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Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - July 4th, 2025

2025/7/4

Bloomberg Businessweek

This chapter covers the Uncharted Community Summit, an annual gathering of entrepreneurs, investors, and other stakeholders in the startup ecosystem. The discussion focuses on the event's importance in facilitating relationships and driving success stories among attendees.

Uncharted Summit brings together investors and companies, facilitating relationships and deals.
The event's success is measured by testimonials from attendees who secured funding, co-founders, or employees.
The current environment is not an up cycle for capital formation, with funding down 60-70%, and AI is attracting most investment.

Shownotes Transcript

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This is Bloomberg Businessweek Daily, reporting from the magazine that helps global leaders stay ahead with insight on the people, companies, and trends shaping today's complex economy. Plus, global business, finance, and tech news as it happens. The Bloomberg Businessweek Daily podcast with Carol Masser and Tim Stenevek on Bloomberg Radio.

Hi, everyone. Welcome to the Bloomberg Business Week weekend podcast and a very happy 4th of July. Well, just about one week ago, we were live in Southampton, Long Island at the Uncharted Community Summit. It's an annual gathering of over 500 members of the entrepreneurial community. And over the next two hours, we will bring you some of our favorite conversations from that event. We're going to be talking about how to get started.

We'll hear from voices on artificial intelligence. In fact, it felt like everybody had a view when it came to AI. We also talked capital markets and women's health. Plus, we sit down with a shark.

First up, though, we caught up with one of the co-founders of the event of Uncharted and the man whose backyard we were literally broadcasting from. He is Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of Loeb.nyc, who started off by telling us why this event is so important. If you were to take a look in the background, you would see, you know, 600 people talking to 600 other people.

It's quite the event and what we really want to do is foster relationships between investors and companies, between companies and companies, and between CEOs looking for talent and talent looking for CEOs. So I think a good time is being had by all. You know, an event like this, you've been doing this for a few years, it started during the pandemic, it started a lot smaller. How do you, and I heard you say, and your partners say this too, Noah,

He's running into people constantly, you say. They raised money as a result of being here. They found a co-founder here. They found employees here. How do you measure the success of an event such as this in the days, weeks, and months following it? Right. I wish we could because I should have a vig on all this.

all that, don't you think? You've known Noah for a long time. Right. So, you know, I got to tell you, we do solicit testimonials of exactly the things that you're talking about. We have quite a few of people saying, you know, I met my founder there about...

Two years ago, Noah and I got an invitation, and it was shrouded in mystery. And it was three women who had us go to an event downtown, and they brought us up on stage. Everybody started to clap. And what that was is these were three women, never met before. They were all, you know, elite athletes. And they decided there should be a fund for

supporting elite athletes. That's great. That they had a different point of view, a different sense of how to compete, and they all got along very, very well. And that thesis led to a $50 million fund. So it's that type of thing that really propels us. Well talk to us about capital. How much is out there for startups? Wow.

You know, it's funny, things go in cycles, as you know. This is not an up cycle for capital formation. Last numbers I looked at, and they're a little bit stale, but down 60 or 70%. Certainly the secondary market, if that's any indication at all,

does illustrate that there's a lot of illiquidity looking to get liquid. Right. Not nearly as frothy as it used to be was IPOs, even though that's starting to unlock a little bit. So I know it is hard, and the money does gravitate these days to AI. So if you have AI... So when there is an idea, when there is a startup, that's where it goes. It goes there, right. And what folks don't...

I think really realize or appreciate is the forces at play in venture and venture funding and venture capital, which is, I sometimes call it a beauty contest, and that is because there's one breakout winner in a category, and then all the LPs are asking their GPs, you know, what is your AI strategy? And if the answer is, you know, we think it's a little oversold, we think it's a little bit frothy,

where there's going to be a couple of winners and a lot of losers, we're taking a wait-and-see attitude. The answer is, bye-bye, I'm bringing my money to that fund that made that investment. So a lot of pressure for them to jump in, and it's in those situations that not-so-good deals are made. Right. So, yeah. Yeah.

In terms of cycles, does it feel like this AI cycle is different than previous tech hype cycles? And the reason I ask, and look, nobody wants to hear or utter the phrase, this time is different. But if you look out at the private markets right now, you've got sky-high valuations, I think many would argue, for open AI, right? For anthropic, for perplexity. You have meta platforms coming in and dropping billions of dollars to buy 49% of an AI company that barely existed. You have founders being poached.

We're talking $100 million signing bonuses. Yeah. For an individual to go to a large company. Right. So I look at my mailbox every day. I'm looking for my $100 million check. Hasn't come in yet, right? To me, it feels different. Now, what does it feel like? I've been around for long enough. So I'm something of the elder statesman here. I've been around long enough that I've seen a few cycles.

This feels like the late 90s and the late 90s was the advent of the internet. Right. And it feels this profound. Now, you know, people would say, well, you know, if we look back two or three years, it was NFTs and that was a false positive. And before that, it was blockchain, which was sort of a false positive. And before that, it was cannabis. And before that, it was Bitcoin. And but now...

This one feels real and this has the possibility of disrupting entire industries. I had breakfast, by the way, with a friend. He has a unicorn. Business is worth almost $2 billion. He has 270 people and he said, Michael, by year end, it's 120.

That's Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of Loeb.nyc, and got to say, a very, very gracious host. We turn now to his Uncharted Community Summit colleague and co-founder, Noah Friedman. He's the CEO of the organization, and he told us why this event is also so special. ♪

The most important thing and the truth of what Uncharted is all about is what's happening right now, which is people just mingling and meeting each other. What we really care about here and what gets me excited as an entrepreneur is environment when I can kind of go up to anybody, shake their hand, say hello, and trust that they're going to be friendly, nice, and more important than someone who I can build with. So I like to think that's what's happening behind me, and I'll get the verdict from you guys and everyone else afterwards if we did our jobs. What's being built right now in the startup ecosystem?

Look, everything with the word AI in it is getting a ton of attention. We talked about this earlier. I think there's a lot of businesses that don't have the word AI in them that are still remarkable companies that are getting a shockingly low amount of attention. And so you have this barbell happening. I particularly am kind of on both sides of it. My fund invests in alcohol and consumer vice, which is there's some AI, but that's pretty antithetical. And on the other side, I'm personally investing and trying to start companies in the AI space as well.

Most of the people here, I can guarantee you, if you ask them what's on your mind right now as a founder, AI is going to be obvious and it's a natural thing to say. And I think that's top of mind for a lot of founders right now.

When everybody's saying that, I think this is something, did we talk about it with Michael or I'm trying to think, we've had so many good conversations here, this idea that there's just so much coming at us with an AI connection that ultimately the dust is going to settle. There's going to be some really big winners and losers. How do you as an investor who's also looking at these opportunities or an entrepreneur,

trying to start something up. How do you figure out which way to go? It's a great question. Look, I think that there's an unbelievable power law that's playing out here. I've said this a lot and I'm going to continue to say it. I think that despite the fact that there is about to be so much money made in AI, an unbelievable tidal wave of innovation and opportunity, there's a lot of people who are going to get absolutely smoked, right? And the reason for that is that there's a lot of people who out of necessity

based on funds that have raised money from LPs that are expecting them to deploy, are trying to rush into rounds for businesses with basically a deck and an idea at $50 million pre-money valuations or sometimes even higher. Sometimes that will work. Often it will not. And so I think that you have an interesting dynamic now where founders have a ton of power if they're willing to build an AI.

