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If you know how we do things here at Upright (formerly Fund That Flip), you know that we have outgrown our name. From the new construction projects we fund to the SaaS platform Flipper Force that we acquired in 2022, we offer much more than loans to fund your flips. We needed a new name to reflect the variety of products we bring to the market and our mission of creating those on-ramps and up-ramps for investors to scale their businesses and transform their communities with an all-in-one platform.
On today's very special episode of Real Estate Investing Unscripted, we sat down with our CEO and Founder, Matt Rodak, to talk about the upcoming brand expansion and the next phase of the company as we continue to live our mission of helping real estate investors take their businesses and portfolios up and to the right. 📈
Make sure to subscribe to Real Estate Investing Unscripted wherever you get your podcasts, and send us an email at podcast@upright.us if you have any suggestions for topics, want to be a guest on the show, or are interested in sponsoring the podcast that keeps it real for real estate investors. 🏡
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Brendan: Welcome back to another episode of Real Estate Investing unscripted, where we get real with real estate investors and experts throughout the industry. I'm your co-host, Brendan Bennett, and with me is your co-host David Dugan. And David, we have a really special episode today.
We have, our very own Matt Rodak CEO and founder of the little company that we call home. And would love for you to do a little intro and bring him
David: in. Yeah. So last time we had Matt on was, was our first episode, Matt had the pleasure of interviewing us, and now we get to turn the tables on Matt, and we get to pepper him with some questions.
So I'm excited to do that. And we're, we're gonna talk about some exciting stuff, including our rebrand. So let's let's go ahead and get right into it.
Matt: I saw that you guys had John on the other day and on his calendar he had wear nice shirt. And I was like, oh. It's like, why does he have that on his calendar? And then I saw like the podcast, I was like,
David: he was, he was wearing a button up. I was surprised. Well, he wore, he wore his banana shirt on Friday. I was hoping that was gonna make a podcast appearance. I have like a zip quarter zip I could put on. I'm just gonna rock the T-shirt. Yeah, it's fine. Yeah. It's casual, approachable.
David: Matt, welcome back to the podcast.
Matt: thank you for having me back. I was waiting for the invite and I guess we had to go through a, a rebrand to get data that invite re extended, so thanks for having me back guys. Great to be here.
Brendan: Of course. And Matt, just for some of the listeners who maybe haven't listened in a little while or didn't listen to the first couple episodes that we put out, if you could just give a quick background on obviously you're the founder of, from that flip and, and soon to be the, the name that we'll share shortly. But just give the listeners a little background on you and, and the company before we get in.
Matt: always, always had an interest in real estate investing, going back to being a kid, had a, a landscaping company as I think a lot of teenagers do, and ended up doing a lot of work for guys that were you know, buying properties, fixing 'em up and, and selling 'em. And decided at a pretty young age that's what I wanted to do.
And I, when I grew up, so, um, took a, took a, a detour, if you will, through corporate America for seven or eight years where he got a lot of great experience and as. You know, towards the tail end of that career started getting involved in fixing and flipping houses and doing some other things in and around the space.
And ultimately, that's where I came up with the idea, which is now, fund that flip to, you know, provide scalable transparent, you know, technology first capital to, you know, growing real estate investors. while at the same time, you know, creating new ways for, folks that wanted to, to get some exposure to this type of asset in a more passive manner, um, through, you know, it was first kind of our fractional note program and a sense evolved into, some other different flavors such as the private REIT that we rolled out earlier this year as well.
So, it's been a lot of fun. It's we're coming up, believe it or not, on our 10 year anniversary, spring of 2014. So I can now say that I've been doing this longer than anything else professionally at least. So, um making me feel old and I've got the gray hair to prove it.
David: That's awesome. a decade puts it into, into perspective. I haven't thought of it that way. but 10 years big milestone and from that flip is, is near and dear to my heart, of course. 'cause it's been, you know, my life, for the last almost four years. And, and it's been, quite an exciting ride for me.
