Nobu Iguchi  0:00  

What is creator economy? So you could see it’s a software enabled economy that allows people, including people in the real estate profession to make money producing content, such as you know, photos, video and so forth. And you mentioned YouTube. And that’s certainly one platform. And I think, over the last few years, what we’ve seen is obviously explosion with Instagram and Tiktok. These are also platforms that are very, very, very popular. And what we’re seeing is even in a very traditional industry, like real estate, and even construction, the audience that say people who are who to see in the case of buying homes, right, the people who are buying homes are, you know, it’s there’s a wide range of age, but a lot of Gen V. Folks and Millennial folks, in order to cater to them traditional ways of kind of advertising traditional ways of reaching out would obviously work to some degree, but there’s a sense in which if you’re not utilizing these content platforms, you’re in some ways missing out.

Announcer  1:07  

Welcome to CRE PN Radio for influential commercial real estate professionals who work with investors, buyers and sellers of commercial real estate coast to coast whether you’re an investor, broker, lender, property manager, attorney or accountant we are here to learn from the experts.

J Darrin Gross  1:26  

Welcome to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks CRE PN Radio. Thanks for joining us. My name is J. Darrin Gross. This is the podcast focused on commercial real estate investment and risk management strategies. Weekly we have conversations with commercial real estate investors and professionals who provide their experience and insight to help you grow your real estate portfolio. 

Today, my guest is Nobu Iguchi. Nobu is the co founder and Managing Partner of Agya Ventures, prior to Agya, Nobu worked at Bridgewater Associates as a senior investment professional. And he holds a BS in chemistry from Yale and his MBA from Harvard Business School. And in just a minute, we’re going to speak with Nobu about the Creator Content Economy, and how it can help real estate investors. 

But first, a quick reminder, if you like our show, CRE PN Radio, there are a couple things you can do to help us out. You can like, share and subscribe. And as always, we encourage you to leave a comment, we’d love to hear from our listeners. Also, if you want to see how handsome Our guests are, be sure to check out our YouTube channel. You can find us on commercial or find us on YouTube at commercial real estate pro network. And while you’re there, we encourage you to subscribe. With that, I want to welcome my guest, Nobu. Welcome to CRE PN Radio.

Nobu Iguchi  2:55  

Yeah, Darrin, thanks for having me. Great. Great to be here.

J Darrin Gross  2:59  

I’m really looking forward to our conversation. We were talking just before we started recording about what we’re getting into here. But before we get started, if you could take just a minute and share with listeners a little bit about your background.

Nobu Iguchi  3:11  

Yeah, happy to do so. I am a co founder of Agya Ventures real estate technology focused venture capital firm based in New York and San Francisco. We invest in early stage technology companies precede seed series A companies in real estate and construction space. So what that means Darrin is companies that have recently emerged that have been founded, usually over the last six months to one year, two years sort of timeframe, across many real estate asset classes, so commercial, you know, space to residential space to we look, you know, look at hospitality space, retail, space, logistics, Senior Living, so on and so forth. So we look at the disruptive technology companies across asset classes and real estate and construction and invest in those companies.

J Darrin Gross  4:12  

Gotcha. And when you say disruptive technology, can you give kind of an example of what one might be or how it might be? Just I mean, because technology to me is such a broad conversation and disruptive seems like that’s what the world has been just one constant disruption here for the last, you know, especially with technology.

Nobu Iguchi  4:33  

Yeah, actually, good point. And I think so. The word disrupt or disruptive is perhaps overused and people use it differently. So happy to clarify that. And I think I would say they’re sort of, in some ways to, to two different types of innovation. One is where company is in some ways augmenting the in real estate space augmenting In the existing roof that holding so a company we have invested in is called Sugar. Sugar is a platform, an app for residential properties and for tenants to you. So if you think of a multi family residential unit, you would open the sugar app, which is tied to a smart lock. So you would use it to enter your home. And the app also allows the tenants to communicate with each other. So if you have specific needs, you’re moving out, if you want to sell your furniture, you want the babysitter, and you’re gonna see whether anybody else in the building has a recommendation. Or you may want to pay rent, you know, traditionally, you would pay, you know, write a check, you can do all of that on your on your app. That’s an example of a company that’s augmenting the existing real estate assets. So you can call that as one type of innovation. 

