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INTRO

You’re listening to Unleashed with the Dacxi Chain, hosted by Andy Pickering. Hi folks, it is Andy here. Welcome to Unleashed with the Dacxi Chain, a Dacxi podcast where we learn all about the Dacxi Chain and the incredible opportunities it unlocks. Let’s get on with the show.

Hey, folks, Andy here. Welcome to Unleashed with the Dacxi Chain, the podcast that features experts from within Dacxi and from across the industry. Experts who are here to share their insights on developments shaping the global crowdfunding economy. Today we have a very special guest. I’m joined again by Mr. Ian Lowe. Of course, Ian is the CEO of Dacxi Global and well, the reason we’re talking to Ian today is Ian is on the ground in LA. I think he’s been there all this week. He’s at the 2022 Equity Crowdfunding Conference, I think it is. Ian, welcome to the show. So, yeah, as I say, I thought it’d be really good to catch up with you as you are at this conference called the 2022 Equity Crowdfunding Conference. Give us a little bit of an idea of what the conference is. 

GUEST INTRO

Yeah, of course. Look, it’s a three-day event with all of the leading crowdfunding platform providers here talking about their businesses in-depth sharing experiences and insights. I think more importantly, there have been quite a few panel sessions where they talk about where they believe the industry is going, and those sessions have been particularly interesting and they’ve looked at that from a couple of different angles. But as well as the crowdfunding platforms themselves, there’s a small representation from the VC community here. There are some early-stage businesses where they’re running live pitches and getting feedback on those pitches and a variety of other sorts of solutions providers within the crowdfunding ecosystem. So it’s a real melting pot of different stakeholders, all with common experiences, but slightly different views on the market opportunity, which has been great.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Fantastic. Well, I’m sure it’s been an exciting week. Can you perhaps pull out one or two key takeaways that you’ve taken from your time at the conference? Anything that’s got you really fired up?

IAN’S COMMENTS

Yeah, look, there are a couple of things that are really worth sharing that I was really struck by, particularly on day one of the conference. So in one particular session, they had a good representation of the CEOs of all the big US-based crowdfunding providers, and platform providers. And I asked a question to wrap up this panel session. Where do you see this industry being in five years from now? And there were three very strong themes that came through in the sort of half dozen or so responses. A number of them essentially reinforced what others had said. The three things that they said they believed in most strongly in terms of what would happen over the course of the next five years. The first point was five years from now, the industry believes that for a retail investor, investing in a private company will be as easy as investing in a public company. There will be no difference in terms of friction, the time it takes, and the convenience with which it can be done. And if you think about what that truly means, it’s revolutionary because investing in public companies through equities or share apps is an incredibly simple task. And so really what we’re saying is that the crowdfunding technology, the feature sets, all of the things that are in and around that experience for the retail investor are going to continue to improve and be refined. And the technology will improve to the point where it’s going to be just as easy for that retail investor to participate in the private company investment opportunity as it is in the public company sector. So that was the first thing, and I thought a really strong statement about the direction of travel. And of course, it doesn’t speak just to the technology and the convenience, it speaks to the scale. Okay, in terms of the trajectory that the industry is on. The second thing was that there was a very strong view held by a few of the CEOs in particular, that the tokenization revolution will transform this investing in private companies to becoming a universal standard across all retail investors. In other words, the blockchain innovation that is tokenization will actually drive a universal standard in the way that retail investors have access to private company investing. And look, just in terms of the language of this, many would call it investing in private companies. In truth, it’s actually investing in the innovation economy. Investing in the enterprise economy, right? This is the structural change that crowdfunding as it’s now gathering real momentum. And clearly, this is across the world, the structural change that it’s bringing to capital markets and more importantly, to companies that require funding to further innovate or to grow. So I think that in a world that is theoretically, at least, disconnected from the world of Blockchain, it was very interesting to me that a number of these CEOs said, look, the tokenization revolution is transforming this whole market, and the blockchain method of access will become the standard path for all retail investors five years from now. The one final thing is that the view was that it’s completely inevitable that the crowdfunding opportunity will become genuinely global over the next five years. And there is a whole range of different reasons that were shared as to why that was the view. But the view is that this is heading down a global path. And so you can imagine how compelling those three things are for a business like Dacxi Chain because these are the things that we’ve believed for a long period of time as we’ve been building out this technology. And now it’s very clear from the largest companies in the industry and the leaders of those companies that this is absolutely the direction of travel. And so that’s obviously enormously exciting. 

ANDY’S COMMENTS

It’s enormously exciting. Indeed, Ian and look, it’s exciting just hearing you talk about that and fascinating to hear those three key takeaways. Essentially you’re talking about how investing in private companies will become very simple and very accessible to retail investors everywhere. Tokenization will help make all this possible and transform investing in private companies. And of course, this is going to take place all around the world. It’s going to go global. The friction will just slowly or quickly melt away. And you’re exactly right, Ian. This is what the team at the Dacxi Chain has been talking about for some time. So it must be tremendously exciting to see the rest of the kind of the crowdfunding industry now agreeing essentially with Dacxi Chain that this is the path forward, right?

