Episode #7: Future You is Begging for a Financial Plan

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  Speaker 1:
  In a world captivated by criticism and negative clickbait headlines, it’s easy to overlook the scope and power of technologies propelling us forward. At Tech Optimist, we delve into the vibrant intersection of technology and entrepreneurship, shining a light on innovators who are building a better future. As members of the most active venture capital firm in the United States, our unique vantage point offers us insights into the real-world impact of technology. Join us as we explore, celebrate, and contribute to the stories of those creating tomorrow.

  Speaker 2:
  Welcome to episode seven of the Tech Optimist podcast. In this show, we cover topics at the intersection of technology, entrepreneurship, and venture capital.

  We have a new segment today called Three Breakthroughs. Drew Wandzilak and I pick three things that we think are the most notable technology breakthroughs of the last week or two, discuss those, and try to make them accessible to a broad audience. Enjoy the show.

  In block one, we have a new segment called Three Breakthroughs. In the segment, I talked to Drew Wandzilak. Drew is an associate at Alumni Ventures. We talk about three new breakthroughs in the tech industry that have happened over the last couple of weeks. We try to make those topics accessible and point to how they can impact real people in their lives in the near future.

  Then in block two, we have Imar Ben Etti. He’s the co-founder and CEO of Zu, a company that’s developed an in-game advertising platform. As we all know, eyeballs are where it’s at in the attention economy, and people game, so advertising will follow. We’ll learn a little bit more about Anzo.

  Finally, in block three, I have a conversation with Steve Chen. He’s the founder and CEO of New Retirement. This is an AV portfolio company that utilizes AI to build a comprehensive financial planning model for people. They use a fee-based system, so it’s not a function of AUM, which is really a great choice for people. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

  As a reminder, the Tech Optimist podcast is for informational purposes only. It is not personalized financial advice, and it is not an offer to buy or sell securities. For additional important details, please see the text description accompanying this episode.

  Hey everyone, I’d love to take a moment to tell you a bit about Alumni Ventures and Foundation Fund. AV offers smart, simple, and accessible venture portfolios. We built our firm to serve the needs of individual investors, and we’ve raised over $ 1.3 billion from a community of more than 10,000 investors.

  PitchBook ranked AV the most active VC in the United States in both 2022 and 2023, and CB Insights ranked AV a top 20 performing VC for 2024.

  So where might investors start? Some of the people we talk to are interested in our Foundation Fund—one of our broadest and most diversified offerings. This fund taps into our substantial investment engine, offering investors a robust and diversified venture portfolio with deals sourced from many of our investing teams and with renowned lead investors such as these.

  The Foundation Fund portfolio is spread across stage, sector, geography, and lead investors to help ensure a diversified and balanced mix in your portfolio. For an investor new to Alumni Ventures, it could be a great place to start. Ready to learn more? Visit us at av.vc.

  Okay, here’s our segment: Three Breakthroughs. This is where we try to identify three things that we think are most likely to change the world.

  All right, Drew, welcome to the Tech Optimist podcast. We’re going to try a new segment today where we’re talking about three breakthroughs that we think basically happened in the last week or so, and hopefully bring those to the attention of people. Talk about it a little bit and have some fun with it. So, who’s going first today?

  Speaker 3:
  I think you’re going first with some new updates in drug discovery.

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, so for mine, I’m picking AlphaFold, the AlphaFold announcement. And just to set some context, at the JP Morgan conference, the CEO of Nvidia, Jensen Wong, really talked about drug discovery moving from scientific discovery to engineering.

  I think that was—and we’ll put that clip in there—but I think it was really striking that when you can move things into the engineering realm, you start experiencing kind of geometric improvements.

  Speaker 3:
  Can you describe, when we’re talking about going from science to the engineering world, what does that mean and why now? Why haven’t we done this before?

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, I would describe it as: obviously you have scientific frameworks and ideas about systems and processes, but it’s a little bit hit and miss. It’s like, let’s try this, let’s design this automobile shape, and then we’re going to put it in a wind tunnel and see how aerodynamic it is.

  But it takes a long time in clay to make the model. It’s like, this worked, now we have to go back and make a new one. But if you can do that in software—if you create a simulated automobile and you can run models and iterate—it’s just, again, orders of magnitude better.

  And again, I think for me, that’s why, for one of the three breakthroughs of the week, I’m picking this AlphaFold announcement. Just to keep it at the strategic level of a discussion, it basically allows people to model protein, small molecules, and all the things that go into drug discovery.

  You can basically do it in a software simulation and greatly shorten the time of trial and error that would otherwise take place in a laboratory.

  I think people have—family members who have had disease, cancer—and you sit there and it’s so frustrating to see, hey, there’s promising technologies, but it’s in phase one trials, and that’s five to ten years from actually, at scale, helping people.

  Even before you hit phase one, which is the starting gate, companies spend years—three to seven—kind of just in the wind tunnel, if you will.

  Bringing more and more of biology into models and software where you can find side effects, see how things work, trial and error in software—I just think is huge.

  If he is right and we are moving into the engineering phase of drug discovery, there’s something to be very excited about.

  I mean, we’ve talked before that I think one of the more underestimated technologies right now is this family of peptides—GLP-1 drugs—that I think we’re just at the beginning of understanding in terms of how they work on certain important systems of the body.

  I think in five years, the vast majority of the population is going to be able to be at their target weight, which is transformative to a society where half the population is overweight and a quarter is obese.

  I think this is like that. The ability to really get at some nasty diseases, to address niche diseases with some of these breakthroughs, is really exciting.

  Listen, I am not a biologist, but I can read the room. I can see and read the enthusiasm of people who know what they’re talking about in this space. When they’re excited, I’m excited.

  So for me, that’s number one.

  Speaker 3:
  Yeah, I think it’s a great announcement, and it’s something that we’ve been hearing for years, right? Computers are going to revolutionize pharmaceuticals and drug discovery, AI is going to revolutionize drug discovery. And I’ve always read that and thought, great—we have artificial…

  Speaker 2:
  Where is it?