Another type of innovation, a Darrin could be one that’s somewhat quote unquote, disruptive in the sense that it might be changing the way that this is done right now. So there’s a company called Dorsey that we’ve invested in, they operate in the single family space. And essentially, it’s a platform for buyers of single family homes, to auction or bid for a home. So imagine, you know, right now, how would you buy a single family home, we say, you know, you see a property on Zillow, you know, you you contact the agent to see how it goes. And the process is honestly not very transparent. When would you agree? This platform makes that all transparent. by listing the platform, let’s say the the home in North Carolina, is the it starts at 3300 to $50,000, you have seven days left, and you can you can kind of put your own bid. So you know, 360 5k, somebody else created, and so on and so forth. And then whoever has the highest bidding with, with with buy the home. So that’s, that’s a very, you know, new way of operating in real estate. So there’s kind of two types of innovative companies. So you know, these are just examples, but I would I would put it that way.

J Darrin Gross  7:22  

Got it. Got it. No, it’s interesting to see all the different applications for technology and the ways that we’ve done business, and then you find these new efficient ways that that, you know, and I think it’s probably more of the the, the, I guess, the the first time through or the understanding of how it works kind of thing. What, in the different technologies you’ve you’ve invested in? How do you look to? And how do you measure the adoption rate? Or what’s kind of an expectation? Is there a, is it something that’s new that like, takes off like wildfire? Is it is it something like you find that is, or I guess, maybe a better question is, if you found, like one thing that makes it something more apt to, to take off and grow, as opposed to? You know, maybe not so much?

Nobu Iguchi  8:20  

Yeah, there’s no science to, to do that, and I wish they were in it. So it’d be easier to kind of invest in the right companies, I think one way to look at it is really, you know, look at we work at the early stage level invest in, oftentimes, the company has just started. So a lot of the times companies we invest in is post product, meaning the products already been built. And oftentimes post revenue, meaning that the company is already generating revenue, having said that, the revenue is minimal. So a lot of a lot of times Darrin what’s what’s very critical is, is to know the founder as well. Because ultimately, the business model could change. And you may, you may work on the product for a little bit, and you find out that, you know, it doesn’t work quite well, and you pivot, quote, unquote, people change to a different business model is very common, even among most successful companies. So a lot of times we, you know, one of the key things in early stage investing is talking to the founders, making sure they know they are they’re the types of people who can build new companies, a lot of times in real estate. Another thing to point out is they tend to have real estate experienced, real estate doesn’t you know, is an area where if you come from a totally different background, you know, how smart you are in software, for example, you may not necessarily be the best product in the industry. So that’s one thing I would say. Another is I think, oftentimes, for companies more in the way in the b2b space, early feedback is critical. So working with commercial real estate developers as customers, for example, what are they saying? Even they haven’t started paying yet? You know, he’s got a pain point, are they? Are they you know, doing pilots and some, you know, early feedback, positive feedback is always a plus to you when you make a judgement.

J Darrin Gross  10:11  

I’m often the guy that creates all the solutions in my head on what would be great only and find out that I’m the only one that has that problem or, or that you know that it feels the pain. So I get ya there. So we were the, the topic that we kind of describe her and talk about today was kind of more about the Creator content. And so, I know in, you know, there’s not a day that goes by that I’m not like, on a YouTube. In fact, I think getting into anything Google Now is like, made me go to YouTube, just for the dual verification that it’s me trying to get in. And next thing you know, I’m watching the video, and how did I get here? But my point to this, though, is that, that I think more and more all, we’re all able to whether it be through subscription, or we’re seeking information or whatever, we’re finding these, these different individuals that have created these platforms. And I’m wondering if you can kind of speak to what you see is, is the you know, how people are creating content, creating the audience and able to leverage that into more than just a platform to disseminate information, but, you know, more of a revenue generating opportunity.

