#7 - Future You is Begging for a Financial Plan

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Welcome to episode 7 of the Tech Optimist podcast. In this show, we cover topics at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, and venture capital. We have a new segment today called 3 Breakthroughs. Drew Wonslak and I pick 3 things that we think are most notable technology breakthroughs the last week or 2 and discuss those and try and make them accessible to a broad audience. Enjoy the show. In Block 1, we have a new segment called 3 Breakthroughs. In this segment, I talk to Drew Wonslak. Drew is an associate at Alumni Ventures. We talk about 3 new breakthroughs in the tech industry that have happened over the last couple of weeks. We try to make those topics accessible and point to how they can impact real people in their lives in the near future. Then in Block 2, we have Itamar Ben-Etti. He's the co-founder and CEO of Anzu, a company that's developed an in-game advertising platform. As we all know, eyeballs are where it's at. Attention economy and people game. So advertising will follow. We'll learn a little bit more about Anzu. Finally, in Block 3, I have a conversation with Steve Chen. He's the founder and CEO of New Retirement. This is a company, AV portfolio company, that utilizes AI to build comprehensive financial planning model for people. They use a fee-based system, so it's not a function of AUM, which is really a great choice for people. I hope you enjoy our conversation. As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not personalized financial advice, and it is not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

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Okay, here's our segment, 3 Breakthroughs. This is where we try to identify 3 things that we think are most likely to change the world. All right, Drew, welcome to the Tech Optimist podcast. We're going to try a new segment today where we're talking about 3 breakthroughs that we think basically happened in the last week or so. And hopefully bring those to the attention of people, talk about it a little bit, and yeah, have some fun with it. So, who's going first today?

I think you're going first with a little— some new updates in drug discovery.

Yeah.

So, I'm going to— for mine, I'm picking AlphaFold. The AlphaFold announcement. And just to set some context, at the JPMorgan conference, the CEO of NVIDIA, Jensen Huang, he really talked about drug discovery moving from kind of scientific discovery to engineering. And, I think that was— and, we'll put that clip in there, but I think it was really striking that when you can move things into the engineering realm, you start experiencing geometric improvements. And, I think—

Can you describe when we're talking about going from this science to the engineering world. What does that mean and why now? Why haven't we done this before?

Yeah, I think I would describe it as kind of— obviously, you have scientific frameworks and ideas about systems and processes, but it's a little bit hit and miss. It's like, let's try this. Let's design this this automobile shape, and then we're going to put it in a wind tunnel and see how aerodynamic it is. And yeah, but it takes a long time in clay to kind of make the model. And it's like, this worked, now I got to go back and make a new one. But if you can do that in software and you create a—

Yeah.

simulated automobile and you can run models and iterate, it's just, again, orders of magnitude better. And again, I think for me, that's why for one of the 3 breakthroughs of the week, I'm picking this AlphaFold announcement. And again, just to kind of keep it at the strategic level of a discussion.

Yeah.

It basically allows people to model proteins, small molecules, and all the things that go into drug discovery. And so, you can basically do it in a software simulation and can greatly shorten the time of kind of trial and error, hit and miss that would take place in a laboratory. I think people have all— I mean, family members who have had disease, cancer, and you sit there and you're just so— it's so frustrating to see, hey, there's promising technologies, but it's in phase 1 trials. And that's, you know, 5 to 10 years from actually at scale helping people. And even before you hit— and that's like phase 1 is like the starting gate.

Yeah.

Companies spend years and years, you know, 3 to 7, kind of just in the, in the wind tunnel, if you will. And so bringing more and more of biology into kind of models and software where you can find side effects, how things work, trial and error in software. I just think it is huge. I think we're if if if he is right and we are moving into the engineering phase of drug discovery, I think I think there's something to be very excited about. I mean, we've talked before that I think one of the more underestimated technologies right now are you know this family of peptides GLP one drugs that we're I think we're just at the beginning. of understanding of how they work on certain important systems of the body. And I think, you know, in 5 years, people are going to— the vast majority of the population is going to be able to be at their target weight, which is transformative to a society where half the population is overweight and a quarter is obese. I think this is like that. I think the ability to really get at some nasty diseases, I think that the ability to get at niche diseases with some of these breakthroughs are really exciting. And part of it, listen, I am not a biologist, but I can read the room and I can see and read the enthusiasm of people who know what the hell they're talking about in this space. And when they're excited, I'm excited.

Yeah.

So, for me, that's number one.

Yeah. I think it's a great announcement and it's something that I think we've been hearing for years, right? It's like computers are going to revolutionize pharmaceuticals and drug discovery. AI is going to revolutionize drug discovery. And, I've always read that and gone, great, right? We have artificial intelligence.

Where is it?

Where is it? And, why is there such a bottleneck? Why is this so hard to do? And when you shared this, I mean, that piece on simulation, I think, is the most important.

Yeah.

And that is what has been so incredibly hard to achieve because human bodies are complex.

Yeah.

There are billions, trillions of data points of how a drug could interact, how our bodies interact. And so being able to model that is hard to do. And we got to a point where I think we could get the data points, but then the actual simulation Yep. You know, analyzing that. And then over a period of time, I mean, we're seeing this across other industries as well, is, you know, if a study has to take 10 years because you got to understand the effects 10, 15, 20 years down the line, people can't wait for life-saving drugs or for that long.

So if we can reduce that— Yeah. And it's also money, right? Because it's like, you know, some of these things, because they take 15 to 25 years Soup to nuts. And then, you find out at later stages like in year 7 of this process that something didn't work or there was this nasty side effect and you've already spent $500 million to get there. And, like our business, it's a hit business, it's a power law business. Bringing these drugs to market, if you can do it in software, you're probably reducing the cost by an order of magnitude. So, which also then feeds into what companies have to charge for drugs. So, I just think it's like when you can digitize something, ballgame, whole new ballgame.

Right.

We've got a whole new order of magnitude arsenal to do things. So again, talk about— An area to go into that is super exciting right now is, you know, at the intersection of, you know, software, AI. Jensen also talked about kind of even within the physical world of instrumentation and robotic surgery, kind of the combination of AI and robotics. the physical world and the software world going to the next level is also, I think, something not to be underestimated. So, it's just super exciting.