  Speaker 3:
  Where is it, and why is there such a bottleneck? Why is this so hard to do? And when you shared this—I mean, that piece on simulation, I think, is the most important. And that is what has been so incredibly hard to achieve because human bodies are complex. There are billions, trillions of data points—how a drug can interact, how our bodies interact.

  And so being able to model that is hard to do. We got to a point where I think we could get the data points, but then the actual simulation—analyzing that and then doing it over a period of time—well, we’re seeing this across other industries as well.

  If a study has to take 10 years because you’ve got to understand the effects 10, 15, 20 years down the line, people can’t wait for lifesaving drugs for that long. So if we can review…

  Speaker 2:
  And it’s also money. Some of these things take 15 to 25 years to make soup to nuts. And then you find out at later stages—in year seven of this process—that something didn’t work or there was this nasty side effect, and you’ve already spent $500 million to get there.

  Our business—it’s a hit business. It’s a power-law business, bringing these drugs to market. If you can do it in software, you’re probably reducing the cost by an order of magnitude, which also then feeds into what companies have to charge for drugs.

  So I just think it’s like, when you can digitize something, it’s a whole new ball game. We’ve got a whole new order-of-magnitude arsenal to do things. So again, talk about an area to go into that is super exciting right now—it’s at the intersection of software and AI.

  Jensen also talked about, even within the physical world of instrumentation and robotic surgery, the combination of AI and robotics—the physical world and the software world—going to the next level is also, I think, something not to be underestimated. It’s just super exciting.

  Speaker 3:
  And neither of us are recommending or in favor of reducing clinical trials or safety regulations from the FDA. It’s: can we reduce those bottlenecks where it isn’t a regulatory bottleneck and time is a constraint?

  And to your point, I mean, that’s reducing costs for the end user, the end patient, and getting these drugs to market faster, hopefully.

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, so that’s a good one. All right, what’s yours?

  Speaker 3:
  I’m actually staying in the drug discovery realm. There was an announcement—we’ve made some progress on what’s being called inverse vaccines.

  Looking at the percent of the population that deals with autoimmune disorders and disease—one in 10 people. And right now, the way a vaccine would work is attacking antigens from a virus or a bacteria.

  In autoimmune disorders, it’s your body essentially attacking itself. And so there are current drugs on the market—Humira, Stelara—$20 billion and $14 billion respectively in annual sales. So these are big markets.

  The problem with those drugs is they essentially tell your immune system to relax and to calm down. So there’s less of this inflammatory response to…

  Speaker 2:
  But it calms down everything.

  Speaker 3:
  It calms down everything. So you’re susceptible to more disease. It’s helping the self-response, but you’re still susceptible to external responses.

  They’ve created these new developments where it’s actually sending the self-antigen—the part of the immune system that’s reacting to parts of our own body—into the liver. And by doing that, it’s helping to train our body to understand that these are not necessarily threats to our body, and it calms down those reactions.

  So really interesting. You kind of get the benefits, hopefully, of what a typical autoimmune drug would do, without the downsides of making you more susceptible to disease.

  Speaker 2:
  So it’s this theme that is more targeted, right? A lot of historical approaches to cancer—let’s poison you, but it poisons the cancer more—and all the side effects that come along with it.

  But if we can go into the human system, which is incredibly complicated, with a much more targeted response or attack—either offense or defense, or in this case, targeting the body to tone down on one vector, not just broadly…

  Speaker 3:
  Really…

  Speaker 2:
  Interesting.

  Speaker 3:
  And maybe not for the doctors or the scientists listening, but to your point on targeting: when we talk about simulation, when we talk about modeling, that’s a big part of it.

  We know how to do a lot of things. We know how to stop a lot of things. The problem that I think a lot of drugs face is: can you stop X thing without Y thing happening?

  To understand that at a really granular, deep level requires understanding all the elements of the body—what is going to be impacted when we put this drug or this molecule into a body? Can we get the positive benefits without the negative effects?

  That’s been, I think, holding back a lot of these drugs that aren’t necessarily safe to go to market because of those negative side effects.

   

  Speaker 2:
  And what was it? Was it a scientific paper? Was it a product release? What triggered you to put this on the list for the week?

  Speaker 3:
  Yeah, it was a study published in Nature Biomedical Engineering. It was in a paper, and it was just in mice. They’ve been very clear—they don’t know if this will be effective in humans yet.

  But I think it’s promising, especially when you think about just how big this market is and how many people are affected by disease and disorders that are autoimmune.

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, no, I mean, the size of the market opportunity—I think it’s surprising to some people how many people are on these drugs.

  Speaker 3:
  All right, Mike, what’s your next breakthrough?

  Speaker 2:
  So my third one—there were a couple, but I’m going to go with the ChatGPT 4.0 announcement.

  I think the reason I picked it was it was an interesting announcement. It was clearly kind of a sexy demo, but I think the reason I picked it is the pace of change here is just something, in 30 years, that I have not seen.

  I’m really picking it for that—the delta we’re seeing with the biggest, most powerful tech companies in the world in an arms race here.

  I saw evolutions in the personal computer. I saw evolution in the internet and mobile computing. Even take the iPhone—it really disrupted computing, putting it in your pocket. Amazing user interface innovation there.

  We talked about generations of iPhone that came basically every year, and I think there was a big kind of breakthrough around iPhone 3 or 4, where you absolutely wanted to buy every iPhone because each generation was way better than the previous generation.

  Speaker 2:
  Now it’s like, okay, every two or three years, I think Apple’s got some stuff up its sleeve that’s going to be pretty exciting. I would be shocked if they aren’t all in on AI assistants. I think Sam Altman, in this release, is kind of getting some live data for whatever Siri 2.0 is going to be from Apple. But I would be shocked if Apple isn’t going to be all in on an AI digital assistant that’s safe, on your phone, with your data secured on a special chip.

