Today’s episode we are passengers on Bryce Emo’s rig, as we ride along and chat about how his company Sidecar Financial assists in providing private company shareholders the knowledge and network to find what can be life-changing liquidity. Bryce explains why stock option-based employees at big tech companies need the “lending hand”, and covers all the avenues available in helping navigate their journey to success with education on the options for their options.
Bryce & Jeff are climbing the wealth ladder chatting about “unicorn” tech companies, what recent layoff’s in this space did to the buy and sell side of secondary markets last year, thoughts on the advancement in A.I., and also don’t miss both of their Half-baked investing ideas that are surprisingly not too shabby. So, take a seat next to us, hear about Bryce being a leprechaun at Notre Dame, and get ready for an entertaining discussion! SEND IT!
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For more information please visit sidecarfinance.com or follow Bryce & Sidecar Finance on LinkedIn.
Sponsored by RCM Managed Futures group – Check out our newly updated Semi-annual Managed Futures Rankings now available:
Check out the complete Transcript from this week’s podcast below:
What are the Options for tech employee Options, With Bryce Emo of Sidecar Financial
Jeff Malec 00:07
Welcome to the derivative by our Sam alternatives where we dive into what makes alternative investments go analyze the strategies of unique hedge fund managers and chat with interesting guests from across the investment world. Hello there happy masters week for those that celebrate you could be several holes several days in by the time you listen this pod and I believe it could have had the best call from the alts industry on or something like that this week except I don’t know who that is. Most of the fund managers I know don’t golf wonder why that is too much time coding not enough time putting anyway you know a manager who is a great golfer hit me up DM me whatever and we’ll get them up figure out why that is on to this episode we’re going back up the wealth ladder a step or two or is it down the wealth planner not sure how that works but uh, talking not about the managers managing the wealthiest money not even talking about the liquid wealthy we’re talking with Bryce Emo, a longtime friend of mine and founder of sidecar finance, who helps the illiquid, wealthy. What are those, those are people with millions locked up in private stock and this or that unicorn tech company looking to get some liquidity, a cool concept and surprisingly, one that touches on a lot of what’s going on in markets today. SP B’s effect on the secondary market, how private buyers and lenders in this space, do markdowns and follow public markets down even if the private equity and VC marks don’t. And just what the tech wreck last year did on both the buy and sell side of this market. Plus we get to hear about Bryce talking about being a leprechaun and his own and my own half baked ideas. That was fun. Send it This episode is brought to you by RCMs managed futures group and the newly released rankings white paper where we go through dozens of top performing funds. Go check it out at RCM. ultra.com/rankings or Sam alts.com/rankings. Now back to the show. Okay, everybody, we are here with my good friend Bryce email. It’s up Bryce.
02:09
What’s up? Jeff could be on the show. But
Jeff Malec 02:11
yeah, good to see you. Haven’t seen you since Sun Valley. Idaho did some skiing.
02:16
It’s been weeks, weeks, weeks.
Jeff Malec 02:20
And you’re calling in. Are you calling in? No, you’re zooming in from beautiful where?
Bryce Emo 02:27
Mill Valley California just over the Golden Gate Bridge. Here
Jeff Malec 02:32
they are. And that’s where you can get like a $5 million house that doesn’t have air conditioning.
Bryce Emo 02:37
That’s exactly right. It’s a heck of a deal. Heck of a deal. Get them
Jeff Malec 02:42
while you get them while they’re hot. What’s the it’s because it’s so nice there it’s like perfectly 65 all year round.
Bryce Emo 02:49
Not this year. It’s been short. In fact, this morning there was frost on the couch cushions outside. So it’s been a really cold wet winter which we’ve welcomed given the drought in recent past. But I think we’ve had enough this is where the saying when it rains it pours must have come from
Jeff Malec 03:08
when it rains it pours. So yeah, Bryce and I have known each other for 20 years 15 years or so from when he used to live in Chicago. He’s one of the most interesting guys I know including a brief stint as the mascot as the leprechaun at Notre Dame Tell us how that went down.
Bryce Emo 03:28
Yes, it’s you know, there’s very few people that are short enough to qualify really elite kind of position but I spent my life My early life as a gymnast. And in kind of a yell leader I guess and cut in in high school along with being a gymnast. And so I ended up ended up at Notre Dame my friends coaxed me into trying out for the leprechaun role and was thrilled to do it. At that time. I was one of a couple of leprechauns as to every year then. And now I think there’s six there’s so many different sports between men women, basketball, volleyball, hockey, what have you football of course, to cover so it’s a great time.
Jeff Malec 04:14
What it’s name is just the leprechaun, there’s no like Lucky the Leprechaun or anything fun like the leprechaun. That’s it. That’s it. And how many games did you get to go to football games?
Bryce Emo 04:25
So I covered women’s sports mostly as the junior guy so I did do the Blue Gold gamut. I can’t say that I did a football game in Notre Dame Stadium, which is something I would like to of course, I’ve had the experience to do but but wasn’t in the cards. But if I look back, you know, clearly I love being in the world of finance, but perhaps I should have focused coming out of college just down women’s athletics, given the crazy trajectory of growth that that it’s enjoyed and I think will continue to enjoy in the coming decades. Yeah.
Jeff Malec 05:00
You could have been owning a couple WNBA teams had a few women’s soccer teams.
Bryce Emo 05:06
That’s right, newly announced one here in San Francisco.
Jeff Malec 05:09
Just what’s your what’s the deal with San Francisco, we just elected this new mayor last night, everyone’s immediately putting up their houses for sale and thinking that all the talk is like this is going to turn into San Francisco. Is it as bad as the national media portrays are still hanging in there? You know, I
Bryce Emo 05:27
think that all cities are going through a point of change right now, you know, COVID exacerbated that just a little bit. But certainly, you know, San Francisco. It’s not a place where I spend a lot of time downtown. And it’s had a number of issues. But I think, you know, we were in Baltimore over the weekend. Baltimore is not a place where there’s certain areas of downtown Baltimore, you don’t want to live clearly. So we’ll see how a San Francisco plays out with the new mayor. But But yeah, it’s tenuous for sure.
Jeff Malec 06:04
All right. And plus all the layoffs now that we’re always talking about people how they can invest hedge funds they invest in after they’ve made their millions, you’re sort of in this little in between phase where they’re on their way to making their millions or have their millions locked up. Right. So tell us a little bit about what you’re doing at sidecar. And what the what’s the 30,000 foot elevator pitch or two I had two different sayings in there mixed together. 30,000 foot view and the elevator pitch match I made into give me the 30,000 foot elevator. I like it. A hell of a pitch you get a 30,000 foot
06:52
trade trademark coming.
