FutureCorp Partner John Tuttle on the Power of Public Markets

Welcome back to Conversation. We're your hosts, Imran Khan, tech executive investor and entrepreneur, and Lily Mae Lazarus, business reporter. Today we're joined by John Tuttle, former vice chairman of the New York Stock Exchange and director at FutureCorps. FutureCorps is an investment firm founded by alumni from SpaceX, xAI, Palantir, Surveyor Mobility, and the Stock Exchange. It aims to give public investors exposure to a frontier economy earlier. We'll talk about why companies go public, why many stay private longer, and what a more flexible path between private and public markets could look like. We'll also hear from John about what's exciting in the space economy, as well as lessons from his career from the halls of the White House to the New York Stock Exchange and beyond.

A lot of companies now are choosing to stay private for a long time. Look at Stripe. They've been private forever and doing all this private fundraising and giving liquidity through the private. So what do you think as a former senior exec, vice chairman of a company that companies get listed, What's your view? Do you think companies should stay private long? Should they go public? And why do you think these companies are staying private that long? I'm sure you had this conversation with a lot of companies internally and externally.

Yeah, absolutely. So I evangelized the public markets for 18 years, and I am a big believer in the public markets and the benefits that they not only bring to companies and their investors, but also to society more broadly. And look, there are gonna be companies that are never meant to be public companies, whether it be the fundamentals of their business, they just don't match up with the expectations of institutional investors, where you want that recurring revenue, the revenue, the predictable growth, all that. There are just some industry sectors and companies that are not built for the public markets, but there are a lot that are. And so, for too much and for too long, in my opinion, you heard everybody say why you don't want to be public. But I think, like I said earlier, for too much and too long, we didn't talk about the benefits of the public markets. And the public markets, I describe them as the horse that pulls the cart of not only the US economy, but the global economy. And so there's many benefits to being a public company. First and foremost, one of the reasons why a lot of companies go public is to access capital that they can use to grow and expand their business, to launch new products, to tap into geographies, and honestly create jobs in this country and around the world along the way. But also the other benefits of being a public company aren't talked about as much as they should be, and that's liquidity. Liquidity for those investors that were supporting you early on. I mean, Imran, you are a well-known investor, a well-known analyst. You have a deep understanding of companies, but you're not looking to be an investor for your entire life. You know, you help these companies grow and expand their businesses, but at some point in time, you wanna recycle that capital either back to your own investors or into the next opportunity that's there. I mean, this is an incredible opportunity for a company to get their story out, being a public company, their story out in front of, you know, their, their current customers, their future customers, their employees, investors. And when I say investors, one of the big changes that I've really seen over the past few years is that used to be one bucket. We want to talk to our investors. Now you, you can almost slice that into several different sleeves. You have the institutional investors that are managing institutional capital, pension funds and mutual funds and others out there. But also retail is playing an ever-increasing role in investment and in market operations. And so being able to tell your story in a bit more curated or amplified way to this new and important group of investors It's something that really all companies can do it, but I think public companies have a better shot at doing it well. So there's a lot of benefits of being a public company. The stock market is like politics and it's like life. You know, the chart's gonna go up and down every day. There's gonna be some volatility. Not every day is gonna be in the green, but if you pull back the lens over time, you'll see that in the markets and in life, you know, that chart goes from the bottom left to the upper right. So being a public company also requires you to, Yes, meet short-term obligations, but have that long-term vision and that conviction that you're working towards so that the slope of that chart is heading in the right direction.

Yeah, no, very well said. And I'm very biased for companies to go public. And I always tell the founders that, look, if you look at over the last 25 years, the companies that gave us the iPhone, the company that innovated the cloud, and the company that's powering the AI GPU, maker, Nvidia, all 3 of them built their product in public market.

That's exactly right. And that's exactly right.

So, you know, so anybody who says that, you know, you can't innovate and build the next big thing, you know, they have not studied the 3 biggest things that happened in the last 25 years.