  I don’t know—don’t have any insider information—but would you be shocked if that doesn’t play out?

  But those were year-long cycles. Now it’s like every two months or every month we’re seeing jaw-dropping improvements in what these tools can do, how much they cost, and how broadly available they are.

  I’m picking it just because I think this is one hype cycle that may actually be under-hyped. I’m just looking at plot points of improvement, and if you extrapolate this ahead three to five years, it’s already far exceeding people’s ability to digest it.

  They’re like, “Oh, I can’t handle it; I’m just trying to get through the day,” but these tools that are now available are going to change our society 100%. The demo of a learning assistant that is looking at you, reading what you’re writing, and asking you questions—the voice believability is just at a totally different level.

  The ability for it to see—I think we’re very close to crossing the Her threshold. I mean, the demo where you had a person applying for a job and the female assistant says, “Hey, you might want to change your shirt and leave the hat at home,” is, I think, way more constructive than a lot of people would find from their current life partner.

  Speaker 3:
  That was—I mean, it’s worth watching the announcement. It’s pretty incredible stuff. But that was part of the big—maybe breakthrough is too strong of a word—but this multimodal audio, video, speech, being able to understand and contextualize and respond in real time…

  You mentioned Her, the movie Her. That’s kind of the breakthrough we’ve been looking for. It’s one thing if you can type a prompt into ChatGPT and then a couple seconds later it spits back a response to you.

  But when you can turn your phone around and say, “What am I looking at?” and it can describe what you’re looking at, and then you can interact…

  Speaker 2:
  With that—and it’s fast. It’s instantaneous. The latency, the natural language interaction—I’ve got it up on my phone, and it’s like I’m talking instead of Googling stuff.

  And that’s real-world. These are practical today, like the language thing—the ability to sit down with somebody, and if you’re… This sounds trite, but I think these things are powerful—to sit down and speak to someone in real time in my language, and they’re hearing it in their language, and we’re having a conversation because it’s basically the universal translator in your ear.

  So I think it’s like, hey, maybe we need to rethink recommending taking four years of high school Spanish. Maybe that needs to be replaced by four years of cultural immersion or something like that. But the actual practicality of having to sit in a language lab for four years—it’s like, no thanks.

  Speaker 3:
  There is something really interesting brewing here. I think 10 years from now, we’re going to look back and go, “It was all connected.”

  We look at the last couple of big technology trends—buzzwords, whatever you want to call them—you have blockchain technology, you have AR/VR/XR, and then now you have what’s going on in AI.

  They seem disconnected. They seem like separate innovations. But when we’re talking about this multimodal, live, fast reaction to what’s happening around you, being able to communicate that to you—does that not fit perfectly into this Apple vision of their Apple Vision Pro?

  What’s the unlock there for them on spatial computing? You want Siri in your headset—not just something that you can talk to, but something that understands what you’re seeing. Is that the breakthrough there?

  And then tying in the blockchain pieces—if we’re living in this digital world where it’s a mix between mixed reality and the real world, it’s…

  Speaker 2:
  It’s hard to know what’s real and what’s not.

  Speaker 3:
  What’s real and what’s not, and how can we create permanent structures of identity, of money flows? What is a fake anonymous actor versus who’s a real person?

  One at a time, they seem like these big, buzzy breakthroughs. But I think we’re going to look back and see that everything kind of molded together. Maybe not in the nicest or fastest way possible, but there’s definitely this thread that’s starting to expose…

  Speaker 2:
  Itself. No, I think that comment is actually very profound in that, as a venture capital firm and as venture capitalists—where do you invest? Where do you think what’s next?

  I actually think there’s really interesting work at the intersection of these huge technology waves. And as you point out, what is the Venn diagram between blockchain, AR, and AI? What is the Venn diagram between telemedicine, robotics, and testing technologies?

  Energy is also in this mix, right? We’re talking about energy requirements. At the end of the day, you’re going to build these data centers; you’re going to need energy storage. So there’s all kinds of innovations going on.

  I think a lot of people right now are investing in buckets. A lot of venture firms have been raised around verticals. I think where the action really is, is to take two of these major trends that look disparate and realize there are great new companies to be built at those intersections.

  I think there are somewhere between eight and fifteen major trends that are order-of-magnitude innovations equivalent to the iPhone. And instead of just a couple of things, there are literally ten.

  Not only are you going to have amazing new businesses being created, but there are going to be huge productivity gains for existing businesses. The incumbents are going to do just fine if you have certain aspects of your business where these technologies are just going to be an accelerant or an efficiency machine.

  But I think the place that is not being looked at closely enough is actually, as you point out, intersectional. Where can I bring AI and robotics together and solve a market problem or something like that?

  Okay, I think those were pretty good ones.

  Speaker 3:
  Yeah, some good ones. I just wanted to say—I think you brought up a good point of you’re almost taking it a level deeper. When you look at some of these really effective or notable VCs, it’s like understanding that Venn diagram, understanding the intersection, and then what are the side effects of that intersection, good and bad.

  You mentioned energy. ChatGPT uses the same amount as 17,000 homes every single day.

  Speaker 2:
  It’s like a small country, right?

  Speaker 3:
  Yeah, it’s more than Iceland. This is insane. As these things intersect, not only can we find opportunities in that intersection, but what does that mean for all the infrastructure that the world would require?

  Speaker 2:
  And again, that’s the whole theme of Tech Optimist, right? There’s a new wave, there’s value created, we’re moving things forward, but there are always negative unintended consequences.

  Instead of retreating back to some romantic notion of the past—no. What you have to do is take those problems and go solve them.

  You invent the automobile—we’re not going back to horse and buggy. Automobiles have created all these external problems, including 50,000 car deaths a year. Okay, let’s solve that problem.

  It’s harming the atmosphere. Okay, let’s solve that problem. In solving that problem, you create another problem.

  Again, you can’t go backwards. That is life. That’s existence. That’s Darwinism. You just have to keep plowing ahead.

