LongeVC AMA: A VC unlocking longevity investments for crypto enthusiasts

Hey everyone, what's up? It's your girl Rachel here. Thanks for joining us today for this very special ama. Today I'm joined by Sergey Yakimov. He is the co founder and managing partner of Longevity. Hey Sergey, how's it going?

It's going really well. Tremendous to be here. Hi Rachel. Hi.

And thanks for, thanks for being here. I'm excited to do this AMA with you. I just want to remind the audience before we start, send your questions in the chat, we're going to be answering those throughout this entire time and and please remember to subscribe to our YouTube channel. Okay, great. Sergey, first question. If you could just give a little bit of background about yourself and about longevity, that would be great.

Super. Well, first of all, excited to be here. Right? And thank you very much. For those of you that will be watching this live. I hope it's exciting enough for you to stay for the whole session. Now I'll start with, I think I'll try to tangle my introduction into the whole Longevity as a fun picture. So myself, I have this very, very specific and maybe very atypical background for a managing partner at the fund and that is I have the founder's background. So I don't actually don't have a domain specific biotech education. I do hold my degrees in statistics and finance, although I have been with biotech as a founder since I was 23 or 24 years old. So quite a while ago. So I started off with my first company, deep tech company, Biotech. This is how I immersed myself. I then spent a number of years working with other early stage therapeutic biotech entities. And therapeutic essentially means those that are innovating in forms of drugs and getting the drugs into the market. Where I worked with these companies and I helped them to formulate their IP protection strategies, their clinical validation strategies. And essentially this is where I achieved my sort of full immersion into biotech and essentially the therapeutic side of biotech, which is the most important. I then proceeded with my, with my colleagues and my friends and co founders now to co found a company which is called longenesis. Now longenesis is a company that essentially accelerates clinical research for big pharma and that is helps to find patients or potential patient cohorts for clinical trials in a much faster and much more efficient way, as well as obtain patient consent, et cetera, et cetera. So essentially do everything to prep the clinical trial 80% faster than the industry does it. Right. And then sort of having accumulated all this network, not only myself, the fund actually has two Other co founders and two other managing partners, we have teamed up, we have put together our networks, our knowledge and this is how longevity was quite organically created, I must say. Right. So it actually came out pretty organically now in terms of the fund itself. So the fund was created around this very specific notion of supporting early stage longevity tech. And by longevity tech I mean both therapeutic and non therapeutic. And I'll come back to that later. Supporting early stage longevity tech founders in the most challenging time of their lives and the most challenging time of the life, in the life of the bias encounter is essentially your seed or pre clinical phase. If you were talking about therapeutics or early a. And this is where your data is scarce in terms of your product. Whatever you're doing with your product and capital is sort of hard to obtain. Right. So the VCs that are investing in that space should possess very deep internal competence in the sphere where they're investing in. And our team behind the fund was very fortunate to essentially be with the longevity space when it was being born. So all the KOLs that we are now working with back in the days were enthusiasts that were making their first steps to push the industry forward. So longevity was essentially built around this corporate, quite idealistic notion of supporting these early longevity founders and through making investments, through of course, generating added value to our LPs also, you know, to develop, to provide this qualitative and quantitative push for the whole industry. So that is I guess the philosophy behind the fund. Now I should though make a footnote here and that footnote is when we talk longevity from, from VC's eyes, right? We are talking about a very practical definition of longevity and that is in terms of therapeutics, you will be looking as a fund, you will be looking at early innovation in so called age related diseases, right? So everything that combats age related diseases or prevents age related diseases and prolongs what you call, well, lifespan, but not, not lifespan as such, but rather healthy human performance and healthy lifespan. It is something that a longevity focused fund will be looking at and we are essentially not an exception at longevity. So we are looking at longevity as something very practical, something very tangible and we're breaking it down essentially into disease areas and different approaches.

Got it right. And I know that longevity supports lsf. The Longevity Science foundation who we interviewed last week, is that correct?

