Making Billions: The Private Equity Podcast for Fund Managers, Alternative Asset Managers, and Venture Capital Investors
Thanks for listening to another episode of Making Billions with Ryan Miller: The Private Equity Podcast for Fund Managers, Startup Founders, and Venture Capital Investors. This show covers topics connecting you to some of the best investment funds that won in their industry—from making money and motivation to alternative investments, fund managers, entrepreneurs, investors, innovators, capital raisers, money mavericks, and industry titans. If you want to start a business, understand investment funds that won the game, and how the top 0.01% made it, then this show will give you the answers!
Making Billions: The Private Equity Podcast for Fund Managers, Alternative Asset Managers, and Venture Capital Investors
The Startup Playbook: How to Start, Fund, and Exit Your Next Startup
Hey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host, Ryan Miller and today I have my dear friend Josh Chodniewicz.
Josh is the CEO of Fundify, an exclusive venture capital firm that allows non accredited investors to build massive wealth in ways that have traditionally been kept private until now. So before Fundify, Josh was the founder of art.com where he sold to Walmart for get this a coveted 300 million bucks.
So what this means is that Josh understands how to start, scale and exit companies, and is about to teach you how to do the same.
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THE GUEST: Josh is the CEO of Fundify, an exclusive venture capital firm that allows non accredited investors to build massive wealth in ways that have traditionally been kept private until now.
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My name is Ryan Miller, and for the past 15 years, I've helped hundreds of people to raise millions of dollars for their funds and for their startups. If you're serious about raising money, launching your business, or taking your life to the next level, this show will give you the answers so that you too can enjoy your pursuit of Making Billions. Let's get into it.
Did you know that experts claim the average return on private deals is around 25% a year, well, the average return on public deals is only around eight so what's the problem? Well, the problem is that only wealthy people are permitted into those highly profitable deals, well, at least that's how it used to be. Join me in my next guest as we chop it up on how he is bringing these tasty deals to the masses so that all of us can enjoy our pursuit of Making Billions. Here we go.
Hey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host, Ryan Miller, and today I have my dear friend Josh Chodniewicz. Josh is the CEO of Fundify, an exclusive venture capital firm that allows non accredited investors to build massive wealth in ways that have traditionally been kept private until now. So before Fundify, Josh was the founder of art.com where he sold to Walmart for get this a coveted 300 million bucks. So what this means is that Josh understands how to start scale and exit companies, and is about to teach you how to do the same. So, Josh, welcome to the show, man.
Josh Chodniewicz
Hey, Ryan, it's great to be here, I'm excited about your show. I love, I love what you're doing, and I love this place. It's a pleasure to be here.
Yeah, it's great to have you, man, we've been very fortunate to be the top 3% in the world, and it's all because of amazing guests like you. So you run Fundify, it allows non accredited investors to get into these deals. That's what this show is about, is just getting people into private deals and alternative assets and alternative investments, right? And so one of those areas is venture capital and startups. And you can just walk me through a little bit what is Fundify, for those that have never heard of this company.
Josh Chodniewicz
So Fundify is the first place in the world where anybody, whether wealthy or not wealthy, can invest in startups by having an expert manage that portfolio for them. We have a monthly program where you sign up, download the Fundify app, you connect your bank account for X amount per month, and we take that capital, we pool it with all the other 1000s of Fundify members. Then on your behalf, we go and negotiate deals with the best startups that we can find to invest your capital into them, and eventually getting you what we hope to be the 25% average annual returns that are coming from the startup asset class.
Awesome and so do founders approach you or investors approach you? Or how do you build your ecosystem?
Josh Chodniewicz
It comes from all over the place. We're getting startups that come to us from Angel groups, accelerators, incubators, venture firms, are passing them on to us sometimes when they're too small or too big, and so we're seeing deal flow all over the place, that's essentially how we find them.