Jeff Malec 06:54
Coming 30,000 foot Oh, yes. So
Bryce Emo 06:58
sidecar finance is a is a brokerage group. We’re focused on helping private shareholders find buyers, find lenders find financial groups that will do structured financings against private shares in private companies, largely its multibillion dollar companies, but especially with the recent sell off, of course, and technology and valuations being down from where they were, at least currently. More and more people are looking to do structured financings and what have you defined a way to get liquidity?
Jeff Malec 07:35
So we’re talking like, Uber, before it went public, Airbnb, these kinds of things booked and pre pre IPO?
Bryce Emo 07:42
Correct? Correct. So you know, stripes of the world would have you are some examples of flex port, who also we got Discord is a popular name, right? These are companies that are worth billions and billions of dollars, you’ve got 1000s, some, in some cases of shareholders at those companies that are sitting on a paper money, the same way they would have been, you know, 9099 millions of dollars in most cases. And they have, you know, they’re hoping the company might go public this year. They’ve got families, they’ve got different career goals, different life expectations and aspirations that they’re trying to achieve. And largely, they’ve got, you know, a very small salary, but millions of dollars in equity. So we help them find ways to get liquid on that equity so that they can achieve some of these milestones that they’re trying to achieve in their lives.
Jeff Malec 08:39
And what in the old days would have been like, well, you’re stupid, you shouldn’t have chosen that profession where you didn’t get paid, right? Where it’s all locked up and illiquid. So that’s what was weird to me of like, okay, you chose this, why do you get to get it both ways? So what’s the what’s the downside there have to pay to get that liquidity.
08:58
Yeah. So, you know,
Bryce Emo 09:02
it will be interesting to see in the coming years, right, as you have super talented engineers, salespeople, product people, operations, folks who have chosen to not go to large publicly traded companies, and opted into startup companies with, you know, potentially more risk, right and potentially more upside. It’ll be interesting to see if that career path continues to hold, especially as people see, psychologically to go from having, let’s say, $10 million in equity, to then not being able to find a buyer. They’ll pay $3 million for it, which can happen in some of these cases. Psychologically, that’s really hard. And you know it whatever they say it’s harder to have one. What is it what is the same?
Jeff Malec 09:57
Better to have loved and lost? Yeah, but I do it About on a 30,000 foot elevation
Bryce Emo 10:01
in from the 30,000 foot elevator. That’s right. So it’s psychologically difficult on these people. And again, they’re signing up. They’re coming from grade schools, they have outstanding backgrounds. They’re signing up for relatively low paying salaries, they’re living in a hyper expensive areas such as San Francisco many times a good portion of the unicorn companies are out here, though, certainly Silicon Beach and Silicon Valley, and Austin, Texas are hotbeds for entrepreneurial activity and venture venture capital funded companies, but they’re living in hyper expensive places. And, and it’s trying on these people, right, you know, I have a guy that I spent some time with, let’s say, three years ago now. And he was sitting on $5 million of stock. And he would drive a Lyft car to and from the office, to make money to send his son to
10:53
not take the Lyft driver or Lyft, to be careful, if you’re
Bryce Emo 10:57
Be careful being mean to any Lyft or Uber drivers, you have no idea there might be a multi million dollar, you know, shareholder sitting in the front seat, and that person has been able to get some liquidity. So they’ve changed, you know, paths. They’re not they’re not driving lifts anymore. But you know, it’s, it’s so often the case that these folks just don’t have enough funds to meet the needs of their daily lives.
Jeff Malec 11:21
Which again, is part of me, it’s like, well, you screwed up, but also not because you have this huge, big portion of the company. So what,
Bryce Emo 11:28
right and actually in that example, if we play that out, right, Jeff, and so this person, you know, they spent 25 years in traditional industry, and then kind of on a whim took this opportunity. And if they had continued down their career path, maybe they would have made, you know, 100 $250,000 a year for the next, you know, 1520 years of working, right versus they went, they went, they took a job at a company for five years, then their shares were worth 5 million. Now, even with the sell off in the tech market, those shares are still probably we call it $10 million. So worked out, a lot of times it doesn’t, right. More often than not, it doesn’t, being able to pick these companies takes the companies you’re gonna go work for it takes a very astute person and a lot of luck sometimes,
Jeff Malec 12:21
which I’m going to jump all around here, because that’s what I do. But so you kind of ended up in this role, because some of the companies you’d been at where didn’t quite work out
Bryce Emo 12:30
precisely, well, they actually have worked out fine. The reason why I came to these, to this space was 10 years ago, I needed to call it, you know, a few $100,000 to buy options in a company that I was leaving, where I’d been the head of sales, and then much more than that, and tax tax is the greatest expense a shareholder will generally have when they’re trying to exercise options. And many people when they take these roles don’t understand just how expensive the tax and the cost of exercise is going to be. So 10 years ago, I needed a bunch of money, I had a choice to sell finance part of it, or go to the secondary markets and find a lender or a buyer. At that point in time. 10 years ago, these markets were in their infancy, infancy, I mean, there were almost no players. And actually ended up not finding anyone at all, and end up having to sell finance that exercise and attacks. But I was captivated by him. And so I stayed engaged with them. I stayed engaged with some of the players in the space. Four years ago, when the co founder MySpace, or I prior ran sales at MySpace as well, I can talk about that a bit.
Jeff Malec 13:41
That’s like a joke now. Right? But yeah, it’s,
Bryce Emo 13:44
it was a social network for those of you who are Yeah, send, you know, 35 years old. And so, you know, four years ago, co founder of MySpace starts a company called quid, which provides limited recourse advances against private shares, asked me to come on board, and build and run the sales organization there. So. So that’s what brought me into this space four years ago. And after speaking with 1000 shareholders a year and hearing from them, one a lack of knowledge about this space, a lack of knowledge about their equity, and the stress level in their voices and the conundrums that they had, I knew there needed to be a third party who could sit with them alongside them, and help them navigate this entire journey weather and figure out should I do anything shave him by these options? Can I get an extend? Should I sell shares? Should I take out a loan against my house? Should I take out can I get a limited recourse transaction, etc. And so that’s
Jeff Malec 14:47
that’s where a lot of people in my mind will be like, Oh, just call your financial advisor but they’re at maybe the stage where they don’t yet have a financial advisor or have the need for one because they’re not throwing off tons of cash that gets invested.
