Jean Brandolini Lamb

0:00 The private markets earlier used to be just for the wealthiest among us and our mission here has always been give the little guys access and making sure that wealth creation can be achieved by a broader population.

0:17 This is Jean Brandalini Lam, CMO of Equity Zen, now part of Morgan Stanley. She spent years inside the Big Bangs, watching how the wealthy invested, then she set out to open that door wider. When I worked at a very big bank, they used SBVs for their very wealthy clients

0:33 to invest big check into private companies, and when I came to talk to the team here at Equity Zen, I was amazed. I was like, "Wow, these guys figured out to make them available to just your

0:48 average accredited investor and what was so exciting for us at Equity Zen. We have about 1400 investors who invested into cerebras, six years before it went public. The investment size was as low as $5,000.

1:03 The average price paid per share was $32. At IPO, it was $185 per share, that's more than five times return, it's 5.6 times return on what they invested. You had 100 grand and no marketing rules, no compliance rules.

1:21 And growth channel are you testing? I am. Welcome to CMO Uncovered, which is proudly sponsored by CleverTAP, the all-in- one engagement platform helping brands turn customer moments into measurable growth.

1:38 If you're serious about retention, lifecycle marketing, and using AI to drive smarter engagement, CleverTAP is the partner you want in your corner. Gene Brandalini-Lam, thank you so much for joining us on CMO Uncovered. This is our third episode, I couldn't be more excited.

1:53 Three is my lucky number. That's awesome. Number three, Gene has been a friend and worked with Gene over the years, it's been incredible to see Equity Zen continue to scale. And I think we haven't been in this exciting of a market in many moons.

2:11 And so Gene, I'd love to just kick things off by you telling us a little bit more about you and Equity Zen if you feel comfortable. Of course, thanks for having me. Really excited to be here with you both. I graduated from college and had a degree in art history and started managing

2:29 art galleries and decided the part of it I liked the most was really the PR part, the comms part, the doing the marketing, trying to get reporters to write about what we were doing. And so I went from there into PR and then found my way to technology and

2:50 financial services. And I found my way to Equity Zen because I saw, had worked for some really large financial services institutions that we were starting to see about four years ago, like

3:08 real democratization and like real fintech change. And when I started looking at different companies, I found Equity Zen and what Equity Zen did

3:23 then and does today is enable accredited investors to invest in private companies. And we find that it's companies that people believe in, they either learn about it through tech or their investors were like reading about new technology every day, but

3:42 they are unfailingly optimistic and they want to be part of the future and they feel like innovation is really happening in the private markets. So for as little as $5,000, Equity Zen allows accredited investors to invest in

3:59 private, mostly technology companies. Awesome. You said the $5,000 minimum and I found that very interesting, right? And before we sort of get into this question, one obviously it would be really great if you could sort of help understand luddites like me who have very little

4:15 understanding of what the secondary market really is, right? If you could just double click how this really works, right? And then the next, the follow up question was the $5,000 minimum, right? Like the rest of the market is typically, I know about 100k and upwards, right?

4:31 So what was the logic behind that? And did that really show up in your numbers, in the way you've seen growth with Equity Zen? But before I get into that, just help me understand what Equity Zen does.

4:46 How does it work? Well, why don't we start with the accredited investor piece? Yes. An accredited investor is a definition, it's an SEC definition. And so in order to participate in the kinds of funds that Equity Zen offers, we

5:01 have to follow the SEC's definition. So individuals, you either have a net worth over a million dollars, excluding your primary residence, or you have income individually of $200,000 over the last two years

5:20 or $300,000 with the spouse. And so that's the financial criteria, investment professionals. If you have a Series 7, you're automatically an accredited investor.

5:35 And that's really, so you have a level of wealth that allows you to participate in sort of non-traditional securities like we have on Equity Zen. What we do here is we not only make sure that you're an accredited investor,

5:50 but we also make sure that you have a risk profile that you should. If you're very conservative in terms of your investment style, like investing in private companies and alternatives is probably not the best choice for you.

