Maxwell Nee, monetization, sustainable growth, flywheel effect, self-funding, VC management.

0:00 I would love to monetize, you know, I would love, but I would love to monetize it in a way that it creates A flywheel instead of an anti flywheel. So my my personal view is that unless you monetize very, very slowly and then it ends up being yourself funny anyway because you got to put all this time in between. I would only love to monetize it if it if the more people that paid me money, the more the wheel started to spin and decided to get faster and faster. Instead of always having to have this balance of you, you know, you get a sponsor in and then you have to choose them really hard. And then I end up becoming a full time VC manager for for everyone you know, without, without any of the fees. Hello, Welcome everybody to another episode of Arthur's Round Table. We're super happy to be here with you today and welcome Maxwell Knee.

0:46 We're anxious to hear all about his background in business, and so let's get into it right away. Max Maxwell, give us a little background about your journey and where you're at presently. Yes, thank you for having me, Arthur. You bet. So I thank you. And so I'm an Australian entrepreneur, you know, my, my side of my career in corporate banking, basically lending money to big, big, big businesses and small businesses. And then, you know, as a, as a family with my brother, we moved into property development. So we raising funds then, you know, have developed like 3 developments so far, about 50 plus units across 2, two buildings altogether.

1:33 One site was a development approval and flip and then another one was a commercial property. It's a whole bunch of stuff in the property space, real estate space. And you know, during COVID we got really caught out because there was, you know, to give you an idea, there was a project might take three years. It took 8 because it was right in the middle of COVID. You know, where we're from in Australia ended up becoming the, the most expensive place to build in the world, apparently. I never fact checked that, but that's what people were saying. Curvy really taught us that we, you know, both of our core businesses lending money S private credit as well as, you know, real estate development. We're in the same cycle, you know, the exact same cycle. They've got same clients, same, same everything, same delays, same cash flow.

2:22 Curvy really taught us that, you know, we need to start getting outside our comfort zone and looking at other industries and things to invest in. And I wish I had a, a tech, more of a tech background like yourself, Arthur. I wish I don't. So I went out on a venture to find one and how that started was living in, you know, just moves to Singapore and MyHeritage. Maxwell by the way, these all these real estate projects were in Australia. Yeah, that's correct. That's correct. So we only, we only have done business in Australia at this point. Yeah, yeah. And then I, you know, I just moved to Singapore, which, you know, sounds exciting and fun, but not really. MyHeritage is actually from Malaysia and Singapore. So my parents are from there.

3:05 My parents have lived there in the past. And I decided, OK, how do we get into this whole, you know, VCP space as a as a novice, right. Totally nascent to the industry. I was never in the circles. And how do you start from zero? So I had a similar epiphany, probably to you, where I said, OK, well, I know about five other family owned businesses that are doing similar things. Why don't I throw them into a WhatsApp group and see if I could harvest new ideas of things to do out of out of out of the group and, and their friends and their friends. And then that became a little network or group that I now call Family Office Insider.

3:55 And I often joke that it's the largest unmonetized, unmonetized network, family office network in Singapore. And I keep it on monetize because probably a, I'm just a little bit too lazy to, to, you know, to take money from people and then, you know, wants to deliver a service over and above, like, I don't really want that liability right now. And then BI also wants to, I want to keep it sort of like genuine, genuine in it and for it to have no agenda and to have no like cognitive bias as to what goes on in there.

4:37 So it doesn't cost me any money. I don't lose any money. I don't make any money. I just use it as like a vessel for, for, for networking, you know, and so does everyone else in the community. So there's probably about 200 people on the on the database right now, yeah. Nice. So what what are the topics that in the past have been interesting and what presently is and it and it's. I get frustrated when people ask me this question because it really doesn't make a lot of sense, but I'm going to ask it of you anyway in the context of your group. The people often ask me what's trending in family offices and I'm going, well, it depends because it depends on who you're talking to.

5:22 But are there things that you can share with the audience that you have seen in the past that have been talked about within the group and that are starting to be talked about more now, for example? Yeah, You know, that question is if someone asks that question, they definitely are either just trying to write but, you know, a news article or they they don't really know a lot, you know, about that. Family officers are just real people and they're just real people that their lives change. The priority is different this year to next year. And the priority this year could be kids changing school, you know, rather than anything else, right. So, but what I would say is the, the most valuable things I think that have come through the community is fact checking, you know, like people don't do it as often as I think they, they could or they should.

6:19 But every now and then someone might say, Hey, look, I've got a, you know, one of our portfolio companies, the term sheet from this company, they, you know, I'm not 100% sure they're going to perform. And My Portfolio company, you know, either needs to decide, take the eye of the ball on fundraising or to keep going. So would anyone happen to know if this if this company or this term sheet is solid? Yeah, real. They really write a check? Or will they ghost you? Right. Yeah, yeah. And every single time that that someone has a gut question to ask that question, there's been 5 answers of that's, that's not solid. You know, I've seen it. I've heard of this, of that.