  Okay, interesting inaugural episode. We’ll talk again in a couple of weeks with Drew and three more big breakthroughs. I’m not going to tell you mine next time—so there we go. Spontaneous. You get two; you have two.

  Next time, I’ll have the sandwich episode. In between, I will use the element of surprise to my advantage.

  Speaker 3:
  Yeah, don’t take mine though.

  Speaker 2:
  Awesome. All right, Mike, have a good one. See you.

  Speaker 4:
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  To get started, visit us at av.vc/funds/aifund. Now, back to the show.

  Speaker 2:
  Okay, let’s get into block one with Omar Benetti, co-founder and CEO of Zu.

  All right, we’ll kick off. I’m pleased to welcome Imar Benetti, founder and CEO of AV portfolio company Anzu. We’re super excited to talk to him today.

  Anzu is a company that follows something we really believe in, which is we’re in an attention economy. Eyeballs and time are being spent in the digital world, and when people are there, brands and advertisers need to reach those people.

  So, welcome to the show. 

  Speaker 5:
  Hey Mike, and thank you for having me here, and thank you for the partnership for many years.

   

  Speaker 2:
  Great. Let’s hear the elevator pitch. Tell us a little bit about what Anzu does and why our investors should be excited to be part of the story.

  Speaker 5:
  Yeah, of course. So, first—great to meet you. I’m Imar. I’m the CEO and founder of Anzu, which I started six and a half years ago. It’s been an exciting journey, and thank you for being part of it.

  Anzu is the leader in the world of in-game advertising. Think about a digital out-of-home ad format inside the gaming world.

  So you’re playing a racing game, a sports game, a casual game, a simulator game—and there’s branded content in the game, like a product placement type of advertisement. It can be a billboard, a poster on a building, a logo of a brand on a shirt or on a car, or on any game object.

  The reason why we’re excited about this is there is so much consumer time spent in gaming and so little advertising dollars going into gaming.

  We saw this opportunity to, number one, help educate people on how big gaming is. Gaming is not only geeks locked in their basement. A 60-year-old lady playing Candy Crush will not say, “Hey, I’m a gamer,” but she’s playing a game. So figure it out.

  Second, we’re bringing advertising standards into the gaming world—for the first time—into mobile games, PC games, console games, VR, AR, cloud gaming, and all virtual environments with 3D interactions.

  Brands love innovation, but they don’t typically change the way they work. So, we’re bringing them a way they’re used to buying media, measuring media, evaluating media from television—and bringing that, for the first time, into the gaming world.

  Speaker 2:
  And I’ll share something too, again, as an old timer—that this went on in the early days of the internet. The adoption of brands moving into new vectors tends to be somewhat slow. It’s like, oh, we’ve worked really successfully in the olden days—radio and print and television. Then it’s like, oh, there’s this new thing called the internet. Oh, there’s a search now—how does that work?

  It literally took 10 or 20 years for brands to catch up, and there’s still a lag in the ratio of digital advertising. It’s taken time to catch up, but enormous value has been created here. This is one of the reasons we were excited to be an investor in the company—we thought we were early, but we’d rather be early, as people spend more time in their digital worlds.

  I think we’re still at the beginning of that. I think there’s an immersive world that is yet to even be hinted at. We’ve gotten glimpses of it with Apple Vision Pro and the Meta Oculus product. But I think we’re headed toward an increasingly high-tech, digital, 3D immersive world, and also a totally unplugged, superhuman, high-touch world.

  Can you speak about the trends and how you’ve seen them play out over the six years, what’s gone as you expected, and what’s been different than you anticipated?

  Speaker 5:
  So first, maybe an example to emphasize what you said. Digital advertising and the internet—for many years, companies spoke about it while big brands were still putting a lot of dollars in print, offline, and radio.

  It was only when Facebook started to get a lot of attention that we really saw a change in ad dollars moving more into digital. That’s what it took for the advertising community to do something versus just talk about it. It shows the complexity of moving mountains in this regard. That’s number one.

  Number two—yes, today we’re focused on the gaming world, but I think gaming is the beginning of something bigger. Gaming is where today we see 3D interactions at scale, but it’s going to be more than gaming.

  Our technology supports every application that is game-engine based, and that’s not only gaming. VR, AR, the Apple glasses that you mentioned, cloud gaming, Hollywood movies being produced with a game engine—there is more and more of this content. Autonomous cars—I believe that once autonomous cars become a big thing, which is already happening in San Francisco, in-car entertainment is going to become a big deal. All these screens are game-engine based.

  So there are many opportunities for how our technology can be relevant. The work we’re doing today with official advertising bodies, big brands, and big agencies—laying out the infrastructure for how to do efficient and effective buying in 3D worlds, how to treat measurement in 3D environments—will be relevant to much more than gaming. I believe most consumer interactions with the internet will be in a 3D world. Maybe there will be lenses or devices empowering it.

  That’s number one, and it’s very exciting.

  Second, focusing more on gaming and what we’re actually doing now—aside from gaming being the first environment to bring 3D worlds that have advertising standards, programmatic advertising, and scale—which has a lot of value for brands in terms of better visibility and viewability of content.

  Gaming is also unique because it has very high attention. You’re playing a game—there is no second screen. In comparison, when you watch television, for example, you might look at your phone.

  It’s also a very brand-safe world compared to social media. Most games don’t have user-generated content. There is moderation by the platform, the engine, the developer. If you’re in a tennis game, as a brand you know exactly what you’re getting. Other platforms and mediums cannot say that.

  And then there’s this incremental reach. A lot of brands don’t yet have a gaming strategy.

  I believe—and here’s a prediction I’m happy to make—two years from today, most CMOs of the world will have a gaming strategy. Gaming will be an advertising medium just like television, social media, and music are today.

  Even without a gaming strategy, many brands are already finding value. Gaming gives them incremental reach to millions of Americans they cannot reach in other mediums. Over time, you see the value, and we need to think bigger about gaming. That’s part of the dynamics we see about gaming’s value as an advertising medium.

