December 4, 2024 • 29 mins
Stephen Tanenbaum, the visionary mind behind Rainbook and co-founder of UGallery.com, joins us for an engaging conversation that traces his incredible journey from a childhood passion for baseball cards to innovative entrepreneurship. Discover how his early endeavors, such as creating a lofted bed shelf in his dorm room, sparked a drive that would lead to the establishment of UGallery.com—a groundbreaking platform for emerging artists. Stephen’s tale is one of relentless perseverance, strategic foresight, and the ability to forge impactful partnerships with industry giants like Crate & Barrel despite the skepticism surrounding e-commerce in the post-dot-com crash era.
We then pivot to Stephen’s fascinating shift from the art gallery industry to the world of financial technology with the launch of Rainbook. Navigate the complexities of starting this venture during the unprecedented COVID-era investment boom, and uncover the ways Rainbook has transformed to support both self-directed investors and financial advisors. At the heart of Rainbook's mission lies transparency and equitable access, exemplified by tools like the Advisor Analyzer, which shines a light on advisor fees and credentials. Stephen shares the platform’s evolution, focusing on building a gender-balanced advisor network and the role of SaaS solutions in enhancing client engagement for wealth firms.
But it's not all smooth sailing. Join us as Stephen opens up about the hurdles faced in promoting Rainbook and the nuanced approach needed to gather user feedback in the sensitive realm of financial data. Leverage Stephen's insights on evolving marketing strategies, the significant potential of AI in finance, and the vital importance of building and maintaining strong professional relationships. Stephen leaves us with a powerful message on the importance of embracing failure, encouraging us to find joy in our pursuits and to treat every setback as a stepping stone to move forward. This episode offers a wealth of inspiration and guidance for aspiring entrepreneurs and digital innovators alike.
This podcast is proudly sponsored by USC Annenberg’s Master of Science in Digital Media Management (MSDMM) program. An online master’s designed to prepare practitioners to understand the evolving media landscape, make data-driven and ethical decisions, and build a more equitable future by leading diverse teams with the technical, artistic, analytical, and production skills needed to create engaging content and technologies for the global marketplace. Learn more or apply today at https://dmm.usc.edu.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Mediascape Insights from Digital
Changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to another episode of Mediascape Insights
from Digital Changemakers.
I am one of your hosts, annikaJackson, and I'm here with
Stephen Tannenbaum today ofRainbook.
Before we get into Rainbook andwhat that's bringing to the
world digitally, we're going totalk a little bit about your
background and where you started.
So, stephen, thank you forbeing here.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Of course, I'd love to hear about your journey.
I noticed that you got degreesin business and finance, but you
also spent some time inAustralia, so please tell us a
little bit about your journeyand your business background and
how that teed up your lifetoday.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yeah, definitely so.
I guess I've kind of alwaysbeen an entrepreneur at heart,
understanding where yourcustomers are I think I tried
selling baseball cards on thecorner of my street when I was
10 years old Learned veryquickly you need to know where
your customers are, and some ofthem In college.
I went to school in DC for acouple of years and then out in
(01:21):
Tucson, down at University ofArizona, I created a bunk bed,
dorm room lofted bed shelf,created that, manufactured, sold
it, sold it door to door aroundcollege campuses and then
landed that in Bed Bath Beyondand then from there I graduated
from University of Arizona outof the McGuire Entrepreneurship
(01:43):
Program, which was within thebusiness school.
There, and me and my twoco-founders of my prior company,
ugallerycom, we came up with aconcept to give emerging artists
a place to exhibit and selltheir artwork and, at the same
time, a place to buy relativelyaffordable original artwork
online and through some businesscase competitions.
(02:06):
Through that we won some seedmoney to get that started, ended
up raising some money from afamily office and I like to say
that was my 12-year startup andI sold my interest in that in
2018.
That was from 2006 to 2018.
So that was a 12 year journeyand it was really an interesting
time.
It was like web 2.0.
(02:27):
You had the dot com crash.
Nobody thought e-commerce was athing anymore.
People have tried that.
Why are you doing it?
You should go to dental school.
Why are you doing this?
So it hurt it all during.
When we got started and we kindof like slogged through.
08 was kind of the greatrecession and I remember one
month, you know, only making acouple sales June of that year.
(02:50):
I guess I must have been 18 andwondering what are we doing.
But we kind of made it throughto where, when I left in 18, the
business was in the sevenfigures in terms of online sales
.
We had a high average ordervalue of over 1200 bucks, which
was pretty high.
It's still pretty high fore-commerce.
We were the exclusive originalart provider to Crate Barrel and
(03:10):
we had a relationship withWilliams-Sonoma Home as well in
first step.
So definitely learned a lotalong the journey.
That University of Arizonaentrepreneurship program was
two-thirds MBA students I knowyou have a lot of graduate
students on, probably listeningand one-third undergrad.
So we were actually part of theundergrad cohort, but we were
(03:31):
able to take advantage andreally leverage that program.
So I'm very thankful to theuniversity and that they offer
that to the students and I knowit's still going strong today.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Nice.
Well, and I mentioned to youbefore we jumped on that in the
MSDMM program our students allcreate a capstone project, which
is it could be a business thatthey have, or it could be their
employer, but they createsomething new, perhaps to help
propel the mission, the business, forward forward.
(04:05):
Thinking about the fact thatyou were doing this in 2006, I
mean I remember in the year 2000, 2001,.
I worked for a magazinepublisher in San Francisco and
to find people to be my streetteam, I was still going into
music, chat rooms, right, theold edit well model, then Yahoo
and all of that.
And so I mean, even justjumping a few years ahead to
2006, you were still very aheadof your time.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah, I mean we were and timing is a lot when it
comes to business, I think andwe were, and I'd say we were
probably a few years, even tooearly to really hit it perfectly
, probably right after the GreatRecession and it would have
been a little bit better time.
But you don't really have achoice in business or startups
and I think the goal is tocontinue to run it and improve
(04:50):
every day, every month, everyyear.
So when the timing is right,you can really recognize that
and then kind of double andtriple down on your business and
whether that's from marketingor the business model itself.