That is correct. We actually share LSF to a certain extent, to a big extent, actually ideologically was born from some of the observations that us as co founders saw in the early stage investment landscape in longevity and that biggest observation was one of the reasons why longevity industry still trailing, trailing behind. I mean, what's it's trailing behind, but it could have been developing much faster is the lack of very early funding in some of the projects. Right? So as a fund, we're essentially longevity is bound to invest in companies that have already achieved some sort of traction with their products. Right. So fund cannot invest in fundamental science, right. Because we are after our multipliers, we after, we're after our exits, you know, certain holding periods, et cetera, et cetera. So we have seen a lot of innovation that was not ready yet to be invested by VCs. Right, got it. And ideologically it triggered LSF in a lot of ways.

Got it. And what is the fund's connection with cryptocurrency?

Right, so that's one of the topics for today's discussion, I guess longevity innovates and tries to be first or one of the first in multiple ways. First, there are very few longevity focused venture capital funds, regulated venture capital funds that have longevity, both therapeutic and non therapeutic, as in their investment thesis. The reason for that is it requires a lot of very, very specific inside the fund, inside the team domain knowledge in this sphere. So this makes longevity one of the very first to invest in longevity in general and have it as the main thesis now being this very first. We have also recognized and we have also admired the way that crypto community grew and the way that, well, crypto world essentially was developing. Right. And the way that how cryptocurrencies came about as something to stay for long with us and came about as a tremendous resource where this resource can also add value not only in the crypto community, but if distributed, if invested in the right way. It can also add tremendous value in biotech in sort of all these more conventional areas which are maybe not very crypto inclined from the very beginning. So longevity is I think, one of the very first ones, if not the first one in the longevity VC space that is offering its LPs and that has made it possible for its LPs to post their LP commitments or to join the fund using crypto. Right. And committing, using crypto instead of fiat and essentially drawing down their funds into the fund using cryptocurrency instead of, instead of fiat. And it was a process for us to sort out in terms of all the legal procedures that are involved, compliance that is involved, because we are still a regulated, EU regulated entity. But we have succeeded and we are now very proud to announce that we are essentially unlocking longevity Investment and classic for biotech investments for crypto holders and crypto enthusiasts to join the fund.

Got it, yeah. And I'm sure the audience is going to have a ton of questions just regarding what you just said and I'll have questions as well. I'm going to take a quick question from an audience member. Jackson is asking how big is longevity research market?

Right. So it's, it is. Thank you for the question. First and foremost, it is a question that, that doesn't have the answer because technically speaking, when we're talking longevity research, we should be narrowing it down. So we should be narrowing it down by sometimes disease areas or at least by technologies or by approaches that we're essentially talking about. So the market for early cancer diagnostics, for example, is over 20 billion alone. And that is essentially the market for the early diagnostics of only one type of age related diseases or only one type of, you know. Yeah, tech that, that, that is associated with Beijing. So, so it's a bit of a, it's a bit of a hard, hard question to answer. It is considerable.

Got it, got it. So I'm curious, so you're allowing crypto investors to invest in the longevity market and industry. Do you come from a crypto background? Just out of curiosity, was that something that you always wanted to do because you were involved with crypto or is that just something that you really see an opportunity with crypto with the investment side of things?

I think we, we do see an opportunity with crypto with the investment side of things, but there is, there is another ideological component to it and I'll be, I'll be very frank with this one. So longevity sphere and longevity investment. Longevity in general. Let's talk. Longevity in general is in, is in a way very similar to, to the crypto space in terms of the mindset and in terms of the willingness of people and actors involved to push the early innovation and to maybe absorb some of the additional risks that come natural for these early adopters. But then again stay loyal to the industry and actually want the best for the industry. Because if you compare longevity industry with crypto, so take 10 years back, eight years back, maybe even six years back. So crypto was not as developed as it is today, yet it was pushed by several groups and maybe even individual enthusiasts that believed in the potential. The very same thing happens with longevity as a dedicated part of biotech. And this is very important. So longevity is now essentially spinning itself out of biotech to become a sphere of its own. And people are, and investors as well are Slowly arriving at this understanding that aging is pretty much the single most important problem that humanity has, because all the resources of the liquidity, all the whatever you have accumulated is essentially nothing if you cannot combat major diseases or major risks. For you to enjoy all these resources throughout a prolonged and healthier lifetime in terms of your performance and your ability to enjoy them. So longevity right now is making the very same move and the very same legitimization move as crypto was doing back in the days, and it requires the very same mindset to support it. And this is where our admiration for crypto actually comes, because it is supported by people that are willing to take these early risks and early rewards as well. Longevity might as well be the next blockchain. Well, bigger than blockchain. Right. Because it is solving a fundamental issue.