And I think that that plays nicely to the founder. So as an investor, as an entrepreneur, I'm thinking about how I can create leverage out of myself, use AI tools to get more out of Noah, more out of a small team and create unbelievable levels of efficiency. But I think like entrepreneurship as a whole, AI really is going to expose people. It's a meritocracy. If you are good enough to figure out how to use AI, there's an unbelievable opportunity at handwriting.

There's been a lot of talk of AI today. I want to talk about booze. Let's do it. I'm curious about where you see opportunity right now because we're seeing a real rise in non-alcoholic beers, non-alcoholic drinks. I mean, it's not weird to go and order a mocktail anymore. It used to be something that kids did at bar and bat mitzvahs, but that's actually happening in bars around New York City. What are the other vices and vice-type categories that you're investing in? Because it seems like there's this really movement away from vice.

So I'll tell you right now, I have a potentially controversial opinion that the notion of betting against alcohol is a bad idea. I think alcohol for a long time has proven that it's remarkably resilient. This is not the first time and it won't be the last time that we hear headlines indicate that no one's drinking anymore. It is just not true. If you take the actual trajectory of alcohol consumption and sales over the last 50 years, it basically was a straight line north every single year where the only thing we knew is that it was going to be higher next year than it was the previous year. In COVID, it spiked like crazy. Everybody started drinking like fish.

And everything went to the moon. And so all the manufacturers made more, the distributors bought more, the retailers ordered more because consumers were buying more. And then lockdowns ended and people said, you know what? I should get healthy. I should try longevity. I should focus on saunas and optimizing my sleep. I think that's a moment in time. I believe in the longevity space, but we've had a slight dip

an all time high, which has created this compression in the market where it's creating all these headlines and the indication that people are not drinking more. It's really just a reset. And if you actually look at the sales in 2024 and 2025, they're higher than they were in 2019. So my personal hypothesis

and we're investing accordingly is that yes, non-alcohol is real, it's interesting, but booze is and will continue to be a deeply important part of the American and global psyche, economy, and so many other things. I also think at the same time, nicotine pouches, super, super interesting, huge opportunity there. We're investing THC beverages, huge opportunity there.

Look, consumers and humans at the most fundamental level put the market aside. They need escapism. They need social connectivity. They need connection. And until there's other commercially reasonable and available things like alcohol and nicotine and THC that can solve for it, there's going to be a lot of money to be made in those spaces. All right. But something like non-alcoholic beer, I mean, substantial growth. Some reports indicating a nearly 415% increase from 2018 to 2024 in retail sales. And mind you, it's coming from maybe...

a smaller bottom but having said that are you not playing in that space we haven't we haven't yet i think if i had to guess in my in my funds i think we'll make a couple a couple bets in the space i just think i think it behaves distinctly differently than traditional alcohol and vice i think there is a market for it my personal bet is that we are probably near the top i do think any beer is going to continue to grow i think any beer is probably the best use case for it i think any cocktails are a little bit tougher any wines a little bit tougher i don't quite get it

On the nicotine pouches. Yeah. You know, I've heard of some of the sort of direct consumer startups like the Lucy's, for example. We're investors. How do you compete with Zinn, though? I mean, we're talking Philip Morris International. We're talking about billions and billions of dollars. Yeah, Zinn is the 10,000-pound gorilla in the room. They have more money than they know what to do with. The reality is, and this goes into a fundamental piece as I have, consumers are inherently promiscuous. I think they are excited to try new things. When you have a market that is...

it is and is going to continue to be as big as nicotine pouches are, there just has to be room for more. And so my thesis in bed is that yes, Philip Morris has crushed it. Unbelievable acquisition was in and they're doing a great job.

By definition, all the other big tobacco players and even I'm willing to bet that a lot of the booze companies as well are going to say, you know what, this is a huge market that behaves similarly to alcohol in many ways. We need to play there. Thanks to Uncharted's Noah Friedman and Michael Loeb. Coming up on Bloomberg Business Week, more of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit that was held just recently in Southampton, Long Island. It's an annual event.

Up next, a serial entrepreneur involved in the early days of the changing fintech landscape. You know, such things as PayPal and Intuit. Bill Harris is coming up next. This is Bloomberg.

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This is a special holiday edition of Bloomberg Businessweek featuring some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit held recently in Southampton, Long Island. And I've got to say, this next guest needs no introduction. Okay, you promised we'd talk to a serial entrepreneur who has a ton of experience in the fintech space. I want to bring in Bill Harris. He's a longtime fintech executive. He's founded or led several personal finance companies. He's also a founder of a company called Fintech.

Think from companies such as Intuit, PayPal as well. He was the founding CEO there. He ran TurboTax. He founded Personal Capital. You remember just a few years ago, that was bought by Empower. Right. So he knows a thing or two about how people are using...

these apps these days. All right. Now that the event is underway, I'm just curious, anybody you've talked to, any interesting conversations that you've had so far? Well, sure. You know, the most interesting fellow here is, of course, Michael Loeb. And I've known him actually for now, I talked to him just a moment ago, 40 years. 40 years ago, we worked together in the magazine industry, which of course is no longer. But he did a subscription business, right? That Time Warp.

That's right. But first, we worked together at Time Inc., and then he left to go build the subscription business that he sold back to Time Inc. Kind of fascinating. Can we just go there for a minute? Sure. Media, the changes that we have seen in content, production, where you get it. I don't know. Who would have thought? I mean, I used to do subscriptions, right, in terms of magazines and various newspapers. We don't do that anymore. Where do you think it's all going? Yeah.

Well, finance and media are the two industries most profoundly changed by digital technology because they are all just figments of our imagination. And you can create them with no assets, just your mind. And so what happened, though, is that media, the tsunami of digitization, hit media fast. And old media came crumbling down. And new media, obviously, has just

done nothing but the upward tilt.

It has not yet happened, generally speaking, in financial services. And you still have the same 50-year-old, 100-year-old, 150-year-old firms that dominate. And so that industry is now ripe for digitization. A lot of folks are working to digitize that industry. You've been working in that for decades at this point. But it's a very lucrative industry. It's also very sticky when it comes to the way people manage their assets. They don't want to...

move advisors. They don't want to move firms. I think especially high net worth individuals still feel like they want somebody to talk to. And that service comes with fees, 80 basis points, 120 basis points. Those fees eat into returns. This is something that you've been working on for years. You did it at Personal Capital. What are you doing now at Evergreen Wealth? We're doing two things. We're doing wealth management, wealth management for people who have, let's say, investable assets of a million to five.

And these are people who don't get the kind of white glove service that people who have $10, $20, $100 million do. And so what they need is somebody who can take the tax and investment principles that the people who have more money utilize because they have tax attorneys and all the rest.

and then look for someone who can use technology to make that scalable, and in fact, precision engineering to make it even better than traditional wealth managers deliver. If we do that, we can give them better pre-tax return and then better after-tax return, because that's the thing that everyone forgets. Can everybody benefit by this?

Yes, absolutely. Everyone who has sufficient resources that the tax impact is meaningful. And so a couple of hundred thousand dollars to a couple of million dollars, yes, you should absolutely be managing your investment portfolio in a tax-aware way. You're the founding CEO of PayPal. We

We talk a lot about the PayPal mafia, those folks. We've spoken to Reid Hoffman, David Sachs. These guys really don't need any introduction. Elon Musk, of course, is among them. To what extent are these folks still in your universe right now? Well,

For the most part, we've gone separate ways. Even many of the people within the so-called mafia. I've moved from Silicon Valley to Miami, so I have sort of a new set of people that I'm working with. Some of them have, too. Some have, yes, that's right. And some of them have moved back to San Francisco, too. Maybe Texas, some of them as well. Okay, so on that, and sort of on payments, I thought of you the other day because the crypto firm Kraken. Yes.

