 'cause our deck looked horrible, to be honest with you. And then just getting that deck back from you guys and I'm like, okay, like—

The design team.

Yeah, I know that sounds so silly, but like getting that back from you guys, I was like, you know what, this is really cool, this is legit, and let's get after it. And so since then we've, We have 6.7 million in subscribers to the fund and we should get to 20 million. Oh, we hope by the fall, but maybe sooner than that.

6.7 fully subscribed. I know you have a lot of soft commitments as well. That's like, that's like signed in the fund, 6.7, especially right now in 2024. That's a lot. That's a good amount of money to raise on your first, very first fund. And you've done that since pretty much December, right? So it's been 3 months.

Yeah.

So you're raising about $2 million a month. Like, that's, that's hard committed to. It's not verbal commitments. This is hard committed, about $2 million a month right now. Additionally, our team— so we just launched a GP stakes fund called Fund Launch Partners. Lincoln Archibald heads that up on our team. And we decided to do a deal with you guys as well because we loved your guys' fund, what you were doing. So we now partner with you guys.

That's right.

Wrote a check to you guys as well as a piece of that. So, which is phenomenal. So in 12 months you went from SPVs, which are doing well. It's not like you did bad in those. You did great. But this, in 12 months, you've got a 50x deal, you think. From your intern, you launched a fund. You've now raised 6.8 million, and we partner with you on on the Fund Launch Partners. Yes. Is it working now? Okay, let's test.

Oh, we're good.

Testing. Check check check. People in the chat give us a yes if Tom's mic's working. Good. Oh, there we go.

Okay. Be honest. I kind of like sharing.

It was kind of nice, actually. I really enjoyed.

Yeah. So actually, can I talk about Fund Launch Partners?

Sure, go ahead.

Yeah. Um. Phenomenal. I think that just the level of confidence that I get, that I know when I call Lincoln or you or, or Adam, that I'm going to actually get the right information. Because I just remember on the SPVs that we did, like you'd call an attorney and then they didn't know the answer and then send you to another attorney. And then all of a sudden the bills are racking up. Just the wealth of knowledge and experience that comes with the team. is phenomenal. That's the first thing. The second thing is you guys have helped me think bigger and believe in myself and believe in the team. And so what we initially set out to accomplish is now probably 10x bigger because just because of the confidence that we have in you guys and the team and maybe, maybe the, the belief window has kind of been shattered. Like, I feel like The sky's the limit.

Well, and you've— I mean, you guys have been off to the race pretty cool. So now you're a 506 fund, so you can advertise. So if people want to learn more about Tom's fund, I think you're taking it to credit investors, allinventures.com. So go check out Tom now. Yeah, Tom is an animal. Someone put that in chat. He totally— he is. Let's talk about that for a second. So your background a little bit.

Okay.

You did 24 SPVs.

27.

27 SPVs. So I'm not going to cut you short.

Yeah.

4 have been more than a 10x.

Yeah.

So, which is phenomenal. If anybody's in the venture space and with 24 deals, you're hoping 1 or 2 is a 10x to have 4. And then you still have a lot of deals that are out that are still— the jury's still out on.

Yeah, there's, there's still bacon in the oven. We, we could do much better than that, but—

But 4 confirmed 10xs already, which is phenomenal. So, uh, for people that are—

I—

everyone watches Shark Tank, you know, at home and like, well, man, that would be such a cool job to get into. There's a lot of people I talk to. I'd love to be a venture capitalist one day. You went out and did it. You're—

how old are you? 33.

33. So at 33 years old, you've already done 27 deals, 4 10x's. How does one do that? Give us your backstory a little bit, how you got to that point.

Great question. So the— I kind of, when I sit back and think about it, it feels crazy that that's what we've done. But a lot of people around me, great mentors, so I went to school at BYU, Brigham Young, had an awesome professor of entrepreneurship that believed in me, and I did a sales job. I don't know if anybody in here has done sales. I think if you haven't done sales, I recommend it. And I made great money during the summer.

Sales. You're doing door-to-door sales?

Yeah.

Hard knock. You're just knocking doors.

Yeah. The purest form of sales.

And you actually crushed it. You did extremely well.

Yeah, I did. Did well. And I had some cash saved up. Luckily, I had good mentors that told me not to spend my money. Believe me, I wanted to, but they shamed me out of it. And I had a good chunk of change.

