Devising Investment Strategy for AI/Ashish Aggarwal, Akash Agarwal, Viral Tolat - 2024 vs 2025, IPO Market, Fake Companies ~ Spark of Ages Ep 29 - Spark of Ages

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello and welcome to the Spark of Ages podcast.
In our last episode, we closedout the year looking at
go-to-market trends.
Today, to start the year, we'redoing another roundtable, but
this one is focused on investingin innovation and how to manage
an untraditional portfolio as aprivate investor.
We'll focus the discussion onthe economy and innovation,
along with some thoughts andpredictions for 2025 and beyond,

(00:28):
so this will be a fun one.
Let me introduce you to firstAshish Agarwal.
Ashish is a highly activeinvestor in AI and machine
learning and a two-time founderwith significant experience
building and scaling products.
Ashish is also a partner atChameleon, a VC firm that uses a
proprietary AI platform forsourcing deals.
His MBA is at London BusinessSchool and Kellogg, and he's, of

(00:52):
course, an engineer by training, as is just about all of us.
Another Agarwal it wasn't enoughto have one.
I have two.
I have Akash Agarwal, althoughhe spells his name a little
differently.
Akash is an accomplishedentrepreneur and a technology
leader with a strong backgroundin SaaS and AI.
Last year, he founded Agilitas,a CPG AI platform innovating

(01:12):
the way food and beverageproducts are formulated.
His experiences also includeserving as a chief business
officer of Procyon and an SVP atSAP, where he developed his
background, and his backgroundcame from originally being a
security specialist.
Like me, akash went to HarvardBusiness School and finally I
have Viril Tolat.
Viril is a technologyentrepreneur and investor with

(01:35):
30 years of experience infintech, specializing in AI and
crypto.
He co-founded a Forex tradingplatform and held senior
positions at various fintechcompanies and investment banks.
He has advanced degrees fromthex trading platform and held
senior positions at variousfintech companies and investment
banks.
He has advanced degrees fromthe University of Miami and
Stanford and he's currentlydeveloping a foundation AI model
for finance at Neural EnginesInc.
He's on the board of Quadrancy,a retail crypto trading

(01:58):
platform.
Viril is an active trader infutures equities and crypto and
he's also presented variouswebinars on Bitcoin and CBDC.
And, of course, viral is ourone PhD from Stanford in neural
networks, of all things.

(02:22):
Welcome to the show.
I'm so happy to have all of you, obviously with your amazing
backgrounds.
Any mom would want to havetheir daughters marry you, and
I'm so happy to have all of you,obviously with your amazing
backgrounds.
Any mom would want to havetheir daughters marry you, but
it is what it is, so welcome tomy show.
We're going to talk about awhole bunch of fun things today.
This is unique for us.
Usually we talk with one personand now we have a whole group
and I thought it'd be great justto talk about the economy and

(02:44):
where we're going and where isinnovation going.
And last year we were supposedto have a recession.
If you all remember, 2023 wassupposed to be the year, the
down year.
Then 24 was supposed to be areally down year, really bad
year, but actually the economydid really well.
It just didn't happen.
We actually had GDP growth of2.7% in the US.
It was faster than most of theindustrialized world.

(03:07):
The rest of the industrializedworld was at 1.5%, emerging
countries at 3.9%.
So it did pretty well.
Inflation, of course, given theelections, was a big issue,
even though the forecast it camedown to about 2.4% after
hitting a high of 9%.
So the economy from a recessionpoint of view, from a rate
point of view, is better, evenif the price of eggs and ham

(03:28):
feel really expensive.
From a monetary policy point ofview, the Fed was supposed to
go more towards a reduction ofrates and it did some of that,
but not as fast as peoplethought, and that's because
inflation stayed a little higherthan normal and all of us have
seen how the stock marketliterally exploded, especially
towards the end of the year.

(03:49):
So I'll give you a couple ofdata points here Applevin up
700%.
Microstrategy, the company thatinvested heavily in Bitcoin up
359%.
Palantir up 340%.
Nvidia up 172%.
Tesla one of my early picks 63%.
Amazon even at 44%.
So just significant growth.

(04:10):
So really interesting, like howthe market has changed
significantly.
So here's my first topic fordiscussion.
With market sentiment currentlyvery bullish and valuations
appearing pretty full, what arethe key signals you look for to
whether market rotation isimminent?
What steps do you take toprepare for volatility in your
public and private investments?
So here I want to start with myfriend Akash.

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Okay.
So look, I know as much aseverybody else does.
You know how people interpretthe information perhaps differs,
so the data is the data.
So I think that you know we'rein a very unique point in time
with the two major trends Ithink will influence the markets
this year.

(04:52):
In my humble opinion, you know,barring all these external
things, which is, if you look atthe US trade policy, I think
that will play a big role, aboveand beyond inflation.
I think inflation is going toget tamed.
I think we're going to continueon what they call a soft
landing.
I don't know what that means,but it'll be softer than I think
that people anticipated.

(05:12):
And you know we will avoid arecession, as you pointed out,
rajiv.
So that's one.
And then the second thing is, Ithink more importantly will be
how trade, how US, presentsitself to the rest of the world
in terms of either triggering atrade war vis-a-vis with the
introduction of tariffs, andthen you know how the
retaliation of those tariffsmanifests itself with some other

(05:37):
leading economies.
I think that really is two keythings I'd be looking at.
And then, the last but notleast, I think we have a very
pro-business government.
Two key things I'd be lookingat.
And then, the last but notleast, I think we have a very
pro business government.
I think that people haveprobably underestimated Trump's
ability to really understand theeconomy.
I think he really doesunderstand the economy and he's
got a set of people that arevery pro business.

(05:59):
Now, pro business in governmentdoesn't always solve all the
problems, but it's certainly astep in the right direction.

Speaker 1 (06:07):
So you think market's going to generally go up,
barring any other factors?
So generally inflation isbetter that kind of stuff.
All right, Ashish, what do youthink?

Speaker 2 (06:18):
I think I spent less time in public markets as
compared to Akash Directionallywhat Akash said.
In public markets, as comparedto Akash Directionally what
Akash said.
I would agree with that Overallgoing into 2025, there is a
positive momentum in the markets.
People are hoping for IPOmarket to open up, as well as

(06:40):
for the M&A market to open upsignificantly, and I think that
would drive liquidity.
That would have impact on allsorts of assets that you are
currently seeing, barring allsorts of external geopolitical
risks that we are currentlyseeing in the market.
And I think, from my perspective, I think the couple of things
that I'm watching one, howeveryone is taking into account

(07:01):
the specifics of trade policyand what sort of impact it would
have on different sorts ofasset classes.
And two, we are seeing a bigbit of kind of like you know,
things around when inflation isincreasing and, at the same time
, interest rates are also goingup.
So it's going to have some sortof impact where people are
talking about the economies oftwo sides right.

(07:22):
One side, if you have capitaland assets to deploy, there are
a lot of opportunities, but onthe other side, the average
consumer is facing a lot ofinflation impact because of rise
of all the stuff that youmentioned, increasing the prices
of household items thateverybody's feeling.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
So you still feel like inflation matters.
That's still an issue.
It's been persistent, right?
It's one of those issues thathasn't gone away.
It was supposed to be temporaryand it didn't happen.
Viral any thoughts here, and weare going to get to IPO in 2025
.
A lot of us care a lot aboutthat.
Some of us have money invarious private companies and
various funds and we're lookingfor getting some of that out.

(08:00):
So we're going to get.
We have a whole section on that.

Speaker 4 (08:03):
Viral.
So, look, I think the market'sgoing to do pretty well in 2025.
You, you know, as Kosh said, wehave a very pro business
president coming in to the youknow the office in a few weeks
and it's interesting If you lookat what's happened in the
market recently.
In the first few days of theyear there's been a pullback,
which I think is very healthy,because it went quite a bit last
year.