14:59
Yeah, So
Bryce Emo 15:02
there are a financial interest. Certainly, you know, now we’re going to talk about public stocks versus private stocks. So these are stocks, these are stocks that are illiquid, for the most part. And so it makes it very hard for traditional banks to be able to give you any value or advance against it, because there’s so much risk. The folks who are able to get advances or loans against private shares are largely sea level executives, founders of companies. And the reason why these banks are willing to do it is they’ll do it almost as a trade for winning their wealth advisory business, maybe an opportunity to take the company public, what have you. You know, there’s a
Jeff Malec 15:45
number, it’s gonna be a $50 million client, five years from now, I’m willing to take the
Bryce Emo 15:52
3 million today, and the loan to value ratios, meaning how much they’ll advance you against your shares, let’s say if you had $100 million, they might only advance you five or 10 million, versus some of the other players in the space today might provide you 20 million or in the heyday of his heyday, but a year ago, you know, maybe they would have provided you $30 million. And so traditional banks really aren’t that active in this space. For employees that aren’t a owner of a company, a founder of a company, a very high level ranking person at the company. So when you even get into VPs of sales, or you know, VPs of legal or ops people, a lot of those people can’t get those loans from a traditional bank. And yet, they might still have 1050 $100 million $200 million of stock. And again, they’ve got milestones they trying to achieve in their life that they don’t have the resources to do
Jeff Malec 16:55
the so this talking about the traditional banks, so Silicon Valley Bank, where people like that these regionals, especially in that area of the world, more willing to do these loans.
Bryce Emo 17:05
Yes, there’s a number of people who, you know, in this space, who were, who are willing to do these loans, and I don’t, it’s definitely not isolated to, you know, Silicon Valley Bank. And again, these are relatively low loan to value loans. Right. So there should be, you know, theoretically, there’s a lot of coverage there,
Jeff Malec 17:28
theoretically, so tell me that level again. What was it 5%, these
Bryce Emo 17:34
five to 10%, kind of the value of the, of the stock, and it’s going to it’s going to range certainly based on based on the person based on the company. Right? If you’re, if you’re dealing with a company that doesn’t have any revenue, it’s gonna be really hard to get a loan. Anytime, right? If you’re dealing with a company that has a billion dollars in revenue, and growing by 50%, year over year, that’s theoretically going to be a company where we’re Lando shall be more active.
Jeff Malec 18:12
Why are the companies themselves helping these people? Right? It seems like they’re just kind of out on an island and trying to find people like you to be like, hey, somebody helped me figure all this out? Should I take this option? And it seems like the companies are a little at fault of like, Hey, you’re a billion dollar plus company help take care of your people and tell them what to do here.
18:29
Yeah. So
Bryce Emo 18:32
you know, think about companies, they want people to work hard. They want people to be very tightly tethered to the success, the vision mission of these companies. And the way they do that is equity. That’s why there’s a, you know, the potential to, you know, have a win a windfall of cash, surrender, big carrot, yeah, if you can soup, big carrots, good weight, but whether you can do that or not, it’s uncertain. And so that carrot, and they’d rather you know, it’s like the dog track. You know, if the dogs ever get Woody, the little guy who’s running out in front of them, it’s a disaster, right dog never ends. So I think that’s what I think that’s what companies are scared of one, too. They’re dealing with you know, it’s a little bit of a pans doing Pandora’s box, right? As soon as you say, Hey, cool, you guys can go sell shares. Now the head of legal the head of finance, the head of operations, a CEO that are managing a lot of complexity, they’ve got to decide who they’ll let in and who they won’t. Now you have many more people to manage on the on the cap table. And so it just adds the complexity. It’s a distraction, what have you more companies, you know, up until it’s a year ago in these markets when the buyers started to, you know, be less active. More companies were starting to do tender offers, right so hey, it’s sponsored by the company, here’s the price, we know the investor, you guys have 30 days, 60 days to decide if you want to participate or not, you can sell 10% of your shares, 15% of shares 25% of your shares, and get enough funds to be able to either exercise your options, if that’s something that you want to achieve, maybe you want to go to another company, or maybe you just want the peace of mind to own your stock, maybe the foreign nine ay ay, or the fair market values low. And so you want to take advantage of that. Or you want to buy a house, take care of a loved one, you know, pay for school, what have you. So companies are open to this than they’ve been in the past, you know, this topic five years ago, if you brought it up to a CFO or head of legal, they had an allergic reaction, right. And I didn’t want to hear about it didn’t want to deal with it. And now it’s become something that companies are willing to discuss, which is great, and they’re willing to act on. So long as it’s kind of within their, within their parameters. And I think the reason why they’re open to it is they’ve realized, there’s a competition for the best talent in the tech space, right? And engineers, product people, salespeople revenue, people, operate ops folks, when they come to a company, they’re saying, Are there scheduled liquidity events? It’s great. They’re giving me all this stock? How am I? How am I going to realize the value? Are you telling me that you’re giving it to me now I’ve got to earn it over four years? And I’m probably not going to see a liquidity event for five or seven years? If so, I’ve got to plan my life around that. And so that’s a question that these senior level people are asking when they go into companies. And of course, that’s then causing the CEO to say to the CFO, hey, we got to, we got to come up with a plan for this. We got to have a solution.
Jeff Malec 21:53
How does the VC community feel about that they’re fine with it, keep the keep the employees happy, like, to your point. And there were a few platforms that popped up where they were, people could actually sell their shares in some of these. Right? Right. But that as you’re saying, we’ve acquired the company and legal everyone to get involved probably the VCs as well, like, Hey, don’t dilute our shares.
Bryce Emo 22:15
So most companies will have what’s called a right of first refusal. ROFR. Right. So if I’m an employee at a company, and they’ve got shares that I own, I want to sell them. I go to the company, and they’ve got a 30 day right of first refusal, often it’s become kind of standard language and a lot of different employment agreements.
Jeff Malec 22:35
But it has a little term ROFR growth. Yeah,
Bryce Emo 22:38
we’ve got an acronym for it. It’s great. And I’ll refer and so they’ll come to the company, they’ll say, okay, Jane Doe wants to sell shares in XYZ company, the company says, Okay, great. Let me let me figure out if we’re going to, we have the right to, let’s say they’re, you’re going to sell them at $10 a share, the company has 30 days to decide if they or one of their investors essentially wants to buy them at $10. If not, then they say No, you’re good. Either. They can say one of three things, hey, you’re not allowed to transfer these shares. To we’re buying these shares or three, we’re not going to buy them, you can transfer them, you know, go ahead and do this, this trade with this third party, and we’ll give you the forms and the legal docs that we have already approved that you’ll fill out for that transaction.
Jeff Malec 23:30
And that’s part of your business can even do those, right, you’re not just setting up the lending, but it’s it’s a whole suite of like, Hey, here’s, what are the options that they could take? What are the doors?
Bryce Emo 23:40
Yeah, so some, you know, 90% of people want to sell and we help them find buyers. And then we manage the paperwork around that transaction as well.