6:06 So we really want to make sure that we're working with people who are accredited and comfortable with this kind of investment. And typically, how do you source these pre-IPO shares, how does that work?

6:22 Well, now that we're part of Morgan Stanley, we share this interest, this belief in working with these private companies themselves. When we were Equity Zen by ourselves, we ran every deal by the private company

6:38 to make sure we got their stamp of approval, not everyone in the market does that. And Morgan Stanley has an issuer focus because they have Morgan Stanley at work . So private companies are their clients as well. And so we work with the private companies, but we also have a network of

6:57 employees. It's usually early employees, early investors who need some liquidity. They're usually not selling everything what they need is a down payment for a house. They need to buy a car or they need to pay student loans.

7:14 We've even seen one of our clients was the CEO of a company, and he sold some shares to fund a scholarship program to send a bunch of kids to college. So every shareholder has a different reason why they need some liquidity.

7:32 Mostly it's personal reasons and they just have their timelines a little different from the companies, either IPO timeline or Tender offer timeline. And so we're here to help them. I'll be honest. I didn't know you could do this, right?

7:48 And that's on me, right? Like I was living under a rock. So just going back to my earlier question, right, like the $5,000 minimum, right, typically from what I understand it's a hundred thousand minimum, right? But with Zeniquity Zen, it's $5,000.

8:06 So why that decision? And do you see that, you know, reflect in the kind of people you're attracting and, you know, ingest your numbers? Well, the reason why it's really equities and has purpose built technology that

8:23 really enables us to create these vehicles that you can invest in. So one of the reasons why I came to work at equities and is they're called these funds that we create are called special purpose vehicles or SPVs for short.

8:41 And what happens when I worked at a very big bank, they used SPVs for their very wealthy clients to invest big checks like you're suggesting into private companies.

8:56 And when I came to talk to the team here at equities and I was amazed. I was like, wow, these guys figured out through processes and technology to take these same special purpose vehicles that used to be accessible only to the very wealthy.

9:15 And they found a way to make them available to just your average accredited investor. And so other companies that create these SPVs, they're very costly. They're costly to make. They're costly to build.

9:30 But equities and found the way to basically be able to manufacture these funds. And so we can create the funds in a very cost efficient way. And as we learned more and got more clients and we realized, oh, wow, we can

9:47 even reduce for some of our investments down to $5,000 and we can still make these work. So it's really because of the technology and the processes and the way that we can manufacture these that we're able to offer much lower minimums than typical.

10:05 And so it's exciting. We think it enables more people to participate and what we find is that our clients don't necessarily bring down the level of their investment minimums. What they find is they're actually spreading it into other places.

10:22 So it's like a company may be on their list, but maybe not at the top of their list and they'll say, oh, you know what, but I'll put $5,000 in. It's really interesting. The equities and product itself, it's really a two-sided marketplace and the

10:37 seat that you're sitting in, Gene, is you're kind of doing two jobs because you have two different funnels that you have to make sure are sides of the marketplace that are fully populated. You have the individuals that are looking to sell equity and then you have the

10:55 people that are looking to buy equity. And so I'm curious how you manage that. And also curious if there's one you prioritize or if it's just always a balancing act. I think it's a balancing act.

11:10 We actually think we have like three audiences that we need to manage. So it's the E2C side is like the individual investor. It's also the individual shareholder. And then the B2B/B2B2C side is like we always want to have those relationships.

11:27 We always want to be supportive of the private companies themselves. And we always want to be there so that we can help them. In time, we've really shifted the perception of all of those audiences, right? Because to your point, it's like this is a new market.

11:44 So you know, investors are so glad to have access to something that they can't have access to in many other places. You know, there was a while that, you know, the only place to access AI and AI

12:00 innovation is in the private markets. Then the shareholders themselves are really interested in, you know, they just need some liquidity. Like they don't, they believe in their companies typically.

12:15 They're staying put where they are, but they just need some liquidity to like move to a next stage of their life. And then the issuers, when equity then was started about 13 years ago, issuers were like, ah, secondaries, I don't know, you know, do we want to do this?

