Mike Townsend: Thisinterview is with Sean Sanders, the founder and CEO of Revix. Revix allows youto invest in a bundle of Crypto cryptocurrencies to make it easier to investsmall amounts into bundles. So they're creating these bundles. We talked aboutwhy he's starting this business, and what he sees in it. It's a beautifuldesign and it's a great concept. Sean is based down in Cape Town, South Africawith offices in the UK, we talked about the future trajectory of Cape Town andSouth Africa more broadly the potential to improve the country, to make it amore economically developed and prosperous nation. We talked about generallythe concept of bundling and the trajectory of Crypto and its integration withtraditional finance.

Fascinating conversation and I hope you enjoy here is SeanSanders.

Mike Townsend: Allright, Sean, I am excited to chat with you. I was doing a little bit ofhomework on your background and similar to me, you started a bunch of differentcompanies involved in different things over the years. Let's just start withwhere you are. So with Revix, how do you define the ambition of the project andwhere you would like to take things?

Sean Sanders: Hey,Mike, thanks very much for having me on the podcast. So where Revix is rightnow we are in the Crypto space and we offer essentially cryptocurrency bundles.So if you want to get diversified exposure to the Crypto space, very much likebuying into say the S and P 500, but in the Crypto Crypto world, we've got abunch of bundles that can help you do that.

So it feels very much like index investing and it's just anice, easy way to get diversified exposure to the Crypto space. If we lookforward, we are looking at introducing other alternative investments. Onto theRevix platform, this is where you can be investing in say, venture capital realestate, private equity, or collectibles. So those are coming onto the platformas well as thematic and sustainability-focused investments. So if you'rewanting to invest and let's say AI, Medical cannabis, biotech, 5g technology,perhaps even, you know, something like space exploration, and you're kind ofscratching your head going well, how do I invest in these areas? Well, we'rejust gonna make it easy for you to get exposure to those different categories.So we kind of putting Crypto into the alternatives bucket. And ultimately Revixbecomes almost sort of an arc-like investing platform. Like Kathy wood, Isuppose, has successfully built arc investments and we sort of want to befocusing on sort of more of a platform play of what she's built with a granderfuture sort of ambition of going into the goals-based investing arena. So wewant our customers to be very outcomes focused to say, Hey, listen, I want tobuy a home or I want to go on a dream vacation and I wanna be able to use theinvestments that are on the rev platform and that'll include savings productsand a whole bunch of other things so that I can actually achieve these goalsand then reward customers along this journey. So that's our long-term visionand ambition. We want to become the world's leading goals-based investmentplatform and there are a couple of big milestones that we want to tick offalong the way.

Mike Townsend:Interesting. So, the two themes here are like the bundlelization of investmentsand then goals, goals strike me as more unusual or just counterintuitive on whythat would be something you'd focus on. Is that something you realize peoplecalibrate their investments towards? Are that goals as opposed to justaccumulating wealth more important to some people?

Sean Sanders: Yeah,so it's interesting, right? A lot of retail investors in particular, arelooking at building wealth, right? They want to have a certain amount ofwealth, but they wanna then use their wealth to either buy a home, buy a car,buy a watch, or do something with it.

Maybe have a rainy-day fund or you have a, I don’t know, sortof education fund or something along those lines. But if you land up, we'vebeen picking this up with some of our user studies so far, if you land up sortof focusing on a particular goal, all of a sudden, your sort of relationshipwith risk. It completely changes.

You're not as risky with the investments that you take, atleast from what we've seen so far, if you know that this money has to be readyin say six- or 12-months’ time. So, we are looking at bringing that onto theplatform with exciting investments, right? So, if you can actually take, let'ssay Bitcoin and I don't know, maybe a thematic ETF and put those two into sayyour own Boulder bundle product. That happens to be the goal that you'reworking towards. All you've really done is you put the outcome of what you'reworking towards front and center, rather than just, Hey, I want to make somemoney through a limit order. I want to achieve something and I'm going to usethese two products that I could potentially trade out in order to, to actuallyachieve that.

Mike Townsend: Do yoususpect that this is more motivating psychologically to people because theyhave a real-world dopamine release associated with the accumulation of wealth,as opposed to, digital numbers somewhere, they think, oh, I'm going to besitting on the beach once I make $1,500 in this investment. Is that what yoususpect is going on? Why it's more motivating for human beings?

Sean Sanders: Yeah, Ithink that's exactly why I think people are outcomes focused. I think people dowant to have goals and financial goals are important. And if you put thosefront and center, all of a sudden.

Hey, I need to achieve this. I need to contribute a set amountof money every single month. So you've got more money coming on the platform.That's better for both the user and naturally for Revix. It also means thatcustomer's taking sort of their risk profile into account. For a rainy dayfund, you don't wanna be investing in say Bitcoin or any other sort of high,risky product.

You'd rather have a savings fund for that. If you're going intosomething that's a lot more sort of discretionary in. Then all of a sudden,maybe having discretionary investments, such as Bitcoin there can be to youradvantage. So it's not to say we are not taking a total portfolio view.

This is not getting into the finance world really, but youessentially saying, Hey, listen, think about the outcome here. And we do thinkas well because a big element of what we're looking at building and integratingis this gamification component. And if you can find out what people are workingtowards, you can sort of gently nudge.

To become better investors over time. And our sort of missionat Revix is to enable everyday people to become their wealth managers and tomanage their own money. And I think that's very much aligned with sort of thatCrypto mantra. And I think, you know, if you deal with independent financialadvisors or just wealth managers in general, I mean the value that they addrelative to the fees that they take, it's not always there and I think that'sreally the big narrative that we are playing.