Jeff Malec 23:50
That’s interesting to me of like, why that seems like a super high number to me that they’re not like, No, I want to stay invested and believe in the future of the company. They’re just like, get me out of here. Give me cash. Well,
Bryce Emo 24:01
if you think many of these folks that I speak with, they’ve got 6070 90% of their personal wealth tied up in these companies, right. They want diversification. They want to be they want to not not just for financial purposes, almost for psychological purposes. Because they’re seeing anytime you work at a company, whether it’s a hyper successful company or not, there are bumps in the road, right? And so when you hit those bumps, you hit those speed bumps. You get a little rattled, and when 95% of your wealth is in a company, you get even more rattled. And so the mainly they want to diversify and just take the assets and put them in different asset classes or in different hyper growth companies. There’s, you know, exchange funds that are popping up where people can trade XYZ shares and shape do XYZ shares for ABC shares? Which is something that the
Jeff Malec 25:05
clever idea of like, hey, two of these stressed out 95 percenters, let’s swap some of our shares. So we’re diversifying or so like that. So that’s door number one, door number two,
Bryce Emo 25:17
door number two, is there probably five or six groups in the in this space that will provide what’s called limited recourse advances, the way they market them in the industry is non recourse loans. But if you’re talking to a lawyer, you’d probably call them a limited recourse advance, for a couple reasons. One, they’re generally not loans. They’re actually prepaid variable forward contracts. And so and there’s a number of reasons why people do those. And so it’s actually an advance against your equity. So if you’ve got $10 million in a company and a private company, these folks will provide you anywhere from 20% call it the 30% value of your equity, at a price they deem year and a half ago, it was at the last preferred price. But with valuations in the public markets coming down, you know, buyers are trying to comp against those public market stock prices to a certain degree in order to give themselves some advantage, and to get it right for their LPs and for their investors. Right? They have a fiduciary obligation to do that. And so long story short against $10 million in shares, you’ll probably get called, you know, two to $3 million dollars from one of these non recourse are limited recourse, you know, find out what is
Jeff Malec 26:35
what, what’s the, so just stick with the non recourse for a second, they’re basically saying, hey, even if the stock goes to zero, you don’t owe us, you only owe us the 2 million, but
Bryce Emo 26:45
that’s right, your recourse is limited to the value of your shares. itself it right
Jeff Malec 26:50
if the value of your shares. So if your shares are worth 100k, you pay back 100k. That’s right,
Bryce Emo 26:55
on a $10 million, you know, piece of stock and get $10 million in equity, you could advanced, you know, two and a half million dollars if the stock goes to 100,000. So long as you don’t violate any of their, you know, bad actor clauses in your contract, you owe them 100,000 back not two and a half million. So it’s for people who are saying, look, I think this thing could go, you know, could increase tenfold or even you know, twofold, right? But there’s a chance it could go to zero, it’s an interesting way to play the market. And you’ll see people maybe not do this with all their shares, but as a strategy, so they might sell some shares, they might take a limited recourse transaction, advanced against some of their shares, to kind of, you know, provide themselves optionality.
Jeff Malec 27:43
But then there’s a yield on that. There is so
Bryce Emo 27:47
those companies aren’t doing it for free, no doubt about that data. And most of them are backed by wealthy family offices, hedge funds, distressed credit groups, what have you. And so usually, those folks are going to pay anywhere from a eight to 12% annual rate, which is kind of a percentage, right. And then they’ll also pay a percentage of their shares. So against that $10 million dollars of stock, they might, you know, relinquish 10 or 15% of that value. So if I’ve got $10 million of stock, that two and a half million dollar advance, I might be paying, you know, 80 to 100,000, those are at $220,000 a year for the duration of the transaction. And then I might also be paying, if it’s if they’re charging me 15% of my equity, I might be paying a million and a half an equity. So if that’s if that stock goes to being worth 20 million, I don’t owe them a million and a half of equity, they actually get $3 million of equity. So it’s a it’s a pretty unique space. And, and the fees can be significant. But, you know, if you were to sell your shares at $10 million, and the stock doubled, you’d miss out on $10 million of upside. So you really have to weigh the pros and cons of both of those. And that’s what we do inside cars, we’ll build these financial models or retrofit them that looks at and we’ll look at what are the costs of these transactions? What are your exit expectations, time and price? And based on these variables, what might be interesting options for you, and then we’ll go find lenders and buyers who will transact
Jeff Malec 29:33
right, in that case, like, hey, hey, I think we’re going IPO in 18 months, maybe I’m willing to pay the 12% if it’s 60 months, probably not something like that. I’m like, Hey, there’s there’s real time here. Now that
Bryce Emo 29:48
that annual rate is and the equity fee is pick. So you pay that generally at the end. So the design of these products the goal is hey, we got these people They get a lot of equity, they’ve got very little of their own funds, right? They can’t be out of pocket during the course of this transaction, because there’s no money.
Jeff Malec 30:08
Yeah, it’s, it’s similar to how it works in the agricultural world actually, like, hey, these farmers don’t have the money, they planted the crops, they have everything, advance them against when the crap comes in when it sells, and instead of giving him 10 million for the crap, we give him 9 million and net out the financing and everything we did for them during the growing season. It’s a great corollary. Yeah, is there a door number three, how many doors open door to door number
30:35
three is.
Bryce Emo 30:39
And I say this to people all the time, if you’re bullish on the trajectory of the company, and where you think it’s going to have an exit, and you can be able to get liquid, and you have publicly traded stock, if you’re sitting on you know, $5 million, with a publicly traded stock, talk to your wealth adviser about taking out a margin loan, right? Like, it’s going to be your cheapest cost of capital, so long as things go well, for the company. So that’s certainly an angle that we’ll look at. There are groups that, you know, if you can’t find a limited recourse provider, I have non traditional lenders that I work with, that if you’ve got, you know, $50 million with a stock, they’ll provide, you know, 10 to $15 million as a loan. Because my never will get a loan from, from any of the traditional players.
Jeff Malec 31:32
So there’s maps, like private credit, hedge funds and groups like that. That’s exactly
Bryce Emo 31:36
what it is. Yep. So that’s, that’s another angle. And then there are there are even people that will do structured financing. So they’ll say, okay, investors in this space are willing to pay $10, the last round of capital was raised at 20, we’ll pay you 15. Right, so you’re getting a premium, but we want a guaranteed return. So we want you know, 15% per year, 20% per year for the duration of the loan, and we’re gonna have you collateralize additional shares. In case in case you you don’t meet that in case, we don’t get that return. And in that case, instead of delivering us the number of shares you’re supposed to, they’ll deliver us more. So there’s different flavors of these prepaid variable forwards, forward contracts, structured financings in the space
Jeff Malec 32:30
that are thus the need for someone to help them figure it all out. Exactly. Anyone doing the Mark Cuban straddle basically, are familiar with what he did.
32:42
I’ve heard of it. But but maybe
Jeff Malec 32:46
this is third hand knowledge of reading it 20 years ago or whatever. But in theory, Yahoo paid him a billion dollars for his am radio, online broadcast company, whatever it was called.
Bryce Emo 32:58
And he was like, Oh, he bought a bunch of what? Put options right?
