121: Money Talks #28 | GameStop and WallStreetBets | Visa-Plaid Deal Dead | Buying Monzo

0:11 Hey there, this is Pete Townsend from norio Ventures, and welcome to money. Never sleeps podcast. It looks inside the head of entrepreneurs, and at the crossover of startups, Enterprise Finance, technology and Life, as We Know It, This episode of money, never sleeps is sponsored by p80 fintech the training partner, the demystifies fintech and digital Finance for financial services professionals. Old Fitzgerald. And I are back this week with another money talk segment. We chat through the absolutely. You can't make this stuff up context of what's going on with GameStop in the Wall Street bets, Redick group, the context of the Plaid Visa deal Fallen apart. And what's next for munzo. We've also got an announcement on something new that I'm up to, with early stage investing. So, turn up the volume and listen in, as we try to catch up with the world.

0:53 On this week's episode of money, never sleeps. Here We Go, Again, cold open. It's not live from New York. It's not Saturday night. It's Tuesday night at nine, eighteen PM choose a title on the 26th, of January 2021. How you doing today? Pal? Pretty good, pretty good. Yeah, busy, what's going on? Lots of interesting stuff called loads. It's always loads always deeply the shift of activities in the last three months for me, at the, very least. And I know, I know you as well. Ben just extremely interesting and getting repetitions, which is the biggest thing with all this stuff. We're doing, right?

1:37 Yep. That's it's all coming. All come around eventually like the slope slope was coming together. Now, there's lots to do lots to say for Tiger Woods, 10,000 hours, you know, before you become an expert. Yeah, right. Yeah. That's it. Actually. Have you did you watched it? I haven't seen that Tiger Woods documentary on Asian. No, I haven't watched it and seen it. I haven't watched it. I'm still trying to find a way to get HBO over here in Ireland. I don't have Sky. Atlantic. Nobody am. I you need one of those sleepy anything. My wife has a thing that allows you to change a VPN in the house to like the us. Then I think you can get HBO on your like day, one of the apps. Yeah. Yeah. I may give that a go because I'm missing billions and I'm missing succession by now.

2:18 Billions of missing out. I would like to watch succession. Well, I had a big day today, explaining Groundhog Day to my physiotherapist. So all's going well with with rehabbing my foot and The physio today, resync physiotherapy for anybody living on the south side of Dublin. Check them out. They're brilliant in case, you get hurt with something right? They'll bring you back to health. Anyway, I was explaining to him. You wanted to book my next appointment for the second of February, which is Groundhog Day and joking. I said, oh, I don't work on Groundhog Day. And he's like, what? Okay, so we started looking forward to the next couple of days and he said, well, how about the the fourth I said, no. I was kidding. I do work on Groundhog Day.

2:59 Do you know what? Saga is he's like no. I'm like, dude, so I explained it to him. Do you know what? How Groundhog Day Works? Do? All right. Yeah, no particular. Okay Punxsutawney, Phil Simms. It was Punxsutawney. Phil comes out of his burrow on the 2nd of February every year in the morning. There's a whole movie about this Cal called Groundhog Day with with Bill Murray. Yeah, and if he sees his shadow, he gets scared. And he goes back into his burrow and it's six more weeks of winter. And if he doesn't see his shadow, Oh, and he stays outside. That means we're gonna have an early spring, right? So yeah, my physio beeramid hadn't hadn't heard of this yet. He's like, oh, yeah, familiar with the movie, but had never been aware of that.

3:41 So yeah, we'll see what happens, but we're gonna have a Long Winter here in Ireland anyway, because we got six more weeks of lockdown baby. So yeah. Anyway, so where we ended up today, right with what we're covering tonight is we had Matt Mcallister on last week. I thought with Matt that we'd end up doing two episodes, but we just package. It up into one with even though it was just over an hour long and probably our longest or definitely our longest episodes date. I just wanted to leave it natively as the way it was meant to be with one conversation. So, here we are. Let's just do a money talks tonight. And look at a few stories out there that have happened in the last week or so that really caught our attention. And there is a big one that's happened in the last few days that actually has been brewing for a few months.