You're absolutely right. And you can extrapolate that out to so many companies too. You look at Facebook and their shift to mobile, and that was largely driven by a market response. Uh, to their current strategy. And so, you know, you don't wanna be, you know, measuring the winds every day as a CEO and saying, you know, go this direction or that direction, but the market will give you feedback and important feedback that allows you to position your business for long-term success.

Lily, you talk to a lot of young companies, so why don't they go public?

It really depends. It depends on the founder, and it's actually not what every single founder wants. I think that there is, there are a lot of benefits. to being public, just like there are benefits to being private. And I think that when the public is not meddling in your business, you have a little bit more freedom in terms of who you answer to as a founder. And we have seen some fantastic private businesses, uh, even on the younger side be built that still don't have any desire in the near term to go public. And I also wonder if maybe some of the novelty has worn off. I think the younger generation, look, I'm young, I'm 26. I don't think my generation has as much of an understanding of the value of the public markets as people that are slightly older than me, including my, my partner who's 6 years my elder. And so I do think that that is one thing that I, I notice, but I also think that they're kind of sick of the hype cycle. And so they see trends like, they see trends like Robinhood that promote that you're gonna be able to invest your own money. And then they, they get frustrated 'cause they're not seeing immediate returns, which is why I think these prediction markets are so popular because they're seeing immediate risk and reward or immediate risk and loss, right? And I would love to know from a macro perspective, from your perspective, now that you are not in the middle of it, when you are looking at what I think is best described as red-hot IPO summer, what are you looking at? What, what has caught your eye and what do you think people are not looking at enough? Because the tea leaves have not quite yet settled, uh, and you know, we, we don't really know what's gonna happen right now with these big AI IPOs, these mega IPOs. So Yeah, well, I mean, what's your take on, on the hype cycle at the moment?

Maybe a few observations that I'd share. And the first is, and I'm gonna come back to it at the end, I think we're living in this, this world where it's very binary, where people are like, you're public or you're not. And I actually think we need to live in the world as it is, where that is a spectrum. And you, and we should think about making sure our regulations and our product sets in the markets can move among that spectrum. And I'll go back to that. across that spectrum. I'll go back to that in a minute. I would say, look, young people have plenty of reasons to be frustrated by the IPO market. Look, there is a short-termism from companies trying to meet the quarter, but it's also from investors wanting immediate kind of stimulation, dopamine hits, and returns that are there. The market should not be viewed as a casino. The market should be viewed as a capital formation mechanism and a wealth formation venue for investors. That's the first thing. But they have, they have good reason to be frustrated as well. If we look at the number of companies that went public from let's say the boom of 2020, there was back-to-back record years on the New York Stock Exchange, 2020 and 2021, by number of IPOs and total proceeds raised in those IPOs as well. And probably over 50% of those companies, and the number is actually probably significantly higher, even while the S&P is flirting with its record highs today, probably over 50% of those companies that went public in that vintage are trading below their IPO price. So, if you got involved in that and got excited by those companies coming to market, You really don't have much to show for it on an absolute basis. And relative to the S&P 500, you absolutely do not. Why is that happening? Because oftentimes, and I don't mean to paint too broad of a brush, but investors have been holding and keeping those companies private during those peak value creation years. And they've been using the public markets more as an off-ramp for liquidity than an on-ramp for growth capital, plus all the other benefits that come along with being a public company. So, I can understand the frustration that comes about from some investors. But again, you have to have a long horizon. In my view, you have to have some sort of diversified approach, whether it's picking a basket of 12 winners or 500 winners, whatever it may be through index funds, and have conviction that over time, you're investing in America, you're investing in great businesses, and that chart's going to go from the bottom left to the upper right. Now, back to the point I was making at the beginning. I think we've lived in this world, at least in conversation and I guess in practice too, where it's been kind of binary. I don't want to be public. I want to remain private. You know, I want to be public. You know, like I want all the benefits that come along with it. And I actually think the way the world is moving is a bit more of a hybrid approach. You look at our current securities laws and the structures that are allowed, and I think there's going to be some significant innovation in the near term. You've seen breadcrumbs of it come out over the past couple of years. But what do I mean by that? There are different structures. You can see it with Destiny XYZ, which I worked with those founders several years ago when they launched their closed-end fund on the New York Stock Exchange. Robinhood Ventures just came out with one, and there's, you know, you can count them on one hand. But what they are are 1940s Securities Act closed-end funds. And so, what they're doing is they are taking private assets, so investments in some of those high-profile unicorns, decacorns, you know, centacorns, uh, that are out there and providing access to those via a vehicle that has the protections and liquidity of the public markets, is listed on the New York Stock Exchange. Why is that interesting to me? For several reasons. One is now all of a sudden, if you're, if, if you're launching one of those types of funds and you're taking direct stakes in the company Getting on their cap table, these, these portfolio of companies, not just buying 7 layers of SPVs or special purpose vehicles to get some to market that you have exposure, but actually investing capital with the company. There is no fund life on the 40 Act fund. You're not on the clock. It's not like your traditional venture capital fund where, where you have 7 to 10 years to provide your limited partners liquidity. No, it's permanent capital. If any of those investors want liquidity, they just sell it in the marketplace. And for the company, so that's permanent capital. They don't have to worry about being on the clock or having some sort of forcing function to make them go public. For private investors— I'm sorry, for public market investors that are investing in these types of vehicles, you now have exposure to those companies in their value creation stage, but again, with the protections and liquidity of the public markets. So I think there's a lot of new product sets that are going to come out to market. Some are already out there. You're going to see that curve steepen pretty quickly with a number of products out there that really solve a lot of problems. Companies want permanent capital. They don't want all the burdensome reporting requirements of a full public company. Investors want access to opportunity, but they don't want to be locked up or have some opaque fee structure that they can't understand and really don't benefit from. And so, there's going to be new products better suited To who is— I'm sorry, who markets are ultimately here to serve, and that's issuers and investors, not necessarily intermediaries.

