Tech stocks we’re watching | Deborah Jackson

Maddy: [00:00:20] Hello and welcome to You're In Good Company, an investing podcast striving to disrupt the norms in the finance industry. I'm Maddy, and as always, I'm in very good company with my co-host Zoe. [00:00:30][10.0]

Sophie: [00:00:30] Hello, Maddie.as always, I'm excited for today's episode. Particularly excited because an incredible track coming your way. We look into the tech industry and areas that our guests find particularly interesting at the moment, and trust me, they will surprise you. It's incredible. [00:00:47][16.6]

Maddy: [00:00:49] They are incredible. We are also going to get her tips on how to spot and investing opportunity in this sector, as well as how we can approach valuing tech companies, which [00:00:58][9.2]

Sophie: [00:00:58] has historically been quite difficult, right? I don't know how to do it. [00:01:01][3.2]

Maddy: [00:01:02] Nope. Before we jump into our interview today, we just wanted to find one quick term so that we can all be across the conversation. [00:01:09][6.7]

Speaker 3: [00:01:11] What's that? [00:01:11][0.2]

Sophie: [00:01:12] The term is STEM and we talk about STEM companies, and STEM is just an acronym that stands for science, technology, engineering and mathematics. [00:01:22][9.7]

Maddy: [00:01:24] Deborah's career began on Wall Street in the early 80s at Goldman Sachs, where she spent the first 20 years or so of her career after retiring from Wall Street. Deb became an early stage investor investing in women entrepreneurs in consumer internet, cloud software, mobile, medical and other industries with her desire to create an even bigger impact. Deb founded Plum Alley with the mission to increase the amount of capital invested in women entrepreneurs and gender balanced teams by making investing in private companies more accessible. Welcome [00:01:54][29.8]

Deborah Jackson: [00:01:55] Thank you for having me. [00:01:56][1.0]

Sophie: [00:01:56] Now, Deborah, we start the episode in a similar way every week so that people can get to know you a little bit. And the first question we start with is, what's the best thing that's happened to you this week? [00:02:06][10.0]

Deborah Jackson: [00:02:06] So the best thing that's happened to me this week is we actually reached a big milestone in my company, and we've now invested 40 million across 23 different companies. Oh, and I still remember back to the early days when we were just getting going and convincing others to join us and to to own their role as an investor. And and so all of a sudden, here we are. It's not been easy. It's been many, many units of work and many days, but very exciting to see that milestone. [00:02:40][33.8]

Maddy: [00:02:41] That's a great one. Congratulations. And Deb, if you could have dinner with anyone, who would it be and why? [00:02:48][6.6]

Deborah Jackson: [00:02:49] You know, I over the years, I've thought about that and I've had different people that I wanted to have dinner with. But I think right now, the person I'd most like to have dinner with is Cathie Wood, and I will tell you why, because we have a very similar investment thesis. I've been interested in Frontier Technologies for a couple of decades now and sort of watch the internet evolved, watched a lot of these new technologies, and I just see the potential of what they could do in the world, which is massive. And Cathie Wood has a similar investment thesis. She focuses on public markets and public companies. But I think it's really fascinating that we have. You can have the same investment thesis in private companies and also track them all the way through to when they become public companies and then invest in public companies with a similar breakthrough. [00:03:47][57.8]

Sophie: [00:03:48] I think I would love to be a fly on the wall with that. Do not. Maybe I'll come to you. [00:03:52][4.5]

Deborah Jackson: [00:03:57] Well, that would be great fun. And I think it's, you know, it's one of those bizarre things where you don't often see women geek out on things like technologies and what technologies can do. But I can imagine that we would have a gin and tonic and really totally geek out, like shut our eyes and say, What could the world be? And I would imagine we'd see a completely different world than what we know, mostly enabled by technology and medical breakthroughs. [00:04:27][30.7]

Sophie: [00:04:28] And then our final question is if you could be a stock or company, who would you be and why? [00:04:34][5.7]