12:32 But we've worked, you know, we've taken that same mindset of technology and processing and we've worked to make it as easy as possible for the issuers. We don't charge them for like taking the process on and helping people move

12:48 through the process. So our goal is to just make it as easy and seamless for them as we can. I think it's so, so interesting that 13 equities in founded 13 years ago. I mean, the secondary market was completely non-existent then.

13:05 And me sitting in my seat at the VC, like even us internally, where sometimes even saying as VC is like, oh, well, you know, well, if it takes too long, there is a secondary market. And these are words that were never ever discussed in a room, in a VC room, you

13:20 know, a decade ago. And so I guess two questions being is you kind of introducing being one of the leaders of introducing the secondary market to the world. And you as a marketing leader, I mean, that's not easy.

13:38 A lot of times when you're marketing, you have 10 to 100 other competitors that have kind of paved the way for you, the people that have failed, the people that have been successful. But having to kind of pave the way to not just sell the product, but educate the world

13:53 before they can actually like engage with the product, what is that journey kind of been on your end? Yeah. For equities then, when I started here, it was, you know, people who knew the secondary market knew of equities then, but I always do this too when someone new comes

14:12 to work here. I say, did you know that if that you could invest in a private company before you came here and you hear most of them are like, no, and I told my friends and they couldn't believe it. And, you know, so it's, it's really a large, a large segment of the accredited

14:30 investor population, the majority, I'd say, that still doesn't know that you can invest in private companies. And so in our work, we've always been driven by the idea that we can't lead

14:45 with brand awareness, trying to grow brand awareness for equities then. Like we have to lead with, we have to build category awareness. And so we look for ways to educate, we look for ways to welcome people to the market.

15:00 We launched, we were one of two data partners with Yahoo Finance last year, Yahoo Finance started to cover private, private companies. So you can go and search for a top private company and you'll find information

15:16 from equities then on that, on that company page. And the reason why we did that is that, you know, there, what there is growing interest in investing in this, but it's still a relatively small part of the eligible

15:33 population knows that they can invest in these private companies. And so we are looking always for ways to just build and broaden awareness. And so that's why it's such an interesting, it's such an interesting marketing

15:50 challenge because if you grow awareness about the category, people are going to learn about you and your competitors. And so where we choose to stand apart is say, okay, you might learn about us, you might

16:05 learn about our competitors, but we want to make sure that we are offering the most welcoming place for you to come. We provide a ton of information on our equities and insights. We make sure that information is searchable. So if you're searching something, you'll find us and, you know, our equities

16:22 and insights is at blog.equitiesn.com. And there we really just look for ways. We look for questions that we see. We look for questions that new clients ask us. We look for questions in search and we answer those questions because there

16:39 really wasn't before we started, there wasn't one place where you could go to learn about investing in private markets. And in this, from, at least what I'm understanding, the way your content strategy currently works, right? Like there's the education layer, there's a brand awareness layer before,

16:56 actually there's a category education, then the brand awareness and then eventually acquisition, right? So is there a way, like in the customer journey, right, in their content journey, like, is there a moment where you can actually tell that someone's actually cross from

17:12 just being curious to like ready to transact, right? Like, how do you identify that low funnel in, in, in, in such a, in, when the upper funnel itself is so long, right? Like, so other moments where you're able to identify that they're ready to

17:27 transact now. It's not just curiosity. We have two, I think two kinds of mindsets for people who come to our platform and we try to create content for both. There's people who are just searching and interested in investing in one

17:42 specific company or one specific technology and we think, okay, there, we hope they find us and we think that's probably a shorter path because it really fits within a self-directed mindset, a self-directed investor mindset, invest in a company.