And, neither of us are recommending or in favor of reducing clinical trials or safety regulations from the FDA. It's, can we reduce those bottlenecks where it isn't a regulatory bottleneck. And, you know, time is a constraint. And to your point, I mean, that's reducing costs for, you know, the end user, the end patient, and getting these drugs to market faster, hopefully.

Yeah.

So, that's a good one.

All right.

What's yours?

I'm actually kind of staying in the drug discovery realm. So, there was an announcement. We've made some progress on what's being called inverse vaccines. So, looking at the percent of the population that deals with autoimmune disorders and disease, 1 in 10 people. And right now, so as a vaccine would work, right, is attacking antigens from a virus or a bacteria. And then, in autoimmune disorders, it's your body essentially attacking itself.

Yup.

And so, there's current drugs on the market, right? Humira, Stellaris, $20 billion and $14 billion respectively in annual sales. So, these are big markets.

Big.

Yeah.

The problem with those drugs is they essentially tell your immune system to relax and to calm down. So, there's less of this inflammatory response to—

But, it calms down everything.

But, it calms down everything, right? And so, you're susceptible to more disease. So, it's kind of helping the self-response, but you're still susceptible to external response. And so, they've created these new developments where it's actually sending the self-antigens, so the part of the immune system that's reacting to parts of our own body into the liver. And, by doing that, it's helping to train our body understand that these are not necessarily threats to our body and it calms down those reactions. So, really interesting. You kind of get the benefits hopefully of what a kind of typical autoimmune drug would do without the downsides of making you more susceptible to disease.

Yeah. So, it's this theme of more targeted, right? So, it's like because we're seeing this with— I mean, this is obviously a lot of the historical approaches to cancer like, let's poison you. But, it poisons the cancer more kind of thing and just all the side effects that come along with it. But, if we can go into the human system, which is incredibly complicated, with a much more targeted response attack, either offense or defense, or in this case targeting the body to kind of tone down on one vector and not just broadly. Yeah, really interesting.

Yeah, and maybe not for the, you know, the, the doctors or the scientists listening, but to your point on targeting, I mean, this is— when we talk about simulation, when we talk about modeling, that, that's a big part of— we know how to do a lot of things, right? We know how to stop a lot of things. The problem that I think a lot of drugs face is, can you stop X thing without Y thing happening?

Yeah.

Um, and to understand that at a really granular, deep level It requires understanding kind of all the elements of the body. What is going to be impacted when we put this drug or we put this molecule into a body? Can we get the positive benefits without the negative effects? And, that's what's been, I think, holding back a lot of these drugs that aren't necessarily safe to go to market because of those negative side effects.

And, what was it?

Was it a scientific paper? Was it a product release? What kind of triggered you to put this on the list for the week?

Yeah, it was a study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. So, it was in a paper. It was just in mice. They've been very clear they don't know if this will be effective in humans yet, but I think it's promising, especially when you think about just how big this market is and how many people are affected by diseases and disorders that are autoimmune.

Yeah, no, I mean, the size, like, you— yeah, the size of the market opportunity is— I think it's surprising to some people how many people are on these drugs.

All right, Mike, what's your next breakthrough?

So, my third one was— there was a couple, but I'm going to go with the ChatGPT 4.0 announcement. And I think the reason I picked it was it was an interesting announcement. It was clearly kind of a sexy demo. But I think the reason I picked it is the pace of change here is just something in 30 years that I have not seen. And so, I'm really picking it for that, just the kind of delta we're seeing with the biggest, most powerful tech companies in the world kind of in an arms race here. And again, I had, you know, I saw evolutions in the personal computer. I saw evolution in the internet and mobile computing.

Yeah.

And even just even take like the iPhone, which really disrupted kind of computing, putting it in your pocket, amazing user interface innovation there. I mean, we talked generations of iPhone that were basically every year. And then, you know, I think there was a big kind of breakthrough about like the iPhone 3, 4, where you were really starting and But you absolutely wanted to buy every iPhone because each generation was way better than the previous generation. Now it's like, okay, every 2 or 3 years. Now, I think Apple's got some stuff up its sleeve that's going to be pretty exciting. I would be shocked if they aren't all in on AI assistants. I think Sam Altman is You know, in this release is kind of getting some live data for whatever Siri 2.0 is going to be from Apple. But I would be shocked if Apple isn't going to be all in on an AI digital assistant that's safe and on your phone and You know, your data is safe on the special chip. I don't know. Don't have any insider information, but I would be shocked if that doesn't play out. But I— but those were year cycles. Now it is like every 2 months or every month we are seeing, oh shit, jaw-dropping improvements in what these tools can do, how they cost, how broadly available they are. And so I'm picking it just because I just think it is— this is one hype cycle that may be underhyped. I just— because again, I'm just looking at plot points. of improvement. And if you extrapolate this ahead 3 years, 5 years, it's already, I think, far exceeding people's ability to digest. You know, that they're like, oh, this is— I can't handle it. I just— I'm trying to get through the day. But these tools that are now available are going to change our society 100%. You know, the demo on, you know, a learning assistant that is like looking at you and reading what you're writing and asking you questions. The voice believability is just at a totally different level. The ability for it to see, you know, I think we crossed, we're very close to crossing the her threshold.

Right.

I mean, the demo where you had the person applying for a job and the female assistant saying, hey, You might want to change your shirt and leave the hat at home, is I think way more constructive than a lot of people would find that they're getting from their current life partner.

And, that was, I mean, it's worth watching the announcement. It's pretty incredible stuff. But, that was part of the big, maybe breakthrough is too strong of a word, but the this kind of multimodal audio, video, speech, being able to understand, contextualize, and respond to that in real time is, you know, you mentioned Her, like the movie Her, like that's kind of the breakthrough we've been looking for. It's one thing if you, you know, can type a prompt into ChatGPT and then, you know, a couple seconds later it spits back out a response to you. But when you can turn your phone around and say, what am I looking at? And it can describe what you're looking at and then you can interact with it.

And it's fast.

And it's fast.

I mean, it's instantaneous, the latency, the natural language interaction. I've got it up on my phone and it's like I'm talking to it instead of Googling stuff. And so, that's real world. And these are practical today. The, the language thing, right? So the ability to sit down with somebody, if you're, you know, this sounds trite, but I think these things are powerful, is like to sit down and speak to someone in real time in my language and they're hearing it in their language and we're having a conversation because there's, you know, It's basically like the UN translator in your ear kind of thing going on, right? And so it's like, you know, I think it's like, hey, I need to rethink recommending taking 4 years of high school Spanish. Maybe that needs to be replaced by 4 years of like cultural immersion or something like that. But the actual practicality of having to, you know, sit in language lab for 4 years. It's like, no thanks.