Deborah Jackson: [00:04:34] I've fallen in love in the last week or so with a company called Play Form, and it is a company that where you can create NFTs, so nonfungible tokens and you can actually create art. So you go on this website and you can either upload a piece of your art or a photo of your piece of art or draw a new piece of art. And then you can overlay filters on it and make, you know, for instance, if you had a photo of yourself and you wanted to say, OK, I want to see what Picasso, how Picasso might paint me. So there would be that Picasso. You click a button and there would be the Picasso version of you. So fascinating. But what's interesting about it is you can then take that digital image and you can upload it to a non-fungible token, which can be bought and sold on the market. So I think this whole world of digital assets, you know, we used to think of digital assets as, OK, upload a JPEG or it's a photo. And so fine, those are all digital assets. But we are moving into a world where we can find the value in all kinds of things that are not digital and even create new things that are digital that people love and appreciate. And so I think it's a really exciting area, completely democratised sourcing and creation of value and the opportunity for many, many, many more artists to find their natural base or to find their supporters. And so what what happens in a lot of these digital platforms is you no longer need art galleries or you don't need art galleries in the same way where there are gatekeepers and gatekeepers who say, OK, this is good enough, we'll put that in our gallery. We'll give that artist an opportunity to sell their works. What a lot of these NFTs do in these digital platforms is allow anybody anywhere in the world with the small amount of money or a big amount of money to go on the platforms and support the artists that they want to support. So I just think it's fascinating. I think in about five to 10 years, we're going to have. Our concept of art and artists will change radically. [00:06:59][144.8]

Sophie: [00:07:00] Yeah, I was actually reading the other day about an art gallery that was inside a video game, so like video games were teaming up with digital platforms or nonfungible platforms, and you could play the video game and pay to like, go inside the gallery and then the actual artist of that digital art would get paid. And I was just like, Whoa, mind blown. [00:07:21][20.7]

Deborah Jackson: [00:07:22] I know. I think that's that's the exciting thing. I mean, we have these. We have the internet, we have technology tools and we're like Web 3.0. These are things that hadn't even been contemplated five to 10 years ago, and they're all enabled by technology in the internet. So I find it a fascinating time. And there's there's a secret artist, a hidden artist in all of us. So stay tuned for what we can create. [00:07:49][27.1]

Maddy: [00:07:52] Well, Deb, I have a little bit of a confession because Sophie and I answered these questions about a month ago now, and I actually said that if I could be a stock or company, that I would be Plum Alley because I just love what you guys do, so much so for anyone who is listening, who doesn't know. How would you explain Plum Alley in your own words? [00:08:13][21.2]

Deborah Jackson: [00:08:15] Sure. Plumley is an investment firm. And what we do is we give access to people. We give access to investors to invest in really high quality early stage companies. And we also support women entrepreneurs in the STEM fields, so we make investing fun. I like to say that investing should not be boring or disassociated from your core and who you are. It should actually be fun. Yeah, and we make it fun. And how do we do that? We make it fun by doing a lot of the hard work and the heavy lifting. So we go, source and find great companies. We probably look at 50 companies for everyone we select that meets our criteria. And then when we find one of those fabulous companies, we present them to our investors. And so our investors have the opportunity to meet the best of the best. We do a lot of used to be in person, but now Zoom sessions with the founders. So our investors actually get to see quality companies and they get to meet those founders and hear the vision of those founders. And then we take our members through this sort of business case and the economics of why these are good investments. And then our members have the control and the power to invest or not. There's no requirement to invest. But what we found over the five years we've been doing this is a number of potential investors. We call them emerging investors come in and they join, not quite sure what they want to do. And then they see these amazing companies. And when they see a real company and they can relate to what value that company brings into the world, it's an easy process to say, I want that company, I want that solution to climate change. I want that solution to better food. I want that solution to a cure to cancer. So they get excited and they say, Wait, this is my hard earned money. I want to make money. And I want a seat at the table. I want to be around the future. I want to be around these founders. I want to be around a group of other very interesting, high powered women investors. About 80 percent of our investors are women. And so it becomes a fun process. And then over time, you watch those companies progress. We have a number of companies that we think are going to produce massive returns. So you you even make money at it. And why shouldn't investing be like that? [00:11:07][172.0]

