Stephen: This is your host, Stephen Sargeant Around The Coin podcast. We just had Aidan Larkin to talk all about the CEO and co-founder journey versus the startup Asset Reality. They've taken over digital and physical asset recovery, but he breaks down the process of being VC backed, going through as a CEO, the trials, the challenges, the successes of building in a space that's heavily dependent on regulations.

Regulators and digital asset adoption. It's a crazy story. Every time I speak to Aidan, it's something new. It's something different, and he comes and he brings the heat, including imposter syndrome and being a CEO and self-awareness. If you're into crypto, if you're a payments tech founder investor, this is a great episode to bring all of that together.

Reach out to me or Aidan if you'd love the podcast.

Stephen: This is your host, Stephen Sargeant, Around The Coin podcast. Usually I don't bring my friends on the podcast, but this time I'll make an exception because he is just an amazing operator. He's super knowledgeable about everything, crypto, digital assets, seizures. But he also has some really cool stories about seas, Lambos and yachts, and he's like big into the investment world, and I don't think people give him enough credit for.

And we have Aidan Larkin, he's the co-founder. And now you're pretty much the CEO of Asset reality. Why don't you give us a little bit, give us the two liner of yourself and asset reality and then we're gonna jump into your background, get into everything that's going on in the digital asset world, especially in the US and the UK when it comes to seizures.

Aidan: Uh, more than happy to thank, thank you. Again, it's not a, it's not a chore to come and to come and sit and talk to you. I really appreciate the, the offer to, um, to do this more off topic than what we normally, normally talk about. Um, so like asset reality exists because there is a multi-trillion dollar asset recovery sector that most people don't know about.

It affects the tax we pay our global security terrorist financing, all of the things fundamentally that fuels this multi-trillion dollar, you know, sector of illicit assets. It's really difficult to seize assets and there's no tools or technology. So at its core, asset reality has built an end-to-end platform to make it easier to seize assets.

Um, we've seen disruption in other sectors where like flexport and shipping. You know, taking a very analog industry that's never really had tech applied to it and just, you know, bringing these technology solutions. So that's what we're doing. We're helping government agencies and asset recovery practitioners seize, manage liquidate assets and just give them the technology they need that will ultimately improve asset recovery as a sector, which is important for all of us.

Stephen: And I love that because I think anyone that's in tech knows about Flexport and anyone that's dealing with e-commerce or shipping understands how complex. And anytime there's something that's complex, PO complex, it's expensive, right? And it costs everybody, especially the end consumers. But you start off working as a tax inspector and based on your characteristics and you know your bravado, that seems like a really weird job for you.

Aidan, tell me a little bit about your early career working for the tax authority in the uk.

Aidan: Yeah, it's like the most, uh, most hated job and most think the most hated a man in America that the, the Netflix, the hated woman in America. Um, yeah, be, being a, being a tax inspector is usually a bit of a conversation killer. I used to love getting into the back of like a, you know, a taxi on the way from the airport, and they're like, what do you do, taxi, inspector, and just put their, put their head down.

But, um, yeah, it was a fascinating job. I, I, I joined there. I, you know, I left school at 16. I wasn't happy in school. I didn't, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I didn't want to go and just do a degree for the sake of doing a degree. And there was an opportunity to basically join like this, um, you know, a little bit of work, a little bit of like college part-time on the side.

Uh, and I said I started to do that 'cause I just couldn't figure out. And all the while my mom. Worked in, back then it was known as Inland Revenue. So for like US and Canada, it's got like IRS sort of the, the equivalent. And then Inland Revenue merged with customs in the uk and we had HM revenue and customs.

Um, and so that opportunity came up to join. This is a huge public sector organization and it was always the thing, and I am the cliche, I literally started in the mail room. I was literally the mail person opening the mail and distributing the meal throughout the building. Um, and then those organizations are just great at just, you know, putting your head down and sort of working through and an opportunity come up to join a development program internally.

I wouldn't have been able to apply for that if I was external. 'cause you had to have a university degree. If you were an internal candidate, you could apply. It was one of the perks of being an employee. You could apply and if you pass all of the tests, you got to go on this, what they call the Fast Track program.

Uh, and it meant for two years they pushed you all around the building and you worked in lots of different departments. And by the end, if you qualified, then you would be a, um, officially her Maje, her Majesty's inspector of taxes. So I had this like weird claim to fame that I was the youngest. I think I was the youngest ever inspector of taxes, but purely just because I didn't go to university 'cause everybody else was coming in the year.

So of course I was smuggling was like, yeah, it's because I'm so clever and amazing. No, I was just there like four years before everybody else.

Stephen: That's hilarious.

Aidan: but it, but, but it made for some weird interviews when I'm going into interview, like a stockbroker in London and I'm turning up and they're like, like, like, where, where's your parents?

Like, are you on like some sort of work experience? They're like, no, it's me. I'm, I'm the tax inspector. So.

Stephen: I, I'm curious what were some of, and I know you can't go into details of the cases, but back then what were like the big tax cases, evasion, you know, deterrent. What were some of the cases that the tax inspectors were really focusing on back then?

Aidan: It, it, it was, for me in particular, things really changed. I was a traditional tax inspector, you know, just doing the good old fashioned sort of, you know, um, I don't wanna say boring cases, but they were, they were the, the straightforward, mundane, sort of, you know, uh, tax evasion cases. But then an opportunity came up to join a criminal taxes unit.

And the pitch that I was given by my, my old boss was the, you know, have you heard of like the Al Capone know effect and know we're going to go after the worst criminals in the uk, uh, and we're gonna use tax offenses to bring them to justice. Everything from terrorists to child exploitation, um, sort of See some cases through to, you know, uh, international money laundering organizations through racketeering.

It doesn't matter anything is on the table if we can catch them for tax evasion. And I'm like in my early twenties going, this sounds amazing. I'm gonna go to prisons. I'm gonna like you get a, you get a get proper warrant card and everything. And even some of my colleagues had like full scale, like no pseudonyms and fake identity issued because they were doing really sensitive cases.

It was just a phenomenal mission driven. Type of job. So everything from like the, you know, famous football managers, people in the UK will know of, uh, of cases of many sort of famous sports stars that have been investigated for tax evasion through to really important cases. Things like the seven seven bombings, the terrorist attacks in London.

I mean, the financiers connected to those cases into really sensitive national security cases. Things like people involved and it's in the public domain. People involved in, um, you know, weapons of mass destruction, proliferation. I mean, there's always a London Nexus or a new, just because it's such a, a financial center.

So there was always a, like a company or corporate connection. So it just meant for like three, four years. It, it really is where my asset recovery sort of bug started, that I got to be involved in these just remarkable cases. Um, and, and one of the most famous cases, there's now a Netflix documentary or a, a dramatization was a, a dentist in Northern Ireland who killed two people and handed himself in 20 years later.

Uh, because he believed from a religious perspective that his son who died, it was the sins of the father coming back on the first born son. But what made the case even more chilling was that he was having an affair and the lady he was having the affair with, they basically killed their respective partners, made it look like joint suicides.

It is all go very dark, made it look like joint suicides, but he was a serving police officer, the guy he killed. And so you had this family ripped apart for 20 years thinking that these two perfectly innocent victims of a murder. Were actually, you know, these lovers who tried to run off and couldn't run off and they staged the whole suicide.

But 'cause the troubles were going on in Northern Ireland, it probably wasn't given the attention it would've normally been given, looked like a suicide, wrapped it up to suicide. But that case made a little bit of legal history in Northern Ireland because by going after that guy, he hands himself into a pre, uh, police station 20 years later.

Lots of complicated financial affairs. And it also turned out he fell for one of the scams. We can find gold if you only give us some money. He genuinely invested like a quarter of a million dollars in a finding The hidden World War ii Japanese gold like nonsense, absolute made up nonsense. Um, but he cooked the books in the dentist practice that he worked, and because of that, we were able to freeze his assets, get this corporate freeze in order.

Again, it was me getting into more of the asset recovery, nitty gritty. Well, the whole team, we all got like a director's award and a commendation. But what I got to then witness was. International requests to seize assets. They take a long time. Everybody, every, everybody's like, you know, sometimes they just take two to three years.

It's like, what?

Stephen: word that nobody wants to talk about is mla,

Aidan: MLAs. And I was like, we got MLAs. And then it's like, oh, well we, we, we can't do this. We can't enforce this thing. We can freeze this thing, but we can't do this thing. And I started to see just some of the procedural and that. So that's what really got me sort of that sort of bug. And then I spent then the next, the next couple of years working in insolvency.

And then that led me into the physical seized assets world that we'll talk about. And that got me to hear. But that, that really, that that criminal tax job for me really, really opened my eyes. Um, even the, the big word Amanda Wick and everyone talks about a lot today, civil forfeiture. I mean, that was a civil forfeiture case.