I like the point that you're making about several of these aspects, and it's making me think a little bit about the push right now in the business community to change the reporting requirements and specifically what the potential benefits of that would be. I have witnessed my own father go through the practice of earnings season several times. It struck me as somewhat counterintuitive to spend so much time not focusing on the day-to-day aspects of the business, but having to cram in addition, so many additional meetings, et cetera, to plan for, you know, earnings reports 4 times a year. Right. I'm curious if you think that that hybrid nature and that people are gonna start getting a little bit more creative. If, do you think that that's an out, somewhat of an output of that, or do you think that this is just— Almost in the same nature of, you know, this space is evolving and we need to get on board?

Both.

And so to that first point, you know, I think you've identified one of the reasons why— one of several reasons why companies delay or prefer not to go public. And that's it's burdensome, it's tough. And you think about it, you really have 6 weeks between quarters to run your business and in a very focused way. Otherwise, you're preparing for earnings, you're responding to earnings, you're speaking at conferences. You're going through all the rigmarole of being a public company, and there's a significant cost to it too, not just in time, but in dollars as well. And so if companies can get some of the benefits of the public markets with fewer of the burdens, I think they'll sign up for that in a heartbeat. You know, when I was at the New York Stock Exchange, one of the things I did, and I had this group for really about 10 years until I left the exchange, but I know it has continued on as well. I got together what I called our Listed Company Advisory Board, and this was meant to be a cross-section of our listed company community. By geography, industry size, and discipline within the organization. So CEOs, CFOs, general counsels, corporate secretaries, folks that are related to the business and the public markets as well. And we asked them many times, you know, do you like the rigor of the quarter? And the answer to that was absolutely. We actually like having the rigor of the quarter. It instills a sense of discipline from a financial standpoint, from an operating standpoint, from a governance perspective. As well. So we like that, but do we like the option of reporting semi-annually? And they said, absolutely, we love that too. And so what we want to be able to do is, you know, put out our public disclosures, our risk factors, our management discussion and analysis of results, all these things that take so much time and cost, you know, for being a public company. We don't mind putting those out annually or semi-annually, but how about we slim down the requirements every quarter? and only put out some sort of short trading update that's equivalent to like a press release. And if there's any material news that comes out in the meantime, we'll do whatever filings we need to do. But we're giving the investors what they're asking for because oftentimes— and I don't mean to, again, paint a broad brush, but investors are just looking at the news release. They're not looking at the footnotes of the quarterly SEC filing a few weeks later. Most countries around the world actually have semiannual reporting. I would always look to the UK. Roughly 40 UK companies, large FTSE companies, were listed on the New York Stock Exchange. And when you're listed in the US as what's called a foreign private issuer, so a non-US company, we defer to home country practices when reporting. So those companies had the ability to report semi-annually. They chose to report semi-annually, but then every quarter they put out those types of trading updates. So again, I think companies like the rigor of the quarter because there's a lot of benefits to it, but they also just want to say, hey, look, what do investors care about, whether they be institutional investors or Main Street retail investors? What do they need to know to make an informed investment decision? And let's release that information to the market. And all these other politically driven right or left tech topics that people insert into legislation or laws and rulemaking, can we just get rid of those and focus on what matters most for investors? This is a great take.