Mike Townsend: Yeah.Yeah. I think I heard the stat that if you, I think Warren buffet made amillion dollar bet one time famously saying that “If you could pick and if youcould manage a bundle of stocks that outperform the market, I'll give you amillion dollars.” I forget the name of the guy who took 'em up on it, but hecouldn't Do it. How do you orchestrate or what is the architecture of theinvestment bundles? Is it like you show a list of Crypto companies that you'veidentified as being correlated in some way, and then people can just choose topurchase on your platform and then you'd hold custody, or are there differentcustody options and technical ways that it can work?

Sean Sanders: Yeah. So,I guess, because we sort of target newer earlier stage investors, if I can callit that. So not somebody that is going to be self-custody. So, if somebodycomes to Revix right now and you wanna buy, let's say our top 10 bundle, whichis our flagship product, you're getting equally weighted exposure to the top 10largest Cryptocurrencies. That bundle then will be rebalanced every singlemonth and that'll be a completely automated process. So, it's very similar tosort of just buying the S and P 500, but in the Crypto space now what weactually do in the background is we have a process called direct indexing. Sonow there's if you get into my background I come from. I guess the startupspace, but I also was working in investment banking for a while and I workedfor a family office in the UK very long story short, but that family officewanted to deploy a lot of money into an index fund. But they had already a bigposition and in one of the companies that were already in that index fund, socredit SWS essentially spoke to us and said, Hey guys we can build this indexfor you where you'll actually own the underlying stocks within that index in theirrequisite proportions.

So we were like, wow, this is a great idea. Let's go ahead anddo this. And they used essentially their in-house technology, which was knownas direct indexing to build this index for us. Now that was a deployment of acouple hundred million dollars. Everyday people can't go and buy fractions ofall these different shares on the market.

Right. So if you're looking at investing, say $50, well, how doyou get exposure to say 10 different stocks? You'd have to have fractionalizedownership of each of those stocks. I think in the U.S., I mean, that market isthe most developed. You kind of spoiled for choice, I suppose, with platformsand also fractionalized access to a lot of stocks.

If you're looking at other markets, I mean, fractionization isalmost nowhere. In South Africa, which is where I'm from, and you can hear myaccent you know, fractionization of shares literally, it's just started. Veryfew platforms are able to offer it and there's just not a big market for thatjust yet.

So, our direct indexing approach is ultimately looking atfractionalizing shares. So that's the first problem that you're looking tosolve and then give customers direct access to each of the underlying eithershares or Crypto cryptocurrencies within a particular bundle. So, you actuallyremove the requirement to have a fund that's that sort of fund vehicle whenbuying a basket of any sort asset.

Mike Townsend: Would youthink of them closer to an ETF? Like, I think of an exchange shaded fund as analgorithmically determined group of stocks or equities, maybe Crypto is inthere as well, but there's some, correlation between what they have together.So, you purchase that, but there's no fund manager. There's no human being,making those choices.

Sean Sanders: That'sexactly it. So, I think the difference really between a direct indexingapproach where you actually buy the underlying and an ETF is that you get alittle bit of tracking risk depending on the ETF, but you get a little bit oftracking risk when you buy into an ETF, which means that the ETF may not moveexactly the same as the underlying assets.

The other thing is an ETF. We'll generally rebalance saysemi-annually or maybe annually, which means that you could be holding assetsthat have been, I don't know, they've either depreciated significantly orappreciated in value significantly. Maybe you wanna either, to sell out of aloser or take profits on a winner and you are currently at the mercy of thatfund structure now with the bundle, and this is ultimately what we are workingtoward. It feeds into sort of that goal structure where you can build your owngoal. Is that all of a sudden that you can configure exactly which assets arein the bundle at which point in time? So, you sort of have access to an ETF-likeproduct, but you've got, just got more control over how it all works.

Mike Townsend: Doesthat not defeat the point of the ETF? I think of it like, if you can go andpick and choose your own, is that the same as, how would that be different thanif I were to just go and buy Bitcoin or buy Ethereum or buy any other Crypto?

Sean Sanders: I thinka big difference is that it's just the efficiency, right? So, you can go andbuy each of the S and P 500 stocks. If you went to a fractionization platform whereyou can buy every single one of them. Right? Then rebalance them every quarteror every single time. But, it is a bit of admin, right?

So, if you're looking at some of, the thematic ETFs, right,you've got 70 basis points a year. So, all 0.7% a year in management fees maybethat comes down a little bit. It's 50 basis points a year, all 0.5%. That'sstill a pretty hefty fee that you're paying on an annualized basis. So, with adirect indexing approach, there's no requirement for that expense ratio, thatfund fee. You can essentially keep that in your pocket.

Mike Townsend:Interesting. And so, yeah, say $50 for practically speaking. If you wanted togo buy an equal waiting of the top 10 cryptos out there, and you had $50 tospend, it's pretty hard to do that because, number one, it takes a lot of time,you'd have to go and make all those trades and then you have, the trading feesfrom each of those, and then you have to manage them all together. How are youmanaging this on the back end is it just you, you have a lot of Crypto you'repurchasing and then you keep your Database up to date with the allocation ofownership or how is that structured?

Sean Sanders: So,it'll depend on, I guess, the size of the customer. I mean, at times you'llhave a customer that's a couple of million dollars that want to be executed andyou know that customer's gonna be treated very differently. We'll segregatetheir account. So, I guess when you're looking at Crypto custody in generalyou've got segregated accounts versus omnibus accounts.

So, you know, we custody with fire blocks. We custody actuallywith a few different providers, but when we look at custody, I mean, you getyour wallet as a customer at Revix and you can make deposits to that wallet andyou can obviously make various trades, but in the backend system, I mean, weultimately are sort of collating everything. So, everything gets sort of commingledtogether and then assets are sort of balanced off on that, through that.

Mike Townsend: If you'restarting a Crypto company or a company that wants to offer some value, add ontop of the basics, what is the custody market look like when you're going outthere?

