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The following transcript was created using artificial intelligence. There will be some grammatical errors below.

00:01:11:00 – 00:01:28:26

Richard Carthon: Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Crypto Current. Your host here Richard Carthon. And today I have a special guest all the way out in Boston that is helping to run a really cool crypto venture fund. We have Rob Fresca, who’s a managing partner with Cosmo X. How are you doing today?

00:01:29:08 – 00:01:31:14

Rob Frasca: I’m doing great. Thanks for having me here today.

00:01:32:04 – 00:01:53:11

Richard Carthon: I am excited to speak with you about all the different things that you’re going to see in the market. What I’ve learned through people who are in funds, you get to see really, really amazing projects and you’re getting to see kind of the latest and greatest as it relates to innovations in all kinds of different verticals within crypto. But before we unpack all of that first one to learn a little bit more about you, can you give us a little bit of background about yourself?

00:01:53:26 – 00:02:30:28

Rob Frasca: Yeah, actually, great to be here. I’m a serial entrepreneur. I’ve been I’m a dot com guy. I’ve been building companies since 1993. I used to be a Navy pilot and I flew off carriers. I was over at Carnegie Mellon and this is back in the nineties, and I started the very first financial service on the Internet, first stock called server, first mutual funds say I used I put Charles Schwab on the net when I was when I was 29, I sold that company to Intuit and worked for Scott Cook and Bill Harris and Bill Campbell back then.

00:02:31:11 – 00:03:05:18

Rob Frasca: Then another company sold it in the air space, sold it to Lycos. Most people don’t even know what Lycos is. The number it was the number two portal behind Yahoo! A lot of people are, you know, Yahoo! Was like way before Google. And we took that company public and then sold it to Telefonica. I did another company in the video game space voice over IP copy box purchased by Unity. So I’ve been doing startups for a long time, more than 30 years, and I run today co-founder of a firm called Cosmo Ventures.

00:03:06:01 – 00:03:38:23

Rob Frasca: And we have a Blockchain Opportunities Venture fund that’s actually tokenized itself. It’s called Cosmo X dot com. And we we did about 2023 deals last year, investments in the space. So what we try to do is really get in early. So we try to get in before tokens or before the company even goes liquid super, super early. Obviously when you get in so early, you’re getting it really at a discount to to the market.

00:03:39:24 – 00:03:41:14

Rob Frasca: And that’s that’s what we’re all about.

00:03:41:27 – 00:03:55:00

Richard Carthon: Right. Well, that’s really cool. So first, thanks for your service. Second, awesome serial entrepreneurial lifestyle. I mean, the fact that you’ve already exited two companies is is huge. Like a lot of people don’t understand what it takes.

00:03:55:08 – 00:03:55:23

Rob Frasca: For.

00:03:56:04 – 00:04:34:01

Richard Carthon: Four four companies. That is that is nuts, which is speaks to the ability that you’ve had to run operations in your companies efficiently and show value and then be able to pick up and start again and just enjoy the grind of it. Also, it makes sense that you have kind of transitioned into now helping find some of these other superstars and help them on their way so that they can, you know, become extremely profitable and also hopefully helping the various types of verticals that you are designed to be in.

00:04:34:03 – 00:04:48:14

Richard Carthon: So in the world of crypto, whether that’s, you know, financial independence, whether that is gaming or metaverse, etc., you now have the ability to have impact on way more verticals instead of being laser focused on on one project, right?

00:04:48:24 – 00:05:21:15

Rob Frasca: That’s right. That’s right. You know, look, I my partners and I, we got four partners and we’re all serial entrepreneurs on the team. We’ve all been there, kind of done it, did it. And we always kind of say, Man, I’ve seen this movie before. I know I’ve been in this movie before and I know how it’s going to end. And I personally believe blockchain is the single largest value creation event in our lifetime. And I and I was at dot dot.com, I was in Mobile, I was in, you know, E Commerce.

00:05:21:17 – 00:05:47:27

Rob Frasca: I did companies and all that part of the world, all that kind of the ecosystem. And blockchain, I think, is far bigger than the Internet itself. So for us to be investing in this space and looking at all these incredible projects and seeing the speed at which things are happening, the amount of value that’s being created and and how global it is, it’s it’s just incredibly, incredibly exciting.

