Loading summary
Transcript102 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign to this week's episode of Modern Day Heroes. I'm pumped to be here with the one and only Thomas Wilkinson. The man, the myth. What's up, bro?
- [00:14]
B
What's up, man?
- [00:15]
A
How are you having me?
- [00:16]
B
Good.
- [00:17]
A
Good, dude. I'm pumped to have you. If anybody follows Tommy on Instagram, he's omnipresent and just. Just a content machine. So, yeah, we're.
- [00:30]
B
There's a lot. There's a lot to come.
- [00:32]
A
You know, we're excited to dive in today. Dude, you have a unique path and story. Being from Prova, Utah, or living here in this world, I feel like a lot of people have similar paths. And I think what's unique about you is your path is a little bit unconventional. And so you're in an industry not a lot of people know about and want to dive in and kind of see the ins and outs and then also open up the minds of the listeners to what venture capital is and what that looks like, if you're open to it.
- [01:06]
B
Let's go.
- [01:08]
A
Talk to us. Kind of give us a little bit of background on you and would love to talk life, would love to talk business. Okay. Anything that you're kind of willing to share. So tell us from your upbringing and then catch us up to speed.
- [01:24]
B
Okay. Gosh. So I was born in Portland, Oregon. Kind of different little spot there, and, you know, had a family with, you know, dad not around a ton. Left. Left when I was young, not to get in, like, some negative stuff, but plays a role. Yeah. I think it shapes a lot, like, who you are as, you know, you know, when you're growing up. But I think I just had this fire in me that I just refused to let whatever happened, like, get in the way. And so I got into gymnastics early because I just. It was just by luck because I was just super. A very energetic kid and just wore my mom out. And this one day, she, like, sent me to this open gym, and, like, I jumped around on the trampolines and swung around or whatever, and I came home, and I just was like a normal human.
- [02:17]
A
Yeah.
- [02:17]
B
And my mom was like, this is the secret.
- [02:20]
A
That's cool.
- [02:21]
B
And after that, I never left. But, like, immediately I set my sights on, like, being the very best, and that's just kind of how I approached a lot of things. But along with that, like, you know, I had a brother that was making bad choices, and then dad that just, you know, not to get too deep into it, just wasn't making good choices. And, like, there's a lot of turmoil at home. And I just was like, okay, ignore that. I just, I have my goal and I'm laser focused and I was getting after it. And ultimately we moved to Utah and then to Texas. And so looking back, like, just really grateful that I had that experience and something, you know, to, you know, put my energy into and went out to try it out for the Olympics. Didn't quite make it, but I just love reaching for like the very, very top of whatever it was that I was doing. And was recruited to a few different colleges for gymnastics and Stanford and Michigan and Ohio State and ultimately chose to go to the Air Force Academy, which was a unique experience.
- [03:33]
A
Is that something you always wanted?
- [03:35]
B
You know, I thought maybe being a pilot would be cool, but just the personality that I have, just like being owned by the government, that wasn't like my jam. But I was willing to do it just to like, you know, go and fly. And you know, we ended up winning a few champions, NCAA championship in our, in our conference and gymnastics. And then I was, I was like top in the school. Like superintendents list, everything like school and everything. I was dialed.
- [04:10]
A
You're how old at this point?
- [04:11]
B
18. But then kind of like stuff just like unraveled a little bit. My brother passed away. Then I went on a mission. I didn't really process all that stuff. And then came back and I was like, all right, I can't go to the Air Force Academy. I've got to like do something else. I transferred to BYU at the same time my little brother went into Harvard. And my parents like, dude, we don't have any money. We're either paying for your brother or you. And you left your scholarship to Air Force Academy. You're on your own. And so that's how I got into the door to door space. It just was like by necessity. I, you know, had to take care of myself. And then that led into the next chapter of my life.
- [04:55]
A
Okay, so you're 21, finish your mission.
- [04:58]
B
Yeah.
- [04:58]
A
You say I'm going to BYU?
- [05:00]
B
Yeah.
- [05:01]
A
From the mission or once you.