Speaker 1 (08:21):
Yeah, it was crazy, right, I mean it just popped.
You may see a pullback.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah, you may see a pullback a bit, but you're still
over significant movingaverages technically in the
market.
So I look at the technicalanalysis of the market we may
see more of a pullback, butwe're still in a very much of a
bull market.
There is no end to money supply.
Just on Bloomberg the other daythey were talking about cash
still being on the street.
There's billions of dollarssitting in money market funds

(08:46):
and when people decide to wantto invest that in the market,
you're going to see that moneypushed to market up.
There's still a lot of money inthe sidelines.
Rates are high.
So, yes, the 10-year almost hit5% just the other day.
Why?
Because the data came in justtoday.
Yesterday data came in positive.
Job claims were down fromprevious month, services up, so

(09:07):
the economy is roaring.
Things are going great and yousee productivity coming
everywhere.
And talk about that theme of AI.
Ai is driving productivity up,will continue to drive
productivity up in 2025.
I think that's a theme ofinvesting invest in AI, invest
in tools that drive productivityand efficiency in companies,
and I think that's going themeof investing.
Invest in AI, invest in toolsthat drive productivity and
efficiency in companies, and Ithink that's going to be a trend

(09:28):
.
There are a bunch of othertrends we'll get to.
I think crypto is still a greatplace to put money in 2025.
We'll come to that in a bit.

Speaker 1 (09:34):
I'm sure you are a crypto pro.
And a few other areas which I'llthrow out when I get my chance.
That I think are innovativeareas to look at in terms of
where things will go in thefuture.
Let's do that right now.
In 2024, financial marketsconcentrated around the
Magnificent Seven, and I'm surewe all know who they are.

(09:56):
It's like Nvidia, amazon, allthese stocks.
They all moved.
Its share of the S&P 500 wentfrom 30% in 2023 to 34.6% in
2024.
So concentration amongst the bigwinners really has gone up, and
so with that and a lot of thatis, folks are attributing that

(10:18):
to AI and an AI-driven growthscenario.
We covered this in a previousepisode.
Most technologies take yearsbefore they hit 25% of US
households using them.
I recently saw that AI hasactually hit about 40% of US
households using the technology,and that's within a year of its
introduction.
So there's a concentrated groupof winners in AI.

(10:40):
They're driving an AIgrowth-driven scenario.
So how do you think about therisks and rewards for investment
decisions when you think aboutprivate and public companies?
Go ahead, varel, go jump in,and I know Ashish is going to
talk about this.

Speaker 4 (10:51):
All right.
So, in terms of publiccompanies, clearly the big guys
are the clear winners.
They have the money, they havethe capital to invest and grow
and just take advantage of allthat technology that's out there
.
In terms of AI, I think, interms of the big seven, google
has probably been the lacklusterAI company of the big seven.

(11:12):
I think you're going to seemore from Google coming in 2025.
So that's one place I thinkthere's an opportunity to put
more into Google.
Hopefully, apple will do morewith AI and they've got such a
great platform the iPhone andthat technology to do more with
it, and I don't think they'vejust started to touch on that.
Siri's been around for a longtime but it hasn't really sort
of given what people want interms of the tools.

Speaker 1 (11:34):
Yeah, do you think Google is impacted?
Because, as the number oneplayer in search, it drives
$200-plus billion in revenue, sosearch is an interesting piece.
And search is heavily impactedby ai, so is that why you think
they took?

Speaker 4 (11:50):
the hit.
They didn't grow as fast.
Not bad so ai for compared totraditional google search, which
, by the way, is machinelearning and ai.
But people don't want to talkabout it because it's not
generative ai, it's not llms,it's been ai.
Google was one of the the earlycompanies that really went into
machine learning and theirentire search mechanism is based
on artificial intelligence,being much the work that was

(12:10):
done back in the 80s at stanfordand these guys came from
stanford, as you guys know.
So I wouldn't say I thinkthey're not on the generative
llm hype bandwagon and that'swhy they haven't had sort of the
inflation of their price,unlike, unlike NVIDIA, unlike
other companies that are reallyin that forefront.
But if you look at what they'redoing with Waymo and what

(12:31):
they're going to end up doingand their platform with Search,
I think they have an opportunityto come towards the top of that
over time and they're doing alot with Google Cloud.
So they have the opportunity.
But you know, I look at placeswhere you can invest.
You ask where you invest.
So I think Google's gotopportunity and headroom to grow
, whereas some of the others aretopping out.
Now NVIDIA you look at what theyjust announced this week and

(12:52):
they are now going right downmarket from enterprise to
consumer with their new AIplatforms and boxes that they're
coming out with.
I was just talking to my sontoday.
It's like oh, dad, I'm going toreplace something in my
computer with this new box thatjust you know, they just
announced, you know, at ces, soyou might see another just great
rise in nvidia, just becausethese guys are so smart and what

(13:14):
they're doing and how they'reapplying that technology and
going down market, away fromenterprise, down market, to
hundreds and of millions orbillions of people that have
computers and that want thistechnology at their fingertips,
right on their desk, as opposedto in the cloud.
So I think there'sopportunities all over the place

(13:34):
.

Speaker 1 (13:34):
Lots of really interesting places.
That's right.
Go ahead, go ahead, akash.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, I was going to chat.
I think Google last year andthis year is sort of dealing
with the overhang of antitrustregulation with regards to
monopolization and their Chromebrowser, so I think they've had
some.

Speaker 4 (13:53):
That's going to go away with the next
administration.
I think they're going to getlike what the heck?
It's just a silly thing to goafter these guys when there's so
much competition out there.

Speaker 3 (14:02):
Actually, in my view, yeah, yeah for these guys when
there's so much competition outthere.
Actually, in my view, yeah,yeah, and I think that that's
been there.
And then there's been someissues around.
You know, search revenue beingcannibalized by going directly
to one of these LLM basedsuppliers.
Now, you know, google has aplatform called Gemini.
I encourage people who haven'tused it to use it.
In fact, all their searchresults, are preceded by Gemini.

(14:29):
In fact, I get a lot of myanswers directly when I do a
search with what Gemini comes upwith.
In fact, I did four queriestoday on stuff I didn't even
have to go to some of the links.
Now you don't go to the links,you don't drive the search
revenue.
So you know Google's realizingsome of that's going to happen
with regards to some of therevenue being impacted, because
you know you are forced to lookat some of the links that are
below the search.
But now, with Gemini producingresults in between those links

(14:53):
and the search, it potentiallycannibalizes some of that.
So, but I think they'veprobably done the math there For
people like me who would havenot clicked the links anyway.
I'm very happy with the resultsthere because they're also
building my loyalty to keepgoing to search versus going to
an alternative to get that sameanswer.

Speaker 1 (15:11):
So you're willing to stay on Google search because
you get the combination of theanswer and you get to if you're
like, well, I actually want tobuy something, so then you can
actually do that.
right, you can actually go andget something and Google still
has that, whereas, like ChatGPT,it's wonderful to use by the
way, we've all used it right?
Do you get directions?
I fed in MRI results for myrecent Achilles tendon rupture

(15:40):
and I showed it to my doctor andshe's, like you know, wow, well
, at least I have a job atrepairing your Achilles, so,
anyways.
So there's a lot of cool thingsyou can do, but Google went
down.
There's a bit of antitrust andit's likely that with AI, it's
still going to have a strong AIpresence, because this is just
the early part of the game right, has strong AI presence, the
one thing Google doesn't have.

Speaker 4 (15:55):
It doesn't have the strength of like.
If you look at what's happenedwith meta and then TikTok and
short form video, right, thinkabout YouTube.
Where's the stickiness?
Where do your eyeballs stay dayto day?
And we know from what's goingon.
It's like TikTok, tiktok,instagram.
These different social mediaplatforms are really going
gangbusters and people spend alltheir day long there.
So how does Google get insertedinto that more effectively?

(16:17):
I think is going to be achallenge for them.
Yeah, I'm just saying, but Ithink there's an opportunity,
right, whether it's a challengeand there's a white space for
that, there's an opportunity.
So I'm actually sorry, I jumpedin and didn't mean to do it.
I just stepped on you, akash,go for it.

Speaker 1 (16:29):
Go for it.

Speaker 4 (16:29):
No, no, it's all right, it's all right.

Speaker 1 (16:32):
Ashish has a thought here, go for it?

Speaker 2 (16:35):
No, I think I was just saying that.
Youtube as well as for if youlook at the amount of time spent
on online streaming, they areahead of Netflix.
The people are spending a lotof time on YouTube.