17:58 And then what we've started to see the past few years is that there's people who are learning about the category for the first time and they want to do that research, but for them, they really need, they're looking for, for more transparency, they're looking

18:13 for a little bit more hand holding, they're looking for more details, they're maybe not as open to risk as some of our more active clients who are, who just pursue risk as, as part of their daily investing, they're, they're just, they're doing this every day and so we

18:30 're trying to serve both of them, like we have depth of information on individual companies, we update them regularly, you know, we, we, if you join our platform and, and you were interested in one specific company and we have a deal in it, our team has recreated the cap table based on

18:49 publicly available information and so that's depth of information on the company. Right, so it's almost like a two-step funnel that you've built. So yeah, and on the investor side, you're right, there's two step on, and then there's people who are just more interested in learning about the category more

19:04 generally. They want to learn about, okay, what are, I'm interested in AI, tell me about different kinds of AI, what companies are in, in each of these categories? And so we try to work on the investor side through, through both of those, both

19:20 of those funnels. It makes me think, you know, there's, as you are building out your user base on all sides of the market, I'm sure there's different ways that everyone wants to engage with the product. I'm curious, like, what the partnership is with the equities in product team

19:38 and marketing, like how closely do you have to move together as you're building this end user experience to not just like acquire new users, but make it so they're building a portfolio with you and not just a one-time investment?

19:53 I mean, we're inseparable. I'm sure my product partner, Sudesh, I can't wait for him to see this. Yeah, we're, we are on the phone multiple times a day. He was actually my first phone call today, so yeah, it's, you know, it's, you

20:12 're exactly right. It's like, our product is what we offer, it's our experience, it's like any other, but marketing and content is such a core part of that because people aren't just seeking product, they're seeking information.

20:28 And so I think goes hand the product and the information go hand in hand. I mean, do you have a master minority report dashboard where you can just like see whatever users doing, but I'm like, when you go to your product team, is there like a set of data

20:43 that you're bringing to them saying like, Hey, whatever this person lands on this company, they are looking for a piece of data that's not currently being shown, or like, but like what's, how are you showing up for each other as you're partnering to like either turn key new features or products or even changing copy?

21:00 Yeah, I mean, we look at data together. Actually, I think that's one of our best practices is from our business operations team to our product team to marketing, like we share and look at data together. And we now look at, you know, we can look at the performance of our deals, but

21:21 we also look at where is their investor interest, like where is the investor interest going so that we can, we can help on the supply side, because we know the investor demand. And so to get back to the product team question, like we've built the site in

21:40 such a way that marketing and products can work really closely together. So, you know, we have a dashboard for all of our investors who come back to the platform. There are sort of action cards that marketing has a hand in on like, what is

21:55 the next, what is your next best action, how can we, how can we help you form a richer and deeper relationship with equities? That's, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, something we talk about often is just the connection between growth and

22:12 product. And it makes me just not to switch the topic too much, but I feel like we're in the middle of this like really exciting cycle of companies going public. And I know, you know, you can't talk about things that haven't happened yet,

22:27 but we can talk about things that have happened. And so, what is it like for like, you know, for a company to go public or they 're being a huge liquidity event, like as a growth, as a growth mind, how does that, what

22:42 's, what's that moment for a customer? How do you take advantage of that moment as like a, as an opportunity to build a deeper relationship? But what is the energy at, at, at equities in when those moments happen? We have a big gong, and so when something super exciting happens, there's a g

23:06 ong present. And we, there was an, there was an IPO a few weeks ago. That was really exciting for us and for our investors. So an AI company, a hardware company called Cerebrous went public a couple

23:26 weeks ago. And what was so exciting for us at equities then is we have about 1400 investors who invested in starting in 2020 into Cerebrous. So six years before it went public, the investment, the investment size was as

23:46 low as $5,000. The average price paid for share was $32, almost $33. The lowest price paid was $11.55. The median check size was $20,000 and our investors owned 1.5% at Soribris when

24:07 the company went public. So, you know, here is the private markets to your point earlier used to be just for the wealthiest among us. And, you know, our mission here has always been, you know, how can we make

24:24 wealth creation not just for the already wealthy? So, you know, there are people who invested much more who could make much more at the time of IPO, but our average investors, you know, with their average, the

24:40 median check size of 19,000, you know, if they invested at the average price, $32, that's more than a five-time return. It's 5.6 times return on what they invested.