So we started off representingcollegiate artists and recent
graduates.
So it was U the letter, ugallerycom, and we evolved over
(05:12):
time to where, when I left, Ithink, our average artist was in
their 50s and really emergingthe career artists, which
allowed us to represent moreseasoned artists and increase
our average order value overtime.
So I think that was a reallygood lesson.
We had a great advisory boardand it was.
You know, it's important, not?
I think it's very important notto be wed to your startup idea,
(05:36):
to your baby, like you need tobe able to evolve and understand
what business you start todayor if you're developing a
capstone project, it might notlook the same three months, six
months or a year from now, andthat's okay.
It probably shouldn't.
All businesses need to evolveover time, no matter how
successful they are, to staycompetitive.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah Well, and to that point, you talked about
winning some business casecompetitions.
You also talked about familyoffices.
For those who are listening,who might not be familiar with
that term, can you explain alittle bit more about what a
family office is and how theycan support you?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah.
So we won the case competitions, which are just competitions
within the university that wewent to One in Canada at Queen's
University and another one atBall State University in Indiana
, and then we had one at ourbusiness school as well, down in
Tucson University in Indiana,and then we had one at our
business school as well, down inTucson, and back then they
would give basically cash prizesthat we could do whatever we
(06:32):
want with it, and we decided toput it towards the business.
We ended up raising someoutside funding from the family
office and family offices aretypically ultra high net worth
families that are looking toinvest some of their earnings
fruition wherever they got it ifthey sold a family business or
they actually have it andthey're looking to invest some
of their earnings fruitionwherever they got it if they
sold a family business or theyactually have it and they're
looking to invest intoalternative assets.
(06:52):
So outside of the stock market,right, and they'll might invest
in real estate, they mightinvest in other multifamily
projects, but they also mightinvest in startup companies or
growing emerging companies, andtypically family offices will.
They might invest where theymight have a certain interest or
(07:15):
passion in addition to just,you know normal startups, but
typically it's because they wantto be involved at a little
higher level with theirinvestments and have a little
bit more of an impact.
So we, you know we had a greatinvestor that invested with
UGallery.
They ended up being they wereprominent alumni of the
university down in Tucson, so hehad a connection to us and we
(07:38):
had a connection to him.
He's an unbelievablephilanthropic supporter of the
arts as well and they were astrong supporter of UGallery
over the years.
And there's typically familyoffices and it's growing,
especially in the last few years.
So there weren't as many ofthese back when we started
UGallery back in 06.
(07:59):
But nowadays there's a lot ofdifferent.
They can be called angelinvestors as well.
So angel investors might bethey're considered family
offices.
I guess would be a super angelbecause they're going to invest
a bigger check.
Versus angel investors might beindividuals that want to invest
in startups that they'reinterested in and they might be
cutting checks for $25,000.
(08:22):
Versus a family office is likeone big group, these different
angel groups that are out therearound the world and especially
around the country that areactive.
They pull together a lot ofindividual angel investors and
they invest as the group and I'dsay that's kind of on par with
a family office.
So that's how I view it.
(08:43):
And each angel group, andtypically you'll find them in
different regions.
There'll be one in theNortheast, there'll be one in
the Midwest, there'll be one inthe Southeast, and you can find
those and you can kind of viewthem on par with family offices.
Some family offices mightinvest more from a strategic
standpoint if they own otherbusinesses not too dissimilar to
maybe some other strategicinvestors from like corporate
(09:06):
standpoint.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Thank you, that was a really great explanation.
I appreciated it.
So you had this online gallery.
You saw your original thesiswas college and post grads and
then you now have this.
You know the demographic aged alittle bit, where you're able
to bring in a lot more people.
How did you find thesepartnerships?
Or how did they find you withthe Crate and Barrels with
(09:29):
Williams-Sonoma?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, partnerships take time and it's really, you
know, reaching out and findingthe right stakeholders.
I'd say we found them.
Those partnerships came aboutwith original artwork in general
being another revenue channel,another product line that was
increasing in demand from thesehome furnishing companies and it
(09:52):
wasn't something they wereselling and it was something
that obviously made sense.
You're going to sell the couch,you might as well sell the
artwork with it.
We were in San Francisco,williams-sonoma Home is based
there.
So basically that was justreaching out to them Original
art for we only sold theoriginal art.
We did foray into prints at onepoint for a brief period, but
(10:13):
when it came to selling originalart through big box retailers
it's just a totally foreignproduct to them.
So it was a big learning curveand it was a little bit tougher
to get integrated with themuntil kind of the drop shipping,
kind of like the Amazonmarketplaces.
That's very common today.
Back in the day, 10, 15 yearsago, that was not normal for any
(10:38):
kind of brick and mortarretailer and some companies,
some software companies, spun upto offer a drop shipping
software service with a widerselection of products, like
Amazon does.
And today, you know, walmarthas their own marketplace
(11:02):
dropshipping.
It's all very commonplace today, but back then it wasn't.
So I think the timing had to beright for us to get into these
big box retailers and not us,but other software companies
that enabled this among the bigbox retailers allowed us to be
able to gain access to thosepartnerships.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So I've heard a few things that I think are really
key from you.
You talked about knowing whereyour customer is.
If you're trying to sellbaseball cards, that could be
worth a lot of money, don't youknow?
don't do it from the streetcorner to 10 year old people,
you talked about coming up withan idea start just starting it
and leveraging the people thatyou knew.
So you were in university, sostarting the university students
(11:42):
and you talked about taking achance and reaching out to
potential partners and prospectsand cultivating that
relationship until there was apartnership in place.
So I think these are really keythings that are part of your
journey that everybody who'slistening should consider as
they're creating businessescapstones or being entrepreneurs
(12:02):
in their offices.
You went from the gallery tothen moving fully into the
private equity advisory realmand then into Rainbook and
working with financial advisors.
So can you talk a little bitabout was that something that
really fascinated you when youwent through the process as an
(12:23):
entrepreneur and is that how youwent into that field?
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So I've always been very interested in personal
finance and Rainbook.
Kind of going back to don't bewed to your idea.