00:05:48:13 – 00:06:19:27

Richard Carthon: So, so, so I want to spend a moment on that really quickly. So again, you, you’ve, you’ve been in Web one, so Internet 1.0, you’ve been web, too, as we look at mobile and and then like things like Facebook and things being built on top of that layer. And now we’re looking at Web3, blockchain, crypto and everything else. So what was your first introduction into the crypto space like? How does he even get on your radar? And like you said, you made the statement that blockchain is the single greatest event of our lifetime. Like, how how did you come to this discovery so quickly once you learned about it?

00:06:20:13 – 00:06:53:24

Rob Frasca: Yes. So my partner, Ken Lang, he he’s one of these guys. He’s a total polymath. He’s, you know, Carnegie Mellon, Ph.D., neural net, a I you know, five degrees, 40 patterns. The guy is just I did a company with him. We sold it. That was the company we sold to, to Lycos. It was an A.I. company. In fact, it invented most of the tech behind Google AdWords using a neural nets. And and he came to he you know, he’s on our team, he’s our CTO.

00:06:53:26 – 00:07:16:12

Rob Frasca: And he came to us and he said, hey, look, this was right when Bitcoin came out. And he said, There’s this thing called big Bitcoin and you got to take a look at it using this technology blockchain. And it’s basically solving the trust problem, the centralized trust problem. Now, a lot of people didn’t know that there we had a centralized trust problem, right?

00:07:16:22 – 00:07:17:07

Richard Carthon: Right.

00:07:17:09 – 00:07:52:09

Rob Frasca: I did, because I grew up in the Internet like I saw and in ecommerce. And, you know, one of the things that entrepreneurs do is entrepreneur. The world sees problems. Right? And what entrepreneurs do is they they don’t see problems. They they dream of solutions. And and and and you can always tell an entrepreneur because an entrepreneur isn’t fazed by oh, well, that’s got 62 problems. They say here, I’m going to solve this. Right. Right. So in growing up in dot com, I’ve always realized that we have or you know, look, the Internet was designed to be resilient.

00:07:52:22 – 00:08:23:05

Rob Frasca: And what we did in phase one was really decentralize content. Right. And then in kind of phase two, we decentralized communication through voice IP. I did a company there and then we decentralized commerce also and anybody. So so what happens? Anybody can be a content creator. Anybody can communicate. You and I are communicating across the world right now marginal cost of bandwidth and anybody can sell anything to anybody. But the problem is, is that our trust model is so centralized, right? If I don’t know you and you don’t know me, what do we do? We use a bank.

00:08:23:07 – 00:08:57:08

Rob Frasca: We both trust. We both trust the bank. Right? Right. The problem is that when you connect a bank to the Internet, they become a honeypot and they’re a single point of failure, which is exactly what we’re trying to get away from. Right. So I’ve always known that we’ve had this kind of centralized trust problem. And when Ken came to us and said, look at Bitcoin, I was like, Holy cow, this is amazing. I was very skeptical because it’s money and the world’s big central institutions control money. But the technology behind it, blockchain was like, wow, okay.

00:08:57:22 – 00:09:27:29

Rob Frasca: And so that’s when I realized we’ve we’ve got to we’ve got to get into this, this, this is it. Like, this is this is this is going to be I just knew it, you know. And so we started buying some Bitcoin and getting involved early on with a bunch of different investments and technologies, and now it’s just starting to take off. I actually I actually think we’re still in the first inning. I still think we’re at that kind of 10 to 12% market penetration rate.

00:09:29:19 – 00:09:35:18

Rob Frasca: But generally, that’s when markets take off, right? They usually take off at that 10 to 12% rate. Right.

00:09:36:16 – 00:09:57:00

Richard Carthon: Actually, I was I was going to ask you about that. Right. So everyone knows about like the curve, right? So you have your early movers and early movers and you go kind of you to your first adopters and then, you know, you kind of go down the line. What do you think? I think I personally think we’re on the cusp of moving past like early adopters to first movers. But where would you see us kind of on that scale of of where we’re headed?

00:09:57:07 – 00:10:28:19

Rob Frasca: Yeah. So so generally the curve goes visionaries, which is like 5%, right? And then the early adopters are up to 10% and then they go from early adopters to early majority. Just more. Wrote a book called Inside the Tornado Crossing the Chasm, Customer Chasm Inside the Tornado. Right. So it’s hard to kind of jump into the mainstream majority, that early majority. It’s hard, right? Because if something’s too complicated, they’ll basically say that I’m not doing that right. I would argue VR, for instance, hasn’t job right.

