Preston Pysh  01:20

Alright! So Ken, let’s kick this thing off with a basic discussion about why people purchase gold and precious metals in the first place. Why do they have these things in their portfolio?

Ken Lewis  01:30

Back in the days, it was kind of like a go-to safe haven investment, where people kind of felt like they didn’t trust the system, or you know, they had concerns about the government and where it was going. It was a nice way to kind of keep assets offline. I see over the last 10 or 15 years that’s actually now evolved. I think people are becoming more educated. They look at the statistics more. They look at the numbers. They recognize that gold is within a portfolio that can perform very well. You know, one of the things I like to remind people is if you invested 100 bucks back in the year 2000, gold’s actually the second-best performing asset class behind real estate since 2000. It has merits as a viable investment option. I think it is a little confusing for some.

Stig Brodersen  02:06

You already touched upon this, but could you talk to us why on the contrary some investors are holding back on gold and precious metals. They might have talked about it. They might hear that it’s a good asset to hold, but few people end up pulling the trigger.

Ken Lewis  02:20

You know, it’s a great point. You go out and you read the analyst out there, and they’ll tell you a 5-10% in gold is great for a portfolio, but many don’t execute. We think part of that is due to complexity. I always joke. I have a buddy of mine. I used to work at Home Depot back in corporate, and a buddy of mine, a Mensa guy, really smart calls me up and says, “Can you walk me through gold again? Because I’m really confused about how this works. There’s this thing called spread and spot price, and this and that. Can you educate me?” And so, it’s not an easy thing to absorb initially. I think products like GLD, paper, ETFs have made it a little bit easier for people to get into. But I also think, frankly, the retail has done a better job of educating people on the merits of gold.

Why people haven’t bought into gold though, I think it deals with a little bit of complexity. I think some people look at the opportunity cost, when they look at taking assets out; cash out if you will; putting it into gold. What kind of return do they get outside of their investment? I think that can be sometimes a hurdle for people. That opportunity cost if you will. But the reality just go off the numbers. Look at how it performs specifically, when there’s a volatile time. I think one of the things that I think people go back and look at today is 2008, 2009, we all know what happened, and how did gold perform then? And I think that kind of gave merit to gold in the long term. And frankly, the run-up we’ve had this year, I think kind of relates to people seeing the historical performance in times like 2008, and make them wonder, “Should I get on the bandwagon?”

Stig Brodersen  03:34

Interesting you would say that. You talked briefly about performance there. So when would gold perform well? Do you have like a general rule of thumb, where you would say, “In these types of market conditions, you know, that’s whenever gold would perform.”

Ken Lewis  03:46

You know, I do a lot of reading on different analysts. I have the opportunity to meet with a gentleman that’s a lead analyst at one of the top middle banks once a year, and the analysts will tell you is they’re always looking for correlations. They’re always doing their R squares, and they’re trying to figure out what drives the price of gold. And what they’ll tell you is once they think they figured it out something changes, right? And it’s almost impossible to get…to take it perfectly. But when you start to think about certain conditions that do drive gold, a strong dollar generally is bad for gold. A weak dollar generally is going to be a better price for gold.

You know, when you have events in the marketplaces. Things like, you know, international wars. Things like that. It tends that unrest tends to be very good for gold. When you look at the equities markets and look at its valuations from a multiple standpoint, when they tend to get on the higher side of valuations, gold tends to perform fairly well. So you know, there are indicators out there that do tend to point the direction whether gold’s going to go up or down. One of the things that I focused on a lot is kind of the upside and downside of precious metal ownership. And I think one of these you’ll find with gold tends to be a little bit less volatile than other options in the market, which depending upon your state of mind and where you want to invest that can be a good thing as well.

Preston Pysh  04:50

So, Ken, from a portfolio standpoint, we already covered why people might want to buy gold, but there’s also an argument that it’ll protect them from inflation. But for anyone that’s looked at inflation over the last 10 years, it’s barely registered anything, at least for the commodities that are listed on the traditional inflation gauges. But how do you respond to this idea of the relationship between gold and inflation?