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, it’s a super exciting space you’re playing in. Give our audience a sense of the company’s story—how it was founded, what those first years were like, where you are in your journey, and the next big milestone you’re trying to hit. 

  Speaker 5:
  So, I’ll tell you a secret—I’m not a gamer. My two co-founders, who lead tech and product, are hardcore gamers. They’re very excited to work with the games they played as children.

  I’ve spent many years building technology for the advertising world. I get very excited and proud when the biggest brands in the world use technology I’ve helped build to do advertising better.

  I believe people don’t hate ads—they hate bad ads. Most people won’t complain about having ads on Instagram or Google search and would prefer it over having to pay for the product. People get annoyed when ads are bad—when you’re trying to navigate a website and ads pop up in your face, ruining the experience.

  For example, one big publisher has annoying ads on their website. People use ad blockers to block that content. The publisher then blocks people with ad blockers from entering the website. That’s a lose-lose situation. The publisher creates great content—no one sees it.

  This win-win-win is what we want to do. Internally, we say “let gamers play.” Ads that make the gaming world more realistic.

  Here’s another example—we’re now based in New Jersey, just outside of New York. Before moving here from Europe, I told my son we were moving to the U.S. He said, “Of course I know New York—I play the Spider-Man game and see Manhattan all the time.”

  I told him there’s one big difference between that Manhattan and the real Manhattan—the real Manhattan has a lot of advertisements. Times Square wouldn’t be Times Square without the ads. Our ad formats can make games more realistic, while also creating a new business model and revenue stream for publishers.

  This win-win-win is what it’s all about. That’s what excited me about this opportunity: educating gaming companies—the biggest in the world—that never had ads in their games because they didn’t like annoying pop-ups. For the first time, they’re accepting advertisements.

  It’s also exciting to work with big brands to position gaming as an advertising medium.

  For us, it was always about this triangle—we knew it would be hard to move mountains and change how big brands view gaming as a new medium.

  This triangle was:

  1. Unique technology – having tech that no one else has. We have patents, we’re securing it, and we’re bringing new capabilities to the world. Too many advertising companies have no unique tech and no added value, which is reflected in their valuations.

  2. Strategic partnerships – we knew we needed the biggest gaming and advertising companies as partners and champions to make this happen faster and better. We’re very proud of our partners: WPP (the world’s largest advertising group, making their first-ever investment in gaming), Sony (owner of PlayStation, making their first-ever investment in advertising), Samsung, HTC, PayPal, NBCUniversal, Axel Springer, and many other great tech, media, advertising, and gaming partners.

  3. A great team – this is my third company, and I’ve never been part of such a strong team. I’m proud every day to go into battle with these people.

  Speaker 2:
  How did you meet your co-founders?

  Speaker 5:
  So, maybe one sentence to complete the last part—five—because it’s also related. Five people from our management team have been with me between 10 to 15 years, across two or three different companies. We have a unified, strong team that has worked together a long time. These are some of the smartest people in the world. They could have many opportunities, yet they choose to continue and partner with me.

  One of our co-founders, Ben, our Chief Product Officer, has been my best friend since school—this is year 15 for us working together. A fun fact about him: he has had the same girlfriend since he was 13. His joke is, “I’ve had the same girlfriend, business partner, and father figure for many years.”

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, he’s a loyal guy.

  Speaker 5:
  And then, as we started, we understood the tech complexity of Anzu—with real-time image recognition and 3D world engineering—and we met our CTO, Mickey, who is a deep tech engineer. Ben is more of a gaming product guy. I come from the advertising side—I was CEO of Glisa, a $100 million annual advertising business before this. Together, we pretty much complete each other.

  Then I took my team from previous companies where we had some success, and from there, we built the company.

   

  Speaker 2:
  Excellent. Now, we’ve got a big audience of other entrepreneurs and a huge community of connected people. Is there any way our community could help you? What’s your ask of the AV community? How can we help?

  Speaker 5:
  Yeah, first, thank you for offering this. Over the years, we’ve received a lot of great introductions from the network, and some of our biggest clients and partners came from these interactions. This is fantastic.

  We’re always looking to meet brands, agencies, and marketers who are willing to consider a new advertising format and a new…

  Speaker 2:
  Advertising process—who may need a gaming or non-traditional strategy in these kinds of domains.

  Speaker 5:
  Correct. One thing is gaming. As I said before, there’s incremental reach, new eyeballs, and high attention. The advertising world is changing—the cookie will not stay for very long, consumer time spent is changing, and preferences for native versus annoying types of media are shifting.

  There’s an opportunity to get it right and adapt plans faster. Hundreds of the biggest brands in the world already work with us, but there are thousands that we don’t yet work with. That’s probably the number one thing.

  Speaker 2:
  For the people out there who control brands or work in advertising, and want to see where the puck is going versus where it’s been—and perhaps help their career and their company by being very forward-looking—this could be a good partnership for you.

  Speaker 5:
  Yeah. I think there’s so much inefficiency in how advertising is done today. There are too many dollars in cable TV. There are too many dollars on open exchange programmatic ads on websites where people are blind to these ads. There’s a massive opportunity there.

  That’s the number one thing we’re focusing on because we’ve pretty much completed most of building the tech platform. We’re already working with most of the big gaming companies.

  Another area we’re really focused on is sports leagues. This is an interesting concept: we work with sports leagues and their teams and clubs to expand sports sponsorships from stadiums into official gaming assets.

  If you work with the official game of one of the sports leagues, that can be a great extension of something from the stadium or jersey into the game. We see this as an easier way for some brands to get involved in gaming.

  Building a gaming strategy is a big effort, but if you’re already putting millions of dollars into sponsoring, say, the Chicago Cubs stadium, giving that same experience in the game is a great opportunity.