Speaker 4 (16:48):
They need more short-form video.

Speaker 2 (16:50):
Well, I mean it depends on.
I mean, the advertising dollarsare moving a lot more and
YouTube is actually doing reallywell as a business today.
If you look at theiradvertising revenue as it's
growing.
I agree that they don't have ashort-form video.
That's definitely theiropportunity, but in long form
video and podcasts.

Speaker 4 (17:10):
They have clearly, I mean they are going the fastest
among all of the players.

Speaker 3 (17:11):
Yeah, and I'll give you an example.
I'll give you an example of thepoint that ashish made.
So I got the short form videosummary.
I'm a big fan of nikki glasser.
She was hosting the goldenglobes this week, so I got.
I got all the snippets on allthe short form video sites
vis-a-vis Instagram, but Iwanted somewhere to go and get

(17:32):
all the jokes that she made, youknow, the monologue, and then a
clip of that.
And, lo and behold, it was onYouTube.
I shared that very liberallywith people because the short
form video wasn't, you know,meeting my needs to be able to
kind of absorb all the jokes.
So that is, you know a bunch.

Speaker 1 (17:53):
Right, and so you're still in it and, as a marketer,
I can tell you that one of theproducts that Google offers is
this notion of you literally putin your objective and it
figures out where to put yourcontent.
You say, hey, this is the goal.
I have cost of acquisition here, and because most people don't
think about using brand as wellor performance marketers don't
think about using brand as wellit figures out where to put it.

(18:13):
So they're not stupid, they'rereally bright and they're really
sharp.
All right, I got another one.
This one is for Viral.
Looking beyond just the markettrends and the numbers, what's
the most significant shift ininvestor behavior that you
observed over the last year andwhat is one unconventional
strategy you believe that couldgive you an edge to those
seeking real value in 2025?

Speaker 4 (18:35):
Oh, wow, that's a tough question.
So I think the biggest shift ininvestor in 2024 was moving
into money markets with theincrease in interest rates, so
much cash has actually left themarket and gone into it.
And look at where the rates aretoday I mean from a risk
adjusted return perspective yourmoney is safe in money markets
and so the question will be in2025, will that money come out

(18:58):
of money markets?
Will we see the 10-year dropback down to 4% or closer to 3%,
or it's going to stay upbecause, as we discussed earlier
, inflation is persistent, rightServices inflation is
persistent.
Cost inflation is persistent.
If we have tariffs, that'sgoing to keep prices up.
So you're going to see, in thatcase, money still staying into
fixed income and bonds and moneymarkets.

(19:19):
I'll pitch Bitcoin here.
I think crypto Bitcoin is anawesome place to invest in 2025.
If you look at the price cyclesafter the halving we had last
year, the Bitcoin halving in thenext three to six months, we
should see a peak in Bitcoin.
I wouldn't doubt it if it gets$120,000 or $150,000 this year.

Speaker 1 (19:35):
There you go $150,000 .
So Bitcoin five years ago is upover 1,000% From five years ago
.
Today it's up over 1,000%.
I think Viril, you got inaround 400 bucks or something
like that.

Speaker 4 (19:50):
I've been in since 2014 or 15, so I don't remember
what it was back then.

Speaker 1 (19:55):
It was like 10 cents maybe.

Speaker 4 (19:59):
I should name my boat Bitcoin.
There you go.

Speaker 1 (20:04):
It is interesting that nowadays you can get four
and a half percent just in thestraight money market, and if
inflation is at two, two and ahalf percent, you're making
money just having your money sitthere, right, so that's
something that's reallyinteresting.
And then there's all thesealternatives.
So, akash, what do you think?

Speaker 3 (20:19):
I think that you know I prepared my account slightly
differently last year.
I was anticipating like a lotof people were again reading the
data Again I don't have anyextra insights that interest
rates would come down a littlebit faster than they have.
So I hedged and boughtlong-term treasuries, meaning
that before I was in three tosix-month treasuries, I moved it

(20:42):
into 18 months to 24 monthtreasuries.
So I have personally taken 10%of my portfolio and put it in
treasuries right now thatspanning nine months to 24
months.
So that's what I've done.
That's, in hindsight, not thebest decision, because interest
rates have stayed pretty high.
Despite that, I couldpotentially be getting slightly

(21:06):
higher rates in short termtreasuries as well.
But having said that, you know,perhaps you could lock in your
money in bonds right now, longerterm bonds.
That's something that peopleshould think about.
You know, again, that dependson your own investment horizon
and risk and things like that.
I think gold is a neglectedasset.
I think gold did spectacularlywell last year.

(21:26):
It did a 20% gain.
I think that's another hedge.
You know, I think the dollarwill continue to stay, you know,
quite volatile depending onwhat happens with inflation,
what happens with the tariffs.
So that's another way ofhedging.
You know your money.
I'm looking at doing goldmyself.
You know it's always been astore of value and now we have

(21:46):
other stores of value vis-a-visBitcoin.
I think Viral's right.
I think one of the mostsignificant innovations last
year from a financialperspective was the ETF the
Bitcoin ETF that came about.
Now you know you've got that inevery account you can utilize
to invest in.

Speaker 1 (22:02):
I got a question.
Great point, Okay, Viral.
What yields are staking crypto?

Speaker 4 (22:07):
So Bitcoin itself doesn't have a yield in and of
itself.
But if you go, for example,into Ethereum or Solana, you can
get anywhere from 2% to 4%yield by staking.
I mean, without going intodetails, there's a protocol, a
different protocol than proof ofwork for Ethereum and Solana.
It's called proof of stake.
Essentially, you make Ethereumor you make Solana by staking
your Ethereum and Solana as partof the proofing protocol, so

(22:31):
you can actually make revenuethere.
You can also make money instable coins USDC, usdt, and now
Ripple has released a stablecoin and they pay yields because
they invest the underlyingmoney into treasuries, so you
get some of the yield of thetreasury.
So it's, in a way, it's likeholding money markets in a
different form.
So if you have a belief that thegovernment and the banking

(22:53):
system is not your friend, thenthe question is where do you
want to keep your money?
Do you want to keep it in thebank or do you want to put it in
something else that is detachedfrom the government and the
banking industry and know whereit's invested as opposed to not?
Now we all know there's FDICinsurance up to, let's say,
$100,000.
So that's fine.

(23:14):
But if you've got more thanthat, your money is at risk in
the banking system.
And look what happened toSilicon Valley Bank.

Speaker 2 (23:20):
All right, but no wait, nobody lost money on
Silicon Valley Bank, but you'reright no-transcript of the other

(23:51):
ecosystem that could have goneinto other asset classes, and I
think gold definitely can.
Like you know, people arelooking at investing in gold and
Bitcoin, so I'm not going totalk about that.
I think, for me, as I lookthrough the whole spectrum of
things that are going intoalternate assets, I think
private credit is somethingwhere people are spending a lot
of time and that's why you'reseeing a lot of these asset

(24:13):
managers launching their ownprivate credit vehicles.
I think, from my interactionswith a lot of family officers
and high net worth individuals,they have been deploying a lot
of capital in private creditfunds with individuals, they
have been deploying a lot ofcapital in private credit funds
and I believe, from thatperspective, that early stage
venture capital, because of thehorizon of the liquidity that
comes in, it's also, I think,you want to find asset classes

(24:34):
that are not moving at the samepace in terms of risk, right I
mean.
So I think early stage venturecapital is also very
differentiated as compared tothat because of the liquidity
cycles.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
This is a great point .
This is a great point.
This is a great point.
Right, there's ways of going inthe stock market which is
highly liquid, or at least forthe larger stocks, not the
smaller stocks.
There's now this newalternative, basically
computer-generated investments,blockchain investments, which
are pretty liquid as well, butthen there's the.
We've all dabbled in theilliquid investment as angel

(25:08):
investors in companies, andwe've talked about venture funds
.
So if you had the ability toinvest in venture funds, what do
you think?
So, Ashish, you brought up agreat one like early stage
venture funds.