There is something really interesting brewing here. I think we're, you know, 10 years from now, we're going to look back and go, you know, it was all connected, right? And we look at the last couple kind of big technology trends, buzzwords, whatever you want to call them, you know, you have blockchain technology, you have AR, VR, XR, and then now you have what's going on in AI, and they seem disconnected, right? Like they seem like there's these separate innovations. But when we're talking about this like multimodal, live, fast reaction to what's happening around you, being able to communicate that to you, does that not fit perfectly into this Apple vision of their Apple Vision Pro, right? Like what's the unlock there for them? On spatial computing, you want to have Siri in your headset, not just something that you can talk to, but understands what you're seeing. You know, is that the breakthrough there? And then tying in the blockchain piece is, if we're living in this digital world where it's like kind of mixed between, you know, mixed reality and the real world—

It's hard to know what's real and what's not.

What's real and what's not? And how can we create essentially these like permanent structures of identity, of money flows. Like, what is a fake anonymous actor versus who's a real person? And so one at a time, they seem like these big buzzy kind of breakthroughs, but I think we're going to look back and see that everything kind of molded together, maybe not in the nicest or fastest way possible, but there's definitely this kind of thread that's starting to expose itself.

No, I think you're I think that comment is actually very profound in that I think as a venture capital firm and as venture capitalists, oh, where do you invest? Where do you think what's next? I actually think there's really interesting work at the intersection of these huge technology waves.

Mm-hmm.

Right? And as you point out is what is the Venn diagram between blockchain, AR, and AI? What is the Venn diagram between telemedicine and robotics and, you know, testing technologies? Energy is also in this mix, right? I mean, we're talking about, you know, energy requirements at the end of the day. You're gonna build these data centers. You're going to—

Absolutely.

You know, data, you know, energy storage. So there's all kinds of innovations going on. But I think, you know, I think a lot of people right now are investing in buckets. And I think there has been a lot of venture firms that have been, you know, raised around kind of verticals. And I think we're Where the action really is, is to take 2 of these major trends that look, as you mentioned, disparate, and there's great new companies to be built at those intersections. And so, I think it's— I've made the point where I think there's somewhere between 8 and 15 kind of major trends that are order of magnitude On the equivalent of the innovation of the iPhone, right? And instead of a couple of things, there's literally 10. And not only are you going to have amazing new businesses being created, I also think that there's going to be huge productivity gains of a Existing businesses, like the incumbents are going to do just fine if you have certain aspects of your business where these technologies are just going to be an accelerant or an efficiency machine. And, but I think, I think the place that is not being looked at closely enough is actually, as you point out, intersectional. Like where can I bring AI and robotics together and a market problem? Or something, right? Kind of thing. So, okay. I think pretty good ones. Yeah.

Yeah.

Some good ones. I just wanted to say, I think you brought up a good point of like, you're almost taking it a level deeper. When you look at some of these like really effective or notable VCs, it's like understanding that Venn diagram, understanding the intersection, and then what are the side effects of that intersection? Good and bad, right?

I mean, you're talking about energy.

ChatGPT uses the same amount as 17,000 homes every single day.

And yeah, it's like a small country, right?

Yeah.

It's more than Iceland.

Right?

So, it's like, this is insane. So, it's like, as these things intersect, it's not only can we find opportunities in that intersection, but what does that mean for all the infrastructure that that world that we view would require?

And again, that's the whole theme of Tech Optimist, right? Which is there's a new wave, there's value created, we're moving things forward. But there's always negative unintended consequences. And instead of retreating back, let's go back to, you know, some romantic notion of the past. Now what you have to do is now take those problems and go solve those things. So you invent the automobile. We're not going to go back to horse and buggy. Automobiles, however, have created all these externality problems. Including 50,000 car deaths a year. Okay, let's go solve that problem. It's doing bad things to the atmosphere. Okay, let's go solve that problem. Well, in solving that problem, you're creating another problem. Okay, well, again, you can't go backwards. That is life. That's existence. That's Darwinism. You just got to keep plowing ahead. So, okay, interesting inaugural episode. We'll talk again in a couple of weeks with With Drew and 3 more big breakthroughs. I'm not going to tell you mine next time. So, there we go.

Spontaneous.

You get 2.

You have 2 next time. I'll have the sandwich episode in between.

I will use the element of surprise to my advantage.

Yeah.

Don't take mine though.

Awesome.

All right.

Thanks, Mike.

Have a good one.

See you.

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Okay, let's get into block 1 with Itamar Benetti, co-founder and CEO of Anzu. All right, we'll kick off.

Yeah.

So I'm pleased to welcome Itamar Benetti, who's the founder and CEO of an AV portfolio company, Anzu. We're super excited to talk to him today. You know, Anzu is a company that, you know, follows something that we really believe in, which is we're in an attention economy. And, you know, eyeballs and time is being spent in the digital world. And when people are there, brands and advertisers need to reach those people. So, uh, welcome to the show.

Hey, Mike, and thank you for, for having me here, and thank you for the partnership for, for many years.

Great. Um, one, let's hear kind of the elevator pitch. Tell us a little bit about what Anzu does and kind of, uh, why our investors should be excited to be part of the, the story.

Yeah, of course. So first Great to meet you all.

I'm Itamar.

I'm the CEO and the founder of Anzu. We started the company 6 and a half years ago, so an exciting journey, and thank you for being part of it. So Anzu is the leader in the world of in-game advertising. Think about a digital out-of-home ad format inside the gaming world. So you're playing a racing game, a sport game, a casual game, a simulator game, and there's branded content in the game like a product placement type of advertisement. It can be a billboard, it can be a poster on a building, it can be a logo of a brand on a shirt, on a character, on a car, on any game objects. And the reason why we're excited about this is there is so much consumer time spent in gaming, little advertising dollars going into gaming. So we saw this opportunity of number one, helping this education of how big gaming is. Gaming is not— Only geeks locked in their basement. A 60-year-old lady playing Candy Crush will not say, hey, I'm a gamer, but she's playing a game. So, you know, figure it out. And second is bringing for the first time the advertising standards into the gaming world, into mobile games, PC games, console games, VR, AR, cloud gaming, all the virtual environments, the 3D types of interactions. And it's the first time ever this is like happening because brands love innovation, but brands don't typically change the way they work. So bringing them how they're used to buy media, to measure media, to evaluate media from television, first time into the gaming world, you know.