  We also have a lot of investors worldwide. The owner of the Pacers, the Cubs, the New Jersey Devils, the Commanders, and the 76ers are all investors and partners. So there’s a big push on that front as well.

  Speaker 2:
  Any other places our community could help with?

  Speaker 5:
  We’re also looking to partner with more gaming companies—that could be another opportunity.

  We’re hiring too, so we’d love to hear from great talent who want to join us on our journey. Right now, we’re a hundred people, so it’s an interesting time. We’re transitioning from a startup to a more growth-scale company.

  Speaker 2:
  I mean, the nice thing about joining a company where you’re at is this: it’s one thing if you’re leaving a very successful, safe job to join three people in an Irish setter—just a rah-rah startup. That’s obviously a huge upside, but also a huge risk.

  You’re beyond that first phase now. When you join a company that has, say, 100 to 250 employees, you’re at the next level. Professionally, that’s a pretty good risk-reward profile.

   

  Speaker 5:
  Yeah. On one side, we’ve raised $65 million—$40 million just last year. We have cash in the bank, so this is a safe, stable place. We have resources to do things right.

  But it’s still early enough that if you join now, you can have a big impact as we grow. There’s also a big opportunity for stock to significantly grow.

  It’s a good balance between joining a tech giant and joining a pre-seed startup.

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah, when I talk to young people or anyone thinking about making a leap into something with a lot of upside, I think you’re in that sweet spot—a really nice risk-reward profile.

  Again, I think you’re in the second or third inning of your story here with Anzu.

  And we all read about how much time people—especially young people—are spending on screens. It’s not just gaming. Some of it’s in professional environments too, with VR training going on.

  Our digital lives are becoming a much bigger part of our story, and this is where companies and brands need to be if they’re going to be forward-looking.

  Speaker 5:
  Yeah, I mean, I believe our technology is going to empower the next wave of the internet, which is going to be a 3D interaction world. Even just looking at gaming—the CEO of Netflix said in the past that his biggest competitor is Fortnite, not other streaming television platforms.

  For Gen Zs and millennials, gaming is their social media. They don’t use WhatsApp—they use the chat function in Call of Duty to interact with each other. I think it’s a fascinating world. Also, for people who like gaming, this is a fun place to be. I’m a bit biased, but…

  Speaker 2:
  No, and the social side of gaming is also important. Not everybody thinks of a lone person in a room playing games. I see it more as a group of friends getting together, watching a sports event, doing a little interactive stuff on the side, or forming a team and playing a game together.

  Some people love the game, some don’t, but they all enjoy being together for a couple of hours on a Friday night. If that’s where people are, that’s where brands need to be.

  So keep up the good work. It was great talking to you today. Again, we encourage our listeners to follow the company, and if this is something that you or your organization want to explore, we encourage you to reach out. We’ll have contact information in the show notes.

  Tomorrow, it was nice to meet you, and keep up the good work.

  Speaker 5:
  Thank you for having me here, and we’ll speak soon.

  Speaker 2:
  All right, take care. See you.

  Speaker 6:
  Hey everyone, taking a quick time out so I can tell you about the Sports Fund from Alumni Ventures. AV is one of the only VC firms focused on making venture capital accessible to individual investors like you.

  In fact, AV is one of the most active and highly rated VCs in the U.S., and we co-invest alongside renowned lead investors. With our Sports Fund, you’ll have the opportunity to invest in a portfolio built around tech and business advancements across the sports world—from personal wellness to sports media to team ownership.

  This fund is focused on companies that have the potential to tap into the massive global sports market, which is expected to exceed $250 billion by 2030. To get started, visit av.vc/funds/sports. Enjoy the rest of the show.

  Speaker 2:
  Here’s our third segment—my conversation with Steve Chen, founder and CEO of New Retirement, a company using AI to make retirement planning easier.

  Steve, nice to meet you. Welcome to the Tech Optimist podcast. We’re super excited to learn more about your company. And again, full disclosure—we’re an investor and super proud to be involved.

  Tell us a little bit about your background and how this came about.

  Speaker 7:
  Sure, yeah. Mike, I appreciate the opportunity and I’m super glad that Alumni VC and Castor invested—it’s awesome.

  I went to Boston University, so across the river from MIT, but I used to go play volleyball at MIT. My first company’s co-founder and CEO was an MIT rocket scientist. I’m pretty familiar with the culture there, and a lot of his fraternity brothers, Kappa Sig guys, joined the company. So I get the value of the human capital side.

  For us, essentially our core innovation is we’ve built the equivalent of TurboTax for financial planning. We let anyone create their own financial plans. Our mission is to democratize access to financial literacy and financial planning—to help people get organized, see what’s possible, and make good decisions across their whole life cycle.

  The analogy is physical wellness. We believe financial wellness is coming. People need to have agency and make thoughtful decisions throughout life:

  • How many student loans you take on and how you’ll pay them back.

  • How you manage credit card debt.

  • As you progress—if you have kids, a family, and eventually retirement—understand how the system works and make smart decisions.

  What’s different about us is we enable anybody. We’re transparent, and we work for the end users. The user pays us for our software just like they would pay for TurboTax.

  Much of financial services is opaque. There are fees on assets or transaction fees that you don’t see. It’s often presented as “you don’t pay for it, so don’t worry about it,” but the fees can be enormous.

  Speaker 2:
  Or they’re kind of opaque.

  Speaker 7:
  Exactly. So that’s the core thing we do.

  Speaker 2:
  And you’re pretty early-stage in your journey too, right, Steve? Where are you in your entrepreneurial journey?

   

  Speaker 7:
  Yeah, we’re a Series A company.

  On the consumer side, we have 25,000 paying customers, which doesn’t sound like a lot, but the average user has a couple of million dollars—so that’s around $50 billion in life savings they’re managing.

  We have another 50,000 active free users managing another $50 billion. Free users tend to have a little less money, but it’s still material.