Nobu Iguchi  11:34  

Yeah, great question. And I think having to dive into that. So I think taking a step back, you know, what is creative economy, you could say it’s a software enabled economy that allows people, including people in the real estate profession to make money producing content, such as you know, photos, video support. And you mentioned YouTube. And that’s certainly one platform. And I think, over the last few years, what we’ve seen is obviously, explosion with Instagram and Tiktok. These are also platforms that are very, very, very popular. And what we’re seeing is even in a very traditional industry, like real estate, and even construction, the audience that say people who are who to say in the case of buying homes, right, the people who are buying homes are, you know, there’s a wide range of age, but a lot of Gen V. Folks and Millennial folks, in order to cater to then traditional ways of kind of advertising traditional ways of reaching out would obviously work to some degree. 

But there’s a sense in which if you’re not utilizing these content platforms, you’re in some ways missing out. So that’s why we’ve seen a growth uptick in creator economy in the in the use of these platforms to begin with. I think a little bit further, there’s one thing we’re seeing, which is, let me just two things. One is that there is what one could call a front end and back end innovation. So front end is kind of like Tiktok, YouTube, Instagram. So that’s kind of what people consume content on, right? In order to facilitate content creators, for people who want to, you know, create the content and communicate to the world. There are a lot of companies emerging to help with that. So you can call them back end innovation. So these are tools that would allow content creators to create better videos of themselves to use one click of a button, have the information available on their, you know, Facebook account, Instagram account dictum, particular candidates, what kind of phone support, so there’s a back end innovation that’s also happening to help content create. 

Another thing, the second thing I’d point out is because of the rise of content, creator economy, in general, we’re seeing platform specific, or industry specific platforms emerging. So if I may give one example, there’s a company called a Playhouse. It’s in the residential space. It started out as a tick tock for real estate. So it was a it was an account on Tiktok that had a bunch of beautiful homes, sometimes by celebrities, and it had it went viral. So a lot of people clicked on them because it’s wonderful to see those homes with celebrities. And it’s kind of fun to scroll through. So what they have decided to do is to make it into an app specifically for real estate. So if you think about the existing platforms today, where you buy a home, it’s you know, you scroll through, usually through photos, and then you may read descriptions. It’s kind of a little bit of a boring experience. Instead, what Playhouse wants to do is to enable content creators, in this case broker agents, right? To post their homes, with abundant wonderful videos with a video content, so that people would enjoy just scrolling through and just, you know, a lot of times, it’s just a scroll, scroll, and sometimes the like, and then you may actually decide to buy, it’s just, it’s some of these platforms that are emerging, specifically, for example, in the real estate industry,

J Darrin Gross  15:27  

No, I’ve seen multiple construction in the residential section or the sector, the realtors, and, you know, think, you know, just create content, but also create an audience and create a following, or just kind of constantly have a stream. And I can only imagine, I mean, it’s got to be very powerful if you’re in that market space to have an audience of potential buyers all the time. And if you’re, if you’re showing a property that, you know, somebody in your audience wants, oh, my God, that’s the one I want, you’ve got an instant flow of potential buyers. Now. I’m kind of curious, you know, with with the worldwide web, I mean, one of the things that, that you that I know that I even run into is that because it is worldwide, it’s not like a lot of his real estate is going to local kind of thing. So you have you have your audience that’s, that’s, you know, worldwide, but your your product is maybe local kind of thing. Is there, do you find are people able to more narrowly kind of navigate? Or is it? Or is that not a concern? Is the goal really to appeal to as many people as you can and hope that the people in your audience or our, you know, potential prospects or potential clients?

Nobu Iguchi  15:56  

Yeah, that’s actually a question that different content providers have to have to kind of wrestle with, and the answer might be different from one plate one person to another. So in the case of certain real estate, agents and seller, the market literally might be global. So here in New York, you might be trying to sell a property where the buyer could be, you know, from Europe, from Asia. And, you know, so they’re, one could say that, actually, the web, and the global reach is a plus. Right. And, in fact, if you think about how previously you had to fly to see the properties, or you might be able to scroll through some photos that Max, and I have wonderful videos, and you know, that might lead to a Zoom meeting, and so on, and so forth. So, from that standpoint, having a global reach could be a huge bluff. On the other hand, to your point, it is true that, if you’re trying to sell a home in, let’s say, California, it actually may not be that advantageous to try to advertise to everybody, even across the United States, because the I mean, depending on the house, depending on the home, or the or the property of interest, it could be a commercial property, but the buyer likely isn’t the same reason. So from that standpoint, local targeted as and targeted outreach, might be more beneficial. So it really depends on the purpose, and, and there may be certain surprises to somebody from different continent, or different states would reach out and at least to at least do a deal. But other times, it’s more important that you focus on a geographic region.