Speaker 2 (25:19):
I think for early stage venture funds.
I think it's if you have thecapacity to do it.
I think it depends, and thereare a whole bunch of different
ways you can do it.
You can go if you have accessto the right set of fund
managers.
Like similar to any sort ofasset, right?
I mean, there are good managers, there are bad managers.
You have to have theunderstanding of how to look for
a good venture capital fundmanager and being able to access
that fund and being able to getallocation to invest in that,

(25:42):
of course, the minimums in someof those cases.
One, you have to be anaccredited investor and two, you
have to deploy that capitalwhich is going to be illiquid,
which is a stark difference frominvesting in public stock
markets where the money isalways available to you.
That same is also true formajority of the other asset
classes.
But along with that, it's highrisk, high reward kind of thing.
Right, I mean, you go in intothe right fund managers, you

(26:03):
will be able to generatesignificant higher returns.
Like what?
The higher returns can beanywhere from 3x to 5x net of
the fee.
So, for example, if you investa dollar, you might be able to
get 3x to 5x after 10 years,which, if you look on the IRR
perspective, can be anywherefrom 15% to 25% of IRR,

(26:24):
depending on what numbers you'relooking at as such, and that's
why early stage venture capitalis significantly high risk but,
at the same time, very highreward, and I can think of it as
on the other spectrum right.
I mean you can have a barbellstrategy, like where you are
deploying capital into publicstock markets and I know that
many people can prefer to gointo index funds but you can

(26:46):
also go and stock the particularstocks, for example, if you
have a good understanding of thetech market and you understand
where things are going.
For example, a bunch of peoplewere looking going after Nvidia,
of course, has already tappedout in terms of, and there's a
lot of things that they'recontinuously innovating on.
But if you look at below thestack, ibandwidth memory is
something that people aretalking about and that led to

(27:08):
Micron stock jumping almost 15%in the past week itself.
So if you are able to identifyspecific stocks and being able
to understand the underlyingtrends, that would go a long way
.
And on the other side of thebarbell, if you think about
deploying capital into earlystage venture capital.
That is, of course, longhorizon, much higher risk but at
the same time, much higherreward on that front, and I
think you can identify in anysort of asset classes these type

(27:30):
of dynamics, based on what I'veseen so far.
But I operate in private marketsprimarily all the time, so I'm,
of course, very bullish andtotally agree with the comments
that Viral and Akash have made,that when you see closely the
impact of AI on every singlepart of things that we do as a
consumer or as an enterprise,everything is going to get
disrupted in ways where startingwith, I think this year is

(27:53):
going to be a lot of likeservice as a software is the
theme that people are goingafter, where things that were
previously being done by humans,either in some sort of labor
arbitrage, or things that werebeing done where you were hiring
people who are expensive, like$500 per hour majority of those
things can be done with muchless number of people required
because of the productivitygains that we are able to get

(28:15):
because of the advances in AIthat is going from text to video
to multi-model and now evenyou're going to start seeing a
lot more robotics which arealready operating and we're
going to start to see a lot moreof those come out.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
So we're shifting right.
We're not just pure software,not just labor.
It's labor augmentation, laborreplacement, and we're even
going into physical devices.
I'm sure many of the folks herehave done Waymo, have tried out
Waymo or robot cars Some of youmay have a Tesla and had a
chance to play with fullself-driving, but they're now
robots.
They've always used some formof AI, I mean the old classic

(28:48):
analytical-based AI techniques,but now they're using more and
more of the generativetechniques and those sorts of
things.
So really cool.
All right, I love the way youset this up.
So, looking ahead to 2025, whatis the most significant black
swan event that you think coulddisrupt the markets and how are
you proactively positioning yourportfolio to be resilient to

(29:09):
these unexpected shocks that maynot be on anyone's radar?
Are there any unconventionalmetrics that you're using to go
beyond traditional economicindicators so that people in the
audience can say, huh, I shouldlook at this and maybe make a
decision.
We'll do this as a quick.
You got to be quick on this one, akash.

Speaker 3 (29:26):
Buy treasuries, you know, as I said, put fixed
income.
Black Swan event could beanything.

Speaker 1 (29:32):
Trade war, I think, trade war to hot war, a lot of
provocation, you never know.
We've already had a couple ofhot waters.
Hopefully they diminish, allright.

Speaker 4 (29:40):
Viral.
Massive tariff issues, with theeconomy and Trump coming in and
bullying people could be, youknow, raise prices up and cause
serious inflation and that'sgoing to drive interest rates
back up, inflation back up, andwe're going to have a
revaluation in the stock marketbecause all the valuations are
tied to the 10-year rate.
That bumps up to 5% to 6%.

(30:00):
You're going to see a bigrevaluation.
So what should you do?
Well, you should actually buymore treasuries, take revenge of
that yield, but the market'sgoing to reset after that.
I think other black swan eventsare wars.
Look at what's happening inChina and Taiwan.
North Korea is destabilizing.
The war in Russia and Ukraineis never going to end is never
going to end, it seems, at thispoint in time, although those
kinds of things drive economiesup.

(30:21):
So we're the beneficiary,because where do we buy all the
weapons from?
We buy them from the UnitedStates.
So, even though we may bepumping money out, that'll be
good for us.
The last one is our debt loadto GDP ratio is getting a bit
wonky.

Speaker 1 (30:35):
Right, we're going over 100%, right, 100% of debt
to GDP.

Speaker 4 (30:38):
So somebody was talking about a Liz Trust moment
which happened in the UK lastyear, where there was the bond
vigilantes came in and decidedto sell bonds really hard.
So if that happens here andpeople say I don't want more US
debt, people aren't buying thedebt, and the BRIC countries
decide they don't want to buythe debt or whatever, then
you're going to see a massiverise in interest rates and a
massive issue of funding.
You know our deficit spending.

(30:59):
Those, to me, are the big blackswan events for 2025.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
And how do you prepare for it?

Speaker 4 (31:04):
I think Bitcoin is a great alternative.
That's where I'm hedging mybets, so I would say, yeah, put
some amount of money in Bitcoin.

Speaker 1 (31:11):
How much?
One or two percent, fivepercent?

Speaker 4 (31:22):
The big asset managers are saying four percent
, two to four percent in crypto,I think the other places to put
money are potentially smaller.
Companies aren't going to haveas much of an impact in terms of
the high valuations.
Nvidia's valuation is just wayup there.
What's going to happen withthat?

Speaker 1 (31:31):
$4 trillion.
What is it?

Speaker 4 (31:34):
It's just like 50, 53 times future earnings or
something like that, some crazymultiple on the earnings.
Right now it's hard to want toinvest in that, but markets can
be irrational.
As the old saying goes, cash isking.
Gold, I mean Ashish broughtthat up before Gold, bitcoin and
gold to me are similar things.
Commodities, right, that justhave their store of values.

(31:55):
Where do you put the money?
Private credit may be a placeto go, but I'm not sure how
that's going to react.
Any of these black swan events.
Yeah, those are the places todo it.
I mean, you can put money onyour mattress.
That might be a safe place.

Speaker 1 (32:08):
Well, this gets to the notion right of.
We always talk about correlatedand uncorrelated risk, and
that's the Greek term beta.
So, ashish, are you buying abunch of gold?

Speaker 2 (32:17):
I'm not.
I mean, yes, buying physicalgold is something that people
are doing in India and China.
That's why you're seeingphysical China is also buying an
incredible amount of physicalgold actually, if you track that
.
So I think from my perspective,I'm spending more time just
investing in private markets,because that's what I understand
.
I think there are opportunitieseverywhere.
Of course, I mean the BlackSwan event.

(32:39):
Viral and Akash have prettymuch covered most of it.
It's very difficult to predictone.
That's why it's called a BlackSwan event.
If you can predict it, then itwon't be called that.

Speaker 1 (32:49):
So I think one of the things you should be ready.