4:24 This one is about GameStop which are video game console and physical. Game retailer and a retic group called Wall Street bets you want to do the honors Owen and tell us what it's all about. Yeah. Well, we spoke about this a while back around Robin Hood's. In fact, one. I think it was the first newsletter that we put out was around this. Kind of, I suppose retail Traders during covid of had nothing else to do, but they've had no gambling, no football to bet on in the u.s. So they've all been just trading stocks to Robin Hood and a few of the other kind of online, trading applications, but there's a subgroup and and I'm not massively familiar with how red it works. But there's a retic group. Obviously Wall Street bets, they call themselves is over 1.8 million members and they have just been taking the other side of Trades against hedge funds and short positions on what are essentially not great businesses and driving up the price and absolutely hammer in the hedge funds. And it's been hilarious to watch some of the the kind of outrage for the poor hedge funds that are out there shorting the stock.

5:27 And it's kind of come to a head this week with game stock, which was Kind of circling the drain as a business over the last couple of years, you know, I my kids got a PlayStation for Christmas. We're able to download all the games for the console. I have no reason to go into a shop to buy a game and they're in there, obviously located in shopping centers, which nobody can go to. So, you know, they're really in a tough position and the heads. A lot of the hedge funds are taken serious short positions under stock. Which okay. So where did it was up? What about $40? They got a new investor on board back in August and everyone kind of thought. Well, that's going to make the business that's going to turn the business around. But obviously, the fundamentals are poor. So to short positions. That was what set as of Monday, 71 million shares were held in short positions.

6:08 It well. I think it closed today. What you tell me to close today at 41, 47, .98, nearly a hundred and forty eight dollars book 90%. Yeah, because it's the individual retail. Investors have just been buying the stock and not selling it. The short positions can cover themselves. And I think it culminated in wanted a hedge funds having to get bailed out by Jay. A pea-sized, JP Morgan or Goldman Sachs or something. It's just a ridiculous story, but it does come back to what we talked about before. And I kind of thought was fascinating because it could be one of those turning points because I'm following on Twitter. And even today, there's been some serious big-name investors, have taken positions and Bart GameStop over the last couple of days, you know, kind of just piling on the bad news for the hedge funds.

6:52 Everyone thinks it's very funny to me like a part of it is just absolutely hilarious that this can happen. But it was, your question. Is this, could this be That we look back on it, three or four years time and say, well, is this a turning point is crazy, you know, it's absolutely crazy. And I think, you know, Dave, Portnoy from Barstool Sports, you know, we talked about his contribution before to what's going on and and using the power of the crowd to bring people into the markets, right? And like you said, yeah, sports are back on but it's a lot more fun when you're kind of there and you're betting at the same time as well. And it's hard to go to sports games these days. So it's Something else to feel the adrenaline to push things along and it's just absolutely incredible.

7:34 That you know, a group of nearly two million folks on Reddit have banded together with this Wall Street. Bats subgroup subreddit and have been driving the price and like you said, I was just wait. Looking for that sound effect on my non-existent sound effect dashboard that goes on. When you said the poor hedge funds, you know, those folks were my clients for years. There are some wonderful altruistic hedge fund. Ezra's out there and but at the same time, right, we know what it's like, we know the story that being said, the business GameStop itself, right? It's been on a downward trajectory. Absolutely. Yep.

8:15 There were going from seven point. Nine billion in Revenue in 2017 to eight point five billion. The next year, the 8.2 is where they started coming down in 2019 to 6.2 billion last year. That's still a lot of money to bring in, but But I think they got somewhere north of 450 Million worth of losses. They're closing over 300 Outlets or were closing last year and they're closing in, but higher rate than they thought. At the beginning of the pandemic. Yeah, the beginning of the pandemic, they were down, Jesus around two dollars per share. They went way way, way down. And then, like you said, when Ryan Cohen came in, in August, he is from chewy Fame.