7:01 And you know that, you know, could save a company, right? Could, could save a company, could save a fundraise. So that one's always really interesting. And then you see the activity in the chat after that one that people are like, wow, wow, you know, didn't know. Thank you so much. And then it just sort of reminds people like the value of acid testing, you know, information. The next that that one's my personal favorite because I think that's the most value. You know, that that's like the little left field that you would never get anywhere else, right? So that's a bit like our USP. The next bit is, you know, 50% of the community have come through referrals because I just happened to live in Singapore, which is a bit of a hotspot for events and everything else. Like I when people ask me, you know, how did you build the community?

7:47 I said, well, 90% of it is probably just living in Singapore because everyone in the community have either. I've almost met everyone in person for a good amount of time, and I've been able to sit at a table with them once or twice a year because they will come through Singapore either on business or leather or leisure or on a transit. You know, I meet so many people on transits and, you know, meet them at funny hours of the day and in funny locations. But that, that's really cool. So I think in their eyes, I'm like the Singapore guy. And then, you know, that brand gets perpetuated through the group because everyone's like, oh, you know, you're going to Singapore.

8:29 He talks Max, right? It was anecdotally, I just share with you that that was one of the benefits of being in New York City, because everybody came to New York City one time or right. If you had ever asked me whether I'd moved from New York City, which I technically really haven't, but been spent a lot of time out of the city now, it was always a hotbed of people wanting to come there for obvious reasons. And it served the growth of Family Office Insights very, very well because you could meet people in person because everybody came there. And so I think there's real value, Maxwell, and what you're saying, being able to say no. I sat down and had a cocktail or a coffee with somebody really important.

9:14 Yeah, yeah, You definitely want to anchor, right? Like some things I really believe in environment, you know, So I've got like my little makeshift podcast studio. I've got. Yeah, yeah, I've got my. It's working. My yeah, I've got my gym and and you know everything close to me. So you want to create an environment that just as there's some of the heavy lifting for you. And you know, I think Singapore definitely is one of those. And also I, you know, culturally I, I think I add a bit of value as like a bridge because, you know, MyHeritage from here. So people want to do business. They get, they get a, they get two sides of the coin, they get the expat side, but they also get the local side.

9:57 So I think that that can help people a lot as well. Totally, totally makes sense. So are you. And by the way, I appreciate the discussion around not monetizing the WhatsApp group because oftentimes it has other benefits without you and you put it well, put yourself in a position where you have to deliver over and above what you're engaged for. I so I super appreciate that. What do you see it going at this point? Just inching along and growing as it is. So I've thought about this, Arthur, like I'm sure like you have as well, like the amount of brain energy I put into thinking about this. Could you know, it's like could fill a, could fill us a solar farm. Like because, because I would love to monetize it. You know, I would love, but I would love to monetize it in a way that it creates a flywheel instead of an anti flywheel. So my my personal view is that unless you monetize very, very slowly and then it ends up being yourself funny anyway because you got to put all this time in between. I would only love to monetize it if it if the more people that paid me money, the more the wheel started to spin and decided to get faster and faster instead of always having to have this balance of you.

11:07 You know, you get a sponsor in and then you have to choose them really hard. And then I end up becoming a, a full time VC manager for, for everyone, you know, without, without any of the fees, you know, so it's, it's, and I'm not, I'm a terrible investor. That's why I made the group. So I, I'm not that guy and I wouldn't enjoy that. So, you know, I could just see it breaking, you know, I could foresee it breaking and the train crashing if, if I tried to take, you know, 5-10 grand. And, and also I'm taking these money from my friends. So, you know, if they like for them join the group or for someone to pitch, you know, it's, it's, it's an, it's not really good dynamic to start off with, you know, but I, I don't mind.

11:48 Like what I've done in the past is like, for example, we do events, we've probably done like 10 events now with the Singapore Stock Exchange, you know, so they don't really pay me any money. I might start charging them an admin fee because I'm starting to get like, you know, my assistant to, to do more and you know, her time needs to be covered type of thing. But usually I get the, the sponsors to just put on the bar tab, you know, and then I get the the group into a room and then that's, that's really cool and casual, you know, no agenda. I've tried doing pictures, I've tried doing content stuff and it just feels like you're really my friends. Everyone will show up because they're my friends. But then, you know, does the pitcher get value? How good are they?