Awesome, let's address the entrepreneurs out there, which, and we had a lot of fund managers when, arguably, they're also entrepreneurs, they're starting a business too. You don't think of that, but it really is a business, especially if you're an emerging fund manager, I see you guys out there, all you budding venture capitalists and private equity carnivores, but really, we're all about private deals, right? Whether you're a funder or a founder, it's the same ecosystem, just depending on what side of the fence you're on, but we all work together. And so I'd love to address founders for a minute, from your perspective, you've been one. You've had a very successful exit to Walmart, I mean, everybody's heard of that. That is phenomenal, and I'd love to get into that. But before we do, maybe can help me understand, when someone's starting out in a business, starting a company in any form, how do they win? How do they get early points on the board? And then we'll follow up with maybe, how do they avoid getting wiped out too early? So how does a founder win?
Josh Chodniewicz
Yeah, that's a great question. I think the challenges that are similar for all companies and for all founders is that you can't run out of money, and you can't you've got to continue to build the business that you're getting and get appropriate traction, to raise the next round of capital so that you can continue to get to your place, to eventually to a place of profitability, right? Because then you run your own show, then you've got your destiny in your own hands. But until then, when we started art.com we had $35,000 my buddy and I, and we bootstrapped the business, and had to figure out a way to make a little bit every day, right, so that we could survive to the next day and nobody would invest. And I think that's a similar story for so many startups, it's difficult to raise capital.
Yeah, it is. And, you know, often, right, and so that's something I do. I obviously have a company called Fundraise Capital, fundraisecapital.co where I teach people how to raise capital, a lot of fund managers, so funders in that group. But I can tell you this funding is so vital, and I think raising capital can be a challenge. And a lot of people I've noticed, who end up not being successful are very focused on, how do I structure this thing? Now that's not saying it's not saying it's not important, they're so focused on structure, they forgot to figure out it's like, how do you pay for this thing? Should probably be your first question, right? Bootstrap, friends, family, fools, institutional investors, venture capital, and then obviously, fundify.com and so really understanding the landscape of getting funded is important. Now I'm curious art.com that. I mean, that's, that's brilliant. But how important is product and product development, or if you're a funder or thesis development, but how important is it as far as product.
Josh Chodniewicz
I think it's fundamental to have a product that is eventually going to work right? And if you're selling whatever, you're selling whatever it is a product or service, it's got to be something, in my eyes, it's got to be something that's significantly better than anything that's out there, and that's what makes for the big wins of the world, right? From an investing perspective, you're looking for things that can be huge one day, that maybe are not today, but you're waiting for an evolution of that, right, something to if only we had some capital and we built this out like this, then it could become something great, right? And that opportunity kind of eventually comes down to building the right product and building something that people need and that they're willing to pay for. If you if there's value there, they'll pay for it.
Yeah, it comes back to that, that Trifecta Venn diagram, viability, desirability and feasibility, and making sure that you had it. And I remember something from Henry Ford, he said, If I asked my customers what they want, they would have asked for a faster horse, or something like that. And so I know you love that, and you know that saying as well, and really, innovation is a challenge, but that's also kind of the hallmark of venture capital, is saying like, hey, we're not just going to offer the same thing or a faster horse. We actually want to you hear these terms that's thrown around where it's losing its meaning, but being a disrupter, right? Everybody is a disruptive, disruptive technology. Everybody, apparently, everything's getting disrupted these days. And maybe that word just gives you an extra multiple, I'm not sure, but developing that product is absolutely key, but not just your vision, but having a good product dev team and developing a lot of those things, not just can we make it and can we pay for it, but does the market want it? And that's really key and we call that product market fit and you know this, this isn't a show about product market fit. Maybe one of these days we'll get into that. But I think it's really important, what you said, brother, is just focus on a good start on winning. Is just make sure that you have a great product, and like you said, you have a clear path on how to raise capital, anything else you can add to how to help people win in the early days?