24:55 And so that's the whole reason why we're here. Like, we are here to give the little guys access and hopefully, like, help them on their journey to creating wealth and making sure that wealth creation can be achieved

25:15 by a broader population. That's very cool. At IPO, it was $185 per share. That was the strike price. I'm guessing the compliance paradigm for you, right, like, must now only become stronger,

25:30 right? Like, every copy that you sort of create lives in an SEC compliant framework, right? And you know, with your previous experience with JP Morgan and TIAA, this is not unfamiliar territory for you at all, but how is it different when you're working at like a

25:47 fintech with antiquities and, right, like, and are there any challenges that you end up seeing when, you know, there's the fintech that that wants to grow at a large scale, but there is that compliance world that you cannot leave.

26:03 Is it really a constraint or it just makes you more creative? So just, just if you could touch on this, that would be fun. I think it makes it, you know, we, Ateeshin, fell to co-founders of the company . They were always interested in doing things the right way and, like, being

26:20 compliant. And so very early on, they had a chief compliance officer, very early on we had legal teams. We still have, you know, if, if there's a deal going through and we're talking

26:35 to, we're talking to a company to close the deal, that's lawyers on our team are doing that. And so we've always had a very compliant mindset, which I think is a, which can be a little different from, from other, other fintechs who maybe are more comfortable sk

26:53 irting rules. I'm not sure if, you know, but, but like for us, it was, it was really about not just being compliant, but also being helpful to our regulators, to the markets new for

27:08 them too. So how can we explain? How can we share what we're trying to do? How can we tell them what we're trying to do and how we want to do it? And so our chief compliance officer is wonderful. She's built really great relationships and we, we work with them to explain

27:31 what we're trying to do and, and share the opportunity for the market. And then, so for us, then it becomes from a marketing perspective, like what is the creativity that we can have inside, inside, inside the box?

27:49 Like if we know people are interested in a certain kind of technology, or we know people are interested in a certain kind of company, like we, that gives us permission to them

28:04 to talk to them about those kinds of companies. But we can't, every person who joins our platform, you know, it, we have to build in personalization, right? Because we can't offer them everything.

28:19 So we have built in ways for them to give us indications of what they're interested in. And then that helps us personalize the content that we send to them. Right. It's like a compliance is like a forced personalization, but that's what

28:35 marketers want to do anyway. Like you want to give people relevant offers, right, right. So it effectively, like it's, it's not a constraint. It just makes you work harder to, you know, speak to the, to, to, to personal ize the experience for your users, effectively.

28:51 Exactly. Exactly. But then does this mean that, uh, even the people that you're hiring in your team, right? Like, are you, are you hiring people who already know this domain and understand this compliance world, because I mean, I'm a marketer, I work for a FinTech for about one and a

29:08 half years. It took me a while to just get used to what I was allowed to do. Right. Like then I will do it, right? So is, is, is your hiring lens a little different when you're hiring for your team? Our team is, is small, but mighty. So like we're, so some people, some of, some of them started and had experience

29:29 with, if not financial services, they had experience with some sort of regulated industry. And some didn't, but we just worked to try to explain the why, the, like why we , so compliance,

29:44 we don't think about compliance as someone who says yes or no. We think about compliance as like our partner to help us get the word out. I don't know. We've, it's not, it's not necessary to, to work here. It does help to your point, like there is, there is some knowledge transfer.

30:01 But I think maybe part of it is we're always focused on like the why we're trying to do something and maybe why we can't from a compliance perspective and then, and then see if we can get some common ground. I want to go back for a second to, you know, the limitation or the opportunity

30:17 around compliance on the growth front. I am curious, do you feel if on the limitation into this, that it, it hurts the ability to be creative? I always think because I, because we do so much work with so many fintech

30:32 companies, I always attribute it back to like, like someone telling you just want to world, like the, the world series, but you can't, you can't yell or scream. You have to kind of like be quiet, like, yeah, yeah, you have been too loud because there's

30:47 this like governor on, on how you share that news. So I am curious, do you feel, do you feel as if you cannot be as creative as you, as, as many marketers can on different products? Yeah, we, you know, one thing that we don't do and maybe some of our