Speaker 2 (32:51):
Yeah, I think you should always be ready and you
should, I think, as they say,never put all of your eggs in
one basket that can wipe you out, or take one risk that can take
you out of the market, and Ithink all of us are
sophisticated enough that wewon't do that.
Second thing is, like you know,one other thing that I would
add.
A black swan event is kind ofthe natural calamities that can
happen, like the one that'sgoing on in LA.
Nobody expected that Like thesetype of things, that because of

(33:14):
climate change or whatever thereasons are, if you look at it,
the frequency and the impact ofthese natural occurring events
have increased significantlyover the past decade.
It will continue.
So it's going to come down towhere do you want to live and
how do you Because risks arethere in all parts of things
risks and where you want to callhome and spend most of your

(33:36):
time, versus when you talk aboutyour assets.
Uh, that's a different story.
Specifically for me, I thinkI'm looking at primarily, I
think between, as viril andakash said, combination of
treasuries, private stocks andpublic market stocks.
Um, from that, from thatperspective and I think I still
believe there are specificstocks that you can still pick,
that can go up.
And if you have a some sort ofmarket understanding, like, for

(33:59):
example a good example is FuboTV.
That has gone down quite a bit,right, it was trading like a
dollar or some change and thenpeople were expecting because
FuboTV had sued, I think therewas some stuff going on.
And then there was this bignews came out and the stock
almost jumped like 300% plus,right.

Speaker 1 (34:18):
So if you are able to identify these type of
companies and can deploy andhave access to those, I mean you
, you can still do so kind of acombination, yeah, yeah, so kind
of set some money aside forsome of these companies that are
languishing but have goodassets and then you will.
I don't think you're going toknow that hulu.
You know disney was going tocombine it with hulu and it
would explode.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
But you play with some of these and put some of
your money aside for it yeah, Imean, but I think that the
general trend over there isthere's going to be an increased
M&A right, increased M&Aactivity.
So if you can think about thattrend and spend more time on
specific sectors, then it canhelp you generate.
But I think, as you said,majority of the assets are
either in treasuries or in goldor in Bitcoin or in some other
sort of like safe assets.

(34:53):
And then you take somepercentage of this, like 5%, 10%
, 15% that you want to play with, which you're okay to lose if
it goes to zero.

Speaker 1 (35:00):
This is really helpful.
Now we're going to go totalking about the IPO market in
2025.
So, those who are in theinnovation world, or those who
have us, who are investors invarious early or mid stage or
late stage venture firms, whatwe're wondering about all the
time is, like you guys promisedme 10 years, now you're saying

(35:21):
it's 12.
Now it's 15.
I mean, I'm you know,especially the seed funds or the
pre-seed funds, and so 2025could be the golden year, right,
if there's more M&A, that kindof stuff.
So I'm going to do a quick Q&Awith you guys.
I'm going to throw out astatement.
You can agree, disagree.
Give me one quick line about it.
The majority of companies goingpublic in 2025 will not be

(35:42):
profitable.
Companies are now going publicto pay down debt and allow early
investors to sell shares, andnot necessarily to finance
future growth.

Speaker 3 (35:53):
I don't agree with that.
I think the market will not buythat.
That's not a reason to gopublic.
I agree with that point.

Speaker 4 (36:00):
I think those companies won't IPO and if they
IPO, it'll tank right away.

Speaker 3 (36:05):
Yeah, and the bankers will be very silly to be
presenting a thesis like that toa prospective investor.
Investors in a company don'twant to make previous investors
rich.
I'm in an M&A right now and thecompany that's buying us is not
interested in paying any extramoney to the investors.
They're interested in thecompany now.
No, no, no, they're not doingit for that.

Speaker 1 (36:26):
Hold on.
Let me pose it in a differentway.
A lot of companies have stayedprivate longer because of the
availability of secondary sharesand continuation funds and
those sorts of things other waysof staying private longer and
avoiding public scrutiny.
So now when those companies aregoing public, they're not going
public necessarily to get aslug of capital to finance more
growth.
They're going public to getliquidity for their investors.

Speaker 4 (36:48):
Right, but the store.
Well, that's understood, Ithink that.

Speaker 1 (36:52):
yeah, that's understood Before when Microsoft
went public, they were muchsmaller, and when they went
public, they were using thatcapital for future growth.
Nowadays, some of thesecompanies have had
billion-dollar slugs of capitalthrown into them.

Speaker 4 (37:05):
When they're going public, you get you have to
reverse question If I'm aninvestor in public markets and
this company comes to the publicmarkets and for the specific
purpose of cashing out theexisting investors, why would I
want to be in there?
Why don't those investors stay?
If they're not willing to keeptheir skin in the game, why do I
want to be in there?
Why don't investors stay Really, if they're not willing to put
their skin in the game, why do Iwant to put my skin in that
game?
They're bailing out, so am Ijumping on the ship that's

(37:28):
sinking?
What the hell.

Speaker 1 (37:30):
Good point, All right , Ashish what do?

Speaker 2 (37:32):
you think.
I think from my perspective,you have to.
I think, instead of like I'mgoing to look at the revenue
growth for the company.
If the revenue growth of thecompany is significantly higher,
profitability can come in thefuture Because, if you look at,
the majority of the company thatget valued is based on the top
line growth and not based on theEBITDA growth.

Speaker 4 (37:50):
I would agree.
So if you've got a great returnbased upon profitability growth
, then you will get toprofitability.
I agree with that Right.

Speaker 1 (38:03):
So, but where's the story that says I'm growing.

Speaker 4 (38:04):
Unless you're going to grow, we're not going to
invest, because we all know thatvaluations are based upon the
rate of growth and that secondderivative of growth.

Speaker 1 (38:07):
Next question the focus for tech IPOs is shifting
and I kind of touched on thisrewarding early backers and not
retail investors.
So before when you would gopublic, a lot of these companies
would go public much earlier.
So before when you would gopublic, a lot of these companies
would go public much earlier.
God, when I was in sales intechnology in the 90s, I was
able to buy Intel and Microsoftat a 15 PE early in their cycle.

(38:32):
Nowadays there's no way I canget into some of these companies
because I can't touch them,because now they're multibillion
dollar companies and privateinvestors have made their money
on that right Because they'rethe only ones who can access
these companies at later stages.
Do you see this as a long-termproblem?

Speaker 3 (38:50):
No, I don't.
I'll tell you why.
One the world has changed.
So, just to use your PE as anexample, s&p trades at about 22%
PE.
The market will pay forcompanies that are growing.
So you know I have to disagreewith a few people here.
That's saying NVIDIA isovervalued.
I don't think so.
I think NVIDIA is an amazingbusiness from top to bottom.

(39:10):
Their PE is 38, something whichis very modest at the growth
that they're encountering andthey've got a pole position in
the market.
When you have pole position inthe market, you do well.
And I also kind of disagreewith the statement that it's
just growth that the marketvalues.
I completely disagree with that.
In tech perhaps it matters, butyou know there are companies in

(39:31):
the consumer business and otherindustries where profitability
matters.
I would invest in a businessthat's generating cash hand over
fist in any day.
I mean, who wouldn't?
The company's got positive cashflow and is generating money,
then that's generating cash handover fist in any day.
I mean who wouldn't?
If a company's got positivecash flow and is generating
money, then that's coming backto the shareholder.
So you don't necessarily haveto have pure growth to make a
good investment, in my humbleopinion.

(39:51):
Look at real estate.
Real estate generates cash oncash.
It's a great investment.
Look at our friend Trump.
That's how he made his money.
And look at all the otherinvestors that are coming in,
and yesterday there was aninvestor that is investing in
hard assets in the AI wave, andthat's this guy called Hussein
Sajwani.
He's one of the leading realestate investors in the Middle

(40:13):
East and he's coming in andbuilding data centers, so I
would want to invest in thatbusiness.

Speaker 1 (40:17):
Picks and doubles just like Levi's All right, I'm
going to invest in that business.
Pick some troubles just likeLevi's All right, I'm going to
go to the next question.
I love this Next one.
Ai augmented venture capitalfirms will become the norm.
I wonder who should answer this.

Speaker 4 (40:30):
What does that mean?
Ai, augmented venture capitalfirms what does that?

Speaker 3 (40:33):
mean that's a layup for us.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
I'll give you more description.
Funds that use AI to analyzedeals will gain an unfair
advantage, leading to a wideradoption of these methods.
Most venture funds get theirdeal flow through their
connections or maybe what theydo for content, and they may
have some event thing.
They might have some privategathering situation.
Most of them get their dealflow through their reputations.