Ken Lewis  05:16

Yeah, I think there’s a couple things. There’s actually the guys pulled together a couple numbers for me, and I’ll say it in simple terms. I’ll give you the exact numbers. I heard a gentleman tell the story once. I thought it was a great story. He said, “Back in 1920, I could go out, and I could buy a suit with an ounce of gold. And it was a relatively nice suit, but I could go buy a suit with an ounce of gold. In the year 2019, if I want to go buy a nice suit, I could still buy it with an ounce of gold.” And you think about what the cost of Coke is, or a gallon of gas, or other things that have changed over the years.

Clearly, that’s not the case with the US dollar. You know, one of things I talked about…I didn’t talk about *inaudible* things like debt in the US economy and how we’re printing money at an unbelievable pace, and how that can generally be a bad thing for inflation over the long run. In 1913, when we came off the gold standard, the dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power. A crazy, crazy statistic, when you think about it. It’s definitely one of those things, where you need to think about inflation. You know, it maintains its value fairly well over the years and always has.

Stig Brodersen  06:12

That’s such a good point. And let’s continue talking about, you know, real-life examples and how it isn’t real life because you often hear that you should buy gold, or sell gold, or whatever you hear in the news. And it’s commonly expected that you know how to do it. You know, whenever you hear in the news, they’re not like you need to click this button, or you need to go down to the local dealer. Let’s make this a bit more practical and more hands-on. What are the different ways you can purchase not just gold but precious metals in general? And perhaps you can talk about some of the pros and cons of the various methods.

Ken Lewis  06:42

Well, first I’ll hit it on to high-level. You can own paper nowadays, so things like the GLD with significant amount of assets under management today. It’s out there available to you. You can do that to your brokerage account. It’s relatively convenient for those today, who have a brokerage account; investment account. It’s 24/7 liquid. And you have great visibility to how it’s performing, so there’s a lot of good things there when it comes to paper. The negatives on paper is there are really high costs, and they’re hitting you for 40 basis points usually or more in some cases for paper. And that takes away from your returns as everyone probably understands.

There are other concerns about paper that I really worry about that probably the everyday person would not worry about; are things like counterparty risk. You know, are the assets really there to back the investments? What happens if this scenario occurs or that scenario occurs, am I protected? And there are a lot of concerns out there. And the other thing finally on paper that kind of drives people crazy is it doesn’t always trade exactly what the price of gold. It can trade at a premium. It can trade at a discount. To think you’re going in and just buying it because it’s directly correlated to gold is not always true. You can time that incorrectly, and buy it at a premium, and then have it be at a discount, when you go to sell, and you have a bigger spread there. Brought a lot more interest in it, and it’s been a good, good thing for the gold industry as a whole.

Then there’s physical. Physical is one of those things. It’s kind of a love affair. I mean, you come in and you find the products you like best. You go buy bars. You go buy coins. You go buy collectibles. You tend to hold those within your own premises within a safe or another location to store it. What people tend to like about physical, it can have a little higher cost, when you compare it to spot, but they also have the assurances of knowing they can touch it. They can feel it. It’s off the grid. It’s not on any statement that you can pull up. It’s a great way to pass on an inheritance. And there’s just a nice comfort zone and knowing you have some of your assets offline. The negative is, and there is a big negative, when it comes to physical, and that is when you got to liquidate it.

Stig Brodersen  08:15

It’s interesting you would mention that, you know? For every investor, there’s a new investing strategy. And that’s sort of like we all have our own philosophies on how to do that. But could you say if there’s like a general type of investor where physical is more appropriate, or paper’s more appropriate, or digital for that matter?

Ken Lewis  08:45

I just turned 49 last week, and I’m starting to get into what I’ll call with a “wealth preservation mode.” So I’m thinking about, “You know what? I want to still invest for growth, but I want to have some of my investments in a more conservative strategy.” I think those individuals tend to buy gold at a higher rate than those who are younger. They are worried about the stability of their overall investments a little more so, but first and foremost, they’re going to be a large consumer of metal. Then when it comes to decision side what you should buy and what’s right for your situation, what I find is you always should have a certain percent physical just to have the protection of knowing it’s off the grid. It’s sitting in your safe. You don’t have to worry about if there’s a financial industry, you know, mad meltdown. You’re good to go. And then, the digital verse ETF game. To me, and I think it’s gonna become a bigger debate over the years to come.