And I'm, I'll speak for Brendan there as well. I'm sure he would say the same. But I think we're equally excited about this, this rebrand and the opportunities that are, are going to be created from the rebrand. So, from the source itself, Matt, can you share some light on the rebrand, what that's going to, to bring us as a company and more importantly, going to bring, the investors that we serve and, and maybe, you know, some of the, the top two or three catalysts for making the decision to rebrand.
Matt: Yeah, and I think, um, you know, look, give you a little bit of the founding story. I think that the founding story on the name is something that I haven't shared with a lot of people, but maybe is a good time to talk about it. So I. You know, what is now from that flip really kind of came into existence in some ways, at least in my brain, all the way back in like 2011, 2012.
And, you know, financing my own flips and trying to figure out, you know, the best way to do that. And came up with, you know, this idea which, which now lives today. And I remember thinking like, well, I got this idea, I need to put a name to it. And, there was a TV show back in 2005, 2009, I dunno if you guys remember it, called Flip This House.
I was playing around with a lot of different names and eventually kind of, ideated on Fund That Flip, which kind of had a similar cadence as Flip This House and, somewhat of a nod to, I guess to the show in, in some ways. I went online and, searched if that fund, that flip.com was available.
It was, I bought it. Um, and that was about the extent of the thought that I put into the name. So, um, you know, and then, you know, one thing led to the next and ended up, joining this incubator program in New York City and they were like, well, what's the name of the company? And I was like, well, I guess it's fun that flip.
Um, I. And, you know, well, you need to incorporate, what should you incorporate? Or I guess we should incorporate underfund that flip. and then it worked its way into, the first version of the website and, you know, a bunch of other legal agreements that kind of you know, transpire from kind of that, that point forward.
So, what's been exciting is I think what's been good is that the name worked in a lot of ways, particularly as we were, you know, early on and, you know, really focused on just. Funding flips. it worked for, you know, kind of the folks that borrowed money from us and it said what we did and was pretty straightforward and also worked well for, you know, our passive investors.
And, um, I think got right to the point as we were introducing ourselves to new people around, how and what we do for the market. the other kind of funny story along that is during that incubator program, I had to come up with a logo. So they gave us this like, little form to fill out around like, you know, what, what should your, you know, brand aspire to be?
I filled the form out and put it up on Upwork and uh some gentleman, somewhere overseas designed our first logo for like 75 bucks. that like, you know was our logo for like the first four or five years of the company. So, long way of saying I think we got a lot of mileage out of the fund, that flip brand, I think it served us really well.
Our r o i in, in terms of both, you know, time spent thinking about it as well as, you know, dollars spent creating it, I think is you know, as close to infinite as you can get. And I, and I think, you know, kind of going back to your question of like, what, what was the catalyst for the change? I think, you know, at some point we started to outgrow the name in terms of, you know, the, the products and services that we bring to market.
wanted to start thinking about, you know, a name that kind of captures everything that we do today, as well as some things that, you know, we aspire to do and that are on the roadmap in the, in the future. So, I remember being at a trade show in, I don't know, 2019 or 20, and, um, Someone saying, well, I didn't know you guys did new construction.
And at that point it was like 20 or 30% of our business. Right. So, um, you know, we do new construction loans. We've got a D S C R product now. we've got a lot of software that we built for, customers that, you know, a lot of that was acquired through, flipper Force that we purchased a little over, you know, I guess a year and a half ago now.
So one of the big catalysts was, this idea that our name that was really great outta the beginning in terms of saying what we do is kind of, pivoted a little bit on us to, to no longer capture everything that we do, both for active and passive investors, and wanted to make sure that we were showing up in the market from a branding perspective in a way that, you know, um, spoke to everything that we do so our customers are aware and can be made aware of, you know, all the different things that we can, we can do to help them grow their business.