Speaker 2 (40:56):
No, I 100% agree with you that that's the future, and
I think, given where we are, weare at the cutting edge of
using quant models, ai tools andtech augmentation platform for
every step of the funnel ofventure capital that we are
using right, and because of that, we are able to see more deals.
We look at around 3.4 millioncompanies from our database

(41:17):
itself.
I mean the way that we aretracking we are able to identify
top 1% of companies across allof those 48 different verticals
right.
So this gives us significantadvantage, both in terms of how
much deals we are able to see,how we are able to do much
faster, much deeper diligence,as well as being able to
automate a lot of help that weprovide to different folks who
are sitting with us, includingportfolio companies, our LPs, as

(41:37):
well as to our advisors, and Ithink that's where, when we're
consistently talking to everyone, you would be surprised.
Every single discussion with apotential investor in our fund
is intrigued with what we have,and I think that's what the
future is so does that becomethe norm?

Speaker 1 (41:50):
All right, Phil, does that become the norm I?

Speaker 4 (41:51):
think AI augmentation in 2025 is going to be the norm
in all businesses, not justventure capital.
You're seeing it.
Look, did you hear?
You should have seen that oneof the CEOs of Samsung was
talking about their smartplatform.
You know for a consumer and foryou know cargo ships and how
they're bringing AI and AI toolsinto every level of electronics

(42:14):
and systems in all areas.
So I think you're going to see,yes, ai augmentation across the
board.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
Co-pilots are here to stay All right.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
Next Akash how about this?
I'm going to start.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
The next question the long-term potential of most AI
companies are overhyped.
We just saw that Anthropic gota $60 billion valuation.
Openai it must be over $100billion valuation.
Now I understand that OpenAI, Ithink, has revenue of like five
or six billion, something likethat.

(42:47):
I mean these are getting.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
these are incredible valuations as a price to revenue
.
Multiple Overhyped, yes, no,maybe.
So yeah, I mean a little.
I mean, look it's, you know,new construction.
It's.
Potentially nobody knows youknow who's going to which
building is going to stay on theblock.
So you know there's a littlebit of excitement there, but I
think you know there will be afew.
It's like finding the nextGoogle.
So one of these is the nextGoogle and you know people are

(43:08):
trying to figure out which onethere is.
So Anthropic is a legitimatecompetitor to OpenAI.
Bunch of investors couldn't getinto OpenAI for various reasons
valuation, fund size, et cetera.
So they're half or one thirdthe valuation of that.

Speaker 1 (43:21):
So you're saying not overhyped.

Speaker 3 (43:23):
Really not really.

Speaker 2 (43:25):
Ashish not overhyped.

Speaker 1 (43:26):
Yes or no?

Speaker 2 (43:29):
It's not overhyped in a way where I think you have to
understand, right.
I mean, the markets they arechasing are in trillions.
Right, the impact of these isbasically going to be, I think,
if you look at what Nvidia, whatJensen Huang said in his latest
CES remark, every singleindustry, every single workload
that consumers and enterprisesare doing is going to get
impacted, right?
So I would agree with whatAkash is saying in terms of,
like, you know who's the nextGoogle?

(43:50):
Like it's very difficult tofigure out.
Of course, the moats of thesecompanies is also very low at
the moment.
They have to keep innovating ata fast pace and that's where
you are seeing these companiesare also burning a lot of
capital, right, I mean, openaiis saying they're going to have
$10 to $12 billion in revenue,but they're going to burn maybe
$5 or $6 billion to get to thatrevenue.
Right, so the quality ofrevenue matters and I think
right now, nobody's asking thatquestion because the gross

(44:11):
margin for these businesses forAnthropix and OpenAI of the
world is low.
But the idea is that once youhave right now it's the market
share rate, similar to whathappened in cloud, where Google
and Azure spend a lot of moneytrying to catch up with AWS and

(44:33):
if you look at it today I meanfast forward from 10 years now
to today you're starting to seenow you have three or four major
cloud providers.
Of course, aws is the numberone and the market is massive
for that.
Similar things are going tohappen in AI too.

Speaker 4 (44:40):
All right, vero quick .
Hype cycle, hype cycle hypecycle.
You will see a lot of the hypeand then there'll be
consolidation.
Are we super hyped?
There'll be consolidation.
You know, when the internethits in 2000, when all these
other technologies came about,they're going to have the hype
and they're going to pay for theopportunity to get that lottery
ticket for one of these and forone of these, and some of them
are going to win and some ofthem are going to lose.
This is a normal cycle.
There's nothing abnormal aboutthis at all.

(45:02):
It's not different than anyother cycle hype cycle we've
been through in the last 10, 20years.
All right.
Next, question.

Speaker 1 (45:08):
I love this.
This is awesome.
So just like that.
Right A thousand car companiesbefore we settled on three.
In the US, we had so manysearch companies before we
settled on one.
Google was actually number 50in terms of the company that
came out for that.
Microsoft was way late in termsof its word processing system.

Speaker 4 (45:26):
We don't know who's going to be on top.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
So there's a lot we don't know who's going to win,
and so this is part of the fun.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah Okay.
Sustainable business models arenot yet a priority for AI
startups, and this could be any,because I know a couple of you
are investors in them or part ofthem.
Like not all of you are doingentropic or open AI type
companies where all the money isgoing to Jensen Wang, so yeah,
I can take that.

Speaker 3 (45:49):
We have a AI company.
There's many business modelsthat are floating around.
One is obviously, you know, youknow usage-based tokens and
whatever demand you're drivingfor the infrastructure.
You put a margin on top of thatand pass it to the customer.
Or you know it's value-basedpricing based on what the output
of the AI is and how that can,you know, impact the business.
So you know things are stillunder development, at least in

(46:12):
our business.
So you know, we have justmodeled our business's business
model based on, you know, sizeof company and the value that we
potentially think we can createvalue based pricing labor labor
, labor savings.

Speaker 1 (46:28):
So you're not looking yet at your business model.
You're driving adoption, you'regetting people to use it and
you're going to worry about itlater.

Speaker 3 (46:36):
Yeah, just like again in any new market, you don't
know absolutely what people willpay and what the ultimate value
.
You know that that if we cansave a food scientist 10 hours a
week, you can model that andsay there's an efficiency gain
and you can get that guy to bemore productive.
What's their time based and canyou charge 5x, 6x that?

Speaker 2 (46:56):
Okay, Ashish that Okay, ashish.
I think sustainable businessmodels are yet to be built out.
I think I would say somecompanies are more advanced than
the others, and just that'sbecause they've been longer in
the market.
But these practices, I thinkover the next couple of years,
would become more clear asmajority of these business
models would move away.
Like, for example, right nownobody wants to pay on a per

(47:17):
seat basis, right, people wantto move away from per seat basis
to usage-based model.
That happened and now fromusage-based models to some other
type of models.
It's going to come up.
We're starting to see someearly headwinds but, yes, at the
moment it's not clear whatthose models would be.

Speaker 1 (47:31):
That's awesome Viral, quick one.
I know you're on the board ofmultiples of these AI
interesting things AI cryptodancing.
Pengu Dancing agents, nfts andthings like that.

Speaker 4 (47:47):
Sustainability Everybody wants sustainability
at the end of the day.
But I look at startups in adifferent way.
You look at the team.
Can the team adapt and figureout how they're going to take
that technology, deploy it andhow to use it?
You go through six or sevendifferent business models in the
life of a startup.
I mean, I went through many inmy company.
So where is it going to betomorrow from?

Speaker 1 (48:07):
where is this?

Speaker 4 (48:07):
today.
Don't worry, just bet on theteam and bet on the idea that
they can actually figure it outand win the race.
It's a foot race out thereright now in AI, and the fastest
, the most agile, the smartestare going to win, so that's what
you bet on.

Speaker 1 (48:21):
Okay, here we go Next question.
I love these answers.
Ai agents will significantlyimpact financial markets,
increasing efficiency and speed,but also introducing new risks.
The rise of AI-driven trading,just like, remember, high-speed
trading, could lead to increasedmarket volatility.
Ai trading has been here forthe last 10 years, this crap.

Speaker 4 (48:45):
It's been around for 10 plus years already.

Speaker 1 (48:48):
Okay, so I'm sorry but now you have ai agents
that's just another.

Speaker 4 (48:53):
That's just another nice term to use for, like,
different kinds of software.
It's been around for a while,right?
The risk, the risk are the same, uh, you know, and there's
still people behind all themachines watching what's going
on.
It's all about risk management,by the way, right?
So give me a good riskmanagement agent, and that's
what I want.