- [05:03]
B
Well, so I reapplied. You have to apply to get back in to the academy and you have to be non nominated by senator or a congressman. And I got both of those nominations because I was, you know, top of the class.
- [05:14]
A
Were you going to do gymnastics again?
- [05:16]
B
Yeah, my coaches wanted me back and dude, I just was in a rough spot. Like just, I never felt like I was good enough on my mission and all those things. And I just needed to change the scenery. So I transferred and my Parents weren't happy with it. My mom was really sad that, you know, I was making that decision, but I just kind of like, it's one of those things where you just know, like, I have to make a change. And so I did.
- [05:48]
A
If you're willing, walk us through how you've maybe skipped forward, how you've unraveled this identity or this self belief of never being good enough.
- [06:05]
B
Dude, I'm a work in progress. I'm definitely working on it. But I think, I mean, it definitely had something to do with my childhood and that, you know, growing up, I always would see my friends and they had their dad around. Their dad was like their biggest cheerleader and was their hero and all that stuff. And I just, like, didn't have that. And so maybe part of it was just like me performing to the highest level that I knew how and I just wasn't getting the acceptance from. From my father figure. And, you know, and then that kind of like bled into everything else. Like growing up in a family in our church where, like, you know, it's not like the regular nuclear family. You've got like this divorced family. Like, it's just kind of weird. And so I just wanted to get acceptance and validation from other people. So I'm like, well, what if I'm just. If I'm an Olympian, then nobody can say I'm not worth. I'm not worthy or I'm not worth it. Yeah.
- [07:06]
A
Attached to a result.
- [07:07]
B
That's right. So that's kind of where this. Where it kind of bled into. And I can. I can see both sides of it. Like, I'm grateful that for the drive of that, but, like, what served me then doesn't serve me now. And so, you know, I definitely needed to.
- [07:23]
A
Good job.
- [07:24]
B
Yeah. To make some changes on that.
- [07:26]
A
Yeah. Interesting. Life happens for us, bro. And it's. It's working for you.
- [07:32]
B
Yeah.
- [07:32]
A
As you're someone that I look up to a ton. So you begin door to door. Did you have a relationship with Todd and those people at this time or not yet.
- [07:43]
B
Yeah. So fortunately, like, I. Because it didn't have dad around, I just was like collecting these father figures all over the place. Now. Did have the unhealthy, like, feeling of like, well, if I don't perform, then they won't want me. But fortunately had, you know, uncle and cousins that were super successful and happened to be connected close friends with Todd Peterson. And so I got kind of plugged into that space at Vivint and. And wasn't a natural salesman Like, I was good at math, you know, kind of a nerd. Still am. And wasn't naturally really outgoing, but I knew how to work hard. And I just wasn't like. I remember my cousin Eric, when I went out for my first summer, he's like, just don't embarrass me. Like, are you kidding me? Literally, that actually pushed me really hard. And so I went crushed and figured it out. Like, it was a slow start, but I had people looking out for me, and I've been really blessed with that. And, you know, and then I was doing well in school and everything. And then this was after my second year, I had about 200 grand saved. But my plan was, you have your deliberate strategy and immersion strategy. So my deliberate strategy was, okay, my cousin Ryan, he did electrical engineering at byu, then he went to a VC firm called Polaris. They paid for him to go to hbs. He goes to Harvard Business School, then joins one of his port co's called Progressive. No, it was Digicert, Went to digital cert, sold that for $100 million, something crazy. Then goes to this company called Progressive Leasing, and then they sold to errands for hundreds of millions of dollars. And I'm like, I want that path. And so that was my deliberate strategy. Do it. Do engineering, set myself apart from the other business guys, and then go the business path and eventually start my own business. When I was 40 and I was dating my. Who's my wife now, Abby, at the time, and she invites me to go down to St. George to this crazy house down there that one of her friends had to get there. Literally biggest house I'd ever seen. Go downstairs. There's. There's a bowling alley in the house. Who in the world owns this? Who does this? And whoever it is, they're next. I'm collecting them to be my. My father figure, and all sudden, Professor Church comes downstairs and I'm like, wait a minute, I know you from one of my entrepreneurship classes. And we had gotten connected there. And I told him what my life plan was and of course said, that's the stupidest thing you'd ever heard. And I was taken aback from that. Like, why would you wait until you're 40 to start a business and start a business now? And so that got me into the venture capital world where I invested in my first business and invested my first real estate property. And that was kind of like the emergent strategy that just came out of nowhere. That wasn't planned, and I just felt like I needed to go for it. And, you know, invested my last dollar and my first business and really glad I did that.