Is launching this competitor to Venmo and to the Cash app essentially using the blockchain to transfer money? And I'm wondering how you look at that. As somebody who really pioneered technology for sending money over the Internet, is the blockchain, is crypto really going to disrupt that? I think the blockchain is very good for some purposes. I don't have much use for it.

cryptocurrency, because we have plenty of currencies that are very good. But the blockchain can do a heck of a lot, particularly on international money movement, because we're looking at SWIFT, which takes at least a day, sometimes multiple days, to get significant money moved from America to Singapore. And with the right crypto networks, you can do it like that. That easy? Sure.

And that fast. So it sounds like Western Union gets disrupted in a situation like that. That's what it sounds like to me. Not quite, because Western Union is all about the last mile. And Western Union is doing lots of little payments. And in most of the world, it's actually agents, physical agents, who are taking the money and giving out the money. So that's a very different thing. But if you're doing bank-to-bank payments or business-to-business payments... So the big guys. The big guys. Yeah. Yeah.

So does it happen eventually? Oh, yes. Yeah. Yeah. There is no reason whatsoever in this day and age it should take multiple days to get money from here to there. Amen. I mean, we were doing it 25 years ago. Yeah. We were moving money instantly, skittering it around the world at PayPal. It's not that hard. So are there going to be big players in it?

I don't know. I don't follow... I'm just curious. I don't follow what's happening. You know, Ripple took a stab at it for a while, but I haven't heard anything about that in a while, so I don't know. What a... You know, just got about 30 seconds here. I mean...

AI is obviously the trend that everybody talks about in terms of its impact. Is there anything else, though, outside of AI? Or is it really just about artificial intelligence, which is not a new thing, but it's certainly on a different level today? So I'll just say quickly, in what I'm doing, Evergreen Wealth, we're doing two things. First of all, we're using AI to revolutionize how financial advice can be delivered. But the other important thing we're doing is bringing tax considerations into investment management, because it's not what you earn, it's what you keep that

that counts. That's former PayPal CEO Bill Harris speaking with us at Michael Loeb's annual Uncharted Summit. Another guest we heard from at the event, Allie McCartney. She is Managing Director, Private Wealth Management at UBS. And she started off by telling us why she comes to this event. So UBS and I traffic at the intersection in liquidity events and individuals. And so what does that mean? That's entrepreneurship.

And so one of the beautiful things about this event and about our partnership with it is Michael Loeb opened by saying, this is a celebration of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurialism. Right? And so if you go through all of the things that are happening in our world today, all of the trends, deglobalization being a big one. Right. Right. Where does wealth come from in this country? It's intellectual property. It is 6 million businesses founded last year. It is being at these events and investing.

having funders and founders meet, providing very valuable networking opportunities. And for us to be able to be supportive of that community full stop is really the bread and butter of what we do at UBS. Does it give you new opportunities to bring new money into your firm? Or is it more like, okay, when I'm allocating my clients assets, I'm thinking about these alternatives because I talked about these types of businesses.

with people at this conference? So yes and yes. I would say there are three things it does. It is certainly a prospecting, rich environment in terms of there are people here who obviously we know the numbers of the success of startups and franchises, but some of these people are going to be the next unicorns, right? So there's that. The second is it allows me to learn about AI or why the founder of Tesla founded Tesla and what he's thinking about now.

And then the third thing is it allows me to find new opportunities for myself and my clients to be outside of this environment, both educated and proximate to the new trends that are driving sort of where the puck is and how we'll invest for sure.

You know, it's funny you say the founder of Tesla because Elon Musk was not actually the founder, was he? So it was very funny because the first panel was someone who's just been seven months in the White House. Yeah. And so Elon Musk was the topic of conversation there. And then the next man after was the founder of Tesla who I thought... Martin Eberhardt. Who very...

decided not to answer that question. You know, what's funny too is, and I think about wealth management, you do have, I'm assuming as clients, a lot of folks that are founders and whether they're looking to sell their company, find a deal, or maybe you have other clients who have money they want to put to work and they want to have a piece of a company. A lot of that is what goes on.

Oh, a lot of that is what goes on. So I think like if you think about the path of a founder of an entrepreneur, right, you have an idea. There's something disruptive. There's some challenge or problem you're trying to solve in the world. And, you know, we were learning today that most people self fund that by using credit cards, personal assets, and their 401k, right? They make less than $100,000 for years and years and years. And they are just so embedded in

in their company and the mission and the branding that they're not thinking about the tax consequences, whether they can take advantage of qualified small business stock. Could the business be stuck in a marriage in court and decided by the state of California or Florida if they don't have a prenup? So all of the, so what we do is we say, look, if you are extremely successful, you're

you're going to get to a liquidity point where some lawyer or some general counsel or Anderson tax is going to say, have you talked about the planning and the, this, and at that point you can maybe add a couple percent of value. But if you can find these people as they're stuck in what I call the, the valley of death, sort of that middle part of building a business and you can get,

an hour with them just to say there are a couple things we can do from an investment perspective, an entity perspective, and a tax perspective that if you are as successful as you think you are, you can protect yourself and investors and you can make your net much bigger than what it would be otherwise. As you know, entrepreneurs are not focused on this stuff when they're starting a company. So if they haven't taken advantage of

something like the QSBS. But if they didn't set up the business that way initially, can they change it to actually get that benefit? It becomes increasingly difficult as you take in capital, you have more LPs, et cetera. But there are many, many ways to do it. And I think most people know about that $10 million headline number. So I've seen many, many times that protected. Our goal is to try to be in front of entrepreneurs and support them

but to try to get them either to think about, which is really challenging, or get them to sort of open up themselves to allowing someone to act on their behalf, even when they're not there yet.

That's Ali McCartney, Managing Director, Private Wealth Management at UBS. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, more from our visit to Michael Loeb's Uncharted Conference in the Hamptons. Up next, a check on the health and activity of capital markets with someone who knows a lot about it, has a front row seat. He is the Vice Chair of the New York Stock Exchange. That's next. This is Bloomberg.

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This is a special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week featuring some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit. It was held recently in Michael Loeb's backyard in the Hamptons. At the summit was Michael Harris. He has his finger on the pulse of what is going on when it comes to publicly held companies, old issues and new issues that have come to market, such as IPOs. He's vice chairman and global head of markets at the New York Stock Exchange. Last time we spoke with you was at another event.

Equally as beautiful, by the way. Equally as beautiful. Downtown New York. That was back in early March. A lot has happened since then. We've kind of had a round trip when it comes to equity markets. There were some concerns a few weeks after we spoke about companies pulling their IPOs as a result of what was happening with trade. Those IPOs, they ended up happening in May and June. How would you describe the environment right now? I mean, I think...

The round trip that you described is exactly the way to think about it. We've seen a complete 180-degree turn in terms of sentiment, in terms of where the market backdrop is, and it's playing out in the IPO market on a couple of different factors. On one hand, we're seeing the subscription levels in terms of interest on IPOs are through the roof. So these deals that are coming to the marketplace are multiple times oversubscribed interest from a wide range of investors.