Yeah, I mean, you make a good point. What resonated with me was you said same mindset, and I completely agree. Crypto holders and people in the blockchain space are very innovative, and the longevity industry is also very innovative. So that really. That makes a lot of sense. The same mindset. Therefore, you'd want to have these investors investing in these companies. Right. Do you?

Indeed.

Go ahead, Go ahead.

Yeah, indeed. So. And this is something that we. Just a quick note, right? So this is something that we see also not among our crypto LPs, but among other LPs that have joint longevity as women that partners as the investors of the fund, and that is their willingness not only to multiply the capital, which is, of course, one of your prime motivations when you're contributing your funds into a venture capital vehicle, but also to become more knowledgeable in the area, to indoctrinate themselves in the area, and to be there when the area is essentially developing. Right. Because it is now the point where you can actually join early. Right. And I know a ton of people in crypto that would sacrifice a lot to be there four years ago, five years ago. Right. And to be more involved. So this is something that is not too late to do with longevity now. And yeah, so that. That's pretty much one of the. One of the pitch lines for us, for the crypto community as well. Yeah.

Awesome. That makes sense. I'm going to take a question from an audience member. There may be some confusion. So Devesh is asking coin name now. I don't think there's a coin associated with longevity. Correct.

There isn't. No, no, no. We're not. We're not issuing any coins. We're not issuing any coins, for sure. This, though, is a great opportunity for me to explain and to the audience, I guess, as well, the mechanics of the venture fund. Right. So what venture fund does is essentially in our specific case, so longevity is a 35 million euro investment vehicle. And these 35 million euros consist from managing partner contributions as well as the contributions from other LPs, right? So limited partners, and these are the investors to the fund. Now, the way venture capital funds normally collect these contributions is that they don't ask their investors to advance the money on a hypothetical account, they are collecting it in commitments, which means that when the fund has a certain lifetime, and our investment lifetime is three years, over the three years, the fund will ask this commitment size in portions whenever the fund is making the investment. Right? So it will ask every LP to contribute proportionally to their overall commitment. Right? So essentially, and this is something that we have enabled to do in crypto for our LPs, right? So it's just sort of a quick, quick theory behind so that everyone is aligned.

Got it? Yeah, yeah. Wonderful audience. Please send your questions our way. Just a reminder, we're here to answer them. Sergey, I'm curious, so if, because I'm sure a lot of the audience members hold crypto or they have crypto, they may be interested in becoming involved with longevity. Is that possible? And if so, how?

Right, so it is absolutely possible. As I said, I mean, we are still, we are an active fund already, which means that we have done our first closings, so we've closed on the first portion of our capital. We are already investing, but we still are in parallel. The fund is still fundraising, so it's still topping up to reach the 35 million target. So essentially, if some of the audience wants to become an investor with the fund, there are a few conditions that the fund would normally operate within. In our case, the fund would normally have a minimum subscription amount from one lp, right? Which in our case it's not the lowest one, so it's half a million U.S. at this point of time, where it's the minimal amount which we accept as a subscription from one lp. Now then there is a process involved. So there is a procedure that is essentially there by the regulator, by legislation, and that is your basic aml, right? So KYC aml, as we are a regulated entity, so we are essentially acting as well under the rules of securities and Exchange Commission in one of the EU states, so there is a process of onboarding involved, and then afterwards you essentially become an LP with the fund. And the way we have designed the fund resonates with what I've said before. And that is a lot of our LPs want to indoctrinate themselves in longevity and in biotech they want to educate. So the way we have designed the fund is a very, was a very sort of LP centric manner. And this is where we involve our LPs as much as possible in explaining or trying to educate them in longevity tech, trying to tag them along in co investment deals if we have the opportunity, trying to sort of do seminars with them essentially explaining why the fund is making this or that investment. So we are trying essentially to create this very productive learning environment around our LP so that it's not only the, you know, the money making exercise, but also understanding the new industry.

Right? Yeah. And I think that's so important given the fact that it's so early right now. We need that understanding also with COVID you know, it's such an important industry and space to be in.