Josh Chodniewicz
I think I'll add that, don't be afraid to change also as you learn, right? Because you're coming in and becoming an expert in whatever space you are, no matter how much you know when you get started, you're going to learn more as you go right, you're diving into the business, and the more you build it, the more you have, the more you'll start realizing that, wait a second, maybe we need to do a pivot. We pivoted with Fundify, for example, we started to build a marketplace for investors to come and figure out which startup they want to invest in. And what we found is that's actually really difficult, because you have to figure out now you have all this homework to do, read the paperwork, figure out which ones are the best ones, interview maybe the founders, by listening to videos. And what we learned is that people don't they want, although they wanted the investments in startups, they don't want to do all the work because it's really difficult and time consuming. There's a reason why there are venture capital firms out there doing this and getting paid for it, right? Because it's a tremendous amount of work and so we pivoted Fundify to now offer a fully managed service for each individual to invest whatever amount they want, and then, and then we do the work to get them invested. They earn the returns that come from that work.
Brilliant. So that's how to get some early points on the board. Now that's not enough, because I think you know as well as I do, when you're a founder, you can also make some silly, silly mistakes, which could be catastrophic. It could result in a pivot, whatever it might be, let's just say there's some downside risk to starting a business or investing in one but from your opinion of being a founder and now investing in those absolutely love it, because now you've got a full perspective on both sides of that fence. What would you say? What are some cautionary tales you could tell some founders on how to avoid getting knocked out of the game too soon? What would you say?
Josh Chodniewicz
That's a great question. I think avoiding, avoiding complete failure is really, you know, in a lot of ways, is so important, right? Because that's ultimately what kills you, it's, uh, people say never quit, right? That's the kind of similar saying, just never quit and you won't lose, right? Because you never quit, but the reality, reality is a little tougher than that, right? So I think listening to your advisors, but also being able to say, hey, I've got a gut here. I'm going to make a call and I'm going to make changes. I would say, move fast to make changes. Don't try to be a perfectionist and do this as fast as you possibly can, no matter what, it's still going to take you longer than you thought. And so what you don't want to do is move slowly, and then it takes even longer and longer and I think that would be one thing I'd suggest.
Awesome and you know, moving fast is key and there's a saying, I'm still recovering CFO, so just forgive me, but there's a saying in finance that we call growing broke. Maybe that's in VC, maybe you've heard of it. Growing broke means your growth rate is outpacing your working capital as effectively as what how an accountant would read it in the matrix. And so when you're growing too fast and your working capital can't keep up, then you got to supplement that, and if you can't through investors or debt, you're in trouble, likely game over. And so how important is growth versus speed? How do you balance those two, what should an entrepreneur look for when they're trying to balance out growth versus the rate of growth and growing broke?
Josh Chodniewicz
I think every business is different in that regard as far as how fast you can grow and not go broke. I mean, growth is critical to excitement and everything that comes from the beauty of a startup world, especially if you're building something that has tremendous potential for scale and with growth. You look at a company like Uber. Uber had massive growth with massive losses, so they had to raise significant amount of capital to keep their growth going. Really, you just have to be able to taper that if, if the growth is going too hard, you need to raise money. You need to stay ahead of the curve and get the money in the door. Usually you should be able to get it if you're getting the growth on the consumer side, and you can prove out your long term value of the consumers that are coming in, if you can pay back, and you know, in 12 months or two years, for the payback of what customers you what you're paying to acquire customers, then that could be a really positive scenario. But you have to have enough money and enough capital to survive that long, right?
That's right. So, so balancing out, I would say, just me in my finance brain, is, if you're building out a pro forma or a future forecast of your financials, just make sure that you've got the cash balance and the plow back ratio to to continue to plow back into your business without suffering growth or growing too fast, without suffering paying your employees or other things like that. So there's, there is a fine line and you know, bless all those finance folks that keep us, keep us on the straight and narrow. So that being said, and there's one thing that you mentioned I don't want to skip past it, which is leaning on your advisory or advisors, or advisory board that exists both in as funders and as founders, it is I also advise the very same thing is build an advisory board that's different than the board of directors. Some, sometimes it can be the same as well, but in this context, it's different. So having an advisory board, did you have one at art.com like, how what have you seen the value of advisory boards and maybe unpack that a little bit on how that helps you?