8:55 He sold out to PetSmart for over three billion dollars in 2017. So, He's got a nice big chunk of change here. He was a big investor, did something with apple? I think a couple of years ago, but it was back for months ago. He filed with the SEC to say you had a greater than 10% stake and GameStop, right? So he took see it on the board. A couple of his Partners came in with him. People thought he was a savior, some kind. And that's what people thought might have started this run up back four months ago and someone actually put a big post on to the subreddit group with A seven-point Treatise. Really on why GameStop actually might be able to turn things around right and where they're looking at the components of their business, that we're going to become digital how physical games were actually preferred by the serious Gamers over digital games just to have something. Whether it's collectible or whatever, but that you can resell right when you're done with it. New game consoles coming out and driving their revenues upward. So there was a few things that suggested perhaps they might be able to turn it around but I don't think that's enough. The story to look at Ryan Cohen of chewy, Fame coming in turning, the whole business around in a few months and basically, you know, this is what to 2146 know. This is It's funny because you can track it all the way back to the start of the pandemic, whereby, you know, we had to hurts thing where the price went up as soon as it announced bankruptcy.

10:20 It was the same effectively. The same group was driving that you had the airline's, your Davey day trader and the guys were all putting money into the airline's driving up the Prices the movie theater is it seems like there's this underlying thing of let's let's put money into the the retail businesses, the stores to things like that. Whereby, everyone else is saying that they're going to go down and rightly so probably for fundamentals a short and they're just putting the money into that to screw the short positions. Ultimately, and it's this game would like Financial chicken either. I saw a described as earlier on Twitter, which is brilliant, but I suppose it raised the question then because you know, what does it mean? This is Like the.com, boom sort of thing. And the crash there, these people seem like they're willing to continue to be active and it's brought a lot, a large number of new, kind of Traders and investors into the market. So what does that mean for the kind of future of publicly listed companies?

11:15 When you potentially have groups like this, who just on a whim can turn against you and drive to stop Cooper down. I was thinking about that today. Okay. And again having to do with crypto as it is. A lot of the time for me these days and Thinking about how the market dynamics change, when your markets, go to 24/7, right? Or when you're trading in a 24-7 market and where you're responding to the news cycle. And where is that news coming from? What channels are you tracking? And I'm not saying, C, NBC and Fox News and CNN and ABC I'm saying, you know, subreddit groups, different parts of glass door when people talking about it, working experiences at different places, Yelp TripAdvisor.

11:59 All these different sites, where you have all this Market sentiment being tracked, right now? When you look at crypto scripto Twitter, right? And that that's driving. Well, I'm not going to go out on it on a Ledge and saying that's driving a lot of the activity and the Bitcoin volatility, but at the very least it's a it's an interesting channel to watch, right. So I think you're getting it. Something really interesting hero in which is saying, are we getting to a point where these not only is it just the new cycle but it is The Gathering of sentiments in a concentrated spot that is observable by those trading in the market, so that we didn't have a few years ago.

12:39 And is that changing how people trade and it's at changing how prices respond obviously, but it's a brand new world, but it probably probably means that the hedge funds need to get smarter because the crowds now potentially has the ability to move the price. On their whim. Almost. Like I said, it's not necessarily tracking the fundamentals. It's just that they can decide because I get. So it's really evident with Tesla. Understand are share price over the last kind of 12 months. Elon Musk is like, you know, that subgroup is a massive fan of Elon Musk. He's like their their unofficial leader sort of thing. So, you know, even when Tesla split is stuck, it's still continue to go up and it is gone up and up, despite. It probably not tracking, you know, from a fundamental point of view.