I actually love that you have these— it's like your family members or mentors or who is it? Like, yeah, I've told you this before. They just like, if you went and bought like a car or something, they just make fun of you.

Yeah, just like so bad. Yeah, I remember going to the Audi dealership up here and looking at an Audi RS7. I thought that was like the coolest car. And, you know, I was And my cousin just looked at me, he's like, dude, that is so embarrassing. Like, what are you doing? So it's not because I didn't want to. I got shamed out of it, which I'm grateful for.

And a little bit of bullying. I keep saying it in my mind, a little bit of bullying. Yeah, I think it's actually good. Yeah, it's called bullying or whatever, teasing. But like, they bullied you out of— don't buy an RS7 right now, invest your money. I think, I think the world could use a titch more bullying. I mean, that's a wrong thing to say.

No, I—

bullying the right way though. I feel like my friends have bullied me out of— bullied, I guess, could be the wrong word, but teased me out of doing a lot of stupid stuff. I was like, oh, I'm gonna go do that. And they're like, why would you ever do that, bro?

You're an idiot.

And they just told me that straight up, like, you're an idiot if you don't. Like, yeah, I guess I'm an idiot.

100%. And so I'm, I'm living proof of that. That's— that works.

So they bullied you or teased you out to not to buy an RS7. What'd you do next?

Well, so then I was dating this girl And she was phenomenal, amazing. And she invited me to go down to, to St. George, to this house and with her best friend. So we go down there and we show up to this huge mansion. What does this guy do for work? And we go downstairs and in the basement there's a bowling alley. And I'm like, that's kind of cool, you know? Is that a girl you're dating?

Yeah. Her dad?

No, no. A girl I'm dating. It's her best friend's. dad's.

Oh, best friend's dad.

Yeah. And, um, can I just say something? Having a bowling alley in your basement, that's kind of cool. So anyway, so we get there, and then all of a sudden, walking downstairs comes my entrepreneurship professor at school, and I'm like, ah, that's Professor Church. Um, anyway, we get to talking, and I told him like money I'd saved in my account and what I was doing and what I wanted to do with my life. Like, at the time, I was studying mechanical engineering, and I was going to go to hopefully, you know, some business school later down the line. And then when I was 40, I would start my own business or whatever. And he told me that was the stupidest thing he'd ever heard and that we should start investing in companies and starting companies right then and there. And so that's kind of how it started. And so we did our first deal together that next year. And, you know, I kept doing sales and I did it for 8 years. And so all the money I made in sales, I just plowed into investments.

So you're with this college professor.

Yeah.

Church. Corbin Church, who's an absolute stud. I know him as well. I took some of his classes. Incredible dude. This guy, by the way, like, he's worth, I don't know, let's call it hundreds of millions of dollars. Just volunteers his time to teach at BYU and inspired me like crazy. And obviously you like crazy. For some of you guys that are listening, if you're that person or want to be that person, it's pretty cool. I mean, it changed our lives. Yeah, one professor. But you start doing deals with him, you save some money from selling. You would co-partner on deals with him.

That's right.

For a couple of years, which is, which is pretty cool. By the way, people that just dropped in the chat, say hello if you just joined. Tom speaking at Fund Launch Live, which can be pretty cool, just about 27 days away. So grab tickets at fundlaunchlive.com. You can go there. Our team is on the chat too if you need help getting tickets or whatever. We're going to be at the Grand Hyatt or the Hyatt Regency, excuse me, in Orlando, Florida. 2,000 people, all fund managers. Tom came last year, last 12 months, you know, has already launched his fund, partnered with Fund Launch Partners, raised $6.7 million, hard committed in a year, which is pretty cool. So we're kind of diving into Tom's story. Walk us through. So one of the deals I love that you did was on the— is the glasses company?

Yeah, SignGlasses.

So walk me through like how you approached, how you approached that deal.