And I'll share something too, again, as an old-timer, that, you know, this went on in the early days of the internet, right, where it's, you know, it— the adoption of brands to move into new vectors tends to be somewhat slow, right? And it's like, oh, we've worked really successfully on, you know, in the olden days, radio and print and television. And then it's like, oh, there's this new thing, you know, called the internet. And oh, you know, there's search now. And how does that work? And it's like, it literally took 10 or 20 years for brands. And there's still the ratio of Digital advertising has taken a long time to catch up, but enormous value has been created here. And this is one of the reasons we were excited to be an investor in the company is we thought we were early, but we'd rather be early as, again, people spend more time in their digital worlds. And I think we're still at the beginning of that. There is, I think there's an immersive world that is yet to even be hinted at. I mean, we've got peaks of it, I think, with Apple Vision Pro and with, you know, the Meta Oculus product. But I do think, I think we're headed toward an increasingly high-tech digital 3D immersive world and a totally unplugged superhuman, um, high-touch world. And, and can you, can you speak about the trends and how you've kind of seen them play out over the 6 years and what's, what's played out as you thought and what's been a little different than you anticipated?

Yeah.

So first, maybe an example to emphasize what you said, right? So digital advertising, the internet, for many years companies spoke about it, and big brands were still putting a lot of dollars in print and offline and radio. And only really when Facebook started to get a lot of attention is where we really saw this change of ad dollars moving more into digital. That's what it took from the advertising community to do something versus speak about it. And this shows the complexity of moving mountains in this regard. So that's maybe number one. Number 2, I mean, yes, today we're focused on the gaming world, but I think like gaming is the beginning of something bigger. Gaming is where today we see like 3D interactions at scale.

Right.

But it's going to be more than gaming. I mean, our technology supports every application game engine based, and that's not only gaming. So VR, AR, the Apple Glasses that you mentioned, cloud gaming, Hollywood movies being produced, and with the, with the game engine, there's more and more of this content. And autonomous cars, I believe, like, that once autonomous cars become a big thing— now it's already available in, in San Francisco— that in-car infotainment is going to become a big deal.

Mm-hmm.

And All these screens are game engine based, so there is so many like opportunities of how our technology can be relevant. The work we're doing today with the official advertising bodies, the big brands, the big agencies, on laying out the infrastructure for how to do like efficient and effective buying in 3D worlds. How do we treat measurement in the 3D world will be relevant. to much more than gaming. I believe most of the interactions that consumers will have with the internet, well, it's going to be in a 3D world. Maybe there's going to be lenses that—

Exactly.

Of the device empowering it. So that's number one, that's very exciting. Second, like focusing more on gaming and what we're actually like, you know, like doing now, aside from gaming being the first environment that brings a 3D world, but has advertising standards, programmatic advertising and scale, which has a lot of value for brands in the sense of better visibility and viewability of the content. Gaming is also unique because it has a very high attention. So you're playing a game, there is no second screen in comparison when you watch television, for example. And it's a very brand-safe world in comparison to social media. Like, like most games don't have, um, user-generated content. There, there is moderation by the platform, the engine, the developer. If you are in a tennis game, you know exactly as a brand what you're getting. Other platforms and mediums cannot say that. And then the last part about this is this, like what we call this incremental reach. A lot of brands don't yet have a gaming strategy.

Right.

Put aside, I believe, and here is like a prediction I'm happy to give, 2 years from today, most of the CMOs of the world have a gaming strategy. And gaming is an advertising medium, same that television, social media, and music are today. Put that aside. A lot of brands are, without having a gaming strategy, are finding value with this incrementality of gaming is the excuse to reach a million Americans that today they cannot reach them in other mediums. After some time, they see the value. Okay, we need to think bigger about gaming. So that's some of the dynamics we see about the value in gaming as an advertising medium.

Yeah, it's a, it's a super exciting space you're playing in. Um, give our audience a little sense of this, the company and the story and, you know, how it got founded and, you know, what it was like those first years and kind of where you are in your journey and kind of what's the next big milestone you're trying to hit.

So I'll tell you a secret. I'm not a gamer, right? And my 2 co-founders who lead tech and product are hardcore gamers. They're very excited to work with the game that they were playing as like children. I'm many years in the world of like building technology for the advertising world.

Yeah.

I get very excited and proud when the biggest brands in the world use technology I led and built to do advertising better. I believe people don't hate ads. They hate bad ads. Most people will not complain of having ads on Instagram or in the search of Google and will prefer it over having a paid product. People get annoyed when the ads are bad, when you're trying to navigate a website and ads jump on your face and you cannot like, you know, like have just have a good experience. So an example, And one of the big, like, publishers has annoying ads on his website.

Yeah.

Put the name aside. So people will use ad blockers to block that content. So the publisher will block people with ad blockers from being able to enter his websites. So that's a lose-lose-lose of the industry. The publisher creates great content, no one sees it. So this win-win-win is really what we want to do. We call it internally, let gamers play, ads that make the world like more real, the gaming world more realistic. I can give another example. Like, we're based now in, in New Jersey, just out of New York. Before we moved here from Europe, I told my, like, my boy that we're moving to, to the US, and he's telling me, oh, of course I know New York. I'm playing the Spider-Man game and I see like Manhattan all the time.

Yeah.