Going back to your 40 Act thing, you know, so I like that 40 Act concept that you talked about and gave example of Robinhood, that now you're giving the Main Street the access to these great private companies. But, you know, do you think we are also potentially exposing risk to these Main Street investors, right? Because a lot of times these venture funds are not buying the stock directly from large private companies. There's not enough diligence is done. You are potentially buying from the other investors who doesn't have information rights. And so my 2 biggest concern with that, one is investors, are we protecting Main Street investors that they end up buying, listening to this high above company? And then the second thing is, it also incentivizes these private companies to not go public and just focus more on hype, right? You know, because the reality is, you know, the moment you go public, numbers speak for itself. Before you go public, you talk about your nice little cute product launch with the video and, and people get really excited about it. And so I, I have my, my biggest concern is, are we increasing the risk for Main Street investors?

You raise a great point, 2 great points, and I'll hit those head on. You know, one of the things you said is Completely true. And forgive my French, you can't BS the public markets. And if you get away with it once, man, you're going to pay for it when they find out. So, to be clear, this is not an advertisement for any of those products that are currently in the market. What I'm saying is that I think you're starting to see products come to market, you're going to see a lot more, and the market is going to allocate capital to those ones where they're going to have visibility into what they're actually owning, who they're backing along the way, or who those partners are along the way that are giving them access. Again, the last thing I want to ever see is retail investors kind of 7 layers deep in an SPV with lack of transparency. No, I want to see these funds going direct onto the cap table of these companies, going alongside some of those top venture capital investors, the Sequoias, the Kleiners, all those of the world, and providing an additional, harnessing much more capital and being able to bring it to these private companies. But But making sure there's, there's the appropriate diligence there. So number one is, I think, you know, as this space continues to expand, and I have conviction and confidence that it will, you know, you're going to want to see funds that are taking direct stakes on the cap table and acquiring those either, you know, primary shares or secondary shares through the tender offerings that are there and not through these exotic structures.

I'd love to take a little bit of a walk down memory lane, not as a total non sequitur. You were a student athlete and then you interned at the Bush White House. In 2002 during the midterms as a college kid from Milford, Michigan. I'm interested in, you know, how did you get there? How did, how did this internship present itself? Um, and, you know, what's one memory from the halls of working in the White House that has stuck with you?