So I was in a civil forfeiture team. I was in a criminal investigation team, but we used civil pars because the burden of proof and a very typical case would be someone found, caught with lots of drugs and lots of wealth. And the drugs, of course, they're not mine officer. It's like, okay, we can't get the drugs offense, but we can ask you how you paid for the house.

And they can't prove how they paid for the house. Big tax bill, seizes the property, seizes the assets. So net, net, you're still disrupting the criminality. Um, so that, that, that's what kicked things

Stephen: the criminality is the money. Right. So at the end of the day,

Aidan: no, no one, no one does it unless it's no politically motivated or motivated. It's called economic crime for a reason.

Stephen: And I'm curious, you know, you've talked about a little bit about, you know, then going into working into auctions and seizures. Give us that one case that, what's the one story that you tell, you know, when you're a couple pints in at the pub and you're like, Hey, you wouldn't believe what we seized and how we seized it.

Uh, I've heard a couple, but I'd love to know, what's your go-to story about seizing, uh,

Aidan: Yeah, there's, well, obviously there was the, there was the famous, now we're seizing Bitcoin. And I was like, what's Bitcoin? But, uh, that's actually not as, not as interesting. The, for me it was just the sheer variety of assets. I mean, we had a, we had a criminal. I was, I was due to board of flight. My flight was canceled.

I was one of the famous storms in England. We don't get many storms. And, and there was a storm and then I got a phone call from a police officer. At this point, I'm like, so the, the important context is the UK does not have a US marshal style function or an asset management dedicated function like many countries have.

There's no central office. So all the governments and all the law enforcement agencies, pardon me, they have to manage their own seizures. So they bring in the company that I used to work for, uh, because private companies manage this. And traditionally it's actually auction companies. 'cause when you think about it, auction companies have storage facilities, valuation facilities, inventory facilities, insurance.

And the ability to sell assets and an auction transaction is protected in law. So there's a lot of things that they can do that can't be done privately selling an asset. So for, for lots of reasons, um, it's the perfect vehicle sort of for a, a partner for sort of proceeds of crime seizures. So I was in a company in.

Um, that had the contracts for most of the government agencies in the uk. So I, I get the phone call saying, Hey, we've got a bunch of assets to seize. It's a bit of a weird one. Um, we've got this guy who is buying lots of things on eBay, um, and when they went out to have a look at his source of funds and his wealth, basically you've a guy that is appearing in the news every other week voluntarily with his, like, man buys large Star Wars statue, girlfriend goes crazy.

Those types of stories. He has this like, Ripley's, believe it or not, garden, where he has like the Starsky and Hutch car. He has a rip, he has like, um, Capuchin Monkeys, he has like Terminator and Ironman statue, six foot tall. He has the, uh, star Wars re like, you name it, it was like a movie, memorabilia Hall of Fame, the actual hover car from, um, back to the future too.

Just so many like screen used props. The crazy thing about it was some police officer just goes, why is, where's he getting all this money from? I mean, he, he says that he spent like half a million dollars or pounds on eBay. So the officer digs into this case and it turns out that, um, no declared income of any real means.

So they go and look at the guy, and then again, the story gets worse. Where? He had basically leased an underground disused nuclear bunker. He was going to use it as like a homage, the like sort of breaking bad and make it into like a comic book store. And he had all these ideas. And then someone truly breaking bad style said, you've got electricity in a big thing.

Can I just use that? And they turned it into one of the largest underground cannabis factories in ever discovered in the uk, inside a disused World War II nuclear bomb shelter. Like type this crazy sort of connection. So he was getting paid bags of cash to turn, turn a blind eye, spending his bags of cash on sci-fi memorabilia.

And because our contract was all assets, like we had monkeys wallabies, we had to deal with the authorities because they didn't have the right papers for the animals. Getting those animals rehoused is not an easy thing to do. Then you're trying to sell screen used assets and to keep the value of the asset, you've gotta go to Warner Brothers in Paramount and try and get documentation to verify it And.

But all the while, it's just, it makes you realize how difficult of a job the police have because this is just a police officer turning up on a seizure warrant and it's like, Hey, I can seize anything of value. And I remember someone sitting there going, is this 14 foot, you know, Sigourney Weaver inside an alien thing?

How much is that

Stephen: Is that, how much is that

Aidan: there's no dropdown menu to pick, like when you're doing that sort of seizure. So, um, but the officers would be criticized if they left behind assets of value and if those assets got destroyed or deteriorated. And so, so that was one, and that always links me into my favorite asset recovery story of all time, which is the Pablo Escobar Hippo story.

Um, I've never done a case of that scale, but there's now a, you know, an ecological disaster in Columbia where you have these rampy aging over a thousand hippos, um, that are just destroying local wildlife, you know, indigenous populations, like attacking people. They're an asset seizure case because there was two hippos not recovered when they stormed Escobar's mansion and seized all of his assets and not knowing what to do.

'cause he had an exotic petting zoo. They let the hippos go and anyone can Google it. Now, Google Escobar's hippos, it's a proper problem, but it's an anecdote we often tell because it just shows us like, how do you plan for that than an asset seizure? How do you deal with that? And when we say we seize everything, we truly do seize and sell everything.

So we help law enforcement, everything from, you know, hippos to to uh, to NFTs and everything in between. Um, but yeah, crypto's easier. Trust me.

Stephen: And it's, you know, so important that you have to seize anything. 'cause like, just like if you're not seizing the hardware wallet to end the seed phrase what can happen in, in crypto, but I wanna talk about your entrepreneurial journey because you're not, you're a non-technical person building a SaaS product at asset reality.

But you got accepted to Techstars and have built a juggernaut of a tech platform. Uh, were you always kind of entrepreneurial, but maybe not technical? And is there anything that you've learned now from being VC back that you're like, okay, you know, raising funds, building a big business, a lot of hands, you know, a lot of obviously suggestions or recommendations and great guidance.

Give us, you know, that entrepreneurial background that you've now experienced, uh, bringing asset reality to where it is.

Aidan: I, I, I would never, I would never think of myself as entrepreneurial in the sense of, I think I was a. An accidental salesman, BD person because of my background. I mean, my, my background in, uh, my, my corporate background, um, uh, in places like K-H-T-M-R-C, my job was to achieve negotiated tax settlements.

We didn't want to go to court. We wanted to get the payment, agree to it, give us the money, like give us the check in the meeting. Like I wanted the guy with the offshore bank to be like, Hey, you got me. I'll write a check. Like, that's what we were targeted on, was getting those new cases closed effectively.

So I think like a lot of time in a lot of prisons, and we literally went to prison. The person just been locked up for 10 years. Their assets still have to be sold. We sit, we still have to physically sit with them and be like, sell the bloody house. Like, give me your consent to sell the house. Don't let it sit for seven years.

It's gonna go to ruin. And so I think accidentally, I, I became just experienced in sort of negotiating and, and just talking to people and communicating with people in usually very difficult circumstances. And it forces a lot of sort of perspective. Um. But I think that, so I wouldn't say entrepreneurial, but I also became really frustratingly impatient when I seen things that didn't work.

And it was, it was during my, my time at the, at the auction company where it was, there's better ways governments could do this. I mean, there's, you've got just in the uk, small microcosm 43 individual forces who are all contributing and seizing assets and all running their own individual systems. And there's no standardization against the backdrop.

I'd met this company called Lysis because myself and Nick Ferno had been involved in one of the first crypto seizures in the UK because of this, you know, all asset contract that I had. Um, and. I got to meet companies like T Analysis. I got to meet these really interesting technology companies and I, I remember reaching out to Jonathan Levin on, on LinkedIn and he connected me with a guy Duncan Hoffman, who's not K, and saying, Hey, look, you guys are like the metal detectors you're finding and helping governments find crypto.

And then when they found it, they called me and they call my team to say, Hey, can you help us with the seizure? Like we should maybe join this up and start to have a look at it. And that's when I started to just look at tech companies and tech solutions and go, Hmm, the problem they have is actually managing this inventory.

Could we maybe build an inventory? And I couldn't do that without stepping away from the job that I really enjoyed and really loved doing. But I had to make a decision, was I gonna stay in that business doing that thing with really good team? But it was a case of, or should I maybe start to think about, you know, asset recovery as a sector?

And then I literally had this little. I call it the, uh, or someone much more clever than me called it an alliterative adventure. In November, 2019, I did four bees. I did Bosnia re, Brisbane, and uh, Brussels. Four weeks back to back four very different conferences, four very different events, four very different things. Pretty much the same slide deck, pretty much the same problems, pretty much the same answers to the problems. There needs to be a centralized system for seized assets. And I kept every, I went to four different, like three different continents, and I kept thinking someone's gonna produce a cellebrite style tool, a analysis style too.

I was like, we've, we've come so far, we've almost like leaped over seized assets. We've now got the opposition where we can do blockchain analytics, but when you find it, you have to use a spreadsheet and an actual paper book. So I have office.

Stephen: as some of that worked for an exchange, you're using legit spreadsheets to keep these digital

Aidan: and, and I've seen other jurisdictions and they still have to record it in a book.

