NCI: The AI Roll-Up of Main Street

Speaker1: [00:00:00] All right, we're here and I'm pleased to introduce Al Goldstein on the next episode of Lumida Non-Consensus Investing. I've known Al for a long time, I wanna say over 10 years. He was an early fintech entrepreneur. He's founded a number of businesses. He built Enova, which is publicly traded. He built Avant in Chicago, which is where I got to know Al.

He's also the co-founder and CEO of Stoic Lane. It's a holding company that's done 90-plus acquisitions since they started in mid-2021. And what Stoic Lane does, they consolidate small businesses and they apply AI to drive productivity and growth. That's a theme I'm really excited about, AI services to drive more margin expansion.

There's a lot we wanna get into here. Al is super thoughtful and I'm sure we'll cover different ground like the OCC charter and some exciting news that Al can share around Avant. [00:01:00] Maybe potential IPO. His experience as an entrepreneur, how he's approaching AI. Maybe the midterms. His experience in Russia-Ukraine.

We'll see how much we can get through, but Al, it's always great to see you. 

Speaker2: Yeah, man. How 

Speaker1: are you? 

Speaker2: No, thank you for having me join. I gotta tell you, it's a little bit surreal because you and I were chatting before this that about a year ago, I think I was pestering you and asking you, "Hey, should I be starting to post stuff on social media, get myself out there?"

And you basically said, "Yeah, of course. You need to do as much of it as you can." Lo and behold, I've recorded 57 podcast episodes of my own where I do the thing you just did. So it's a little bit- ... a little bit fun and awkward being on the receiving side of it. 

Speaker1: What did you learn from those 50 podcasts that stood out for you?

Speaker2: Yeah, it's 

Speaker1: been super. Were there any insights? Yeah. 

Speaker2: It's been super fun. My podcast co-host and I, we basically talk about the American dream being alive. We talk about founder stories. We bring on [00:02:00] entrepreneurs from a bunch of different industries and whatnot, and I think it makes you pretty thoughtful, or at least more thoughtful if you have to put stuff out there versus just the randomness of what we all talk about.

Yeah. Which I love because, I think you and I, we're all in this business of trying to keep learning and trying to adapt to the world, and it's just another format that allows you to share what you're learning. 

Speaker1: Yes, 100%. I remember we spoke in Miami, and what I've learned since then is, we need even more content and more social media.

There's just loss of trust in these centralized institutions, and people are turning to others to get a point of view on the world. And I think entrepreneurs and creators have a lot to offer. People are learning a lot. I'm looking at Alex Hormozi's content. That guy's built an extraordinary business using social media.

So how has it worked out? Do you like the podcast and- 

Speaker2: Yeah it's been super fun. And we [00:03:00] talk about things like kids and obviously you have kids about my kids'- Yes ... age. And my podcast co-host and I, we talk about, okay, we have middle school kids and now high school kids, and how do you try to get them to be positive and to encapsulate the American dream?

And sometimes they actually listen to our stuff all voluntarily, which has been fun. But I think the point you make that the mainstream media has lost credibility and probably doing it to themselves, like today is a perfect example. I don't know if you saw this flight from Dubai that was- I did ... there was an attempted...

there was an attempted hijacking- Yeah ... where the- ... one pilot stabbed the other pilot. Yes. What did The New York Times and the BBC write? It was "Flight was diverted." 

Speaker1: Are 

Speaker2: you kidding? Not... No. That's 100% true headline, and they got community- Why? ... noted like crazy on X. And back to this idea of how do you- Wow

discern what's real versus what's not. 

Speaker1: Wow. Wow. I had no idea. We have a lot to get into here. Yeah. So much, no. Now is the time where we have a chance to [00:04:00] brainwash our kids and- ... hopefully shape them with the right approach to critical thinking values. I had a chat yesterday with a friend and the topic was maybe this is the end of critical thinking.

Maybe this is the generation that you and I came from, where it's like the last generation of critical thinking because we have AI. 

Speaker2: God, I hope not. I don't know. I agree. I'm more positive than that. I think nostalgia bias, that concept that every generation thinks that the next generation is dumb, that's been around forever.