You would be surprised, or maybe you would not be surprised, but I should mention that actually Covid and it is of course a tremendous disaster in terms of the damage Covid made and the amount of people it took. But in terms of tech and specifically in terms of longevity tech in certain areas, Covid has triggered tremendous tech advancements. Specifically if we're talking oncology, for example, oncology therapeutics and specifically mRNA. Right. So the messenger RNA as a method to deliver something. Right. And MRNA is something that was piloted in vaccines. Right. So Pfizer, Biontech and Moderna are both MRNA vaccines. We are seeing a huge increase in MRNA piece of technology being there in Onco therapies. And because of this accelerated approval and because of this attention that MRNA and it's only one of the examples MRNA got, it has found accelerated adoption rate in the areas where it is very much needed. Right. And these are also age related diseases. And it's also not, not only oncology, it's also Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, so neurodegenerative, et cetera. So it has had an impact in a lot of ways. It has pushed the tech forward. Not even pushed, kicked the tech forward virtually.

Yeah, right. Yeah, that's good to know. I want to change the topic a little bit because this is really interesting, the fact that Longevity accepts crypto investments into the fund because I think we're going to start seeing a lot more innovative spaces do that as well or want to do that. So in terms of, you know, having a fund that does that, what were the biggest challenges in terms of regulations that you guys had to deal with in order to ensure this.

So I think it's a good question. I think these were the very same challenges that you would see across the other industries. Right? Because if you look at it holistically, not even longevity or longevity case, but holistically, what you have is you're trying to merge a very, sort of innovative, a very young industry and in a lot of ways still under regulated industry, which is crypto. Right. And you're trying to take the resource out of this industry and put it in something very conventional, very conservative, something that has been in the way it is for the last, well, 40, 50 years. Right. So essentially it has been a standard challenge for us to understand what would be the position of the regulator, what would be the actual procedure of how we should approach, you know, your standard AML KYC checks with the, with the LPs that are willing to contribute crypto. Right. So how do you, how do you figure out, you know, the best way of showing the source of funds, for example? Because if you are a regulated entity, you should be able to show this to the regulator in terms of, you know, the source of funds of your investors. So these are all your standard things that you should, should be going through when trying to tackle a fairly regulated and fairly well established process which a venture capital fund is. But we managed to overcome. Right. So we were pretty successful with that one.

Would you say that it's less challenging to accept funds in crypto versus fiat just given the benefits of cryptocurrency in terms of, you know, having those transactions come through certain ways?

Less challenging, Hard to say. Different. Absolutely. So it has a totally different logistics chain to it in terms of physically accepting these funds. I wouldn't say it's easier or more difficult. It's rather it has, well, it has asked us or triggered us to establish additional processes on our end as well as with our regulator, with our banking authorities that the fund is using, etc. Etc. But that said, we are actually creating a very cool precedent here. Right? Because everything, every, every new thing needs a precedent. Right. And there is hope that we're creating good practice here and, and we will be able to demonstrate this, this practice in, in variety of cases with some of our LPs and you know, hopefully we're setting the path for the other, other biotech entities to, to accept crypto as well. And, and this is totally fine with us because what we ultimately want is we want crypto holders and we want crypto investors to look at biotech as an Industry which can achieve a tremendous value add and actually tremendous returns on your funds as well if these funds are allocated to that industry. Because with early stage VC in biotech, we're still talking about our return target at 1 Chevy for example is 5 to 6 cash on cash. Right. So 5 to 6x cash on cash, which is a good return by VC standards whatsoever. But it is also pretty, pretty understandable and I think pretty desirable for a lot of, a lot of crypto investors as well. So.

Right. Definitely just want to remind the audience, send us your questions. We what I really like about this Sergey, is that also you're just opening additional opportunities for the crypto community because right now there's only so much that crypto holders can do with their crypto, you know, huddle, sell, buy random things. But this is another, this is just another really good opportunity that allows people to actually invest in something that's going to change the world.

