Today’s guest is Will Ahmed, founder and CEO of WHOOP, a wearable technology/fitness company that fits smack in the middle of what I like to call ‘fashology’ – technology meets fashion. The device tracks and measures strain, recovery, and sleep. The brand is well received by pro athletes like LeBron James, Michael Phelps and over half of the PGA Tour; but can it help Howard? Those who have followed me for a while know I’m fascinated with sleep fitness and I have a WHOOP, but there are difficult customers, and then there’s me. We discuss what it would take to have Howie back on the WHOOP wagon. 

Will started the company in Boston right after graduating from Harvard – his first company, and his first full time job. Ten years later the brand continues to unlock human performance and save lives. Some of the smartest people I look up to on things like fitness, brains, and style are super bullish on WHOOP; to include Arizona Cardinal Kelvin Beachum, Jr., Brad Feld, and Ryan Spoon. 

Guest - Will Ahmed, Founder and CEO at Whoop 

howardlindzon.com, whoop.com 

Here’s the WHOOP Podcast 

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @PanicwFriends, @whoop, @willahmed, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/willahmed

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes:

Introduction (00:42)

Welcome Will (05:48)

Starting WHOOP in Boston (06:32)

Star athlete investors (07:05)

Celebrity users (07:39)

Physiology research at Harvard (08:45)

Raising capital (09:23)

10 years 600 employees later (09:41)

Big name venture investors (10:01)

Bet the business transition (11:16)

Differentiating WHOOP (12:53)

Behavior change and improving health (13:43)

Early star athlete adopters (14:30)

Making health monitoring cool (15:40)

Bringing Howard back into the fold (16:59)

Becoming a source of accountability (18:30)

A/B testing yourself (19:31)

The next frontier for WHOOP (19:43)

Apple Watch - the elephant in the room (20:54)

Sensors in your boxers (23:13)

Whoop on the PGA tour (25:27)

What’s the magic with WHOOP? (27:38)

Wearable's - A uniquely difficult space (29:02)

Being mentored as a founder (31:31)

Improving live, saving lives (33:56)

Two types of customers (35:03)

Smart people bullish on WHOOP (36:18)

The WHOOP Podcast (37:06)

Free Climber Alex Honnold (39:18)

Alex’s REM sleep advantage (41:06)

Closing thoughts (45:54)

Wrapping up (48:02) 

Related:

Free Solo climber Alex Honnold on eliminating fear and accomplishing greatness

Kelvin Beachum Jr, Offensive Lineman for the Arizona Cardinals & 2022 Walter Payton Man of the Year Nominee, on Investing, Leveraging your Network, and Parenting with Intention

Ryan Spoon, COO of Sorare on the Intersection of Fantasy Sports, Blockchain, and Community

I’m stoked to have my good friend Rob Petrozzo, Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Rally on this special episode of Panic with Friends. It’s the first Panic with Friends dual podcast, so it won’t be a format you’re used to. A lot more of me as Rob dual tracks this episode for Rally’s new podcast, The Best Money I Ever Spent. Rob’s spent the last several years building Rally into an amazing platform that makes fractional investing safe, easy, and accessible. 

Guest - Rob Petrozzo, Co-Founder and CPO at Rally, Host of The Best Money I Ever Spent Podcast 

howardlindzon.com, rallyrd.com 

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @robpetrozzo, @OnRallyRd, «BestMoneyPod, @knutjensen, @PanicwFriends 

Podcast: The Best Money I Ever Spent

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3vwvQoGUbP7FKAbuvkYemA

linkedin.com/in/robpetrozzo

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes:

Introduction (00:42)

Welcome Rob (03:08)

Thinking changed from 5 years ago (04:08)

Living through market cycles (05:13)

Domain experience counts (06:20)

Cutting Signal from Noise (07:46)

Survival matters (10:05)

Starting Rally (11:40)

The ICO craze (12:52)

Fractional Warhol (15:46)

Culture and the future (16:35)

What we spend our money on (18:54)

A different type of bear market (21:26)

Gary Vaynerchuk’s ear (22:26)

The ‘right’ community (23:06)

‘Mobile First’ generation (29:40)

Nailing the UI (30:17)

Rethinking the desktop (31:42)

Hitting peak ‘Mobile’ (36:15)

Betting on guys who survived before (37:40)

DAOs - small is the new big (40:50)