Stig Brodersen  09:28

Ken, you mentioned GLD a few times, and just, you know, to give people perspective to that. That’s the largest ETF, whenever you invest directly into physical gold. But there’s also a lot of criticism about that, whenever we talk about physical gold because we talked about the gold is not just gold. You know, there are many different types, and you buy them in different ways.

Ken Lewis  09:45

Right.

Stig Brodersen  09:45

Why is it that you hear a lot of people talking about, “Well, if it’s gold, it’s just GLD.” And then, you also have, you know, you watch some of the concerns before, you actually have some issues, or you can face some issues if you are holding the gold ETF in your portfolio. Could you elaborate a bit more on that?

Ken Lewis  10:03

The pragmatic person would say the risks are minimal. But the person that, you know, really stays up at night and worries about how they might not be wrong in the process. There’s ways to pick up paper ETF. Things like it isn’t metal physically there like I mentioned earlier. Things like the counterparty risk. Look, we had the crash in 8, when a lot of the banks got to be saved by the government. What happens when that occurs again in this environment? How am I protected? So I think those are valid concerns. I think the odds of some of those concerns becoming reality is probably less so. I do think the fact that they charge fairly large fees is something to think about long-term. Gold investors tend to invest for the long term.

Preston Pysh  10:37

So Ken, would you suggest that if you’re simply speculating, or you need to move your resources around pretty quickly that you use an ETF like GLD? And if you’re holding for the long term that you buy physical gold, what are you suggesting?

Ken Lewis  10:52

You know, that’s a great question. I think the nature of an ETF is you can get in and out of it. I bet you if they released statistics though, I bet we’d find that those in an ETF do tend to be there more long term than short term, because I think that’s just gold as an investment in general. It doesn’t matter which way you invest. You tend to be more of a long-term horizon investor. You’re tending it to do it for portfolio diversification and not just trying to play the markets if you will. The beauty of a GLD and also the beauty of digital, it allows you to go play the market for seven days, get in and get out, and take your profits or your losses. So there is a nature of trading that comes with those two platforms that a physical tends to definitely not be the case on.

You know, when you talk about speculation, I think anytime you invest in anything, it’s speculation, obviously. The nature of the horizon on your investment tends to be a little shorter, when on paper or even digital. But in general, it’s like investing in anything else. It has the conveniences that come with it, depending the platform you invest in, and it really just comes down to your time horizon. What are your prospects? How far are you trying to invest? That might dictate sometimes what are your better options or what to invest into.

Preston Pysh  11:54

Ken, we see a lot of big-name investors talk about the gold-to-silver ratio. Can you tell our audience a little bit about this ratio?

Ken Lewis  11:54

The gold-silver ratio has been around for a long time. It’s one of those things, where people like to think that gold and silver should trade within a certain range. And when they get out of that range, they’re going to migrate back to the mean. And history has shown that mean is going to run in that 75-ish range or somewhere like that. I mean, we’re today, for example, we might be trading at a 90 to one ratio, meaning you could buy 90 ounces of gold or silver for one ounce of gold. And some people go *inaudible*. They always go, “So what does that mean? Is gold overvalued? Is silver undervalued? Are they going to migrate back to the mean?” My belief, it’s just my belief, is that that ratio is going to become less and less relevant in the long run.

And the reason why is because the way gold is priced, it’s a little bit more to supply and demand and the readily availability of gold, and is becoming scarcer, and more scarce in the long run. Where silver is far more readily available; has more industrial uses than gold. And frankly, I would argue it’s going to be more like a true commodity. Unlike gold, it can become a lot more scarce over time, so I would not be surprised if you see that ratio over the next 10 years starting to wind more than one historically has done.