Josh Chodniewicz
That's right. So we did have a few advisors that were on the side, if you will, that provide a different look from the outside, not in the weeds, look right of the business, and you can go to them with specific questions, specific thoughts, and it's great to get the feedback from them to say, hey, I'm dealing with this issue right here. Do you have any feedback before I go to the board, or before I do this or that? It's nice to have that as you're building a business, I think that's, it's imperative, and it's, it's really cost effective, frankly.
Brilliant. So, so having that advisory board that's a key to not lose in the early days, balancing working capital with the rate of growth, grow as fast as you can without growing broke. And I would say all of that really just comes down to figuring out how to make good decisions off great data, would you agree?
Josh Chodniewicz
I would agree absolutely, 100% and you know, you make more good decisions than you make bad make sure you don't make any fatal decisions. So that's another thing I'll say, is if you're thinking about making sure you don't go broke, right? Is when you're faced with a decision, one of the questions we ask ourselves is, is this potentially a fatal decision? Because many decisions you make are not potentially fatal, right? Not really going to matter if it goes this way or that. It may matter a little bit, but when you're faced with a strategic decision or something that may actually potentially bury you, well, then you really need to think a little harder about that one and get some more data around it, and get yourself to a place of comfort that, you know, hey, the way I'm going, I understand the risks, and I'm going to pull the trigger this way, knowing, uh, full well that this is potentially fatal, and therefore, uh, I've taken the proper time and consideration when I make that decision.
Brilliant. So let's, let's turn the page a little bit on that and so from winning and not losing, those are key things that we got to focus on and have a little bit of strategy around. So I think there's a great conversation, but also winning and not losing with what and big part of that is understanding the market that you're in. So if you're going to win and not lose, you might need to also consider the market you're operating in. So I'm just curious, from your perspective, and maybe you can share with some of the entrepreneurs and emerging fund managers out there, what are you seeing in the market?
Josh Chodniewicz
Well, it really the market itself, it depends where you're at. You can be in a market like today that AI is really hot, right? And you can be building a biotech company that's super hot too, right? It really depends how amazing is your innovation. If you're an innovation, you could be in the waste management business. But if it's something that's going to change the way things get recycled and make things 10x better, well, everyone's going to pay attention real quick. And so it really, I think, I think you have a lot of opportunity in this, in this world we live in, because things are moving fast. Technology is amazing, there's so many cool things that when you put, you know, multiple industries together that haven't been put together, you could really create some really interesting businesses.
Yeah, that's brilliant. I'm curious, what are you seeing as far as so you're on the that funder and founder side. What are you seeing as far as it goes? How are these private returns stacking up compared to, say, public returns?
Josh Chodniewicz
So the interesting thing about it is that private returns, we've gathered data. I would say, I'll start there. I'll say, we gather data from 19,000 startup investments that have been made over the course of almost 20 years, 15 to 20 years, that data shows you unequivocally that returns come in between 25 and 30% a year. Now that is contrary to what most people think about startup investing, they think very risky, you can lose all your money. But those are all true. They are risky. When investing in only one startup or a few startups, when investing in 40-50 startups, you end up with the middle of the bell curve, which that's where you 25% is in the middle of the bell curve. That's a great spot to end up, really. So another thing I'll add is that the ultra wealthy people are moving their money out of the public stock market as fast as they possibly can find private investments. It's amazing. This is one of the things that propelled me to build Fundify, because I was amazed at the fact that one they're doing it, why they're doing it, because of the outsized returns that are coming in the private space. But I was really shocked by the fact that the average everyday person could not get those returns. So for us, that became a critical problem, that we thought, wait, could we fix that problem? Could we change that and that became the piece for us. Every business, whatever business you're in, you have to think through, what is it that you're doing that's now going to change the, you know, the landscape of the industry that you're in a significant way, where now, really Everyone's going to want to play the way you are playing the game and the way you've laid it up.
Man. So you're about, and let's assume the industry average of 8% for public returns, like S&P so the median, well, I'm assuming the median is four times that, I mean
Josh Chodniewicz
Three times,
Three times.