Speaker 1 (49:10):
All right, Viral's building the next risk
management agent, Ashish.
Any thoughts on this?

Speaker 2 (49:14):
No, I think I would agree with Viral that I mean you
look at the likes ofMillenniums and Renegar
Technologies, right, I mean,they have been already using
versions of that and much moreadvanced than a lot of these
things.
That's why, specifically onthat, I think you wouldn't see
that.
But I think if you look at itfrom the consumer perspective,
on the financial side, or notjust the financial markets in
itself, in terms of trading, butif you look at how can you
invest, like the rise ofrobo-advisors, I think people

(49:35):
are going to do a little bitmore of that to kind of
automatically.
Based on that, I mean, I'malready starting to see a lot of
bots being used for cryptotrading, also at scale, and then
you can define your own bots.

Speaker 4 (49:45):
Right and markets are efficient.
And when these bots all pileinto the same thing, what
happens?
Somebody else takes the otherside of that trade and wins.
You know, buyer beware.

Speaker 1 (49:55):
Okay, here you go.
That relates to this next one,about alpha.
It'll be difficult forinvestors to generate alpha
using AI alone.

Speaker 4 (50:04):
What does that mean?
Ai alone.

Speaker 1 (50:12):
Because the ability to use AI to rapidly digest
information may be short-livedas algorithms become ubiquitous
and the market becomes, as youtalked about, highly efficient
and homogeneous.

Speaker 4 (50:18):
There's always opportunities to make alpha.
The question is what data isyour AI consuming and where does
it get the data from?
Is it the same as everybodyelse?
So you need that edge.
You need to find that datathat's different and
differentiating to give you theedge to create alpha.

Speaker 1 (50:35):
Thank you, okay.
Next we are going to move tothe Spark Tank.
We're gonna have some fun here.
This is.
This is the part that you guysget to compete against each
other.
So here we go.
Akash ashish viril.
Welcome to the spark tank, whereai pioneers go head to head.

(50:55):
This is where three leadinginnovators and investors in the
ai space are forced to leveragetheir strategic insights and
battle for market-defining ideas.
They're not just talking aboutthe future of AI, they're
building it Tonight.
They dissect the currentlandscape, expose the hype and
debate the real opportunities.
Get ready for the battle ofintellectual firepower as they

(51:17):
explore the cutting edge andchallenge the status quo.
This is the ultimate AIdisruption challenge, where only
one emerges as the champion ofthe AI revolution.
Tonight, we're not only talkingabout the future, we're
witnessing it being forged inreal time.
So this is like it's going tobe like two truths and a lie.
So I'm going to read you thesethree statements.
Two of them are true, one is alie.

(51:38):
You get to pick out which oneis the lie.
I'm going to count down three,two, one, and then you're going
to put up your hand with afinger at the same time, so that
none of you can cheat and tellme which one you think is a lie.
You ready, okay.

Speaker 2 (51:53):
All right.

Speaker 1 (51:53):
We're going to do three rounds, okay.
Round number one a publiclytraded company offers a service
to name newly discovered starsafter customers.
Number two a publicly tradedcompany offers a service to name
newly discovered stars aftercustomers.
Number two a corporationspecializing in developing and
selling personal jet packs forcivilian use had its IPO in 2022
.
And number three a company thatproduces and sells synthetic

(52:16):
dinosaur meat created throughgenetic engineering is publicly
traded.
Three, two, one.
Dinosaur meat created throughgenetic engineering is publicly
traded.
Three, two, one.
Okay, so the winner of this one, the lie, is number three a
company that produces and sellssynthetic dinosaur meat with
genetically genetic engineeringis publicly traded.
There you go.
Guess what there are.

(52:37):
There is a publicly companycompany.
Yeah, jet packs and names Newlydiscovered stars.

Speaker 4 (52:44):
Yes, that's why Interesting.

Speaker 3 (52:46):
Interesting.

Speaker 1 (52:47):
Number two a, a company that sells scented
candles designed to smell likeyour favorite celebrities, went
public in 2023.
Number two a publicly tradedcompany offers a service to
launch your pet's ashes intospace as a memorial.
And number three a corporationthat manufactures and sells

(53:10):
invisibility cloaks based onmetamaterial technology, had a
successful IPO in 2024.
Ready Three, two, one whichone's false?
All right, the Agarvals losethis one.

Speaker 2 (53:26):
The Tolat wins.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
So it was number one.
While a celebrity scentedcandles exist, there's no public
company solely dedicated tothis.
The other two are true Celestisoffers memorial space flights
for cremated remains, andmetamaterial develops
metamaterials with potentialapplications in visibility
technology.

Speaker 3 (53:46):
Why did you guys say number three wasn't true?

Speaker 4 (53:47):
Clearly the IPO market was very good last year I
mean all of these are allpublic companies that I'm not
aware of, not the public, notthe Santa Kendall one.
Come on, dudes.

Speaker 3 (53:59):
Yeah, I mean, clearly I was short that baby all hands
down, all right.

Speaker 1 (54:04):
For number one, two of you picked three right Ashish
, Ashish and Vero.
Okay.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
I'm in the losing spot, yeah.
Vero's one, ashish two and I'mthree, yeah.

Speaker 4 (54:15):
Exactly, we can call it quits.
So we have two points.
Ashish is won, right?
Well, what is?

Speaker 3 (54:20):
it.
What is the incentive?

Speaker 4 (54:22):
What is the incentive here?
What are?

Speaker 3 (54:23):
we getting what gift?
Yeah, there's no incentiveOpportunity to-.
Kind of bogus companies outthere.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Here's number three.
Number one a company thatclaims to extract gold from
seawater using a proprietarynanotechnology process is listed
on the stock exchange.
Number two a corporation thatdevelops and sells smart socks
with built-in GPS and healthmonitoring features had a
successful IPO.
Number three a publicly tradedcompany offers a service to

(54:55):
cryogenically freeze people'sbrains for future revival.
You ready?
Three, two, one, go, guess what?
None of you are right.
While smart socks exist,there's no public company solely
focused on this product.
The other two are true OceanGold Company claims to extract

(55:15):
gold from seawater, and AlcorLife Extension Foundation offers
cryonic preservation servicesand is publicly traded.
All right, all right.
Do you want a fourth one forAshish to potentially catch up?
Number one a company thatproduces and sells mood-changing
chewing gum infused withFDA-approved chemicals is

(55:36):
publicly listed.
Number two a corporationspecializing in developing and
selling robotic pets withadvanced AI capabilities had its
IPO in 2023.
Ready, three, two, one.
Okay, they have conviction.

(56:00):
All right, ready, the winner isvirile.
You got three right.
I got three wrong.
You got all wrong, but hey,this was fun.
Here's what it is lie.
Number one is, uh, moodaltering foods exists, there's
just no public company sellingchewing gum.
So, gosh, you got to get onthat.

(56:21):
Sony develops and sells aipowered robotic pets and
messaging extraterrestrialintelligence, or medhi, is a
publicly traded company thatsends messages to potential
alien civilizations.

Speaker 4 (56:34):
God, god help god help us on that one.
That's the takeaway.
Yeah, the takeaway for me isthe ipo market is really robust
that's the takeaway the yeah.

Speaker 3 (56:43):
The takeaway for me is the ipo market is very robust
.
I don't think we need anychanges in 2025 that's the
learning for me, why?

Speaker 4 (56:55):
don't we just come up with another come up with
another front point, exactly.

Speaker 1 (57:01):
Imagine this roadshow , anyways, Exactly.
I'm going to give you each onequick thing that you're going to
answer to close out today.
Okay, and I'm just going to goaround the horn Viril, ashish
and Akash, and I'm not evenchoosing for any reason.
Viril, what's the biggestsurprise you've had over the

(57:21):
course of 2024?

Speaker 4 (57:24):
reason, viril.
What's the biggest surpriseyou've had over the course of
2024?
The robust growth in LLMsgenerative AI in 2024 was
tremendous.
I didn't think it would be asmassive as it was, so that's the
biggest surprise for me in 2024.

Speaker 1 (57:34):
Awesome, All right Ashish.
What are you most lookingforward to in 2025, whether it's
business or personal?