12:31 You know what happens if they do something a bit nasty and fraudulent two years down the road and you know that people remember that they pitched at my spot like and things like that. You can't control, right. So I'd rather just just stay away. But then if there's like general networking, you know, I, I get to pick the wine list, I'm happy with that. Yeah, right. Yeah, but don't blame you. I like that idea too. So have you what? What do you, There is a lot of conferences in Singapore you've got, but they just had a crypto conference there. There was a Scaramucci does a Salt conference in Singapore. There's probably dozens and dozens of others that I don't know about. Has that been productive for you as you suggest?

13:14 Do you go to those and get to meet people? Is that a productive way to populate the the group? Yeah, it's it's, you know, so I've been, I've been a fund manager raising money before and that's what I started to go to those because, you know, some of them I paid, some of them I didn't pay. And like, yes, the answer to your question is yes. You know, you might meet one or two, you know, really good people that, you know, you could do business with and you and you actually like them enough spend more time with them. But it's not more than that, you know, like those companies like, so you have to go to a volume of them, you know, and you also have to go to ones that are on different, different days, like day nights, you know.

13:59 And as everyone knows, the real money, like the, the real benefit is and the real connections, the real conversations, the real, you know, business cards where people, you know, actually want to maybe talk to you again and get to know you properly is in the side events. So that, that's probably a very good benefit as well that I forgot to mention about the community. So we typically get a from everyone pitching in like a spreadsheet of all the side events during like super return or during the Formula One or there's another wave. There's a few waves, there's like one wave in May, a wave in September, October and another wave towards November of, of events. And that followed the, that followed the big events. Yeah.

14:40 So let's talk about that a little bit because I've been criticized regularly about lots of things and in the context of our conversation and I've been criticized for not monetizing family office insights in a much, much bigger way than it. The current contract is very limited. And you know, we've had we, we know that over $200 million each year in the last five years has been deployed into companies or funds as a result of people pitching to the community. And when you talk to a banker, he immediately says, wait a minute, 3% of $200 million is, wow, that's a lot of money.

15:22 We've from the beginning decided not to do that, get paid a success fee based on capital raised. And there was 2 reasons. And I'm sharing this with you, looking for your insight more so than sharing mine is that one, it's potential conflict that we don't want to deal with. And two, in the US you have to be a regulated entity to get performance fees based on how money raised. Just a Commission though. I've owned a broker dealer as an investment and I know what kind of nightmare from a regulatory perspective that presents just the nightmare of dealing with that, never mind the economics of supporting the regulatory expenses that are associated with that.

16:06 And then you're open to even more so to people getting upset and suing and then you have to defend yourself. So not to say that we would do anything wrong, but it doesn't matter in the US if you get sued, you may not have done anything wrong, but it's irrelevant. You still have to spend money to defend yourself. So the, the biggest thing that we've done is and, and withstood the criticism is just here's our flat fee. You want to meet some family offices a picture thing, pay it. Otherwise, you know, we're not going to get involved in helping you raise money post that and getting expected. Well, first of all, you, we don't charge enough money to cover that type of activity. And if we wanted to get paid commensurate with that type of activity following up and closing the deal and getting check, then we have to charge a lot more. And we just don't want to be involved in that from the regulatory perspective, also from a conflict of interest, where somebody pitches on family office insights and then the only people following up are the people who pitch, not us. So you don't have two people chasing the family offices and the community seems to like that. So anyway, that's a long story to say that. And I have much more interesting things to do in my life than that just.

17:20 And so I've been criticized for not doing it, but I'm totally fine with that. What's your feeling about the Conference of Business in the Family Office Insights world? I've got a lot of things to say about the conference business. You know, I, I think it works. I think it just passes the test. I think it works. I think it's, yeah. How do I say? I think it just works. And I think the good conferences like the Super Returns that I've been doing it for 25 years, have been able to just make it work. Although this year, you know, what they did in Singapore is they split the the stage into like 3 different stages.

18:02 So there was super return mainstage, like main room, 3 different rooms, like 3 different events, so three different lanyards and tickets. His main room, there's energy and infrastructure. There was CEO OS and CF OS and then there was one more, I forget the last one. So they split one event into four and so there was 4 different stages, four sets of sponsors, you know, because if they ran out of sponsor slots for the main one, then then they've they've just solved that by a factor of 4, right. But the, the non main rooms, including the main room was like at most 1/4 full, if that, you know what I mean? Because the audience isn't that big.

18:42 So they, they, they watered down and diluted the audience. So, so that was a real, you know, Max's right moment of like the way that the way the business model is set up is that there's a natural conflict. You know, there's an inherent conflict in the business model. That's why I call the business model, the event business model, an anti flywheel. You know, Jeff Bezos talks about the flywheel where every time you get a customer, it makes your business faster, bigger, better, faster, right? But every time super return or there's other events or whatever, I don't want to like badmouth super return, but just just like, you know, that's the one that everyone knows. Yeah, but they did. An experiment, right? They did an experiment, right?