00:10:28:21 – 00:11:01:04

Rob Frasca: VR is just too it’s like I don’t want to wear goggles and get dizzy and and have wires going all over the place. Right. Oh, my, my living room. Right. So I would argue is probably hasn’t crossed the chasm. So generally that cross the chasm process happens right around 12%. And when it does cross the chasm, right, what happens? And this isn’t me. This is like, you know, lots of books written about that. I think. I think it’s called Product Diffusion Theory. That’s my Carnegie Mellon kind of geekery. You know, you can it’s on Wikipedia, just bunch of stuff there.

00:11:01:06 – 00:11:01:21

Rob Frasca: But

00:11:03:13 – 00:11:34:12

Rob Frasca: there’s a lot of alpha in the beginning, right. Because going from zero one. But it’s not a scale like there’s not a ton of heat, there’s not a lot of it. Whereas most of the alpha happens when you cross the chasm and jump in the tornado. So you ask me long winded answer to your question, I apologize, but you ask me where are we, what you think? I think we’re just now or over the chasm and we’re and we’re just getting into the tornado. So I think, you know, you’re seeing global money come in.

00:11:34:15 – 00:12:04:21

Rob Frasca: You’re seeing institutionalize all embrace this big custody firms like BMI, Mellon and State Street announcing they’re going to custody this stuff. Coinbase has got more account holders than Fidelity and Charles Schwab combined. And and I think the key to all of this is, is that it’s global from day one. Right. So the Internet wasn’t global when it first launched. It was really Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, and then it finally went global e-commerce the same way.

00:12:04:23 – 00:12:28:05

Rob Frasca: Now, boom, everything is global immediately. So I think we’re just jumping inside the tornado. And I would tell you to the entrepreneurs that may be listening or watching this, you know, one of the biggest mistakes I made I made a couple of times is that when a market’s early, we all tend to say that it’s too competitive. I’m not going in.

00:12:29:20 – 00:13:00:01

Rob Frasca: Right. Because everybody goes in. Right. And so today I hear that from a lot of entrepreneurs. They say, oh, man, there’s five people doing this. And I don’t know. It’s too crowded. I don’t know if I should go in. And my answer to that is, only 12% of the people are in the market. There might be five people doing it, but all of those guys have almost no market share. And if it is the first inning, the bulk of the market is still going to come in. So go for it. Yeah, I go for it. All right. Fight the fight.

00:13:00:14 – 00:13:17:19

Rob Frasca: Because you’re going to look back and go, man, I should off because all those bugs are going to rise. They’ll probably be a consolidation. Some will fail. But if you got to dream dope at this point, you know, don’t be don’t be competitive right now. Like, I wouldn’t go compete Coinbase, right?

00:13:18:18 – 00:13:22:21

Richard Carthon: Yeah. But they’ve also been they’ve also been in the market for like eight years. Right.

00:13:22:23 – 00:13:55:01

Richard Carthon: So that’s right. But if it’s still early. Right. I’ll give you an example. You know, I was general manager of Lycos dot com. We were the number two portal behind Yahoo! And if you would have told me that Google, this new company was going to be the market leader and Yahoo! And Lycos were be out of business or, you know, blown away. When I was doing that, I would have told you you were, you know, high on drugs, right? I mean, Google’s number, what were they, 12 to enter the.

00:13:55:03 – 00:13:55:18

Richard Carthon: Market.

00:13:55:21 – 00:14:26:03

Rob Frasca: For? They were super late. Right. A lot later. And by the way, Google came. When did Google come into the market? They came in in the early majority. Yeah, they weren’t even there in the early adopter visionary phase. So, you know, so that’s why I look at I look at what’s going on in the market right now. You’ve got a lot of really cool layer ones. You’ve got a lot of really good layer twos, a lot of people solving a lot of problems. But to think that the market leader today and I’m look, I’m a huge fan of Bitcoin, I think Bitcoin is going to be around forever.

00:14:26:05 – 00:14:43:21

Rob Frasca: Okay, I’m a big holder. I’m a holder. I’m not pooh pooh on Bitcoin, but I’m also a pragmatic person in the sense that there’s a lot of problems that still haven’t been solved. And I don’t think we’ve seen everything in the market that we you know, that that that’s yet to come. Right. Right.