- [11:03]
A
Very interesting. So for people that don't know Corbin Church, Professor Church is a volunteer entrepreneur, teacher at byu. Doesn't get paid, doesn't need the money, of course, but a successful businessman that has created one of the coolest entrepreneurial communities I've ever seen. And he literally just serves at a really high level.
- [11:26]
B
He.
- [11:26]
A
He's very specialized in real estate. And then these people that bring him ideas, he ends up investing in a lot of them. So you're saying you meet Corbin within a conversation, your entire trajectory changes?
- [11:40]
B
Oh, yeah. It was immediately I was like, well, I guess that is kind of dumb. Why would I wait until I was 40?
- [11:47]
A
I love it.
- [11:48]
B
Start a business.
- [11:49]
A
Okay. And then from there, what transpires? So you go buy your real estate deal.
- [11:55]
B
Yeah.
- [11:56]
A
So how soon is the next venture deal?
- [11:58]
B
Literally, they happen about the same time.
- [11:59]
A
Okay.
- [12:00]
B
So the first thing he tells me is, hey, there's this place called the tech transfer office at BYU where there's all these patents, and I think there's a few that might be a good fit. We're going to do what's called validation, which is like, you get the concept or idea and you go and try to sell it before you have it so that you know there's an actual market for it. Because you can tell people all your ideas, and they'll usually just blow smoke up your skirt and say, hey, that's a great idea. But until they're willing to pay for it, you have no idea. So, I mean, I went through hundreds of patents, and I saw one that was for deaf students. And I had a few deaf students in my classes, and I noticed that it was impossible for them to see the professor up front and their interpreter at the same time. So they're straight up doing this the whole time. I'm like, I'm having a hard enough time myself in, you know, multi variable calculus. How in the world is this kid getting all this content? Turns out one of the professors in the astronomy lab figured out a way to solve this. He gets a grant from the government for $700,000, figures out how to get this student some smart glasses, and they pull the interpreter out of the classroom, and then they do a live interpretation of the ASL and push it to these smart glasses. So now wherever the student's looking, they're getting both the professor, like, the audible, or I guess in this case the visual of the ASL and whatever the professor is pointing out. And I Thought it was unique and wondered why nobody had commercialized that, because that clearly needed to exist. But Corbin teaches is like, before you dive into something, you really need to do your homework. And so at the time, this was in 2015, something like that, you. You're able to get what's called an I Core grant. So it was about three or five thousand dollars to go and validate a concept. So I paid for a flight to San Antonio. I set up a booth at an edtech conference and pretended like the whole business was done. And then we were getting deposits like Dallas isd, ut, Austin, and these people just, like, couldn't believe what we'd come up with.
- [14:11]
A
And was that with a prototype or without?
- [14:15]
B
There was a prototype, but, like, there was no business. Yeah, there's no business. So I go back to Corbin and I say, hey, I think we're onto something. And he's like, okay, we'll see how much we get. Get this from BYU for it. And we offered him $10,000. And they took it. Right. And what I learned from that experience is a lot of these universities, the most valuable thing to them is to show that they're commercializing technology, not necessarily that they're making dollars from it. That's how they attract talent into their university is like showing, hey, we were commercializing this tech. And so they. They lower the bar for people like business, people like us to come in and. And commercialize the ideas. And then the other thing I learned is that technologists and professors, they have a cushy job and tenure, they're not going to go leave that to go start a business. And so they're willing to pass their technology off for somebody that specializes in business to go and make it happen. And, gosh, that's a gold mine. Like, some of my best deals have been from that. Nice hack. Yeah. Super fun.