13:24 It shouldn't necessarily be worth the value of all the other. Companies combined, but it is. And that's partly because he has such a following and has that ability to kind of dictate where some of those trades are going and where that money is going. But what does that mean? Then, for, you know, the normal company because you could have situations where by a group like, that could turn against a business because of some negative news story, maybe something from a from a climate point of view or whatever comes out about a company. If it gets the attention of someone like Wall Street bet or maybe they have the potential to really do some damage. Judge them and that's a bigger kind of issue. There's so much more to the story. You know, I like the headache that the suspend trading nine times there on Monday.

14:05 You see that on the socket on GameStop. No, I didn't like that so much. That's, that's how much was being traded. Shares are being traded in a period. That is suspended. Nine-time II, literally, I think I was seeing this morning that the chamath I will just refer to him by his first name. And I will put his second game, The Legend of the, let the legend that is shamash yet. He was out on Twitter. This morning. I think being goaded into doing something around buying in. Yeah to GameStop and he put up 115. Yeah, he came in at 1:15. Put out a tweet. Yeah, you put out a tweet yesterday asking saying that he put 100 Grand in somewhere. Someone for the best, you know, suggestions and it must have been GameStop because he disiike came back responded to the tweet and to say he's gone into GameStop at 150.

14:52 Yeah, exactly crazy. So, you know, this is and and the hole insider trading thing comes to mind and being aware of what other people are trading and trading off the back of that. And it's like, it's not applicable here. In this case. It's just completely different context. And, you know, we're not talking about what blue horseshoe, loves Endicott steel or anything like that from from Wall Street and the cut Steve. I love that. Yeah. Yeah, Joe. I was going to send you something earlier. I saw some that. I made me think of it because I saw people start to tweet. Can I get paid now and GameStop instead of Bitcoin? I thought you'd appreciate that. Yeah, I would find it. Absolutely would.

15:33 Yeah, I brokered another one of those deals just in the last few days which has been interesting. But we are. Yeah, I think we're in an all new world here. I keep saying that. It, it feels like we're in an all new world every month. Just things are changing so fast. I love it. It's hard to keep up but you know, it's forever entertaining and also Forever opportunistic at the same time. We should ask. Andrew Milani to come back on and talk about it. I, that's exactly, was. I was in the party episodes. We had Andrew Milani from pre mind and episode 57, definitely a shout out to Andrew, you know, and he's talking about medium term trading, which is the difference between day trading, and then hold, you know, Buy and Hold. And do you kind of your long-term qualitative type trading and where, you know, the market is moving way too fast, even on a 30-day holding period for a fund manager to keep up and make the run, you know, make accurate decisions. Based upon the new Cycles.

16:28 So he needs help. Now, you need some automation around that or she needs help, and she needs some automation around that so pre. Mine comes along able to provide all that when we were talking to him. You talk about Market sentiment out there on social media. Think about things, bouncing around on Twitter. You don't think about how you gather all this unstructured data because Twitter is short enough with what 160 characters hundred forty characters, whatever where you can kind of set some, you know, programs to Pick up on what's going on there, when it is red. It grips? Forget about it. I don't know how you do that in. An automated way to pick up on this stuff. But you really have to expand and your catchment net of what you're looking at here in order to trade these markets.

17:11 Effectively. It's crazy. Yeah, rubber Hood, used to put out daily information on where the bulk of their trading was being done in what share our in what stocks and they pulled us kind of feeds that they used to provide to the market because that you used to be able to get a good Insight on kind. Where the short-term day Traders? Are putting all their money from Robin Hood under 13 million accounts or whatever, but they kind of pulled that feed and made it private again. Gotcha. It's an interesting one. Yeah, speaking of pulling, we saw that Visa pulled the Plaid deal out from under plaids feet. Well, it or think it was or was it the other way around? It? Sounds like it was the other way around.