So this is, this is the, the thesis of our fund too. So we'll get into that in a second. But there in every university, there's a department called the Tech Transfer Office. And so the government actually funds grants for professors to do research. And so these professors will do research. It takes them years to do it and they'll spend millions of dollars of grant money. And then once they've developed the technology and the patent, they send it to the tech transfer office and it just sits there because typically guys that are great at research and development are not great at commercialization, nor do they have the confidence to leave their, you know, tenure at the university to go and start the business. And so— Yeah. Entrepreneurs could go in and, and check out the patents and commercialize and license the technology from the university. And so I went through hundreds of different patents. This is that first deal I did, sunglasses, and we found one that I just thought was really cool. So we had a handful and I had a handful of deaf students in my class. And, you know, I noticed that it's hard for them to see the interpreter sitting right next to them and then whatever the professor is doing at the front of the classroom. no one could see 2 places at once. And so they would miss half of the lecture.

Hmm.

And so apparently, um, this professor had one of these students in his classroom and thought, you know what, we need to fix this. Got a grant for $700,000, spent a couple years developing this, and was able to develop these smart glasses, push— pull the, the interpreter out of the classroom and then just push the ASL interpretation to the glasses. So wherever the, the student was looking, they're getting both the interpretation and Obviously the visual—

it's like a heads-up display on their glasses.

Yeah.

And is it— are they— is the— are the glasses listening and then doing the interpretation?

So it's a little bit more involved than that. The patent was just pushing ASL translation through a head-mounted display. So, okay, we don't actually have the— I mean, the better that smart glasses get, the better our technology gets. We don't— we're hardware agnostic. So the patent is just for the head-mounted display.

Gotcha.

Okay. And I thought, you know what, this is cool. But you don't know an idea is cool until you've like gone out into the marketplace and people are willing to part with their cash, you know, to do it. And so there were grants at the university where you could go and do what's called validation. So I got a $3,000 grant to do validation. I bought a plane ticket to San Antonio. I went to an edtech conference and set up a booth and we just pretended like the business was done.

So yeah, so you found this grant. I love this story. You're like, you're the salesman and you're like, let's just go see if people will buy it instead of doing a market survey or doing ads or whatever. You just said, let's just go sell the product. You fly out to Texas, set up a booth and start selling this thing. So what happened?

I mean, overwhelming response. I remember this lady from Dallas ISD just wondering why in the world somebody hasn't developed this. And one lady in tears and UT Austin. I mean, schools from all over the country just like paying deposits. Hey, we want to be—

So you're just collecting cash at this booth?

Yeah.

And you're like, little does anyone know, this is just a patent back at BYU. And you're now obviously the wheels are spinning to build a business around it.

Yeah. And then even there was a pitch competition. We won that.

Wow.

There was another, you know, product from like some students at Harvard that you know, pitch, we dominated them. But I mean, it wasn't anything we did. It's just, it's, there was a big need for it and people kind of caught onto that. So I fly back home and I look at Corbin and I'm like, dude, this one's good.

Yeah.

And I think we're onto something. We go back to BYU and I'm surprised they only want $10,000 for the patent.

Wow.

So I put my, I put $50,000 in. Corbin, my partner, puts $50,000 in and We're off to the races. Now, the beauty of this whole thing is, is in, in the entrepreneurship class at BYU, there's hundreds and hundreds of students that want to start a business. They just don't have an idea. And so it's great to just pair them up with these businesses. And so now fast forward.

So you went and found some people. Students just said, hey, do you want a killer business? We're, we have $100,000 coming into it.

Yep.

Wow, that's cool.

And then, you know, a handful of years later, we've got contracts with Costco, NASA, um, NASA one's crazy, um, Tesla, Panasonic, Twitch, Microsoft, Universal Studios, NFL Hall of Fame. And the, the applications for the technologies keep getting better. And so, um, really, really cool.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

What's the, what's an evaluation around on that one?

Um, so that, that one, we're 144 times our Wow.

144 times the money.

Geez. Wow.

That's unreal. That is so cool. So how did— and I'm actually curious about this. I haven't heard this part of the story, which is, by the way, if you guys are listening, want to get into venture, what a cool thing. Like a low-cost, easy way. You go through Tech Transfer Office. This is what your thesis of your fund is.

Yep.

And say, hey, we want to do this at scale. We have really good ties to these universities. We're very good at picking and pulling entrepreneurs together at a low-cost basis. Or early seed stage, if I'm correct.

Right.

Very early. And we will develop these companies and incubate very good technology behind them and, and help them grow, which is so cool. So I'm glad to have you come share more at Funnel Launch Live. So if you guys want to grab tickets, funnellaunchlive.com. Now tell me, how did you pick— did you actually pick the right entrepreneur out of those classes? Did that— is that the same person still running it today or is it really?