J Darrin Gross  18:35  

So for the content providers who have actually created an audience, they’ve, you know, they’ve identified whether they’d be a commercial real estate broker or, or you know, thinking of like Grant Cardone. And so he’s got a large following potential investors and in coaching and all that kind of stuff. When, when creating an audience, is there a magic number? Or is there a point at which your content is more valuable because of the the number of people in your audience meaning that there’s other people outside that would like to either advertise or, or, you know, attach themselves to your, you know, your brand? Because, I mean, I know, like, if you’re watching somebody on YouTube, I know, there’s like, all of a sudden you get the ad, you know, that pops up, but I’m assuming that’s all driven by the algorithm with with YouTube based on number of people watching and how, you know, how regular you put content up. But in general, or is it different for the different platforms? Is there a, is there any kind of a ballpark or kind of a?

Nobu Iguchi  19:54  

Yeah, I think. Yeah, I think it could, again, it could depend on a few things. So on the one hand, you might want to monetize totally off of your content. So you have a line of, you know, like, really, you know, video content for real estate investors, you have certain other media, and if that’s exactly how you’re gonna monetize off of, you do need a certain kind of threshold of, of followers and viewers, and that would direct that will directly help you monetize. So in that case, I mean, there is no magic number, but let’s say 100,000 followers on Instagram, or what have you, right might be some of the numbers from I want to look for any leads to certain monetization, that that’s appropriate for you. Another way to think about it is it’s kind of a way for you to monetize off of something else. So you’re trying to sell a property, and then you have you use, you know, you mentioned YouTube, Tik Tok Instagram for that purpose. In that case, it’s less that you have, you know, 10,000 followers or 1000 followers or 100,000. Followers, what matters is the quality of the leads you will generate, right? So it’ll actually lead to a transaction, that, that, that that in from which you profit, so kind of different monetization models exist for that, for that, for that, depending on depending on how depending what you want to achieve.

J Darrin Gross  21:28  

And so, so more about the leads that you could generate just from the audience who sees whatever it is that you’re speaking about, whether it be a property or, as opposed to like an actual revenue generating thing based on sponsorship, or that’s really the right, and that kind of goes, that makes more sense. Because it’s like the, I forget what it was, there was something that was some marketing idea, but it was, rather than having like a million subscribers, or whatever you need, like 1000, true fans was kind of wondering, you know, starting small, or you had people that were really, they were paying attention to what you’re doing, regardless of when wherever they were true fans kind of thing. And, yeah,

Nobu Iguchi  22:15  

Yeah, exactly. So I mean, if you want to monetize off of views, you want to have as many views as possible. But if you monetize off of like, do have done transactions, you would want to have you want to do what matters is the quality of police.

J Darrin Gross  22:28  

Got it? Got it. So in that, is there a platform that you think is more dynamic or more useful?