Jeff Malec 33:02
Now he basically said these guys are idiots, right? If they think this thing is worth a billion dollars, and he got it in Yahoo stock, so he went to Goldman, I believe and said, Hey, basically, you can have everything over $1.1 billion. And I want nothing less than $900 million. Yeah, basically gave up all the upside, and said, guarantee me $900 million. And they’re like, right in the peak of the internet, boom, they’re like, sold, idiot, you’re giving up all your upside and locking in the downside. So, you know, I think a year later, his stock was worth maybe like $100 million. But he just left there with 900 million.
Bryce Emo 33:43
You know, I guess if you look at these limited recourse transactions, they give us all the money today. Right? Yeah, yeah. And stock goes to zero. We’ll pay but we’ll handle the stock. Yeah,
Jeff Malec 33:55
right. Here you go. So similar. So something piqued my interest here. And this is a big debate currently in these, like, as a general topic, let’s dive into like how the market has changed over the last year with NASDAQ down whatever, it’s down 20%. Inside of that narrative is the other narrative like, hey, private equity hasn’t marked down at all. Right, right. And so I don’t know in the venture capital world, if they’re doing the same thing in terms of like, they’re not really marking down these investments at all. But it seems like you’re saying inside these mechanisms, it’s getting marked down a lot. Right? So like, how does that jive with like, Hey, we’re only going to lend to at 10% of this because we don’t really either the values come down, we can see it even if the last sale like you’re saying the last sale was at a billion dollar valuation. We think it’s now 100 million valuation. So instead
Bryce Emo 34:51
of these mechanisms you have I’d say a year and a half ago, the advance rates were you know, 30 to 40% in some cases against high revenue, late stage companies that are well known, right? Today, they might be 20%. So you’ve just decreased your advance rate by called 70%. And you’ve held your rates the same or increase them. So you’ve achieved the same thing, you essentially would by marking down the stock. And you’ve done this so you can hopefully better protect your investors. So clearly, in the secondary markets, you know, a year and a half ago, it was a firmly a seller’s market. There are multiple buyers, in many cases, for for sellers, if they want to sell, there’s a lot of pressure on sellers. As of last call it January, February, March, right as the NASDAQ started to sell off, buyers became much more quiet, because they didn’t know what the right price was right. They just bought a bunch of shares, theoretically, over the previous few years, in companies and their LPs were looking at and saying, Well, what do we weigh overpay there, and they’re saying we don’t know yet. And so the market, the secondary market was very quiet. It’s a last April, May, and you really kind of May through December. And what happened was you got to a big disconnect in the bid ask spread. So I saw a chart that said, you know, generally, the bid ask spreads 10 to 15%. In secondary markets, it kind of spiked it like 40%, last half of last year. And so just very few transactions were getting done. Sellers didn’t believe that they should be selling at lower levels, even if they needed the money buyers were were mostly just not in market. And if so
Jeff Malec 36:50
hands in their pockets we call Yeah, they no bid
Bryce Emo 36:55
for a couple of reasons. One was they didn’t know what the right price was right, the big institutions who might have, you know, they might have agreements with their LPs that they can only hold so much in private stock versus public stock. You know, they couldn’t really add to their private positions aggressively because their public positions had sold off. So if I could have, you know, like only 20%, private and 80% public, if that 80% public was not worth 50 50% of what it was, then I can’t add to my private position so that the institutions are really quiet and crossover funds.
Jeff Malec 37:38
Coming into an interesting, dynamic sorry, that I hadn’t thought about of like, if private equity doesn’t get marked down, you have this imbalance of when the liquid stuff gets marked down of like, now you’re overweight, the illiquid. Right. Sorry, I interrupted you while you’re saying.
Bryce Emo 37:53
And so, you know, the institutions were certainly more quiet, those still selective right, in companies had good prices, etc. Coming into this year, the secondary markets that really started to pick up in January or February, you saw more buyers more bids to found in salaries that were willing to come down. I think that they had, you know, drank some truth serum, you know, the last half of last year because there were fewer buyers. And so, things seem to be picking up and then you hit Silicon Valley Bank and the regional bank. You know, Mazel, I’d say I don’t know, I mean, I don’t know what a good word is for it. And so that’s caused over the course of last month, buyers to be taking their time, even if they were in advanced kind of discussions with sellers or in process. They’re not saying no, they’re just being more cautious. And, and also it’s causing sellers to be more interested in selling. Right, this added risk is is is is creating some urgency for sellers to get liquid if they think they want liquidity to hit some of those milestones. They’re they’re reaching for
Jeff Malec 39:14
and who are some of these institutional buyers? Like without naming names by like large banks, yeah. Endowments
Bryce Emo 39:24
large VCs who represent all those people, right? Yeah, generally speaking. So there’s a few different groups, you’ve got multifamily, you know, family offices, multifamily offices worth hundreds of millions, billions of dollars, what have you who are active in this space buying? You have hedge funds that are active in this space? You’ve got VCs that will have secondary desks that are active, they buying and selling in the space, right? And same is true forever. Every one of those groups is selling as well. And they look
Jeff Malec 39:55
at it as like, Hey, I missed the last round. But here’s a way to get in at the same price. They’re even better.
Bryce Emo 40:01
Yeah, I think what what you’re seeing is some of these institutions who’ve already done diligence for the last several years, they know the company, right, they still, they’re still seeing marks, they’re still seeing the progress of the company companies still growing. Right? They’re still innovating. And they’re like, Well, you know, I paid $10, a year ago, should I be willing to pay? You know, $5 or $6? Now? And if they still like the company, they want to have those conversations? Yeah.
Jeff Malec 40:36
What? Two thirds? And do you feel like this is an indicator? Is it a leading or lagging indicator? You think
Bryce Emo 40:44
I would say the secondary markets, in my opinion, lag the public markets by a month? Or more, right, and I’ll give you an example. So last August, August, September, it feel like the market gained some ground, right, I think there was a market came up a little bit. And so then in September, you started to see buyers in the secondary market come back about three or four weeks later, right. And then the market sold off again. And then buyers are like, Oh, nevermind, put my hands back in my pockets. I was joking. Now. And so, you know, I think, I don’t know that. That it’s a leading indication, indicator, per se, but I do think at some point, we’ll hit a place where these funds who like the secondary markets who believe in the growth of these companies and believe that you’ve got what 1200 Unicorn companies plus now that these are gonna be the companies too, who continue to evolve and lead and change the world. And they want to be in these companies. And and they’ll start to buy them again.
Jeff Malec 41:53
Especially it’s so funny to me, I was like, no matter how sophisticated the investor, how much money they’re still always performance chasing, right? So it’s like, oh, we’re starting to go up, I’m in I’m buying. Let me see. Oh, we went down. I’m back scared. And so talk about that landscape. Is that? Is that the max number? How many unicorns do we have? Right? Like, I look at all these stocks, right, like, peloton and snowflake and all these things, they were down 80% at their lows, right? At some point last year, right, though part of me thinks like, oh, we the model broke. And like this tech company, innovator model is overdone. And everyone rushed in and got their faces ripped off. So like, what are your overall views of like, that’s just part of the process? Or are we going to keep going? Are there going to be 5000? Unicorns?