Sophie: [00:11:07] So you're talking about a couple of things you're talking about, criteria you're talking about some of these amazing companies. What are some of these companies that you're investing in? And I guess, how do you decide which companies to invest in? [00:11:20][12.5]

Deborah Jackson: [00:11:20] Yeah. So we have a very well thought out investment thesis, which we didn't have on the early days, but over time, we really perfected this investment thesis and what our opinion is that these new emerging frontier technologies and medical breakthroughs will dominate our future. So if if you believe in that which we do, you always want to go where the future is going. You don't want to look behind and you don't want to be in. Her mental change, so by an incremental change, I mean, do you want to be another dating app or a dog walking app or whatever? Probably not. There's, you know, you could probably do well at that. But if you really want to see change in the world and if you really want to pick big market opportunities, you want to go with newer technologies. And so one of our criteria is these companies must be a frontier or health care medical breakthrough kind of company. So very important big stuff and leveraging technology, either existing technology or building new technology. So that's our first criteria. Second, criteria must already have some kind of a product, so we don't do ideas on a napkin. You know, early stage angel first money and we don't do that. Other people do that much better than we do. So we like to see companies that have already raised a little bit of money, built a prototype so we can actually kick the tires and say, Oh, we get this, we see the potential here. And in many cases, our companies already have at least one paying customer, maybe more customers. So you can see the outside market has validated the need for that product and are willing to pay for that product. So those are criteria. We also every single one of our companies has at least one woman in the founding team, and so many of our companies are teams of men and women. But all of them have at least one woman. And why do we care about that? Because we think the diversity of opinions, the different perspectives between women and men are absolutely critical to form really strong companies. And we know that women's brains are different than male brains. There's there's a lot there. And so and women are huge controllers of their families, the food their families eat, the health care in their families, vacations, electronics, car purchasing. So of course, you'd want to have women at the table when you're developing new products and you're leading companies. So that is all our criteria. We like series level. And you know, when we first started off, people said to us, Are you sure there are that many companies with women in the STEM fields and like, are you sure you're going to find enough companies? Well, let me tell you this we have a database of over 9000 companies today that meet our criteria, so we pay sources for information. But we also have collected for five years our own database from talking to women, women, founders, other investors, and we track these companies so. And then, you know, what happens is we focus on the top handful of companies and really drill down deep into those companies to see what we think. But there's no lack of great companies. There is no lack of women with brilliant ideas. [00:15:11][230.5]

Maddy: [00:15:11] I want to touch on that a little bit more because I read a stat the other day that said in 2020, just 2.3 percent of, say, funding in the US went to women led start-ups. So I'm interested to hear in your experience, why do you think that is? [00:15:27][15.3]

Deborah Jackson: [00:15:28] Yeah, it's a nagging problem. And that number has always hovered under five percent some years. It's a little bit better. There's actually a little bit better right before Covid than Covid hit was worse for women during the Covid women entrepreneurs during the Covid period. So why do I think that is a couple of major reasons. Number one, who controls the flow of money? So when you look at who staffs, who are partners, decision making partners in venture capital firms in the United States, that number is basically also hovers around five percent, it seems, in the last year or so to be getting better. But what happens when you have predominantly men at the table when women come in and present there is an unconscious bias, or maybe even a conscious bias? And so women, I don't know if you've ever been in the room of you're the only woman in the business context, but there is a dynamic that happens. And, you know, I think that's one of the issues at play. Also, most venture capitalist firms in the US find their deal flow and opportunities by going to their circle of friends, right? That network their network right? And so if there is an open position in their venture fund, where do they go? They go to their handful of friends and they say, Hey, do you know anybody we're hiring? So who are they likely to bring in there? And the other thing is this these networks are really powerful. When you think of PayPal and I'm sure you've heard over time, there's this reference to the PayPal Mafia, which includes Elon Musk and others. So these were the original men who were at paper and obviously PayPal's highly successful company. They made a ton of money and they all went off to other ventures. Well, what happens? They all still know one another. They have money. And so when they want to raise money for their companies, they go to their same network of people. And if you look at the data, those networks are powerful. Those networks include people giving money to other people, saving their venture funds, creating tech products that fit with somebody else's tech product. And women have just not been in those circles. Traditionally, they've been in other circles, but not necessarily those circles. So we need to change that. [00:18:12][164.7]