Nobu Iguchi  22:40  

Yeah, I think the, the, the, this is so very deaf at the front end, the you know, the tick tock, tick tock, the Instagram, YouTube, some of these conventional platforms are, right now still the kind of the best ways for people to, to advertise, right. And then the, the example, I gave a playhouse in the residential space. And then there is also a company called Hammer, which is in the construction space. There are content industry specific platforms like that, that are that are emerging. This is a recent trend over the last year or two, since really, more like a nascent, you know, emerging trend, but we expect more of those things to to become prevalent as well. So we pay attention to both more the general, you know, platforms, as well as industry specific platforms that are emerging, which is very exciting. You finally also take kind of a step back and see kind of Why is this still happening? It’s kind of creative economy is very interesting, because on the one hand, at the beginning, you can say, there’s this economy in which there’s an employer and employee, to somebody is an employee for a company. And then I think we’ve had, like a gig economy. I think a good example that’s often used is kind of like ride sharing. There, you know, they don’t necessarily work specifically for that company. And one could say, well, yeah, you’re your own boss. But the fact of the matter is, you may be but also your degree, constrained by the company you’re working with, right? And then a lot of things are basically, it’s debatable whether you’re truly a robot. Content economy, and the creator economy has the promise to do more beyond that, namely, where you essentially create your content, and then you monetize off of your content. I won’t go into too much detail, but there’s also a concept called Web three that’s emerging. That’s pretty relevant for this now, where you know people are Part of the metaverse, you know, the Dow and FC, all of these things in a web three are very relevant for creative economy in the sense that if things actually materialize, and it might take a few years, several years, and we’ll see how it goes, there could be a world in which you create your own content monetize off of it, and it surely become your own become your content. And if you’re part of your, it’s a creator owned platform as well. So that’s kind of a badass, like a dynamic shift in like, at a macro level, what’s happening.

J Darrin Gross  25:34  

That’s interesting, you mentioned that, you know, I was just sitting there thinking like you, you started off by saying the employer, employer employee relationship. And just as you were kind of going down the is the creator now, kind of is able to leverage their own platform are their own brand. I mean, you know, there’s a, there’s the, the NCAA and the, the student athletes. Recently, I’ve seen a couple of articles just about the, the problem that that’s creating, because the the old guard, the the coaches are, are frustrated down because the the players have money, and they’re not as easy to manage, you know, as they were when they didn’t have any money, and they didn’t have any resources. And it’s, you know, that relationship now, it’s, it’s, for those who want agency, they can create it based on their own, you know, their own efforts, and in the requirement of having a, you know, your, your ability to create income, that’s not necessarily limited to what your employer is willing to, because you may be, you may be more valuable to somebody else based on the audience you’ve created, or the the content you’ve created. But if you have, if you have agency over it. That to me, that’s, that’s pretty insightful to have that as opposed to, you know, only be limited to what your employer is willing to whatever the contract has been.

Nobu Iguchi  27:08  

Yeah, I think your sports example, is actually kind of an interesting one, there certainly is, like an analogy there, right? whereby you’re part of a team, or, you know, you can’t earn earn money, or maybe there’s a threshold, versus you’re free to do things. I think, you know, it depends on the industry depends on it may not be a linear sort of, you know, straight line, but I think directionally things are going in the direction where individuals could be more empowered to, to have their own, create their own content, actually own their content. Bearing in mind, right now create economy, quote, unquote, a lot of the times when people publish their content, it’s still controlled by some of the giants companies, right? Tech companies, right. And that also could change. It’s TBD. We don’t know for sure. But I mean, that dynamics might also change in with the rise of web three.

J Darrin Gross  28:03  

That’s interesting. I was gonna, just trying to think here, do you, you know, with the the ability to kind of create your content and create your brand. Do you see more people becoming more, I mean, it seems to me as kind of more independently between just the way work is done now. And, you know, the, the pandemic and kind of what it taught us about the place that we considered, you know, the workplace has certainly changed. And the, the, just the power that one has, with, you know, if you can create an audience, you have a following the value you you have, period. I’m curious on the, is there any rhyme or reason or, cause, you know, I think historically before the YouTube and all the abilities to and all the other platforms where you could, you know, create a channel and stuff, I would think that, you know, if you were to watch any kind of program on video, TV movie or whatever, you know, there was usually a an attractive person, there was a script, there was all these things, you know, now we’ve got this more like a reality. Then we got into like reality TV, which was supposed to be unscripted kind of thing, which I think we found as more scripted. You is, there a seems to be there would be a formula that would make sense for whoever was trying to create an audience. In that you a you have a topic that you’re you’re speaking to on a regular basis, which is kind of the you know, the the reason why people are tuning in what they’re searching for, too, would be that your presentation. There’s something about you that the audience identifies with. Is there anything beyond that? that, that you see that like, as a recipe for somebody to have success or to create an audience.