19:23 And then and and you know it, like people walked in and they said, wow, there's more people on the stage than there is in the audience. Like, like that's how bad it was. Yeah. They also, you know, in advance in the sponsorship model, like, yeah, there's a natural conflict. So you're, you're like, who's your actual real customer? It's the law firm that's going to sponsor. It's not the family office, right? The investor. But then if the investor stops showing up, then your business evaporates, right? So. So how do you dance? How do you balance that? Like you, you know, you just have to, it's like, Hey, just trust me, you know, I know the right balance, right? And just show up and, and you know, here's your free ticket or, or here's your, your sponsorship ticket and that and that kind of thing.

20:14 So I think there's an inherent conflict and, and I think, but, but it works like obviously you could easily do one of these events, make $10 million a year if you do it right and you do it for five years and it starts snowballing and then it, it sort of has a life of its own, right. But for me, will that be fulfilling knowing that to, to get value out of the business, you got to take value somewhere else? It's like a 0 sum game, right? You know? You put it a good way. No flywheel anti. Flywheel like it literally it stops itself spinning. Stops itself. Yeah. Anti. Yeah, yeah. So like I've put so much thought into this and you know, so then I think, OK, well how can I do it differently? Because A, you want to be different, you want to have a unique selling proposition, right?

20:56 And B, but I also want it to be, I want to feel good because life's just too short. You know, I'm probably, you sound like a bit more like me. You've got more interesting things to do than to chase people up for five grand, you know, and then and then they chase you up and then, you know, they're disappointed they didn't close any money and, and just messing around with that, that stuff. So, but, you know, $200 million is, is a big number. And, you know, like could you have started a, you know, quasi merchant bank firm with that maybe, you know, is, is that where you want to be? No, probably not. But, you know, if that number keeps getting bigger, then maybe there's a, there's an argument for that, you know, I Yeah.

21:45 I think there's a legitimate argument for that. And Full disclosure, if it wasn't that I have multiple other things that allow me to prosper in exponentially more ways that even if that worked, it would what I'm otherwise doing would dwarf the success of that, right? So that's a very sort of circular way of me saying I make a lot more money doing other shit then I would do if even if I did that well. Yeah, perfect. And that's what it comes down to, right? Like a lot of people, they they do the whole merchant banking model. Maybe they enjoy it, but also because that that that's the best option that they see right now, right. Yeah, yeah.

22:33 So then Arthur, like why do you do your community if you're making more money elsewhere and everything else like what? What is the, you know, a guy like you doesn't need to do the family office inside. It's, it's the flywheel effect. The community happened by accident. I told you a little bit prior to our hitting the record button. So the the having the community has allowed me to get to know people so that when I need something, they'll take my phone call and they'll need something is often capital. So I don't have endless amounts of capital and I'm an investor so I can syndicate something and get a Co investor just a lot easier than I would otherwise. Nothing's ever easy be able to do had I do, I had I not had the community.

23:31 So the community has caused me to be able to continue to prosper in the other things that I do. Yeah, yeah. It's like the groundwork, you know, And it's. Yeah. And it is not a scalable business. And it's really well thought of. I'm saying this because people tell me that's not because I think I've done a great job. It's that people like it just the way it is. Non conflicted. Show up when you're interested. Arthur's not chasing us or his team to do anything after, right? And that is allowed people to feel good about the whole process on the family office side and also on the people who pitch because they they end up succeeding. Not every time, but a lot of the time. I mean, there's people that pitch and they just do a shitty job and it's a bad idea and we made a mistake having them and it's a flop, right?

24:25 It happens, right. But you know, just to distill it down to it's not scalable, right? So we're doing pitches on Zoom and there's only so many Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays and we only do one on each Zoom for an hour. And so that's it. It's capacity constraint, right? I can't go to and do 4 conferences a year and have a $2,000,000, you know, revenue stream and then pay half $1,000,000 in overhead and have a million and a half profit out of it's just not scalable, right? But yeah, it's totally fine. And thanks for asking the question. The answer is really simple. I just too many other things that I've been doing that have largely been catalyzed by the relationships that I've built within the community.

25:15 Yeah, I think people forget that as well because people ask me, you know, why, why don't you charge you money? Why don't you doing this? And then they said, you know, what's the motivation? And then they look at me with like a bit of suspicious eyes trying, trying to dig a, dig a skeleton out of the closet. And then I tell them, well, before I formalize this into like a brand, which is basically just like an AI logo, literally an AI logo. And before I did that, I was getting invited to like 3-4 coffees to people to meet them in Singapore a week, right? And each coffees like end up being 90 minutes, 2 hours, you know, in and out. And I got to pay for the coffee because, because I'm like, I'm taking, I'm taking them, right?