Sophie: [00:18:13] So pretty much what you're saying is that we need to make a Plum Alley mafia of women in networks. [00:18:18][5.5]

Deborah Jackson: [00:18:20] I'm going for it. We are going to say that the minute one of our companies, which hopefully we're projecting in the next two years, one of our companies goes public and we have massive returns. We want that headline. You want that headline like, OK, we women stepped up, wrote a check. We helped fund that company. Now that company is successful and we're going to turn around and strengthen our network. We're going to do even more. We're going to support other companies. We're going to mentor each other. We're going to talk up each other and we're going to we have to build it. You have to build it. [00:19:06][45.8]

Sophie: [00:19:06] Well, I think when you say PayPal, you know, PayPal was a very disruptive company when it first started. You know, what was it, maybe 20 years ago? I don't know the exact dates, but it seems like a lot of the companies that you're investing in are also so just disruptive as well. I mean, I was reading on your website, there was a company called air protein that makes alternative meat made out of CO2. Like, how does that even happen? [00:19:28][21.8]

Deborah Jackson: [00:19:30] Yeah, fascinating. All of our companies are fascinating, but I'll talk a little bit about air protein and then a couple of the others. So air protein, actually, the woman, Ph.D. founder was watching rockets go up into space and NASA and said, Well, wait, how do you feed people once they're in space? And that was like a big deal and there was some money invested to try to figure that out. And she saw that technology that was abandoned by NASA, but she saw that technology and said, Wait, a second, I want to do that for food on the planet. So she captured that technology spend a few years developing it further. And basically what it does is it takes air. And captures air and then through a fermentation process, turns that air into protein. So protein is now. I mean, imagine that imagine that it's like a car everywhere, and it's like, that is an amazing discovery. So that's what you want to do. If you want to be investing in things, you want to be investing in things that are massive and are game changers. And so that's an amazing company. We also invested in a company called Open Water, which the woman, Ph.D., founder there, actually ran a lab at M.I.T. and then she worked with Sergey Brin at Google on a couple of moonshot. And then she also worked at Oculus, at Facebook. And she was watching lead our technology. So it's a technology with light, and it can actually penetrate various things, including the blood brain barrier. So she was watching this and she thought, Well, it's kind of interesting, OK, if you want to build goggles and Oculus, see an alternative world, but why don't we actually use this technology for good in the world? So she realised you can actually create a wand, a machine and a wand and work in your brain and do a version of a CT scan or MRI to find out what's happening in your body. And she figured out, doesn't have to be a mega machine like what we have today for several million dollars. And, yeah, huge, huge equipment. You can actually do that with this relatively small machine and a wand. So that is her invention, and she is now doing stroke detection in a hospital in Hartford, Connecticut, and her goal is to have her technology put in every ambulance. So you think about all these remote places in the world that don't have the money or the the cat scans or MRI. So how do people find out what's going on in their body and it's a better body scan. So it's revolutionary, absolutely. And revolutionary. [00:22:35][184.9]

Maddy: [00:22:36] You know, MRI machines, they're so big, they're so costly and they're like, they're quite limited because they are so big. So the the thought that that's something that could be accessible to so many more people in a much easier and more accessible capacity such as an ambulance is just that's incredible. [00:22:52][15.7]

Deborah Jackson: [00:22:53] I know, and that's that's the whole thing. So when we look at companies and founders, it's a sense of, you know, they can see around corners, they can see the possibilities that other people can't see. But somehow they see these possibilities and then they're persuasive that they they so believe it, that it can be. It's almost like they can see it and they're going to will that it happens? And that is extraordinary. It's like when you meet a founder like that, you just know it's like the bells go off. It's like, Wait, this is an extraordinary founder human being that can see this, and you never know when or how or where that's going to happen. It just, you know, but when you see it, you know it. [00:23:39][46.4]

Maddy: [00:23:40] Yeah. Well, we're going to take a quick break for us glances. But we'll be right back to hear more from Deb about what are some of the biggest trends that she is seeing in the tech industry at the moment and how to value a tech company. [00:23:53][13.3]