Nobu Iguchi  30:07  

That’s one that’s very hard for, to to answer, but I will tell you this, which is I think you touched on kind of an interesting point about a scripted kind of show to the sound scripted, think what’s interesting nowadays with the creative economy is, in some ways, what’s not scripted, what’s more natural, is being preferred. So obviously, there is room for kind of like a TV show sort of setting and the very scripted sort of messaging and so on, and so forth. And that may still have its own place. But increasingly, for example, even videos, right. It’s an interesting thing where, you know, you know, some of the videographers and photographers we’ve talked to in the content, creator economy space, they’ve been increasingly asked by the people for, you know, who gave them the specific jobs right, to, to take the videos in a, in a very natural way, sometimes using just a phone camera. So they, they are not allowed to use, like professional camera. They, they’re specifically asked this photographers and videographers are asked to use their their iPhones to videotape. Because if you look at Pixar, I mean, all of it is basically kind of people using their phone. So there’s a sense in which the what’s preferred, is changing, whereby you’re not necessarily putting your best self, but you’re kind of putting your natural self, again, it depends on the content, I mean, that’s not always the case, when talking about the gonna present your commercial real estate assets, you might want to actually show your best, you know, polished videos, so that’s that, you know, you may don’t want to just take a random video, but again, it could be depending on the occasion, in the preference might be different.

J Darrin Gross  31:52  

Ya know, it’s interesting to see even like, with pandemic, and all the Zoom calls and stuff, and how the, you know, the background and, and, like, almost how relaxed things have gotten to where there seems to be more of a genuine interchange between, you know, people participating, whether it be, you know, broadcasting from a spare bedroom, or you hear, you know, kids in the background, or, you know, just some of the life noises that, you know, distractions that happen and stuff, as opposed to an always a high polished kind of presentation that may lack any kind of real, genuine, you know, look and feel about it. But, so, let me ask you, so, you know, we were talking about the augmenting, and just how disruptive the technologies can be, is there one that you feel like has a chance to really, you know, grow greatly? And then I’ll ask you that the opposite is there one that you think is potentially threatened? Because of just the change in these? The, the just the use of technology and the platforms and, and, you know, the the ability to, to attract an audience?

Nobu Iguchi  33:22  

That’s one that’s very hard for me to answer. But I think the, I think the next slide here is going to be pretty interesting already talked about a couple industry specific platforms that have emerged in real estate infrastructure and, and also actually another industry, it’s going to be a very interesting year, where some of these will pick up on we’ll see, we’ll see how it goes. And we’re supporting some of these companies investing in some of them, so very supportive of them. But we’d love to, so that’s one where, you know, I don’t have a quote unquote, bet on you know, hoping for and also, we’d love to see these content platforms, emerge, Memorial codes emerge. So that, in particular, a lot of ways, these platforms, what they’re doing is democratizing in an ideal world anyway, the the content creation platform where you don’t necessarily need a lot of budgets to do do things, but you can kind of, you know, people can create a content with videos and a little bit of, you know, software solution and support and they can become, potentially become their, their own bosses we talked about earlier. So, you know, that’s when we’re, you know, very bullish on the space and we’d love to see the seeds actually getting more adoption.

J Darrin Gross  34:37  

Now, it sounds kind of limitless as far as what the opportunities are, especially in the web. Three 3.0 sound. I mean, I guess stay tuned. Right. That’s good. Hey, Nobu. If we could, I’d like to shift gears here for a second. By day, I’m an insurance broker and as such work with my clients to try and assess risk and determine what, what to do with the risk. And there’s a couple different strategies we typically consider, we first look to see if there’s a way we can avoid the risk. When that’s not an option, then we look to see if there’s a way we can minimize the risk. And when we cannot avoid nor minimize a risk, then we look to see if we can transfer the risk. And that’s what an insurance policy is. It’s a risk transfer vehicle. And as such, I like to ask my guests, if they can look at their own situation. Could be clients could be the technology could be government could be, you know, the market interest rates, how are we, however, you would like to frame the question as to what you consider to be the biggest risk. And again, for clarification, while I am an insurance broker, I’m not necessarily looking for an insurance related answer. And so if you’re willing, I’d like to ask you, Nobu, oguchi, what is the biggest risk?