- [15:26]
A
Cool, dude. So that's your first one.
- [15:29]
B
Yeah. So you start it.
- [15:31]
A
Are you the ground floor guy?
- [15:32]
B
What does it go about? So that one and several others I've started. And so at the same time, I'm looking at this duplex. So we put money into this duplex, and then my last 50 grand is this check into this business. And then Corbin put 50 grand in. And. And then what we did is we recruited a student from the entrepreneurship class that had some background in ASL that wanted an idea, and then we gave him an incentive plan to go and be the founder of that business and go and build it. And that was my first deal.
- [16:01]
A
That's amazing. Yeah, that's Amazing. Yeah. Can you share what that 50 grand turned into?
- [16:08]
B
Right now it's valued about 7.2 million. So it's amazing. So it's a good deal.
- [16:15]
A
It's awesome. First investment.
- [16:17]
B
Yeah, that's not how it works usually, guys.
- [16:20]
A
Yeah, first investment into venture buys duplex at the same time. And you're still doing door to door.
- [16:30]
B
Yeah, at the time I was still doing door to door.
- [16:31]
A
And then how does, how does this begin to go from. I'm doing door to door. I'm probably spending the majority of my time into that, into. Man, this venture thing was sick. Yeah, I see a lot of Runway here. How do I dip more into that?
- [16:47]
B
So it came down to statistics for me. I, I understood that when investing into venture capital, there's, there's a failure rate and I wanted to have 30 chances at bat rather than just one or one or two. And, and selling door to door allowed me to get a lot of cash quickly and deploy it. And, and I think speaking of risk, the riskiest thing you can do is if you're young and you're making money to not take risk. Like, that's, you know, you're missing out on massive opportunity if you're not doing that. And so I recognized that quickly. I'm like, gosh, if I was able to do this with 50 grand, how many more times can I do this? And So I did 26 more of them. And out of those 27 total deals, we had four that were just massive returners. And, and that's all we need.
- [17:46]
A
Beautiful. So that transpired over what time frame?
- [17:49]
B
Since 2015 until last year. And that's, that's when I got into what I'm doing now. Of course, eventually I graduated in engineering due to a promise I made to my mother in law, which was a costly promise.
- [18:03]
A
Man of his word.
- [18:05]
B
It was a very costly promise, but I'm glad I did it. And then, and then there was a bit of a correction in venture capital, just similar to what you'd have in 2008 in real estate. And it's like, this is the best opportunity ever. One of my mentors is John Pennington, who some of you guys might know his son, Bridger Pennington, but he started a fund called Bridge Investments that manages close to $50 billion. Now he started his fund like just right before 2008. And then when that happened, all his friends called him, like, dude, that sucks. You're in real estate. Like you're getting hammered right now. And John's like, are you kidding me? It's the best time ever to be in real estate because everything is on sale. And then those very same people that called him to make fun of him ended up being as investors, and he took that from like maybe 5 million under management to 20 years later, you know, 50 billion under management. And so we see a similar trajectory happening here for venture capital capital for us.
- [19:06]
A
Tell us a little bit about that. Why is that?
- [19:09]
B
Why do I see that trajectory?
- [19:10]
A
And when. When, when are you seeing that?
- [19:13]
B
So it's. I think the next 10 years of venture capital in Utah is going to be incredible. Yes. Valuations came back down to reality, and that needed to happen, because now benefit for this is a benefit for everybody. It's even the benefit for the founders, too, because founders were raising money at, you know, $700 million valuations. And then, you know, in order to keep up with that trajectory, they had to, like, double, triple, you know, quadruple revenues, and they weren't doing it in a sustainable manner. Now it's gotten back to, okay, let's grow at a healthy rate. But, I mean, you look at all the signs of, you know, a burgeoning economy. Like, we have that here in Utah. Like, people that have done sales, done. Gone on a mission, you have. You have an ability to face rejection and to get up when you get knocked down better than anybody in the world. You look at any place on the planet. There's not a place where you have so many people that have served a mission that's really hard. And a sales culture like we have here, that's. That's spectacular. And then on top of that, this, the. The people that are willing to serve and give back. You have Ryan Smith, Todd Peterson, Larry H. Miller's family, all these people that just want to build the economy. That's special. We're making a big bet on that. So we're investing 50 new companies in Utah.