Bryce Emo 42:45
Well, at some point, it all comes back to supply and demand. Right? So if you have a great company, a great private company that’s growing fast, it’s doing a lot of revenue, it’s just it’s a leader in this space, what have you. If the company goes to raise capital, there might only be a few, or maybe 10 People who get in on that round, right? So when when there’s such scarcity, your choice becomes, you know, if you want access, you may have to pay up to get it. And theoretically that, you know, that occurs. And then I’d say, in the secondary market, the same will theoretically be be true as well, right? Right. Now, there’s more sellers than buyers. But in a normal market, or in a market like, you know, even a neutral market, there should be more of an equilibrium reached. And you and you would, you would expect that if there’s more demand, right? And less supply Prices, prices will change accordingly. But
Jeff Malec 43:58
yeah, I’m asking why are your business and just think of the whole tech industry as a whole, right? Have we? Did we go too far in like, oh, we were growing users, or we have this many app downloads, and that’s what our valuation is based on instead of actually revenues and profitability and, and whatnot. And did that get all these unicorns to their valuations, which then got cut in half? So like, did we go too far in some of those metrics where it should have been
Bryce Emo 44:26
different? Yeah, it’s probably a better question for a person who’s steeped in what the appropriate multiples are for different asset classes. Right. So if you’re seeing like, the, the, the, the multiples and some of these companies were what 80 100x On what existing or Ford revenue? Yeah. Yeah. If you look at the public markets, you have to say, has that has that ever held for a long period of time is it sustainable? Will investors at large back that right and you You eat? And so I think the answer you find is, it’s unlikely that that can become steady state in the, in the public markets, right?
Jeff Malec 45:12
If I’m one of those investors or VCs, like that doesn’t apply, because we’re looking for the next unicorn. That’s why their name unicorns,
Bryce Emo 45:18
I think that’s and I think that’s right, what’s hard for these investors is, look, the company’s growing it, let’s say 300x. Right? Because their companies are growing that fast sometimes in the public markets, and then you try to figure out okay, well, gosh, this isn’t, you know, you start to look at tam total addressable market, that’s a massive market. How big is the opportunity here? Okay, I can actually justify paying up right now that we’re paying a high multiple, because I think there’s an enormous Tam and the incumbents aren’t kind of paying attention, or they’re not well equipped to, to, to move in the way that this disrupter is going to move. And, and so in that case, these folks who spend a lot of time right, I mean, these venture capitalists, they hire some of the best and brightest people. Theoretically, you’ve gotten some of the top schools, you know, to work for them, and are looking at these nonstop.
Jeff Malec 46:19
What, what’s the are the visa non answer? It wasn’t. Yeah, I just want like part of me, I mean, look, the system, it rolls and then it breaks, it rolls. And so like, if we’re in a breaking period now, and then we’ll the next level of all these employees not get the stock options, because now they’re scared, or they heard a horror story of a REIT, like, Oh, I got all those stock options, I’d pay a bunch of tax. And then a year later, it was worth zero where it was worth half.
Bryce Emo 46:46
Yeah. Which, which is certainly if you look at, you know, the Boston 1999, right, or 2000, or whenever it happened, right, when all these folks, you know, I talked to them weekly, people who are at very senior levels of these companies now who lived through 9090 90,000, who are like, Oh, my gosh, I bought my options, I paid the tax, the stock wasn’t worth anything, I still have a carry forward. Right? loss. And so those people would they do? They went to mainstream companies for a while. Right? They went to publicly traded companies in Microsoft, and Apple and some of these groups, who then by the way, had tremendous innovation. So it’ll be interesting to follow,
Jeff Malec 47:31
and tremendously, as well, even Yeah,
Bryce Emo 47:34
I mean, it’ll be interesting to follow. Where do these employees who’ve worked at these disruptive companies, if they’ve been like, Go, or if they’ve decided to leave the company? What is the type of company they go to work for now? And which are the companies they go to work for now? And, and will they be able to cause the same kind of drive the same kind of innovation and growth at those companies? Or are those ecosystems, you know, not open to, you know, these types of disruptors, people, and, and, and so they’ll become frustrated. And eventually, they’ll say, you know, what I worked in to start my own thing, I worked at this startup company. And even though I didn’t make a lot of money, gosh, I had a lot of fun. It was a really cool experience. I felt like I was making a difference and doing something.
Jeff Malec 48:22
And what what, there’s been tons of layoffs in the tech space, do you talk to some of those people? How does that work? Do I lose my stock options? I keep them they get marked down? What has that all?
Bryce Emo 48:33
Yeah, it’s it’s different every company. So when you when you join a company, you know, you’ll generally sign something like a stock option agreement. And so or an equity plan. And that will say, it’ll, it’ll talk about how long you have if you leave the company to purchase your options or purchase your equity. In some cases, you know, that selling 90 days. So those are the people who come in like, Okay, I gotta do something fast. And actually, a lot of those people come to us before they’re leaving, and say, I’m thinking, a lot of people reaching out to me, I’m kind of thinking about maybe leaving. What’s the market? Like? What are my options? Can we start to have some of those conversations so that when I go to the company, and resign, I know what I’m going to do I know if I actually have golden handcuffs or not, right? Do I have to stay I’m gonna loot forfeit millions of dollars in equity, or is there an option to buy my options and pay the tax? So standard, I wouldn’t say standard. A lot of companies have 90 Day policies. What I’m seeing is companies who are doing you know, who are downsizing, you’re letting some people go right sizing however you want to determine based on the company. Some of them are extending the window. So instead of giving them 90 days, they’re saying we’ll give you two years. We’ll give you five years. We’ll give you more than that to exercise your options, which hopefully means company can get pumped Like, they can do a cash purchase exercise or something like this where, you know, they don’t come out of pocket to buy the options and pay the tax, the company just keeps a portion of the shares to cover those expenses.
Jeff Malec 50:14
And then in the case of a layoff, what does it look like? Who knows? Basically the same thing, they don’t work for the guy,
Bryce Emo 50:19
it’s the same thing, right? So so those companies that are doing some layoffs, some of them are saying, you know, we’re gonna, instead of 90 days, you got two years, you got five years, so as to not put pressure on the employees and also not put pressure on the market, right? If you all of a sudden have 400 or 300 employees that are coming to the market saying, you know, we want to sell shares, I need a loan to buy my options. There’s not enough buyers in many names to support that. And so the price goes down significantly, or can
Jeff Malec 50:51
you say anything funny when you talk about options on options?
Bryce Emo 50:56
No, but it’s, it’s something that I should add to my daily agenda. Yeah.