  We’ve helped people build a few hundred thousand plans. We’re working on improving re-engagement, but we have product-market fit with a certain segment of the population—people who take planning seriously, who might have had their own spreadsheets, who are often tech-oriented. They see the value, they tell their friends, and they sign up.

  We’re now taking that funnel to employers. Raytheon is a customer, giving this tool to 230,000 employees. We’re talking to big healthcare systems and similar groups.

  We’re also working with RIAs (Registered Investment Advisors). Many wealth managers have models to service clients with $1–2 million, but they also have prospects below that threshold. They’re not set up to handle scale—we can help them serve both high-net-worth clients and everyone else.

  Speaker 2:
  Is that really the core of your question then? If someone is working at a company and thinks this would be a great service or benefit for employees, should they reach out?

  I’ve got to believe you’re competing mostly with non-consumption here. The number of people in the world with no plan has to greatly exceed those who have a plan with someone, right?

  Sorry, compounded questions there. I guess, question one—what is your ask of our audience, Steve?

  Speaker 7:
  Sure, yeah. I would say if you’re an Alumni VC investor and you think your company would like this as a benefit, for sure, we’d love to get an introduction. That’s already happening in our own community.

  I just talked to someone from Pulte Homes. He’s a user on our platform and works in the tax department. He said, “Yeah, I would love this as a benefit.”

  Or if you work in a large financial services organization and think, “Hey, we could do more with planning and literacy and get the user more involved,” this is a great education tool. It’s also a selling tool and a retention tool. Those are the main ways we’re going to market.

  Speaker 2:
  Great. And then again, from the thesis I had—which is, this is good hygiene that most people are not doing, especially not early enough in life—right?

  Speaker 7:
  Right. Yeah. I would say someone made this comment a while ago: this is an “urgent should” versus an “urgent need.”

  I would say it actually transitions from an urgent need to an urgent need as you age. For sure, most of our users are 45 plus. It’s like, “Oh, I’m raising my kids, but I see my parents getting older. I know…”

  Speaker 2:
  I’m behind. Yeah.

  Speaker 7:
  Yeah. I know I’m behind. I’m used to making $150,000 a year or whatever it is, but I’m seeing my friends get laid off or AI’s coming. There’s always pressure.

  Our users have much higher confidence because they have more command of their finances. They understand how it works, how the whole system works.

  They understand if they’re taking as much advantage as they can of company benefits like 401(k) matching, HSAs, whatever it is. They understand how to claim Social Security, how to use their house, how healthcare is going to work while they’re working and once they’re on Medicare.

  They’re thinking about their financial lives not just this week or this quarter—which is how the financial media often frames it, like “we’ve got to buy Nvidia or Bitcoin.”

  No. What you should be thinking about is: how is your money going to last over the next 10–20 years? If you’re out of school, fund your Roth. Get your money into index funds.

  Yeah, take some risk, but just start saving and investing—and do it for 15 years. If you save and invest 10–20% of your income, which might feel like a stretch, but if you do that for 15 or 20 years, you’ll wake up with more money than 99% of the country and have far more control.

  That financial control unlocks you in your late 30s or early 40s to make whatever choice you want.

  Along the way, knowing you’re on this journey has a second-order effect: you can make the most of your human capital—which is our non-renewable resource. Time is scarce.

  There’s a giant dialogue about purpose and what we’re doing with our lives. People who have more control financially can make more intentional choices.

  If you care about climate, healthcare, AI—whatever it is—you can choose to work on those things.

  You mentioned your daughter—very smart, made lots of money. I’m sure she’s being intentional about her time and why she’s doing what she’s doing, or at least pausing to think about it.

  Speaker 2:
  Absolutely. You covered a lot there. I’d say financial independence is often thought of as a dirty word, but it’s really about flexibility—the time to make choices.

  There are a few key principles that are so powerful:

  • Spend less than you make.

  • Invest early and regularly over a long period of time.

  Just those two things.

  Warren Buffett’s success is partly that he’s lived to 90 and started investing as a teen. Compounding anything over time—whether investing or learning piano—produces big results.

  Steve, what do you think about partners and couples? We mentioned my daughter—she’s now engaged. You hear that couples often don’t talk enough about money or have a plan. Could this tool help facilitate conversations between spouses or even parents and kids?

  Speaker 7:
  Great question, Mike. Yeah, for sure. Very often in families, you have one person who’s the “banker.” Across generations, they know about the money and control it.

  In couples, usually one person is much more educated about finances and has the “keys to the kingdom.” You have to be careful because if that person predeceases or dies first, you need to make sure the other knows how to operate the machine and that it’s set up with proper controls.

  I sometimes think about this from a governance perspective. As people live longer and $50–60 trillion moves between generations, it’s showing up already.

  In our town, you see 35-year-olds rolling in, buying houses for cash. Where’s it coming from? They’re inheriting money, or they’re tech people who are cashed up. It’s material.

  Our tool can definitely facilitate those discussions. Families often save and plan not just for themselves but for their kids and parents. They want to ensure people are taken care of.

  We’re leaning into intergenerational planning. People already build plans and share them with spouses, but we want them to be able to build plans for themselves and their parents.

  The reason I started this company was to help my mom figure this out. My brother and I are still involved in our parents’ finances, making sure they’re generally on track and we roughly know where the money is.

  It’s imperfect, and there’s a huge risk as people age and need caregiving. I’ve seen it in my family too—grandparents getting more care, being cash-oriented, and it’s hard to track where money is going.

  And then for your kids—you want to help them make good decisions. If they’re going to inherit money, you want to be intentional so they don’t lose value and still understand the value of money.

  Speaker 2:
  I can personally relate. My parents were of that generation where my dad “did the money,” and when he passed away, it was really hard for my mom to figure it all out.

  A lot of us face that. I also think people don’t fully grasp the wealth transfer just starting to happen as boomers—who’ve been incredibly successful at generating wealth, probably at the expense of younger generations—will become a huge piggy bank as tens of trillions transfer to the next generation.

  Are they equipped to handle it? Are they planning?