We launched Rainbook in 2021summer and it launched as a
platform for self-directedinvestors to aggregate all of
your alternative investmentswith all your other assets, to
(12:47):
be able to display a nice cleannet worth dashboard, but with a
wedge being the alternative.
So when I had exited UGallery,I put some of my money and
invested in some private equity,some friends startup, some
multifamily real estateinvestments, some online
fractional this is kind of thecraze during COVID where
(13:09):
everybody was investing you caninvest in fractional baseball
cards, fractional artwork.
You had the crypto boom of thattime.
So I thought, you know, I hadthis issue of being able to
consolidate all the informationinto an Excel sheet, which was
too crazy, and I wanted to builda platform.
But I wanted to make sure therewas a scalable enough audience
(13:32):
there, demand for it and untilkind of the crypto craze and the
collectibles and every now youcould invest in also other real
estate platforms as well thatwere democratizing access to
alternative investments.
Once that came to the forefront, I thought, yes, there could be
a need for this.
We launched it and thenobviously that craze waned and
(13:57):
we looked to see what else, whatcould we take, what we've
learned or built and what'sanother problem we can go out
and solve.
And what we saw was thatfinancial advisors we had
clients, members that weretrying to connect their
financial advisor accounts, butwe didn't have those connections
.
So we said, why are they tryingto connect those accounts?
(14:18):
Obviously it's part of theirnet worth.
And then we kind of saw whatelse can we do once we have
those connections?
What can we kind of do for themand serve the industry?
And we saw that a lot of peopledidn't know exactly the fees
they were paying their financialadvisor.
They didn't know about thelayered portfolio fees.
If you own a mutual fund oreven an ETF, you're going to pay
(14:40):
an expense ratio part of thatfund.
Some funds have these frontloaded fees where you pay an
additional fee before you eveninvest in the fund, which is
just terrible.
It might've been commonplace 20plus years ago, but today we
have this thing called ETFs andthey're very low cost funds and
(15:01):
you know the difference itreally came down to.
Brokers are allowed to takecommissions and their firms are
allowed to take these kickbacksVersus a fiduciary financial
advisor that works at atypically an RAA firm,
registered investment advisoryfirm is.
Not only do they not offer thatto their clients, they're not
allowed to, and they always putthe best interests of their
(15:25):
clients and find them the bestproduct, no matter where it's
coming from.
So we saw that problem andwanted to see what we could do.
So today Rainbook has amarketplace of vetted fiduciary
financial advisors on theplatform.
We're striving to be the firstgender-balanced network out
there and we'll match ourmembers.
If you're unhappy with yourfinancial advisor or if you
(15:47):
don't have a financial advisor,you can log onto Rainbook and
get matched with an advisor.
Our marketing kind of from abusiness standpoint, our
marketing hook is we developedthis advisor analyzer where
members can log on.
They can enter their advisor'sname and firm name and connect
(16:07):
their advisor managed accountand we'll basically review their
advisor.
We'll pull their broker checkrecord, we'll tell you if
they're a certified financialplanner, we'll tell you if
they're registered as a brokeror an RIA or both dually
registered, and then we'll alsogive you a fee breakdown of your
account so you know exactly howmuch in total fees you're
(16:27):
paying.
That's been really good toreally drive engagement.
And then the last thing I'llsay is we've continued to evolve
as a business, so now we'vebegun building a B2B SaaS
solution for wealth firms toreally recreate their prospect
conversion page.
One thing we're noticing outthere is a lot of wealth firms.
(16:48):
Their main call to action issending their users to a 1990s
style contact us form, and wethink there's a much better way,
leveraging our advisor analyzerto drive engagement for their
firms on site.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Fantastic and Rainbook is a free service.
How do you monetize?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, so it's free to our members to use.
I'm a big proponent of that.
I don't think there's a wholelot of scalability in a consumer
service that's going to charge,especially when it comes to
personal finance.
You kind of hit a limit ofpeople who are going to pay, but
then beyond that people justdon't have the time.
Hence why I think financialadvisors are great to work with,
(17:29):
because they can really take onthat ownership that you don't
have time for.
So it's free to members to useit.
And then we have a rev sharerevenue sharing agreement with
the RIA firms on our network.
So if you end up working withan advisor on our network, we
share in some of that advisoryfee revenue, whereas the member
will never pay any more thanthey would typically pay,
(17:52):
normally pay that firm in thatengagement.
So that's how our revenue modelis to smooth that out.
That's hence our kind ofadditional service that we're
looking to provide to our RIAfirms in terms of this prospect
conversion page software.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, fantastic.
I always love when people arereally transparent about the
process and also realizing thatthis is a service a lot of
people need who might not knowwhat questions to ask, not know
if they have the right advisorit's just somebody that was
recommended to them or somebodytheir parents used.
So you're helping really createthis equity, as you said, and I
(18:29):
love that you're wanting to begender equitable as well.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah, I think it's important.
Part of the requirements to beadvisor on our network is you
have to be at least a certifiedfinancial planner or a CFA
chartered financial analyst or aCPA accountant.
And part of the industry isjust very it's dominated by old
white males.
That's where the numbers areand it's a growing industry.
(18:54):
But to the CFPs, no-transcript,that isn't necessarily going
(19:19):
straight down to the millennialsfrom the boomers.
A lot of that's going from theboomers who are passing away and
going to their spouse, who, thewife, is actually living a lot
longer than the guy.
So and there's one set outthere that I believe like 70% of
inheritors changed thefinancial advisor from who was
(19:41):
there.
So you see it's within theinvestment community and the
advisory community.
So there's a lot of efforts toreach out to women spouses so
they can obviously hope toretain that relationship where
that probably wasn't there 20years ago.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
How was it when you started this new company?
Obviously, it's very differentthan online art.
Did you have differentchallenges when you were
starting Rainbook, and what?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
was the onboarding process to get to, you know, go
to market and then onboard yourfirst consumer, clients and
financial advisors.
Yeah, very different challengesbut all the same in terms of
the problems that you need tosolve, like, so we're building
software versus procuring one ofa kind original artwork and
artists onto the site.
Back when we started YouGallery, you didn't.
There wasn't as much opensource software or off the shelf
software that you couldleverage.