00:14:44:11 – 00:15:16:22

Richard Carthon: I just want to add to that, like I’ve talked to people about this all the time, right? If if Bitcoin is digital gold and if you look at the regular market and you look at gold, yes, gold is steady, but it’s not the biggest market cap. It’s not the biggest opportunity. It’s it’s always the technology. And if you look at the rest of the cryptocurrency market, which in my opinion, crypto markets are blockchain startups, they’re just under the umbrella of the coined phrase cryptocurrency. That’s right. You’re going to look at a lot of these projects whose market cap will flip Bitcoin’s.

00:15:16:25 – 00:15:19:06

Richard Carthon: And it’s just a matter of time. Right.

00:15:21:18 – 00:15:49:14

Richard Carthon: Hey, cryptocurrency through. This is Steve Miller and I’m the host of a light show that keeps you up to date with what’s popping off in crypto land. Every episode of C Live brings you the latest news, keeps you updated on the top projects, and decrypt everything you need to know to get ahead in the wild world of Web3. So if you really want to stay cryptocurrency, join Richard, Chris and I every Tuesday and Friday at 7 p.m. Eastern, only on YouTube live. So what are you waiting for? Subscribe to Cryptocurrency YouTube channel today and as always, stay cryptocurrency.

00:15:56:11 – 00:16:28:05

Richard Carthon: I mean, look, we invested in this. We invested in this in this currency called ENDOW in the EU. And it’s it actually was built on the cosmos, tendermint blockchain. It’s its own native blockchain. And it’s, it’s been out there for, you know, it’s, it’s been made that actually for a while, it’s designed to be basically a long term star value. So it’s designed to be like Bitcoin, but it’s also designed to have a yield and is also algorithmic to hopefully adapt to market conditions.

00:16:28:20 – 00:17:01:16

Richard Carthon: So, you know, this thing has been out for for a while. By the way, the yield rate on this thing when you lock it up for three years is 25%. 25%. Well, if you’re locking up for one year, I think the yield is 15%. Now the prices fluctuate. It’s not a stablecoin. Right. So the prices, it was as high as 42. I think it’s down to eight and it’s on kucoin a bunch of other exchanges anyway. But but that is kind of like super early.

00:17:01:18 – 00:17:34:05

Richard Carthon: Right. So in other words, the team is really figuring out the algos and they’re modifying it. And, you know, I think there’s around 15,000 people that hold it, you know, market cap on. The thing is around, I don’t know, 200 million, something like that. But anyway, the reason why we invested in that was exactly your point. Right. It’s so early that, you know, the whole concept of creating this adaptive, intelligent currency that reads the market versus a free floating one is is is really profound.

00:17:34:07 – 00:18:08:05

Richard Carthon: So let’s let’s let’s take a look at that. And and and that’s that’s what you know, that’s what this is. That’s what this is all about. I mean, we did another investment in a thing called Ichi, and we got in early. We we know that. We know the founder and we love what they’re doing. They’re basically building stablecoins for the firm. It’s a stablecoin protocol for people with large treasuries. Right. That want to announce. You know, I think we’re you know, we’re 14 X our money on that deal right now.

00:18:08:07 – 00:18:26:29

Richard Carthon: Now we’re we’re we’re a venture fund. We’re not hedge fund. Right. So what we do is if you believe that you’re in this, if you believe that this is the first inning, why the hell would you sell now? Yeah, it’s kind of like Amazon, right? When Amazon went public, you double your money, you’re like, ooh, I’m a rockstar right now. You’re not.

00:18:29:16 – 00:18:59:05

Richard Carthon: It’s so I want to talk about this for a couple of reasons. I want to talk about a couple more of the other products that you’re in. But what’s what’s really great about you in this conversation right now is I try to impart to our listeners that time for good projects you would typically win. If you look at historically, even in Bitcoin, if you bought at the top of any of the market, usually over the course of like three and a half years, you still always win. You still become profitable.

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00:18:59:17 – 00:19:02:06

Rob Frasca: I agree with that. I’m not giving any advice here.

00:19:02:08 – 00:19:03:12

Rob Frasca: No, no financial advice.

00:19:03:23 – 00:19:35:20

Rob Frasca: No financial advice. Right. Right. And I don’t have a crystal ball, so I can’t predict anything. I can predict just as well as you. Right. But I agree with you. I agree. It’s just macro. It’s simple math. Right. If if if if you believe that we are in the first inning and we just cross the chasm, if you believe that and what you me, what you believe is, is that the market is going to grow exponentially, okay. From 10% to 80%. How many doublings is that? It’s a lot.

00:19:36:00 – 00:19:36:15

Rob Frasca: It’s a.