No way. Still running today.

So some student was just in class one day and you and Corbin came by and just said, hey, do you want to be a billionaire? And give him this idea?

Well, yeah, I mean, Corey's the CEO, founder, phenomenal, done a phenomenal job. But the beauty of doing validation properly is you're really pursuing ideas that there's a lot of tailwinds behind it. Like, you know, there's great market demand for it. There's a moat behind it. I mean, I don't want to take any credit away from Corey, but But yeah, so that's kind of the beauty of it. And then you said it exactly right. What we— what we're doing with our fund is we're just pouring gas on the fire. So we've got an incubator now. Yeah, 20,000 square feet that was donated to us to have student businesses in there. And then a $20 million fund next, next to my fund just to do validation checks. So before we put any money in, there's a fund that's funding just the validation process of each one of these businesses. And then we come in right behind that and we write the second check.

Okay.

Very cool. Yeah.

Well, it's phenomenal. You guys have built— I love it so much. If you guys have questions, by the way, we are live for a reason. So drop questions in the chat, whether you're on YouTube or Facebook or whatever. If you're liking this so far, give me— make sure we're still live here. Give me like a 1 in the chat. Type a 1 in the chat if you all are still there and can hear us. Okay, give me a 1. And then if you have questions, you can type those in the chat as well. We'd love to answer some of them. And then as well, if you— can you share my computer real quick? So we are— Tom's come to speak at Fund Launch Live. It's going to be so fun. And you're obviously— you just came last year and all this is— we've been tailing up. I mean, I'm excited to see where your fund goes.

Changed my life. I wouldn't— I 100% wouldn't have done this without going. So.

Well, I'm just so excited for you. This is like we talked about doing a fund for a while before and I was like, come to the event. And yeah, there's something and I'm living proof of this. There's something about being immersed in something for a couple of days because like, I know, I'm sure you've thought about doing a fund for years in the back of your brain. Like one day we're going to do a fund, maybe we'll do it, maybe we won't, maybe we'll do syndications. Yeah, at least for me, I thought about doing a company like Funnel Launch for years, and then I went to an event and it was— I think the event was 4 days, and for whatever reason, I, I like was immersed for 4 days.

Yeah.

And it, uh, totally changed just my thought process around this entire business. So you're in this video, by the way. Did you know that?

I didn't know that.

Let's see if it comes up. So this is the video from last year. Let's see if you pop up. Um, I don't even know if sound will play. Will it play through there? Can you guys hear the sound of the video? Type something in the chat if you can hear. I'm not sure if you can.

Ed Mylett was money.

Yeah, he was awesome. No sound for these guys. Went from 30 companies to over 80 companies. We exited that fund at $1.27 million.

Don't try to predict the future. Try to learn probabilities. The path has been laid before you, and now the decision is on you. Oh, nice.

All right, there you go. You made the video.

That's awesome. You and Steven made the cut.

Yeah, made it for about a 4th of a second, but you made the cut.

Nice.

So if you guys can see that, okay, people can see that, right? You guys can see that in chat. Is that working? On Zoom. Oh yeah, you can see it.

Okay.

So day 3. So this is a very, I guess, choreographed event around fundraising and launching a fund. It's called Fund Outside for a reason. So day 1, we're talking about the whole fund core, building out your fund, all the actual steps, building your team, building your thesis, how to find alpha in your fund. Maybe your fund doesn't have alpha. We should probably determine that upfront if it doesn't have a compelling edge. Day 2, we go into asset class deep dives. We talk about all different types of fund— real estate, crypto, hedge funds, venture, M&A. We also talk a lot about capital raising day 2. And then day 3, continue on raising and scaling. We talk about— we have some incredible speakers talking about macroeconomics, raising capital, etc. On day 3, it should be pretty fun. We have Steve Eisman coming from The Big Short. So he's the— he's played by Steve Carell. Yeah, he'll be coming. I get— I have to interview him for— it's just me interviewing on stage for 45 minutes. And we're doing crowd— we're doing crowd questions as well with him, which should be really fun. So, okay. He's the guy. Yeah. Mark Baum. His real name in real life is Steve Eisman. They changed his name for the movie. He didn't want to— he didn't want to have the exposure.

Okay.

But then now he's like, I like it, actually. Yeah. care anymore.

That's funny.