I've seen people and you, do you think, again, anyone who's ever been involved in search and seizure will know this. I mean, you literally have, you're standing on scene. Most officers aren't like propping a laptop on their knee when they're in someone's house. They are writing it in an exhibit log. So you've got, so then you started to think about, okay, so it's paper, paper, paper, you know, the silo database.

And so then seeing what the companies, like T Analysis and others were doing. And I reached out to the guys, um, they said, well, if you've got an idea for a business, well wouldn't it be great? And on my way, my way flying back from the, uh, the last leg, which was actually was Brisbane actually flying back like 19 hours it takes to get, get from here to Brisbane.

I was like, I wonder, could there be a, like, could we set up a platform and what would it look like? And I'd actually, I was engaged at this point with the UNODC to carry out reviews of a number of, um, uh, Southern African countries who were wanting to understand A, they wanted a feasibility study for new IT systems to manage these assets.

And 'cause at, at this point, I had a fair bit of experience in different categories of assets. I was sort of on the circuit talking at a lot of like, you know, UNODC and Fat F events and things like that. And um, yeah, every word just kept saying someone needs to build a tool, someone needs to build a tool.

So when I saw the T analysis went through Techstars. Um, the guys, um, I reached out to Techstars London, the team, um, and I was like, oh yeah, we have a cohort started in a couple of months. Like, you know, what's the idea? What's the pitch? I was like, Ooh, well, you know, someone needs to build this thing. I know what it needs to do and I can draw it on a whiteboard, but I have no idea what I'm doing in terms of technology.

And they're like, okay, you need to get some technical co-founders. You need to start building out that team, but come to Techstars and we'll, we'll sort of help you do it. And, and through that, you know, sort of Nick Ferno was involved sort of very early on. She go, Elliot, my, my, my original co-founder. Now who we, the three of us sort of sat down and went, and Hugo comes from a finance background as well, going like, we'll need to really get into this.

But we know that governments would be happy with anything just to get off and running. It's like even just on awareness of the problem and a roadmap to start helping them. And that's how we started to identify uh, people like Hugo Hoyland, who is, you know, one of the original blockchain investigators, sort of OGs globally.

I mean, he was the person trialing the tools, fromt analysis and elliptic. When they first launched the tools, he built the investigation practice at crawl. So, uh, and Hugo was actually one of asset real's early clients. 'cause again, he sees in assets and asking me and Nick to help with custody. So I was like, we want you to come and join as well.

And we sort of had this early idea. If we bring together people who knew all the component parts, we could, we could do that then. Yeah, we, we applied to, to Techstars and. We've never had like an eBay of seized assets was how they were thinking about long term. It's like if we help governments capture the assets, manage the assets, wouldn't it be amazing if you could sell all the assets in one place, eBay, Amazon

Stephen: that. Yeah, the eBay style makes a lot more sense now. It's just a whole bunch of, you know, different jurisdictions, different agencies, but you have everything under controlled,

Aidan: In one, in one, in one platform. So, so, so that, that's the original idea and that's still the long-term roadmap, but how we solve asset recovery at scale. How do you get the assets onto the platform? You need to start with the initial collection. The best thing you can do that is have an app and start, you know, collecting the data at source.

So that's why we've launched our platform to make it easier to seize crypto assets, seize boats, use the app, get them on the platform, and then the idea is you have a data set. Then we have, you know, over 259 users across 20 different countries, you know, uploading their assets. And you start to get a bit of a picture, and then you can start to work with 'em and say, right, you need to sell that house in three years time.

Let's get an agent appointed. And maybe in a couple of years time where Uber style with different, you know, subcontractors and agents, but right now we're doing a lot of r and d around what could be sold. There's different legislation in certain countries. They've gotta, like some countries you still have to advertise in local newspaper.

It says that in the legislation. And I think that's the big thing that this industry misses out. When people talk about seized assets, I, I often hear, you know, government agencies being yelled at by the private sector going, why are you not staking all your crypto? You're going because of the 1978 proceed of crime legislation means it's a piece of evidence right now.

Or it's a money laundering exhibit. I, I can't take your Rolex, sell your Rolex, invest the money. And then if you're not Gil, no, not guilty, go. Don't worry, I'll buy you another Rolex. Like that's what happens when you stake assets, for example, in, in certain certain cases. So.

Stephen: Vic, the victims or the criminals still have like some kind of, you

Aidan: It's their right. The, the, these assets, these assets are frozen. These assets are frozen. The title still remains with the person. So I think that's why, that's what gives us, one of our main USPS is an awareness of asset forfeiture, um, and how that actually works in that interaction with that. But for us, it's just another seized asset.

Doesn't matter if it's cars or crypto, they all have nuances, they all have complexities behind them. But that, that was always the, the entrepreneurial journey was to, you know, get into Techstars, get connected with really good people, get a really good network of early investors. Um, and then, you know, you, what I think what was, what really helped us was the fact that we were solving like just a really important societal problem.

It wasn't no and no disrespect to anybody intended, but it wasn't a, you know, sort of no gym membership comparison website. It wasn't a, I mean, there's lots of really cool companies that there are billion dollar companies, but I, I think the. The mission driven side of this is like we pay more tax, we are at more at risk.

We could have better policing, better laws, better like safety and security and just like economic prosperity for the country. If we get this right and the famous infamous statistic, 1% of assets are recovered globally. Like every investor we met was like, surely not, but it sounds preposterous. Like what if, what if for all crimes committed, we only arrested 1% of people, or we only jailed 1% of criminals

Stephen: Well, I feel like a lot of people think that's where we're right now with crime in the North America, but, and you know, but like just you saying that, it's easy if you seize a car in Argentina and only have to deal with the local victim, the local criminal, the local, you know, police department. But cross-border digital asset payments involve a, you know, because the agency that might be looking to seize the funds are in a different jurisdiction than where the funds might have ended up, or the exchange it might have ended up at, and the criminals in another jurisdiction.

So you have to apply so much different legislation, regulatory requirements, as you said, information sharing at MLAs, that's almost impossible to do for law enforcement if they don't have a technology tool to streamline this.

Aidan: Yeah. And that was one of the reasons why we, we have to have such a diverse set of backgrounds in the team. You know, outside of, you know, traditional sort of the product and engineering and building. We have this weird bolt-on that. Now all of a sudden we're building in a, you know, heavily regulated to be regulated, you know, not too sure in certain jurisdictions space with crypto assets, interactions.

So all of a sudden now we have. I mean, I, and I think we've done it right. I think we do deserve credit that we haven't built fast and loose like a lot of exchanges have a lot of exchanges, you know, built multi-billion dollar companies. We could have been open, we could have made a lot of money being open for business day one to retail customers.

And just saying, Hey, we, we've built, we've built the same infrastructure as an exchange. We just, we're just an exchange for government agencies and asset recovery practitioners. But we didn't, we chose, I mean, I think at one point we probably had more MROs and regulatory infrastructure than some of the billion dollar exchanges do.

And that's why we, we were with pride that we managed the most sensitive assets in the world. We don't have any regulatory breaches. We haven't been fined, touch wood, we haven't been fined. Our CEO hasn't been arrested yet. Like, you know, people have short memories of some of the, some of the exchanges and it's just not fit for purpose for, for governments.

So that's why, you know, go, like if you had a auction company or an estate agency that their CEO was arrested, their company had money laundering breaches, they were under regulatory scrutiny and fined by the regulator, the local cops wouldn't come along and go, Hey, can you sell this house?

Stephen: right.

Aidan: think a lot of exchanges, there's some exchanges have done an extraordinary job and done a great job and built law enforcement liaison teams have done a really good thing.

But also like we're, we're, we're, we're ex law enforcement elephants. Like we never forget. Like we've also been on the other side of this where three, four years ago we couldn't get any information outta some of these places. And now all of a sudden it's like, no, they're the best companies in the world.

Like

Stephen: I'm

Aidan: still, they're,

Stephen: when you talk about that, like FTX, Einstein, Riga cx, what happens if law enforcement has seized assets and they're using these exchanges as custodians? What happens to law enforcement seized assets is do they evaporate? Are they standing in line with other investors that have,

Aidan: a hundred percent. And this is the big thing, and, and I think this was one of the reasons that drove us to, I, I was talking about having that like diverse background. We have people like Danny Haston, who's an ex asset recovery lawyer. We have people like TJ, who's, um, you know, was like the US Marshals asset forfeiture unit and has been in, you know, charge of managing huge billion dollar portfolios of complicated assets internationally.

Like we had to have this really broad bench of backgrounds on top of our compliance infrastructure and on top 'cause to understand that, 'cause you're right that we've seen this and I think this is why, you know, people use us. This is why we work with some of the, the, the sort of largest agencies in the world because there is that risk if they go to a regular retail or consumer business.