00:19:36:17 – 00:19:43:09

Rob Frasca: Lot. So if you believe that, then in a macro sense, if you invest in that market, you’re going to you’re going to kill it.

00:19:44:03 – 00:20:23:08

Rob Frasca: Right. And to speak to that a little bit more, again, just looking at what happened in Web 1.0, you had this gigantic boom. All of these companies kind of came out of nowhere and a lot of them failed. But it doesn’t mean that even with the ones that failed, there wasn’t money to be made, there wasn’t opportunities. But like, we’re not we’re not there yet. We’re not even close to where like, boom, now we have all these things and like all of them are going to make it like where if you had to compare from web 1.0, like how early we are in this, like I think one of the latest alliteration that I kind of got to as we went from being in this giant room with a giant computer to finally getting that like first personal computer.

00:20:23:11 – 00:20:30:08

Rob Frasca: So like the Internet’s not even there yet. Like, we’re just we’re still like in the infrastructure place. Like, how would you kind of compare that?

00:20:31:05 – 00:21:06:24

Rob Frasca: Yeah, so, so there’s, there’s a couple of thought bubbles in here that I want to, I want to share with you. So there. There. I believe that look. Yeah, you’re right. We went from these big computers to everybody owning a computer to everybody having one in their pocket. And the one in their pocket has a camera, has a video camera, a microphone, and does everything. We went from a world where we had to dial in to a service, to chat, to a world where now you can go to any site to get content and communicate.

00:21:07:07 – 00:21:37:12

Rob Frasca: And and and and so every, you know, the world has just been kind of, you know, decentralizing. And so this is kind of the next evolution like wave like we started in the beginning. It’s really the next evolution. Here’s here’s two fundamental points that are absolutely critical, in my opinion, that people need to understand and I and I talk all the time about this. The first is this what we’re building now are not companies.

00:21:38:01 – 00:22:08:04

Rob Frasca: Companies are centralized bastions of the old world. Think of them like the tower and everybody goes and they have a hierarchy with a CEO and a board of directors. And we all go to that tower and we work that shiny tower. And below that shiny tower is a town square. And that town square is loaded with people. The town square is the network. The companies are the tower. And what we’re doing is we’re moving.

00:22:08:11 – 00:22:43:15

Rob Frasca: Right. And by the way, this is now Ferguson’s book. I think I have it around here. The tower, the square, the square in the tower. I was getting confused, but it worked. What we’re building now are networks. Networks of people. And by definition, the value of that network is how is what is being distributed by the token of the network. And that means that everybody that owns the token and is part of the network owns a piece of the network. Right. So so if you think about Facebook, that’s a centralized thing that’s owned by Mark Zuckerberg and the shareholders.

00:22:43:17 – 00:22:54:11

Rob Frasca: And you are part of that by feeding all your content into it. And he’s making all the money off of you. Right. What’s that old adage? If you’re in a service and you don’t know what the product is, you’re in.

00:22:54:13 – 00:22:54:29

Rob Frasca: You’re the product.

00:22:55:07 – 00:23:32:17

Rob Frasca: You’re the product. Bingo. So so that’s the old model, right? Is the centralized tower model. Right. You go on Twitter and they can censor you and say, I don’t like you and your or your goes banned and you’re out. Why? Because they’re in a tower and they can control it. If we move to a town square model, blockchain y. So number one, we’ve got to have we got to understand that as we’re buying into these things as investors, we’re buying into networks. How fast is the network growing? How many people are on it? How much code is being written? What’s the network being used for? What’s the velocity? What’s the cost? You’ve got to look at all that stuff.

00:23:33:06 – 00:24:09:19

Rob Frasca: That’s one very, very, very important point. The other important point here as an investor is, is speed to liquidity. Why? Why was venture capital created? Venture capital is kind of. A is a is a way of investing in stuff that’s not liquid. So if you’ve got a company or an idea and I invest in you, I’m going to give you a seed round and then I got to give you a series A and then you you take some risk off and you do some things and I give you a B and a step up in value.

00:24:09:21 – 00:24:37:24

Rob Frasca: I give you a C and a step up a value and a D, and each time I give you more money, you need more money, but the risk is reduced. So the values hire, right? Right. And the model is 14 years, 16 years to unicorn to get liquidity. So, you know, I don’t know about you, but the actual average individual investor isn’t going to keep shelling out money for 14 years on a on a prayer and a hope that it’s going to be a unicorn. There’s a lot of risk.