Now, I say that…about a week ago, we had a big run on silver. Many argue that that was because of a tightening of the ratios, but also people were talking about a week or two ago was it also allows certain investor type to get into silver, when gold is starting to get too expensive. When gold gets too high, things like jewelry demand starts to drop. Some of the everyday consumers or the investors start to go into say, “It’s just too expensive for me to get into. What other options do I have in the commodity space that performs like gold?” And that’s where silver starts to come into play. And then, you see the tightening of the ratios. Revert back to the mean, so I could be wrong. I would expect a widening of the ratio in the long term, but in the short term, you’re seeing a lot of that back and forth to the mean because people look at it as a viable option of going on investing silver, when it’s too expensive.

Stig Brodersen  13:48

Ken, you mentioned before people often use the gold-to-silver ratio as a way of measuring the…call it, the intrinsic value. You know, they talk about whether it’s overvalued or it’s undervalued. Gold is different than stocks, where you would discount the expected cash flows because there are no cash flows. That’s the nature of gold and silver for that matter. I’m curious to hear your thought process about determining the intrinsic value if there is such thing for precious metal.

Ken Lewis  14:14

It’s a tough one. There are some numbers that become relevant like the cost of mining. You know, when you look at the cost of capital, and you look at the capital investments needed for mining of these metals. You look at the demand side of things and what how their metals are used. Are they hundred percent investment? Are they used for other purposes? Things like jewelry, or semiconductors, or you name it. So there is a little bit of supply and demand like you would expect it, which draw the middle price up and down. You know, I think a great example of that was palladium, right? Palladium has seen a really nice run; a significant run on this price. But now, what’s happening in the marketplaces is manufacturers are looking for other options metal wise for conductivity because palladium has gotten too expensive.

And I think you see the same thing happened with gold and silver. It’s always kind of kept in check because eventually becomes too expensive for some of the manufacturing purposes. You look for other options on the metals that can meet the need. I know that you can’t go back to metrics like what was the cash flows or what’s what’s my P/E ratio versus historical performance, and things of that nature of gold, but we do tend to see is it goes with the economic climate as well.

Go back, for 1800 bucks back in 2011. It’s the nearest all time high. I believe that it was all time high back then. What was going on? I think, you know, the US debt have just gotten downgraded. You got quantitative easing kicking into gear. You had no GDP growth. You had a lot of things going on the market that saw gold hit all time highs. I think those kind of dynamics are really how you have to evaluate gold and silver is it’s not just, you know, its uses within manufacturing, or its uses from a consumer demand standpoint. It’s also understanding the broader worldwide landscape and how it’s a safe haven investment.

Preston Pysh  15:46

So, Ken, when you think about price, supply and demand is such an important consideration. So what are your thoughts on those drivers today?

Ken Lewis  15:55

I’ve talked earlier a little bit about manufacturing requirements, when it comes to certain precious metals. I talked about the cost of mining, and all the different requirements from an environmental standpoint. And how challenging that is to do today than it ever has been. Like the cost of exploration, the cost of going out and finding the metal is still very high. And there’s a lot of prospecting goes on with that. And I think there’s always going to be a challenge, when it comes to being able to find more sources of metal if you will.

The other thing I think that’s very relevant for your listeners, and when we think about the price of metal, when I look at physical, there’s fabrication cost, right? To take gold out of the ground; refine it; put it in a certain, you know, coin or bar for m; ship it; get it to a distribution center; send it out to customers, there’s a lot of costs that come with that. And that cost is only going to go up over time, right? We talked about inflation earlier, right? The cost of labor; the cost of the overhead; it’s only going to get more expensive over time. I want to get back to digital for a second. One of the beautiful things about digital is metal can be in any form. It can be in grain. It can be in bars. It can be in doré form. Consumers I think long term are going to find digitals a viable option mainly because the cost of getting the metal is dramatically less expensive.

Stig Brodersen  17:01

Whenever you look at these drivers and whenever you look at the news in the industry, you know, our listeners might be saying, “I will listen to what Ken has to say,” whenever they look for information, but what do you do? Where do you find the information?