The second part of it is when they do come to the market, the actual pricing outcomes are oftentimes very much in the favor of the issuers. And then the third part of it is the performance, which you mentioned just now. The performance on day one, the follow-through in the aftermarket all the way through the offer to today's performance.

has been absolutely phenomenal. So that really keeps the cycle in terms of investor interest continuing to go. And so what we're seeing that play out is really in our backlog. So we see a very active summer. We see an active September. And we think it's going to be a very active 2025 going forward. What does that backlog look like? You say active. I mean, how backed up is it? And how eager are these that are backed up ready to go?

Yeah, well, you know, for the first part, you're seeing on one hand a lot of companies that were delaying their IPOs because of some of the tensions that happened in the beginning part of the year. So some of them have taken a step back and they were kind of waiting to see on one hand just what happened from a geopolitical standpoint, how things are playing out in terms of just the tensions that were in the air.

And also they're waiting to see from the investor community what the reception was going to be for some of the more recent crop of IPOs. So we've gotten those results. Those results have been, in many cases, much better than they thought they would be. And so they're now ready to push forward.

The other part of it is what we're seeing now is a much more diverse array of companies that are going public. You know, when you and I talked, we were talking about who would be the most likely companies to go public and they would be likely the more defensive names. Now we're seeing that start to broaden out. So our pipeline looks more diverse now.

than it was back in March. It looks also for larger companies that are also going to be coming. So really, in all respects, it tends to be a very healthy outcome. How has that pipeline diversity shifted in recent years? I remember when I spent three, four years working from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange as a reporter. And there was a period in 2017, 2018 where

No joke, no exaggeration. Almost every other day, there was a Chinese company going public in the United States. These were companies we had never heard of. There were companies that we haven't heard from since. I mean, it was really, really wild times. Then there was this crackdown on a lot of these companies that were listed from China in the U.S. Yeah. Has that business completely dried up for you? I mean, Xi'an has filed confidentially.

to IPO in Hong Kong. We saw that today. You know, it's interesting. There's still a class of companies that are, for the most part, micro-cap in nature. A lot of them domiciled in China that are still coming public. That's a class of companies that, quite frankly, we at the New York Stock Exchange really don't really look to.

Some of our competitors tend to focus on that market. And we've seen a number of articles, whether it's from the Wall Street Journal or Financial Times or others, that have really pointed to some of the problems that have become as a result of that. So that's not something we really focus on. But we are still seeing some of those companies come to the public markets. But I think there's some challenges with that. And there's going to probably continue to be challenges with that going forward. But still out of China? Yeah.

Some. Are they choosing to list in other areas of the world? Yeah, you know, it depends a little bit on market cap. It depends on the sector. I think what you are seeing is a bit of a preference for many companies just for liquidity. So the U.S. market still continues to be a place where they would like to list. But for larger names, the home markets continue to be also very attractive. You know, cattle being a great example of that early in the year. Sheehan looking to Hong Kong relative to London.

So depending on the name, depending on the sector, depending on the specifics of those companies, home markets can also be a very viable alternative too. Michael, in some of the cases with the IPOs, we've really seen quite a pop in that first day of trading, right? That's a good sign. You know, we want to see that as certainly...

a company that's going public wants to see that, but it always begs the question, were they too conservative in, you know, the numbers that they put out there? I am curious, what are the conversations that you're hearing from those folks in those companies that are looking to go public? Are they, would they rather be a little conservative going in and making sure that that's a good first day of trading? Yeah. You know, I think when you,

talk to people in the world of IPOs, whether they're bankers or lawyers, you know, it's often talked about being more of an art than a science. And I think there is a little bit of truth to that. Yeah. There's a balancing act that always has to happen. And also companies that are investors, rather, they're going to be supporting the company from a liquidity perspective. And there's a balance of the two in the aftermarket.

And the reality is, until you actually get to that stage where you're in the pricing room and you're actually confronting with management in terms of what the dynamics look like, it's sometimes tough to tell. And so I think the underwriters do a great job of being able to offer what those tradeoffs are going to be to management teams. Ultimately, the management teams are the ones that have to make those really tough decisions. But I always think about it in terms of the IPO process. Ultimately, it's

a day one event. And really what management teams, what their stakeholders need to focus on is really trying to set up a company for success over the long term and not focus on necessarily the day one performance. Obviously you want a great pricing outcome, but really you're managing this company for the long haul. It's not really just for the day one IPO event. Can you give us an update on the New York Stock Exchange Texas?

Launched this year. We talked about it back in March. Yeah, yeah. We have, you know, multiple companies that are now listed there. We have a pretty fairly healthy pipeline of companies that are going to be going listing on the exchange over the next several months. We are very close to signing a lease in Dallas. It's really continuing to take on momentum. And so we really are excited about it. Do you think it's perhaps a hedge in New York City losing its place?

when it comes to capital markets. And I asked this, kind of came into sharp relief this week with, I think a lot of people would argue, with what happened in the Democratic primary for the mayoral election. We certainly have a lot of outspoken billionaires who've talked about concerns when it comes to capital markets here in New York and the position of New York City as being the epicenter of Wall Street. Yeah, I mean, for Texas, the way that we've thought about it is when we look at our own listed community,

and we look at the number of companies in terms of where they're domiciled, Texas really stands out. It tends to be the area where we have the most number of companies from a really diverse range of sectors that are represented. And so when we kind of really thought about it from the perspective of what Governor Abbott's doing to try to make sure that the ecosystem of companies within Texas is vibrant and intersects with a lot of what we're trying to do in terms of

getting a great environment for our own listed community, it really made sense. So we think about this more from the long-term perspective of offering the best environment for our listed community, less in terms of like a short-term strategy in terms of what might be happening in the New York ecosystem. We still are big believers that New York continues to be a great place for capital raising and also for companies to be domiciled. But longer term then, does that mean, does it expand the model?

It's hard to know. You know, it's really just focused on kind of where we see the greatest opportunity for our community right now. But we're always forward thinking in terms of really trying to see where the greatest opportunity results for our community. That's Michael Harris, vice chairman and global head of markets at the New York Stock Exchange. We also caught up with a shark at the Uncharted Community Summit on Long Island.

Damon John is the founder and CEO of FUBU. And of course, he's also a shark on ABC's reality show Shark Tank. We spoke about how hard it is to start a brand.

It is not easy. Is it getting any easier or is it harder? I feel like it's an environment where anybody can almost have a brand. I do think it's getting harder. I think because you have to find this niche audience, but not only do you have to create the brand itself for your product or services, but you as a CEO and a founder have to be a brand as well. What does that mean? Well,

Well, that means that people would not only want to know why they're investing in the brand or the product or buying it. What story does that brand or product have? As well as founders, who are you? You know, I always say on Shark Tank that, you know, none of us are original. I mean, there's a million real estate agents. There's only one Barbara Corcoran. A lot of people own sports teams, Mark Cuban, clothing line. You know how many people...

We had created personal brands and then our brands now walk into the room before we do when we want to raise capital, when we want to make decisions, when we want to defend the fact that somebody's saying negative about our brand and our company and affecting our payroll and our amazing staff that works for us. Do you think you could create FUBU today?

Absolutely. 100%. But today's FUBU... It's a completely different environment. Today's FUBU would be different, right? There's no... It's not new to have four young African-American men designing for their own market. So what would FUBU be today? I would probably do more of the Avon type of thing where I would have one male, one female in a college and a high school. They would get probably about $1,000 worth of FUBU on credit for about $300, probably underwritten by hopefully somebody great.

And the more they sell, they would get more digital curriculums and various other things. And very much of an Avon model. So I would have, hopefully, 2 million sales reps around the world. It's so interesting that you say that because the retail environment has completely changed. It's done. It's done. Yeah. Completely done. You know, I've been to 56 trade shows this year. You know, I speak at a lot of shows and...