They're not gonna be top of the queue if there's a problem. Like they're not, they're not, you know, doing a trillion dollars every sort of two, three years in trade with these people. They're not the big important, they're a small team and a small unit, probably very good, very committed men and women, but they're still a small piece of the GI puzzle.

And we've seen this in some of our team. Were involved in the cases that you've just been, been rhyming off in Canada, uh, back in their old jobs. And if you have, the local government agency has their assets with that person, they're gone. They're, they are an unsecured creditor in the bucket with everybody else.

And I think that was one of the reasons why very early on some of the government agencies that first started working with us, when we were in our infancy, it was like, we'd rather take our chances with you when we, we only move assets once or twice ever. And it's like, if it can get seized and stay in the same place because the court order will stipulate that.

They would rather we, we call it sort of fast and slow out, you know, being able to seize assets as quickly and expeditiously as possible, but maintaining the chain of custody as much as possible and then doesn't move. And if it takes 5, 6, 7 years for that case to come to conclusion, there's a chain of custody in place there.

And I think there's, that's very valuable and mandatory in some government agencies as well. And I think that's why they like working with us because they realize that when they pick up the phone to call us, they're not in the queue because there's a bank run on the exchange because there's been some news and the FTX account, now all of a sudden there's a problem.

I think most governments it, it would be un, it'd be unfair to me to, to, um. Sort of represent that lots of governments have lots of exchange accounts. That's probably not the case nowadays. There's been enough scares that people went, Ooh, the hell with that. Now a lot of government agencies have pre-existing procurement where they're still working with exchanges on liquidations, for example.

It's in the press. I mean, Coinbase was a, was awarded the US Marshals contract. Now what remains to be seen is that the executive order, we're no longer liquidating forfeited crypto that's gonna go into strategic reserve. So there's just so many interesting things that keep always changing in the space.

I think the industry just wanted its own solution built by practitioners, for practitioners. Um, and I think that's the gap we occupy.

Stephen: you mentioned chain of custody. Like if you're the one in charge of crypto and you're the only one that's knowledgeable about crypto, and all of a sudden that, you know, three Bitcoin that you see is five years ago is now, you know, worth millions of dollars. Uh, and you wanna send some of that to, and there's nobody oversighting and watching what you're doing or technically even understands what you're doing, you run into a lot of problems.

And we've seen it in the news where law enforcement is the one taking these crypto assets because they believe they're the only ones that understand how these assets move. And, you know, without that oversight, without that chain of custody, 5, 6, 7 years later, that's when we're finding out that, hey, this person was skimming crypto off the top and nobody even knew about it.

Aidan: we, we, we've seen this in the industry. I remember back when, you know, when mining was, you know, truly exploding. You know, it was, you know, it managers and buildings were running mining rigs and server rooms and stuff. 'cause no one would notice and no crypto's exactly. But crypto's no different than gold.

And if you're, if you're the manager of the gold or diamonds and you're in an organization where no one really knows what you're doing and they don't. Understand what protocols should be in place. Like an example would be if I, if I'm involved in a cash seizure, there's very, very clear law enforcement protocols, but not in all jurisdictions, but in most jurisdictions around, no, there must be a second or third person.

There must be body cam footage. It must all be counted at the time of seizure. It must be cross-referenced and verified and then it'll be lodged and, but all of that was born out of lots of mistakes when it was like, oh, we seized a bunch of cash. How much? Count it out. It's been in custody for three days now in an open bag, in an evidence locker.

Type thing. And then allegations come in and the criminal says, or the suspect says, Hey, there was no, there was 2000 or $10,000 more. And that, well, of course he would say that he's a criminal and it's the, and then sometimes like, no, there was actual evidence he withdrew from the bank and he was arrested three minutes later and like, where did the money go?

So it, it will always happen if the controls aren't in place. And that was one of the things we wanted to do from, from day one, was make it like we, we, we think of it as sort of democratizing access to asset seizure because you're right, it, it's not feasible for governments anymore to say, call the crypto person at 3:00 AM when they're doing a seizure.

So, and we've seen a lot of the blockchain analytic tools do similar things. Now, the, the, the launch of a lot of the recent chain and TM and other tools is around making analytics easier. So just to reduce that burden. So just that instant triage and those things come with risks as well. 'cause you all, you still need to know what you're doing, you know, to interpret the information.

But I, but I completely get, you know, quicker decision making is always a good thing, uh, or quicker access to information is a good thing. So for us, it was, for us, it was a case of making that, just make that, that seizure part easier. But baking in all of the governance and compliance so that if Stephen goes out to photograph the asset and Stephen sees in the car and the crypto straight away, he's doing something on an app that he's two factor authenticated and logged into that his administrator can see what Stephen's up to.

And you can see that even just you knowing that and being aware of that, there's a first layer of control that's in place. And if you then say, Hey, I'm retiring, I'm taking a new job somewhere else, I'm off the sunnier pastures. Being able to just say, great, we'll just reassign that role. And now Stephen's, I know, uh, um, replacement's coming in.

He's gonna be the person that does seizures tomorrow in the force and he's got the app, the acid reality app, and he's doing seizures for example. Whereas in the past it was like, oh shoot. Stephen was the crypto guy. He set up the wallets, he has the seed phrase, what if Stephen's remembered them all and wrote them down somewhere else?

And, oh shit, we're gonna have to do this all over again. We're gonna have to purge everything, transfer it all again. And that's why a lot of the agencies, you know, had to like create their cryptos custody stack two, three times, change it, and then they went, oh, the hell with that. Let's just use an exchange somewhere.

They use an exchange, oh, someone's had a bank on if they've been hacked or they, you know, the CEO's been arrested and that's, oh, and now one person has access to the account. And there was just so many at the time, it was the only solution available. Uh, and I think, I think for us, we just wanna try and make it a bit easier.

Building the governance layers, building the transparency. And again, that wouldn't have been possible six or seven years ago. I mean, in the past it was exchange or hardware, software, wallet. Whereas now you've got things like MPC and now you can have multiple layers and multiple governance structures and 14 different people if you want 14 people on your sign, but all 14 can go off on vacation for three months and you can just put different people in.

There's just so much that keeps changing

Stephen: There's a lot that, and hey, you're in the public sector and all of a sudden now there's a crypto boom. All your talent's going into the private sector, like you need to now reassign roles at probably a rapid pace. You mentioned something though that I think will help a lot of tech, crypto, and other payments founders listening to this podcast and investors is, you mentioned a lot of great people from a lot of great, you know, different places within the ecosystem.

You know, if you're raising 5, 10, 15, $20 million, like the people that you mentioned, that money, and obviously you do have revenue on the other side, that money goes pretty quick. When I see people saying like, Hey, $50 million or $10 million, I'm like, yeah, but they have like 5, 6, 700 people. Like that capital goes away very, very quick.

Talk to me about how you balance bringing in top talent, managing that with revenue and you know, the VC dollars and then you know, when the VC's giving you money, they're expecting certain turnarounds, certain things to happen. Talk to me from like creating a startup, maybe it's a scale up at this point, but you know, doing that in a industry that's very volatile, not just from a price perspective, but from a VC interest perspective and from a growth perspective.

Aidan: It it is, it is the, the, the million dollar question. And it's always that old thing about, you know, can you bootstrap your startup? Uh, and no, can you, you'll get it. It's, it's like a side note that I always, I I, I actually wrote down to remind myself to, to say to you, and I was speaking today, one of the most liberating sort of eureka moments that I had probably six months ago, a year ago, maybe.

Uh, one of my colleagues actually has a, has a recording of me saying it at a, like a, a little all hands meeting we were having. And I sort of, I used to completely absorb myself and all of the advice and like, even when you join Techstars Mandatory Reading list, why Combinators the same. And it's like, right, there's, there's 45,000 podcasts I've gotta listen to every single week.

Otherwise my moron, I gotta, I gotta, I gotta understand all of these. I gotta, I gotta consume everything Andreessen puts out and a 16 Z puts out they've got. And you can end up just going absolutely down this rabbit hole of this like shaken bake, pull together, you know, Frankenstein of all the best advice in the world.

And surely if you follow that, it'll all be fine. And I remember listening to a, a podcast, a very successful podcast that I'll not name, um, that the guy in one episode completely. One because someone truly like he be everything he thought about building a seals playbook at a SaaS company. This very successful entrepreneur was like, Nope, completely disagree.

Here's how I think about it. And the host was like, oh my God, you are right. And then part of me just sort of paused them. So hold on a second. Everyone who's listened to your show for the last three years has been called Morons. If they don't Do It Your Way, and Your Way has now just changed in one conversation.

And it made me realize that if I keep hearing this stat, which no Techstars and Start accelerators are very proud of, they're like, no, 98% of no startups feel only 2% of those actually go and raise VC money. The very fact you've even just raised a little bit of VC money means you're in a very, very, very small club.