Ken Lewis  17:15

I tell you, I’m a big reader of local council. We have a thing called, Goldhub. It’s free. The World Gold Council was formed, a little history here, a lot of the miners helped form the World Gold Council and support them financially. And their objective was to get the word out on gold, you know? To educate consumers on what gold is; why it’s a viable option; how it’s reformed historically; protect consumers and making sure they’re educated on where to buy, and they were actually behind, the local council was actually behind GLD and its formation. I find that their information is very valuable. I find that they provide a neutral view. They don’t provide a pro view of gold at all times, and I find that’s very, very helpful. There are things like Gold Seek. And you know, with the internet today, there’s so much information available to you. What I’ve always told consumers, first decide whether you want to be in metal. And then secondly, decide what type of metal do you want to own.

You know, just because you get the first two right I want all metal, and I want to digital, for example. Who you do business with is also very, very important in today’s world, you know? I think people don’t understand the risks that sometimes come with buying on the internet. And in the metal risk you take as a consumer. You want to know the company you’re doing business with is sustainable. It’s been around a while. It’s…you can trust. And I would ask consumers to do that last piece of research as well, when they’re making their overall decision. Do you own gold or not? Research that on places like Goldhub? What are my options, do your instant research on the internet and really read up on who you’re doing business with. You know, one goal in APMEX, we’ve been around a long time.

Preston Pysh  18:37

You know, it just seems like there’s so much change from a technology standpoint happening in the financial markets these days. So Ken, I’m curious, you mentioned earlier this idea of one gold. Talk to our audience a little bit more about that and what it is.

Ken Lewis  18:50

You know, I think the first thing I mentioned earlier, we’re trying to revolutionize the way you procure gold. So the main product we have in our our site today, we have two products on the gold side, one’s a yolk. A Canadian product with the Royal Canadian Mint. And what we’ve done there is we take ownership of metal and any number of forms within their operation. It can be doré and grain. It can be bars, but it’s within their infrastructure. When we procure metal, here’s what’s beautiful about digital, when we procure metal in that case, we’re actually logging you onto the blockchain and the RCM is acknowledging that I own that metal. I can’t sell metal that the RCM doesn’t say I own. I can’t do it. I can’t assign ownership. The blockchain won’t allow me to do that, so we’re using the blockchain purely as a ledger just to keep track of ownership. And so now, you know I own it, and then I assign my ownership to you as a consumer, which is beautiful. You have title. It’s yours. You have complete protection. The RCM stands behind it. The Government of Canada stands behind the deposits.

If I were to ever go insolvent, what you would do is they would literally liquidate that gold and give you your cash back. The same happens for the US as well. To answer your question real quick, we buy the metal; put it on the blockchain with independent verification that the metal’s there at all times. We built a beautiful system to where it’s very intuitive, very easy, *inaudible* very important to us. We find gold can be complex, and it’s too complicated. And we need to make it where you can hit a couple clicks and be done. And that’s what we really built with the platform. Frankly, we stole some ideas from the crypto. We thought they did a really nice job by making user interface really uncomplicated.

Stig Brodersen  20:20

So I have to ask you, Ken, you talk about crypto before, and we hear a lot about cryptocurrencies these days. A lot of people are calling Bitcoin, the digital gold. You just mentioned blockchain before. I guess a lot of listeners are sitting there they’re thinking, what is the difference between one gold, and Bitcoin, and other cryptocurrencies? What are similarities? What are the differences?

Ken Lewis  20:41

I think our marriage to crypto, and I honestly believe crypto in the long term is going to have a much bigger role in our economy and our financial systems. Today, it’s speculative. I’ll just use Bitcoin as an example. What’s the intrinsic value? What props up the value of a Bitcoin? What drives its price up and down? Well, you say trading? Well, the reality is, I believe that the top 20 holders of Bitcoin own over 70% of the coins. It’s not a viable option if you…look, the regulatory side of things would say, “Geez, how do we control the trading aspect? How do we control the supply in the market? How do we know that the assets are there, so consumers don’t get burned?” I think that’s some of the concerns that crypto still needs to solve, but I do believe there’s some great things there.

They distributed ledgers and the blockchain. I love the concept. I love where it’s going. I love the ability to verify the balances independently across multiple nodes. I think it’s got fantastic potential boom. I also think with the banking systems and the way we want to transact as consumers, we want to take our phone in, and we want to be done with it. I was in China on holiday with my daughter. And we were amazed at how people use WeChat to do all their transactions seamlessly right there with their phones. Nobody carried money. No one carried a credit card. That’s where I do think long term, cyptos can also take us and not just the financial systems to enable that.