25:57 And I was just like, man, like this is taking up so much of my time. I'm not getting anything done. So I said, OK, well, why don't I like, I still take the coffees, but then I will divert 8090% of them into the next event that I'll do, which is sponsored by someone like the Singapore Stock Exchange, which is, you know, we'll have a bar tab. I'll say, hey, just meet me there. So, so I've actually created a, an arbitrage of time by, by having the events instead of the people say, oh, you know, you spend so much time organizing the events. What's your, what's your angle? You know, what's what's I said, well, the angle is now I get to touch base with 40 people and not have 40 coffees. That took me, you know, 90 minutes each, every, every quarter.

26:39 Yeah, Yeah. So that that was one thing. And then and then, yeah, you know, the access. Well, like, I'm not, I'm not shy to say that there's a selfish aspect of like right now I have investments in renewable energy. So anyone that's in renewable energy officer, hey, look, you know, what are you doing? Here's what we're doing. Is there any way we could work together? And then, you know, I also own a part of a hemp farm in Australia, which is, which is great. And then some, some people have portfolio companies where their products are really cool and I want to help distribute them. So I care about the things I care about, you know, I care about impacts. I care about, you know, if you have two options and one's just as cheap as the other and one of them saves the planet and the other one destroys the planet.

27:25 I care about helping people to switch type of thing. I don't I don't believe in that to the extent where you know, you should necessarily pay 20% more. I think that is that model is broken. But I think that if you can make it an easy choice to make less harm to the environment, then why not? Yeah, I agree. Yeah, the one of the things that would give you a quick example where I interviewed somebody like this on the podcast with the intent of discovering exactly what they are up to in terms of these mini nuclear power plants that are going to power. Data centers. Data centers.

28:07 And he was somebody I'd known for a little while and between the time that I interviewed him on the podcast and it was published, he had been identified as a target for a SPAC. And it was going to go public in January. And I was able to get a piece of that. And so there's a good example where just being at the crossroads of an interesting opportunity, I took a piece of it, syndicated the other part. And, you know, anything can go wrong with that sort of thing, especially with the SPAC. But, you know, there's $206 million in the SPAC trust, and he was the target. And you know, between the time I interviewed him and it got published shortly after all that had happened.

28:52 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying that opportunity wouldn't otherwise have happened. Yeah, and the people in your community is really, really thankful for, you know, being in proximity to you, right. So I think I tell people, so I'm trying to write a book right now, just trying to put some of these golden Nuggets into, into something that, you know, I can share with people. And I talk about things like access, you know, the money's in the access, the money's in the proximity. Because of my proximity, I really thankfully got invited to a enlisted company, a listed shell that's buying out a goldmine and in Africa. And I got in, you know, the private placement price, it was, you know, half the, the share price of what it is now. You know, my, my business partners, one of my partners made all of his money.

29:41 He's on three gold, 34510 gold deals. Three of them are really hit. You know, 80% of his wealth comes from gold deals. And he's very excited about this one. So I'm really excited to put some money in. And, you know, the, the, the ticket was oversubscribed, but then, you know, managed to get his wife to call the, the, the owner of the vehicle to say, hey, look, let Max in for 10,000, you know, but look, it's, it's a big number and the multiples are big numbers. And this is the highest risk part. So look, Maxim for 10,000, he's got XY and Z and XY and Z included, you know, the community and the extra phone calls I could make. So, yeah, it's a huge leverage point to to open doors, you know, open doors for other people, open doors for yourself. And you know, a lot of people, a lot of people think so short term, right?

30:34 And I think so transactionally. And, you know, we would never know that we're right until the long term. And by then those people will have forgotten about us. But I really do think it's it's a long term benefit. I think one of the things that you just mentioned is equally as important to proximity and access is that you had somebody that had the domain expertise to tell you that this was a good deal rather than a piece of shit, right? So. You you had advantage in not like I, I don't know, I didn't know anything about nuclear power. What the hell do I know about that? But I was able to pull in somebody to say, OK, is this is this legit?

31:18 And that proximity itself is worth a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, because you hear those stories about those people, that right time, right place, like those silent investors that were, you know, at Harvard at the right time or wherever at the right time. And and yeah, that that was just all proximity, yeah. Totally. So what else are you doing that's interesting that you'd like to share? And if not, that's OK too. Yeah, yes, yes. You know, writing a book and more or less right now it's called 10X deals. You know how to, how to do game changing deals for the best players in your industry. And I talk about, you know, basically like your own little network and everyone's got an inner circle and, and you want to, you want to put as much love into that inner circle as possible. And then, and then it'll, it'll love you back. So today's that where I'm starting to show people how to do that because I'm, I'm, you know, a bit sick of people who say, Hey, look, can I pay you some money to access the community?