Sophie: [00:23:57] So we're talking a little bit about the tech industry already with some of the companies that your company invests in. So within the tech industry, are there any sectors or any trends that we are seeing at the moment or that you're particularly interested in? [00:24:11][13.8]

Deborah Jackson: [00:24:12] Yeah, I think, you know, technology is fascinating because it's always changing and things are being built on other things, so it's definitely a moving target. And and if you just think of like the internet, the early days of the internet where people did dial up and, you know, we didn't even do transactions. And now what you can do on the internet, what technologies just like that, you know, trains out of the station, it's just going to move in one direction and there's going to be more functionality. And now with mobile phones and the proliferation of mobile phones, you know, it's accessible quite broadly. But what I think is I personally see is that companies are using more than one technology. So right now, there's no such thing as just an AI company or a blockchain company or a machine learning company or a health care company. Now every sector and every company is really looking at components of all of that. So you can see now a lot of the what we had during Covid, with remote visits with doctors and so forth. That's technology. You can see it with the Apple Watch and the Aura Ring and other physical devices that monitor your health that also report into your doctor. So that's a convergence of technologies. Its hardware, its software, it's internet enabled. And so I see that a lot and many of our companies, I'll give you a good example. Eczema Akram is a company based in Silicon Valley or San from the Bay Area. And what it it's a company that invented a piece of hardware that can be put in roving vehicles. So think of Google Street View cars or Lyft cars, and their technology is a hardware. But what it does is actually captures air and measures the air on 17 pollutants. Real time literally can tell you what's in the air, block-by-block because it's moving around in the vehicles and captures that air. And it's real time so it can tell you what you're breathing right now on that street. And so that's hardware also software because it captures that analyses what's in the air, reports that back through the internet to a platform and then does artificial intelligence and machine learning on the data that's collected. So how would you define that company? Would you say it's a climate related companies at a hardware companies that have software companies that an AI company is out of machine learning? It's a little bit of all of that, and I think that's what we see that you can have these companies with different technology aspects, more than one that makes them much, much more valuable because if you're one piece of that puzzle, you're not going to be as valuable. But by having all of that and those different pieces of technology working together, you create massive value and things that could not be done before. So I think the biggest trend is there's no such silo one type of technology over there. And you think of NFT as, you know, digital assets. Cryptocurrencies, those are all based on blockchain, so they're not blockchain companies, but they use blockchain. So I just find it fascinating that these sectors are, you know, there's there's no such thing anymore as just a health care company. It's health care, tech or health. And we don't quite yet know how to put the labels on these things, but it's really the convergence of technologies that bring huge value. [00:28:08][236.4]

Sophie: [00:28:09] Yeah, we also talk about a little bit when we're looking at companies to invest in and when you're looking in the future, you kind of say to yourself, Okay, I might be investing in, you know, a pretty cool company or blue chip or, you know, let's just say a bank or something like that. But you do need to look at, OK, what technology are they implementing to make them a better service or better product? It's not just their core business, but, you know, are they acquiring tech companies to make them better? Are they using new technology so that they can provide new things to their customers? I think it's one of those aspects that you do look at when you are investing in companies. [00:28:41][32.7]

Deborah Jackson: [00:28:42] Yeah, especially online companies are, you know, traditional companies. You know, what we've seen through Covid and otherwise is every company needs a digital aspect. And it needs it even more needs it even more, because the competition. Just look at Amazon for four brick and mortar retail stores. I mean, so you can do more and more online and it just, you know, Airbnb disrupting the hotel business. So I think every legacy industry has some threats. And whether or not those legacy companies can move fast enough and, you know, really stay current and not just current, stay ahead of the game because these smaller companies are totally nimble. You know, they're hungry, they're not, you know, bureaucratic. They're trying to get product market fit, they're trying to bring new value. And so the mindset is very, very different in early stage companies compared to traditional big, big companies. [00:30:01][78.7]