Custody's a huge deal in Crypto and just the allocation of theCrypto underneath the hood, like Celsius, I'm sure had to have a ripple effect onyour business and just the whole market in general, as they froze, likebillions of people's, you know, equivalent dollars in Crypto, like a lot is it,yeah.

How do you sort of describe what the landscape looks like andhow it is today? Where it's going? What are your thoughts on custody?

Sean Sanders: Yeah,the custody space has grown so much. I mean, I think back four years ago, sixyears ago, and I mean, custody was expensive. I mean, you're looking athundreds of basis points a year. I think at one point in time when we firstlooked at BitGo and I mean, this must have been six years ago. It was almost450 basis points a year. So, 4.5% to custody assets on an annualized basis andthere were no insurance options, no real insurance options. Since then you'vehad copper.io.  They've emerged. You'vehad Fireblocks. You've had, you know, bit pandas, recently, acquirer player. Thereare a lot of custody partners. But some of the bigger players, the likes of Fireblocks,I mean, they've established themselves. They've built a really good serviceoffer. Fireblocks interestingly is a lot more of a SAAS play. So, they providethe infrastructure so that you can custody of cryptocurrency. At the end of theday, they are not a custodian. Copper on the other hand is a custodian, Bitgois a custodian.

So, there's an interesting sort of play there. But I think thespace has certainly matured. I mean, you can get insurance now at a reasonablecost. I think this market will become far more efficient prices will end upgoing down. So, the infrastructure's growing tremendously, and we got shown acouple of sort of neat integrations with Fireblocks recently with, you know,various trading providers. I mean, the technologies are just at the verge ofwhat you're getting in tradfi, right? I mean, traditional finance and, you know,algorithmic trading and all the rest, they rely on milliseconds for anything tohappen and you're kind of seeing that now in the Crypto space. So, it'sfantastic to see how far it's come. It's only a matter of time where, you know,get that same sort of level.

I mean, the fact that this has happened over four to six years,it's remarkable. It's honestly the rate of development in the custody space issomething, you know, I've never seen something like that before.

Mike Townsend: Is itspecifically the pricing decrease that's exciting or is there is somethingelse?

Sean Sanders: I thinkit's the functionality, to be honest with you. It's the fact that back fouryears ago you had very few platforms. We're able to the custody of the top 10cryptocurrencies. It was sort of really select and you'd have to sort of addcryptocurrencies every quarter.

Now it's sort of, you know, top 150, 200 Cryptocurrencies. It'sthe integrations with chain analysis or elliptic or some of them, the analyticstools that exist out there as well. I mean the space is, it's just crazy howfast the developments are.

Mike Townsend: That'sexciting. So, you guys have raised money. Can you talk about why you raised?when you raised? how much you raised? A little bit of that story.

Sean Sanders: Yeah.Sure. So, in total, we've raised $7 million. We've raised that in two rounds.We did our initial round a couple of years ago. We did that with theJohannesburg Stock Exchange-listed specialty investment group called Sabvest.They predominantly invested in industrial businesses and then somehow, we, Idon't know, came out on their good side. They decided to invest in us andthey've backed us from the start. Since then, we've raised from a Swiss-basedVC called CVC, a whole bunch of angel investors.

And I mean, for us, you know, software development's expensive,we are building a platform that would be comparable in many ways to the lacksof Coinbase, focusing in a very different area. Of course, a different sort ofinvestor comes along to us versus a Coinbase. But I mean, that's what we areaiming to build. Right? We wanna be profitable by this time next. So, you know,ideally late 20, 23 we wanna be able to say, “Hey guys, we are profitable”.It's not necessarily just burning money at all costs forever and I think forus, we have 46 employees most of which are based in Cape Town, South Africa, andsome are based in the UK, for us, it's an opportunity now to expandinternationally. We've been heavily focused on the South African market. We didonce upon a time operate in Europe and the UK, we decided to sort of doubledown and establish ourselves as one of the leading players in South Africa,which we've done now. The UAE is sort of the next opportunity for us, to moveinto. So that's, that's what we are doing now. The UAE is next. That it's next.

Mike Townsend: Talkto me a little bit about South Africa. Like, I understand it's a unique marketin the sense that there's like a huge consolidation of economic activity aroundCape town. What are the other unique factors of operating in South Africa? Likefrom a regulatory standpoint or demographic standpoint, whatever else comes to.

Sean Sanders: So, Ithink this is the thing that, you know, a lot of my American friends andBritish friends as well, they're kind of just like, what did you just reallysay that?

So firstly, we have the Rand as a local currency, so you'll seethe ticker ZAR or Z, I guess, in the U.S. and The Rand is a cryptocurrency.Quite honestly, it is super volatile, right? I mean, to give you context, likeit is not odd to see a 4% move over a week. It is not odd to see a 6% move. Likethat's just the nature of the beast. There's an investment strategy in SouthAfrica and it's the same. I've worked in Turkey. I've worked quite a lot in theSouth American markets as well. Like the local currencies, they depreciateright? Every year relative to the dollar. I mean, maybe one year they pop up alittle bit, but there's structural depreciation. There's higher inflation,which means that there's that structural depreciation taking place. So, peopleare kind of used to volatility, right? Our average inflation rate over the lastdecade has been 5% which is where it's at. You've got a very different sort ofmarket dynamic because of that.

I mean if you, if you sort of look at Bitcoin as an example, oryou look at stablecoins, all of a sudden, my word, you can enter a dollar-basedasset, a stablecoin, and you're now not exposed to this volatile currency.Which has a huge impact on the economy from I guess, unknown pricing, right?

You're having to enter sort of futures, contracts for oil thatyou're importing, and a whole bunch of other goods. So, there are a lot of risksthat are sort of baked into the market. I think that's the first thing that'sinteresting to note. So firstly, you've got an entire, and this isn't justreally South Africa. This is the entire African continent and pretty much everyother emerging market with maybe the exception of China where you've got alocal currency that is just volatile where you want to be in another asset andyou would crave to be in us dollars. Now there's a limitation. South Africa isone of the few countries in the world that has this very sort of system inplace.