IAN’S COMMENTS

Yeah, that’s absolutely right. And look, what’s probably most exciting for us is the chance for me to meet with CEOs of crowdfunding companies from different parts of the world all in one place together, and help them understand the Dacxi Chain vision. And the level of interest that we’re getting from these companies is absolutely staggering and in some respects not surprising, but certainly incredibly exciting for us. And look, I think there’s one other insight that really has come through Andy, that’s worth sharing very quickly and that is that I think there’s been a view that crowdfunding, in its different sort of flavors, is somehow competing with VC investment. And to the extent that they all want a position in a really great company, then that is true. But where it’s not the case is unlocking the enormous power of the retail investor in their many, many millions around the world. What it does is drastically reshapes the capital opportunity. And so what it’s really doing is vastly growing the amount of capital that’s available to those early-stage businesses that seek it. It’s not like there’s a finite amount of money and suddenly crowdfunding is just going to take more of that off the table. So I think that’s a point that’s really well understood. And the evidence of that is that anecdotally there are clearly a lot of VCs that are actually doing tag-alongs on capital raising, being done through a crowdfunding platform. They’re doing tag-alongs as a top-up or as a sidecar to a crowdfunding round, and they’re working together with the crowdfunding platform providers, in some cases, to make that possible. So there’s a very complementary dynamic to that. And so, whilst I think crowdfunding in some respects is a response to the limitations in the VC world around, there are actually not thousands of these companies and they’re located in very few places, and it’s very, very competitive to beat a path to their door. And then if you do get them onboard, they want influence, they want control, they want all sorts of special rights. Whilst crowdfunding is a response to that, what’s starting to emerge is that early-stage businesses, in some cases, will bring both to the table in one line and use crowdfunding as the primary capital raise and then potentially do a sidecar with a VC as well. So that’s a very interesting dynamic I think we’ll see more of.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Yeah, got it. Thank you, Ian. And look, you used the word innovation earlier on when we were talking, and this is a word that we use a lot, obviously, at the Dacxi Chain. And I was just looking through the agenda for this conference, Ian, and if listeners, if anyone wants to see it, the website for this conference is Startupstarter.co. But what struck me, Ian is that really kind of the breadth of innovation available, or the panels and people speaking. So just to give listeners a sense of this, there’s everything from the future of Healthcare, fire, and smoke, and the future of Cannabis,  To the moon – Investing in space, clean tech solutions for the future, the future of Housing, the founder of Tomorrow autonomous technology disruptive Robotic Innovation, the State and Future of Web3, and digital assets, the future of Arts, and it just goes on and on. I get really excited by all this kind of talk of the future and how human innovation and imagination can take us there, Ian.

IAN’S COMMENTS

Yeah, look, so much the case. And what’s exciting for me, Andy, is realizing that Dacxi Chain may actually, in the end, play quite an important role in bringing the growth capital to the table, to the innovation economy, to unlock the potential of a lot of these amazing businesses with great ideas that require funding. It truly is a supply-and-demand opportunity that is being redefined before our eyes. And it’s just terrific to have a front-row seat.

ANDY’S COMMENTS

Fantastic. All right, well, hey, thank you for talking to us today, Ian. I know you’ve got a busy schedule and you’re kind of just in a breakaway room at the conference in LA. So thank you for taking the time to jump on a quick call for us. What’s next for you this week?

IAN’S COMMENTS

Well, we’ve got another day to run tomorrow and then I’m back to Sydney after that. So looking forward to tomorrow.

ANDY’S FINAL COMMENTS

Awesome. All right. Well, thanks, Ian. We’ll let you go. All the best and we’ll talk again soon.

There you go. Hey, that was Dacxi CEO Ian Lowe on the ground in LA, reporting live, and direct for the Unleashed with the Dacxi Chain podcast. Fantastic to talk to Ian. Always good to catch up with Ian. And yeah, I mean, I hope you got a sense of the excitement involved in that conference. And again, look, if you wanted to just take a look at that agenda that I was talking about, it is indeed startupstarter.co. But, yeah, fascinating to hear Ian’s takeaways from his time at the conference this week. Just running through them again. Number one, he said that there’s a general sense that going forward, it’s just going to become easier and easier for everyday investors everywhere to invest in private companies as the friction falls away. Number two, tokenization, the blockchain again, is just going to transform investing in these companies. That is going to be a no-brainer, of course. And number three, crowdfunding is just going to continue to evolve and become more and more global. Simple as that. So couldn’t agree more. Great to see that this kind of crowdfunding industry all around the world is on exactly the same page as the team at the Dacxi Chain as we all look forward to a bigger, brighter, and bolder future. All right, well, hey, just a quick one today. I hope you enjoyed that. Always good to catch up with Ian. As I say, we’ll see you real soon. Don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast in whatever podcast app you are using, but that’s today’s episode. Thanks, team. This was unleashed with the Dacxi Chain.