Well, here's indeed, I would totally second that. I mean here's food for thought here, right? So we don't think when we're young and we essentially have resource behind our backs, we don't really think about how to and even if we have capital, we don't even think about how to allocate our, our capital not only in the way where it would multiply, which is essentially earning money for the sake of earning more money, but also allocating the capital strategically so that it actually contributes to something that is far more important that me, you or us combined doing whatever. So contributing to the bigger goal. And if we're talking longevity, we are essentially talking. So the reason I started that conversation is so from funds perspective, for example, we are looking at two directions. We are looking at what we call therapeutics and non therapeutics. Now therapeutics are your age related diseases and age related diseases are the diseases where the risk essentially increases dramatically as you age. These are oncology, these are neurodegenerative, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and all the other neurodegenerative disorder, disorder, spectrum diseases, diabetes, etc. Right. So statistically speaking, when you're young, you sort of don't grasp the notion that you do have a solid 25% chance in your life to develop oncology, to develop cancer of some sort, even if you don't have the genetic ability, increased genetic ability for doing so if you're a healthy person because of your lifestyle choices, because of environment, because of whatever the factors you don't control. Right. So when you do have resources and same happens with neurodegenerative by the way. Right. A lot of us actually have a risk of developing a neurodegenerative disorder. So when you have resources, the most logical and most reasonable thing you should do is essentially allocate these resources and in the areas which can solve this issue, even for your own sort of personal sake, so that by the time you're 50, by the time you're 60, there is a treatment available also because you have contributed. And this is something that a lot more people are grasping right now. And a lot of we're seeing this tremendous response from the crypto community. As you rightly said, people are no longer interested in just buying things because they suddenly have money. They are interested in contributing these things to a greater cause or to a more fundamental cause, if you wish, and doing so, if you are not an expert in biotech, and most of us are not, it is the easiest way, and one of the only right ways to do it is, is either through charity or through actually placing your funds with a specialized groups of people that have spent their lives in the space. Right. And facilitate tech in the space by investing in it. So this is where you are earning money and this is where you are also essentially immersing yourself into this new and arguably the most important, to be completely honest field out there. Right.

And I mean, like you said, we hear a lot about crypto donations going to charity and how that's being used for good. And obviously that's great. But this is just another use case that we actually aren't hearing so much about now, how crypto can be used for good by investing in the longevity industry. And I think that this use case is going to actually become a trend with other industries that are emerging, like the space industry, for instance. I think what you guys are doing is going to kind of lead the way to show that this is possible, to take crypto investments and put it into these emerging industries.

Absolutely. And I would go one step further and I would say that we would be extremely happy if we see if we trigger some of these use cases where crypto holders on their end reconsider their capital placement patterns on the one hand, and on the other hand, people that are behind the funds, right, in these space industries or other emerging industries that are not crypto, make every effort to accept these crypto holders and to address these crypto holders as their potential investors and their potential partners. Because again, the most important thing that you would like to achieve in any business venture is the like mindedness. And essentially this whole story is about forward looking People trying to merge forces with the other group of forward looking people. It's just they're in different industries but the mindset is the same.

Right. I'm curious, how do you find these investors? Is it, are these people that within your network that you already knew, are you going to crypto conferences and events and just kind of raising awareness? Are you speaking at those events? Because I think while it's a really great idea, we need to raise awareness. I'm just curious as to how you're getting those investors to know about longevity.

So we're talking about limited partners to the fund, right? So the investors to the fundamental. Right, Right, yes, yeah, we are. With crypto we are actually just starting. Right. So we are. Now we decided to design the whole thing in a way that we wanted to establish the process first so that it works and then we would try to pitch the audience. Right. So that when the audience comes in we actually have the process in place. Right. So it is a bit of a safe bet but, but then again we're dealing with the funds of other people. So you should always be on the safe side in terms of your processes. Now, in terms of raising awareness, it's the things you've mentioned. So we are trying to educate the audience through appearing at the events, through pitching certain kols in the industry that have this network effect behind them, etc. Right. So it's your standard things that you do. That said, we're so long and it's present in this fund, right. As I mentioned, it's a total of 35 million euros that we're going to subscribe and that's it. This is where the line is drawn. It's not a lot for a VC vehicle. Right. So what we are also seeing across, among our investors and also increasingly seeing across maybe crypto community a bit is this, I wouldn't call it a fomo. It's not the right word. But we are seeing increasing interest of people wanting to get in. Right. And this is something that we very much welcome because eventually not only we are trying to, not only we are attracting investors to our fund, we are also indoctrinating like minded individuals. Right. And, and that is, and that is something that we can take further on with us in, in the other ventures. Right. Or in, in a bigger fund. For example, after longevity one is invested. This is, this is something very hard to value. Right. So it's, it's golden for us and we, we very much respect the choice of, of, of, of, of the LPS to, to join Us and. Yeah, right.