You know, when I was 17 years old, I said, ah, you know, I wanna continue on and play college football. And I went to Eastern Michigan University, which, you know, they've never put together a good season, but everyone, you know, every year they put out a couple of guys to the NFL. And I was playing basketball in a friend's driveway, and I ended up hurdling a bush to go save a ball from going out of bounds, and I, I broke my ankle. And that was my wake-up call saying, like, you know, I think we're on the last stop of this football journey, and so you better figure out what you're going to do with the rest of your life. I was sitting in my dorm room, I said, what am I going to do? And so I thought, you know what, I'm going to apply for an internship with my congressman. And I went online and it said, you know, you've, you've got to get 3 letters of recommendation, write an essay, and send in your resume. And I thought, all right, I can do that, easy enough. And then it was right after 9/11, right after 9/11. Today's the 25th anniversary that we're recording this. So it's, you know, 9/11 was a— I wasn't in New York City when it happened, but it changed my life in a lot of ways. And I said, you know, why don't I swing for the fences and I find out what it takes to get into the White House? And lo and behold, it's get 3 letters of recommendation, write an essay, and send in your resume. I was like, oh, sweet, I can double dip here. And so fast forward, never heard back from my congressman. You know, you had tens of thousands of people applying for the White House program, and they cut the program down significantly after 9/11. It was like a dozen or so people. And somehow I made my way to the top of the pile. And fortunately for me, and through a lot of luck, honestly, it's the only job I've had to apply for in my life to date. And so I ended up— they just said, you look interesting. And I went into the Bush White House. It was an opening door for the rest of my career. And so I Finished up school as fast as I could. I ended up working for Condoleezza Rice in her office when she became Secretary of State. I got to know a lot of central bank governors, finance ministers, foreign ministers during my time at the State Department. I went off to business school. Somebody I worked for at State moved up to the New York Stock Exchange, said, hey, we're taking this thing global. I need you to come work for me. There's a lot of equity capital markets bankers out there that could tell you how to list a stock on the New York Stock Exchange. What I brought was a different set of experiences that when complemented with finance or capital markets unlocked a tremendous amount of value that, you know, most people, because they didn't have that experience, they didn't see those dots, so they didn't know how to connect them. I always say every country has a flag, an army, and a stock exchange. So it's a lot easier to work your way down the food chain than up it when dealing with policymakers and regulators and others. And so if you know how to navigate the government red tape domestically or globally, you can do some, you can do some really exciting things and really drive your corporate strategy at warp speed.

You talked about a lot of people know how to take a company public, but you had different experience. There are a couple of really large companies going public, you know, and I think the size is gonna be really big. So if you are in an exchange, you know, and companies like Anthropic goes public, what kind of preparation needed?

I'm having some flashbacks to when Imran and I first interacted, which was with Alibaba, which up until SpaceX was the largest IPO in the history of US markets, raised roughly $25 billion. And so you think about the size of those transactions, the complexity that goes into them, the volume of trades and orders that come in. You got one shot to get it right. And, you know, one of the things, you know, there are many reasons why that the US capital markets are the envy of the world. The liquidity, the analyst base that's here, just all that comes together. And liquidity is a positive feedback loop. It brings more liquidity. And you look at some of these markets around the world that are illiquid, they become more illiquid over So you really, you really have a special thing here. But what underpins it all is confidence and confidence in execution, knowing that if you, if you want something done, it's going to get done and done quickly and in the right way. You know, you've got one shot to get it right. So for weeks beforehand, we were testing our systems not just internally, but we were pulling in all the, the whole market ecosystem, the banks, the trading firms, and others, the post-trade settlement and clearing folks as well. To make sure we got this down, we tested it 3, 10 times more than the expected volume as well, because we knew this was not only gonna be the biggest IPO of all time, but the biggest opening trade in history and likely the highest volume of any day one IPO in history. So the exchanges are making sure that they get it right. They're testing their systems, they're engaging the companies, they're making sure that they de-risk this as much as possible because That is the underpinning of the US markets, that is confidence. And so, you need to be able to deliver flawless execution. And when you think about the changes that have happened from, Imran, when Alibaba went public to today, one of the big things that really fortified the markets aside from rigorous testing driven by events like this was the pandemic. We went from having everybody in the office operating these systems to Record volumes, record volatility. And what I may say may be off by, by one or two numbers here, but directionally it's correct. I mean, I think the S&P swung something like 5% 20 days in March of 2020. Like, it was crazy. And so you need to— and so COVID actually required the exchanges, but also the whole market ecosystem to really fortify itself to be able to withstand volume volatility that comes along with these large transactions or large swings in the market. So the exchanges are getting ready They're testing their systems and they're really getting back, you know, these big events force the exchanges to, you know, think about who they're here to serve, and that's the issuers. And so what's going to make those issuers successful? Are they able to provide that core basics function of flawlessly executing an IPO? Are they going to be able to give them the best services they need to be a great publicly traded company? You know, competition does breed a better product out there. Are they going to give them the visibility to help those companies be as successful as possible? Are they going to help them achieve their, their goal of getting to the right investors along the way? So I think, you know, the exchanges are working hard on all that right now. You know, it's exciting to see 3 kind of back-to-back IPOs that are going to be the 3 biggest in history, likely. But, you know, the exchanges will be ready for them. And, you know, there's nowhere else in the world you can do them except for the US capital markets.