The traffic besides the franchise show and maybe the medical tech show, it is one-third of the traffic at these shows because these retailers are now dying. They're not walking in the door. You know who's walking in? It's a bunch of kids or people, influencers, could be grand influencers, who are now doing live selling, whether on Amazon or TikTok or whatnot. And that's what's happening.

Live selling. That's something that I think is very familiar to people in China, but not necessarily familiar to many people in the U.S., at least yet. Explain exactly what that is. Well, live selling is you go on. I'll give you an example. There's an app called Whatnot, right? And people have 20-second auctions for one little device or, let's say, a piece of makeup.

Sell it for about $12. Now, they can do this three separate times in one minute. So they make a profit of about $4 every time they sell it. So now all of a sudden, $12 a minute. You times that, because now they have friends coming on everything. You times that by 16 hours a day.

And that's what's happening because then when people buy it, now you know who the client is and the customer. You can sell it to them again. Remember, there's only three ways to ever deal with a customer. Acquire a new one, upsell a current one, or make one buy more frequently. That's why you want to supersize everybody's fries. And now you know who they are. They can upsell them or buy more frequently. That's Damon John, founder and CEO of FUBU and, of course, one of the sharks on ABC's Shark Tank.

And that wraps up our first hour of this special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Coming up in the next 60 minutes, more from our visit to the Uncharted Community Summit held recently in Southampton. We'll talk about investing in women's health issues with Jessica Kamada. She's founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures.

Plus more from our hosts, Michael Loeb and Noah Friedman, who come back to discuss investing principles in the VC world. This is Bloomberg Business Week. I'm Carol Masur along with Tim Stenevek. Stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.

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Welcome to a special holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week and happy 4th of July. We continue with our recent live broadcast from Southampton, Long Island. We were at the annual Uncharted Community Summit, an annual gathering of more than 500 members of the startup community. And over the next 60 minutes, we continue to bring some of our favorite chats from the event. We'll hear from someone that runs an incubator for disruption in the tech sector and another investor targeting women's health specifically.

First up this hour, though, I was joined by Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney to get some background on the event that you've been hearing about and hearing conversations from in the last hour. Event host Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of Loeb.nyc. You heard about him in the last hour. And also Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted. They both joined us for a bit of a roundtable on the initial idea behind Uncharted.

So what the intention is, is that Noah and I started building Uncharted about four years ago. It was in the teeth of COVID when nobody was getting together with anybody else. And we started having dinners at my house in the city and was very popular. And what the thesis is, is that entrepreneurs need as much support as they can get, including emotional support. And

The best way to do that is put entrepreneurs in a room with other entrepreneurs. And they are, as a class, they drive the economy, drive jobs, drive wealth. And yet they're, I think, underappreciated. And as a serial entrepreneur myself, and actually one or two things worked, I'm very...

empathetic and just with all the miles on the tires i am kind of a senior statesman by definition right this is a young guy's game i say that i have the privilege of working with people half my age and twice as smart i used to say that now it's three times as smart and one-third my age but that was the intention and it's grown to a tribe of maybe 2500

entrepreneurs of which about a third of them show up to this. So we will have about 800 today. Noah, come on in on this. You're the CEO of Uncharted too, right? And so we're seeing things being set up. There's going to be a lot of great conversations and speakers going on. Tell us what it's been grown into and what kind of conversations are going to be happening later on. The common thread of everything that we've done at Uncharted since the first dinner on May 20th, 2021, and I'll never forget it,

Was it just you two, by the way? Just us two at dinner? Yeah, it was just us two. We just sat and talked for four hours, and here we go. No, we also held hands. We did hold hands the whole time. Yeah, it was very romantic. No, we had about 20 entrepreneurs around the table, kind of eight of each of our friends and then a couple others, if you will. Look, the common thread of every single event we've done, whether it's our dinners or the

The past three summits or the breakfast we've done has always been trying to create safe spaces for real entrepreneurs, founders, exceptional participants in the entrepreneurial community, as we say, to truly drop their guard, drop their hair, and trust that they're in an environment where they can speak openly and honestly. Any entrepreneur or anyone who's building and really doing it, the real ones, hopefully this will resonate when they hear it. It is really...

hard. It's very hard to build businesses. It's really hard to play this game at the high level. And I think if we can offer a rare environment where people can feel like they are amongst their true peers or they can really drop their guard and connect with people in a place where no matter who you go talk to, they're all going to be exceptional, it

It's special. And so we've really tried to guard the energy. We've really tried to keep the sanctity of the fact that if you come to an Uncharted event, you're going to meet someone amazing. And that's really been the common thread. I just want to say, it's a reminder that like Google, Apple, all of these companies that are now, you know, the biggest market caps that are out there and that we talk about, you know, all the time. I mean, they all started as an idea, an entrepreneur. And that's the point. Yeah, 100%. And if you look at kind of success rates and everything else,

if you're an entrepreneur, if you really knew all that stuff, why would you do this? Because the failure rate is incredibly high, hours are incredibly long, the pay is dreadful until it's not, until you have a big score. But the number of big scores is very, very small. And there's so many forces and so many exogenous things that are anti-entrepreneur that we wanted to have a sanctuary here

that other entrepreneurs can meet other entrepreneurs. And Noah, you're fond of saying that not a week or two goes by where we don't get a phone call saying, I met my co-founder here two years ago. Yep.

That's pretty cool. Noah, what are the areas that are of most interest to entrepreneurs today? Is it technology? Is it healthcare? Are there certain industries that are getting most of the attention? Look, I think the obvious buzzword that you can't go too far in any of the news cycles of the hearing is AI. And I think that unlike other cycles that have come and went and entered the zeitgeist and left, this one feels very real. I can tell you that amongst all my friends, whether they're in CPG, health tech,

Pure AI, deep tech, what have you tech, all of them are thinking explicitly about how AI is going to impact their business if they're not already in it, how they're going to get into it. So I think we're certainly going to talk about that a lot. I think it's top of mind for a lot of people. The movement is real. I think that the implications and repercussions are unclear how it's going to land right now, but everybody's thinking about it and they should be. But I think it's unclear, but it's going to be broad. It's going to be broad. Absolutely. It's going to be broad. And you mentioned cycles. I've been around for a few.

This reminds me of the late 90s where the Internet happened and we had a lot of false starts two, three years ago. Everybody was talking about NFTs before that blockchain, before that cannabis, before that, you know, something else. But this feels like another eruption.

This feels like another advent of the Internet, one that we haven't had in three years. On the same level, no doubt about it, or even more. I think on the same level. I mean, it's hard to project and predict. But I had breakfast with a heroic entrepreneur a couple of days ago. He has built a business now worth $1.8 billion. And over breakfast, he says, I have 270 people by year end.

It's going to be 120. Yeah. Okay. Interesting. I would add to that, if I may. Sorry. I think that there's this interesting tension with AI right now where I think Michael's right, and I would even argue that this might – I didn't live through the late 90s period of seeing it at least. Okay. You're done. Out. Out. Thanks for having me, guys. You're done.