(20:38):
Here at Rainbook, I have aco-founder that's a technical
co-founder, daniel, who's ourCTO, and that's been a world of
difference to be able to build asoftware company to make sure
you have a technical co-founder.
I think that's extremelyimportant In terms of, like, the
QA process and going throughand making sure the software is
(20:59):
working and it has everything isstill extremely important.
One of the challenges I thinkwe got that I had when we
started Rainbook version one,which was the network dashboard,
was you want to get feedbackfrom users right and getting, if
you can start with your networkto get feedback like that's one
of the best ways to get initialfeedback.
(21:20):
But starting with a personalfinance app, I think my network
and friends are probably theywere hesitant to hop on and
really go after it because theydon't want me seeing their info,
even though I said, you know wemask everything and we don't
see it.
We see it on an aggregate leveland connecting all the
different APIs, whether that waswith legacy alternative
(21:55):
investment platforms or up andcomers like very new.
We had the problem of and that'swhy we pivoted away from that.
But we had the problem oflegacy alternative investment
platforms.
They didn't have their APIs,weren't in a place to be able to
share it, they didn't have theproprietary data and keeping
their users on their site as acompetitive advantage and they
(22:33):
didn't need to expand it.
So it was a little bit tougherto drum up the number of
investment connections for thatwealth dashboard.
From the alternative investmentside, from the liquid side, you
had APIs like Plaid right thatyou can connect, you know, to
thousands of institutions andyou had all the crypto platforms
where we could build out thosedirectly.
(22:54):
So those were easy.
But the initial thesis of havingthis platform for alternatives
was a very manual process andthen, as we evolved into kind of
go-to-market strategy andgetting the word out, at least
it's been a bit more direct withour current messaging, with our
advisor network, to where we'regoing to personal finance
(23:16):
investment newsletters and blogsand going where those readers
are and doing some whether it'screative, like guest posts or
newsletter sponsorships, youknow, starting to try to speak
out a bit more through podcasts,and we try to be decently
active on LinkedIn as well,where if you have a financial
(23:38):
advisor or if you're looking forone, you're probably a
professional, businessprofessional working active,
decently active, on LinkedIn.
So that's where we've kind ofgone to Away from when I was at
YouGallery and when we weregoing that we were one of the
early accounts on Pinterest andInstagram, so we were really,
(24:00):
which lent itself great toshowcasing original art and
artists and driving interestthere.
I think you really need to knowwhere your audience is and with
financial, talking aboutinvestments and financial
advisors, linkedin is our focusthere.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, fantastic, and thank you for sharing your
ecosystem, because this issomething we talk about a lot in
the program as well is whatpercentages of paid, earned,
shared and owned media are inyour mix, and so you just talked
about all of those so in a verysuccinct way that shows how
they have to really truly beintegrated, but they all need to
(24:39):
be part of your strategy.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Totally, totally, I'd say with YouGallery.
Over the years, I think theartist story lent itself really
well to PR and we really leanedin on that.
And today I think the PRlandscape is very different.
When it comes to publications,right Like then it was magazines
and they were going digital.
You had a lot of different dealsites et cetera, and now it's a
(25:05):
very different landscape.
But you try to lean in to whereit, to what's working right.
So I think it's just importantto try to really figure that out
.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, definitely All right.
Now I have to ask you about AI,of course.
I've had conversations.
People say it's running thefinancial market.
A lot of people areincorporating artificial
intelligence into their SaaSproducts and into other areas,
including PR.
We were talking about thatbefore we jumped on as well.
(25:36):
How is it affecting Rainbook,if at all, and are you utilizing
different AI methodologies inyour you know, in LLMs, in your
software approach, or what doesthat look like for you?
Speaker 3 (25:51):
So we're not today, so we're.
I know from SEC standpointthey're taking a keen eye at
this.
We have two algorithms.
One is our advisor analyzer.
That's really rudimentary andstraightforward, and then we
have our advisor matching aswell.
Where I think we could use it inthe future is to call more to
(26:11):
enhance the matching that we'redoing between our members and
the advisors From the wealthtech space and the wealth
industry.
I think the biggest impact it'sgoing to have there is from the
administrative standpoint andthe compliance standpoint.
I think it's going to save tonsof hours off advisors' time and
(26:32):
even the firm side in terms ofjust handling the amount of
compliance that these firms haveto go through to just keep them
in line and keep everythingorganized.
I think it's going to have aprofound impact there which is
going to allow advisors to beable to spend more time with
their clients.
Yeah, certainly it's being usedkind of on the investment side
(26:55):
At Rainbook.
We don't manage any assets, wemanage zero dollars and we don't
really get into the analysis ofspecific individual securities
or stocks.
We take a high-level approachand we're focused more on the
relationship side of the advisorclient.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah, which I mean everything's built on
relationships, or should be, sotaking that approach is very
refreshing.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, I think it is.
I mean that goes between youknow, in the household right
within your family or spouse orpartner to business.
Relationships with like what Iwas talking about earlier with
the one with Crate and Barrelcame about because I met the CEO
, was formerly at a differentcompany and we were talking
about doing something and thenwe ended up doing something at a
(27:41):
company that he later went toand that wouldn't have come if I
hadn't built that relationshipwhen he was at a prior company.
So that's why I said it takestime.
I think everything's onrelationships when it comes to
business.
I think it's number one.
I think people don't want towork or be with anybody who
they're not going to enjoy theirtime.
(28:02):
Right, our time is finite here,so we want to make the best of
the time we have with who we'rewith.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Fantastic.
Any last thoughts that you wantto share with our audience,
with, perhaps, the students whoare looking at innovative ways
to use technology for the fieldthey want to go into or who
maybe are interested in gettinginto more of the wealth, the
investor space?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
the investors face.
I'd say stay nimble.
The space business is just sofluid and I look back and time
really flies.
But especially the students whoare in school now.
I mean, you're probably intouch with a lot more of what's
going on and all the new edgetechnologies that are out there,
and with every new technology,especially AI, you can build so
many new products and serviceson top of it.
I'd say, don't be afraid tofail and fail quickly.
(28:55):
So try something out.