You're currently working in a space that is absolutely taking off. Speaking of space, um, and as you said to us earlier, you can't spell space without SPAC. So we would love to hear a little bit more about that motto. Do you have it tattooed anywhere? Uh, is it written down like on a big scroll? Tell us a little bit more about what you're working on right now and, um, and really what you are seeing as the future.

Yeah, so maybe I'll take a step back. You know, one of the things, uh, I loved about working in the markets was that for a long time, there was just really arguably one path to the market, and that was the IPO. And it was a very well-worn path. And CEOs, founders, CFOs, you know, they were going to go public once, maybe twice, maybe if you're a real outlier, 3 times in your career. And when you're going public, you want to de-risk as much as possible. And so, you're going to take the well-worn path of an IPO. But you always have some kind of rule breakers and independent thinkers that are out there. And Barry McCarthy, when he was the CFO of Spotify, said like, I don't want to— I don't need the capital that comes along with an IPO, but I want the other benefits of being a publicly traded company. And so me and some really awesome colleagues of mine concocted the direct listing, and it took, you know, about a year to draw up the plans, get them through the SEC, test all of the technology there, and then successfully execute. The first direct listing was Spotify, and then you had Slack, Palantir, Asana, you know, Coinbase, and others took this new route. But what it meant was there was another path to the public markets. And then you looked at SPACs. So I worked on, I worked on our SPAC rules back in 2017, 2018 and said like, look, there may be a better path to the market for, for companies, for specific companies, you know, helping them achieve their goals and objectives. Never did I think it would turn into proliferation that we saw in 2020 and 2021 where like the dog catcher from Des Moines, Iowa was launching a SPAC. But I feel like all of that noise has washed out of the market and we've learned some really important lessons. Along the way that it's a product that's coming back and has a need. And, and, and if a company has a goal of getting to market quickly, but they're ready, they're able to forecast their revenue to X degree of confidence for Y quarters out, you know, they have all the financial controls in place that are required of a public company. They're mature enough to be a public company. This could be a more direct path for many of them and maybe a little less dependent on broader market conditions. You know, if the market's down on a given day or sentiment's not where they want to be, they can still go public. They don't, you know, it doesn't shut down the SPAC market like the IPO market would be shut down. So one of the lessons that we learned from the kind of the SPAC boom and to some degree bust of 5 to 6 years ago was that, look, this product works, but you need to, you need to have the right sponsor team. You need to have the right company, target company in place there. And so SPACs work best when you have companies that need growth capital, that number 2, their story is understandable to investors, and number 3, you have a sponsor team, a SPAC sponsor team, that can help shepherd that company from private to public and do it with, again, discipline from a financial governance and operating standpoint that's really going to help them be as successful as possible. And so when you look at the sectors that kind of meet that criteria, Space is one of them. You know, if you talked to me 4 years ago about space, I would say, like, look, I don't really know much about it. You know, there's some really interesting companies that are popping up, obviously SpaceX chief among them, Voyager Space and others that are out there. But I would say I was more naive than a skeptic. And now I've really studied up on the space. I've gotten together with some really great partners, the former general counsel of SpaceX, the former general counsel of Palantir, another colleague who sold his satellite company to private equity and has been in the space for for 20 years, another one that was the chairman of an NYSE-listed aviation company. We've gotten together and said, this is a frontier economy that is ripe for growth. And we can be a resource to these companies. There's very distinct areas within industrial space, whether it's launch and telecommunications, which Elon has done a fabulous job of really positioning himself in those markets for interorbital transport, defense, and Earth observation, and space observation for that matter. So outward, there's a lot of opportunity to unlock here. These companies have a forward-looking story. There's not some past history of revenue. But if you can find the right dual-purpose company that has military and civilian application, so defense and civilian application, that wants that growth capital and is and wants to really define their own way into the public markets, there's a lot of great SPAC candidates that are out there. So, but if you look at space, there's over 60+ companies that are valued over $1 billion right now, and that to unlock their next phase of growth, being able to build out their, their hardware and their infrastructure, will really benefit from being a public company and being able to deliver on those government contracts and civilian contracts. You know, the SPAC is one route that they can successfully go to market if they structure it in the right way, at the right price and with the right team.