Passionate about comedy (41:48)

NFT meets DAO meets Community (42:41)

Howard’s favorite investor (48:49)

The future of venture (49:09)

Next breed of crossover investors (49:54)

The one that got away (52:28)

Thoughts on bootstrapping (54:10)

Closing thoughts (55:57)

Wrapping up (59:38) 

Previous Panic:

Rob Petrozzo of Rally: Classic Cars, Dinosaur Bones, and Crypto Punks (EP.171) October 14, 2021

I’m excited to bring my good friend Om Malik back for a third round of Panic. Om is a partner at True Ventures, a $2B venture capital firm in San Francisco. They have made over 300 investments including WordPress, Peloton, Fitbit, and Blue Bottle Coffee.

He’s a super smart guy to talk to. He worries about the future, invests in the future, and talks about the future. It’s important to talk about the future especially when the current situation is bleak – with a tech crash and valuations coming down. I don’t think there’s a panic, we’re just witnessing the end of an era. We could whine about it, or we could look past it and figure out where technology is going next; which is what I’m doing. I don’t think what’s worked for me over the last 12 years will work going forward. Om is here to help me sort it out. 

Guest - Om Malik, Partner Emeritus at True Ventures 

howardlindzon.com, trueventures.com, om.co

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @PanicwFriends, @trueventures, @om, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/ommalik

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes:

Introduction (00:42)

Welcome Om (02:52)

The world aligning to new technologies (04:01)

Valuation and tech decoupled (04:51)

The core thesis hasn’t changed (6:06)

Today tech is bigger, bolder, more impactful (07:26)

5 trillion dollar companies created in the last 12 years (07:37)

The unknowns make the future of tech exciting (08:43)

Moving towards a 3D interface with data (09:38)

Apple M1 chip changes everything (10:02)

Identity and Authentication are key (14:14)

Understanding the future of tech (16:07)

Fixating on ‘labels’ instead of the tech (17:55)

The digital wallet is the future (18:33)

The ‘MetaMask’ of the future may come from Apple (19:28)

The future doesn’t have to be Instagram and Twitter (20:31)

Trust and Big Tech (21:54)

Apple is one Tim Cook away from things falling apart (22:01)

The disappearance of the App store (22:44)

The wallet is tightly connected to your Smartphone (23:16)

Policy always lags tech (24:15)

The ‘Wild West’ analogy for Web3 (25:57)

Software is important, authentication will be key (26:32)

Distinguishing between the artificial and real ‘us’ (27:52)

Metaverse is a euphemism for next gen tech (29:12)

How will China define the future (30:11)

Globalization versus Deglobalization (30:44)

End of one-size-fits-all tech (31:32)

The current reality of centralization (32:44)

Twitter is social media marketing (33:17)

Small subsets of decentralized social networks (33:49)

Opportunity comes after a crisis (36:47)

Silicon Valley is a state of mind (37:24)

Closing thoughts (39:08)

Wrapping up (41:55)

I’m excited to have my fishing buddy, Lewis Johnson, back for another round of Panic. He runs a couple billion dollars as the CIO of Capital Wealth Advisors. Lewis was first on in November of 2020 when we realized we might not die from COVID and the Fed was printing money and we were in market Nirvana. Back then we talked value and growth and commodities because Lewis understands cycles. He’d seen the worst stretch of value stocks versus growth stocks in the last 200 years. In this episode we talk cycles and supply chains and commodities and a strong dollar and valuation and the deglobalization cycle we find ourselves in now. What Lewis has is expertise, which is why I enjoy talking to investors like him at different points in time to expand my knowledge. 

Guest - Lewis Johnson, CIO at Capital Wealth Advisors 

howardlindzon.com, capitalwealthadvisors.com 

blog.capitalwealthadvisors.com/trends-tail-risks

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @PanicwFriends, @TrendsTailRisks, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/lewismjohnson 

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes:

Introduction (00:40)

2020 Take - Value & Growth (04:17)

Welcome Lewis (07:00)

Cycles have a logic of their own (08:19)

Commodities & Value back in favor (10:04)

A Deglobalization Cycle underway (12:11)

A chain of Deglobalization events (13:22)

Positioning and asset allocation (16:47)

The nature of the cycle (17:50)

Taking a defensive stance (18:07)

Real Estate bubble in China (18:29)

De-risking early (20:12)