If it doesn't work after acouple of months, like don't get
stuck to that, like it wasn't asunk cost, I promise you you
learned a ton doing it and thenmove on to the next thing and
find something that works and Ithink you do that.
You'll hit something, and justmake sure you're enjoying doing
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, fantastic.
Stephen Tannenbaum, rainbook,thank you so much for being here
, and rainbookcom will have thatlink in the chat for everybody
to go to.
Thank you to everybody who'swatching or listening to this
episode of Mediascape.
I'll be back again, or JosephAtaya, my co-host, will be back
next week with another amazingguest to share their story,
their journey and how they are adigital changemaker.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital
Media Management program, visitus on the web at dmmuscedu.
Welcome to Mediascape Insights from Digital
Changemakers, a speaker seriesand podcast brought to you by
USC Annenberg's Digital MediaManagement Program.
Join us as we unlock thesecrets to success in an
increasingly digital world.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Welcome to another episode of Mediascape Insights
from Digital Changemakers.
I am one of your hosts, annikaJackson, and I'm here with
Stephen Tannenbaum today ofRainbook.
Before we get into Rainbook andwhat that's bringing to the
world digitally, we're going totalk a little bit about your
background and where you started.
So, stephen, thank you forbeing here.
Speaker 3 (00:43):
Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Of course, I'd love to hear about your journey.
I noticed that you got degreesin business and finance, but you
also spent some time inAustralia, so please tell us a
little bit about your journeyand your business background and
how that teed up your lifetoday.
Speaker 3 (01:00):
Yeah, definitely so.
I guess I've kind of alwaysbeen an entrepreneur at heart,
understanding where yourcustomers are I think I tried
selling baseball cards on thecorner of my street when I was
10 years old Learned veryquickly you need to know where
your customers are, and some ofthem In college.
I went to school in DC for acouple of years and then out in
(01:21):
Tucson, down at University ofArizona, I created a bunk bed,
dorm room lofted bed shelf,created that, manufactured, sold
it, sold it door to door aroundcollege campuses and then
landed that in Bed Bath Beyondand then from there I graduated
from University of Arizona outof the McGuire Entrepreneurship
(01:43):
Program, which was within thebusiness school.
There, and me and my twoco-founders of my prior company,
ugallerycom, we came up with aconcept to give emerging artists
a place to exhibit and selltheir artwork and, at the same
time, a place to buy relativelyaffordable original artwork
online and through some businesscase competitions.
(02:06):
Through that we won some seedmoney to get that started, ended
up raising some money from afamily office and I like to say
that was my 12-year startup andI sold my interest in that in
2018.
That was from 2006 to 2018.
So that was a 12 year journeyand it was really an interesting
time.
It was like web 2.0.
(02:27):
You had the dot com crash.
Nobody thought e-commerce was athing anymore.
People have tried that.
Why are you doing it?
You should go to dental school.
Why are you doing this?
So it hurt it all during.
When we got started and we kindof like slogged through.
08 was kind of the greatrecession and I remember one
month, you know, only making acouple sales June of that year.
(02:50):
I guess I must have been 18 andwondering what are we doing.
But we kind of made it throughto where, when I left in 18, the
business was in the sevenfigures in terms of online sales
.
We had a high average ordervalue of over 1200 bucks, which
was pretty high.
It's still pretty high fore-commerce.
We were the exclusive originalart provider to Crate Barrel and
(03:10):
we had a relationship withWilliams-Sonoma Home as well in
first step.
So definitely learned a lotalong the journey.
That University of Arizonaentrepreneurship program was
two-thirds MBA students I knowyou have a lot of graduate
students on, probably listeningand one-third undergrad.
So we were actually part of theundergrad cohort, but we were
(03:31):
able to take advantage andreally leverage that program.
So I'm very thankful to theuniversity and that they offer
that to the students and I knowit's still going strong today.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
Nice.
Well, and I mentioned to youbefore we jumped on that in the
MSDMM program our students allcreate a capstone project, which
is it could be a business thatthey have, or it could be their
employer, but they createsomething new, perhaps to help
propel the mission, the business, forward forward.
(04:05):
Thinking about the fact thatyou were doing this in 2006, I
mean I remember in the year 2000, 2001,.
I worked for a magazinepublisher in San Francisco and
to find people to be my streetteam, I was still going into
music, chat rooms, right, theold edit well model, then Yahoo
and all of that.
And so I mean, even justjumping a few years ahead to
2006, you were still very aheadof your time.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Yeah, I mean we were and timing is a lot when it
comes to business, I think andwe were, and I'd say we were
probably a few years, even tooearly to really hit it perfectly
, probably right after the GreatRecession and it would have
been a little bit better time.
But you don't really have achoice in business or startups
and I think the goal is tocontinue to run it and improve
(04:50):
every day, every month, everyyear.
So when the timing is right,you can really recognize that
and then kind of double andtriple down on your business and
whether that's from marketingor the business model itself.
So we started off representingcollegiate artists and recent
graduates.
So it was U the letter, ugallerycom, and we evolved over
(05:12):
time to where, when I left, Ithink, our average artist was in
their 50s and really emergingthe career artists, which
allowed us to represent moreseasoned artists and increase
our average order value overtime.
So I think that was a reallygood lesson.
We had a great advisory boardand it was.
You know, it's important, not?
I think it's very important notto be wed to your startup idea,
(05:36):
to your baby, like you need tobe able to evolve and understand
what business you start todayor if you're developing a
capstone project, it might notlook the same three months, six
months or a year from now, andthat's okay.
It probably shouldn't.
All businesses need to evolveover time, no matter how
successful they are, to staycompetitive.
Speaker 2 (05:55):
Yeah Well, and to that point, you talked about
winning some business casecompetitions.
You also talked about familyoffices.
For those who are listening,who might not be familiar with
that term, can you explain alittle bit more about what a
family office is and how theycan support you?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Yeah.
So we won the case competitions, which are just competitions
within the university that wewent to One in Canada at Queen's
University and another one atBall State University in Indiana
, and then we had one at ourbusiness school as well, down in
Tucson University in Indiana,and then we had one at our
business school as well, down inTucson, and back then they
would give basically cash prizesthat we could do whatever we
(06:32):
want with it, and we decided toput it towards the business.