You're done. That and the letting your hair down type of thing. I'm just trying to take shots all day at this guy. Why do you work with him? I know. It's crazy. Everyone asks me that. But I think there's an inherent tension where I actually think it could be more disruptive. And at the same time, I do think that there's a lot of people who are betting big dollars on AI that are going to get wiped out because I think there's going to be an absolute power law dynamic here where a small select group of companies at the top end

aggregate a ton of power and resource. I also think it's going to be a barbell where on the bottom end, you know, I've invested personally in companies that have like two or three people on the team and have rocketed to millions in ARR because they're able to get 10x productivity if it's a killer founder. So I think there's a barbell thing happening right now where the killer founders who actually know how to leverage resources are going to crush it as are the big businesses. Well, because of that and what AI can do, generative AI and so on, I mean, does it give entrepreneurs even more opportunities to start up? We talked about that after the pandemic. Basically,

Create a website and you can go. 100%. And maybe that's simplifying things. But does AI kind of have a multiplier effect, too, on entrepreneurial activities? Without a doubt. I think that's right. And opportunities. I think that's right. And if you just look at what has happened over the years, there's –

It used to be that if you built a business, a brand new business in the Internet, you needed hundreds of people. And now that's really compressed to just a few. But to Noah's point, there's going to be winners and there's going to be a lot of losers. And it's very hard to predict. Michael, talk to us about monetization. I'm not seeing a lot of IPOs. I'm not seeing a lot of M&A. How do these great entrepreneurs monetize the value they've created?

That's a great question. I would say that everything you just mentioned is part of a cycle, and we're just in that type of cycle where everything is a little bit bollocked up. But, you know, we're going to be on the other side of that, and there's going to be some great companies built around

And there's going to be some great flame outs. A lot of people are going to lose a lot of money and then there's going to be a few that are going to be extraordinarily successful. But to your point, we can build it now with instead of 300 people, three. And there's been predictions that there's going to be a unicorn with all of three people.

Seriously? Yeah, I buy that. Okay, that kind of makes sense. And we've started to see IPOs actually in general come to market, and it's a much more favorable market. I've got to ask you, I think we'd be remiss, of the macro that's going on and different policies and the world being upended and geopolitics. What does that do for the entrepreneur who's trying to, you know, we know it can be lean and mean in the beginning when it comes to a startup. What about some of these macro issues? What would be more helpful to them? What kind of environment? Okay.

Well, anything that helps with capital formation, anything that kind of reduces regulation, I was hopeful that this administration would attack some of that stuff and maybe not tariffs. But anyway. It's still early. It's still early. We're here now. They are very active and very proactive. And I'm just hopeful that what you really want to give is entrepreneurs just charter. I mean, let them do their thing.

as much as you can. And our hope is, by the way, that this environment, believe it or not, will put a dent in that world, right? That they will find support here in many different ways. Well, I always think it's kind of amazing how much time we spend. And obviously, this is our world, right? The publicly held markets, right? This is what we track, you know, all the movements. But we talk constantly about the importance of small business and startups in terms of the backbone. And I just think it kind of gets lost a little bit.

Yeah, I do think, though, that you're going to see AI upend just about every industry. And I think those big companies are going to find themselves woefully behind, and they're going to have no choice but to make some acquisitions. Well said.

Is it out there for entrepreneurs today? It is, but I think that you're seeing an interesting dynamic with the VCs and private equity that they're chasing a lot of trends almost blindly. The fact that right now there are really good businesses that don't have the word AI that are struggling to raise money, whereas there's other businesses that have a deck and free seed and barely an idea and are raising money at $50 million pre-money valuations, I think is indicative of what's going on.

Yeah, we saw venture raise. It's been really difficult. It's been very difficult unless you're a credentialed AI founder, have a good idea in the AI space, because there's a lot of VC funds chasing ideas, and I think some of them will work. But the unfortunate reality is I think a lot of them are going to get absolutely smoked, because they can't all work, especially not at a $50 million pre. So to answer your question directly...

Sure, there's capital out there. I wish there was more. I wish there was more going to more ideas that were based just on meritocracy and their actual traction versus the notion that they have AI. And as bullish as I am on AI and investing in it personally, to be abundantly clear. But it's an interesting moment right now. Very interesting. I will only add that that is not too much different than what we've always seen. True. There's always been the bright, shiny object, and the investors feel like they've got to follow that. Yeah.

Did he really start working for you in high school? Kind of. He's fantastic. Got to start him young. Yeah, got to start him young. We'll talk about that off air. Exactly right. Michael Loeb, thank you so much. Thank you, sir. Michael Loeb, founder, CEO of Loeb.nyc. And Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted. Thank you, gentlemen, for being here and having a great conference today. I hope a lot of great ideas are circled about and a lot of great deals. Thanks for having us. Our thanks to Michael Loeb, founder and CEO of Loeb.nyc. And Noah Friedman, CEO of Uncharted.

Coming up on Bloomberg Business Week, more from our visit to the Uncharted Conference in the Hamptons, held recently in Southampton. Paul Sweeney stays with me as we learn about AI's potential to replace human workers. It's a conversation and narrative that is gaining a lot of momentum. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg.

Thank you.

We'll be right back.

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We're back here on this special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week featuring some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit. It was held recently in Southampton in Michael Loeb's backyard. What we keep hearing from tech leaders, including those at some of the big ones who are talking about Microsoft and Alphabet, how they talk about AI's potential and likelihood to replace human workers. Salesforce, among the latest, noting its internal AI use has allowed it to hire fewer people. Kind of makes you say, uh-oh.

Well, someone who knows a lot about our changing workforce is Cheryl Grice. She is senior partner at the consulting giant EY. She's also global executive sponsor for the EY Entrepreneurial Winning Women's Global Program. She joined me and Paul Sweeney to talk about her first visit. Well, this is your first one, and you have clients and you deal with them. Tell us what you are hoping to get out of this. What are the conversations you're looking to have?

Well, for us, we want to help our entrepreneurs really establish better community, better connections, and access, access to capital in particular. So events like this go a long way to helping them get

scaled in a way that they can't do by themselves. This is like one event that brings it all together in such an amazing way. How do you bring capital and entrepreneurial ideas and talent together? How does that happen? How do you bring it together? Events like this have private investors, private equity, venture capital, bankers, etc. that are looking to find people that fit their mold for what they want to invest in.

And so this is one-stop shopping for hundreds of entrepreneurs to come in and find access like that. And these companies are here for that. You know what I never understand, Cheryl? We always talk about the world being a washing capital. You know, everybody's starting private credit funds. There's plenty of money out there. But why is it so tough for smaller business, for startups? What is it that makes it so tough? I think you have to break down the startup in the population a little bit.

I mean, we often say, and the statistics... It's not one bucket, is what you're saying. It's not one bucket. Statistics haven't changed. For example, only 2% of the world's venture capital goes to females. Wow. So when you can find an event like this and you can give them that kind of access where they can actually...

be ready. Like we do a lot of work at EY to get them ready for those conversations so that they can ask for the capital in a way that the VC wants to provide that capital or a private equity or a bank or a private investor. There's a lot of work that goes into that and not all of the same populations are

A lot of the populations are overlooked. They don't get that same kind of coaching and counsel to be able to find that capital, to be able to ask for it in a way that they'll get it. Carol and I were just talking with Noah Freeman, the CEO of Encharted. He was saying, boy, if you don't have AI in your name,

It's tough to attract capital. It's almost like the late 90s. If you didn't have a dot-com at the end of your company's name, it's tough to raise capital. How are you guys seeing that part of the business? Well, it's not just – it's so funny. There's such an evolution. In the 2000s, it was the Internet and e-commerce. And then you go to 2007 and 2009, and it's all about social media and what are you doing, where everything is transacted from the palm of your hand. And now it's AI.

AI has been around for a long time, but it's AI where how are you using agents and agentic and so forth. To us, digital is a growth engine, but inclusiveness is also a growth engine. So it's not just about digital. It's about the communities that you're getting to to be able to bring digital to life.