So I'm a CEO of a SPAC as well, and I completely see the value of a SPAC, but you know, it got a lot of bad raps in 2021, 2022. So if you go to a company and say, hey, you should consider going public via SPAC, you know, a lot of companies said, why can't I go public by myself? You know, why do I need a sponsor? Why should a company consider SPAC when they can go public themselves?

You know, their guard is up. You know, a lot of them are scarred or heard negative stories about SPACs. They've seen some of the performance of companies that weren't ready to go public or sponsors that didn't know what they were doing along the way. And so it really forces you as the SPAC sponsor to educate that company on why this is the best route for them. And then they can make that conscious decision. Do they want to take the well-worn path of the traditional IPO? Or do they want to take the SPAC path or direct listing or, or another way if there's one that appeals to them as well? So it's really explaining to them, hey, look, you know, we, you know, we can be a partner to you in helping you navigate the public markets to the extent you want us to or don't want us to. There's a lot of really interesting benefits that the SPAC product can bring to a company. But companies are right to ask the questions, why should I do this? Tell me how it makes sense for me.

My son is a junior in high school. And a lot of his friends are interested in finance. You know, a lot of kids want to go to finance. So what would be your one single advice for people who are, you know, now in college or in high school thinking about a career in finance or thinking about any kind of career? What did you learn in your amazing career that you had, you know, last 20 years?

You're not necessarily going to get your dream job by applying through the HR department on a website. You know, really find those folks at the organizations that you're looking to be a part of or you find interesting, that you have some commonality with. And you have so many tools at your fingertips now. You can go on LinkedIn, find somebody that went to your college, somebody that's from your hometown, you know, and you'd be surprised to find out that they're more than willing to lend a helping hand. They will open the door for you. It's your job to get to walk through it and stay in there. But really, you know, don't— if you really want a career in finance, find people that can help you get there. Because at the end of the day, the second point is to be successful in finance, Business is done by people. Yeah, you have to know how to navigate a spreadsheet and, and understand math, but businesses shouldn't be run by spreadsheet. Relationships aren't built by spreadsheet. Business is done by people. People need to work together. So go out there, engage with people, add value in every one of those conversations. That's the best way in, and that's the best way to grow.

What are your 2 hottest Midwestern/Michigander takes?

So first of all, please come and join us. You have an open invitation to the heartland of this country, the backbone of America's economy, the arsenal of democracy here in Michigan, the Great Lakes State. We would love to welcome you ideally in the summer because that is God's country. There's no place better on earth where you're gonna find the greatest people on earth here in the Midwest. I love New York City. I miss New York City. I've spent a lot of my formative years there and I'll be back there one day. But, you know, look, I'm looking out the window right now, and before we got on this podcast, I saw a bald eagle pull a fish out of the river right next to me. Like, that doesn't happen in most downtowns in most cities. So come here and see it for yourself. There are so many incredible small businesses here in the Midwest where people that want to run a company, maybe not a public company, that are young and want to roll up their sleeves and run a real business with real revenue, with real jobs and real impact, you can come here in the Midwest and find that and find incredible opportunities. And make a lot of money along the way if that's what's driving you, but get an incredible experience as well. So my hot take is, uh, whether you're looking for a wonderful vacation, wonderful people, or wonderful career opportunities, you can find them here in the Midwest and in the heart of it, Michigan.

Are you getting paid for this glowing advertisement, or—

You know, I guess if, you know, more people move here, there's more demand for real estate and, uh, you know, the value can go up.

Amazing guest. Thank you.

So thanks so much for having me. You guys are awesome.

Awesome.