We ended up raising someoutside funding from the family
office and family offices aretypically ultra high net worth
families that are looking toinvest some of their earnings
fruition wherever they got it ifthey sold a family business or
they actually have it andthey're looking to invest some
of their earnings fruitionwherever they got it if they
sold a family business or theyactually have it and they're
looking to invest intoalternative assets.
(06:52):
So outside of the stock market,right, and they'll might invest
in real estate, they mightinvest in other multifamily
projects, but they also mightinvest in startup companies or
growing emerging companies, andtypically family offices will.
They might invest where theymight have a certain interest or
(07:15):
passion in addition to just,you know normal startups, but
typically it's because they wantto be involved at a little
higher level with theirinvestments and have a little
bit more of an impact.
So we, you know we had a greatinvestor that invested with
UGallery.
They ended up being they wereprominent alumni of the
university down in Tucson, so hehad a connection to us and we
(07:38):
had a connection to him.
He's an unbelievablephilanthropic supporter of the
arts as well and they were astrong supporter of UGallery
over the years.
And there's typically familyoffices and it's growing,
especially in the last few years.
So there weren't as many ofthese back when we started
UGallery back in 06.
(07:59):
But nowadays there's a lot ofdifferent.
They can be called angelinvestors as well.
So angel investors might bethey're considered family
offices.
I guess would be a super angelbecause they're going to invest
a bigger check.
Versus angel investors might beindividuals that want to invest
in startups that they'reinterested in and they might be
cutting checks for $25,000.
(08:22):
Versus a family office is likeone big group, these different
angel groups that are out therearound the world and especially
around the country that areactive.
They pull together a lot ofindividual angel investors and
they invest as the group and I'dsay that's kind of on par with
a family office.
So that's how I view it.
(08:43):
And each angel group, andtypically you'll find them in
different regions.
There'll be one in theNortheast, there'll be one in
the Midwest, there'll be one inthe Southeast, and you can find
those and you can kind of viewthem on par with family offices.
Some family offices mightinvest more from a strategic
standpoint if they own otherbusinesses not too dissimilar to
maybe some other strategicinvestors from like corporate
(09:06):
standpoint.
Speaker 2 (09:07):
Thank you, that was a really great explanation.
I appreciated it.
So you had this online gallery.
You saw your original thesiswas college and post grads and
then you now have this.
You know the demographic aged alittle bit, where you're able
to bring in a lot more people.
How did you find thesepartnerships?
Or how did they find you withthe Crate and Barrels with
(09:29):
Williams-Sonoma?
Speaker 3 (09:31):
Yeah, partnerships take time and it's really, you
know, reaching out and findingthe right stakeholders.
I'd say we found them.
Those partnerships came aboutwith original artwork in general
being another revenue channel,another product line that was
increasing in demand from thesehome furnishing companies and it
(09:52):
wasn't something they wereselling and it was something
that obviously made sense.
You're going to sell the couch,you might as well sell the
artwork with it.
We were in San Francisco,williams-sonoma Home is based
there.
So basically that was justreaching out to them Original
art for we only sold theoriginal art.
We did foray into prints at onepoint for a brief period, but
(10:13):
when it came to selling originalart through big box retailers
it's just a totally foreignproduct to them.
So it was a big learning curveand it was a little bit tougher
to get integrated with themuntil kind of the drop shipping,
kind of like the Amazonmarketplaces.
That's very common today.
Back in the day, 10, 15 yearsago, that was not normal for any
(10:38):
kind of brick and mortarretailer and some companies,
some software companies, spun upto offer a drop shipping
software service with a widerselection of products, like
Amazon does.
And today, you know, walmarthas their own marketplace
(11:02):
dropshipping.
It's all very commonplace today, but back then it wasn't.
So I think the timing had to beright for us to get into these
big box retailers and not us,but other software companies
that enabled this among the bigbox retailers allowed us to be
able to gain access to thosepartnerships.
Speaker 2 (11:19):
So I've heard a few things that I think are really
key from you.
You talked about knowing whereyour customer is.
If you're trying to sellbaseball cards, that could be
worth a lot of money, don't youknow?
don't do it from the streetcorner to 10 year old people,
you talked about coming up withan idea start just starting it
and leveraging the people thatyou knew.
So you were in university, sostarting the university students
(11:42):
and you talked about taking achance and reaching out to
potential partners and prospectsand cultivating that
relationship until there was apartnership in place.
So I think these are really keythings that are part of your
journey that everybody who'slistening should consider as
they're creating businessescapstones or being entrepreneurs
(12:02):
in their offices.
You went from the gallery tothen moving fully into the
private equity advisory realmand then into Rainbook and
working with financial advisors.
So can you talk a little bitabout was that something that
really fascinated you when youwent through the process as an
(12:23):
entrepreneur and is that how youwent into that field?
Speaker 3 (12:27):
So I've always been very interested in personal
finance and Rainbook.
Kind of going back to don't bewed to your idea.
We launched Rainbook in 2021summer and it launched as a
platform for self-directedinvestors to aggregate all of
your alternative investmentswith all your other assets, to
(12:47):
be able to display a nice cleannet worth dashboard, but with a
wedge being the alternative.
So when I had exited UGallery,I put some of my money and
invested in some private equity,some friends startup, some
multifamily real estateinvestments, some online
fractional this is kind of thecraze during COVID where
(13:09):
everybody was investing you caninvest in fractional baseball
cards, fractional artwork.
You had the crypto boom of thattime.
So I thought, you know, I hadthis issue of being able to
consolidate all the informationinto an Excel sheet, which was
too crazy, and I wanted to builda platform.
But I wanted to make sure therewas a scalable enough audience
(13:32):
there, demand for it and untilkind of the crypto craze and the
collectibles and every now youcould invest in also other real
estate platforms as well thatwere democratizing access to
alternative investments.
Once that came to the forefront, I thought, yes, there could be
a need for this.
We launched it and thenobviously that craze waned and
(13:57):
we looked to see what else, whatcould we take, what we've
learned or built and what'sanother problem we can go out
and solve.