Jeff Malec 51:00
Add to your my repertoire, your repertoire. wrap us up? What? What are some of the biggest pitfalls some of these people see if you wish, like if you see a store, and you’re like, Oh, I wish I could have talked to him? I could have saved them from doing X and screen that up?
Bryce Emo 51:20
Yeah. One is they don’t talk to and this is just generally speaking, shareholders who haven’t been through this before, most events would understand. There they are, they think to themselves, yeah, I’ve got $10 million in stock, but I’m not wealthy yet. So like, I shouldn’t engage a wealth advisor to help me plan for if the company is going public, or I shouldn’t be talking to an accountant yet or a lawyer yet. Or I shouldn’t be talking to someone in the secondary markets. And then they get to these critical points where it’s like, you get 90 days to exercise your options, or companies going public and a couple months, and I don’t have a plan. And that creates a ton of stress for them. So I just say, you know, it’s like, get help early, these resources want to talk to you, they will take your phone calls, they will help you start to come up with the game plan. So don’t Don’t sell yourself short. If you’re an employee of one of these hyper growth, unicorn companies, people will talk to you. So that’s one two,
Jeff Malec 52:19
don’t sell yourself short. You’re an incredible slouch, you’re incredible slouch.
Bryce Emo 52:25
So too, is, you know, especially in this market, people are or they’ll sit on decisions, right? Sellers, and I’ve seen this happen in the last month, financial markets are uncertain. And if the secondary market is going to find the going to, you know, follow the the public markets, you have to realize that you may be considering a transaction and that a week later, the markets could significantly change, and the risk profile could significantly change. And those buyers or lenders could go away. Right. And so, you know, do your due diligence, make sure you have the right resources to make an informed decision. But, you know, be aware that some of these options, these liquidity options can can come into play and disappear, almost, you know, in some cases on a dime. Right? So, stuff that’s happened with the regional banks, for sure. There were people, buyers and lenders who were willing to do transactions. And once those things happened three days later, they’re like, We gotta wait out. Yeah, we’re out. We’re at least on the sidelines for a little bit. Until we understand more of what’s going on.
Jeff Malec 53:45
We saw that in crypto back in the day when it was 5060 down the working with these groups like hey, we’re trying to, can you help us design an algorithm and to get out of the crypto without paying too much in bid ask? And we were doing it and they’re like, sure, but you just waited five days for that and it fell $10,000. Right, you would have been better just to hit the other side of the bid offer spread and not be at risk for five days while you’re figuring it out.
Bryce Emo 54:10
That’s right. And the same thing happened in crypto. What’s the big group that went out of business?
54:16
A couple of? Yeah.
Bryce Emo 54:19
Yeah. You know, just after that happened, you know, I’m working with the folks that work for crypto companies, same thing buyers and lenders are like, we got to wait, we don’t know what’s going to happen here. In fact, investors don’t like uncertainty. Right. Generally speaking, unless, unless, unless that’s the design of their of their structure.
Jeff Malec 54:39
And while we mentioned it, how did that look with crypto? Was that part of the demand for a little while? Yeah, those loans get paid out in crypto, or in seconds in
Bryce Emo 54:51
US dollars. Yeah. Or, you know, with many of these contracts, you can either pay in stock or cash check your legal agreements because it’s different. For every vendor,
55:02
but for sure, I mean, crypto.
Bryce Emo 55:06
The secondary markets, as well as financial markets at times can follow buzzwords. Right. And so AI is super, you know, it’s it’s, I think I did read an article recently that it’s the most searched for, you know, keyword on Google or something, right? Investors are talking about AI, when crypto is you know, popular and in in the news every day, investors were talking about crypto, and they wanted to look at companies and opportunities in that space. And so, you know, you you have to, to be aware of like these cycles, that they’re not going to last. Oftentimes, they don’t last forever. And that the end that the only certainty has changed, generally.
Jeff Malec 55:54
The, what’s your thoughts on AI? Have you used chat? GPT?
56:00
You know, it’s interesting. So
Bryce Emo 56:02
we’re just, you know, we’ve got round off, we talk about kids, and we’ve got, you know, kids that are the same age until I was going into high school and, and in touring schools, the last couple months, every single school brought up AI, and how they’re going to combat AI being used by students in ways that are allowed that are not allowed, how is it going to change the face of education?
Jeff Malec 56:32
It’s interesting to me, they didn’t say how they’re going to embrace it, how they’re going to combat it?
Bryce Emo 56:36
Well, they did. Actually, they did say, they did say, you know, they’re trying to they’re, they’re looking to hire people that are consultants that that are experts in this space to help them figure out where it’s going and how they might use it. I mean, AI, it could be a huge game changer. And it’ll be interesting to see, when I look at it, I think, Well, boy, that makes soft skills really important in life, right? It makes communication skills, super important. A lot of things you go, you know, we send our kids to good schools to learn, right and to and to refine, but I think that AI generally speaking, it’s it, it could really be, you know,
Jeff Malec 57:25
put you out of business. Okay, and just my options, my stock comp contract, tell me what the best solution is.
Bryce Emo 57:33
There, certainly there, there could be aI features built into that. But again, you know, any of these, it’s tough to just go for a buzzword Do you really have to understand what the pros and cons are to some of these movements and cycles.
Jeff Malec 57:56
I want to close out and do a segment that I didn’t warn you for half baked ideas. You have some of the best half baked ideas. I’m in second place. You were the first one to ever tell me like hey, why doesn’t Uber just like have a red screen with the McDonald’s logo on it? And then the driver’s seat looks for red. That was brilliant. They never they did do the color but they didn’t monetize it. Right? They don’t selling?
Bryce Emo 58:19
Yeah. So it’s like, Hey, I’m the guy with the purple phone. Right? Come find me.
Jeff Malec 58:23
Purple matches to Dunkin or whatever brand, right? Yes, that’s exactly. That’s remember you had you had the brands you had everything that was brilliant. So give me your top three half baked ideas. I think mine at the time with to counter your Uber one was the foldable pocket helmet for when I’m riding on the Divi bikes and the shared bikes and in cities like this. And I just want to pop it out and like, grab it. Yeah, yeah. Right. Because I want to wear a helmet. I don’t want to carry it home into the office around downtown. But then people like how are you going to make it rigid? I’m like, I’m just the idea guy. Right? I’m not the execution guy. You got to figure out how to make it work. So
59:03
I’ll share a couple ideas. One is,
Bryce Emo 59:06
this is one actually you might use in some way, shape, or form, if you can get it by compliance is called drunk elevator. Okay. Yes. So it’s almost like
Jeff Malec 59:15
can we change it to drunk 30,000 foot elevator? Drunk
Bryce Emo 59:19
30,000 foot elevator.