00:24:38:12 – 00:24:39:18

Rob Frasca: And a lot of a lot of people can’t.

00:24:39:26 – 00:25:19:15

Rob Frasca: And a lot of them just just can’t. Right. And by the way, if you don’t have a lot of dry powder as a venture capital, meaning if you don’t have a lot of available capital, you risk. I do the seat like angel investing is hard, right. Because I do this, I don’t have a lot of money. I do the seed round, I do the a round. And then all these big guys come in and what do they do? They dilute me out, right? Because I can’t I can’t keep writing checks. Right. So it’s a hard thing. You still keep selling, but it’s a hard thing. So. So that’s kind of the old model, right? I think if you looked at the data, it says that the average exit and exit across, I don’t know, 20,000, 18,000 funds on a deal is like 4.6 years.

00:25:20:00 – 00:25:54:14

Rob Frasca: Now, that includes failure and that includes like, you know, just acquire right where they where they buy the thing for assets. So wherever you look at it is five years. This market because we’re building networks is going liquid in a year, two years. Then all of a sudden, you’ve got this this this system where people can buy into networks and then that thing goes live main that and then there’s now there’s not by crazy liquidity, right? Liquidity builds over time.

00:25:54:16 – 00:26:21:08

Rob Frasca: So, you know, you may not be able to get all your money out, maybe get your cost out or something. But but there’s there’s this timing thing. And that’s what’s exciting about this is that now all of a sudden, everybody around the world can kind of participate in this market, whereas before you just couldn’t because, you know, if you couldn’t write $1,000,000 check into a venture fund, you couldn’t. Our fund, Cosmo X, is tokenized for that reason. Outside the U.S., $10,000. You’re in the fund.

00:26:23:05 – 00:26:54:22

Rob Frasca: In the US it’s more because it’s raggedy, it’s, it’s FINRA. So it’s 10,000 inside the U.S., but it’s also tokenized. So that means I’m in and out of the fund if I want. Right. And again, that’s what blockchain kind of buys you. So those two things, I think people you got to get it if you don’t get it. Those are the two critical things. Number one time, right? Fast time to liquidity, not for liquidity, but some form of liquidity. And you got to be able to manage it. Right. And then the other thing is we’re building networks. We’re building networks here.

00:26:54:24 – 00:27:07:08

Rob Frasca: We’re not. Sometimes you build companies, you know, it’s not all networks, but the majority of if you’re investing in tokens, you’re investing in a network. If you’re investing in private and equity, you’re you’re investing in companies.

00:27:07:22 – 00:27:40:20

Rob Frasca: Right. And I think those are two really good approaches to look at this. And I think it’s a new way for people can conceptualize it and for everyone listening. If you didn’t follow that, go listen to it a couple of times and let it resonate, because that’s that’s where things I think are headed as well. And I think that’s a really good illustration of, you know, thinking about the towers and the squares versus networks. I think that’s a really, really good way to think about that. But man, you’ve dropped a ton of really good knowledge on this today. And I always, like everybody, might not always like to talk about, but what a couple of fun questions. The first, which you kind of talked about earlier, but want to present it in a different way.

00:27:41:06 – 00:27:57:17

Rob Frasca: You’ve been in this space. You’ve been a serial entrepreneur for a long time and you’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. If you could go in part 1 to 3, I mean, because you have so much experience, I would say three if you give yourself three pieces of advice when you first got started.

00:27:58:06 – 00:27:58:21

Rob Frasca: Yeah.

00:27:58:25 – 00:27:59:23

Rob Frasca: What would you tell yourself?

00:28:00:11 – 00:28:06:26

Rob Frasca: So number one is only an idiot runs out of gas in an airplane.

00:28:08:24 – 00:28:39:14

Rob Frasca: Okay, so what does that mean? You as an entrepreneur, you’re number one. Your number one job is to make sure there’s enough fuel in the tank for you to fight the fight. That that that’s the first thing and the most important thing that you got to do. Number two, it’s all about passion. Passion is a gravitational force that will pull all the resources you ever need to. You think of passion like a black hole. If you’ve got it, you’re going to get employees.