Short squeeze in Commodities (20:44)

The Fed can’t print corn (21:23)

European energy supply crisis (21:46)

Avoiding last cycles winners (22:41)

Defensive/Offensive investing (25:16)

Tech under a deglobalization mindset (26:13)

Valuation is the first lens (26:48)

Reconstructing the supply chain (27:25)

Defense spending and stocks (27:50)

Emerging markets in crisis (31:27)

Living in Florida (33:33)

Market volatility (35:47)

Risk management first (36:19)

Fundamentals, supply, demand, valuation matters (37:20)

Avoiding black swans (37:43)

60% of the world’s debt is in dollars (39:02)

Wrapping up (41:11)

Closing thoughts (41:54) 

Related Episode:

Co-Founder and President of Fundamental Global Lewis Johnson Joins Me on Panic with Friends to Discuss the Business of Investing – from Asset Management to the Nature of Cycles (EP.120)

Today’s guest, Serge Kassardjian, is the co-founder and CEO of StayTuned Digital, and a partner at 6th Man Ventures. He got his MBA from Harvard and Bachelors and Masters in Engineering from Stanford, where he was the President of his class. Serge is a fighter, an entrepreneur with irons in the fire of two incredibly volatile sectors – e-commerce and crypto, so he’s the perfect guest to come on Panic with Friends. As the pundits at CNBCq say ‘the markets are in turmoil’; and it’s not just crypto, but our beloved e-commerce stocks, including Amazon $AMZN and Shopify $SHOP, that are taking a beating. We discuss StayTuned Digital, which is a Shopify roll-up, but not in the classic sense of rolling up e-commerce stores – they’re rolling up software companies on the app side. We get into Serge’s love of STEPN – the crypto/web3 lifestyle app, and what the future crypto/web3 ecosystem might look like for us ‘normies’. (Full disclosure: StayTuned is a Social Leverage (Fund III) portfolio company.) 

Guest - Serge Kassardjian, Co-founder and CEO at StayTuned and Partner At 6th Man Ventures 

howardlindzon.com, staytuned.digital, 6thman.ventures, sergekassardjian.com  

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @PanicwFriends, @sergekass, @staytuned_dig, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/sergekass 

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes:

Introduction (00:043)

Welcome Serge (03:21)

Selling dumbbells (04:05)

Coming to America (05:11)

Starting in e-commerce (07:17)

Macro trends in e-commerce (09:22)

Growth is in headless solutions (10:50)

Non-linear paths in startups (13:14)

Serge’s time at Google (13:38)

Shopify app roll-ups (14:03)

Building the StayTuned team (14:43)

Getting into crypto (16:02)

Early whale on NBA TopShot (17:28)

International e-commerce (18:06)

Venture debt model (19:05)

StayTuned apps (20:26)

Shopify competition (22:25)

Catching the crypto bug (24:35)

Talent moves to crypto (26:02)

Crypto adoption demographics (27:40)

STEPN sneaker NFTs (29:54)

Wrapping up (37:23)

Closing thoughts (38:59)

Today’s guest, Matt Ober, is a really good friend of mine. We laugh about everything – but now we’re laughing on the same team, which is the best. Matt joined Social Leverage as a GP a few months ago – and he’s the upgrade we’ve needed to think about the future as the surface of tech continues to expand. Matt was most recently the Chief Data Scientist at Third Point. Prior to that he was head of Data Strategy at WorldQuant and part of the WorldQuant Ventures founding team focused on private investments.

Matt is based out of New York City, which gives us boots on the ground there as the web evolves into the next web. He’s also started his own company, which we talk a little bit about; I’m always excited to have people on our team who have companies – it keeps the entrepreneurial juices flowing. Matt is wicked smart and knows the business. We overachieved by bringing him on board. He’s got all the gifts – he knows how to be social, and how to ask the right questions. 