17:52 Exactly. And and that just from, from a background. Activate Department of Justice started investigating 12 months ago. After the Visa. Implied deal was announced were plaid was being acquired by devs up by five, four four five point, three billion dollars and the investigation led to the doj saying. Sorry. This is anti-competitive. You're basically taking competition off the streets by doing this deal. So, sorry. Now, from a plaid perspective, what I've been hearing. It sounds like you've been hearing the same thing or reading the same thing, because it's kind of out there. Is that platter pretty Happy about this, given that again, as we just said, the markets moving so fast tech is moving. So fast. Revenue growth is on fire, especially in the digital world that pulling the plug on this deal.

18:38 Pulling. The rug on this deal is a good thing for plaid because they're probably worth at least 30 percent more than what they were worth at least 12 months ago. I would have said two or three times. Yeah, if you're, if you compare it to, I don't know the exact number in front of me, but the affirm IPO and the numbers involved in that I think plot is Work multiples of what it was and I think that's why they were happy enough. My understanding is what I've read is that they instigated as kind of being cancelled, because ultimately devaluation, aside from the doj piece was actually the valuation as moved far too. It's the whole thing is taken too long. Like these, I should have been able to try get in and close that deal as quick as possible. You know, it's now multiples of that that it's worth. I'd say.

19:18 Yeah. And it, you know, people were saying well, the plat Founders left some money on the table, you know, by by walking away from this deal and I'm like, they would have been leaving a lot more. Table by doing the deal. Yeah, absolutely. No, it's especially about a time. It would get done. I mean, could be another six or 12 months. Yeah. It's time to doj thing is finished. It's interesting because it contacts is changing quickly. And I think it was Brian Brooks from who's now former OCC, the office of the Comptroller of the currency. He's X coinbase. Chief legal officer, before he went into the OCC, and his Parting Shot really from the OCC, sent out a Twitter thread. It was last week where he basically said, You know, Europe has already figured out kind of banking infrastructure and doing it the right way, with open banking, the US has not yet. Why can't the u.s.

20:06 Just go in that direction? And you know, the view is that plaid only really exists because in the US market banks are not mandated to provide apis to third-party fintax in order to enable those third-party fintax, to provide data to customers, right? Like, we have with their called a isps here. Shout out to David Heath from sir. Could he is it the first a ISP in Ireland? Alternative information, service provider under PSD to that. Lets a third party through a secure authorization process gather your banking data, okay? And directly directly through your bank via an API connection. The way plaid does it is, it's still a password and username that you need to provide to your fintech app that there is obviously that security that privacy breach, there can it obviously perceive that way. Definitely in Europe.

20:57 And I'm sure there's some concerns about that in the US, but that's why plaid has one of the first reasons they've done so well, is because they've enabled all of these apps like venmo, you name it to connect the bank's, okay, but it's still, you got to give your password and username to someone else. That is not your bank and is not you. So, in a roundabout way, I'm aware of players who have the option in Europe. If using plaid using folks, like true layer like Tink ya Polly. And they're using the other players you're using the European players because they're plugged into the network here. Now platter so big and doing so well. And have a lot more capital, a lot more money behind them.

21:38 So I think they're going to figure it out. But if I were them, I'd be like, okay, great. We're doing really well in the US market, but outside of the US, especially in Europe, which is, you know, the second biggest economic, Bloc forget China for now, Jack ma. Let's leave him to deal with that, right? You're playing a little bit of a different game over here in Europe. So I like to see how they're going to figure that out. The other thing that strikes me about it is actually is what that means for stripe actually, so these obviously we're looking to get a good deal, you know, a year and a half ago. Nerdy at this stage that value would say, is gone up in multiples of now for plaid, but it does. It does kind of raise the question, you know, who can acquire these companies, you know, so plaid is, let's say plans were to double even now 10 billion. So what are they going to do?