Maddy: [00:30:02] One thing that we often hear people saying, and I think this is especially the case in Australia, where we love our dividend income and we love to see profits, is that tech stocks are overpriced. And, you know, a really popular example in Australia recently where we have Afterpay who is not making a profit, but the share price gets up, got up over $100 before it got acquired by Square. So I'm interested to hear your approach or if you have any tips on how it can go about evaluating the potential of tech stocks when I guess it comes down to like distinguishing between genuine value and then just being overhyped, because that was something that was very common about Afterpay in particular. Is there a whole group of people who just said, Oh, so overhyped, so overhyped? We really struggle to understand what the value of that that company actually is? [00:30:54][51.4]

Deborah Jackson: [00:30:54] Yeah, the whole subject of valuations is very tricky, and I think historically there were sort of rules that worked and you could apply and you could do multiples. You could look at a whole bunch of companies in a sector and you could compare them to earnings to market. Market cap and otherwise. So I think historically it was a lot easier than it is today. But I think with some of these newer companies and newer technologies that have not existed before, it's very hard to put a number on it because you're comparing apples and oranges. So, you know, people do their best to do science around this, but there's a huge element of art that also has to go into it. So and we look at valuations all the time, every single company that we've invested in, we've we've considered the valuation we've considered. OK, where could the company go? Where could the valuation be in the next couple of rounds? And I think one of the things that we've learnt is. You really have to appreciate the potential. You really have to get your head around what could be and. Then you have to discount that because there is some risk into the future. You don't know if that's going to materialise. But if you don't start off with this could be massive. This brings so much value like Akuma could potentially affect every person on the planet. Open water, you know, that that does the the remote body imaging that could potentially affect every person on the planet. And OK, so that's where it could be. What is it today? What have they proven today? What have they de-risked? What still is a risk factor? Where do you have to make a leap of faith? And so it's an art on the leap of faith. But if you see the potential and that factors into the valuation and there's no right or wrong here, I mean, I've seen 10 times over people said when Facebook first went public, everybody said, No, that's ridiculous. I would never do that and look at look at [00:33:17][143.2]

Maddy: [00:33:18] their growth metaverse, [00:33:19][0.6]

Deborah Jackson: [00:33:20] where I mean all of it. So I think we've all been humbled by thinking we can use these traditional formats. And I think that traditional formats work and traditional companies, but not so much in new companies. I think you have to think out of the box. I think you have to really. Look around at data points and say, what could this be? And and there is now history and things coming out of nowhere and becoming huge. Clubhouse is one of them. Not that I. You know, support that, but that came out of nowhere. And look at it like, so these things happen, and I think we have to not be surprised. Be sceptical. But also when you believe it. Stick with your guns, you know, just if you see it. And I think with our companies, we can see where they could go. Doesn't mean they for sure will get there, but we can see it. And if they succeed, they will be massive. So. And keep in mind, too like valuations. And the point is, you want a really big pie. So, OK. So if the valuation seems high today, like if you have an early stage company and it's a 50 or 100 million dollar valuation and they just have, you know, less than a million in revenues. OK, so you could buy a piece of the company, it's going to be a small piece of the company, but. If it reaches its full potential, that pie will be billions, billions. So. It's OK if we can get there, because even if you have a small sliver, if you invest early, that small sliver is worth a lot and you don't even care if you're deluded because if it reaches that full potential, you have to look at the entry point that you invest and the exit point. So if you put in money early. You hope it gets crazy valuations and succeeds and raises money, and, you know, so it's an interesting dynamic. I will tell you this the venture failed. Is not for the faint of heart. I mean, you've got to you've gotta you've got to say, OK, I'm going to make some bets and some may be wrong, but those with hit will be massive. And so that's just a little plug for a plumber. That's what we do, so we do that work so our members just can pick and choose, but chances are they're going to have a very good portfolio. [00:35:58][158.6]

Sophie: [00:35:59] I guess you've spoken a lot about what you can say in these companies, but you know, do you have any tips for the everyday investor like and I for spotting opportunities in the tech space or in this space in general? [00:36:10][10.3]