But we have foreign exchange controls, which means that every SouthAfrican that is individual can only move a million Rand out of South Africa. Sothat's about 63 odd thousand dollars on an annualized basis. If you wanna movemore money outta South Africa then. You would have to apply to the SouthAfrican reserve bank to send that money and that's a tedious process. It takesmonths to get that done. Now you bring about Crypto and all of a sudden, well,moving money out of South Africa is easy. So that's been one area and I thinkyou saw that in China, actually quite a lot as well. In Nigeria, certainly alot over the last few years, but that's one big sort of development where youhave seen a lot of people and billions of dollars move into the Crypto space.So, people can move there. Out of South Africa. I think another quiteinteresting thing is that the Crypto market in South Africa, I mean, it's a bigmarket.

Certainly not comparable say to the U.S., but in the Africanmarket, it's definitely one of the top two or three across the continent and 60million people, million people. Yeah. It's a lot, it's a lot of people. I mean,knowing near sort of the spending power that you would have in the. But, Imean, nevertheless, a lot of people that also are sort of just cravinginvestments that aren't Rand-based. So, they want dollar-based investments andCrypto is viewed like that, but that results and this is sort of looking at theexchange controls that are there. This results in cryptocurrencies, having anaverage price premium of about one and a half to 2% at all times. So, if youhad to move any cryptocurrency into South Africa, and let's say you bought thison Coinbase, or you bought this on some international exchange, you'd be ableto sell it at a 2% premium or a 1.5% premium depending on the market at anypoint in time. So that's led to this huge growth of an arbitrage industry inSouth Africa where there are companies making a fair amount of money, literallyon behalf of various citizens, moving money outta South Africa, and then justmoving it back in to buy Bitcoin and, and essentially selling on localexchanges.

So, yeah, super interesting dynamics taking place, in aninteresting market.

Mike Townsend: Interesting.I would imagine that the purpose of the government regulations on the limit ofpeople moving money outta the country is, what is it deflationary concern orwhat, what do you think the motivation with the regulation is? Is this short-term,like a gap in the market that's gonna be closed up? Or how do you sort of paintthe picture of what's going on?

Sean Sanders: Oh, no.We actively engaging with the regulators and there's definitely no way I thinkit's being closed up. It's to prevent capital from leaving the country. Ultimatelywhen you go through periods, some surprise, or some big shock in the economy.The first thing people do is flee, right? I mean, during the start of COVID, Imean, the Rand is currently around about 15.8 to the dollar at the start ofCOVID they went up to 19 and at that point in time, It's just like sort of whenpeople are panic selling out of a cryptocurrency, right? People are panicselling out of the Rand. They just want to buy dollars. At that point in time,I think the reserve bank ready battles to maintain any sort of peg. You’ve seenthis in Turkey, you've seen it in Peru, you've seen it in Argentina. I mean,currencies, just go through that hyperinflationary period. There's massdepreciation, and I think the reserve bank is just desperate. They wants toavoid that. So that's why exchange controls are there ready.

Mike Townsend: Whatdo you think of that? Is that a useful tactic? Is that outdated and like an antiquatedtactic? Is there a better tactic to, I mean, I would imagine you'd agree with,tell me what you think should be done? If there are gaping opportunities, thatthe fed is not over or the central bank is not looking at.

Sean Sanders: On myword. It is so archaic and it is the worst thing that could ever have beenimplemented. It makes doing business in South Africa terrible. I mean, we are aUK-based company, so it's easy for us to get an international investment, butyou can imagine now you're a U.S. investor. Let's just say Revix was a southAfrican company you wanted to invest in Revix, cool. That's easy to bring moneyinto South Africa. No problem. Now all of a sudden, we wanna pay. But no,that's gonna take three to six months because we have to do applications withthe reserve bank simply because of some rule that was put in place.

So, I mean, there's been so many battles where you've hadeither just very wealthy individuals take the constitutional court essentiallychallenge the constitutional and the constitutional court around this sort ofexchange control regime that's in place and no one's been able to win just yet.

So in this business, it's incredibly frustrating to workaround. But it is sort of one of the rules in the game at the moment, at least whenyou're dealing with the South African market. I think that's a nuance that youactually see across the African continent. Nigeria's very similar. If I'm notmistaken China's got a, I don't wanna lie. I think it's about a $40,000 a yearlimit. So, it's actually lower than South Africa in terms of the amount ofmoney that you can take offshore without applying to, the central bank overthere.

Mike Townsend: Do youthink South Africa would be better off if they completely eliminated that rule?

Sean Sanders: Withouta doubt. Yeah. Without a doubt.

Mike Townsend: Yeah.It doesn't really protect them from people fleeing that they're is there anypositive externality? I mean, I would imagine if people literally can't taketheir money elsewhere, then it would limit panic selling or fleeing of thecountry. Is that in any way a good thing?

Sean Sanders: I mean,potentially, I suppose, I guess if you don't have say the balance sheet as thecentral bank to actually be able to defend the currency when you enter marketstress like that, perhaps I think that could be a good time, but at the sametime, I mean, it impedes a lot of foreign direct investment and that's what youreally need in emerging markets, right? to create jobs. So, I personally thinkthere's, it's far more negative than. Yeah.

Mike Townsend: Imean, it's hard to see otherwise, but who knows, whoever put that in place,maybe they're wiser than we are. Do you think that there is currently a limiton Bitcoin purchasing? Like, can you go and purchase a million dollars worth ofBitcoin in South Africa? and while you technically haven't moved it outside thecountry, you own it? And you know, Crypto is universal. It's not tied down toany country specifically. So, are people getting around this rule effectivelyusing Crypto?