So it's relevant. Well, that's really fascinating. You know, when you talk about women, you talk about minorities. And I want to go back to women for a moment because I remember a few years ago, and maybe this was coming off the pandemic, Bloomberg putting out a story that even female venture capitalists weren't really, you know, more prone to maybe support women.

Female entrepreneurs. So again, how do we, is it an education, like I understand what you're saying about like educating entrepreneurs so that when they have to talk to the folks that have the money, like it's the right conversation. But how do we really finally move some of that, whether it's for minorities, for women, really move the needle on that? Because those are pockets of consumers and areas that can provide a lot of economic momentum, a lot of business.

To me, there are three gaps. At EY, we always say there's three gaps. There's do they have the community necessary so that they can...

stick together in their growth agenda and find like-minded people that have been there before so that they can learn from those people. Then there's the capital that we've already talked about and then there's the connections. A lot of the connections are how do you educate yourself and get the right level of insight so that you can talk to a capital provider. Many people don't have that education.

So for us, programs like the ones that we have, like Unchartered have, they're intended to help them get those connections and the insights necessary to get access to those things. VCs don't necessarily go after the underserved or overlooked populations because they just don't know how to communicate yet with the capital providers. Our job is to help them.

What is the real opportunity for you today? What do you think you're hoping to get together today? I want to meet 30 more entrepreneurs that I haven't met and help them with their journeys. My goal is to get them the things that they need so that we're not on the sidelines. We're very much in the mix with them to get them to the next level. 30 seconds, a success story.

A success story. We watched a female entrepreneur who was one of our winning women back in 2015 create an adult beverage company as a school teacher and sell it for undisclosed amount, but we're guessing it's over a billion. Wow. In the last year. That's a success story. That's Cheryl Grice, EY Senior Partner for Global Client Services. Bloomberg's Paul Sweeney sticking around for our next conversation, and that was with Brett Markinson. He is founder and CEO of the InnoVent Capital Group.

His company's website notes that he launched his firm as an incubator and platform for launching businesses that leverage disruptive technology to innovate old ways of doing things. We started by asking Brett what he is hearing from attendees of the Uncharted Community Summit.

Everybody's talking their book. You're listening to the Bloomberg Business Week Daily Podcast. Catch us live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern. Get to know people, learn a little bit about the authenticity connected to how they feel about what they're doing. And I just kind of personally enjoy the origin stories. So I try to spend as much time as I can.

understanding how people got to where they are by way of where they came. All right. It's like a gift when someone says that because I want to talk about your origin story a little bit. Media folks, we're kind of obsessed with media. Take us back to the 90s. You were selling nonlinear digital editing bays to Hollywood in the 1990s. No, but it's like all these things.

shape us. I remember doing paper prompters. I'm going to age myself. It's very different nowadays. So tell us about what that was like and how it does shape your perspective as you see things change. Sure. Well, first of all, like any early stage business, it was brutal. I think what made this

challenging was whenever you're too far in front of something, it's very difficult selling vision to the visionless. And people have a lot invested in the way they're doing things and the way things were. In the case of nonlinear editing, I think what made that so difficult was the editor was very comfortable in the basement by himself with no oversight and not having too much of the producer in over his kind of shoulder telling him how to do things.

And the nonlinear editing system just changed the landscape entirely because now the producer was able to kind of be involved in the editing process. Right. And brought the guy upstairs, surrounded him with a whole bunch of people, and the efficiencies that it brought were incredible and the impact indelible. But to a lot of editors, it really changed the way they thought about what they did and how they did it. Right.

Getting it to take took some time, but like anything, once the dam cracked, it just became a floodgate. Be it the Internet or AI, right? It's kind of the same story. Hey, Brett, you're on a panel today talking about exits. Yes. I haven't seen a lot of IPOs in the last few years. I haven't seen a lot of M&A in the last five years.

How do guys like you and the folks here, they've got an idea, they get it funded, they get it off the ground, and now they're thinking about an exit, a monetization event. Where are we today in that environment? Well, when, you know, I start at the very early stage, a little north of the napkin, I like to call it. And for companies like that,

It oftentimes doesn't make a lot of news in terms of acquisitions, but there's plenty of that stuff happening. In a lot of cases, they're accu-hires that you hear about. So in the end, it really comes down to a couple of very key things. Building a great product.

validating it with solid product market fit, finding and understanding those customers and getting those customers to accept your product and tell other customers. And once you get that flywheel moving, it's kind of a snowball rolling down a hill and it kind of takes on a momentum of its own. And if you reach that

capacity for your business where you are growing and need help, capital finds you. And as capital is hunting for you, so are other larger businesses that want access to your customers and want access to what you're doing. So at the very early stage of things, it's not too difficult to be able to find exit opportunities. It just depends on whether or not you're able to find product market fit and

demonstrate that. How often though is it for an entrepreneur, Brett, is it just tough for them to let go after they've started a company and they realize it's time for them to either sell, merge, I mean in order to take it to the next level? How difficult and how often does that happen where it's just time that they need somebody else to help? It's an

It's an interesting question, but I think the answer is emotional. And I think people with high EQs are capable of seeing that they're in over their head or to get to the next level, they need competence beyond their capability or skill set.

And for some, they just can't see the forest through the trees. And it becomes a very emotional thing. You know, you have a whole persona and identity that has been formed around this thing that you brought to life. You know, I oftentimes think about startups as giving birth to a child in the ICU. Yeah, that's tricky. And it is, you know, your kid's in good hands.

All the appropriate people are there on a 24-7 basis, but it's still touch and go. That's Brett Markinson, founder and CEO of InnoVent Capital Group. Still ahead on Bloomberg Business Week, more from our visit to Michael Loeb's Uncharted conference recently in Southampton. We'll hear about investing in women's health and how Washington policy might be impacting all of that. That's coming up next. This is Bloomberg.

We'll be right back.

♪♪♪

We're back here on our special holiday edition of Bloomberg Business Week, continuing to highlight some of our favorite conversations from the Uncharted Community Summit, which was held recently in Southampton, in fact, in Michael Loeb's backyard. We turn now to Jessica Kamada. She's founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures, a new venture capital firm that's raised a fund to focus on women's health, caregiving, and financial health. We started by asking her what she looks for in a company before deciding to invest.

We're looking at really the course of a woman's lifetime and investing in companies that advance women's health and wealth through pivotal life stages. We see three sectors as really filling the gaps for women over those life stages. So health care, physical health care, caregiving responsibilities on the elder side and early child care, and then financial health.

I want to say good, good, good. Because especially when you get just down to medical health and health care, it's just so behind, even R&D. And it's just amazing even, I don't want to do a blanket statement about professionals in the field, but I just hear over and over again women who go in and it's just things are ignored, said it's not anything, and things that turn out to be things. So how can you through VC, venture, and investing kind of change some of that?

Yeah, absolutely. I think it's a little known fact that we only have 34 years of women's health research. We were only included in clinical trials since 1993 when NIH mandated that. That's crazy. It's insane. So when we go into the doctor's office, it actually...

It's actually just lack of education on MDs' front. I mean, they only get four hours of menopause training in their entire eight years of training. So some of it is not actually their fault, but the research just has to catch up and the education of the system has to catch up. That's just shocking to me. Can I just ask you, is that research being heard by what's been going on in the government and cuts? They...

We are very much looking at the cuts. Yeah. Because I think if they're... They did initially say that they were going to cut a longitudinal study that has been going on for 30 years. They reinstated that until at least January 2026. So we're now watching that. And if they cut it, then we're going to lose...