I told him there's one big difference between that Manhattan in the real Manhattan. Like, in the, in the real Manhattan, there's a lot of advertisements. Times Square is no Times Square without the ads there, right? So our ad formats can even make the game more realistic on top of being a new, like, business model and, like, net new revenue for the publishers. This win-win-win is really what it's about. So this is where I got excited about, like, about this opportunity for, for Anzu educating gaming companies, the biggest gaming companies in the world who never had ads in their game because they didn't like this annoying pop-ups and annoying ads. And for the first time are accepting advertisements. That was exciting working with the big brands about gaming as an advertising medium. And for us, it was always about this triangle because we knew that it's hard to move mountains and change how like the big brands are looking into gaming as a new medium. This triangle was about number one, having unique tech that no one in the world has. Of course, having patents and like securing it and like bringing new capabilities to the world. Too many advertising companies don't have any unique tech, don't have any like added value. And you see that like in their price stock and valuations that the market is giving them a very low price on that. That's number one. The second thing is strategic partnerships. We know we need the biggest gaming and advertising companies as partners and champions to make this happen, A, faster, B, better. And we're very proud of the partners we partnered with alongside the way. WPP, the biggest advertising group in the world's first ever investment in and gaming. Sony, owner of PlayStation, one of the biggest gaming groups, first ever investment in advertising. Samsung, HTC, PayPal, NBCUniversal, Axel Springer, and a lot of other great tech, media, advertising, and gaming partners. That's number 2 in the pillar. And number 3 is just having a great team. This is my 3rd company. I was never part of such a strong team. My proud every day to go into battle with these guys. And 5 people—

How did you meet your co-founders?

So, um, maybe one sentence to complete the last part, fighting, because it's also related. 5 people from our management team are with me like between 10 to 15 years, 2 or 3 different companies. And so we have like a unified strong team that works a long time together. These are some of the smartest people in the world. They could have a lot of opportunities and they choose to continue and partner with me. So one of our co-founders, Ben, our chief product, we're like best friends from school. So this is like year 15 for us together. Maybe a fun fact about him, he has the same girlfriend from age 13. And so his joke was, I have the same girlfriend, business partner, and father for many years.

Yeah, he's a loyal guy.

Yeah.

And then as we started, we understood the tech complexity of Anzu was like real-time image recognition and, and, and, and, and 3D world engineering. And we met our CTO Mikey, who was like a deep tech engineer. Ben is more like a gaming product guy. I come more from the advertising side, and I was the CEO of Glispa, $100 million annual advertising business before, and those would pretty much complete each other. So that's how we, we got going. Then I took my gang from the previous companies that we had some success, and this is then taking it from there.

Excellent. Now we've got a big audience of other entrepreneurs and a huge community of connected people. Just, is there any way our community What's your ask? What's the Anzu ask of the AV community? How can we help?

Yeah, I mean, first, thank you for offering this. And we received over the years a lot of great introductions from the network and some of our biggest clients and partners came from these interactions. So this is fantastic. Like we're always looking, A, to meet brands, agencies, and marketers who are willing to consider a new advertising format, a new advertising concept.

Who may need a gaming or non-traditional strategy in these kinds of domains.

Correct.

And one thing is gaming is one thing, as I said before, there's like incremental reach, new eyeballs, high attention. Because, you know, like the advertising world is changing and the cookie will not stay for a very long time.

Yeah.

Consumer time spend is changing. Preferences of native versus annoying types of media is changing. And there's an opportunity of like getting it right and adopting your plans faster. And hundreds of the biggest brands in the world already work with us. There are thousands that we don't yet work with. So I guess that's like maybe the number one thing.

So for the people out there that control brands or in advertising and want to view or is going versus where it's been and perhaps help their career, help their company by being very forward-looking, this could be a good partnership for you.

Yeah.

I mean, I think there's so much inefficiency in how advertising is being done today. There's too many dollars in cable linear TV. There's too many dollars on the open exchange programmatic ad dollars and websites where people are blind for these ads. And I think there's a massive opportunity there. So that's like the number one thing we're focusing on because we pretty much like completed most of building the tech platform. We're working with most of the biggest gaming companies. And another area we're really focused on is on the sport leagues.

Mm-hmm.

And so that's an interesting concept of like we work with the sport leagues and with their teams and clubs on expanding sports sponsorships from the stadiums to the official gaming assets. So if you work with the official game of one of the sport leagues, that can be a great extension of something from the stadium, from the jersey to the game.

Mm-hmm.

This is like, we see this as like an easier way for some brands to get involved in gaming because like, building a gaming strategy is a big thing, but if they're putting millions of dollars in and sponsoring the Chicago Cubs stadium and giving them the same experience in the game, that's— it can be a great opportunity. We also have a lot of investors in the world. So the owner of the Pacers, the Cubs team, the owners of the, like, the Jersey Devils, the Commanders, and the 76ers are all investors and partners as well. So there's also like a big push on, on that front.

Any other, any other places, um, our community could help with?

Um, I mean, we're always looking also to partner with more gaming companies, and so that maybe can be another opportunity. We are hiring, so we also would love to hear from great talent on joining on our journey. And, and yeah, I mean, that's really like where we're now at in terms of company. We're now 100 people in the company. So it's like an interesting timing of this, like, transition from a startup to a more gross-scale company. So a lot. So that's also—

I mean, the nice thing about joining a company where you're at too, which is, you know, it's one thing if you're leaving a very successful, you know, safe job where you're leaving to join 3 people and an Irish Setter, just literally raw startup. Obviously, huge upside but also huge risk. But, you're beyond that very first phase now. And, when you join a company that has what I say is 100 to 250 employees, you're kind of at the next level.

Yeah.

professionally, a pretty good risk-reward profile typically of, you know. Yeah.

So like, on the one side, we raised $65 million, $40 million, like last year, we have cash in bank, this is like a safe, stable place. We have resources to do things right. But it's still pretty early in the sense of like, joining early and having a big impact on this growing And there's a big, like, opportunity on the stock to significantly grow. So I think it's a good balance between, like, the tech giants and a pre-seed startup.

And a pre-seed, start your own thing. So yeah, I, again, when I, when I talk to young people or people that really are thinking about making a leap into something that has a lot of upside still in front of it, You know, I think again, you're in that sweet spot of really a really nice risk-reward because again, I too think you're in the, you know, the second or third inning of your story here with Anzu. And again, we all read about where the amount of time young people and everybody is spending on screens. And it's not just, you know, it's not just gaming. Some of it's a professional environment too, with VR training going on. And, you know, it's just, it just, our digital lives are just really, really a bigger part of our story. And, you know, and this is where companies and brands need to be if they're going to be, um, forward-looking.

Yeah, I mean, I believe our technology is going to empower the next wave of the internet. Which is going to be a 3D interaction world.

Yeah.

And even just from gaming, you know, the CEO of Netflix said in the past that his biggest competitor is Fortnite.

Yeah.

And not the other, you know, like streaming television platforms.

Yeah.