Sean Sanders: Theydefinitely are. Yeah. Up until this point in time, they have been the southAfrican reserve bank though has spoken to us about, and not just Revix, butalso the south African Crypto industry about implementing some sort of anexchange control structure.

That would mean that if somebody made a deposit to a Cryptoplatform and bought a cryptocurrency, that could be deemed exploitation ofcapital. So that would be essentially like sending money to somebody in the U.S.Whether or not, that gets implemented as an actual law. That's something weneed, to wait and see, but that is something that's been floated about.

So, I guess over the next six to 12 months, we'll see whetheror not that gets implemented. We've been on the side to say, Hey, listen, ifyou do that, you're going to really impede innovation and growth within thecountry. It's, it's a complicated subject because we live in a world whereyou've got physical borders, right?

And then in Crypto land and the digital world. Well, you know,if I, and this is sort of the conundrum that gets created here if I land upremembering a private key and I climb on a plane and I travel somewhere and Iland up, you know, using my Crypto from the private key, I mean, is thatexploitation of capsule? They can't answer that. The locality of Crypto isactually a fascinating subject to dive into, especially when you start lookingat how values moved around. It's the same as, you know, if you buy a luxurywatch and you put it on your wrist, you got on a plane, you, you leave SouthAfrica. Is that an expectation of that watch? Well, I mean, there's a wholebunch of sort of rules to determine whether or not it has been, but those ruleshaven't yet been written for Crypto. So, there's just a big gray area at themoment that needs to be addressed.

Mike Townsend: Yeah. Itseems to me that literally speaking, it's the location of the private key andthere can be multiple locations, you know, you can write it down and memorizeit, but then it's just, it, it literally is located in both places.

Whereas the optionality to be located, I guess once it, oncethe key is engaged, that's the actual definition of where it's being used fromwhich it seems like a, it seems like a pretty reasonable definition to me. ButI think it also would require the government to say, hey, we need to, this isit makes the desire to control the location of currency.

Like futile. So, I think, if you recognize that, that when youget on a plane and you memorize your, your passcode and you go somewhere, like,yeah, that Crypto is leaving the country for sure. But also, that's maybethat's okay. Maybe it's like a catalyst to say. Because the alternative seemsway worse.

I'm curious, how, how do you go about influencing governmentpolicy? I think it's interesting in South Africa, cuz it's a smaller place.Like maybe you can have more of an influence, you get together with otherfounders or other people in financing. Have you structure at any choreographedmessaging or any way that you find is most effective in getting the attentionof governing?

Sean Sanders: Yes, Ithink in South Africa, I mean, I've gotta actually applaud the regulators.They've spoken with us directly. I mean, I literally was on the call with themearlier this week. We've engaged with other industry players in South Africa. So,the major exchanges we've worked together on at least forming our positionsaround.

Okay. Well, these regulations that you propose that are good,these don't let's, you know, come to some sort of an understanding about howexactly we could build this. I mean, in South Africa, you've. Crazyunemployment. Right? You've literally got youth unemployment. That's about 55%.Wow. So that's people under the age of 26 people over the age of 26 is roughlyaround 36, 30 6% unemployment Countrywide.nI mean, people need jobs. Like youreally desperately need jobs in South Africa. But policy gets in the way, timeand time and time. Again, it doesn't matter if you're looking at sort of miningor if you're looking at, and I'm not talking Crypto mining, I'm talkingtraditional mining. It doesn't matter if you're looking at that or you'relooking at the Crypto industry.

Regulators are just so far behind. I guess, you know whatyou're seeing in Europe or what you're seeing in Switzerland, I suppose evensome states in the us. So like innovation doesn't happen. And that means thatyou've got a lot of brain drain that happens. A lot of people end up going to,to first all countries and then you land up also having just a lot of companiesthat just go, I'm not dealing with this.

There's just too much uncertainty. And that uncertainty means Ican't can raises capital. It means it's a hot operating environment to work inhow I'm going to Europe. I'm going to the U.S. and we've seen that happen justloads of times. But having said that, I mean, we are actively engaging with theregulator and they've been very forth.

Which is great to see. Yeah.

Mike Townsend: Do youfind that they generally recognize that is true, that the regulators that they'rea hindrance, not an enabler or is this still kind of a cloud of the illusionof, hey, we need these policies or there's some sort of political reason tokeep them in place for, for some odd reason.

Sean Sanders: It isvery much like; we are the regulators. We are here to protect people and that'sour job. It's like this nanny state. I've actually seen it far worse, Isuppose, in the UK where the regulators go fine. I mean, it's actually startingto happen, I suppose, more and more in the U.S. as well, but where theregulators will go as far as to say, like, listen, you cannot include, and thisis happening currently in South Africa, but you cannot include cryptocurrenciesin a retirement portfolio. That's like, Hey, listen, I'm a sophisticatedinvestor. Right? Like, I spent the first seven years of my working careerworking in finance, managing portfolios for people. Like, how can you tell menot to put a product that I'd like to put into my, my personal portfolio forretirement? So that's just one of the things that sort of coming out and in theUK, I mean, it's even stricter, right? There's no Crypto derivative trading.Whatsoever. So, the government literally put a complete ban on Crypto derivatives,which also means you completely hinder the innovation there because what youdo, if you are a Crypto minor and you positioned it in that region, whetheryou're staking and, you know, earning Crypto through that, or actually miningthe more traditional sort of way, you can't take out a short position and sortof hedge yourself.

So you move to a new jurisdiction. There's like silly thingsthat are happening at the moment where you kind of just scratch your head andgo like, but why, why have you implemented this?

Mike Townsend: Yeah,it's baffling to me. It's frankly like, It's funny because I'll have thisconversation with many different founders, and we kind of arrive at the sameconclusion, which is that there are just some policies that are put into placethat seem to benefit no one. I mean, genuinely, honestly looking at it, we're,it's almost a mystery. It's like, well, is the politician putting this inplace? For the perception of the mainstream person that they're doingsomething. And so, they can include that on the bullet point list of what theydid while they were in office.