30 years of longitudinal data that we've been collecting with women over the course of their lifetime. So we are looking at that from a research perspective. But I think what's amazing and where tech comes into play is that these tech companies, especially with AI, are now creating their own data sets to help empower these researchers. So how would it change your opportunities as a venture capitalist if those cuts were to happen?

And if we do see a pullback in funding from Washington, we've already seen a pullback in funding, at least to universities, to research. We talked to a lot of venture capitalists in the biotech space about this. Does that make your job more difficult because there will be fewer founders out there chasing opportunities? Or does it does it shut opportunity, shut opportunities off for you? I think one main one major concern in the research and biotech world and also VCs is just a brain drain.

Like these, you know, the tech companies are built on the research that has been created over the last 30 years or so. Now that we have AI, they can finally do something with that data, create personalized care plans, et cetera. But if the underlying data is not there and that doesn't progress, then it's a lot harder to build on top of it. And...

funding research is not really in the VC model. So we can only fund the companies that are built on top of that research and we have to rely on federal funding, on other grants, on philanthropy to fund the actual research that's underlying. So my concern is that if we're funding companies that are going to be great 10 years from now, then like,

What do I fund 10 years from now if that research doesn't continue at the clip it is today? We're talking with Jessica Kamada, founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures. You initially said it's divided into kind of three buckets, right? You talked about healthcare, you talked about caregiving, you talked financial health. Where are you finding the most kind of entrepreneurs doing things? Is it equal? Are there certain buckets that are, you know, people that are starting different companies? What are you finding? We've funded 20 portfolio companies in this current fund and they're

pretty split evenly among the three sectors. I would say that in the caregiving sector, we're finding the most opportunities in elder care right now just because of the population progression. It's a big play, I feel like, with everything. It's a huge play. And it's also something that is just undoubted. Like, it's a bipartisan issue. No one is going to, you know, say, like, argue that

The population is not aging. Right. So it's something that everyone agrees on and knows that the health care system will be overwhelmed if we do not do something about it. But that's very employee intensive. That's very human intensive. And there's been a lot of commentary about the immigrant labor that actually does a lot of the caregiving of elders in the United States and potentially how that will be affected. Can this be solved with technology? I mean, same with...

With child, like with caregiving for children, like you need people to do that. How do you take a venture capitalist approach to this stuff? Yeah. Part of it is trying to fix the system and finding business models that are aligning all the incentives at play. Because a lot of it is just like incentives, right? And the issue with human caregivers is that it's a ruthless job. There's a lot of high turnover in it.

For example, one company that's here, Ruby Well, they enable family caregivers to get paid through Medicare benefits that already exist.

So it's really about helping people navigate the system that's so tricky and gatekept to figure out. But those dollars are there. They just need help accessing them. And they work with the basically staffing agencies, the home health care agencies that do that work. How easy is it for you to get capital and create funds? She laughs. It was...

Not as challenging as I had expected. However, this was the first environment that I have raised a fund in versus being in market in 2021 when I have heard that dollars were falling from the sky. So one of the things about my thesis is that it's very relatable. Every single human has struggled through a personal, a pivotal life stage, be it a man or a woman. Right. And I think that relatability has helped me to...

for investors to understand what I'm trying to build. But even women specifically, like is there always, it's, it's a little trickier, right? When it's, it's a little tricky issues. I feel like it's a little trickier until you dig in to say, to explain the economic opportunity. I mean, investing in women's health is a $1 trillion market. Um,

320 billion in the US alone. So when you really uncover the numbers behind the opportunity, it's far larger than people expect. And that's typically what I lead with. Yeah. And from a health and from a wealth perspective, when we think about the great wealth transfer already in play,

Yeah, go ahead. Well, I don't mean to sound glib, but if you were to sort of look at the categories that might be the least challenging to disrupt through venture capital and through funding companies, it wouldn't be these categories. I mean, these are categories that are ripe with regulation. Yes. They're categories that aren't necessarily – it's not like you're creating an app.

Sometimes you are. They're human capital intensive, though. This is a really challenging space, I think. Am I wrong about that? See, man's planning to ask. No, you're not. But all venture capital stuff. Thanks, Carol. But this is really tough stuff. But you see the way money is flowing for AI agents and companies that are built on chat GPT. Mm-hmm.

That seems to be the path of least resistance right now. So I was at a consumer AI summit and a lot of the companies were creating like shop, like connecting you to the right clothes and like things that are really fun. And there does need to be fun in consumer. AI does need to be fun to use, but it also needs to be helping like very foundational customers.

human things. And it can do that as well. Sometimes I think in these categories, it doesn't actually need to be flashy. It just needs to solve a problem. For instance, we have some companies that are not that high tech. It's a maternal mental health company where they're just...

providing access to mental health professionals after you have a baby, which is a leading cause of maternal death. And it's like it's not that hard of a concept and it doesn't really require AI. It's just filling a need that didn't exist before. And there are so many more of those in women's health and these categories because they've been so overlooked and underinvested in.

So, yes, we have fancy AI companies like investment platforms directed at Gen Z or like hormonal monitors that you can do at home. But some of them are not as high tech and they don't need to be. What would surprise somebody about investing in this space?

I know you talked about the economics, which I thought was really kind of telling some of the numbers, right? Because when people see, I'm sure hear that they're like, oh, I get it, right? This is a really untapped marketplace. Why aren't we doing more? But I'm just curious as you've been like talking to entrepreneurs, thinking about, you know, initiatives specifically that fall into, you know, women's fields. I think people are surprised at how much deal flow there actually is and how many people are building in these spaces and

Because they're building for themselves. Typically, they're building because they see a need in their own life that was unmet through one of these pivotal life stages. Right. And they don't see anyone else tackling it. And so they go for it themselves. It's funny. That's what Bill Harris said formerly of PayPal. And he said his current investment firm, it was something he wanted, he needed, and that's what he created. It makes the most sense for entrepreneurs to be doing that.

That's Jessica Kamada, founder and managing partner at Swizzle Ventures. You can hear all of our conversations from the event. Just head to Bloomberg.com or check out our podcast feed. And that wraps up the weekend edition, a special holiday weekend edition of Bloomberg Business Week from Bloomberg Radio. Thank you so much for joining us. Be sure to tune in to Bloomberg Business Week daily, Monday through Friday, starting at 2 p.m. Wall Street time on Bloomberg Television, Bloomberg Radio, and on Sirius XM Channel 121.

You can listen to us on Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. It's free in the Apple App Store or on Google Play. You can also watch our daily broadcast on YouTube. Just search Bloomberg Podcasts. We're simulcast on Bloomberg Originals, available at Bloomberg.com slash originals, and streaming platforms including Roku, Amazon Fire TV, Samsung TV Plus, and more.

Find our Bloomberg Businessweek daily podcast at Bloomberg.com, Apple, or wherever you get your podcast. And the latest edition of the magazine available on newsstands now at Bloomberg.com and always on the Bloomberg Terminal. I'm Carol Masur, along with Tim Stenevek. Have a good and safe weekend, a happy holiday weekend, and do stay with us. Today's top stories and global business headlines are coming up right now.

This is the Bloomberg Businessweek Daily Podcast, available on Apple, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts. Listen live weekday afternoons from 2 to 5 p.m. Eastern on Bloomberg.com, the iHeartRadio app, TuneIn, and the Bloomberg Business app. You can also watch us live every weekday on YouTube and always on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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Bloomberg Businessweek Weekend - July 4th, 2025