- [20:40]
A
50?
- [20:41]
B
Yeah, over the next three years. And we think we'll get the next Qualtrics or Vivint or Divi. We'll get a couple of them.
- [20:49]
A
It's amazing. So cool.
- [20:51]
B
Cool.
- [20:51]
A
I love it, man. So you invest in 27 companies over what time period?
- [20:57]
B
So since 2015.
- [20:58]
A
Okay. And what, nine years later, what would your return on those 27 be?
- [21:04]
B
So if. If somebody invested a hundred thousand dollars with me in 2015, we would have returned $467,000 to them and then have 2.6 million in value.
- [21:15]
A
It's amazing.
- [21:16]
B
Yeah, that's.
- [21:16]
A
That's unbelievable. So I'm young, I'm Willing to take risks. I have money. Why? Why venture? Yeah, why should I invest in venture?
- [21:30]
B
So when you invest, it's all about investing in buckets, right. So it's important that you're, you have a portfolio approach. And so I like to have some of my money in liquid assets. So, so stocks, bonds, and then the majority I have in venture capital and real estate. And you decide with whoever your investment advisor is, like how much risk you want to take the younger you are. Those bottom two, like real estate and venture capital categories should be much, much bigger. My argument is until recently it's been really hard for everyday people to invest in venture capital. And the myth was you had to be 100 millionaire to invest venture capital. But what happened is 10 years ago could even be closer to 15 years ago. There's a big shift where companies started staying private for much, much longer. Meaning you couldn't invest in to Uber until like the majority of the growth had already happened. Generally in the past, companies would go public at you know, $200 million or $500 million and then you could buy what was called a small, small cap stock as a normal investor through your local brokerage. And that doesn't really exist anymore. And so now you're looking at waiting until those businesses have like literally squeezed all the growth out and then all those founders, all those early investors take all their profits off and then, and then you get to buy it. That's not going to set you up for a lot of success. So what was a successful investment strategy 15 years ago will not work anymore because like the small cap stocks that could have gone from 200 million to you know, a billion to 1.5 billion don't exist anymore. And if you're not in the private markets in vc, you're missing all of those gains like you just are. So you only get to wait until all of the money's been made and then you can just make the steady, you know, returns after that.
- [23:29]
A
So, so very cool, very cool. And then so the way that you guys are set up, all inventures is your company correct. You kind of have your fun set up in a way where you put money and then you diversify it for. Because the name of game to venture is have multiple at bats rather than these young kids going to their buddy and saying hey, let me invest in your company and most likely losing it all. Tell us a little bit about all in and kind of what your guys trajectory is, what, what the vision is and, and where you guys are currently.
- [24:01]
B
Yeah, so the vision is is happening right now. So we've, we've invested in 10 of the 50 deals so far. And why we chose 50 is it's goes back to my statistical and numbers background. It's if you put $100 into every pre seed startup business since 1983, you would average a 22% return. Now what's interesting is why is that? Right? Well, the entrepreneurs, people building businesses, that's the lifeblood of our economy. And so it's going to be the most productive asset class because we're the ones creating all the value, like employing all the people. And so taking a step back, if you could potentially, if you could do that, right, $100 into every single one of those, that would be average of 22% return. Well, that's impossible. So if you go back to this, to the stats, if you just did 50, you're pretty much a 95% correlation to that. And so that's why we chose 50 businesses, because you're protected on the downside, because we're doing so many businesses, but the upside is still extraordinary. So that, that's kind of like the base strategy of the fundamental. Then on top of that we have proprietary deal flow from our incubator called iHub which is collecting all this talent from BYU, UVU and the surrounding areas and Sandbox. And all those businesses have access to validation capital like what we talked about earlier, where you get a check for 50 grand to go test the idea to see if it works. And if it works, then you come back to us and we'll decide if we want to fund you. On top of that, each one of these founders has a dedicated or two dedicated mentors. And the data shows that if a founder has a qualified mentor, they have a 70% better chance of success than if they didn't have that. So if we're looking at the last 10 years, nine years of my investment career, I didn't have any of that. Now I've got iHub plus all these mentors that have access to free legal and free accounting and this community of 40,000 square feet. We just threw an event last week with Steve Young. We had 700 people there, net worth of collectively probably $50 billion. The energy there was extraordinary. We're building something that's going to change our community forever. And the support that we had from the community was phenomenal. And these are people that have already made their money, right? They just want to give back and they realize they suck very quickly. You saw people come in like, hey, what is iHub, what is this? And, like, pretty soon, 20 minutes in, they're like, what. How do I get involved? How do I mentor? How do I get some money into this? How do I back these people? We. We came away from that without even pitching several million dollars of investment. And. And then people that wanted. A guy that managed $280 billion wants to mentor me. Like, why in the world would he mentor me? It's. It goes back to this community I'm talking about. Everybody here wants to give back to the community special and make it happen. And so. So it's really special. We're really grateful and feel like the timing is great.