And it's like, yeah, yeah, that's a good thing. That means you've got someone to believe your story and the vision and the potential to execute and you've got some money and it, it's not a validation, it's just a, it's a good start it, you've gotta still build a successful company. But it made me realize that, well, if 98% of all startups fail, is there a chance that 98% of all the advice out there is garbage or it is not, not relevant?

It's like, you know, giving someone advice on love on a website. It's like sometimes all you have is a combination of your collective organizational intuition. So I don't believe in like, no, just follow my gut. What if I'm wrong? But I believe in, I have to ultimately at the end of the day, be able to sit down with the, the VCs or our board and say, here's the decision we made.

And that's on me. But the best thing I can do is at least surround myself with intelligent people and challenging people who will at least come to a bit of a consensus and say, have we covered all of the bases? Then it's for me to take that decision and ultimately it's on my head. But I think that there is this delusion that you can just follow a playbook because you're in a particular industry and if you're truly, truly, truly like generationally successful and you look back now to companies like Airbnb and, and things like that, I mean everything, they're great at sort of going back going, they're, it's always those companies that like create their own job titles and then everyone else follows.

So rather than trying to cookie cutter down. What Look, we often try and look and say Flexport was a good example. Um, open OpenGov was a similar one. Um, and, and I'll look at companies and go, okay, well what companies have done something in a similar sector to me that that playbook may, may work a little bit and can we take a fragment of that and put that over here?

But with a big giant caveat, it may not work and not being afraid. And I think if I would, if I would look back on things, getting that balance of you can, you can bring in lots of, you know, people very quickly. We probably hired too quickly, very early on, and I, I can look at it two different ways and say, but actually hiring a lot of people meant that we were able to acquire a lot of customers.

But then the compromise is you're not in the weeds building and then, but then you know better than anybody, it's you're building brand and marketing and distribution. Again, back to good old startup advice, someone over here says product, no distribution beats product. Someone else says, no product beats distribution.

I said, well, who's right? Like Peter Taylor's a pretty smart guy, so should I follow him or should I follow the other smart guy? And you realize that you can find an answer or a disagreement for every position you take. That's the dangerous thing. Um, and you can go down that rabbit hole each time. So, but I, but I think for us, one of the, I think it was CrowdStrike, CrowdStrike, the, the CEO George Kurt, I think it is.

Um, he had a great thing about that resonated with me around just trust, is that if they call you in their greatest moments of need, then you will just organically and almost naturally become a long-term business partner with them. So I was very well aware that our industry was incredibly analog. And a lot of it comes down to relationships.

So we need that ex law enforcement practitioner, former lawyer, someone who's been in the weeds, someone who's worked at the regulator's office, someone that understands compliance. And if we can do that, then those enterprise clients will see that you actually know what you're talking about. The, then the rat race is to try and quickly build the product, the technology, and build something scalable in the background, as you say, while at all times, balancing the, Hey, we've gotta make some money 'cause we've got investors and we can't, we can't, we can't run outta money and you can't also perpetually raise money.

And you know, we, we've seen that like the blockchain analytic boom, you know, 2021 in particular with crypto money was thrown everywhere. And we sort of missed that. We were just way too early. We, we only came committed Techstars, three people in sort of 2021. Um, but part of me is almost a little bit glad that we missed it because on one hand what I love to have a hundred million dollars investment.

No, who, who wouldn't want that sort of capital? We've raised less than $20 million. But similarly, I also worry for a lot of 2021 vintage companies going high on earth. Are you gonna hit those metrics? And you've seen big layoffs and lots of big companies. Um, we always have to look every quarter. Now we have to look and go, they're amazing.

But like, do we really need five days a week? Could we do a day a week? Could we do two days a week? And I think that's what I would relearn, reteach myself going, going back. Um, and also it's, it's been probably even more honest with people, especially when, I mean, startups are startups sometimes you get the perennial people have been in 15 different startups, they're used to it.

Then you get people that have never been in a startup in their life. We've got some employees that they're very young with pretty much like their first like, proper full-time job. And then we have people that have been in these like stellar careers for 20, 30, 40 years. So I really like that we have a big broad mix.

Um, but yeah, I, for, for me, it's always like the advice to give to people is that. Most of the advice is wrong. And like people, people, people dogmatically follow all of this advice. And then he said it and she said it like, at the end of the day, you are the person that will look yourself in the mirror and you're the person who will sit with the VCs and you will either be exiting successfully or you will be wrapping up your company.

And the advice you didn't listen to won't really matter. It's like, uh, for, for me, have a, have a bias towards just build stuff and get stuff done. And that's now for us, um, our, our big push right now, we've just got our FCA registration and we had to cross that first big hurdle and, um, and no Mika is next.

Um, and yeah, it's a, it's, it's, it's an exciting sort of adventure to be on, but, um, but I do feel for a lot of, a lot of, I think too many startups. Try and find a, it's like finding, finding a hammer and what's, what's the, what's the saying? I'm trying to find a, I'm trying to find a hammer for my nail. No, I'm trying to find a nail for nail for your hammer.

It's, I think sometimes people build something and then try and retrofit it. One of the things I'm most, I think we're lucky and it's luck and that's where our, I think we're humble about that, is that there is this enormous problem that needs solved. And we have a lot of very mission driven people who just want to solve the problem because it is actually doing something good, like for humanity.

Like we genuinely like feel that in the company that, you know, no one wants bad people to have assets. We wanna unapologetically, we wanna take assets off bad people. Um, so, so I think that's what makes it fun for, for me anyway. I dunno. The rest, the rest of the team may all not agree, but, um, uh, I'm pretty sure, I'm pretty sure they, they do.

All joking aside, we have, um, yeah, we, we've a great bunch of people that just want to do the right thing. And I think that's where we're really lucky as a startup. I'm not trying to convince people here. We're, we're the 24th best company in our sector and we're, we're, we're truly the first in our space.

Um, but then the pressures, we also know that, you know, rivals could come up on us very, very quickly and look at what we've done over three or four years and help that orient and make them move very, very quickly behind us. And that's something we're always sort of looking over our shoulder at.

Stephen: Do you feel a shift? Maybe not so much advice, but obviously you're talking with other founders and VCs and all these other companies and law firms. Do you feel a shift? 'cause you were around in 2021. Uh, that was right after, you know, the panda, well, during the pandemic and, you know, it was a very softer DEI, it feels like we're going to like a tech focus, like no more DEI initiatives, no more, you know, paternity leaves for unlimited PTOs.

We're going very much like Elon Musk. You gotta like, this is our time to work a hundred hours

Aidan: what, what's the, is it 7, 7 7, or what's the

Stephen: Yeah. It's basically what I call, like anyone working like Binance. It's like, Hey, do you, how do you like a 16 hour shift? Uh, you'll have seven of them this week. Uh, good luck. But do you notice that too?

Like, I feel like a lot of the companies are like, yeah, we did the partnerships. There's no more fluff now. Like it's back to business. We're a tech company, let's go do tech and we don't care how you feel. And if you know, if you're too woke or you're too initiative driven, like you're gonna have to go work at another company.

Do you feel that? Or maybe

Aidan: Oh, no, no. Oh, no. Listen, I, I, I see it. I see it massively. And maybe, maybe it's come, maybe it's from my own, my own background. I mean, I've, I've talked on podcast before. I was, you know, I was, I was like the smallest, one of the smallest kids in my class, in school. It's another reason I left school at 16.

I had a pretty, pretty hard time with, with bullies and stuff. And I was like, I was from the different area in like the posh school and I was from like the, the, the rough part of town. And I was in this weird carrying a V in back and forward. And I, I was, I was like, I was, I was like the cliche kid that was gonna get picked on like, for a thousand different reasons, um, growing up.

So, so I think that. But I think that as a company we have really good empathy for for each other. We have a lot of, you know, team members right now going through some really tough personal stuff and it sort of galvanizes and I, when I think about the examples you're giving, when I, I do see those shifts, but I think it kinda shows that those companies are a bit bit soulless candidly, um, in the sense of they might be widely financially successful, but if you're flip flopping that much anyway, like we, we are not changing what we're doing at at asset reality.

Like the, the people we have working in the company work really hard all the time and not every hire is perfect. That's all to be absolutely candid there. But that's, that's individuals. I think if you can build a good company culture, which is really, really hard to do and especially remotely, that for me was the single biggest challenge.

I wanted everybody in the office together because I believe that that's where culture matters. That's where you get to have a conversation with people. So I do agree in the being in the office, but I also know that pragmatically. If you've hired a bunch of people in 21, 20 22 and offered them remote work, I can't now just go, oh, hey, by the way, you know, dude's in dc you know, you're SAC now because we're just all gonna be in London.

I'm never gonna do that. But I'm gonna say in our future hires going forward, can we maybe start like trying to bring people? 'cause I see the value of people being in a room and like, one of the reasons that we're, we're connected so strongly with, um, with Amanda Wick. Uh, no, it's, it's on LinkedIn. Amanda was one of our early angel investors.