22:23 Who can acquire them, especially if part The reason that Visa were being challenged was that it was going to be anti-competitive. So, if that potentially rules out, let's say Visa buying plaid. It rules out, the likes of a Visa or any of the big financial services companies from acquiring, any of these players like a plan, like a stripe. So plaid will probably try to find some way. Now, to either IPO, or maybe through the The Legend that is shamash, do it, do an S pack into the into the Star-Spangled legend. That is this pack is back. But if they don't plan on doing that and obviously stripe of always talked about trying to stay private, you, where's the exit, then, for some, for a company like that. If you effectively now, or two important or too, big to be acquired by another bank, who do you believe? I don't know.

23:10 I mean, it's like, you know, the context of plaid is that they built the brand new rails for digital Finance, right? At least for Fiat and we'll see where they go with with, you know, pure digital assets, which is another conversation. And but Visa. Have all these old aging rails, for analog Finance, right? And between them and MasterCard control, so much of the volume control. So much of the flow that if plaid were able to come along and actually start developing what they're doing to a much greater institutional scale. Could they take on these take on the old school rails? Yeah. I think they could and so, you know, Visa acquiring them is kind of taking them. Like I said, off the street, is there exit and E0, I think so, but I think they're probably going to have to bulk out a lot more.

24:02 I mean stripe started out as an API, and now they're embedding Financial Services into small business apps, right? Small business, operational platforms and you know, financial and inventory platforms. So yeah, I think plaid have some, I'm sure they have a plan. I just, you know, I would like to see how they're going to compare vis-à-vis to the likes of stripe and others. Moving ahead. Because I think it's the piece for me. It's the piece we're somewhere. These companies are kind of an infrastructure play. You know, I think that makes them more difficult of an acquisition from a typical financial services company, you know, so you mentioned true layer. So, the more these companies that are their kind of building the infrastructure for other companies to sit on top of it, the harder it is then for an incumbent, or whoever to acquire them because it runs out risk, that can competition risk.

24:52 It is, but I mean, MasterCard did one. So, who did MasterCard bought, what was it finna City? Yeah, Felicity. Yeah, but a smaller player, not as big as plaid. So yeah, anyway, space to watch lots going on, you know, the foundations of everyday money is shifting a significantly and like you said, are we going to look back on this period in three to five years, time? And say, what was it? That very interesting intersection of events? I heard it. Someone described it as a Cambrian explosion. Right? I think that was Lex sakhalin in his long take newsletter that just came out today. A you know, the fintech blueprint where he's talking about. The pairing is this moment in time that we're going through right now with the pandemic with the evolution and speed of adoption of smartphones.

25:39 Not only in developed economies, but in under less developed economies and the post-financial crisis angst really out in the world, all these things happening at the same time, is this going to significantly shift the landscape of how people live their life, how people spend money? How How people, you know, find their livelihood, perhaps. And we're they were comparing it. Lex was comparing it to period between 1760 and 1780 with a combination of different things. Going on around the world that led to the American Revolution. Right? And it's never just one thing in isolation, that happens. It's always a combination of events, like the Cambrian explosion itself, 540 million years ago, whenever it was where it was the perfect, geographical geological atmospheric, you know, life spawning period of the Earth, right?

26:27 Going off on a tangent here, but I think we are going through one of those moments and its own very little humble way of how people spend money right now anyway. This episode of money never sleeps sponsored by p80 fintech demystifying, fintech and digital Finance for financial services professionals. P80 fintech enable Financial Services professionals to transform their capabilities into the digital age with dedicated virtual training programs geared towards those. It can develop deliver and monitor optimally customized user experiences, balanced by appropriate, governance, control and oversight to learn more about. P80 fintech. Go to money, never sleeps. .I E, /p A teef.

27:14 So obviously, I know we talked about before on this podcast about potential buyers out there from Bonzo and just thinking about where they are kind of in the competitive field right now with revolute within 26, some of the big u.s. Players, like chime and others, and you kinda look at Manzano and think they've done really well, but they feel like they're kind of a brand play. And how are you actually going to grow the business into being something? That is a formidable Financial player? And not just as one analyst was referring to them in an article that I read as Charity for the UK market, right? So considering the different industry segments out there.