Guest - Matt Ober, General Partner at Social Leverage  

howardlindzon.com, socialleverage.com 

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @PanicwFriends, @obermattj, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/matt-ober-caia-b2469214

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes: 

Introduction. (00:39)

Welcome Matt. (05:19)

Working with Social Leverage (06:41)

Starting out at Bloomberg (07:18)

Responding to a Craigslist ad (08:07)

No information overload, only filter failure (09:33)

Learning the startup business (11:07)

Good rabbit holes and bad rabbit holes (12:40)

Working with Dan Loeb at Third Point (13:51)

Getting into crypto (15:12)

Why crypto is enticing to smart people (17:02)

Matt's startup (18:01)

Consistent returns on the quant side (21:19)

More freedom with a smaller firm (23:00)

Concentration v. 1,000s of positions (24:17)

Geography matters less now (25:02)

Leveraging web3 to build the future (25:20)

Talent migration (27:02)

The next generation of digital natives (27:15)

Staying connected by disconnecting (28:04)

What Matt reads to stay ahead (30:27)

It's data, content, filters, and your network (33:29)

Wrapping up (35:06)

Closing thoughts. (39:44)

I’m excited for today’s guest, Abe Finkelstein. For over five years I’ve been picking his and his partners' brains, which is why I love this job – I love being able to tap into the wealth of knowledge from people like Abe. He’s a GP at Vintage Investment Partners based out of Israel – a $3 billion fund of funds with an interesting model. We talk Israel, we talk growth, we talk about tech and how all this stuff works – all the parts of the system and how you get capital. Prior to joining Vintage in 2003, Abe was an equity analyst with Goldman Sachs covering Israeli technology companies. Before Goldman, Abe was Vice President at US Bancorp Piper Jafray, where he helped start and then headed their Israel technology shares institutional sales effort. Abe has a BS in Economics from the Wharton School, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude. 

Guest - Abe Finkelstein, General Partner at Vintage Investment Partners 

howardlindzon.com, vintage-ip.com 

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @PanicwFriends, @Vintage_Inv, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/abe-finkelstein

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes: 

Introduction. (00:40)

Welcome Abe. (04:09)

Starting a career in finance. (06:17)

Moving to Israel. (07:25)

Getting Vintage off the ground. (10:25)

Living through multiple market cycles. (10:57)

Deploying funds across three geographies. (11:37)

Making few direct investments recently. (12:47)

The disconnect in public and private markets. (13:17)

A world with 10 Softbanks. (15:11)

Younger managers have never seen a downturn. (16:31)

Start learning the underlying portfolios. (22:15)

Living in Israel. (23:06)

Panicked about traveling again. (29:31)

Waiting for the next $10, or $100 billion Israeli company over the next 10 years. (30:16)

Looking towards Europe. (31:33)

Intrigued by web3 and the gaming ecosystem. (32:37)

Favorite cities to visit. (34:07) 

Wrapping it up. (38:48)

Closing thoughts. (39:44)

My special guest today is Spencer Jakab from the Wall Street Journal – I say special because I’m doing something I rarely do – talking about stuff that’s fascinating to me. Normally I’m fascinated by the people, but don’t understand half the stuff we talk about because I’m learning; whether it’s crypto or trading. This episode is near and dear to my heart because we’ve got a true journalist on the show, not because he went to journalism school, but because after spending a decade at Credit Suisse, Spencer went out and learned journalism on the job. He’s the editor of the Wall Street Journal’s Heard on the Street column, and he recently published The Revolution That Wasn’t. And Spencer is one of the good guys. We’ve hung out quite a bit – he’s always been supportive of community and he understands what it’s like to build brand and how hard it is to survive in the financial world. It’s safe to say he’ll be a recurring guest here on Panic. Enjoy the episode. 

Guest - Spencer Jakab, Journalist and Author of the book “The Revolution That Wasn’t” 

howardlindzon.com, spencerjakab.com/buy-my-book

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @PanicwFriends, @Spencerjakab, @knutjensen 

[email protected] 

linkedin.com/in/spencer-jakab-43b635b

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes: 

Introduction. (00:40)

Welcome Spencer. (04:22)

Working for Rupert Murdoch. (04:43)

Moving from Research Analyst to Journalist. (06:40)

Using the Print Edition to spot developing stories and trends. (08:06)

The revolution that wasn't. (11:17)

Robinhood, Wall Street Bets, and Gambling Culture. (11:52)

Cornering the Market. (14:50)

Retail versus 'The Suits'. (16:23)

It went down in real time on Twitter. (20:45)

From immigrant to Columbia. (23:15)

Bull Market geniuses. (25:27)

The fintech disruption that wasn't. (26:36)

Addressing the retirement crisis. (27:44)

Painful lessons for young people. (28:20)

Bit by the gambling bug. (29:21)

Fear and Greed. (33:42)

