Unlocking Private Markets for Everyday Investors with Fundrise CFO Alison Staloch

Private assets have traditionally been accessible only to large institutional investors and venture capitalists

But that’s quickly changing, thanks to investment platforms like Fundrise.

Fundrise is an online real estate investment platform with over 300,000 active users. Through Fundrise, everyday investors can access real estate markets and deals that they normally would not have been able to invest in on their own.

In today’s episode of The Modern CFO, host Andrew Seski speaks with Fundrise CFO Alison Staloch about the democratization of private markets, alternative asset management, investor communications and transparency, and more.

Show Links

• Check out Fundrise
• Listen to Onward, a Fundrise Production
• Subscribe to The Distance Newsletter, a Fundrise Publication
• Connect with Alison Staloch on LinkedIn
• Check out Nth Round
• Connect with Andrew Seski on LinkedIn

Transcript

Please note that the transcript is AI-generated and may contain errors. The content in the podcast is not intended as investment advice, and is meant for informational and entertainment purposes only.

[00:00:00] Andrew Seski: Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of The Modern CFO Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew Seski. Today's episode highlights one of my favorite topics again: thoughtful democratization and access to alternative investments. I know you've heard me discuss secondaries and venture funds with Aman and Andrea, regulating accreditation and the history of Reg CF with Woodie, even angel investing with Oslene. But today, I'm thrilled to take another approach at this topic, which is so important and so critical at this time, with Alison Staloch, the CFO of Fundrise. Alison, thank you so much for being here. 

[00:00:43] Alison Staloch: Thanks for having me, Andrew. Super excited for the conversation. 

[00:00:45] Andrew Seski: So could you give us a quick overview of Fundrise? I know it's actually the largest direct-to-investor real estate platform in the US today. Is that right? 

[00:00:54] Alison Staloch: Yeah, that's right. So Fundrise is a FinTech company with a mission, a really broad mission, of building a better financial system for individuals. But today, that means alternative asset management, primarily focused in real estate, really with the idea of giving everyday people access to the private markets that they were historically excluded from whether due to lack of scale, lack of wealth. And in that mission, we've built a capital-raising machine founded in regulatory excellence that allows us to scale thousands of individuals' investments to then utilize capital deployment technology to compete for alternative assets with the Blackstones and Starwoods. And with the launch of our venture capital fund and now with the Sequoias of the world, we have about three and a quarter billion in equity AUM offered exclusively through diversified portfolios. And our goal right now is to disrupt the private markets by using technology and new approaches on old industries to give outsized returns back to invest