27:55 What do you think might be something to think about for a potential buyer for munzo? I think it's going to come from, probably one of the less well-known tech companies, you know. Don't, I don't think you're going to see them acquired by another bank, but still, I don't think it makes sense. You may as well close them down. Then if you're gonna try, bring them in house to a UK bank, but they already know. I don't think there's anything compelling enough about them. That would have them as a bring them into a Barclays or someone like that and keep them as a standalone, you know, dude. I don't think it makes sense and then are any of the bigger players going to record them. The Facebook's Google's any of those? I don't think there's a again I'd only compelling enough for them to acquire them and everything that comes with it.

28:38 It. But you may see it's like we saw with when we talked about it at that time with Tick-Tock and Walmart. And he's like that, it might be someone who's, you know, next tier like Oracle were in the mix for that sort of deal. I think it might be someone trying to pick up a banking banking solution, banking offering as part of a wider reach. I mean, look, these I have loads of money to throw around, no, not by in plaid. So maybe they'll go down that route. Yeah. Yeah, they might. But it's like, you know, when you got such a big behemoth - a small Financial brand, you kill the Brand's? Okay, maybe some insights here being aware of some of the folks that were on the original founding team of mons. Oh, that had since left and knowing their approach. To if you think about what Monza were doing, there's something in the middle of their whole Tech stack called an intelligence Services layer.

29:30 Okay, right. That is doing a lot more than just banking, right? It is going out in real time. We use spend money. Any to not Google, but do a search for, Okay, where did you spend money? What type of retailer is that? What category am I going to put that into for your spending? Right? That's all happening in real time. And, you know, there's a lot of intelligence that's gone into that. Is this something that can be replicated right? In a bank? He's banking as a service type model, right because there's a number of players out there that are doing that now and could you actually take these assets of the tech stack and actually turn that? And something that is sellable on a repeatable basis, right? That's kind of what I'm thinking about this and that just came to mind the last few minutes genius. No, I think it makes a lot of sense, like we've talked about this before the idea of, you know, because I see it now. Even in my revolute account, you know, they keep trying to tag things that I have as a subscription because obviously the more intelligent they can get around what I'm doing and how I'm spending my money.

30:31 Then the more they can offer me on the other side, the more you can tie into that. So if manzai could do that better already. Well then that's fits nicely into. Someone who needs it up piece of it more so than the customers of card, or the brand. Yeah. Yeah. I think they could get end up with something quite interesting there, and it's the value of the relationships. They have their the value of the customer base. There's got to be something that you can do with that. That's going to be compelling to somebody else. You want that kind of Market. I'm thinking crypto has more actually as you're talking to I'm more thinking someone on the financial management side, and maybe it's coming into the kind of wealth and Nosy, but you know, those types of businesses where they already do the wealth management piece.

31:13 So let's now let's say we come down the kind of food chain a bit and into the space where we understand how you spend your money. And here's how we can. Yeah, big time and I'm getting teed up to do a podcast with a group that's talking specifically about wealth and wealth management, fintech and wealth. And you really have to think about how people are spending money. What do they have left after? They spend their money at the end of the month? Do people that spend all their money and not save any of it? Are those people you really want to bring it to a wealth product? What is a wealth product? Was that really mean? I'm not attracted to wealth product. I'm not worldly. Right? Can you call it something else? Can you call it a savings app? I don't want to savings account. I'm not going to make met any money on that. You know, I want crypto.

31:58 You know, I want to earn based upon staking my teeth to a network, right? Wonderful, but you know, anyway, I think there's a More psychology that goes into this. I think there is a wonderful user base there with Manzano. I think it's something that is going to end up in the right hands and the fact that you and I are talking about this after Chris Skinner tweeting about it, other people must be taught of solute. Yes, right. And I don't think we're, I don't think we're jumping the gun at all here by suggesting. That munzo should be bought by somebody because I do think it should. Anyway, I think we've hit the three key stories tonight. Right with GameStop with plaid and visa and with riffing on one's. Oh, right.