Josh Chodniewicz
Three times the returns. Now, the negative is illiquidity. Private investments are illiquid. So what that means is you can't pay your rent next month. You know, with this capital, you got to put it in, and you got to wait it out. The average returns take three to four years, and some of the bigger companies take longer to see the returns. But we mentioned Uber earlier. Uber, if you invest almost 5,000x return, okay, that's a half, that's 500,000% return. And it took seven years, so it took a few more years. But you know, you're a $5,000 investment return 24 million. So a $5 investment would return $25,000 and for $5 that's the kind of beauty of the proportions that come in.
Wow. What, what an amazing amount, like all of us, especially the VCs, who actually had the opportunity to burn past, I'm sure they're, they're, uh, thoroughly losing sleep over missing that one. So that's where the market's at, but we all know, as investors, we invest not necessarily where it's at, but where we believe it's going to go. Now, obviously it's not financial advice, but I'm just curious of your opinion. Where do you think the opportunities are going? Where's the smart money going? Where do you see the market going in the future?
Josh Chodniewicz
I think really technology is where scale happens. So really investing in things that offer the opportunity for significant scale is what we really like, because we are we invest, at least now, an early stage company. So we're looking at ideas on a napkin, companies that have just gotten started, maybe just starting to see traction, which we think is the bottom of the hockey stick curve, right that they're going to grow on. And so we're looking for businesses that have large runways to kind of continue to grow that, you know, is more difficult in a local, little sort of mom and pop brick and mortar store versus I'm going to take this and scale this in a in a market, in a product that could grow 1,000x, 10,000x from where they are. That's really what gets us excited. Technology is usually an underpinning to everything that's there. Now that's been the case for a little while, right? But you're seeing, you're seeing quite a bit, obviously, artificial intelligence, you're seeing SaaS businesses are still significantly strong, marketplace businesses that bring multiple two different parties that need something and put them together that had not been put together before, bring significant value to both ends of the party, and so therefore significant value to the startup itself.
Yeah, brilliant. Well, those two techs, like sometimes I call it edge computing, I was one of them, but Uber back to them. We love them, right, they're a great success story a name everyone knows. Just use your maps and your cell phone and giddy up, you're in business, and maybe a payment processor, and there you go. So there's so many opportunities that are out there, I absolutely love that. Just to add my candle to your bonfire, I know I think clean tech still's got some legs to run. I think we've seen FinTech is also another sector that also has some area to run. I really like both those industries for a couple of reasons. This is just my opinion, because I actually, full disclosure, I do invest in both of those. So in clean energy, I think I'm a fan of all energy, those who know me know I cut my teeth originally after grad school in oil and gas, and really got to understand the positive work that those companies are making. But all energy, I think, with electric cars, with this, with that, all of these different things. AI, there's many things that are coming online that are going to demand a huge amount of power, and so we need energy of all kinds. Do it clean, do it ethical? Absolutely no one's going to fight you on that. The other one, FinTech. It's a pretty old, archaic, there's pockets of it that are old and archaic that are ripe for back to the D word disruption and I think there's a lot of efficiencies that can be had. So I think this is a process and an efficiency disruption, there's a ticket there as well, anything to add to that?
Josh Chodniewicz
I wholeheartedly see those industries as being really strong, FinTech, LeanTech. These are they're seeing significant growth and FinTech, for example, we saw a company just this morning that we talked to that is building a different version of Shopify, for example. You think, well, that'd be a tough business to build, and I want to compete with, with, with Shopify. Well, that's one of the companies we're looking at potentially investing in, and that company now has, I think it's 60,000 websites that are using their software instead of the software that Shopify looks at and you say, well, is their technology really that much better? Because obviously 60,000 users think it is, and they're willing to use it, so for whatever reason, I do think that there are tremendous possibilities in FinTech, clean tech, the future of energy. Energy has been around forever, and we're only consuming more, AI is consuming, for example, way more energy than anything else that we've ever used. Therefore, we also need more energy, which means, if you're investing in energy, investing in a market that has way more demand every year, which is a great thing for the businesses that are creating something of value in that space.