And what we saw was thatfinancial advisors we had
clients, members that weretrying to connect their
financial advisor accounts, butwe didn't have those connections
.
So we said, why are they tryingto connect those accounts?
(14:18):
Obviously it's part of theirnet worth.
And then we kind of saw whatelse can we do once we have
those connections?
What can we kind of do for themand serve the industry?
And we saw that a lot of peopledidn't know exactly the fees
they were paying their financialadvisor.
They didn't know about thelayered portfolio fees.
If you own a mutual fund oreven an ETF, you're going to pay
(14:40):
an expense ratio part of thatfund.
Some funds have these frontloaded fees where you pay an
additional fee before you eveninvest in the fund, which is
just terrible.
It might've been commonplace 20plus years ago, but today we
have this thing called ETFs andthey're very low cost funds and
(15:01):
you know the difference itreally came down to.
Brokers are allowed to takecommissions and their firms are
allowed to take these kickbacksVersus a fiduciary financial
advisor that works at atypically an RAA firm,
registered investment advisoryfirm is.
Not only do they not offer thatto their clients, they're not
allowed to, and they always putthe best interests of their
(15:25):
clients and find them the bestproduct, no matter where it's
coming from.
So we saw that problem andwanted to see what we could do.
So today Rainbook has amarketplace of vetted fiduciary
financial advisors on theplatform.
We're striving to be the firstgender-balanced network out
there and we'll match ourmembers.
If you're unhappy with yourfinancial advisor or if you
(15:47):
don't have a financial advisor,you can log onto Rainbook and
get matched with an advisor.
Our marketing kind of from abusiness standpoint, our
marketing hook is we developedthis advisor analyzer where
members can log on.
They can enter their advisor'sname and firm name and connect
(16:07):
their advisor managed accountand we'll basically review their
advisor.
We'll pull their broker checkrecord, we'll tell you if
they're a certified financialplanner, we'll tell you if
they're registered as a brokeror an RIA or both dually
registered, and then we'll alsogive you a fee breakdown of your
account so you know exactly howmuch in total fees you're
(16:27):
paying.
That's been really good toreally drive engagement.
And then the last thing I'llsay is we've continued to evolve
as a business, so now we'vebegun building a B2B SaaS
solution for wealth firms toreally recreate their prospect
conversion page.
One thing we're noticing outthere is a lot of wealth firms.
(16:48):
Their main call to action issending their users to a 1990s
style contact us form, and wethink there's a much better way,
leveraging our advisor analyzerto drive engagement for their
firms on site.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Fantastic and Rainbook is a free service.
How do you monetize?
Speaker 3 (17:08):
Yeah, so it's free to our members to use.
I'm a big proponent of that.
I don't think there's a wholelot of scalability in a consumer
service that's going to charge,especially when it comes to
personal finance.
You kind of hit a limit ofpeople who are going to pay, but
then beyond that people justdon't have the time.
Hence why I think financialadvisors are great to work with,
(17:29):
because they can really take onthat ownership that you don't
have time for.
So it's free to members to useit.
And then we have a rev sharerevenue sharing agreement with
the RIA firms on our network.
So if you end up working withan advisor on our network, we
share in some of that advisoryfee revenue, whereas the member
will never pay any more thanthey would typically pay,
(17:52):
normally pay that firm in thatengagement.
So that's how our revenue modelis to smooth that out.
That's hence our kind ofadditional service that we're
looking to provide to our RIAfirms in terms of this prospect
conversion page software.
Speaker 2 (18:08):
Yeah, fantastic.
I always love when people arereally transparent about the
process and also realizing thatthis is a service a lot of
people need who might not knowwhat questions to ask, not know
if they have the right advisorit's just somebody that was
recommended to them or somebodytheir parents used.
So you're helping really createthis equity, as you said, and I
(18:29):
love that you're wanting to begender equitable as well.
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah, I think it's important.
Part of the requirements to beadvisor on our network is you
have to be at least a certifiedfinancial planner or a CFA
chartered financial analyst or aCPA accountant.
And part of the industry isjust very it's dominated by old
white males.
That's where the numbers areand it's a growing industry.
(18:54):
But to the CFPs, no-transcript,that isn't necessarily going
(19:19):
straight down to the millennialsfrom the boomers.
A lot of that's going from theboomers who are passing away and
going to their spouse, who, thewife, is actually living a lot
longer than the guy.
So and there's one set outthere that I believe like 70% of
inheritors changed thefinancial advisor from who was
(19:41):
there.
So you see it's within theinvestment community and the
advisory community.
So there's a lot of efforts toreach out to women spouses so
they can obviously hope toretain that relationship where
that probably wasn't there 20years ago.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
How was it when you started this new company?
Obviously, it's very differentthan online art.
Did you have differentchallenges when you were
starting Rainbook, and what?
Speaker 3 (20:17):
was the onboarding process to get to, you know, go
to market and then onboard yourfirst consumer, clients and
financial advisors.
Yeah, very different challengesbut all the same in terms of
the problems that you need tosolve, like, so we're building
software versus procuring one ofa kind original artwork and
artists onto the site.
Back when we started YouGallery, you didn't.
There wasn't as much opensource software or off the shelf
software that you couldleverage.
(20:38):
Here at Rainbook, I have aco-founder that's a technical
co-founder, daniel, who's ourCTO, and that's been a world of
difference to be able to build asoftware company to make sure
you have a technical co-founder.
I think that's extremelyimportant In terms of, like, the
QA process and going throughand making sure the software is
(20:59):
working and it has everything isstill extremely important.
One of the challenges I thinkwe got that I had when we
started Rainbook version one,which was the network dashboard,
was you want to get feedbackfrom users right and getting, if
you can start with your networkto get feedback like that's one
of the best ways to get initialfeedback.
(21:20):
But starting with a personalfinance app, I think my network
and friends are probably theywere hesitant to hop on and
really go after it because theydon't want me seeing their info,
even though I said, you know wemask everything and we don't
see it.
We see it on an aggregate leveland connecting all the
different APIs, whether that waswith legacy alternative
(21:55):
investment platforms or up andcomers like very new.