So gaming is for these like Gen Zs, millennials, it's their social media.

Yeah.

Like they don't use WhatsApp, they use the chat of Call of Duty to interact with each other. And so I think it's like a fascinating world. Also people who like gaming, this is like a fun place to be at. So I mean, I'm a bit biased, but like, yeah.

No. And the social side of gaming is also not, you know, everybody thinks of kind of a lone person kind of in a room playing game, but, you know, again, I see it more as like a group of friends getting together, watching a sports event. You know, doing, doing a little, you know, interactive stuff on the side or, or forming a team and playing a game together. And some people love the game, some people don't love the game, but they all like being together for a couple hours on Friday night. So if that's where people are, that's where brands need to be. So keep up the good work. It was great checking in.

Thank you.

Again, encourage our listeners to follow the company and Again, if this is something that you in your life and profession want to reach out, we encourage you to do it. We'll have some contact information in the show notes. And again, Itamar, it was nice to meet you and keep up the good work.

Thank you for having me here and we'll speak soon.

All right. Take care.

See ya.

Hey everyone, taking a quick timeout so I can tell you about the Sports Fund from Alumni Ventures. AV is one of the only VC firms focused on making venture capital accessible to individual investors like you. In fact, AV is one of the most active and highly rated VCs in the US, and we co-invest alongside renowned lead investors. With our sports fund, you'll have the opportunity to invest in a portfolio built around tech and business advancements across the sports world, from personal wellness to sports media to team ownership. This fund is focused on companies that have the potential to tap into the massive global sports market that is expected to exceed $250 billion by 2030. To get started, visit av.vc/funds/sports. Enjoy the rest of the show.

Here's our 3rd segment, my conversation with Steve Chen, founder and CEO of New Retirement, a company using AI to make retirement planning easier.

Right.

So Steve, nice to meet you. Welcome to the Tech Optimist podcast. We're super excited to learn a little bit more about your company. And again, full disclosure, we're an investor, super proud to be involved. And yeah, tell us a little bit about your background and how, you know, this came about.

Sure.

Yeah, Mike, no, appreciate the opportunity. And Super glad that Alumni VC and Kastor invested. And, you know, it's awesome. I went to Boston University, so across the river from MIT, but I used to go play volleyball at MIT. And, uh, in my first company, uh, the co-founder CEO was an MIT, you know, rocket scientist guy. So pretty familiar with the culture there. And a lot of his, um, fraternity brothers, Kappa Sig guys, joined the company. And so, uh, I, I see— I get the value of Human capital side. Yeah. So for, for us, I mean, essentially, we've— our core innovation is we've built essentially TurboTax for financial planning. So we let anyone create their own financial plan. So we're trying to democratize, democratize access to financial literacy, financial planning, help people, you know, get organized, see what's possible, make good decisions across their whole lifecycle. It's kind of the analogy is like physical wellness, right?

Yeah.

So we believe financial wellness is coming. People realize they need to have some agency, they have to make good decisions across their whole life. Like, don't take— be thoughtful about how many student loans you take on and how you're going to pay them back. Be thoughtful about credit card debt and other things like that as you get going as a younger person. And then make good decisions as you go through life. If you have kids, have a family, go to retirement, you know, be smart and aware of how the system works. So we're— what's different about us is we enable anybody.

People who We're transparent.

We work for the end users. The user pays us for our software, just like they would pay for TurboTax. Much of financial services is opaque. There's fees on assets, or there's transaction fees that you don't see. It's kind of like presented as, this is not— you don't pay for it, so don't worry about it. But the fees are enormous, or can be enormous.

Or they're kind of Opaque.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So we, you know, that's, that's the core thing that we do.

And you're pretty early stage in your journey too, right, Steve? Like, where are you in your entrepreneurial journey here with—

Yeah, we're a Series A company. So we are in the consumer side, we have more data, right? The platform, we have 25,000 paying customers, which doesn't sound like a lot, but the average user has a couple million bucks. So, yeah, like $50 billion of their life savings they're managing. And there's another 50,000 active free users that are managing another $50 billion. So people that are free users have a little bit less money, but it's still material. And we've helped people build a few hundred thousand plans. So we're working on always lifting the kind of re-engagement side of this. But I would say we do have product-market fit on the consumer side for a certain segment of the population that's like, takes planning seriously, might have had their own spreadsheet, you know, very often tech-oriented. They're like, I see the value. They're telling their friends, they're signing up. That's all working. What we're doing is we're taking that, you know, that funnel. So in the consumer side, like 8,000 people a month create plans, a couple thousand people swipe their credit card and start paying us, you know, 2,000 people are in classes, you know, over 100 people are taking one-on-one coaching sessions that they pay incrementally for. one time. And then a bunch of people raise their hand. We have an RIA inside of this, but we only do fee-for-service kind of flat fee planning starting at $1,500. But it's really just to show the whole model works. So that whole funnel works. We're taking that to employers. So Raytheon's a customer, right? They gave this model to 230,000 people in the workplace.

Yeah.

We're talking to big healthcare systems about it. like that. So there's employers, um, and then there's, you know, RIAs. So when wealth managers are like, oh, I can use this myself, because a lot of them get people coming in the door that, you know, their model is if you kind of have a million or $2 million, they want to— they'll service you one-on-one. But they have a lot of people that come in, I want help, but they, they're not set up to do this. They're not set up for scale. So we can help them do both, like help everybody at the top, and then if people need extra help, hey, plug your service engine in and then help from there.

Is that really the core of your ask then would be if you're working at a company and you think that this would be a great service or benefit to the employees that work with you, your teammates? Because I got to also believe you're competing mostly with non-consumption here, right? The number of people in the world that have no plan has got to greatly exceed the numbers that you know, are currently have a plan with somebody, right? So sorry, compounded question there. I guess question one, what is your ask to our audience?

Yeah, I would say, you know, if you're an alumni VC investor, and you think your company would like this as a benefit, for sure, we'd love to get an introduction. That's happening in our own community. People are— I just talked to someone from Pulte Homes. The guy is a— he's a user on our platform. He's like, He works in the tax department. He's like, yeah, I would love this as a benefit. So that, or if you work in a large financial services organization, you're like, hey, I think we could do more with planning and literacy and get the user more involved. I mean, it is a great education. You know, it's a selling tool. It's also a retention tool. So those are kind of the main ways that we're going to market.