Yeah and when you boil it down, if you really dive in, because when you think energy, a lot of people think refineries and crude oil and all these things and this is well documented, well researched. When you bring energy there are it's real, like there are countries that have lack of energy, and it completely blocks them from helping their citizens. And so bringing energy into countries having free, open access to energy, not free energy, but I just mean free access to it is one of those things, those critical components that we talked about earlier in a startup. It's one of those critical components a country's not going to innovate if it can't even turn the lights on, you know what I'm saying?
Josh Chodniewicz
Energy in other countries is lifeblood to businesses where, just like water is a lifeblood to humans, right? You have to have water. You're seeing energy needs to be there for businesses and countries to thrive, cities to thrive, businesses to really execute at a large scale.
Yeah, 100% man, I love that. So as we round third base, I'm just wondering, from all of your experience and everything that you've been able to do talk about, two or three things that you can give our listeners an unfair advantage. What would you say?
Josh Chodniewicz
Well, for me, I'd say, I think starting early and getting into something that's really interesting, meaning, whatever it is that you're passionate about it, start diving into it, because that'll that won't feel like work to you, right? Build something and start making movement, right? You never get anywhere by standing still. So start moving towards where you think it might be, you can change it. I'm making a lifetime, you know, decision to say, hey, I'm going to do this forever and never anything else. Start moving to achieve the things that you know that are unique. Everybody sort of has these knowledge bases because you did something. You encounter here, story after story of entrepreneurs that think, hey, I learned this. And when you map it with that, that's what got me to say, huh, what if I did this? And that's how entire businesses started, right? And I was it's fascinating to me to see how much you can do by just moving forward and getting things done, and in particular now to Fundify what we're doing. You know, we're in the investment space. We think we like outsized returns, and we think everybody, frankly, should be investing in the startup asset class. Now, no one's advocating for you to invest all your capital in that. I would never do that, but I do think a portion of everyone's portfolio should be in startups. The returns are ridiculous, right? You have to wait and be patient find a venture capital firm to get into. Usually, the minimums are too high, right to get into many of them. That's what we built, Fundify, or what you're doing. There's so many places where you can put your money to work to get higher returns than the 8% that you're getting in the public markets. And so be smart about that, start thinking about what that might look like and start gaining that unfair advantage that the ultra wealthy are already getting every day, and we're falling behind if we're not doing it. So start thinking about those things, and challenge yourself to, you know, to become more educated on it, and start dipping your toe in the water, if you will.
I love that. So that's number one. What else would you say would be a good competitiveness? So get started early, invest in things that the ultra rich are already investing in. What would be a second one?
Josh Chodniewicz
We talked about starting early, moving forward, but also putting in the countless time those Malcolm Gladwell rule right of massive hours that when you put in the time you get there and you start seeing the successes that are coming. And the reason why that's coming is because you've now educated yourself well beyond what the average person has inside of this space, so you know something that others don't know, and then you have to execute on that to deliver real value to your consumers, to your constituent group, whatever that might be, I think again, never estimate, never underestimate, what you can do by going after things and actually making movements and so I'm not sure that answers your question, but that's how you think about it.
Yeah, yeah. So, so get started early. Was number one, then number two is put in the time, put in the work. Make sure you put in the hours to achieve mastery, so that, I would argue the reason being is makes a good leader. You can navigate choppy waters, right? So you leave port and you're like, yep, I've done good things, I've put in the hours of put in the reps, I am quite confident we're going to be just fine. I know exactly what to do, so that's what companies and employees and partners and advisors, they all look to you to understand that, so.
Josh Chodniewicz
That's right and the more you know about a business, the more you know about your specific industry, the more you become set up to really succeed, right, because you can navigate at the challenging waters that come ahead. There's no guarantees for success, but you really can take that knowledge, and let's say we have a competitor that's having some trouble, but we know the industry better. You can, you can be the one acquiring them for a competitive advantage instead of them acquiring you if you make the wrong decisions, right? So it's about thinking through and having that knowledge. You know, what did Muhammad Ali say, he said, he said something around at fight time, you find out how much work you put in in the dark, right? Like, how much time did you put into actually building your business, knowing your space? Because the fight's only a few minutes, right? But it's, it's years that go into the space of the overnight success, if you will, right? I've heard so many times people say, oh, you guys are like an overnight success. I'm thinking, oh, goodness, if you only knew, right?