But Steve Eisen coming to speak. Uh, we got Oren Klaff, one of the best capital raisers in the world. My dad, John Pennington, he's talking. That should be really fun. Todd Buchholz, uh, Harvard professor, um, and, uh, Tiger, uh, Tiger fund manager, former Tiger fund manager. Codie Sanchez, Contrarian Thinker on YouTube. All— she talks all about buying boring businesses, so buying laundromats, vending machines, etc. Peter Zeihan, one of my favorite authors of all time, wrote, uh, The End of the World Is Just the Beginning. We're actually— he's coming to speak. We're doing an interview with him. Crowd Q&A should be very fun. Ben Hardy, 10x easier than 2x. Neil Bawa is incredible about raising capital, especially when you're just starting from like zero, like day one raising capital. Andrew Smith, Ben Reinberg, Bryce Sutton. I mean, you can go through this list of incredible speakers. Jeremiah. So he came to one of our events. He, he first came, he was, he was running like $50 to $80 million and they were doing with Patriot Holdings a lot through self-storage. Now they're up to $350 million, member of Black Card. Incredible dude. Bob Frazier, he's done incredible stuff in the venture space actually with secondaries on venture. It'd be really cool to hear from him. And it was like, you go down the list, but we got incredible people on here. We got to add your picture. We just added you a couple days ago.

Nice.

It's going to look good. So it should be pretty fun. Grab your tickets. Also, you can book rooms right up here, the room block. We have discounted rooms from the Hyatt. So 27 days left. Yeah, pretty fun. Okay, so you can go back to full screen for us if you want. So Tom, excited to have you come. Been cool what you guys have done with All In Ventures. I think it's, you know, it's funny, I love your story in that you started at 22, 21.

Yeah.

Your first deal, you spend a— now at 33 years old, you already have a decade of investing in venture, which is pretty significant, I think, where most people are trying to, they're gonna go work for somebody, which is a fine route, but go work. They're gonna work their way up the ladder and then start doing deals, which can work. But it's funny, I don't know about you, but most people that I see in the venture capital space, a lot of them didn't do that. A lot of them were founders themselves.

Yeah.

Or they started doing deals like you did, and then they run this big firm and then they hire interns and associates that believe if they keep being associates, one day they will be the founders of this firm. And what happens is that I very rarely see it. happen. It's usually they hire in an outside founder that just exited their company for a couple hundred million. They're now going to help run the venture capital, or they've already done lots of SPVs like you have.

That's right.

It's kind of this— I think specifically with venture capital, this, uh, people think they can work their way up the ladder. In reality, I don't see a lot of firms that do that. Any comments on that?

Yeah, I mean, I think venture capitalists, you— to attract the right founders and to relate to the founder, you kind of need to be on the other side of the table a little bit. It really helps. It's tough to, you know, read a textbook and understand, oh, I get how venture capital works. I get how entrepreneurship works. It's one of those things where it's so raw that you really do need to be on the other side of the table, in my opinion.

Yeah, that's at least what I've seen.

Yeah.

Just from other firms. I'm not in the venture capital space, but I just look at these firms and I look at who's running them and it's Very rarely it's a guy that just worked his way up working at the firm. Yeah, it's almost always a founder. And I think it's for exactly that point. You can't relate to these founders unless you've been in the deals, been in the trenches with them.

Yeah.

And that's a compelling edge for venture capitalists as well when they talk to these firms or why they should choose them.

That's right.

So on you guys, obviously you've done a lot of these SPVs early stage. What's— walk us through maybe more specifics on how you approach early, like very early investing, which people would deem as the most risky. Yeah, you guys seem to de-risk it a lot with— you mentioned validation, but walk us through some of those things.

You—

because some other groups say that's way too risky to do pre-seed rounds or start like— you mean you guys are at the foundation? Most venture firms like to wait till the Series A, sometimes even Series B to get in. You guys get in early.

Um, well, so the data shows actually that, um, if you, if you do it right, And you're spread across enough companies, you get way better returns than the funds at Series A and Series B.

Way of power law, a power law with way more companies across an earlier stage.

So since 1983, the data shows if you put $100 into every pre-seed startup, you would average a 22% return. And so that's obviously impossible to do. Nobody can go and get every deal.

Yeah.

But the closest approximation to that statistically is about 50 companies and you're, you have a 95% chance of getting an outlier with that. And so that, that's in my mind.