00:28:39:16 – 00:29:10:04

Rob Frasca: You’re going to find other people that like what you’re doing. And and honestly, they will fall out of the sky. I swear to God. They will fall out of the sky if you’re passionate because people want to be around other passionate people and they want to be passionate, too. And it feels good to be passionate. And let’s face it, we’re this this is a cruise. We’re doing some really cool stuff. They’re right. We’re really okay. So just I know it sounds trite, but I’m telling you, passion. The third is, is

00:29:11:19 – 00:29:42:15

Rob Frasca: stay positive, man. It’s hard. You said it in the beginning, right? You’re fighting, you’re stressed. It’s difficult as an entrepreneur. Just stay true, man. Let go fight. You’re the man in the arena, as Teddy Roosevelt says. Write your taste in the dust, in the sweat and the blood. But you’re also got the glory of the win. So just do it, man. Stay. Stay true. Show that passion and just and just, you know, what a great time to be an entrepreneur, man.

00:29:42:17 – 00:29:55:14

Rob Frasca: I’m in my fifties. Like, holy cow. There’s there’s. The more wealth is going to be generated in the next 20 years, 10 to 20 years and ever imagine this is this is exciting time. Exciting time.

00:29:55:27 – 00:30:07:29

Rob Frasca: 100% degree. I think those are three amazing nuggets. I don’t know if you’ve ever written a book, but you might be considering something in the future because you got you guys a wealth of knowledge in there, man. So we definitely appreciate that.

00:30:08:01 – 00:30:31:24

Rob Frasca: Well, let check me out on Twitter. I’m at Rob Fresca. And you know, you want to see our portfolio, it’s Cosmo X, WSJ.com, by the way. We named the firm Cosmo after get this, after Cosmo MODIJI. Cosmo Modiji was the patron father of the Medici family that invented the banking system that we’re all working to make obsolete.

00:30:33:09 – 00:30:53:07

Rob Frasca: That’s right. I think that’s a that’s a really cool name and actually on that. So I know that you brought this up and I do want to give this again. So for people who are interested, because you said it’s tokenized, if they want to potentially participate in, um, Cosmo X, they can reach out to you on the, on the website.

00:30:53:18 – 00:31:25:03

Rob Frasca: Right on Cosmo WSJ.com. And then what that does is it takes you over to a site called securitize where you get all the documentation, KYC, AML, all that, all that good stuff in the US, you’ve got to be accredited investor. There’s a big there’s a $250,000 minimum in the U.S. outside the US there’s a lower minimum. It’s just the state of the world. And like I said, this isn’t any investment advice, right? I always got to say that. But yeah, that’s how you do it.

00:31:25:05 – 00:31:37:09

Rob Frasca: Cosmo dot com. You can see our portfolio out there. We are about 23 deals or we do about a deal a month. We just did an NFT deal. Copy’s pretty cool. So we’re we’re doing web three. Cool stuff.

00:31:37:29 – 00:31:43:25

Rob Frasca: Awesome man. Well, as we wrap up here, what is a final thought that you want to leave with all the listeners here today?

00:31:45:14 – 00:32:01:00

Rob Frasca: Final thought is, you know, do your research. There’s a lock on. It’s impossible to keep up with all this stuff. Join these networks, get involved. These are all ecosystems. Have fun. I don’t know. It’s hard to keep up with it.

00:32:01:11 – 00:32:03:01

Rob Frasca: No, that is that is is life.

00:32:03:06 – 00:32:11:07

Rob Frasca: You know, it’s kind of a holdover from science. It is life. But, man, it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s exciting. Exciting stuff.

00:32:11:23 – 00:32:36:16

Rob Frasca: Absolutely. And I might have just lied because I actually thought of one more question. I do want to ask you that I didn’t get to ask earlier, and I think it is important while we have you is as you’re looking across and of course, you said do your own research when you’re looking at potential deals. But like what are some of the things when you’re looking at your one of your portfolio companies and you’re evaluating if you want to bring them in, what are some big qualifiers that you think is really important while you’re doing your research?

00:32:37:03 – 00:33:15:28

Rob Frasca: Yeah, we like to look at the network, how fast the network is growing, number one. Number two, the team is always super critical. Right. Who’s running this thing? Have they done it before? Do they know what they’re talking about? One of the nuances of this market is syndication value. So in the Old World, remember that series ABCD? As an investor, you always wanted to look at where there are a lot of deep pockets, where they’re big investors involved in this market. You don’t need that. So this market, what you tend to do is look at and the entrepreneurs have got smart, right raise small amount of money from a lot of people is always better than raising a lot of money from one guy.