I met Amanda during the time in she analysis and I completely supported what she was doing because I do think, I think, look woken, DEI for the wrong, for anything that's disingenuine, you know, is, is, is, is just, is dumb and it's just wrong and it's going to backfire. And I think what you've basically seen is the companies that were doing it.

Didn't really give a damn about it, but it was kind of the popular thing to do. They did it, and now you're just really seeing them for what they are. And it's like they're just being exposed now. Like the same companies that, and they really infuriate me, the same companies that were all very, very tight-lipped about like the big money laundering cases.

And um, and they didn't really have an opinion, but now the new administration's in, they can say whatever they want. It's like, well, so you're just revealing that that was your truthfulness lens all along, but you weren't honest about it back for, again, for me, it, it just, it see seems disingenuous. Um, so, so I think for us, and we, we were, we were actually joking the other day that I think we're slowly being outnumbered, for example, in our senior leadership team that no hot news shock horror, that there's more, there's more women than men.

You know, it's not by design, it's just that it's talk to sensible people and then, and good people sort of join the company. So, uh, but I, but I do, I do see a cynical. Shift towards that. And I do see a cynical like sort of bro culture, you know, slightly popping back up again. And, and, but again, I, I think that I'm like, I'm 42 years of age, but I feel 62 in, in a sense of experience and, and and, and I've been in very, very jobs.

So I consider myself a bit of an old soul and I sort of zoom out on it and I try and like channel my inner like, you know, chilled out war veteran, just looking, going, these are all cycles

Stephen: Right,

Aidan: now. A couple of years of this, we'll be talking about something else in another couple of years. What will always be here will be economic crime, will be struggling government agencies trying to seize assets and can go after criminals.

So we try and stay back. From the current popular trend that is happening, but we will always dig in on like what's right. I think what Amanda did and what Abert did needed to be done. And that's why we were one of the first members. I think I was, I think that that pastor, I think Ari, Ari beat me to be in the first male ally.

Stephen: he is. Of course Ari,

Aidan: everywhere. Everywhere.

Stephen: Ari reborn is such a good, he's such a good soul that

Aidan: know. How dare you? It's, it's second. It's seconding how nice he is.

Stephen: all the rest of us are like, Hey, we're men. We can't do anything. We can't join. And Ari's probably the first one to be like, Hey, I'd love to join. And she'd say, oh, of course. But I think actually that male allyship really changed the way aic.

Perform because it wasn't performative. It was like, Hey, we all gotta work together and here's a path for male males to get involved, versus us just sitting as women talking about how bad men were. And I think that was the, that was a lot of the conversations. I was at a lot of the international women state conversations.

I was like, wow, like you're not gonna get many places just focusing on what, like the problem or who the problem is. Uh, I think Amanda's done a great job of focusing on the solutions and small wins. Hey, can we get a woman on this panel?

Aidan: but, but that, but they're, yeah. You, you say, you, you say that, you say they're small. I think they have like seismic Im implications in the sense of, because I get to see it in practice. I mean, I, I've done it. I, I now just without even thinking now when I'm invited to speak to the panel, I immediately go in and it is, it is in my mind and I'm looking, going much six, it's six middle aged white male in this and it's going, no, but, but what I will say is where I'm, the reason the company's called asset reality is, 'cause I have a quote about being a realist and I've had it on my iPad for like 10 years.

Um, is I also am a realist. There's a chance that those six people are the absolute six best people for the job. And I've said this, I've said I wouldn't apologize if I had six people of the same race. Like if, if, if all things were equal, if there was a genuine meritocracy. And I think that is difficult.

And then everyone does have a bit of a responsibility just on sheer optics as well. But I also said that I refuse, like I hate, hate, hate. And this is a terrible soundbite. I hate women in blockchain panels. I think it's the most degrading thing to do to somebody when you have sitting at an event. And that, that for me is organizer ticking box.

I was like, whoa, I, I wasn't on, I, so I'm, I was on a panel session recently and I'm doing my usual thing. We're talking about sanctions and seized assets and that, and then like the, and I don't wanna, I don't wanna name the event or name or, or call it the, the person who's the victim of this, one of the best crypto minds in the world is on the women in blockchain panel with the other three women in blockchain.

I'm like, why not just have 'em on a panel talking about the thing they're good at? And I was like, no. It was like ladies' corner in the corner, like Women's Institute event. And so I, I still, I still think there's a long way to go. I think that there's no doubt it's steps in the right direction, but I think we also need to like, kind of call that stuff out and going, can we all just agree?

We'll just get, we'll make it accessible for everybody. We'll promote from within, we'll give people opportunities, people that don't get natural opportunities, let's make sure we over-leverage to getting them in. But similarly, I'm not going to hire someone who's, you know, who ticks the box.

Stephen: right.

Aidan: The better can is the, is the, is the guy or the girl in that situation.

So I think trying to get to that is, is tricky. But then, yeah, I think, you know, credit the Amanda for, for what she's done with that. The, I say we were having a running joke looking at our org chart the other day. It was Danny has went highlighted going, you're massively outnumbered. I like, we just, we, we just hired the right people.

It just happens organically.

Stephen: But I don't think anyone's like, Hey, you know, he's really trying to do diversity. It's like, oh, he just have the best people in the industry. And I think people, and from someone that creates content and talks to a lot of companies and asks 'em for inspiration, they're like, we want that branding. We want that kind of personnel.

We want that kind of vibe, that asset reality has. And that's what, you know, one day I, I think I even made a video. I was like going through asset reality on the, on the LinkedIn and all the people that work there. I'm like, hold on. They have this person and this person, and, and this person just came over.

I was like, wow. Like, is anyone noticing how many superstars they have?

Aidan: you know that, that, that, yeah, that's the big thing for me around the, and that's very kind of you to say. I think that. For, for us, that's the big validation, and I take no credit for that. Like, good people are joining our team because of the rest of the team. I mean, when you look at, if you're, I'm not a blockchain expert, I'm not a digital asset expert.

I'm not, that's not in my, my background. So when I look at, when I see people wanting to join us, that's, for me is always that validation. But Trish Turner's a great example. I mean, Trish, Trish and I talk before. They're actually, I, at some point, I'm happy to say it on this podcast because it's a bit more informal.

I will surface a photograph of a karaoke event in DC many years ago.

Stephen: You're infamous everyone. Everyone that mentions Aidan mentions infamous karaoke story.

Aidan: It, it's, it gets better. It, it's, for me, it is BD of the gods. You see people's soul when you see like their song choices and karaoke and stuff. I, I, I, I, I stand by it.

That's, that's my next, my next startup, uh, as I'm a karaoke, uh, karaoke van that drives around at corporate events. Um, I, uh, I have, I have a photograph and there's like seven people in karaoke like three, four years ago. And like I think of the seven people. Six, either work at asset reality or are investors.

And at the time none of them were. And it's true just about like, you know, personal connections. And like Trish was a great example of just, you know, Trish saying, Hey, I'm, I'm leaving IRS I'm gonna be involved, uh, with um, uh, CTG, I'm gonna be doing tax computations and putting her sort of brilliant mind to work.

But it just, I'd love to work with you guys 'cause I just, I like the mission. It was nothing about me. It was nothing about, it was like, I like the mission and you have a bunch of like decent people at the company. I was like, I was like, yeah, let, let, let's do something. Let, let, let, let's, let's make it work.

And that's, that's a continuing theme for us. We're really, really lucky that that good people want to come and work at asset reality. And that for me is all, and that's really important. You mentioned earlier about investors. I mean, what are the signals you can give to investors at your company? You know, can, like I always think of A-A-C-E-O founder's job is, you know, the sort of PE people and story.

Two, the sort of main things. And if you're gonna track the right people and keep that going, I mean, 'cause there's obviously no point raising a billion dollars in venture capital money if no one wants to work with you. So I would love, I would love to say it's because of, uh, my technical expertise, but I think it's probably the combination of karaoke and hiring good people for them to go and work with.

I just sort of pass them on and say, Hey, you're joining that team and you've got a lucky bunch of people around you.

Stephen: I am curious, I can ask you this 'cause you're, you know, a straight shooter. Have you ever felt like, hey, maybe to get to that next level, I'm not the CEO that's gonna do it, or maybe conversation with VCs, I'm sure they have a CEO and it obviously they have the same, you know, charisma as you do, but we might need someone more technical or someone that has this label or this association.

Has that ever crossed your mind? How do you deal with that? Because I think a lot of people that have built companies from the ground up kind of go to that, you know, and then as you said, they're listening to podcasts and say, when you reach five years, you should be stepping down and bringing somebody else in.

Aidan: Th this is something that I've, I've sort of battled with the, this sort of imposter syndrome, especially when I'm like listening to some of the conversations of some of our team, and you're just realizing just how technical they are and the stuff they're talking about is like, I add zero value to that conversation.