And an outlier meaning one firm that returns the whole fund plus more.

Yeah. One company that returns the fund plus more. And so that gives me a ton of confidence going into this fund. But also what we see happening in venture capital is over time these firms raise tons and tons of money. And so that's what forces them to write the later checks because the math and the economics don't work. If you're managing $250 million, you can't write a $250,000 check. That just doesn't work.

Yeah, there's not enough time to do that.

Oh, exactly. So for them, I mean, they're getting great fees just on the management fees up top, and so they don't mind getting the 12, which is on average what, what they get. And so we're a small $20 million fund and we intend to just stack those, you know, $20 to $50 million funds in that, in that early stage and be small, nimble, be able to do those small deals because these bigger firms have to slug a certain amount of money to each. That's right.

Right.

That's right.

I mean, the extreme of that is the Tiger Vision Fund. Yeah, there's a $100 billion fund.

Wild.

So their checks, they're writing, you know, $500 million checks, $800 million checks. I mean, it's just, it's hard to— number one, you drown a founder in a company with just so much capital. It's inefficient.

Yeah.

And because they can only— they're planning to do, you know, 100 deals in there, maybe 200. That's an average check size of $500 million. I mean, that's absurd, right?

It's crazy.

Because they're going to deploy that much capital. But you guys are obviously being nimble at the front end. So, and you play that power law, which I think is awesome. It's funny enough, I was talking to a big family office yesterday. And we, for whatever reason, got on the topic of venture capital. And they were talking about they have some people in there. They have a guy that was an NFL player. He's done extremely well. And he's like, he's telling him, he's like, oh, I got my buddies investing in these deals. He's like, what do you mean? Yeah, we're like, I find a company I like, we just invest in the startup. And this guy that runs this big family office goes, and that's it? Like, he goes, this is a very risky and dangerous game you're playing. Meaning if you're just going to get your friends or buddies into one deal or two deals or five deals even, he goes, If you're going to do venture capital right, you need to have the mindset, I'm going to do 25 deals.

Yeah.

I'm going to continue investing and I might lose for 24 deals, but you keep playing the power law. It seems like gambling. They have all these approaches with whatever hand you're playing.

You keep—

there's one with like, is it roulette where you double your bet every time until you hit and it pays back the whole thing, right? And there's some funny stories on that where people are— Double, you double your bet every time and you get these huge numbers and you have to keep doubling because the math plays out. You will hit, but you have to be committed to play enough. Yeah.

People just don't typically have that gumption, that mindset.

Yeah, that's what I told the Big Family Office guy. I said yesterday, I'm like, that's— I actually love venture funds for that reason. Yeah, I've done a couple. I did like, I think I've done 2 venture deals myself. Yeah. A lot of people are like, oh, I'm going to put some money in these companies. And I told the guys, I'm like, I will never do that again. If I'm doing venture, I'm just going to give it to a fund because they're going to do this full time. They're going to invest my money into 20 to 30 deals, and a power law is going to tell me that over the course of a decade, I'm going to hit pretty well.

Yeah, and that's exactly right. And, and so doing this, the SPVs that I did with, with my partners and friends, like, that's the same conversation. Like, look, if you do this deal, you need to do all of them with me or just don't do it. Yeah. And it was actually interesting to me that You know, there are a handful of people that told me, yeah, yeah, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do, do more. And they just don't. And so that's why I like— that's why I'm so excited to do the fund, because I know if they give me $250,000, it's getting across 50 businesses and so we can go and deliver for them. Yeah.

Yeah. Funny on that, I remember a story. My buddy, he went to— he was in Vegas and he was playing that on— I can't remember what game it was. I'm not a big gambler, but he put $20. He was like, he's a normal dude. This is a W-2, just normal guy, not like some crazy entrepreneur or whatever. What I'm saying is not that wealthy. Okay, $20, he misses. So then you're supposed to double, he goes to $40, he misses, goes to $80, then goes to $160. He's at $2,500, has not hit yet. He misses, he has to now go to $5,000.

What was the table max?

I, I'm not sure.

Okay.

But he was at this moment of like, I've missed, I don't know how many hands that is in a row, but he was at $2,500, around $2,500, missed again. And had to go to $5,000. And I believe he walked away.

Oh, wow.