We had the problem of and that'swhy we pivoted away from that.
But we had the problem oflegacy alternative investment
platforms.
They didn't have their APIs,weren't in a place to be able to
share it, they didn't have theproprietary data and keeping
their users on their site as acompetitive advantage and they
(22:33):
didn't need to expand it.
So it was a little bit tougherto drum up the number of
investment connections for thatwealth dashboard.
From the alternative investmentside, from the liquid side, you
had APIs like Plaid right thatyou can connect, you know, to
thousands of institutions andyou had all the crypto platforms
where we could build out thosedirectly.
(22:54):
So those were easy.
But the initial thesis of havingthis platform for alternatives
was a very manual process andthen, as we evolved into kind of
go-to-market strategy andgetting the word out, at least
it's been a bit more direct withour current messaging, with our
advisor network, to where we'regoing to personal finance
(23:16):
investment newsletters and blogsand going where those readers
are and doing some whether it'screative, like guest posts or
newsletter sponsorships, youknow, starting to try to speak
out a bit more through podcasts,and we try to be decently
active on LinkedIn as well,where if you have a financial
(23:38):
advisor or if you're looking forone, you're probably a
professional, businessprofessional working active,
decently active, on LinkedIn.
So that's where we've kind ofgone to Away from when I was at
YouGallery and when we weregoing that we were one of the
early accounts on Pinterest andInstagram, so we were really,
(24:00):
which lent itself great toshowcasing original art and
artists and driving interestthere.
I think you really need to knowwhere your audience is and with
financial, talking aboutinvestments and financial
advisors, linkedin is our focusthere.
Speaker 2 (24:16):
Yeah, fantastic, and thank you for sharing your
ecosystem, because this issomething we talk about a lot in
the program as well is whatpercentages of paid, earned,
shared and owned media are inyour mix, and so you just talked
about all of those so in a verysuccinct way that shows how
they have to really truly beintegrated, but they all need to
(24:39):
be part of your strategy.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
Totally, totally, I'd say with YouGallery.
Over the years, I think theartist story lent itself really
well to PR and we really leanedin on that.
And today I think the PRlandscape is very different.
When it comes to publications,right Like then it was magazines
and they were going digital.
You had a lot of different dealsites et cetera, and now it's a
(25:05):
very different landscape.
But you try to lean in to whereit, to what's working right.
So I think it's just importantto try to really figure that out
.
Speaker 2 (25:14):
Yeah, definitely All right.
Now I have to ask you about AI,of course.
I've had conversations.
People say it's running thefinancial market.
A lot of people areincorporating artificial
intelligence into their SaaSproducts and into other areas,
including PR.
We were talking about thatbefore we jumped on as well.
(25:36):
How is it affecting Rainbook,if at all, and are you utilizing
different AI methodologies inyour you know, in LLMs, in your
software approach, or what doesthat look like for you?
Speaker 3 (25:51):
So we're not today, so we're.
I know from SEC standpointthey're taking a keen eye at
this.
We have two algorithms.
One is our advisor analyzer.
That's really rudimentary andstraightforward, and then we
have our advisor matching aswell.
Where I think we could use it inthe future is to call more to
(26:11):
enhance the matching that we'redoing between our members and
the advisors From the wealthtech space and the wealth
industry.
I think the biggest impact it'sgoing to have there is from the
administrative standpoint andthe compliance standpoint.
I think it's going to save tonsof hours off advisors' time and
(26:32):
even the firm side in terms ofjust handling the amount of
compliance that these firms haveto go through to just keep them
in line and keep everythingorganized.
I think it's going to have aprofound impact there which is
going to allow advisors to beable to spend more time with
their clients.
Yeah, certainly it's being usedkind of on the investment side
(26:55):
At Rainbook.
We don't manage any assets, wemanage zero dollars and we don't
really get into the analysis ofspecific individual securities
or stocks.
We take a high-level approachand we're focused more on the
relationship side of the advisorclient.
Speaker 2 (27:12):
Yeah, which I mean everything's built on
relationships, or should be, sotaking that approach is very
refreshing.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Yeah, I think it is.
I mean that goes between youknow, in the household right
within your family or spouse orpartner to business.
Relationships with like what Iwas talking about earlier with
the one with Crate and Barrelcame about because I met the CEO
, was formerly at a differentcompany and we were talking
about doing something and thenwe ended up doing something at a
(27:41):
company that he later went toand that wouldn't have come if I
hadn't built that relationshipwhen he was at a prior company.
So that's why I said it takestime.
I think everything's onrelationships when it comes to
business.
I think it's number one.
I think people don't want towork or be with anybody who
they're not going to enjoy theirtime.
(28:02):
Right, our time is finite here,so we want to make the best of
the time we have with who we'rewith.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Fantastic.
Any last thoughts that you wantto share with our audience,
with, perhaps, the students whoare looking at innovative ways
to use technology for the fieldthey want to go into or who
maybe are interested in gettinginto more of the wealth, the
investor space?
Speaker 3 (28:32):
the investors face.
I'd say stay nimble.
The space business is just sofluid and I look back and time
really flies.
But especially the students whoare in school now.
I mean, you're probably intouch with a lot more of what's
going on and all the new edgetechnologies that are out there,
and with every new technology,especially AI, you can build so
many new products and serviceson top of it.
I'd say, don't be afraid tofail and fail quickly.
(28:55):
So try something out.
If it doesn't work after acouple of months, like don't get
stuck to that, like it wasn't asunk cost, I promise you you
learned a ton doing it and thenmove on to the next thing and
find something that works and Ithink you do that.
You'll hit something, and justmake sure you're enjoying doing
what you're doing.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Yeah, fantastic.
Stephen Tannenbaum, rainbook,thank you so much for being here
, and rainbookcom will have thatlink in the chat for everybody
to go to.
Thank you to everybody who'swatching or listening to this
episode of Mediascape.
I'll be back again, or JosephAtaya, my co-host, will be back
next week with another amazingguest to share their story,
their journey and how they are adigital changemaker.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
To learn more about the Master of Science in Digital
Media Management program, visitus on the web at dmmuscedu.
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