And I alluded to it. You know, I think you know, as, as many things as we have kind of under our umbrella today, we've got a lot more that we intend to bring to market over the next, you know, months and years. And, wanted to create some space for us to continue to innovate and bring new products to market, under kind of this United, United brand, that, that people can, can comprehend.
And that is legible ultimately of, of, you know, how we, how we show up in the market. The other piece that I kinda just hit on it quick was we bought Flipper force, right? So we've, we've really kind of been operating two companies with two different brands. we think that a lot of what we do on the lending side of our business, you know, those customers, we've got, you know, strong things that in the, in the flipper force world that they may not be aware of and vice versa, right?
And it's hard to manage those two separate brands. And we thought, we thought it would be difficult to bring a lot of that. You know, software value prop under a a fund, that flip brand. So part of this is also how do we bring these two really great products and services that we bring to market under one brand that we can go to market with kind of in a unified way.
And, and people can understand.
Brendan: Yeah, that makes sense. Matt, we've, we've kind of alluded to the rebrand on a couple different episodes now. We had John Andrews the c e o of the company and, and we've talked about it with our, our Flipper force team members as well. But we haven't yet shared the new name and the how and why behind the name with our listeners yet.
So we were wondering if you'd do the honors of rolling out the new name.
Matt: Yeah, happy to, and honored to be able to do this. And, and what I will say is that the team, that has been leading the charge on this has put a significant more. effort than I did kind of on the first round with the fund, that flip name. So this has been, you know, over a year in the making and we spent a, a lot of time, doing research and actually talking to customers both on the flipper, flipper force, business customers, our lending, you know, customers, our passive investor customers, and really wanna understand, you know, what, what are some things that kind of resonate with them, and ultimately why are they, why are they doing what they're doing?
Right? Why are they investing in real estate and. one of the things that, that started to really emerge through that, that customer research was this idea, um, which I think is true, it's the same reason I got into real estate investing. And I know Brendan, you do some real estate investing and a lot of people in our company do as well.
But it's this idea of, of creating wealth. And I think, you know, one of the things that really, shown through, through this research was it wasn't wealth for wealth's sake, and everyone had somewhat of a different definition of wealth. But it was really what that wealth created, which was freedom, right?
Freedom of choice and freedom of time, right? How do you spend your life? Is it working a lot? Is it vacationing? Is it with your kids? whether people were just getting started in this space or doing it for years at different levels of scale or investing more passively. This this common theme of.
I'm interested in investing in real estate, or I'm investing in real estate to create, you know, these paths for myself that allow me to control my destiny and my time. and, you know, from that kind of, you know, we started to lay that over, well, what do we do right? And how do what we do?
- compliment, right? And, and enable, this goal for our customers to create a better life, you know, for themselves, for freedom. and the team came up with this idea of, well, really what we're doing is, is creating on ramps and up ramps, right? So if you're, if you're just getting started, we've got software to help you find your deal.
First couple deals to analyze that. Make sure you get the numbers right if you are, you know, on your hundredth deal, right? We've got software and financing and a lot of other things that can help you. You know, either manage that business better. If growth is, you know, what you wanna do, help you grow the business.
So no matter where you're at, kind of on the spectrum of getting started in real estate investing, it was this idea of both on-ramps and up ramps. and we kind of started to like draw that out, right? both figuratively and, and kind of in our, in our brains. And this idea of like, well, really what we're trying to do is help people move their lives up into the right.
Right, like the proverbial right, like growth curve up into the right. and then we spent a lot of time looking at a lot of different names and um, the one that emerged kind of came back to this idea of on-ramps and up ramps and upright and long lead up to your question here, but the name that we landed on was upright.
so, you know, in the not too distant future we will be. rehanging both the fund, that flip business as well as the Flipper Force business under, under this unified new brand that we're super excited about called Upright.
David: Cat officially out of the bag. We love it. We'll edit in a nice like drum roll.
Matt: Yeah.