I don't, I... Clearly, if you let the AI do all of your thinking for you, you don't develop that muscle. But at the same time, you can just, you can learn so much that was hard to do before. But I tell, I actually spoke to my eighth graders, it's his finance class or business class yesterday, and I just kept showing those kids quotes from books.

I was like, "Okay, this is what Warren Buffett said, and this is what Sun Tzu said." And a lot of them had heard of these people. I'm like, [00:05:00] "Guys, you gotta go read books. Just don't forget that art form." 

Speaker1: Yes, 100% agreed. I'm reading with my kids at night now that they're at an age where they can read and ask more interesting questions.

The, and the age of AI i- is something that my wife and I are trying to approach, and how did that change education? You have schools now like Alpha School- Yeah ... that are out there, which I'm super supportive of. I've concluded that maybe Y Combinator is the best education you can get. Look at the success of Alexander Wang.

He dropped out of MIT. 

Speaker2: Yeah. 

Speaker1: Two years later, starts at Y Combinator. Mark Zuckerberg bought half his company for $6 billion. Meta stock went up a couple hundred billion dollars- 

Speaker2: Sure ... 

Speaker1: after about six months of him being there. And it's not just him. OpenAI came out of Y Combinator. So many companies, it may be one of the most impactful institutions.

And the difference is with these higher education schools, you're paying them $100,000 a year for four years, or students graduate with debt and they resent the system. [00:06:00] And on the other side of that with you have Y Combinator, where they're paying you- Yeah ... to go build a business, and after you come out of the program, in three months where you've learned incredible lessons like entrepreneurship the journey you've gone through, we've gone through.

You then get introduced to more investors to grow your business more. That's the promise- Yeah ... of entrepreneurship and capitalism. 

Speaker2: Yeah, totally. Actually, Avant even is Y Combinator adjacent, where I don't think you even- if you know that, but my two- I don't 

Speaker1: know that. I don't know that

Speaker2: so my two co-founders, I think you've met John Sun probably previously. 

Speaker1: Yeah, I did. Of course I know John. I'll see him in Money 2020, I'm sure, three weeks. 

Speaker2: Yeah, they were, him and my other co-founder, Paul, were in an early batch of YC working on a company, and it wasn't really taking off, and we basically pivoted and we did Avant.

So we're not quite- Oh, no 

Speaker1: way ... 

Speaker2: yeah, we're not quite in the batch, but have you seen recently that Andreessen Horowitz is now launching their own university, call it not quite Y Combinator, but Austin, Texas, they have that Joe Lonsdale school UATX. Yes. I think [00:07:00] all of, I think all of those are super interesting as a way to- Agreed

right, to learn in a different format where you get diverse opinions, you get the skills of the day. I, I, as my kids get a little bit older, I actually think a lot of those are interesting options. 

Speaker1: I 100% agree. Some of the formats now are where you have learning in a course format for two hours a day or what we call traditional learning, and then it's active projects.

You're building something. Yeah. You're collaborating on some kind of project, and I think that makes, a, a lot of sense. So tell me more about where Avant is today. Why not just introduce Avant? Sure. There were some major headlines that came out recently. Go ahead. 

Speaker2: Yeah, no, like you said you and I met each other, I think, early days when we were fighting in the the fintech battles of 10 years ago.

Call it- ... Fintech 2.0- 

... 

Speaker2: Just getting going. But, Yeah ... Avant is a 13-year-old company, and we've been at it a while. Our mission has not changed from day one, which is to be the core financial partner [00:08:00] for the middle income US consumer, and we think there are 100-plus million of those customers that really are not served well by the traditional financial system, nor a lot of the fintech peers that have gotten into the fray.

And what Avant does is we've provided credit to those customers at scale across multiple products. So we've originated nearly 18 billion of credit since we launched in 2012 across personal loans and credit cards. We've served nearly five million unique consumers across those products. Nearly three million credit cards issued on the platform.

To me, the most exciting thing is we're now going into the more transactional side of the day-to-day of what the customers want. So we now have a credit builder product, which is a financial management tool. We have over 500,000 customers that have signed up for it, which is super exciting. But ultimately, Avant's vision is to be that core partner for that middle income consumer, and that vision is really powerful.

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