Preston Pysh  21:56

So, Ken, I’m friends with a bunch of millennials, and when you mentioned something like one gold, where it’s digitized. I think it makes perfect sense. But to suggest that they’re going to go out there and buy something physical, it almost seems like a far fetched idea or concept to me with some folks. So talk to us about your opinion on this generational perspective and how your company, and you guys see something like that.

Ken Lewis  22:19

What we find is younger crowds tend to do a lot of transactions, but smaller dollars like you would expect, right don’t have as much to invest. The older crowds tend to be much larger transactions, but also a little bit less frequent. You know, on a digital platform, we’re seeing 8 to 10 transactions in the first three months of people being on the platform, which is unbelievable. When you buy physical, you might be one to two transactions in the first 90 days. So the frequency of transactions a little different, when you talk about digital. I think it’s not generational. I think it’s age. When I get into wealth preservation mode, I started to more seriously think about having assets that are more conservative.

And more importantly, I think about having assets that maybe are a little bit off the grid. How much cash do you want to hold? How much gold do you want to hold? I would not normally have considered those, when I was 22, because I’m looking to grow, grow, grow. I’m looking for high growth stocks. I’m looking to maximize my investments. I read all the books that say over 50 years, you can’t go wrong if you invest for the long term.

Well remember earlier, I just stated in 2020, if you invest in $100, the only asset class that outperformed gold was real estate. So do you want to miss the mark and not have anything in metal? So I think you’re going to make it easy for younger crowds to buy. I think as they start getting into wealth preservation, they’re going to get into physical. It’s just bound to happen because they’re looking at ways to take assets off the grid. They’re looking for ways to have a little bit more of a safety valve there at all times. And that’s what comes with owning physical.

Stig Brodersen  23:36

That’s such a great point that you bring up. Let’s go back to the very beginning of the episode where we actually talked about that we will discuss the current market conditions for gold and where you as one of the top authorities see the gold price going perhaps the rest of 2019, but also moving forward. What do you see in the market right now?

Ken Lewis  23:54

You know, obviously we’re careful not to give financial advice, and I would ask others to do their own research, and don’t rely on my opinions here. But what I would tell you is there’s been a nice run up on silver and gold. My personal opinion is I think gold and silver might flatten out for a little bit of time here. But I think the core considerations are still there for why gold silver should go up over the long term. I think our economy is going to struggle in the future. I personally do. What I just read that we just crossed 1 trillion in debt. 11 months, 10 months into the fiscal year for the government. Not a great sign. We’re out of control printing money. You hear the jobs, of course, last week is starting to slow down. Interest rates are already being lowered. Can the dollar continue to be as strong as it is, when you have all these other events going on? I personally don’t think so.

So when I think long term, I think there are a lot of dynamics out there that support a higher metal price. I don’t think it’s probably going to be a significant return in the initial period. Maybe next 6 months. Maybe less three months. But I think if you take a 2 to 3-year view, I think gold is going to be still a very nice place to have your money. And I would say this, even if gold doesn’t perform, and you put 5-10% of your portfolio in gold, you’re still going to be happy. Because if your equities go up, and they kill it, and your gold underperforms, your portfolio performs very well. But what happens if you don’t put any money in gold and the equities actually don’t perform very well? Now you’re going to regret not having a good diversification strategy.

Stig Brodersen  25:12

That’s a good point. And you know, we have a quote someone like Ray Dalio, you know, one of the most successful investors, and he says the same thing about gold. So it’s very interesting, you would also bring that up.

Preston Pysh  25:22

So Ken, our final question for you is simply, where can people from our audience learn more about you and APMEX?

Ken Lewis  25:29

Clearly, we have websites, apmex.com and onegold, O-N-E-G-O-L-D, .com. What we try to do is educate consumers. We want you to have all the information you need to make a buying decision. We do almost a billion dollars a year in revenue. A lot of good information to funnel the physical side. On the digital side, OneGold’s new, man. It’s been live since January, but what we’re doing there is continuing to refine that material and experience. For example, we’re coming off with an app hopefully in the next 30-60 days. We’ll have an app environment, not just a website that’s mobile friendly. And we’re looking to bring new capabilities. We’d ask people to just follow us. Make sure your listeners to listen in.