David: so, so you touched on, A lot of the stuff that, that Brendan and I were going to ask about, which is, kind of some of the hidden meanings of the upright brand, right? Because I think when it was rolled out as a company, I was like, oh, that, that's a cool name.
I'm not good at connecting dots, right? I need people to explain things to me. And then I got the explanation that you gave and I'm like, oh shit. That is cool. Right? There's a lot of a lot of kind of innuendo in, in hitting meeting behind it. So I think that's awesome. But more importantly, how does it.
How are we better positioned in the marketplace today? Now that we have gone through this rebrand?
Matt: Yeah, I think it's a good question and I think, um, the main thing that it's gonna unlock for us at least, is my hope is this, um, Customers that, that, are working with us today are, are probably have a certain experience with us, right? And they're primarily that experience is, is how they're, they're using our products and services today, whether that's, you know, they're borrowing money from us, right?
To help them take down new projects and, and grow their business. Or they're, you know, a flipper force customer, you know, using the software to help them again, find and analyze deals. Or maybe they're a passive investor. Um, and they've, they've got kind of a, a narrow aperture in terms of, you know, what it is that we can provide to them based on.
You know how they've experienced us before. So I think one of the biggest opportunities is for us to, to. Start to have a broader conversation with our customers on, Hey, did you know right that under the fund, that flip umbrella, we also have this software business that was previously known as Flipper Force.
whereas now as we go to market, right, and we talk to talk to our customers, it's just upright. Right and upright is financing solutions. Upright is software solutions. Upright is passive investment opportunities. but we don't have to kind of, manage if you will, this different, go to market plan, this different branding, but we can meet the customer, kind of, you know, where they're at with their needs at any, any given point in time with a unified message and a unified product service offering without having to kind of, um, navigate between.
Was it a different company? Like, do I talk to different salespeople? Does my account manager understand? Right? Like, how this product can, can help with my business. So I think it gives us a, a real opportunity, one, to kind of broaden the, the conversation that we're having with our customers around what their, you know, their needs are and, and what we have today that can help them, you know, grow their business.
and I think the other thing that, that it does for us is, when your, when your company name is Fund that flip. It's pretty clear what you're aspiring to do, right? You're making a statement to the market. We're here to fund your flip. Um, since I started this company, right, the vision has always been, I used to say like in our, our leadership meetings all the way back in like 20 16, 20 17, you know what, what we'll know, we've like really success when the first thing that our customers do when they start their morning is they fire up our platform, right?
And the last thing they do before they go to bed and shut it down. Is log off of our platform and they're essentially running their entire business off of our platform. So when you're making a statement to the market that, you know, you fund that flip, it's hard for the customer to understand like, we wanna be more than that for you, right?
So I think the other thing that this hopefully will do, um, as we go to market, as upright and with this combined product, you know, and service offering that we, we have today, I think it'll also start to, to help with conversations with our customers on like, Hey, what else do you need? Right? How is this software helping you today?
What's missing? Um, what other things in your business could be solved with software, financial service products that I don't even think we're engaging in those conversations with, with our customers today. 'cause they don't know, right? That that's what we, we really wanna do for them. so I really also hope it, it, um, you know, create some new, again, conversations with our customers on like, Hey, I know you guys are doing a good job with me on the flip, you know, the financing for my flips or new construction or D S E R and I'm starting to use your software.
But, property casualty insurance is a real problem for me. Or, getting new bank accounts opened up and managing my cashflow for these projects is a real problem for me, right? Like, these are problems that, that we intend to, to solve at some point, right, for our customers and are working on.
And I think the more that we can get those conversations started with our customers, the quicker we can bring value to market and the quicker that we can get it right ultimately for, you know, what the market needs.
Brendan: Yeah, Matt, I think it's a, I think it's a great point with, with, from that flip being extremely prescriptive there, there's not a ton of imaginative space for existing or future customers to think about the different ways that we can service 'em on our upright. It's. direct, but it also leaves a lot of room for interpretation, which I think we can let the borrowers and future customers imagination kind of run amok, and then we meet them halfway with really good products and services to kinda help support that.