Nobu Iguchi  36:14  

Yeah, this very deep question, but I think the, let me try kind of the short term and the long term, if I may, I think in the short term, so, you know, this is this is May, right, May of 2022, the world is looking, increasingly uncertain.  The economies looking increasingly after the inflation is through the roof. There’s no, no indication is subsiding. And there’s not a question that the Fed is going to keep raising interest rates. And even if they keep raising interest rates, which is basically I think, at this point, given, the question becomes, you know, is the interest rate? Is inflation actually going to come down? And what’s the, let’s say, stabilize the 4% 5%? I mean, is that acceptable to the Fed? And the likely answer is no, because they want the 2% interest rate, which is good for the economy, and that’s their mandate. 

So if that’s not acceptable, they may have to keep bringing interest rates even further up, which is a substantial risk for the, for the asset for the assets, asset prices, in general real estate, and also public market assets and private market assets. And, and also, it’s an it’s a risk to the economy. So it could lead to more job losses, unfortunately, and so on. So in the, in the short term, that’s, that’s, to me seems like a huge risk. For many of us a different context, it could be about our jobs, let’s say, from an investor standpoint, for portfolio companies, the companies that we’ve invested in, I think there’s a huge risk, they should prepare for it. So you know, for example, having not just having six months of cash in the bank, but you know, 18 months of cash in the bank, just in case, you know, there’s a substantial food, our economy, they find it challenging to raise capital, and so on, and so forth. Real Estate operators. Again, it’s the same where, you know, even though COVID, you know, in the United States seems to be to a large degree, you know, not a big, big factor anymore, and people are coming back to the office, perhaps that’s going to have a substantially negative impact on our company’s willingness to have more office space. Right. So I think that, to me, seems like a short term, big risk of like, in as big as through what the buffer should be, in each case, in one’s case, to see it to prepare for the future. In the long term, what we see is an apology I have alergies today. 

But in the long term, what I would say is, even though, let’s say with that sort of Outlook, technology companies, you’ve seen NASDAQ down a lot, you’ve seen venture valuation down a lot, right? And so on and so forth. But in the long term, we’re very bullish still in, in, in technology, on technology, and in fact, are some of the best technology companies, including the say, Airbnb in the in the in real estate space, came out of basically a recessionary period. So even though that seems like a huge risk to have technology exposure, in the long term, there’s a ton of risk in not investing in technology. So we talked about web three as one example. You don’t have to necessarily invest in every single web three company or like, you know, adopt anything that comes out, but is keeping track of what’s in the face. And even investing, let’s say, as a real estate operator or investor and so on and so forth. And some of these, I think, actually, in a lot of ways mitigates risk. because there is a risk of obviously investing in failing in that, but also also other risks, which is you don’t invest. And five years, 10 years later, you’re kind of left behind. Right. So I think saying the short term there is the kind of inflation risks that could lead to potentially a recession that could lead to asset price. Coming down even further, in the long term, long term, that the risk is not investing in technology, and thereby being left behind.

J Darrin Gross  40:29  

So true. If you keep looking for yesterday to come back. You may never may never get there. So that’s good. Hey, Nobu, where can listeners go if they’d like to learn more or connect with you?

Nobu Iguchi  40:47  

Would be great for any listener to to to email me at Nobu  Nobu@agyaventures.com on ag y a ventures.com. There’s also a website I agyaventures.com. Also, you’re welcome to to ping me on LinkedIn and send me a message as well as mentioned that you watch this wonderful show with you and that you’re hosting and, and we’ll make sure to respond.

J Darrin Gross  41:15  

Awesome. Well, Nobu, I can’t say thanks enough for taking the time to talk today. I’ve enjoyed it and learned a lot. And I look forward to doing it again soon.

Nobu Iguchi  41:26  

That sounds great. Thank you for having me Darrin.

J Darrin Gross  41:28  

All right. For our listeners. If you liked this episode, don’t forget to like, share and subscribe. Remember, the more you know, the more you grow? That’s all we’ve got this week. Until next time, thanks for listening to Commercial Real Estate Pro Networks. CRE PN Radio.

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