32:18 So no, you know, but you can pay me money. I'll show you how to do it yourself because, you know, like there's, there's probably. So my community, I think everyone's community will reflect them, right? Like everyone's like, you go to private school, you grew up in private school circles, you're going to have private school friends, right? You go to public school, public school, friends type of thing. So my community I realize isn't actually a lot of fundraising benefit to a lot of other people because, you know, I'm not a heavy capital deployer. I'm more like, I'm not really an investor. I'm more of an operating investor. So I invest something to operate it because because I enjoy operating, you know, and I only have less than three things that I sort of am hands on in because you can't do anymore.

33:00 And, you know, so my community is a reflection of me that they're typically 2nd, 3rd, 4th Gen. And, you know, a lot of the money, not all of them, but I'm noticing more and more a lot of the money hasn't moved hands yet type of thing, you know, and they've got brothers and sisters and they're trying to work out who gets wired and they're selling the business for the first time and all that type of stuff. And, you know, because they share a lot of common interests with me. You know, we go out, we, we're fine. We have dinner, we have drinks together. And that's just, you know, who who is attracted to me a lot of the time. And then and then there's a whole bunch of others. So I really think that there's value in creating your own inner circle instead of trying to buy access to someone else's because that will reflect you.

33:45 And then, you know, if you're like an energy guy, if you're more of an engineer personality, then you're going to have, you know, more engineer personalities that you can talk shop with, right? So I think that you know, energy, energy as in like, you know, universal, I don't know how spiritual you are, but but universal energy, you know, really vibrates and and connects to, you know, unmistakable, right and. Your radar zone is unmistakable, and your radar gets better, Yeah. Yeah, right. That's a good way to put it, yeah. Totally, Yeah. One of the things that was, and it sounds like you have benefited and enjoying it in Singapore about New York City is that even though the reputation of New York City people are, you know, limited amount of time, get to your point, hurry up about it and let's move on to the next thing.

34:35 There is an enormous amount of support and willingness for people to engage. And it's really funny that when you live in New York City, you pretty much don't drive. And so people are willing to just stick around at a cocktail event with interesting people and not worry about drinking and driving. It's a really interesting subtle difference, but it, it has a really a maximum effect because people aren't worried about how they're getting from one place to another. And you're often going to three things and a night rather than just sitting in one place.

35:17 And the, the networking flywheel is accelerated by that type of thing and you can get around the city pretty easily. It's not hard without worrying about the stuff like if you lived in Silicon Valley or in LA, you got to get in your car and go somewhere, right? It's really, it's an interesting effect. And of course we have that that's. A really good point. Yeah, and we have clubs, you know, private clubs, which was also an interesting thing, is that often times there's a limited amount of guests that a member can have. And so it worked as a really good effective ways like you could only have three non members come and sit at your table and meet for you for an hour and a half.

35:59 Or you you could have them there as long as you wanted. But it was a really effective way to say, OK, let's get to the meeting of the matter. I got three other people coming up in an hour. You have to go because that's the house rules. And so you could cycle people in and out. Like you were talking about having your coffee. You know, you had to had to be done in an hour, right? And then three other people would come in. It was really an effective way to to do do the New York City Minute. Yeah, that's very interesting. Singapore is a very small as as well. Most people don't drive because cars are cars are three times the price of what they are in New York City. Even if you have a car, you you barely touch it and you definitely don't drink drive. So that that happens as well. Then people, Yeah, the whole private club thing, It's it's a huge status symbol in Singapore.

36:46 I don't have a status symbol over there. More or less depending on which club, but yeah, more or less. Yeah, depending on which club, yeah. And then people will want to say, hey, look, come meet me here. And then that's a subtle way to say, hey, look, come to a member, you know, that's pretty special type of thing. And then and then, you know, the members always the, the staff at the private clubs, always, you know, call you by name. And then, you know, you just sort of feel like a really big dog host as you're hosting and, you know, whoever you're hosting. Yeah. Yeah, human nature being what it is, it's always a nice effect, right, All the way around. Yeah, Yeah. Arthur, could I ask you? So what, what's you know? So I had a renewable energy company that I've just, yeah, we're looking at doing a merger with a, with a German company. So I was, I was an operate, I was effectively the CEO of that company to help get it off the ground. And my, my, my plan was to step out. And because of this merger, I will probably step out sooner than later.