So to to that point, I think some of the people listening, or maybe someone who doesn't catch this episode, If they see us at a conference or they, they see some sort of, of marketing campaign with the upright branding. I think there might be some questions around, has the mission of the company changed at all?
And are we realigning on a new focus? And I think you've touched on this a little bit, but if you can just double down on has the mission of Fund that flip slash upright changed and how are we performing against our mission? In your own words?
Matt: The short answer is no. Right. The mission, the mission is the same, right? And I think if anything, the new name allows us to, you know, be more explicit with what that mission is, right? And, hopefully show up in a way that, is also more explicit around being committed to that mission, right?
So, you know, I think at the end of the day, our job is to. Create extraordinary experiences for our customers, right? That's in a big part of our mission statement. One of the ways that we do that is through building, you know, lasting relationships. So we think relationships are really important for this business.
they're important for our customers with who they're buying properties, their contractors, their financing partners, right? All of their, their vendors up and down the stack. And we think that those lasting relationships are. An imperative part of creating extraordinary experiences. And we care about creating extraordinary experiences.
'cause ultimately, that good experience is gonna help empower our end customer, our investor, to create wealth. And that that wealth creation spills into improving communities, right? So, that is our mission statement, right? We build lasting relationships through extraordinary experiences, empowering investors to create wealth and improve communities.
That has been our mission statement for a very long time. And I think, If anything, as kind of we talked about before, this, this brand expansion exercise and, and starting to operate under this brand of upright. Really reinforces that that commitment to that, that mission statement. Right.
And David, you asked earlier about some of the, the Easter eggs in the name, that's one of it. Right? We're trying to bring every, everybody, not just ourselves and our customers upright, but it's the communities that we, that we operate in and our customers operate in. It's, it's the wealth creation.
It's you know, we're literally physically building buildings, right. Um, and standing them upright, right. So there's a lot of fun I think that we can have. with this name as well. as we get it, as we get it rolling.
David: Yeah. And I think it brings some internal cachet as well. Right. So you talked before about, um, the segregation, if you will, of the, the different. Business entities that we had, right? You had flipper force, you had fund that flip that kind of did some different things, right? But it was all built around lending and I think, myself as well as a lot of the other guys around here that had spent time in market working with clients, we were kind of branded as like, oh, you guys are the hard money guys.
Right? Oh, hard money guys. And, and it was tough to kinda like scrub that off you. 'cause we do so much more than, than hard money. still do, you know, a big portion of that as a business. But as we've grown, that pie has grown and, and all of these other business lines that we have, um, I think are, are so beneficial to.
The customer base that we serve. And I think, um, the rebrand positions us to kind of scrub that, that stigma off of us. And instead of David or one of our other, you know, outside reps being the hard money people, it's the, hey, they are the, the go-to for everything for my business. And, and I think that's I think we're all headed in that direction and, and striving to get there.
So again, very excited about the rebrand and and where that's gonna take us. Shifting gears here a little bit. you're a real estate investor. Brandon's a real estate investor. I dabble a little bit myself, but, but we've got a lot of investors here in the office, which you alluded to previously.
So, why do you think it is relevant for you as a C E O to have that experience or, for our employees here as a company? To have that real estate investing experience. And, and what do you think that does for us as a, an organization that that works with real estate investors?
Matt: I think the more of the company that we have close to, You know what it means to live the day, live a day in the life of our customers, the, the better, right? mentioned the, the TV show earlier, right? And I think that's a lot of people's perspective of what house flipping is.
And we've come to learn over the years that's, that's not the case at all, right? There's a lot of, there's a lot of things that gotta, that gotta go right for you to get in and out of a project. whether it's a fix and flip or a bur or a. you know, new construction build. So, understanding the nuances of all of that as someone who's actually doing it helps.