Like, I, I, I know, I know my limit, but I also know that I think anyone who's in that CEO position has to look and consider and say, right, who has the most context for the best generalist decision making? I do truly believe that I'm in a very fortunate position in terms of my actual interest and passion and asset recovery means that if there comes a point where we have four senior executives in the company, all, you know, pitching for, Hey, this, we're gonna change this in our product roadmap, we're gonna do this thing, we wanna do this.

I feel that I'm in the best position to take those nuggets and say, I think this is how we go forward. And this is why, because I have that 10,000 foot view, and I have that sort of like North Star on the mission piece. But I've said since day one, the minute we realize as an organization, I've never managed more than 50 people, let alone more than a hundred people, let alone more than 150 people outta 200.

So I fully, fully see myself being that person saying, so if I'm better in the business at actually sitting down on the strategy side, whether you call it strategy, whether you call it vision, I think a lot of CEOs need to have that. Like just self-awareness. Like for me, that's my, you know, Tim Ferriss podcast question.

What one message would you give to the world, like a billboard? Self-awareness. So just be self-aware, like nearly all the world's problems go away if everyone's self-aware. Um, and I think I'm, I'm self-aware to know, I have no experience of that, but it might be that at the stage we're at, in the way we're growing because of a lot of our decisions.

And, and I love the fact that we've seen this like scaling back of managers, for manager's sake. A lot of it's AI driven. But I think candidly it should have been done pre a lot of pre ai. There's so many, I think Airbnb did a very good job with this, is going like, just having managers for manager's sake is sometimes necessary, but other times it stifles a company.

So for me, I'm trying to hold on as long as they'll let me to be that. 'cause I think you, you still need that enthusiasm. No. Dragging the company forward. And I say dragging in the sense of like chief cheerleader dragging when I want other people to be able to be like, this all seems really tough and say we're not gonna solve this technical problem.

Or Oh my God, we wanna go and hire these 25 engineers, but we need to raise more money to do that. And like, it is literally my job to be like, it's gonna be good. We're gonna sort this, this. So I think that. If you're a random CEO who's just come in because you've worked at a couple of big know in certain names of big companies.

I don't know if I would be enthused if I was a engineer or somebody else. I'm like, I want to know that you are literally going to sleep thinking about this problem, that you're waking up thinking about this problem. You're standing in Starbucks thinking about the problem. So I think I've seen some really good companies bring in the corporate manager or president way too early and it kills the company.

And I think that, and I think a lot of that vintage 2021 fundraising. 'cause of course if a, if a VC gives you $80 million or a hundred million dollars and they say you're changing the ceo, you're changing the C

Stephen: You are changing the ceo, especially if you wanna raise another round with

Aidan: precisely. Yeah. You're not. So, so that, that's why for us, that balance was always, if I, if I meet somebody who I feel has.

A better passion for what we're trying to do about asset recovery. I'll step aside immediately and say, right, how do I help you? How do I enable if, if the mission is the main thing? Um, and I think that time will come at, at some point there will be someone who's much better placed, but part of me is almost interested, and again, I, I take a lot from Brian Chesky about, but how much can I learn on the job as well?

And maybe, maybe I'll be the person and be the right person at the, at the right place. But I do think it is a question that everyone has to keep asking themselves all the time because there's nothing worse than that person who hangs on. And then a really good company with a really good mission just dies because they didn't see it.

And I think there is that, you know, too many companies get sort of stuck in the mud. I think if you are a fast growing startup company, you need to be moving fast and orienting and iterating fast. Whereas too many are like, we're doing this thing, we're gonna stick with this thing for six to nine months.

Like, like. The combination of crypto and startup is like advanced dog years. It's like that episode, it's like the interstellar movie. Know, one minute in our world is three, three days in your world.

Stephen: step off and you're all old and gray, and they're like, how long? How long was I out? And you're like, 18 years. And you're like, no, you're just like sitting there crying.

Aidan: It's true. It's like I, I haven't spoken to another human in 80 years.

It's like we, we can't afford to sit around and be like, oh, well, we'll revisit this next week. And it's like, you just simply can't. It has to be, and, and I, and I think that's where I'll come into a lot of criticism. I have no doubt I'll look back and I've made a ton of decisions wrong, but again, I, my, my favorite bit of startup advice was always like the storming, the beaches analogy.

There is a time when you're storming the, and the only objective is to storm the beach. It's not a time to count your ammunition. It's not a time to make sure you've packed a lunch or you've lost a boat. It's like, that's not the time. But I think some people stay in stormy the beaches mode for too long, when actually, yeah, you've raised the big round, you've got 18 months runway, maybe time to sit back and take a bit of a look across the landscape and go, do we have all the right people?

Are they the right personalities? Are we getting or do we have the right people in the right roles? I think that's a constant. And then fall in love with the problem, not the solution. The, the book by the, the we, uh, founder, um, Waze, as everyone else would say, my Northern Irish accent. Um, he always talks about, you know, do the list every couple months.

And I, we, we always say the art whole thing. Here's like, here's the book we're reading, please go read this book. So there's no big secret. I'm not trying to keep like a dice in my head. I'm like, you wanna know what I'm thinking about? This is what I'm reading right now, or what I'm listening to on a podcast or what I'm listening to on Audible.

And he does that exercise of like sitting down every couple of months, entire org chart. If you're starting over again tomorrow. Anyone that's not in the bucket that you wouldn't personally ask to come and join you in the company. It's like have a conversation for their sake as well. Like, I'd be like, I think you might be better in a, in a different company.

And we've been really lucky for us, the difficulty we have when people leave the company is that you are growing so fast that the person that's like Moneyball get on first base type of thing is like the person that you maybe need for zero to 24 months. It's a different skillset from 24 to 48, and we're not always gonna get that decision.

Right. But I think we try and be candid as a company. To basically be like, I, I often use the on the bus, off the bus sort of speech going like, this is the way we're gonna do it over the next six to nine months. If you are not like screamingly enthusiastic to do this, like, please, let's have a private conversation and we'll figure something out.

And some people, some people, uh, obviously I would respect their privacy have taken me up on that and I infinitely respect them for saying it's maybe not for me. It's maybe not the thing that I'm aligned with right now. Maybe I've got family commitments. I'd rather do, maybe I'd rather work on a different project.

Maybe I'd rather go completely somewhere in a different direction. That's brilliant for everybody because, and I think a lot of founders are probably not comfortable, they're not easy conversations. I still get nervous having those types of conversations, but I think again, you know, years of sitting in prison, waiting rooms, talking to people, I keep always keep reminding myself going, it can't be worse than that.

Other time the guy tried to put me out the window type thing. Like it, like, it's not gonna be like that. I, I have a good reference point.

Stephen: And I think you brought up a couple good points. It's like, hey, the same conver, the same things are going on in your head when you're sitting around with a bunch of technical people talking about things you don't know. There's other people in your organization that probably feel the same way, right?

The former law enforcement or former regulator, and they understand what needs to be done. But then that technical, you know, that technical bound keeps on raising and raising and it's hard to keep up with that as someone that sat at exchanges wondering, what am I doing here? 'cause that person knows way more about cryptography and cryptocurrency.

And then you mentioned Storm. You know, I think everyone's watched Private Ryan saving Private Ryan. If Tom Hanks doesn't pick up people and keep charging, when the bullets are flying over their head, they won't. There's no more, you know, trying to secure the beach. It's like, hey, we have to get to that next point.

That next point. And to

Aidan: was, and he, and he was famously a school teacher, but it's like he's, he's, he's, he's wearing the hat down.

Stephen: that might come in might, like when the bullets start flying, are they worried more about saving themselves and making sure their pocketbook is okay and making sure they have an exit plan, or are they leading the rest of the team, you know, to get that bunker and take out that, that big weapon.

Last points, I know I've kept you so long, I could probably talk to you for another hour and a half. Uh, but this is not like a Chris, it was like some of the podcasts that we listened to for three hours.

Aidan: Yeah, long, long.

Stephen: exciting announcements? I know you mentioned Trish, who you just brought on the team. Is there any exciting announcements?

We still have four months left. It feels like this is gonna be probably one of the biggest four months in crypto, especially in compliance. There's a lot of, you know, moons aligning momentum from the US and the UK and abroad. Uh, what are your thoughts going into the end of this year?

Aidan: I, I think that now that we have a lot of regulatory clarity, I think, you know, the gloves will be off in terms of crypto related enforcement at a, at a macro level, what's really exciting for us is that we, our whole investment was around like the, you know, the, the fat F effect, you know, fat F recommendation 15, sort of give birth to a blockchain analytic industry.

You know, it made it compulsory that companies and government agencies know, uh, to an extent had to have analytic tools. And that's sort of happening in our world now, and that's what we're really excited about. There is a mandatory, you must have a central register of seized assets and we've built the first one in the world.

Um, but I know that with that will bring a lot of competition as well, which is which, which is, which is healthy. But I, I obviously want as much time as we can get. Um, but I think that within that, you now are going to see at the end of the year, particularly in the US with budgets coming online as well.