So I'm, well, I'm, you know, obviously it's super interesting, so there will be increasing interest there. But what are some of the doubts that you're hearing? I mean, I'm sure some of these people have doubts. I don't know if it's security issues or taxes or anything like that. But what are some of the biggest challenges and doubts that people are expressing when they, when they express interest in here, in this. But they're like, well, I actually have a question. How, how will the funds be kept safe, for instance?

Right, so, so we do have, we do have a standard sort of FAQ that, that, that the investors, every LP would be going through. And, and this, these questions are not very different across let's say a traditional, say family office that is, that is committing into the fund with, with fiat, with, with traditional money versus a crypto investor. Right. And these of course include all the questions around sort of your AML or compliance tax questions as well. And we have sort of a whole bulletin and consultants actually to clarify these out. In terms of safety for the funds, I think a VC fund is the safest place where you can contribute the funds because we're not asking for the funds in advance. So the only funds that a VC vehicle, and it's not only us, it's just the VC vehicle that's the way the industry works is asking in advance as your management fees that are paid yearly by LPs. And these are fixed and they amount to, in our case, these are 2.5% and management fees. That's it. Right. So the way that LPs actually withdraw their money in order to transfer it to the fund is where the fund actually finds the deal it wants to invest in. And then the fund issues what you call a capital call. Right. And this is where we would ask every LP to wire the exact amount proportionate to LP's contribution and the whole fund body, of course, the exact amount that we need to actually close this transaction. And that's it. So the very moment when the whole package of the whole sum ends up on the bank account of the fund, it is immediately transferred into the company that the fund is investing in. So technically we don't store the money of our LPs on the account and from return perspective, talking IRR terms, they'll be dramatically bad. The money would be just there, not doing anything. It's not something that you want to do. But otherwise these are all standard questions from both crypto and non crypto audience. And we're perfectly fine at answering them.

Right, yeah. And audience, please send us your questions. We've still got some time here. I mean, this is such an interesting topic that we're chatting about. What about the stuff, instability in the price fluctuations of cryptocurrency. I mean, isn't that a concern here that people are like, you know, one day bitcoin is at 60k, the next day bitcoin's at 40k. And I've made this commitment to invest this amount. So how do you, how do you deal with a question like that? I think that's really important point here.

Right. So it is something that you cannot remove from, from the equation. Right? So it's, it's the fluctuation and the volatility of the crypto market essentially is, is just there. So the way we do take the commitments in cryptocurrency is that the actual commitment of the LP actually comes in fiat, which means that the subscription agreement that is being signed with the fund is still signed in fiat. Let's say it's US$500,000 right now. What happens next is then when the capital call comes in and the fund invests somewhere and asks for a fraction of that money from the lp, this is something that can be wired in crypto. Right? And it can be wired in. So we're now, okay, essentially to accept major cryptocurrencies, right, which is ether, which is btc and most probably stable. So this can be wired in these major crypto. And it is immediately converted at the exchange rate, which is there at the point of actually fund closing the deal. All right, so that's the way it works. But then all the stake of the LP in the fund is still in fiat, Right. So it's not subject to crypto fluctuations. So the whole accountancy side of the fund and the whole portfolio management side of the fund isn't fiat. It's in USD normally, well, euros in terms of accountancy in Europe. But most of our deals are actually out of us, so we invest in USD. Got it.

And so from the LP's perspective, if the price fluctuated with bitcoin so much where they didn't have that amount that they committed to, can they still do that in fiat then?

Oh, absolutely, yes. Okay. The point is you can, you can choose. The point is you can choose the way, the way you like.

Okay, cool. Changing the topic a little bit. I'm curious. No, because it's, it's a crypto focused fund. The companies that you're investing in are those blockchain focused or are those just in general longevity industry, any technology?