32:45 So I had one or two other things. I wanted to mention first off, rest in peace, hammer and Hank. Aaron, he to me, is the still the Home Run champion of the world. He hit seven hundred and fifty five home runs in his career. He was surpassed by Barry Bonds back in back in the 2000s, but Barry Bonds was Act up on juice to the extreme with the steroids that were coursing through his veins and his skull so I kind of disqualify him. Even though Major League Sports haven't yet. Disqualified him. But yes. Rest in peace Hank. Aaron. I have his book his autobiography autographed up on the bookshelf in here with a baseball card.

33:29 That is autographed by him as well. I met him in 1991 at a charity event that my mom is cool, too. So, shout out to my mom for bringing me to that, pulled it down the other day. Day and took a picture of it. After she Ford me his obituary. So and I know you mentioned as well that it's Kobe's anniversary today. Yeah, sad day. So Kobe Bryant's rest in peace as well and speaking of Los Angeles were Kobe Bryant played for a very very long time. We had Brian McMahon on the show from expert. Oh Joe. Yeah back. He was episode 109 and had a great chat with him. He's running an accelerator called expert Dojo, which are also making some Vestments in early-stage funds, and I'm pleased to announce that yours truly. I am now sourcing investments in early stage, Irish startups, mostly Irish startups, because that's where I think the biggest Gap is for precede and Seed stage funding. So, now sourcing Investments for expert Dojo. So, opening up the deal flow.

34:28 Now, going to make that a lot more public on LinkedIn. Obviously sharing it on the podcast is a means of going public or this, but we want to start opening up that deal flow because there are a lot of of opportunities. Not only just in the usual places that people look in Ireland, but also in the Northwest, in the southwest, in the west out in Galway, in the Southeast that may not always come out of the woodwork and I think going to go find them. Yeah and then generally also with a network going to different parts of Europe and back to the US. I think they'll be some good opportunities. That's a, that's a great deal for you. That's it. That's great. No better. No better man to be leading that out. Yeah. Happy to have that outlet. Now, why? This stage. So, anything else that you wanted to touch on before we wrap it up for the night.

35:13 No, actually a shout-out to Sean, O Reilly in t, u, Dublin or git, as I still refer to it. They launched their post-grad diploma and fintech actually starts. It started, the induction was this week. So it starts tomorrow night, where yours truly is given a guest lecture intro to fintech. It's great. There's loads of interesting fintech courses now happening in Ireland. Lots of really kind of well, delivered. Well, run programs is another addition to that, and it's great. To see. I think they had over 300 applications possibly for 50 places, which is great. So yeah, Keen to see what comes out of that. We might catch on at some point in the future. To tell us that it's going. Alright, we'll leave it there tonight, bro. Pleasure, as always, that does it for this week folks and thanks for listening to us.

35:59 Try to figure out what the world does. What it does links and show notes for this episode or on money. Never sleeps that IE, so check us out online. Also, you could subscribe to our money, never sleeps. At money. Never sleeps, dotsub stack.com. If you're enjoying money, never sleeps and want to see it continue. Make sure you hop on over to Apple podcast and give us a five star review. Also, check us out on pod. Chaser.com to tell us what you think, leaves a voicemail on our website. Money, never sleeps that I eat. Don't forget Conan Brophy from create sound, he mixes and edits each episode for us and is an excellent medium and get in touch with when you're thinking about launching your own podcast. As for me. I help startups get their products to Market, get customers. And financier vision. You can find me on LinkedIn on Twitter. Her oratorio adventures.com, you'd get following Fitzgerald on Twitter at Owen. Fitzgerald nine.

36:43 Finally till next time. Thanks for listening. See you.