Probably a massive flurry of activity. We're seeing lots of like, cross collaboration in the sector. We're seeing lots of, you know, the announcements from exchanges and analytic companies. No freezing funds. I think what we're hoping is that there will be more clarity. I just don't think, I think, I think people lose sight of crypto as this, you know, borderless, like regulatory hot mess.

How can you're, you're, you're trying to be an international, if I put myself in an shoes of an exchange or one of your sort of typical listeners from compliance perspective, I can see how difficult it is. Like we sit on the law enforcement side. We don't have retail customers, consumer customers. We, we help governments, but I can imagine what it must be like.

And there's a lot of friends who are compliance officers and big exchanges and it's like, how do you do it? Like how do you go from one meeting with the eu? There's a very particular stance on crypto. That the UK is, you know, pitching itself as being a bit more progressive to now the current administration in the US being like, have at it.

No. Even, even if you launder money, you're fine. Like it's fine. Don't worry. Don't need to be an SB, we got you. It's like there's just this spread. How do you build a business around that? And I think, and then you've got AI's gonna solve everything. No, spoiler alert. It's absolutely not. If anything, it's gonna make things a hell of a lot harder.

Because you're just gonna have, you know, more program. You know, Aaron West will tell you better than, than I will on that. But, so I think that there will be the, I think what will drive everything is the capital that's gonna come in. There's gonna be a lot of capital that comes in. Um, and a lot of the VCs in this sector obviously are also usually, you know, very large crypto holders themselves or, or adjacently, um, to their sort of connected wealth.

So, I mean, an interesting side note, our lead investor framework ventures is a very big crypto DeFi fund. Like, they we're like the weirdest portfolio company. They have like, they're, I think they're like one of the biggest holders of Chain Link outside of the Chain Link team. And like, they're deep, deep, deep sort of know DeFi crypto folks.

Um, and then they've got us on the side,

Stephen: They got you.

Aidan: they're all always, but it's

Stephen: you're the last one to get invited to. Like the portfolio dinners. They're like, yeah, you

Aidan: do you do? What do you guys do? And we're like, we're like, we're like the global undertakers. Like there's always going to be problems in the sector.

There's always gonna be someone that needs to do that. But I think it makes it very exciting for the sector with the regulatory clarity with like the defense tech and govtech things coming online. So I think we could be entering into sort of another big sort of boom period is what it certainly looks like.

And particularly back to the, the, the 2019 fat F now that Fat F have, you know, announced that, you know, asset recovery will be this key priority. The new fat F guidance that's coming out mentions asset management and seized assets 148 times, for example. I mean, that's good for asset recovery in general.

And asset recovery then means that has a knock on effect in compliance in blockchain analytics. So I would say that, uh, my, my advice to anybody would be to brush up on old school asset recovery, because ultimately that's what underpins all of this. Like, why do we have compliance screening? To spot illicit assets.

Why are we trying to spot illicit assets to stop them or get them back? Like the, the, like, the parent in all of this is asset recovery. It's combating crime effectively. So I think that there'll be, there'll be lots of exciting opportunities, I think, in this space, but what the UK does next, you know, what happens with the EU and how sort of Mika truly rolls out and is implemented.

Um, yeah, I think, I think your industry in particular in compliance is in, for a, a bumpy couple of years, but, you know, one person's bump is someone else's sort of elevation in someone else's misery. So I think there's a, there's gonna be a lot of activity. There'll not be, there'll be plenty of topics to be discussed.

Stephen: I think, you know, as a closing point, I think a lot you say it's the parent, but I think people have left it as like the, you know, the orphan child where it's like they're so worried about the optics of how much we seized and you know, who went to jail and what color or ethnicity they were and how many years they get.

I don't hear very many people giving us follow ups like, Hey, you remember those CS assets? We sold those Cs. You don't hear very much of that happening at all in the media. So I think as much as we wanna say, like this is the whole point, we're like, we've added so much complexity, so many political statements and you know, anything that happens is like, if it doesn't have that political angle, then you know, the media doesn't want to talk about it.

You know, a driver, you know, a truck driver kills somebody in Florida by making an illegal U-turn. It's not about, well what about the victim's family? It's about, you know, are they unidentified and you know, what are we gonna do with them and like we're gonna arrest him and bring them back. And I'm like, why is that guy flying on a private jet to be brought back to Florida from another?

Like, I'm like, how much did that cost? Like, it's all these things that we're not talking about. But when I saw that jet, I'm like that, that man took a better plane than I did to Florida. We need to discuss why he didn't take a greyhound with an officer beside him. But it's so funny how much now the media plays into the way we treat certain crimes and, you know, recovering these assets and putting it back into the victim's pocket actually seems like the least of our

Aidan: it's, yeah.

Stephen: now.

Aidan: It's, it's our, it's our closing sort of, it's our mission. Our mission is there is no accountability really in the asset recovery sector. When people talk about, I've recovered X, we want them to say of what? No, no, no one actually knows what that recovery is. There's no context around it. And I think there's no data and it's the old, no, you can't manage what you can't measure.

I mean, there is no accountability. We've got, look how much bi blockchain analytic information now exists, hotly contested, but there's at least, there's lots of people saying lots of things. Whereas the asset recovery statistic, I talked about the 1% that was collated in 2011, that then was re-upped by Europol of a data set from 2011 to 2014.

There's nothing being measured in 11 years. So for us, it's a good creating that accountability. As you said, we talk about when someone gets arrested, we talk about how many years they got. We rarely talk about how much did we get back and that's our money. As members of the public, you literally pay more tax in Canada because of the lack of returns, for example.

And in the UK it's actually broken down in your council tax bill, it says Police and crown commissioner money, money going to police force. I'm like, well, can we get a slice of the trillions that are being laundered globally? And let's put that in. Let's reinvest that. I mean, Aaron West, wouldn't Aaron Love to be able to have an, an Operation Shamrock initiative funded by forfeited funds?

You could have drug rehabilitation forfeited by, you could have better law enforcement tools and training all funded by. So for us, that asset recovery sort of flywheel, if we can play our part with all the other parts, but I think for, for your predominant lister group, people don't realize that those, some of the biggest cases in the world all started off with a SAR being filed.

So like compliance plays such an important role in being the genesis of some of the most biggest, most interesting cases. Big case in Australia where they were laundering proceeds, uh, laundering, proceeds of crime using classic cars, crypto assets, all started from a bank teller going, Hmm, something seems strange.

Stephen: Right.

Aidan: These cases wouldn't be started. So I think, I think the whole system's sort of all, all working together. And like you say, if we're sitting here in a year's time and we're starting to talk about asset recovery statistics, countries collect them, but without context. And I would love to start seeing sort of global asset recovery, statistical information.

Maybe that's a, a follow up for this time next year. See where we are?

Stephen: Yeah. Who's gonna survey the 40 agencies and who's

Aidan: We will, we will. 'cause we'll have, we'll have all the data. So we will

Stephen: Exactly. And that's what we're waiting

Aidan: we, we, we, we are, we, we need, we need permission. This is the difference. We need permission to share that information. So that's the, that's the big deal. We, uh, we have the data. We're not a blockchain analytic company. We don't have public data that we can talk about.

So I can tell you right now how some countries are doing, but of course I'm not permitted to. And that's what we want. We want that information more in the public domain. UK publishes asset recovery statistics, the US publish statistics. But again, it's not, it's not contextualized. And I think there's more work to be done in that space.

And we take a leaf outta the blockchain analytic. Industry going. There's all these amazing, really interesting reports that are submitted every year. They're contested and debated. That's a good thing. I wanna see the same for recovery.

Stephen: I love it. Aidan, I know people can find you on LinkedIn. Do you spend any time on crypto Twitter, or is that just too much

Aidan: I, no, I am, I, I, and I still, I'm, I'm too old and I refuse to call it X, so I still call Twitter as well. So yeah, Aidan, Jay Larkin. Between, uh, between, uh, Twitter and LinkedIn is where you'll find me, uh, ranting.

Stephen: Awesome. Thank you so much for joining. The one piece of advice I'll leave you with. Every single time we have a conversation and we talk fairly regularly, I see a lot of the content you put out. I learn something different. I like, I challenge you to have a conversation, whether it's in a camera, to somebody else every single day for a whole month, and just to see how much different information you can provide because none of the information is, I've heard you talk about asset reality.

Every time we have a conversation, I learn something completely different. Some nuance of the industry. And I know we've talked about doing like a weekly

Aidan: That could be a compliment or an insult because it's like you never stay on point as well.

Stephen: No. Because I think you've listened to enough podcasts. It's like if you listen to the same person on eight different podcasts, they have that same message usually directing people to buy their book in the context of their book.

But I think what's interesting about you is like you are having different conversations every single day. You're researching different things every day, and it adds so much context and richness to your points.

Aidan: It's an important space Yeah.

Stephen: Aidan Larkin, thank you so much for joining Around The Coin podcast.

Aidan: Much appreciated.

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