Like, is that ultimately what it is? And then all thesophisticated folks who are in the space, working in the space andparticipating in the space know that this is kind of a stupid thing, butthere's like a lack of power that they have collectively or individually. To,you know, change ultimately, right?

It comes down to what most people think is true. And becausemost people participate in general elections and fi push the politiciansforward. And it, it still seems like such a struggle to find the right rules.Right. It's like, I, you would think that there'd be more recognition of like,okay, this country does it this way.

And it seems to be working like let's move in that direction. Itry to make sense of it. I don't know. I feel like I don't quite have a goodgrip on what the pathway is forward.

Sean Sanders: Yeah,no, and I completely agree with you. I think humans are terrible. I mean,taking a big step back, we're kind of terrible for defining what exactly wetrying to optimize for.

So, if we're trying to optimize for protecting a consumer, aretail investor, then cool implement protections. I mean, all I've seen withmost of the jurisdictions we've engaged with, I mean, we've been inSwitzerland, we've been in Germany. We've been in the. Obviously in SouthAfrica as well. Now more recently the middle east, the regulators care the mostabout money laundering and KYC and cool.

Like that's what you are obviously optimizing for. That'sfantastic. And there are now processes in place for most Crypto platforms, anyrepeatable platform where you'll have to KYC your customers and, you know, dotransaction monitoring and all the rest. But from there it just seems like everybodyseems to go in a different direct.

It's just absolutely fascinating to, to see regulators sort ofoverstepping their bonds. I think more often than not. And just regulating forthe sake of regulating, it was almost like the start of COVID I suppose, wherethere was just pressure to do something, right. Whether it got whether or notmasks actually were good.

I mean, I honestly don't know and frankly, I don't really care,but the thing is that like you had to implement policy and be seen to be doingsomething. So, it's like, hey, wear a mask, you have to wear a mask. That wassomething that was implemented across the UK, across South Africa. People didit.

And the politicians were seen as doing something. And even ifit wasn't like this massive box that ticked and saved millions of lives, ormaybe it did, I don't know. But just as that example, I think that's the samething in the Crypto space. It's like, we need regulations. Cool. What are youdoing? Okay.

You doing things? That's great. Like, no, one's losing theirjobs and it just seems like that's what people are doing. Yeah.

Mike Townsend: Yeah.Yeah, I totally agree. I almost wonder if there's ways that they can, you canlike give them something to do, but it's not actually created regulations. It'slike write up policies or write up, write up suggestions on what you see in themarket.

Or I don't know. It certainly feels like, a remix or some sortof systemic improvement is necessary, but maybe, maybe that's also fine too.Maybe it's like the ideal pathway is slow and it's grueling. And through thatgrueling process, is where you come to a happy balance. Like there's certainlya point for regulation.

There are different regulations required in different marketsbased on the conditions and demographics and challenges, opportunities there.And I could see, I could see absolutely mistakes happening by moving tooquickly, like opening the floodgates too fast. I don't know. I think at prosand cons, but certainly the extremes are where the, where people suffer.

So just opening up alittle bit more. Yeah. What are other things that you feel through your journeyyou've learned or feel strongly about managing Crypto you're you've integratedwith obviously the technology providers in the back end to manage the Cryptoyou market to the Crypto community. You deal with regulators in the twocountries who operate planning, planning the next area.

Do you feel like there are things where you're like, oh my God,this is something I explore or get out to the world, ways you spend your time?

Sean Sanders: Oh,every day, every day. Now I think I've come across maybe five or six businessideas over the last six or seven months where I'm like, ah, it would be so niceto be able to.

To kind of pursue that. One was in sort of the messaging spaceand the other was in sort of the fitness space and obviously, I mean, I'mfocused on Revix. Investors are backing me, and my team's backing me. So, youdon't deviate, but definitely, it's like a good itch. It's not an itch to likemove away from the project I'm working on.

But I think it's that sort of mindset of always wanting toexperiment and go down new paths and tinker with things. I also just loveworking with smart people and I often feel like just the dumbest guy in theroom at Revix, and that's sort of one of, I don't know, one of the things I'vesaid to a lot of investors about like, this is why this company's kick ass.

Like, I don't think I'm a dumb guy. But the people that I workwith are just super smart and we are going places and pretty much that's likethat's the sales pitcher right there. I think over the last few years, one ofthe biggest things that I've. Really, I suppose, sort of had to learn and it'sbeen an interesting sort of journey as well is just this gratitude,understanding, and self-awareness. I think being a founder, self-awareness islike the superpower that you have just about working in a team and justrealizing, Hey, listen, you can work 12 hours a day. You can work 18 hours aday every single day. That's nothing compared to getting three people to workreally intelligently. So, being grateful, making sure that, you know, you arevery expressive and gratuitous with your team, like, you know, thanking them forthe work that they do. But then also just making sure that they're going in theright direction. So, moving from being just a manager to actually being amanager of managers has been a big change in my career and something that, youknow, I've loved doing over the last several years now.

I mean, Revix is going on four years old. So that's sort ofbeen the biggest lesson and on the self-awareness side of things, I mean, thatto every part of life whether you're leading a team, whether you are in arelationship, whether you're going for a run, I think being able to eitherlisten to your body or listen to your mind and, really kind of just be aware ofwhat you are thinking. I think that's quite a superpower and it's something I'mtrying to hone in more on. Yeah.

Mike Townsend: Yeah.A lot of times myself included there's like a, you work on so many differentthings. Like I saw the list of things that you have listed on your LinkedIn islike 30 things long. Each one of those requires a lot of attention. So justmoving between those there's almost like the jet stream or like, a wave. Like thereare some after effects where you're still actually processing the last task. So,if you're moving from like this thing to this thing, to this thing, to thisthing, which founders have a tendency to do more so than people who arespecifically focused on Elaine, then your mind can get, it can get crazy.