Great, great. And then again, from the thesis I had, which was, You're mostly non-consumption. Most— this is just something that is good hygiene that most people just are not doing, and they're probably not, especially not doing it at a young enough age, right?

Right.

Yeah, I would say that one— someone made this comment a while ago, and they're like, this is an urgent should versus an urgent need. I would say that it actually transitions from an urgent should to an urgent need Uh, as you get— as you age. So for sure, like, most of our users are kind of 45+. It's like, oh, you know, I'm raising my kids, but I see my parents getting older. You know, I might—

I know I'm behind.

Yeah, yeah, I know I'm behind, you know, and I'm used to making $150,000 a year, whatever it is, but I'm seeing my friends get laid off, or AI's coming, and like, you know, it's like there's always pressure out there, and it's like Right. Getting our users have much higher confidence because they have much more command of their finances. They understand how it works, how the whole system works. They understand like how they're, you know, are they taking, you know, as much advantage as they can of company benefits, 401 matching, HSAs, or whatever it is. They understand how am I going to claim Social Security? How might I use my house? How's healthcare going to work while I'm working? Post-work, pre-Medicare, once I'm in Medicare, they're thinking about their financial lives, not like this week or this quarter, which is how the financial media—it's like they're like all right, we got to buy Nvidia or Bitcoin or whatever. It's like you know, yeah, I mean no actually what you should be thinking about is how is the money going to go over the next ten twenty years? Like hey, if you if you're Out of school, fund your Roth. You know, it's like get the money into index funds. I mean, yeah, take some risk, but just start saving and investing and do it for 15 years. If you save and invest, you know, 10, 15, 20% of your income, which might be like a stretch, but if you do that for 15 or 20 years, you will wake up and have more money than 99% of this country and have way more control. And then it and that unlocks you. in your late 30s, early 40s to— well, it unlocks you to make whatever choice you want to make at that point. But along the way, if you know you're on this journey, the second-order effect is that you can make the most of your human capital, which is our non-renewable resource. So, our time is what's so scarce. And I think there's this giant dialogue about purpose and what are we doing with our lives? It's like people that have more control, it's like, hey, if you think climate matters, if you think healthcare matters, if you love AI, whatever it is, right? Like we were talking about your daughter, like very smart and made lots of money. I'm sure she's being very intentional about like what she's doing with her time and why, or she's at least taking a moment to think about it.

Absolutely. I mean, I think you covered a lot there and I would say that, you know, so much of financial independence is thought of as being kind of a dirty word or something. And it's like it is about the flexibility to have time to make choices. And, you know, it's not— in some respects, there's a few key principles that are just so powerful that, you know, spend less than you make. and invest early and regularly over a long period of time, just those 2 simple things. You know, Warren Buffett, I think everybody knows, you know, part of his success was just he's lived to be 90 and he started to invest in his teens. And, you know, you compound anything Over a long period of time, and whether that's investing or getting good at playing the piano, those things compound over time. Steve, how do you think about partners and couples? We mentioned my daughter again. We'll bring her back into it, but she's now engaged.

Yep.

these kinds of discussions are also somewhat, you know, you hear about couples that just don't talk about money enough and have a plan. Is this potentially a tool to have conversations between, you know, husband and wife or parents and kids and those kinds of things?

Great question, Mike. Yeah, for sure. And very often in families, you'll have someone who's like the banker, right? And that's across generations, right? They know about the money, they're into it. And, you know, definitely in couples, usually one person's way more educated about it and kind of has the keys to the kingdom to some degree. And you have to be really careful about this because if that person predeceases or dies first, it's like they need— you need to make sure that, uh, people know how to operate the machine and that it's set up in a way that the right controls are in place. I actually sometimes think about this like from a governance perspective. I think we're as As people live longer, and there's more— there's $50-60 trillion. Yeah, it's crazy. That is going to move between generations. Yeah, this is showing up. I mean, in our town, like some people will show up and they're like, hey, there's these 35-year-olds rolling in, they're buying houses for cash. Like, where's it coming from? They're inheriting this money.

Yeah.

Or I mean, or they're a tech person that's like cashed out. But, you know, it's material. But yeah, it can definitely facilitate those discussions where someone you know, because families— a lot of the reasons people do this saving and planning, it's for not just themselves, right? It's for their kids or their parents. They want to kind of make sure people are taken care of, right?

Yeah.

And so, it can— we actually are leaning into this intergenerational thinking, which is, I would like— people already build plans and share it with their spouses, right? But it's like, I want them to be able to build plans for themselves and then for their parents. I mean, the reason I started this company is to help my mom figure this out. And my brother and I are still involved in our parents' lives, like kind of like making sure that kind of they're generally on track and like we roughly know where the money is. I mean, it's definitely imperfect. And there's also a huge risk as people age, you know, and you need more caregiving. And I've seen this in my own family too. It's like other future generations, you know, my grandparents, like, you know, they get more care and they, you know, they maybe they were more cash-oriented. It's like, you know, where's the money going? What's like, It's a giant exposure. And then the other way for your kids, yeah, it's like, hey, can you help your kids make good decisions? Or if they're going to inherit money, like, be intentional about it so that you don't screw up their values and they still understand the value of hard work.

And I can, again, personally relate on both those fronts. You know, when, you know, my parents are of that generation where he did the money.

Right.

And then when he passed away, you know, in a time that was really hard for my mom, it's, you know, having her having to figure this stuff out because of that. Right. So again, you know, that's something that I think a lot of us face. And then I, again, I just think it's, it's out there, but I don't think people totally get the wealth transfer that is just starting to happen is, as, as boomers who have been incredibly successful in generating an enormous amount of wealth at probably at this, at the expense of the younger generations. But they, in a way, they're also going to be a huge piggy bank as, as you know, that wealth is transferred in tens of trillions of dollars to the next generation. And then, you know, I think, are they equipped to handle it in planning? And I know, again, with Alumni Ventures, a lot of our investors use venture investing is actually an educational tool for their kids.

Okay.