Getting on the financial ladder has never been easier. (37:06)

Dealing with the old guard. (38:04)

The need to educate investors. (39:02) 

It's all Jesse Livermore 2.0. (41:23)

SEC should do their job. (43:31)

Being careful about leverage. (45:01)

Wrapping it up. (47:21)

Closing thoughts. (48:34)

My buddy Ross is back for round two of Panic. He’s the open source guru who started Mulesoft – which was well covered in our previous interview (EP.103) – but today we’re going down the crypto/NFT rabbit hole. And if there’s anybody outside of Fred Wilson, Chris Dixon, and the people at Multicoin I’d trust on this topic, it’s Ross. That’s because he’s the king of open source. A crown I’ve bestowed on him, mostly because he’s the only one I know in open source. Not only is Ross a unicorn founder, he’s also a seed investor in a unicorn through his fund, Dig Ventures. He’s been on both sides of the table, which is why I brought him in as a board member for $SLAC the SPAC. Nowadays Ross splits his time between Switzerland and Amsterdam, one of my top five favorite cities in the world. I’ll be catching up with Ross in Amsterdam this week! Be sure to follow along on Twitter. 

Guest - Ross Mason, Founder at Dig Ventures 

howardlindzon.com, dig.ventures

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @rossmason, @dig_ventures, @PanicwFriends, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/ross-mason

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

EP.103: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4Hq5nGVsLmLepCIRfSGHWr

Show Notes:

Introduction. (00:39)

Welcome Ross. (05:51)

Best cities in the world. (06:04)

Leaving Mulesoft for good. (08:34)

Leveraging the social networks (09:06)

Digging into web3 whitepapers. (10:07)

The Holy Grail of Open Source. (12:24)

Down the crypto rabbit hole. (13:24)

Crypto’s gaming angle. (15:10)

NFTs as assets. (16:33)

You’re going to get scammed. (19:17)

Manufactured urgency, but it’s fun. (22:49)

Living with the drawdowns. (23:41)

The thesis for minting your own coin. (26:03)

Creating a ‘carry’ token. (27:40)

Can centralization fix the scams? (30:49)

Build your community the correct way. (31:48)

Helping founders (33:52)

Public tech meltdown (38:47)

Long bitcoin and ethereum. (39:52) 

The need for middleware connections. (40:34)

Amsterdam's web3 culture. (42:19)

The thing about FIFA. (46:07)

Wrapping it up. (47:39)

Closing thoughts. (49:12)

Today’s guest is a master of the markets. I’ve been following her work since the start of TheStreet.com. To say she’s a fan of the markets is an understatement. Helene got started in the markets in 1982 at Cowen and Co and then moved on to Goldman Sachs where she was their first ever technical analyst. And she learned early on that if you're going to work at Goldman you're going to put your money where your mouth is. Today she’s a mentor to thousands, if not tens of thousands, of people that like to think clearly about the markets and learn about technical analysis and price and sentiment – all the things that make markets work. The stories are fantastic – the weird dynamics you have to deal with when running people's money, being an analyst, and building stock charts by hand – she’s a legend with a great sense of humor. You can find her on FinTwit talking about all this stuff every day. 

Guest - Helene Meisler, Financial Markets Analyst and Columnist for RealMoney.com 

howardlindzon.com, RealMoney.com, realmoney.thestreet.com 

Twitter: @howardlindzon, @hmeisler, @realmoney, @PanicwFriends, @knutjensen 

linkedin.com/in/helene-meisler-4a783153

#fintech #invest #investment #venturecapital #stockmarket #finance 

Show Notes:

Introduction. (00:42)

Welcome Helene. (03:21)

Helene lands on Wall Street in 1982. (05:02)

Becoming a market technician by working with a mentor. (07:55)

Are you a technical analyst, or just a chart reader? (11:30)

There's no "one" correct way - her style might not work for you. (12:42)

Moving to Goldman Sachs. (13:56)

The General Motors $GM trade. (15:20)

Calls that shook her confidence. (20:35)

Entering a Bear Market in 2021. (25:15)

Tops and Bottoms aren't built in a day. (27:16)

Working with Jim Cramer. (27:41)

Reacting to "V" bottoms in the market. (30:48)

Helene's typical day as a market technician. (33:26)

The pain of a broad market decline. (38:43)

Wrapping it up. (43:42)

Closing thoughts. (45:35)