Um, you know, one of our com company values is empathy. Right? Helps our, our people that are serving those customers, understand what they're going through or what their needs are or what the opportunities are. 'cause they themselves are, are living it or have lived it, um, which allows us to, I think, Get to good outcomes for, ultimately the customer and, and as well as, other constituents on our platform.
I think the other thing that helps is, is it helps us get to the right decisions a lot quicker, right? 'cause we, we understand it, right? Like, we understand the terminology, we understand the constraints, we understand, you know, again, some of the nuances that are required to operate these projects.
the right way. and then I think it also is a little bit goes to like conviction, right? Like I've got I've got a fair amount of my both retirement savings as well as disposable income invested on the platform in our notes. 'cause I've got conviction in our underwriting team, right? In the products that we take to market, in the asset class.
Just generally in terms of, the risk return profile. you know, so I think that also helps, right? With how we show up is like, we generally believe, I think more than generally, maybe, like we passionately believe that real estate is a, a fantastic asset class to invest in either passively or more actively as an operator.
and it's not just written on our wall. It's, you know, How people spend their time after hours, right. Is, is doing this type of stuff. um, I don't, I don't know how to put a value on that other than I think it, um, it shows up in the passion that our team brings. 'cause like they enjoy this stuff and they're doing it, you know, on their own.
but it also shows up, I think, in real results in terms of, you know, the outcomes that we can, that we can get to for both our passive and active investors on the platform.
Brendan: Yeah. And Matt, two, two quick data points I'll share with with the team. So I. Our people team here was, was kind enough to run, um, a quick survey across a lot of our customer facing employees, just to see. I think a lot of us felt that we had a lot of coworkers, you know, in the, in the cube over or across from us that invest in real estate.
But it was hard to quantify before, what the, the survey reports is 60% of our sales and production team are active in real estate investing to some capacity and around 30% of our investor relations team. So, You know, if you talk to 10 people at at upright on the sales and production team, you know, you get a 60% chance of, one of them is at least having a taste of the experience that you have as a customer, which I think.
Really speaks to the empathy component that you were talking about, Matt. So cool, quick little data points to share. But before we get into the speed round, um, to kind of wrap up and put a bow on the brand expansion topic, um, what's maybe one final point that our stakeholders, shareholders, customers, um, whoever you really want to direct us towards, what can they expect from us under the new, the new name of upright?
Matt: Yeah. I mean, I think the good news is that on a day-to-day basis, you know, not, not much is gonna change, right? We're gonna continue to, to, you're gonna continue to have the same team members, right, that you work with on a day-to-day basis. There continue to deliver the same, products and services, same commitment to that extraordinary experience.
the thing that, that will start to, you know, feel a little bit different, which is what I alluded to before, is this idea of, you know, how we show up from a positioning perspective is gonna be, is gonna be much broader. Maybe then what you're used to seeing under either the fund that Flip brand or the Flipper Force brand.
Right. And both of those product and service offerings are gonna come together, you know, under one one umbrella of the upright brand which I think is really exciting. Right. 'cause again, I think it's gonna start to, to give us, some opportunities to hear from our customers. You know, feedback on a broader set of things that, that we could potentially help them with in terms of, you know, how to take their business up into the right.
So, you know, on a day-to-day basis, I don't suspect that there'll be a, a whole lot, of change felt, But what I would encourage anybody that's listening to this that maybe has a relationship with us is to, to start to double click on some of this stuff, right? So if you're a fund that flip customer and you've never heard of Flipper Force, you're gonna start to see some of that stuff under the upright brand.
And I would encourage you to, to get with your account rep and take a look at what's there and vice versa, right? If you're a Flipper Force customer and you're looking for financing for your projects, right, you're gonna have, a cleaner line into, you know, some of the folks that, that can help you understand what your options are to get financing for your next project.