Because it really brings into relief some really important decision-making about how do you look at an investment, how do you evaluate risk-reward. It tends to be more fun and interesting than, you know, ETFs in a diversified, you know, S&P portfolio. So, again, a lot of our A lot of our investors actually use individual deals, and we do, and we do kind of share due diligence, like how do we think about an investment? And then they share that as kind of a family, and they vote on whether, hey, should we do this syndication or not kind of thing. So, but it's all in that same spirit of wanting to have good plans and good education and something that Probably people don't talk enough about. But yeah, I guess my last question, Steve, is, again, very successful entrepreneur, what would be kind of one personal productivity hack or piece of content that you've consumed that you would just kind of share with somebody as like, check this out?

Okay. Yeah, great question. So a couple things that I've been listening to, you know, so there's Lenny's podcast, which is— I'm going to mess up his last name— Lenny Rachisky. Anyway, he's a product guy. He interviews all these other product people and so many great insights on his podcast and videos. And that's been super helpful for us as a company.

We'll put a link in the graphics here so people can check it out.

Yeah.

I've also been using Perplexity, which is this AI search engine. And it is, I mean, if I was Google, I'd be paying. You know, it's, he gives, they give the answer, right? So you ask a question, it gives the answer and footnotes at all. It just saves so much time. I mean, you have to still make sure you're fact-checking this stuff, but you can see with tools like that how the answers to our questions are gonna be in front of everybody all the time. And I use it like on my— I also use voice a lot now with my mobile phone. This is actually, I think Apple has a killer thing because it's like voice recognition is so good. Like I can't do it on my— I use a PC. It's like I can't talk to my PC. So I'm talking to my phone a lot and getting answers. And, but yeah, no, the world is changing. I mean, I've been in technology and seen the different waves. I would say AI and what's happening with all this convergence.

It is.

Astounding. And it's, I feel like we're in this place where I always used to feel like, okay, you can kind of see it's, you know, you can see like, hey, if I was a young person, like I'd be all in on AI and I'd be, you know, all in on software. Right. And, you know, that, but it's like, I don't feel like I know what the world could look like in 5 years or even maybe 3 years. Like it could be so wildly different.

Yeah.

I think, first of all, I've got Perplexity. I, you know, I've got a bunch of screens open. Perplexity is constantly open on one right now. And again, we're not investors in Perplexity, full disclosure. But yeah, I mean, it gives you the answer. And listen, I, I use on a daily basis now, as you know, ChatGPT. I'm using Google, Bing, Perplexity, Claude. It has, I believe, it's just made me 50% more productive right now. So again, it's, and I just think we're at the beginning of that wave and it is, yeah, there's a lot of hype around it, but I think it could still be underestimated.

Yeah, it makes, you know, like we're thinking about what the— and you're kind of unlocking something here. So we're thinking a lot about how do we use AI, and every business is right in their own thing here. And I think one orientation is, all right, so what we're seeing is these LLMs, they know everything about the world, but they don't know about you.

Yeah.

And so what you're seeing, like with us, we learn a lot about our users because they're creating financial plans. We learn a lot about their finances. I think the opportunity is, you know, opportunity we're not the only ones that know about their finances. is you have that kind of AI interface that also knows you and the world. So it's like, oh, hey Steve, you know, should you refinance your mortgage or whatever? And like, based on, you know, what's happening with my kids' education, what's happening with interest rates, should I go to a 10/1, whatever, like, whatever. And then make it up, make that all easy. You can definitely see a world where it, like, what you should do with your money is there are basic simple rules.

Yeah.

Are proven. So the thing is, there's math, Like, noticeable work. And then there's like hope and dreams, which is what like you get from a lot of the industry. It's more like, let's lean into the math. And then you'll have much better outcomes for broad swaths of society. And just make it accessible. Making bets on making powerful stuff accessible to lots of people, like, that's like, generally wins.

That generally wins. And just to build on your point, Steve, because I think you know, all good entrepreneurs and CEOs are thinking about this, which is what is AI going to do better? And then where do we still need people? And in the case of financial planning or medicine, because I, you know, I've, you know, I think there's a lot of the medical profession too that is going to be done just as effectively, if not more effectively, by AI. But, at the end of the day, I think as humans, we still want a relationship with another human being through a difficult time or an important process. So, I could very much see in new retirement, it is, yeah, the machine has developed a plan, but I also just want to talk to somebody and go through it with another human being like you and I are talking right now just to be bring my own specific, you know, situation, empathy, relatability, and just, you know, again, we've been wired over, you know, hundreds of thousands of years to be with other human beings. And I just think, you know, we're— there's kind of this high-tech, high-touch barbell that I think we're going to be seeing more and more of over the next, you know, You know, like you said, 3 years, 5 years, 7 years, it's going to be, it's going to change. Yeah, for sure.

I completely agree with you that the kind of human in the loop, but people are not going away. They're just going to be smarter and more productive and more insightful. But yeah, you still, it's not, it's like when you have questions, you're not, I mean, we do go to places like Perplexity to ask those questions. Uh, but I don't think that, like, that's just— it's another tool. I really like it. You still want human expertise that has seen this pattern with other people. And, and so, and we're also emotional creatures first, right?

Yeah.

We react to emotions first.

And reading that is an interpret— you know, being able to relate to someone on an emotional level is equally important because it's behavior. Like, a big part of this is behavior. This is why People, the one big thing we talked about, the easy steps, it's like, hey, learn to save money, learn to invest. The third thing is know yourself and your behavior so you don't screw yourself. Because that's what people, they can make, like, I'll leave you with one story. Like, you know, there's someone I know in our family, they make good, great choices their whole life, like super sophisticated, you know, plenty of money. And then, you know, they get a little older and they're like, you know, I'm gonna start messing around and start trading stocks. Well, You can blow yourself up. And they almost blew themselves up by starting to take these positions that they didn't even need to do it. So, the risk sizing, like, don't start making bets you don't need to make and don't make—

The psychology of money and just being self-aware about how you're wired, I think you're right. That is like the 3rd pillar to wealth, financial security, right? So, Steve, it's been a pleasure talking to you. Congratulations on your progress. Great conversation. And, you know, look forward to your B round.

Yeah, thanks, Mike. Really appreciate the support and getting to know you and the alumni VC, you know, network and appreciate the support there. And yeah, we're optimistic, you know, and let's see how, like, you know, maybe come on our podcast and we'll talk about how AI is coming. And for sure, we'll have that second part of our conversation about, you know, opening up access to different kinds of investment opportunities for people.

Excellent. Look forward to it. Thank you, Steve. We'll follow up.

Be well.

Thanks, Mike. Appreciate it.

Bye.

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