37:41 So I basically made myself unemployed, which is great. But now I'm looking at, you know, what's the next thing? Where do I put my time? You know, I still have My Portfolio companies, but you know, I've got room for one more. What's what are any interesting companies or industries just to share some ideas that that you've seen that you're looking at that that you think have, you know, have the right timing in the market based on, you know, all the data you've got? Yeah. So we're really got to know a lot about this nuclear project. That's too too much expertise for me. Yeah, and so I think that's super interesting and I dug really deep and had to help to do that.

38:25 There will be AI bust, I think, but there's lots of hidden gems in people doing really interesting use cases for not everybody thinks that the workflow dynamics of using AI are going to make it super efficient, and in some cases it will make workflow super efficient. But I think that the real opportunity is in this using the AI and bringing it to the point where you need a human to credential it and make sure it passes the sniff test and then have human element bring it like Amazon the last mile, right?

39:10 And I think that that, that I, I, I, I don't know how to express that yet in terms of an investment. But I think that the last mile of getting all the stuff that AI can do in efficient way that would otherwise take an analyst to do. For example, somebody on, on who, who was analyzing where we stand in terms of the interest rates in the US and the Treasury, not the Treasury. You know, where whether we're going to increase rates or increase would normally to report on where he how he felt about that. And his analysis of that would take a junior analyst and pay them a, you know, a couple $1000 to do all the legwork. To come out with the work product that would be able to give him an opportunity to make a credible argument about how we felt or he could develop how we felt about it in a credible way that analysts would take, you know, a day and a couple $1000 or two days and AI did it in less than 30 minutes. And and he had to take that amount. He still needed to have the last piece done. So he was able to see that it was a just like you would review the analysts information that he was given. And so I think that last piece

40:40 is going to become fundamentally the most valuable thing that people can participate in. It would be super valuable. I mean, I think the whole AI thing is super valuable as it is, but I think there's going to be, and it's going to happen exponentially faster than perhaps we even can think about and how much better it's going to get. But I think that last piece where it's, it's kind of like somebody doing the the last piece of quality control on something, right? Yeah, Yeah. It's interesting that you say that because I have a friend that's used to be a partner, McKinsey, it's no longer there.

41:23 He's doing his own thing now. And he was telling me that at McKinsey, some partners are growing 10%. Their Billings are growing 10% month on month because of AI integration. So they're basically selling AI integration, Yeah. So the big consulting firm, Sir, and I think that probably you would think would be the other way around, is that people wouldn't hire because they could get it all done. What it it's not the McKenzie analyst work like all the big accounting firms made all their money in doing OK, you decided to implement this computer program. OK, we're now we're going to help you do it right. And so the accounting firms were the ones that made all the money, not the person that sold the SAS platform. It was the accounting firms that integrated it into the biggest into the big machine, right?

42:17 Because they had to have somebody that they could blame if it all went wrong, yeah. Yeah, yeah. And so in your example, I think that it's the same thing. Mckenzie's just selling integration, like, OK, we're not sure it's right. So if we're going to bring it in and potentially screw up all the legacy systems, then we have to, you know, you're going to pay us a lot of money to make sure that it's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought it was. It was just so interesting because, you know, you think that, like, you can ask AI write like a McKinsey consultant, and then they'll write your report, right? And then. Yeah, yeah. But but, you know, people, I think that really is a testament to the unknown.

43:01 It's not just the liability insurance, right? It's also human beings. Like, we love to just have our hands held, right? You know, we're going to pay the old lawyer to bridge us over to the new lawyer because it's just there's an unknown there and we're going to pay through the nose, right. And that's, that's that's what could make in these cells. They sell. They sell comfort. And they also could sell cover the executives of the company that made a decision to do something. So if they said, OK, we hired the guy in the Lower East Side that has a 11 room accounting office to do the project. Then when it blows up and they didn't hire PwC, then there's no, you can't go to the board and say I'm going to hire the accountant on the Lower East Side and have them feel good about it.

43:52 You just can't, right? By definition, doesn't matter what the cost temperature is, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'll tell you one other interesting thing that I'm, I'm working on every now and then I get a referral of family office saying, Hey, look, I've invested in this company. You should meet these people. They're really good people. They're, they're raising money. See if you can help them. I only really do this for companies that I, I want to help. And I also like if I succeed in helping them raise money, make connections, grow the business, then then I want to have some type of role because I'm more interested in roles and learning and, and, you know, building my career a bit more.

44:34 So I often ask for like a fractional CRO role because I'm a sales and investments guy. So I can walk around and, and just keep it in my back pocket. Hey, look, have you thought about this? So that's what I'm, I want to do with this company. They are health insurance company and they have an incredible Moat. You'll just, you just love it when you hear it. So what they do is they help insurance companies to generate a, a, a savings of about up to 3040% every time a claim is made. And it's like, hey, that's really cool. That can, that can totally transform the insurance industry.