So he lost out on— he lost out. And he said this, I've never— because he had like read a book or watched a YouTube video, he never really gambled. And he's like, I'm out. And which was funny, just back to the point of you got to play enough hands to make it make sense. And if you do though, the math is very compelling, right? You have a 95% chance of if with 50 companies that you're going to have an outlier that's going to do this. Now, what's interesting about you though, is you've not just had one outlier or two outliers, you've had 4 outliers. Yeah, already. And I— you can say a handful more that are in the books, just not— they're not sold quite yet but are close. Um, what makes— what makes you so special, Tom? How do you do this? I'm not— how do you do this? What's the secret sauce?

It's— I think in life it's better to be lucky than good, for, for sure. Um, I think that we've, we've stumbled upon some good luck. I think that, um, our our investment process is dialed in. I think our selection process is dialed in. I think that the way that we approach the lean startup method, nail it, then scale it, all that stuff that Corbin Church has taught. And, you know, I think, I think in venture capital there's a tendency to think, you know, we're going to do 20, 25 deals and we have an exceptional ability to choose a business. I actually believe the opposite. I feel like we, we don't have the Midas touch. And, and so that's why we, we do as many deals that we do and we put so much time into the diligence process and the selection process. You know, I don't know, to be honest with you, but, but I feel like we've been very fortunate and we're going to continue on the same model that we've been using and hopefully it keeps playing out for us.

That's awesome. Well, I would— you call it luck or you're being humble, but you guys have done an incredible job. Validation upfront. Your whole process that I've seen is— that's why we wanted to partner with you at Fundwork Partners was this. You guys have a phenomenal process for selecting, I think, selecting companies, doing validation upfront with really zero cost basis or very low cost basis to do validation, to making sure this is actually, actually legit and going, which is pretty cool. Blake said, I've invested with Tom before. He's given me the same advice he's explaining right now. Great opportunity with this fund, which is awesome.

Very cool. Very nice. Thanks, Blake.

So if you want to learn more about Tom, allinventures.com, go there. You guys can check out All In. And then Tom will be on stage at Funnel Launch Live speaking, which should be so fun. We are 27 days from Funnel Launch Live, so we'll drop links in the chat. You guys can go to funnellounchlive.com, grab tickets. We have sold out the previous 2 events. This event, by the way, is— we are raising prices all the way up to the event, so tickets just keep going up in price. Um, I think VIP tickets are almost sold out. They're around $1,500 now for VIP tickets. And then general admission, I can't remember, they're $100 for general admission. They will keep going up though every single— I think it's every week they go up until Funnel Launch Live. So, if you want to grab tickets, grab them now, book your hotel, come on out. Like, it's— we spend a lot of money on this event, a lot of time, a lot of effort. I'm a very particular with how events run.

I was.

I'm very— I don't like bad events. I hate going to events that are just thrown together. This is a very choreographed event this year. We do a lot of things on purpose. We spend the extra money. to like make it an experience for people.

So yeah, I think that was the thing I was really impressed with, like how, how dialed in the systems were and everything flowed. And I could tell like you put thought into every single bit of it. And how much, how much you guys invested into this?

We'll spend around $1 million on this event.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Which other people could throw this event for $500,000, maybe $600,000. We'll— we spend a lot of extra time and money. To just go the extra mile to make it.

I definitely felt like I got my money's worth, especially now.

So, well, Tom, thank you so much. We'll drop that link one more time. FunnelHacksLive.com, All In Ventures. Go check out Tom.

Check it out, guys.

Fun hanging out today. Yeah, you're awesome, Tom. Good hanging out with you. Tom's an absolute stud. I know him personally, by the way. His family's amazing. He's the real deal, this guy. Our sons are like best friends. They play together like every day. And so, and it's just cool to see you crushing in business and I love that we've been a part of it a little bit to just help fuel your growth. And it's been, it's been really cool.

So you've been, you've been an awesome mentor and friend and I look up to you. So thanks for having me on.

Well, you're amazing, Tom. Thank you guys so much. We'll catch you next Tuesday. Every Tuesday and Friday we're doing calls just like this. So hop on on Tuesday and Friday. You guys are amazing. Drop a thanks in the chat to our team in the backstage if you can. And you guys are amazing. We'll see you at Funnel Launch Live, 27 days away. It's going to be very fun. We'll see y'all later.

Bye-bye.