So I think that's the main change that will start to be felt is, um, you know, everything that we offer today will feel a little less disjointed, both in terms of, you know, how we, we go to market with it, but we're also doing a fair amount of work on the technology side. to bring kind of those experiences together so that if you're logged into Flipper Force, you're also logged into formally known as Fund that flip and vice versa.
so it should be easier for you to kind of traverse, if you will, between the different sets of products and services and, and discover those things and see how those apply to your business. but the thing that I'm, I'm most excited about is how, how we get these feedback loops quicker, right? with kind of, again, that broader perspective on.
what's available and, and we wanna hear from you guys on what's missing so that we can continue to innovate and, and bring new things to market.
Brendan: I love it. Good stuff man. Um, alright, so we're gonna jump into the speed round. So this is the M B R speed round. Sponsored by Mahali Brothers Racing, the N H R A Champion Drag Racing Team. That upright very proudly sponsors some really fun going to the, going to the drag race meets. Great time. Matt, we're gonna give you about 30 seconds to give your 2 cents on a few different alternative investing.
Options and industries outside of the real estate space. So give us your your best when we, we give you these three. A quick disclaimer, this is just for fun and not speaking true as investment advice from Matt had to say it. Now we'll get into the fun. first one being stocks. Matt.
Matt: Yeah. So I mean, I think I think stocks are so I do very little like individual stock picking for the most part. And most of my stock portfolios is like what I'd consider to be in, in retirement accounts. So I kind of set up a portfolio allocation, my 4 0 1 k and some other, you know, I r a accounts that I have.
with the exception being I will do some like, Distressed stock buying and or dividend stock buying when I think there's opportunities to get, you know, attractive yield in companies that I think are being mispriced. So, you know, during kind of the, the Covid reset, I had my eye on a few, um REIT stocks that I thought were gonna be okay that I could get in at, you know, 12 and 14% kind of dividend yields that, um, You know, I plan on now holding forever, um, as a function of kind of the yield they throw off based on the entry point.
So I guess I can't help myself. I always find my way getting back into real estate one way or another.
David: all right, next crypto.
Matt: Yeah, crypto's one that, um, you know, I've we had an intern back in like 2014 when Bitcoin was like a buck or something, telling me that I should buy crypto and I told him to get outta my face with that and now, you know, I probably could be retired by now had I listened to his advice. Um, shout out to Drake.
Um, I I dabble with it. I got a small portfolio. I think I invest in crypto more just so I have some interest to kind of follow it, but not a big part of my you know, long-term investment strategy. I.
Brendan: Last one, Matt. Any sort of angel or venture investing.
Matt: Yes, I do. I do enjoy this. So, um AngelList came out with a product a couple years ago called a rolling fund. Um, so, um, you guys are going to hear a theme again, but someone I know started a prop tech rolling fund. so I do a quarterly subscription to that and, um, probably have 600 or so. You know, startups in that portfolio.
So like very small allocations, but very diversified approach to startup investing. the other kind of cool thing that that affords is if there's a, a company that, um, I have a. A larger amount of conviction in, I'm able to kind of invest a larger amount, you know, alongside, into, you know, that company.
So I've probably made, I dunno, 10 or 15, um, you know, investments outside of the, the rolling fund and some in, in companies that I feel, um, more conviction over than, than others.
David: And that folks is why he's the brains behind this whole operation. And listen, I think that's all we have for you today, Matt. But as always, pleasure having you back on the podcast. And maybe we will maybe we'll invite you back sooner than than a year.
Matt: Fingers crossed. Thanks for having me guys.
Brendan: I'll get you signed out really quick. So Thanks again for tuning into this week's episode. Make sure to let us know what you guys think, and feel free to write in some suggestions or future topics for the show at podcast at upright us. That is podcast with an SS at upright us.
David: and make sure to like and subscribe to the podcast so you don't miss out on any episodes.
And leave us a five star review please, if you like the show. Of course. Thanks guys.