00:33:16:21 – 00:33:55:03

Rob Frasca: Trust me. Okay. It’s better to take 10 million from 1000 people than 10 million from one guy. Trust me, okay. As an entrepreneur and the entrepreneur is when you’re and by the way, if you’re building a network, you want the people in the network to buy into the network. Right. Right. So I would look at that. Right. Look at the network and we look at, okay, who else is invested in this and how many people have invested? And and and what’s the allocation size? And, you know, what’s the overall, you know, kind of roadmap? Those are kind of the fundamental and the tokenomics and all that good stuff are important.

00:33:55:05 – 00:34:06:21

Rob Frasca: But, you know, you want to you want to look at how many how many and how many people are willing to invest into and buy into the network right now.

00:34:07:03 – 00:34:36:12

Rob Frasca: Definitely appreciate that. I think a lot of people in they’re doing their own research. Sometimes they don’t necessarily know where to look or whether it’s the white paper where they look at the team, etc.. Well, a lot of what we typically emphasize is first and foremost, look at the team, look at who’s actually building this, and then do they have the experience to try to execute on what the vision is that they have? And then as far as the vision goes, what is their actual role? You know, what is their timeline look like and is it can they actually execute upon that and then kind of, you know, take the rest from there? But I guess.

00:34:37:08 – 00:35:07:10

Rob Frasca: That’s another thing, too, that you look at, too. I call them signal callers. So so there are there are some folks that are really pretty decent signal callers. Right. Or firms, right. So when you see, you know, some of these bigger name firms come in, they generally bring their. It’s a good signal, right? It’s a good signal to say, hey, wait a minute, galaxies getting involved. Maybe I should. Or Coinbase Ventures just put some money and maybe I should or Binance. Right. And and it’s just because they have a lot of capital, they have a lot of clout.

00:35:07:12 – 00:35:34:08

Rob Frasca: And and, you know, I mean, look, you know, galaxies, what, three something billion. You know, Coinbase is massive, finance is huge. And and so, you know, don’t be afraid also to look at at at signal calls, but don’t be blind to that either, right. You know, just because they’re big and they know what they’re doing doesn’t mean they’re right. But, you know, if it’s I always you know, I always tell people. We’ll look at who the signal callers are.

00:35:34:28 – 00:35:48:23

Rob Frasca: Absolutely. Well, again, man, thank you for that information. Thank you for everything that you shared today. For everyone listening, if they want more information and want to be able to learn more about your fund, follow on Twitter. Can you just share all that again?

00:35:49:08 – 00:36:16:04

Rob Frasca: Yeah, it’s at Rob Fresca on Twitter. I’m not a prolific Twitter person, but I do from now, every now and then. And the site is Cosmo X, I, Cosimo Cosmo WSJ.com. That’s the fun site. And you can see our portfolio there. We update it and you can click through. There’s all kinds of documentation and all that good stuff there.

00:36:16:23 – 00:36:49:01

Richard Carthon: Excellent. Well, again, Rob, thank you so much for spending some time with us. And of course, for everyone listening, stay cryptocurrency. Hey, crypto crack crew. We want to give a quick shout out to all of our faithful listeners out there. It’s been an amazing journey and we really appreciate your support throughout the years as we’ve been growing as a community. Each episode, we decided that we would start sharing some of the reviews that you were leaving for us for today. We would like to share this review. Today’s review comes from two lane Tyler Richards. Insight and commentary on the podcast is invaluable. Not only is it incredibly educational, but also fun and engaging at the same time.

00:36:49:08 – 00:37:21:02

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00:37:21:24 – 00:37:55:25

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00:37:56:05 – 00:38:05:18

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00:38:11:10 – 00:38:24:08

Richard Carthon: thanks for tuning in to another episode of Crypto Crime with Richard Kragen. We’ll be back with more exciting developments from the world of blockchain and cryptocurrency next. But until then, stay cryptocurrency.

00:38:33:23 – 00:38:36:06

Richard Carthon: Three U.S. states now.

00:38:40:27 – 00:39:15:17

Richard Carthon: Thank you for joining us for another episode of Cryptocurrency. Just one quick reminder. Cryptocurrency is a cryptocurrency and blockchain education platform that’s bridging the gap between the curious newcomers who are just discovering the space and the thought leaders who are shaping its future. All opinions expressed by Richard Carr, Ethan, the cryptocurrency team and their guests on this show are exclusively their own opinions. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Richard. The team and their guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or to follow his financial advice. This show and any other crypto current production is exclusively for informational purposes.