That, that's the, that's the, the, the, the, the, the interesting part here. So we're, we're not, we're not crypto focused, we're crypto friendly. Right, that's the perfect, the first part of it. The, the second part is we, we are very focused around our thesis and that is therapeutics and non therapeutics. So what we do is we invest in early stage druggable interventions for age related diseases, essentially drugs that require your traditional sort of market approval, FDA, EMA clinical trials, etc, as well as we invest in, in diagnostics, biomarkers of aging, etc. So what we are doing is we're still sticking with a very focused and very tech oriented thesis when it comes to biotech and our understanding of longevity. So blockchain is rarely findable there. Sometimes it is. Blockchain is super useful in companies which are dealing with clinical data, secondary use of clinical data. So secondary use of clinical data and unlocking clinical data for usage in, let's say AI powered drug discovery. This is where blockchain shines. And it shines because what you need to do is you need to report and you need to record and trace data usage permissions from patients and data origin and all the other stuff that sort of this distributed immutable ledger gives you. So these are the companies that we see blockchain and if it actually serves a functional purpose, we love them. Right. So we're happy to be on board as a fund.

Got it. Nice audience. Send your questions our way if you have them. We've got a few minutes left because we have just a few minutes. Sergey, I was wondering what's next for longevity? I mean, what can we expect? I know the fund is young, so what can we expect moving forward?

Right, so we are, our goal with this fund here is to do I think roughly 24 early stage investments with this current fund. 24 to 26 would be, would be the correct, the correct estimate. We are actually will be live around JPMorgan healthcare conference which is in the beginning of January with a couple of, well, extremely cool announcements which I cannot disclose at this point, but some of our sort of deals that we have already completed and we're about to complete now in this year, so hopefully in December, even before Christmas. Right, so this is the first part of it, the second part of it we are actually thinking of ramping up our sort of educational work around longevity and this is where we are planning quite, quite a bit of Quite a bit of sort of PR activity. Well, not PR activity, but sort of public addressing the public activity around the topics of longevity, around the general topics of investing in longevity trends, etc. Etc. So we are very much on the radar right now with these news that are there to come. And then of course we are planning a couple of really big announcements for the new advisory board members that are going to join our already, well, superstar advisory board. But we still have a couple more to announce.

Got it. Oh, quick question that I'm curious to know about. In terms of location, are these investors located globally or are you targeting one area specifically the LPs?

You mean we are so, so we don't have, we don't have the onboarding restrictions. As a EU based, as an EU based fund, we are abstaining from any US marketing activities to, to, to non qualified investors. As I am very explicit. We are not allowed to do these marketing activities explicitly. Right. But in terms of generally onboarding investors from different geographies. No, we don't have the, we don't have the restrictions, no.

Wow.

These are only the rules of marketing.

Yeah. Also, do you think this is the future of investing? Do you think we're going to see more funds become crypto friendly? Given what you guys are doing, do you think that this is the future?

Yes, because I think what you should, it's the part of the future. So some, some, some LPs like family offices, like traditional sort of conventional investors would still be there with fiat, with traditional currencies and that's absolutely fine. But what you should acknowledge and what you should understand is the forward looking nature of the crypto community, the resource that the crypto community has and the growing amount of education along these investors, crypto investors that are willing to diversify in the areas which were not crypto friendly before. Right. So absolutely. My bet is that you will see, you will see a lot of crypto investments or crypto backed essentially investments in whatever form in biotech, in space tech, as you've already noticed, and other traditional industries. Absolutely.

Yeah. No, this is, I think it's so interesting and I agree with you, we're going to start seeing this more and we're only seeing a few funds doing it. So longevity is super interesting. Sergey, if people want to get in touch with you and ask you additional questions, how can they do that?

So they can essentially mail me and that is sjongevisy.com I also have a telegram apparently which is, apparently which is Sergey J A so S E R G E, Y, J, A which is my name and the first two letters of my surname. LinkedIn still there, still a thing. Well, Facebook. Don't bombard Facebook I guess. But if you need so findable there as well. So whatever is your preference really good.

Great. So we can find you online. And Sergey, we're out of time. So it's been a real pleasure. This has been fascinating. I'm excited and I want to learn more about it and I'm just so happy we had the time to chat today and I want to thank our audience for joining us. You guys are awesome as always and remember to please subscribe to our YouTube channel to learn more about all the fun topics that we have coming up for you guys. So Sergey, again, thank you. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you, Rachel. Thanks for having me. Thanks.

Bye.