59:20
So the idea is this is you get,
Bryce Emo 59:25
you know, executives at companies or heads of sales in an elevator after they’ve had a few cocktails. And then they’ve got basically the elevator ride to give the pitch on their business. Because all of these companies make their businesses sound super complex. So nobody understands them. But if they could simplify it, then a lot more people would would kind of get it. So that’s one. Well, that’s the classic
Jeff Malec 59:48
elevator but but they have to be drunk. So it has to be right. Yeah. And they’re trying to sell each other. It’s the same people in the company or from different companies.
59:56
No, it’s like you’re recording it. Oh, it’s like Oh, oh, yeah, like it’s like here’s a, here’s drunk elevator. Here’s
Bryce Emo 1:00:03
a one and a half minute video on all these different companies. The person’s giving their elevator pitch. I don’t know if you watch Drunk History, but it’s a pretty entertaining show.
Jeff Malec 1:00:12
This might be a new podcast. I do. I love it. Alright, trunk elevator,
Bryce Emo 1:00:15
elevator. I, and by the way, I’m working on a prototype of this. The first one wasn’t great, but we’re going to do another run. It is a motion activated speaker that sits on the back of your toilet. So when you walk into a bathroom, it just starts playing music. And this already, the device doesn’t eat well, the device probably isn’t very hard to create. When I went into a Dairy Queen, we were in. Where was it? I think Central Indiana. I wanted to Dairy Queen bathroom. And it’s Warren Buffett. And I was in Warren’s in there and he says, Hey, Bryce, take a seat. I got something to say no. So the experience of having music playing in the bathroom is so so much more pleasant.
Jeff Malec 1:01:05
Oh, yeah. loosens the bowels. It does.
1:01:08
You know, they just
Bryce Emo 1:01:09
like I think everyone’s more comfortable with each other. Maybe somebody’s whistling or humming what have you so that’s my second.
Jeff Malec 1:01:16
I gotta send you the link. We got stocking stuffer for Christmas. The kids bathroom has a little LED motion activated LED light that goes like inside the bowl. Oh, and it changes colors every time. So one time the water and everything is this nice blue. Then it’s pink. And it’s a yellow. Maybe there’s not yellow, because that has a different meaning in the bathroom. But yeah.
Bryce Emo 1:01:38
On St. Patty’s Day, I assume that’s green raised. Yeah.
Jeff Malec 1:01:41
I don’t know if it’s that smart. I think it just randomly alternates. But yeah.
Bryce Emo 1:01:45
Wait for AI. Yes.
Jeff Malec 1:01:47
Yes. Ai assisted like toilet. All right. What do you got next?
1:01:52
I have a third on hand. What have you got? Jeff, you got any big ideas right now?
Jeff Malec 1:01:58
I and I stole this from the Bill Simmons podcast, by the way he does. Whenever you’re I’ll share the one he’s his guest had, which was why in the NFL. A guy should catch the ball and say like, I didn’t catch it. I didn’t catch. Like demonstrably do that. So the other team uses one of their challenges and challenges that he didn’t catch it. But the replays like, oh, he definitely caught it. So little gameplay game theory to be like, get rid of that.
1:02:28
See, the
Jeff Malec 1:02:31
mind would be like that. Last time we were hanging out or not? Two times ago. We were in Napa with you. And I think I’d had too much wine because now all this wine keeps arriving at my house. And I see on the credit card like this. I’m like, why I thought I paid for this at the time know that it keeps charging me. So there needs to be some sort of half baked idea on how to monitor and control the wine purchases while visiting Napa.
Bryce Emo 1:02:58
It’s like, you know, on your phone, I think you can lock your phone after a certain point at night, which was or would have been very helpful in our 20s. Probably, right. So I’m drunk dial people. And so this is almost like drunk purchases. You just let Amex know or Visa No.
Jeff Malec 1:03:15
lock my card after 2pm When? After two vineyards. Yeah, exactly. Right. Yes. That’s a trader guy. He’s no had that called the trading platform called them and said, he did a lot of business. And he had them custom code, his version of the software to not let him place any more trades after he lost three trades in a row. Oh, and so that’s actually the software people were telling me of like, and then he calls constantly, like, turn it back on. I need one more. Yeah. And they’re like you told us to do this. Sorry. So he would yell and scream for three hours. But at the end of the day, he was happy for him. I buddy, it’s been fun. What’s next? What’s on the agenda?
1:03:57
Spring break coming up.
Jeff Malec 1:03:59
Spring Break. Yeah, you’ll be there in Cabo, and I’ll be right down the road and porta Viar toe. So let’s come up with a harebrained idea how we can meet at sea. What I was gonna say well just
Bryce Emo 1:04:09
I’ll take a tin can you’ll take a tin can and we’ll just find a string that’s long enough into it old school.
Jeff Malec 1:04:16
I’m gonna rent a Hobey cat and sail up there. That’s what I’m going to do. Instead. You paddleboard you’re in better shape than the board down all searching for Marlin. Yeah. Searching for Marlin. Alright, tell everyone where they can find your good stuff.
Bryce Emo 1:04:31
Yeah, sidecar finance.com or you can follow me or find me on LinkedIn Bryce, Emo sidecar finance. Thank you so much.
Jeff Malec 1:04:40
Where did the sidecar name come?
1:04:43
Okay
Bryce Emo 1:04:43
sidecar came from my good friend Marty. From from college action with it together in our 20s we were out one night in Chicago as one does, you know bar to bar what have you and I passed by motorcyclists sidecar and I said, Marty, one day I’m gonna buy a motorcycle with a sidecar. Nice short like I am. And I’m like, we’re going to tour the countryside. And so over the course of the last 15 years, one of us would have a rough day or I would call him and say, Bruce never give up on the dream. We’re gonna have a motorcycle on a sidecar I’d sent him a picture. So being an entrepreneur has always been a dream of mine. And, and so sidecar. Clearly, it’s great concept of, you know, working alongside someone helping them to, you know, tour the markets and navigate the space. And so it was, I guess, a double entendre is that right?
Jeff Malec 1:05:38
Yeah, you need to go down to Universal Studios and they have the Hagrid ride. I think you ride in the sidecar. Oh, the roller coaster is like a motorcycle and a sidecar on the roller coaster. So get a picture of you doing that and put it up on the website. That’s a great idea. Thank you. There’s my hair brand. I’ll come down there. I enjoy myself a good coaster. As do we all right, Bryce, email, everybody. We’ll talk to him soon. Thank you, buddy.
Bryce Emo 1:06:09
Thanks, pal. Talk to you soon.
Jeff Malec 1:06:15
Okay, that’s it for the pod. Thanks to Bryce. Thanks to Jeff burger for producing. Enjoy the Masters get ready for no vol on Thursday and Friday as traders are staring at that screen versus the trading screen. We’ll see you next week where we have total assets Andrew Stresemann coming on talking trend piece.
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