Preston Pysh  26:04

Thanks so much for that, Ken, and thanks so much for coming on The Investor’s Podcast today.

Stig Brodersen  26:10

So this segment of the show, I’m super excited and honored to present Shawn Flynn, a host of our new show, Silicon Valley by The Investor’s Podcast Network. Sean’s a longtime listener of TIP, and we couldn’t find a better person to interview our guests live in Silicon Valley. Shawn, welcome to the show!

Shawn Flynn  26:32

Thank you for the kind words, Stig. It’s always great talking to you. And for everyone at home, who may not know this. I actually…first time I met Stig in person was in Vegas. This guy, not only is he’s an amazing value investor, he also knows the value of good hand in poker, so be careful playing with him. But no, no, once again, it’s an honor to be here. Thank you.

Stig Brodersen  26:51

Well, I have to say that Shawn is not too bad himself. I remember we both had a decent poker session in Bellagio, Vegas back in April, when I flew out there to interview Netsuite founder, Evan Goldberg, for a podcast. But one thing led to the other, not at the poker table. But back then, right after our poker session, I actually asked Shawn if he was interested in hosting our new show, and he luckily said yes. So after five months of preparation, here we are. So Shawn, the name of the show is Silicon Valley. What can our listeners expect?

Shawn Flynn  27:26

Yes. So the goal of this show is to bridge the knowledge and the resources that are here in Silicon Valley with the rest of the world. So I have had the opportunity to travel to several countries; to give talks about disruptive technology. And on these trips, I keep getting similar questions. What will we see next? What’s the new technology that’s going to disrupt the current market? What’s going on? How much hype is it? How real is it? And the best part about Silicon Valley is some of the people that are creating this, betting on this, investing in this, they’re right here.

Stig Brodersen  27:56

And Shawn, we already had a soft launch last week, which guests have you already interviewed?

Shawn Flynn  28:01

So yeah, we’ve already launched quite a few episodes. And some of the ones that were launched included an interview with Melanie Perkins, who is the CEO and founder of Canva. Canva, the second unicorn company of Australia. We talked about what’s it like to grow an international company; coming to Silicon Valley to raise funding; and the challenges that she faced taking on the big giants out there. We also got to interview, Alan Tien, who led the PayPal team, when eBay went into China. Now many of us have read those case studies, but we talked with the person that actually was there and got his side of the story.

We also interviewed Jonathan Trent, who was a former NASA research scientist for the last 20 years. Guess what, guys? We are further away from Mars than people think. And another episode that everyone might really want to check out, Michael Keogh. He’s the head of innovation at the lab for Black and Decker, a $25 billion company. And we talked about the technology coming out right now that might make building homes 15% more effective. Now, how is that for a value investor invested in reads and the bottom line. If implementing certain types of technology can really, really change their complete portfolio. So there’s a lot of companies and people that we interview that have something that may not today really be impactful to people, but in 2, 3, 5 years could really turn the entire industry on its head.

So that’s the most exciting part about these interviews is seeing what’s to come. What’s next. How is this going to disrupt a 100-year old industry? We also interview that’s coming up in the next few weeks, Gregory LeBlanc, who talks about the disruptors in fintech; who the big players are; what’s the future for MBA programs and a lot more? So to reiterate, if you want to know what might disrupt your current investments; technology that might change industries; technologies that companies you might want to keep an eye on; startups in general, you’re going to love Silicon Valley.

Stig Brodersen  30:07

And we link to Shawn’s show in the show notes, so you can subscribe right away. But you can also just search for Silicon Valley or The Investor’s Podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or whatever podcast app you’re using. And you should see Shawn’s caricature that looks just like Preston’s and mine right there. I hope you really enjoy his show as much as we do. And if you do, it would really help Preston, Shawn, and me out if you give Silicon Valley by The Investor’s Podcast Network an honest review on iTunes.

Outro 30:37

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