Transcript

For full sequel, I started my first company, Velocity Black, which I started nine years ago. It's a digital concierge helping high performance people make the most of their time. And we grew and scaled that to hundreds of employees and 10s of millions of dollars in revenue and ultimately exited it to U.S. bank. So I started my career doing face recognition research at a startup in Russia. Most recently, we started Stress Coach, which is a mental health app for people with anxiety. We recently sold it in a small exit. Last year, so before Seagull, I was living in Melbourne, Australia. So by previous backgrounds being largely in creative agencies and I've recently just come from working at one of the largest investment companies in the world and the CF charter holder. And my background is in investment banking. So I spent seven years at the Barclays and Goldman Sachs. I didn't join WP, the largest media conglomerate in the world where I was in charge of acquisition for portfolio company. And then I joined the fintech world. I worked at Be Happily and Openers back before Sequel. I was working in a VC fund called Boost Capital Partners and in my spare time I became a FIFA licensed agent. Before SQL. I did my MBA at Harvard and then I've been working most recently at Alumni Ventures, which is a billion dollar US venture capital fund and currently one of the most active venture capital investors in the world. My favorite sport is Formula One. I've done a bit of racing myself in the past and there's something about the danger, the risks and the speed of Formula One which has always fascinated me since I was a kid. If I had an ultimate hero Formula One, it's probably going to be out at center. If you look at his skill on the track, the way he handled fierce competition from rivals, even within his own team throughout his career, he's someone who from embodies the ultimate competitor, the ultimate risk taker. And unfortunately, in the end, he. They paid with his life for for taking that risk. This is a good reminder of the downsides of potentially taking those risks to the absolute limit. So my sporting heroes, Evita Vastic, here's an Austrian soccer player and when I was very young, I played with the soccer club and he was kind of one of the big shots back then. If I had to pick one favorite sport person, I'd probably be Nadal's favorite tennis player. I think he's just amazing. I remember going to the Australian Open and they'll come back. That he had in that tournament was just incredible. My sporting hero. You have to be Tiger Woods to see someone who could go through such a massive car accident that I think most of the golfing community had written a more even playing a game. And to see him out there at the Masters walking the course is a huge inspiration and it just speaks to the determination and focus that he's showing throughout his career. I didn't join SQL, I started SQL. But the reason I started SQL, as you know, I previously been investing for more than a decade in early stage companies. I increasingly had athletes, people from the entertainment industry, people from outside venture approaching me asking me how to start investing in these companies. So a lot of problems around education, within sport, around finance and investment and a lack of access, as well as potentially poor advice from some existing advisors to your athletes. And I thought we could build something that would help solve those problems. And would also bring capital and attention to some of the most deserving companies and sectors that society will need to invest in going forward in order to solve some of the world's biggest problems. I was always interested in startup investing myself, Angel investing and in finance, so it seemed like a perfect match. So I love what we're doing at Segal, specifically around giving our members the tools they need to make the right investment decisions. I've seen. Just had how investing is so complicated and confusing and how so many people make a wrong investment decisions. So I love that part of what we're aiming for chief. I want it to be part of a smaller team so that the work that I do men more and it was more key to the success of the company was in a bigger company and more of just like a another cog in the system. But sequel specifically. I love sports and I'm interested in investing in finance. So it's like the. Perfect mix. I joined Sequel because sequels are a combination of the two things I love most, which is sports and technology. I also like the fact that SQL combines the two forms of leverage, which is code and media. The athletes have a lot of influence and I think they're able to see the results of SQL in the coming years. Founders and professional athletes are to relieve people I admire immensely because they need to demonstrate a lot of courage and resilience and such as a privilege to join Sequel to serve. Just took him. I would say my secret power is I think I can get on the phone or get a meeting with any person in the world at Velocity Black. I frequently had to do that to arrange unique experiences for some of our high performing clients, whether it was arranging trips for people to meet the Pope to speaking with the Dalai Lama. I'm pretty confident that I can get on the phone to anyone in the world. Some people call me the mailman because I always deliver. If I get given a task on Friday at 9:00 AM, it'll be done by 6:00 PM. My superpower is absorbing knowledge. And having the grid to stick through and learn something new. So I see myself as the Sherlock Holmes of tech. Whenever there's a problem nobody can find a solution to, I come in and I get a new solution. I come up with a better solution. I love going to hackathons, working on new stuff, trying machine learning or AI solutions online, but also like to go downhill racing and skiing in the winter when I'm not trying to kill myself. Skiing, racing or going down ice shoots at 70 mph head 1st. I have a young puppy who I take out for long walks on the weekends with my wife, so I enjoy spending time with my family. I have two daughters there. 1:00 and 4:00. So it's a lot of joy, lot of work as well, and I also love training from art and so I'm always kind of foray. If I had $1 million to invest, I would invest in spatial computing. With the recent releases of Apple Vision Pros and Orion from Meta, I'm really excited about how these new technologies can bring together the physical and digital world in a more natural way. So definitely the most interesting space right now is machine learning in the eye. So I would look at companies in that space, but I would split my cache between different companies, that's for sure. Generative AI is clearly. You can rightfully onto the investing scene and I would invest in the mixture of AI and consumer facing companies, specifically health and Wellness, but I think historically haven't received the same amount of attention but is now having its moment. I would love to invest in women in sport because I feel like they are so undervalued and underrepresented still in the media. So I would absolutely love to put that money towards building their profiles and then becoming role models for the future generations of women coming through sport. I think I would invest in climate tech. I do think there is a lot we need to do to protect the planet. Obviously climate change is happening. How much of that is man made, how much of that is natural is up for debate. But I'd be investing in technologies to help protect wildlife, the planet, our forests. I think that's a huge area of growth over the next decade.