45:18 The margin in the industry is about 8%. How can you, how can you do that? Well, it's really simple. So what people don't know about insurance companies is that they, they use very, very minimal with data when it comes to analyzing the the, the doctor. They use a lot of data on the human to, to assess, you know, how much your you should be paying, how much I should be paying, you should be paying. But then the actual performance of the doctor, they use very, very little. Yeah. The outcome. Yeah. The, the specialists, right. And the specialists. So what, what these guys have found is that typically everyone that pays for private health insurance, they'll go to a private hospital, right. Because that's what you assume.

46:00 You assume that the hospitals have the best care, you pay the most money or whatever. But there's a there's a correlation for the best hospitals to often hire not necessarily the best surgeons or specialists, but the most ambitious, right. So the most ambitious went to the best schools and they came back to Singapore and they do whatever and they're typically the youngest because you know, you're more, more ambitious when you're young. So they found a huge spread between the private doctors that everyone goes to and the price that they charge because, you know, they're building their career and they want to make more money compared to the, the, you know, Italian cobbler, you know, mastery specialists, you know, 2020 successful procedures, 0 mistakes been in the market 30 years.

46:49 And guess what? The Italian cobbler mastery specialist doesn't, can't be found on Google. Like if you know, you know, right. So, So what they've done is they've found all these Italian cobbler level of mastery specialists and then they've they've priced them on a matrix against the the mainstream and it's typically 40%. Wow. Yeah, it's crazy. And their outcomes are better, and they're less expensive. Outcomes are better, less expensive. They've done it 25 times, you know, compared to the new, you know, 32 year old Harvard graduate that might have done it once or twice. You know, both times were handheld.

47:31 Yeah. Yeah. So they they've mapped out this data for for this part of the world, door to door. Wow. Took him three years. Yeah. So when I heard that, I was like, wow, I want to help you. That's really cool. So it's a little different here, I think in the US, because that specialty Italian cobbler would be charging 40% more the doctor in the hospital because he can and he doesn't take insurance. You have to pay him and then you need to file the claim and float the money and then get 60% from the I mean is it we had screwed healthcare system anyway, but so that that specialist that's done it multiple times is the one that in the US anyway would likely be more expensive.

48:29 But what I thought you were going with it is that the insurance company would still rather pay the guy independent of what it costs who had done it multiple times and more experienced because other things aren't going to go wrong where they would end up paying more in screw ups, right? Yeah. So that there's that as well. So the founders of this business are very smart. You know one of them was a ex director of investments at Temasek. So they've created an insurance products that supersedes in terms of costs any other insurance product, health insurance product in terms of costs and also in terms of quantitative risk model.

49:09 So they, they, they look at that as well, you know, depending on the surgery location where you're from, you know, and then they, and then because I've done because Southeast Asia is a place with a lot of countries, they've mapped out, you know, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia. And they might say to you, you're better off going to Malaysia, you know, that type of thing. Yeah, yeah, really, really cool. So I'm helping them and, you know, they just sign a contract with a big insurance company to distribute their products and, you know, really excited to see how it disrupts the market. Yeah, super interesting. Yeah. Is there National Health in Singapore? I don't actually know. So, so I haven't gotten my PR yet. So there's there's a few levels of visa, there's there's the expat, like the fresh expat one, which is called an EP like an entrepreneur pass or employment pass. And that is just basically like the right to work when you're APR, which is a permanent residence. I don't know much about the health insurance benefits, but I do know that for example, for foreigners, because on an EP I'm still a foreigner.

50:12 For foreigners, I pay a 60% tax to buy real estate 60. So I'm waiting for my PR to to even consider buying real estate type of thing. Yeah, yeah. So there's huge benefits like that, so. Before we wrap it up, if you care to ask the ask the audience anything that might be helpful to you. Like is there something that the audience could be helpful? Yeah, Well, I'm, I'm really excited about building this. This health insurance business now. So if anyone you know, finds that exciting, we'd love to chat. And you know, if you ever come through Singapore for any of the events like Formula One's a big one, you know, I usually, everyone usually loses their voice during that period. I'm talking networking, shouting, that type of thing. Please let me know and we can catch up. That would be awesome.

51:02 I really appreciate you doing this. It's been a fun conversation. It's super informative, Maxwell. I'm glad we were able to do it. Yeah, likewise. Thank you, Arthur. Yeah. So maybe we can do it. Again in a few months and see, see what's new. Yeah, yeah, let's do that. Yeah, that'd be great. Thanks everybody for listening. Today and sharing with us the only thing you can't make more of. And that's your time. Till next time, thank you, Take care. Thanks, Maxwell. Cheers.