Like you can just have so many things in your head that itbecomes difficult to make high-level decisions. And yeah. So being thoughtfulabout like what time of day is my, does my mind work best for long-termvisionary type exercises versus like finance versus like HR and managing andrecruiting and hiring people.

Sean Sanders: Yeah,exactly that. Yeah. I think the other interesting thing is, I mean, I'vedeveloped sort of an ADHD, even when I speak funny enough now I end up gettingsort of muddled up over my words because of like, thinking about differentthings. I dunno, if it’s my mouth that is not keeping up with my brain, butthere's just this weirdness about that.

It's actually been as well, sort of a superpower since startingRevix because you do and Mike, you've obviously experienced this many timesover and you know, the different businesses that you've started and, and workedon and all the rest, but you are working on one single project and all of asudden, 10 minutes later, you're working on something completely different. So,you could be dealing with somebody in HR, and then it's over to an interview andthen it's straight over to an Excel spreadsheet. Then it's over to theinvestment team, all in the space of 25 minutes. And, you know, sort of theability to jump between different projects becomes like your superpower forthat period of time. So, I do miss deep work as I'm sure, you know, to acertain extent you do and I think that's one of the things I wanna focus onimproving over the next.

Mike Townsend: Yeah,I saw you were the first person to send a voice message on WhatsApp. Is there astory behind that worth telling?

Sean Sanders: I dunnoif it's a story worth telling, but I'll definitely tell it.I mean, I don'tthink I was the first person ever, certainly the first person in South Africa. SoI landed up doing it sort of like a third-year dissertation at university onFacebook's marketing tactics. I got invited to sort of speak with the VP ofmarketing it's at Facebook at that point in time and it was just fantastic,like an awesome experience and I got completely carried away with whatInstagram actually only recently launched, cuz this was just around theacquisition of Instagram. I was talking about sort of how Instagram was goingto have this sales feature, where you would be able to essentially postsomething, whether it's the scoff that I'm wearing or whatever it may be and you'dbe able to link that to the site and then get a little referral every singletime somebody purchased it. I thought this was the cutest thing. Then it wentinto also, well now they've just acquired WhatsApp. Great. What is the sort ofmonetization strategy around that? Cuz WhatsApp wasn't monetized and it was theidea that Facebook could listen to what you were saying and therefore improveits marketing, right? Which it did early on. I kind of was like, well, youknow, I kind of, I am one of these contrarians where I do believe that gettingdata about you can be beneficial obviously. Handled in the right way.Definitely a controversial thing to say, when you say Facebook and data in thesame sentence. But I actually think more times than not, I look at whatever adsI'm served on say Instagram. I kind of like the stuff and I read a book called TheReputation Economy, which sort of supported that narrative and how brands inthe future and maybe this is happening now if they see that your brand. Andthey're able to maybe determine that from Facebook, they'll give you greaterdiscounts and a whole bunch of other things.

So, I started to lean into that a bit more, and then this voicenotes thing really started to become like a bigger part of what I was doing.So, I was like communicating with everyone by a voice note, rather than a call.And next second, like everyone, was just like, what is this weird guy doing?He's constantly sending us these weird voicemail things and like, Eating up ourdata and it's annoying and I did that for such a long time also because Iwanted to improve sort of my speech. I wanted to be a better orationindividual. I wanted to like to speak better. And that was like something elsethat I was focusing on at the same time, which was quite fascinating. So yeah,I guess long story short, I was doing that for ages and a lot of people gotannoyed with me and it became something I was known for.

Mike Townsend: Do youstill do that today?

Sean Sanders: I stillsend so many voice notes. No, it doesn't end.

Mike Townsend: Idon't love them. I have a, I have a mixed relationship with voice notes. Cause,they take up more time to listen to than they would if it was just text. So,they need a voice note with an optional transcription. Like they have 'emvoicemail.

Sean Sanders:Facebook. Are you listening?

Mike Townsend: Yeah.Yeah. Well, they probably are. Did they actually confirm that they would listento people's voice notes and transcribe what they're saying and use that formarketing?

Sean Sanders: No, Idon't think they confirmed that, but I'm pretty sure that they will did thatearly on.

Mike Townsend: Cuzthe CEO of WhatsApp, I mean he made a lot of billions of dollars when they soldand he was pretty like, f*ck Facebook mentality when he left, which is, I mean,he left billions of dollars on the table too. Cause I don't think it was fullyvested. So, I have to imagine, would they be doing inside of Facebook for himto have that kind of reaction and it's like, well, that would be one of themjust monitor everyone's communication and then put, put ads on top of theexperience. It's like it's brutal.

Sean Sanders: You canalso have encrypted messaging. Right. But I mean, Hey, listen, somebody's gottaprocess this voice communication at some point in time. Yeah. So, I mean, isthat encrypted the same way?

Is this a beta or alpha or some sort of a product launch? Do weneed, maybe have a world garden for that? So there are all these weird things.I mean, I'm on the show at some point in time they did that.

Mike Townsend: Yeah.But I don't think today it's monetized. I mean, I think it's just, a giant holein their balance sheet that they bought this thing and like, I'm not sure.

I, it doesn't seem like a good investment to me in hindsight.Whereas Instagram seems like a genius effect.

Sean Sanders: It'sjust that, to be honest with you and it might even be WhatsApp for business. Iactually don't know if they've monetized WhatsApp for business, but itpotentially could be some things down the line there.