Deborah Jackson: [00:36:10] Well, I would always say use your own instincts and believe your believe your eyes like Candace. A very good example. So. I guess three or four years ago, whenever and our team internally, Plumley, we were trying to do an invitation to some event we have and like, you know, we had to get a graphic artist and it was like, so time consuming and so painful. And then I discovered Canva and I was like, This is amazing. Drag and drop. And I thought to myself, I remember taking it into the team and saying, We have to use this. This is going to save so much time and it's so much better. And I always thought this would be an amazing company to invest in. But it wasn't us base. We didn't have any Connexions or whatever. And I look at it today and I think like that is the thing, especially for women like if you see a product that. You think is has a lot of value, and maybe you share it with a couple of other people and they also think it has value. That is where to start. Because it's your own. Your own knowledge of of seeing the potential and being a customer like if you're a customer and you like that and especially women, they will tell their 10 friends. So if you like it yourself, that's that's a really good indicator. And by the way, you don't have to. It's in Canada. It's a good example. You don't have to understand what's underneath the hood. Right, right. You don't have to understand everything they do, you know, behind the scenes and and how the tech is built there. But you do know the user interface, your experience when you go to that site or other sites. And that's huge. So I always say to investors, you don't have to be an expert in technology. You know, you have to you have to look at the team and assume they are the experts and they're credible. But what do you see and do you see value there? And that's where you start, and then there's a whole bunch of other stuff like how big is the market, their marketing strategy and brand? But you know, if you get the product you're, you know, on first base or second base, really? [00:38:46][156.2]

Maddy: [00:38:47] Do you know what comes to mind when you say that? And they appeared very recently as Olaplex. It feels like like when you're saying those things, I'm like, Tick, tick, tick. So maybe I need to go and look more into that one. [00:38:59][12.6]

Deborah Jackson: [00:39:01] Yeah, it's and that's really great because I think that's the thing about technology. It's like, these are new things. And you know, we are the customer, we are the customer. So we have a point of view. And your point of view may not be with your investor hat on. But as a consumer, it's really important because and it's also, by the way, generational. So things that would work in a certain generation may not be, you know, your traditional venture capitalist may not get it. You know, so I think it's exciting, I honestly think everybody has something to bring to the table around investing and may not be Dollars at the moment. Maybe in the future, who knows, but you all have an investing point of view. That it's not reserved just for those high paid people on Wall Street. You know, it's like there's the world is changing and products are changing and technology is evolving. So a lot more people are actually in the know than they appreciate. [00:40:14][73.7]

Maddy: [00:40:15] Well, Deb, I think that brings us nicely to the watch list. Each episode we have been asking our guest to add a stock or company news, trend industry, whatever you lack to our watchlist. And the purpose of this is to get us thinking outside the box and broaden our horizons in the investing space. But we're not financial advisors and this is just for educational purposes. So what are you adding to our watch list today? [00:40:40][24.8]

Deborah Jackson: [00:40:41] I guess I would add OpenSea, which is the marketplace for digital assets, NFTs, which I think is I think everyone should dip their toe in the water, I guess pun intended. But I, you know, I think this whole world of digital assets is here to stay and it's going to grow. And I just think everyone should dip their toe in the water. I did that recently. I literally bought some Ethereum and bitcoin on Coinbase, just a small amount, mostly to experiment and see see how it works. But then I wanted to buy an NFT and I had to create an Ethereum digital wallet, so I literally was on with one of our interns like saying, How do I create a digital wallet now? I bought the Ethereum here. How do I get it to my digital wallet? And how do I buy the NFT? And we literally spent an hour on Zoom trying to figure out how to create the account of a transfer to the wallet. The whole thing. But that is what you should do every bit. The world is changing so fast and like, just go play around with it, go create. In fact, our company, I think for our holiday party this year, we're going to have a. Arts and crafts kind of session where everybody creates a digital asset or a piece of art or drawing. And we're going to turn it into NFT. How else, how else, how else are you going to learn this so. And you know, I just think it's exciting and you got to you got to you got to stay current. If you're not current, you're out in left field. And that's really my worry for so many investors and people like the world is moving very, very fast. So you're either going to be in the know. You don't have to be an expert, but you are going to be in the know or you're going to be out in left field. Hmm. [00:42:51][130.5]

