Podcast highlights:

• 00:40 Can you give us a quick introduction about yourself? -- Really an entrepreneur who found a way into venture capital and investing. At heart see myself as someone who founds and builds companies. More recently have become infected with the blockchain bug.
• 27:10 ICOs and tokenization represent a new tool in the entrepreneur's toolbox for how to fund a business while at the same time creating a fan base. It will be very important to see how these things are regulated going forward; however, right now it is possible to be fully compliant with the law, while at the same time developing your business and product in new and truly innovative ways with these technologies. Venture capital has traditionally been very illiquid. When VCs invest in companies, it might be up to seven years before they see a return on investment. With an ICO in contrast, the expectation is that in a matter of weeks coins will be trading on an active market and generating returns and cash flows for investors. It's a game changer for venture capital.
• 35:45 So this is basically a whole new economy? -- Yes. In fact, if any listeners run or know someone who runs an airline, give us a call. We can help you raise billions of dollars with a token offering. Any company with a loyalty program who does not tokenize moving forward is going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Large companies will be the big winners here. If you think about it, companies like Costco are already doing something similar in driving a discount-based loyalty program. As soon as companies add liquidity through tokenization, the sky's the limit.

Podcast notes:

• 00:05 Welcome Andrew Romans, co-founder and general partner of Rubicon Venture Capital, also CEO and general partner at 7BC.VC, to Cross Border Kyle with host Kyle Ellicott.
• 00:40 Can you give us a quick introduction about yourself? -- Really an entrepreneur who found a way into venture capital and investing. At heart see myself as someone who founds and builds companies. More recently have become infected with the blockchain bug.
• 03:25 What are some lessons you've learned getting started and becoming an author? -- The books have been a network path and have allowed me to meet new investors around the world. With the blockchain book, it was an attempt to clearly lay out the existing securities law in the United States and how it's possible to be 100% compliant and still do an initial coin offering (ICO). There is a lot of misunderstanding around ICOs, what they are, how they work, and how they comport with existing law. Many investors simply don't understand crypto and distributed ledger technology because it's so different from anything else they've worked with. To take another example, publishing is a market ripe for the introduction of blockchain and smart contracts. Having a distributed record of book sales and how authors are reimbursed will go a long way towards improving how the publishing industry works. And not only publishing, but also real estate and any other instance where someone feels a contract was not fully honored. When someone says all this cryptocurrency stuff is rubbish and all the coins will go to zero, it may be true for 99% of the coins out there now; but the ones that make it will be huge.
• 27:10 ICOs and tokenization represent a new tool in the entrepreneur's toolbox for how to fund a business while at the same time creating a fan base. It will be very important to see how these things are regulated going forward; however, right now it is possible to be fully compliant with the law, while at the same time developing your business and product in new and truly innovative ways with these technologies. Venture capital has traditionally been very illiquid. When VCs invest in companies, it might be up to seven years before they see a return on investment. With an ICO in contrast, the expectation is that in a matter of weeks coins will be trading on an active market and generating returns and cash flows for investors. It's a game changer for venture capital.
• 35:45 So this is basically an whole new economy? -- Yes. In fact, if any listeners run or know someone who runs an airline, give us a call. We can help you raise billions of dollars with a token offering. Any company with a loyalty program who does not tokenize moving forward is going to sink to the bottom of the ocean. Large companies will be the big winners here. If you think about it, companies like Costco are already doing something similar in driving a discount-based loyalty program. As soon as companies add liquidity through tokenization, the sky's the limit.
• 41:05 When you spend all day in the blockchain world, you realize the problem that this is the way things should happen; but it doesn't work because the solution doesn't exist. Right now there are a lot of missing pieces to this technology. There are all kinds of badly needed fintech and basic payments infrastructure, and right now there is a big opportunity for VCs to investment with companies to get these things built.