  At Alumni Ventures, a lot of our investors use venture investing as an educational tool for their kids. It highlights important decision-making: how to evaluate an investment, assess risk vs. reward. It’s more fun and engaging than ETFs in a diversified S&P portfolio.

  We share our due diligence, show how we think about investments, and families vote on deals together.

  It’s all about having good plans and education—something people don’t talk about enough.

  So my last question, Steve: you’re a very successful entrepreneur. What’s one personal productivity hack or piece of content you’ve consumed that you’d recommend to someone—like, “check this out”?

  Speaker 7:
  Okay. Yeah, great question. So, a couple of things I’ve been listening to: there’s Lenny’s podcast—I’m going to mess up his last name—Lenny Ky. Anyway, he’s a product guy. He interviews other product people and shares so many great insights in his podcast and videos. That’s been super helpful for us as a company.

  Speaker 2:
  We’ll put a link in the graphics here so people can check it out.

  Speaker 7:
  I’ve also been using Perplexity, which is this AI search engine. I mean, if I were Google, I’d be paying attention. Perplexity gives you the answer—you ask a question, it provides the answer and footnotes everything. It just saves so much time. You still need to fact-check, but you can see how tools like that will put answers in front of everybody all the time.

  I use it often. I also use voice a lot now with my mobile phone. I think Apple has a killer feature with voice recognition—it’s so good. On my PC, I can’t do that. I end up talking into my phone a lot and getting answers.

  The world is changing. I’ve been in technology and seen different waves, but I’d say AI and this convergence—it’s astounding. I feel like we’re in a place now where you can’t predict what the world will look like in five or even three years. It could be wildly different.

  Speaker 2:
  Yeah. I’ve got Perplexity open on one screen constantly. Again, full disclosure—we’re not investors in Perplexity—but it gives you the answer.

  I also use ChatGPT, Google, Bing, Perplexity, and Claude daily. I believe these tools have made me 50% more productive already. We’re just at the beginning of that wave. There’s hype, but I think it’s still underestimated how profound it could be.

  Speaker 7:
  Yeah, you’re unlocking something here. We’re thinking a lot about how to use AI—like every business is.

  What we’re seeing with these LLMs is they know everything about the world, but they don’t know about you.

  With our platform, we learn a lot about users because they create financial plans, so we know their finances. The opportunity is to have an AI interface that knows both you and the world.

  Imagine asking, “Should I refinance my mortgage?” and having the system consider my kids’ education, interest rates, and options like a 10-1 ARM—making all that easy.

  You can definitely see a world where managing your money follows simple, proven rules—math-based planning—rather than open-ended, vague advice from the industry.

  The future is making these powerful, math-driven tools accessible to lots of people. That generally wins.

  Speaker 2:
  That generally wins. To build on your point, Steve, I think all good entrepreneurs and CEOs are asking: what will AI do better, and where will we still need people?

  In financial planning or medicine, much of the profession could be done as effectively—or more effectively—by AI.

  But as humans, we still want a relationship with another person during difficult or important processes.

  I could see New Retirement developing AI-driven plans while still having a human advisor to talk through things—like you and I are now—bringing empathy and relatability.

  We’ve been wired over thousands of years to connect with other humans. I think we’re heading into a high-tech, high-touch balance in the next three, five, seven years—it’s going to change dramatically.

  Speaker 7:
  I completely agree with you. The “human in the loop” isn’t going away. People will just be smarter, more productive, and more insightful.

  But you’ll still want human expertise from someone who’s seen patterns in other people’s situations.

  We’re emotional creatures first. Being able to relate on an emotional level is just as important because behavior drives outcomes.

  Learning to save money and invest is one thing. The third pillar is knowing yourself and your behavior so you don’t sabotage your own success.

  For example, someone in my family made great choices their whole life—sophisticated, plenty of money. Then they got older, started trading stocks, and almost blew themselves up taking unnecessary risks.

  Risk sizing matters—don’t make bets you don’t need to make.

  Speaker 2:
  The psychology of money and being self-aware about your wiring—that’s the third pillar to wealth and financial security.

  Steve, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. Congratulations on your progress. Great conversation, and I look forward to your Series B round.

  Speaker 7:
  Yeah, thanks, Mike. I really appreciate your support and getting to know you and the Alumni VC network.

  We’re optimistic, and maybe we’ll have you on our podcast soon to talk about how AI is evolving. We’ll also have that second part of our conversation about opening access to different investment opportunities.

  Speaker 2:
  Excellent. I look forward to it. Thank you, Steve. We’ll follow up.

  Speaker 7:
  Be…

  Speaker 2:
  Well. Thanks, C. Bye.

  Speaker 8:
  Hey everyone, just taking a quick break so we can tell you about the US Strategic Tech Fund from Alumni Ventures.

  AV is one of the only VC firms focused on making venture capital accessible to individual investors like you. In fact, AV is one of the most active and best-performing VCs in the U.S., and we co-invest alongside renowned lead investors.

  With AV’s US Strategic Tech Fund, you’d have access to an investment portfolio focused on technologies critical to bolstering U.S. national security and economic prosperity.

  We prioritize three key areas:

  • Homeland security

  • Cyber, AI, and digital strategy

  • Space innovation

  By investing in companies innovating in these areas, you can support early-stage ventures and help encourage sustained growth and technological progress in the United States.

  If you’re interested in learning more, visit av.vc/funds/strategictech.

   

  Speaker 2:
  Thanks for listening to this week’s show. If you like it, please subscribe, share it with friends. Have a great week, and keep building stuff.

   

  Speaker 1:
  Thanks again for tuning into the Tech Optimist.

  If you enjoyed this episode, we’d really appreciate it if you’d give us a rating on whichever podcast app you’re using—and remember to subscribe to keep up with weekly episodes.

  The Tech Optimist welcomes any questions, comments, or segment suggestions. Please email us at [email protected] with any of those, and be sure to visit our website at av.vc.

  Thanks again. Until next time.