Sophie: [00:42:52] I think I love that the whole you're doing it as a Christmas party so that you can learn together because especially in the digital space, it's really hard to get your head around when you're first kind of understanding it. And you need like I remember at work, I had a work colleague teaching me about the hot wallets for digital assets because she, you know, bought all sorts of coins and I'd never. But I was just watching her and I'm like, Oh, that's what you need, like, you need someone to like, literally explain it. It's so hard to understand in the first instance. But fascinating nonetheless. And I think it's great that you put it on our radar because the more that people can think about it, as you said, you don't have to be an expert, you can just be in the know. So our last question today is what would you say to someone who has some trepidation about starting on their investing journey? [00:43:40][47.8]

Deborah Jackson: [00:43:41] I would say. You have a lot more to bring to the table than, you know, today and in a very short period of time, you will see that. So your own brain, your own life experience, your own ability to think about risk and return and what what you want to see in the world and how you react as a consumer or how you see value is absolutely critical. And and you basically have that today you have that today. It's maybe not a honed skill, but you come at this immediately bringing something to the table. Now traditional investors and Wall Street and others. Would dispute that and say, you know, you bring nothing to the table, and in fact, they need to hold on to their position, right position of power or whatever authority. And so I would just say like. You know, it's your money. You have the right. And the capability to direct it to what you want. And don't let anybody scare you away or tell you, no, particularly yourself, because our identity as investors have been somewhat hijacked away from us, like. So just say not going to take that and just. Just do it because it's a lot of fun and a lot of fun. Like, women have no trouble in particular with philanthropy, it feels good to give to this non-profit give to this and do good in the world. Well, you should have the exact same feeling about investing. I just invested in open water. Oh my gosh, they're going to bring this, you know, body imaging to the world. And oh my gosh, eczema is going to give us the data we need to cure air pollution. And you should be excited about that, so it can invest in can be excited, shouldn't be a chore. Hmm. [00:45:56][135.0]

Maddy: [00:45:57] Well, Deb, it has been an absolute joy chatting to you today. Thank you so much for joining us. And I so often I have gotten a lot out of this conversation, and I'm sure our listeners will tell you if anyone wants to find out more about you or Plumlee, is there anything that you want to plug before we head off? [00:46:13][16.2]

Deborah Jackson: [00:46:14] Yes, I would just say to go to our web site, it's Plumlee, Darko, Nunn, Akon. And if you want to reach out to me, if you're interested in becoming a member investing, we also have a fund if you're interested in becoming an LP in the fund. Reach out to me directly. Deborah Deeb our age at Plumley Darko. [00:46:37][23.3]

Sophie: [00:46:38] Amazing. Thank you so much for your time today, Deborah. We really appreciate it. [00:46:42][4.1]

Deborah Jackson: [00:46:42] Great. And I hope you guys like do more of this because it's so needed [00:46:47][4.6]

Maddy: [00:46:47] in the world where you keep going. Don't you worry about the incredible chat. [00:46:54][7.0]

Sophie: [00:46:55] I would personally recommend going to check out the website because honestly, some of the companies, they have a list of companies you can click on to them and it gives you a little wrap-up of what they are. And it's so cool. [00:47:05][10.2]

Maddy: [00:47:05] I am so glad that our manifesting to get Deb on the show worked because that has been one of my favourite episodes so far. I'm feeling very inspired about all the opportunities around investing and I guess how you can invest your own money in like start ups and things that are going to make a real difference in the world. It's really exciting. [00:47:25][19.4]

Sophie: [00:47:26] Exactly. It doesn't have to be boring. Now, as always, we will be putting more info and more explainers and everything else onto our Instagram Why IGC podcast? [00:47:36][10.8]

Maddy: [00:47:38] If you have any questions from today's episode, jump into our Facebook group and ask away why JCA Investing Podcast, Discussion Group [00:47:45][7.6]

Sophie: [00:47:46] And if you've really been enjoying these episodes, please leave us a review because it helps people find us people like you find us as well. [00:47:54][7.9]

Maddy: [00:47:56] Thank you so much and we'll catch you next week. [00:47:57][1.6]

Sophie: [00:47:58] Goodbye. [00:47:58][0.0]

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