31:04 competitors do do, but we're just not comfortable as we can't go out and talk about specific deals that are live on our platform. And so I think that, I think it just drives us to be more creative and to be

31:20 more that whole welcoming idea again, this idea of people don't, how do we build category awareness? Once people know the category and might be interested, how do we give them the information

31:35 they need, whether it's about a company or just hand holding through the process? And then how, how do we guide them along the path? And you know, the fact of the matter is, is that it might, there might be certain things

31:50 that you're like, Oh God, I wish I could do this. But the fact of the matter is, is actually you want, you want in the kind of business that we're in, you want people who are, who this kind of investment is appropriate for here. And so sometimes this broad mass, maybe, you know, a little bit more,

32:11 what's the word I'm looking for? Like sexy words and messages. Maybe, maybe you, we don't want to be so clever. Like maybe, maybe we really just want to reach the people who belong here and

32:29 should be here, and who are, who are educated and want to educate themselves more. Like, so rather than trying to reach everyone who's looking for like the next hot thing, it's like, we actually want to reach the responsible investor who is interested in

32:45 some diversity and like wants to invest in technology they believe in. If when you, when there is a customer that, you know, is onboarded, maybe invest in a couple deals, are the gloves off? Do you have the ability to market to them any

33:02 way you want? Or are there still limitations? There's still limitations. Interesting. Okay. Okay. And what are those limitations? If I may, sorry, like what, what are those limitations? These are retained customers. I would assume that now you would have the option

33:18 to engage them the way you see fit, right? Like you see compliant fit. But what are those restrictions that you run into? Well, there's way it, there's, it's just we can't, we can't share, we can't recommend

33:33 something. And so if you haven't told us that you're interested in something, we either have to tell you everything that's live on our marketplace, that's a certain deal type, or we can only, if we're writing to you about just specific deals and specific

33:51 companies, we, we need to know that that's something that you're interested in. This is a sort of PSA though, for our clients, like really do come to, if you 're interested in a certain company or a category and you haven't, and you haven't told us, we

34:08 can't tell you when the deal's gone live. So, you know, the more information you give us, the more relevant the communication we have with you can be. And how are you orchestrating this information? Like you're asking, is it through surveys,

34:23 zero-party data, is that how you're going about this? Like how do, how can I give you that information as a user? So as a user, when you were logged into the site, you click a button and tell us that you're interested in a certain company. You tell us how much you might be

34:40 interested in investing in that company and that comes to us and then we catalog, okay, these are your, these are your indications of interest and the amount that you've given us just helps us to build the signal for the supply side of our marketplace.

34:57 Right. And from what I understand, you also lead customer experience at equ ities. And so is this one of the main reasons why, you know, customer experience and, you know, the CMO role is sort of under the same hood because you can't market to people if

35:14 you are not, if you don't have an understanding of, of their customer experience and the information that, that they're giving you. Right. And, and it's like, what is, what is the journey? What is the, where are the opportunities on the journey for us to help them? Really? And even like the data, to your

35:30 point, earlier Drew, you know, what are the questions that our clients are asking us and how do we take these individual questions and serve up the answer? So a broader population,

35:47 then the, then the, just the one person who asked the question, like how do, how do we build out? So we've really have a really deep help center. And the content of the help center is just the questions that we've been asked that we just want to make it easier for

36:02 people to find the answer to that's cool. So if I could just take a little bit of a digression here, because this is one question that I had in my mind the minute, you know, I heard you were on because the first time I actually heard about equities in was in back in 2023 when you did your re

36:19 brand, right? And I think this was, this must have been your first year in the organization. So where did it start, right? Like what was the diagnosis that led to the point that, hey, we need a little bit of free funding, right? Like, and where did that come in from? Right

36:35 ? Like, and how did that impact the customer experience, if at all it did? I think it was something that we even maybe talked about when I was interviewing for the role. And there was a real opportunity where equity zen was starting to be

36:52 really known in the market, the category was starting to build. And we as equities and needed to present ourselves in such a way that really sort of reflected who we were as a company.