- [27:34]
A
It's awesome, man. Utah's incredible. So if I'm understanding correctly, what sets you apart is you have the iHub, the assets, but then you also have. I don't know if this is common, but you also have the concept of validation, which you would never invest in a company that doesn't go through that process. Is that normal for. Would you say, nationwide? Most venture capitalist firms are doing the exact same thing, or is that pretty niche to this market?
- [28:06]
B
Well, so.
- [28:08]
A
Because you're at.
- [28:09]
B
We're pretty way better. Yeah. So we've done well with that. And I think that it is the way that we approach validation, the stage that we're at, I think that we're very unique. Normally, when investors are investing at the stage that we invest, there's very little validation that happens. And because some people in venture capital have this, like, feeling of, oh, I. I have the magic touch, like, I just. I can pick winners. I think that we have a little bit of that, but that's not. We don't rely on that. That's. That's silly to me. We. We've taken the approach of, let's assume that nobody can choose a winner, and let's go off of the data. Then on top of that, let's layer our unique abilities and our. And our unique insights to. To increase our odds. That's kind of the way that we look at things, and I think that's led to a lot of our success.
- [28:58]
A
Very cool. Very cool. Well, dude, you're the man. This is fun. I love. I love hearing about your business and the vision, and it's cool. Once again, it's cool being in this community, and it's cool to see you so involved in it. For those that are young, entrepreneurial, they want to create wealth, they want to go crush, and they want to go start a business, a unique business. Walk. Walk them through what advice you would give them. I know the mantras. Fail, fail fast, fail cheap.
- [29:30]
B
Yeah.
- [29:31]
A
How would they go out and do that?
- [29:34]
B
Well, it's important to find a mentor in a community. And so I think the first thing, if you're around here, I would find a way to get into iHub and apply to be a business in iHub. And then they'll give you all the tools that you need. But if you have a little cash and the time, I would go and just try to sell it to people. You can return their money, you know, take a deposit and just return it back to them. You don't know that you're onto something until you're able to sell it. And unfortunately, if you go to your mom or your dad or your cousin or whatever, they're just going to tell you what you want to hear. So.
- [30:12]
A
Yeah, the market doesn't lie.
- [30:13]
B
Yeah, market doesn't lie.
- [30:15]
A
That's cool, man. Well, dude, thank you so much. For people that want to reach out, I highly recommend learning more about all Adventures. Checking out iHub. Where do they go?
- [30:27]
B
They can find me on my Instagram. Probably just slide into the DMS and then I can share my number with with you after.
- [30:36]
A
What's your username?
- [30:37]
B
It's Thomas J. Wilkinson. Thomas J. Wilkinson.
- [30:40]
A
Give him a follow, guys. He's crushing. Thanks so much for being on today.
- [30:43]
B
Appreh having me and you inspire me, man. Appreciate it.
- [30:46]
A
I love you, bro. See you guys next week.
- [30:48]
B
Thanks.