Speaker 2 (57:42):
I think travel more.

Speaker 1 (57:44):
Travel more.
I love it.
Okay, Akash, what's your secretto staying motivated over all
these years?
What keeps you going?

Speaker 3 (57:51):
Learning new things.
I love that.
I love that.

Speaker 4 (57:54):
I would agree 100% the desire to learn.

Speaker 3 (57:57):
And we're fortunate there are new things happening.
Like Viril said, and you know,some people like traveling.
Traveling is also learning.

Speaker 1 (58:03):
You know you're learning about new cultures, new
places, each one of you give meone stock that is in your
anti-portfolio, One company thatyou wish you invested in,
company that might have hiredyou or a company that you might
have founded.
Google Google Gosh, it's GoogleViral Right now Anthropic.
You wish you invested inAnthropic.

(58:25):
I love that.

Speaker 2 (58:25):
Ashish, I knew about Cloudflare since 2012 and I
tried to get you know.
I spoke with them.
I was not an investor at thattime.
I wish I would have invested inthem or I would have worked
there, because I knew aboutCloudflare since 2012.

Speaker 3 (58:42):
So, ashish, my advice to you on CloudFlare invest now
.
It's one of my big holdings.
We're just getting started.
It's very highly valued.
So on the PE basis you're goingto run to the hills, but you're
an early stage investor.
You don't care about that.
You take risk.
My view of all of thesecompanies is at least, from

(59:03):
investing, you know you're goingto get.

Speaker 1 (59:05):
The market presents you lots of opportunities all
the time, every year, wheneveryou think it's over.
I'll tell you my anti-portfolioone company I've invested in I
can't believe I'm down thestreet from this company and I
missed it which is nvidia.
So I got a bunch of good onesnow.

Speaker 3 (59:22):
I took new positions in NVIDIA this week.

Speaker 4 (59:27):
It's getting to the point where it's going to be
very good.
It may go down a little morebefore it goes up, but I think
it's going to be great, I agreewith that Sell calls on it.

Speaker 3 (59:35):
make some money while you're waiting for it to come
back up.

Speaker 1 (59:38):
That's great.
Okay, I'm going to give you onequick question, which none of
you are going to say quickly.
So here we go.
One statement what is yourpersonal moonshot?

Speaker 4 (59:47):
Urban air mobility.

Speaker 1 (59:48):
Oh, I like that.

Speaker 4 (59:50):
We are going to transform the airspace.
The age of the Jetsons are here.
You're going to see the launchof EV tolls take over, because
building new roads andtransportation is just too
costly and the infrastructure istoo slow and hard to maintain.
So we're going to have to moveup into the air and, with the
new AI and technologies,batteries and materials, we're

(01:00:12):
going to have lightweight flyingvehicles permeating the skies
in the next five years.
Watch out, and I'm getting mine.
I should get mine this year, bythe way.

Speaker 1 (01:00:23):
I'm sure you've already put a deposit on it.

Speaker 4 (01:00:24):
I did two years ago.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
I would say personalized medicine, because
with the ability to also beingable to grow synthetic organs,
because if you are able to livehealthily for a longer period,
you can do anything else thatyou want, right?
I mean, science is going toadvance.
All of that stuff is going tohappen.
The number one reason peoplelike health is the number one
thing.
That is my North Star.

(01:00:49):
I love it.
That's great, yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:50):
Akash, you know I think I would.
Mine is similar to Ashish's,which is, you know, live.
I don't want to live forever.
I mean, some people want tolive forever.
I don't want to live forever.
I want to live for the timethat I am going to be living,
living as healthily as I canvis-a-vis, with my mind and body

(01:01:12):
operating in a high performanceway.
So, whether it's medicine,whether it's assistance in doing
that, where you know you'rerelying on less people, I think
is a moonshot.
That, you know, is something toaspire to Tell them a reason.

Speaker 4 (01:01:30):
We need more tell-emers.
Tell them yours.

Speaker 1 (01:01:33):
Here's mine Keep meeting amazing people like you
and spending time with amazingfriends like I have around the
table and all the people I'vemet.
I've been very fortunate, so mypersonal moonshot is to keep
meeting and hanging out withfantastic people.
All right, I want to thank youguys today for doing just a

(01:01:53):
fantastic job talking about themarkets, talking about your
favorite investments, talkingabout AI.
We talked about crypto.
We hit so many different typesof things.
Talking about your favoriteinvestments, talking about AI.
We talked about crypto.
We hit so many different typesof things and you were good
sports about this our two truthsfrom the lie game.
So I really wanna thank youguys for being with us today and
lending your ideas andexpertise, and please come back

(01:02:15):
so thank you Thanks.

Speaker 4 (01:02:16):
Rajiv.

Speaker 2 (01:02:16):
It was great.
I had a lot of fun.
Thank you so much, Rajiv Cheers.
Yeah, thanks for having us havea great 2025, guys.

Speaker 1 (01:02:35):
Now that was a lot of fun.
I mean, we got to learn fromsome of the smartest people I
know about how they look at themarkets, how they invest in the
markets.
It wasn't your traditional.
Here are my favorite threestocks, although you got some of
those too.
You got a sense of what areimportant black swan events,
what are situations that makethem think a bit differently,

(01:02:56):
the methodologies by which theygo through them, and I think
what's most amazing to comethrough at this is that there's
always going to be aninteresting investment you can
make or a way to rejigger yourportfolio or rejigger your life
so that you can take advantageof the latest in innovation, and
we're in one of those timeswhere it's just a boom and it's

(01:03:17):
not too late to come and play,and that's the big message I
took from it.
So thanks for listening.
If you enjoyed the pod, pleasetake a moment to rate it and
comment.
You can find us on Apple,spotify, youtube and everywhere
podcasts can be found.
This show was produced bySandeep Parikh and Anand Shah,
production assistance by TarynTalley and edited by Sean Maher

(01:03:37):
and Aidan McGarvey.
I'm your host, rajiv Parikh,from Position Squared, an
AI-based growth marketing firmbased in Silicon Valley.
Come visit us at position2.com.
This has been an effing funnyproduction and we'll catch you
next time.
And remember folks be evercurious.
All right, here's number two.

(01:04:07):
Fartcoin, a meme-basedcryptocurrency on the Solana
blockchain, was launched onOctober 24th 2024.
Fartcoin's initial distributionwas carried out through a
system of submitting fart-themedjokes or memes, not a lottery

(01:04:29):
system.
So here are the truths or lies.
Number one fart coin wascreated by Elon Musk as a joke
response to Dogecoin'spopularity.
Number two fart coin wascreated by Elon Musk as a joke
response to Dogecoin'spopularity.

Speaker 4 (01:04:39):
That's the same as number one response to
dogecoin's popularity.
That's the same same as numberone same one who wrote my
freaking script.
All right, is that?
Is that number three too?

Speaker 1 (01:04:57):
number three fart coins.
Unique gas free systemgenerates a digital fart-themed
sound effect for eachtransaction.
Okay, it looks like we had alittle error here, but anyways,
we're going to do it.
Anyways, you know what I'mgoing to do this again.
All right, for fun.

(01:05:18):
Which one do you think is a lieNumber?

Speaker 4 (01:05:19):
three.

Speaker 1 (01:05:20):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:05:20):
Three, two, one.

Speaker 1 (01:05:23):
Three.
Actually, it was number two.
Fartcoin was created by ananonymous developer, not.

Speaker 4 (01:05:28):
Elon Musk.
You didn't say number twobefore, Rajiv.
You said Elon Musk for both oneand two.
You didn't give me the rightone, dude.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
That's why we Alright , we're now going to go to.

Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
I think it was.
I think it was the zombie onMusk, but you know.

Speaker 3 (01:05:47):
I know, I didn't know about the gas.

Speaker 1 (01:05:49):
Thing.

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Devising Investment Strategy for AI/Ashish Aggarwal, Akash Agarwal, Viral Tolat - 2024 vs 2025, IPO Market, Fake Companies ~ Spark of Ages Ep 29

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Devising Investment Strategy for AI/Ashish Aggarwal, Akash Agarwal, Viral Tolat - 2024 vs 2025, IPO Market, Fake Companies ~ Spark of Ages Ep 29