37:08 Like, this idea of being welcoming, the idea of, you know, helping people to invest in the future that they want to see, like that was already core to equities and it

37:24 just wasn't, it just wasn't expressed in our experience at all. You know, in the experience, it looked very sort of corporate and not distinctive. And so we just set out to say, okay

37:39 , what, what can we do? You know, what is it that we should, what we should stand for? You know, how do we take all the great parts of equity zen? And then how do we visually

37:54 show up in a way that reflects who we are? You know, we try to be open, we try to be transparent. Those things are like more whitespace, more, you know, when you get into design , we have,

38:09 we have our logo and then the middle of the logo is what we call a path. It's like we see this as a jury. And so I would just say, like, our, you know, it's, it was kind of like it was a rebrand. It was a complete, it was a redesign, but it was a

38:24 redesign because we weren't showing up in as who we were. We, we were showing, we were, it was the imagery was dark. It felt very closed. And that's just like not who we were as a company. So it's like, we needed to put on the clothes that reflected who we were. It was like

38:42 what not to wear our brand fintech style. But how do you get a get founder alignment on a brand change? And especially when, you know, the founders effectively worked on the original branding, right? Like, so like, how does that shift really happened? Right? How

38:58 do you convince someone of saying that, Hey, we need to do something better. You've done this good job, but I think I just was honest. I think I just said something similar to what I said to you guys, which is, it's just the system that we have today just doesn't reflect like who

39:15 we are and what is so special that equities and, and then we did, we did research and, you know, I've, I've, I was able to work with some agencies that I'd worked with in the past that just were happy to

39:30 come in and, and really, and really help us get to something that really reflects who we are and was ready for like, what is the, what is the next generation of equities on? And went from being

39:45 like the little kid to getting dressed and going to work. This has been such a great conversation. I'm so appreciative, Jean, for you being so open, especially within a business does have a lot of compliance. The way we typically like to close things out here is actually just

40:02 by asking some speed round questions. Oh, okay. Just a couple. So are you ready? I'm ready. If you had 100 grand and no marketing rules, no compliance rules, what growth channel are you testing? I'm doing more

40:17 video today. More video. Yeah. Like podcasts like in office production, like following the founders, clipping. We do video. I think I'm paying for more of our videos to be out in the world. Yeah. I like that. Video is, it's, it's, it's such an underutilized thing. Such

40:39 great stories can be told that way. What's your AI growth hack? Well, I think we, you know, this, when we started this blog, no one was talking about AI search, the equities and insights. Yeah. And then suddenly, AI search started being a thing, and we were like, oh, wow, long form quality

40:58 content actually helps you with search. And so that was, I don't think that was, that wasn't our goal. When we started, our goal was to really help free people. It just, it just shows that it helped,

41:13 it helped AI search. And so we're trying to just do more of that. Great. Nice beautiful surprise. What's your wellness hack? What, what keeps you excited every day? What's that thing? It's my wellness hack.

41:29 I get up early and I really try to meditate every morning, just like 15 or 20 minutes and like, you know, what it's like for me is, remember when we used to have to defrag our computers? Yeah. It was like my brain needs that. And so I really try to just like,

41:45 it's very, I've been meditating for decades and it's very, it's still very hard for me. But I do try to just like turn off, if I can. How early are we talking here? Between five and six, not like crazy. That's, that's a good time.

42:03 A three am kind of thing. I have to do it before, I like try it before my dog wakes up and wants to eat. Yeah, nice, nice. And then last question, if you had to go join another department at equities in other than the marketing team, what department are you joining?

42:19 What a great question. I am, I really am excited about us now being part of Morgan Stanley and really the opportunity about Morgan Stanley hovers the private markets more broadly than anyone else. And so I, if I wasn't doing marketing, it would be part of

42:39 like, how do we build that out? Because I think that's a real big opportunity here. Awesome, awesome. Well, you, you did a great job on the speed round. I'm Gene Brandalini-Liam. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you. See you on cover. This was so insightful. And we're excited to stay

42:56 close and keep watching equities and scale up to the moon. Thank you. This was very, this was very educational. It's always a pleasure being with you, Paul. Thank you.