Yeah, as the saying goes, I worked my whole life to be an overnight success, and I remember that back in my sports days in MMA, that was one of those exact things, and I didn't realize it came from Mohamed Ali, but it's like, the the fight is won or lost, not in the ring, but in training.
Josh Chodniewicz
Yeah, I think that's a lot of the saying and I like that. There's another saying you mentioned Henry Ford, there's a Thomas Jefferson saying that I like a lot. You know, he says, I believe in luck, the harder I work, the luckier I am.
That's right, that's right, yeah. So in other words, I don't believe in luck. It's hard work that makes a man, I guess, rewrite the stars. So third competitive advantage, is there anything else, any final competitive advantage you can give our budding entrepreneurs?
Josh Chodniewicz
Yeah, I would go back to something we touched on earlier, which is, hone your product and your service to really create something that people just have to have, right? Because it's significantly better than all their other options, right? And if you can do that, if you really have that product, that service, it becomes easier to get your customers, it becomes easier to get investors, it becomes easier to hire staff. It becomes everything becomes better, right? Like we talked about earlier, being able to move fast, change, innovate. What are you doing? When you innovate, you're creating a better product, hopefully, right? Hopefully you're making changes because you're seeing that the current product you're offering is only a little better, perhaps, or maybe it's better, but I can make it significantly better if you can see something that's going to be better. Well, why aren't you building it, because if you're not building that, somebody else will build that, you'll be the one disrupted, right? So think about the edge that you can create and keep building towards that and make it this sort of, you know, you hear about this 10x factor, build something 10x better than what's out there right now, right? So that's if you do that, that is a competitive edge that others can, you know, it's going to be difficult for them to come out and beat you on.
Brilliant. So as we wrap things up, is there any closing remarks any ways, people can reach out to you, the website, anything at all?
Josh Chodniewicz
I appreciate that. Well, in closing I'd say, again, I love this show, so I'm excited about being here, thanks for having me. I'd say, as far as what we're doing with Fundify, our big kind of give to the world is our mission is to bring startup investing in the returns of startup investing to everyday America. Now, we're not quite yet in Canada yet or other spots, but we will be.
We'll get you up here.
Josh Chodniewicz
Yeah, we're gonna get there, but the idea there is get invested. Now for Fundify, you can download the app, you can go to fundify.com and learn more about it. You can join for any dollar amount, we have no minimums. We get people into the startup asset class looking to get them their returns of 25% or more a year, right? That's the beauty of what we're doing. That's our competitive advantage given the fact that it's really difficult to even invest as a non accredited investor. Never mind it's difficult to do it as an accredited so that's what we offer. I'd listen, I'd love for you to check me out on LinkedIn. Connect with me there, go to Fundify to check out what we're doing, we'd love to hear from you. We'd love to have you part of our ride and watch what we do. I hope one day we'll be back on the show to talk to you Ryan a little more too. So really enjoyed this.
Awesome man, it's great to have you. So just to summarize everything that Josh and I spoke about, start investing as young or as early as possible, getting in there and making sure that you pay attention to the market, you're building things that people want. The second thing is, for the entrepreneurs, just know your industry better than anyone else. And I would argue, even emerging fund managers really make sure that you know what you're talking about when you're in front of investors. And number three, hone in on your product development and if you're an emerging fund manager, hone in on your thesis development. But most importantly, just build that product and investment thesis that the market wants more than the one that you want. You do these things, and you too will be well in your way, in your pursuit of Making Billions.
Wow, what a show, I hope you enjoyed this episode as much as I did. Now, if you haven't done so already, be sure to leave a comment and review on new ideas and guests you want me to bring on for future episodes. Plus, why don't you head over to YouTube and see extra takes while you get to know our guests even better, and make sure to come back for our next episode, where we dive even deeper into the people, the process and the perspectives of both investors and founders. Until then, my friends, stay hungry, focus on your goals and keep grinding towards your dream of Making Billions.