Mike Townsend: Yeah.What do you think is the thing that helps South Africa pull out of the, I dunnoif you'd call it a slump or a continual economic challenge? Like we talkedabout regulation, are there other things, I mean, having a 36% or 50%unemployment rate you know, these things are massively existentially high risk.Like certainly when you throw in currency or some bad policies on regulatoryissues, Sri Lanka just comes to mind as a recent country that went throughabsolute chaos. How do you see the trajectory of South Africa? Are you, do yousee any central things that people should pay attention to for other peoplelistening to that may live in South Africa or be interested in it?

Sean Sanders: Yes. Ithink if you're looking for innovation, this is not the market where you'regonna see it. You just don't have forward thinkers or policymakers in the countrythat promote that. If you're looking for innovation, you'll go to many placesin the U.S. You'll go to. Obviously, Asia's a big player now as well, but no,unfortunately, I just don't think you're seeing that not in South Africa andit's sad to say that, but I think that is the honest truth, just where we are.If I'm also being honest, I think just around sort of south Africa's trajectoryover the last 15 to 20 years, you've really just had the slow puncture. And attimes it seemed like a foster puncture, but ultimately, you've just had theeconomy get slightly worse, slightly worse. You've had corruption, the scandalof corruption, scandal. I mean, there is such a big cleanup job required and asystemic cleanup job required. Not just with politicians, but also just withsort of government systems. And I mean, you're still, still dealing in manyareas with like book-based systems, like the most analog of analog systems thatcould never work in an efficient society. Unfortunately, we just have a lot ofthat. And you also have a population that doesn’t have a lot of money. I mean,another interesting fact is you have more people in South Africa and I'm nottoo sure how many other countries have those, but more people from a, just anumeric basis that are collecting grants from the government on a monthlybasis.

So, like a government pay grant than paying tax. Wow. Andexact, I dunno, the exact figures, but I think there are in South Africaprobably about eight and a half million taxpayers. And I think there are 13million people collecting grants. So. I mean, not just a small difference, it'sa huge, huge difference and it's that sort of a structure, which you go, well,that's not sustainable. You can't keep that. And what's ultimately happening.And I think this is the biggest problem and it needs to be addressed. This isprobably the first thing that needs to be addressed. But in order to addressthis, you have to address all the other issues as the brain drain that happensbecause just like, you know, I've spoken many a time about how many smartpeople are entering the Crypto.

From finance and from, you know, software development and allthe rest, you're just seeing the exact opposite in the south African realmwhere you've got loads of really smart people that are being educated here andbeing, or just going overseas and going to the likes of the U.S. and going toAustralia, Canada, and the UK.

So yeah, I think that's the one thing that you have to change.Yeah. And that's, that's the most important thing you can change.

Mike Townsend: Yeah,totally. I mean, if there's any singular goal it's like driven people creategreat economies. It's like at the end of the day, it's hard to debate withthat. Are the tax rates super high for people who do pay?

Sean Sanders: Theyare comparable to the United Kingdom. Yeah. So I think high for U.S. standards,definitely. If you're in the top tax bracket, you're looking at 45%. Yeah. Ifyou are in sort of a bottom tax bracket, you're at 18 odd percent.

Mike Townsend: Wow.Yeah. That's still pretty high. Interesting, interesting. I love talking to youbecause it's a unique perspective to hear you're working in Crypto in SouthAfrica. I don't think I've had that combination before. I don't think I'vetalked to anyone located in South Africa. I've talked to people who used tolive there. Elon Musk is famously right. Born. Or from there at least. Sweetman. Well, congrats on all the progress. Are you guys currently fundraising orlooking for anything you wanna throw out?

Sean Sanders: Yeah,we are doing a bridge round. We're raising $4 million. Now, this is more for usto finish up a couple of big developments that we have on the go and actuallylaunch in the UAE. So operating in the Crypto space you mentioned Celsius notlong ago. I mean, fortunately, they didn't have any impact on us, but they didhave a big impact on the the ecosystem.

And we also just dunno where the economy's gonna go. So. It'smy job to be prudent and to look out, you know, 12, 18, 24 months and make surethat we've got consistent runway and we able to grow. Then we've got pretty,pretty big ambitions Africa, the UAE, like those are big markets. There aremarkets that are growing fast.

There are actually other African countries, which you thinksignificantly higher growth rates than what you're seeing in South Africa. Andwe wanna be able to tap into those. Yeah. So yeah, if you wanna reach out to meto chat about the rays, please do, we'd be more than happy to chat about it. Weclosing that at the end of.

This year and we've got a decent amount committed about 25% ofthe raises already taken up. And we've just started.

Mike Townsend: Areyou active on Twitter or are you writing anywhere publicly?

Sean Sanders: No, Iam not that active on social media anymore, I suppose, on LinkedIn a littlebit. But that's one of the things I wanna focus on again, cuz I kind of wentcompletely across all social media. I was just like; I'm focusing on thisbusiness and I'm making this thing a success. And I'm kind of peeking my headup now being like, okay, real world. I'm back. Yeah.

Mike Townsend: Lastquestion for you. Are there any books or people? YouTube channels, podcasts,things that you've really focused on and learned a lot from recently.

Sean Sanders: Oh, myword. So many, so many, so many. So, I'd recently read Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. That was really great. Imean, in terms of podcasts, I'm looking down now, How I built this. I thinkthat's like one of those, those stables in good company that's with theNorwegian sovereign wealth funds CEO and founder not founder opposed to CEO andfund manager which is an absolutely brilliant podcast talk.

He talks to essentially all of the top fortune 500 odd C.They're CEOs, they're CFOs, and learn about business there. Other greatbusiness books, I mean Blink from Malcolm. Gladwell's another sort of favoriteof mine. Ah, gosh, I could actually go on for a while, but I mean, those areprobably the key ones to take a look at.

Mike Townsend: Nice man.

Sean Sanders: It'sgood speaking with you as well, Mike.

Mike Townsend: Yeah.Thanks, Sean. This was fun. Congrats on everything and keep crushing.

Sean Sanders: Thankyou. I appreciate it. Have a good dress today.