Episode 71: Taking the Guesswork out of Private Market Investments with Opto Investment Co-founder Jacob Miller | Why Financial Advisors are Leaning into Alternative Investments in 2024

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After working for the world’s largest hedge fund, Bridgewater, for over five years, today’s guest, Jacob Miller, found his passion — making investing accessible. 

This passion led him to co-found Opto Investments, a tech-driven private markets platform. 

In this episode, Jacob and Stacy dive into: 

• Jacob’s backstory: how he went from aspiring doctor to advisor at the world’s leading hedge fund, Bridgewater 

• Opto’s mission to decode complex market dynamics so average people can better understand their investments 

• Why making people feel dumb, so they think they need you in order to invest, is a dead (and unethical) strategy 

• Opto’s foolproof strategy for standing out in the crowded tech industry 

• How Opto’s platform helps financial advisors differentiate and tackle alternative investments  

More About Jacob:

Co-founder, Jacob Miller, is Opto’s Chief Solutions Officer, a key figure in its leadership team and central to its growth strategy. He spearheads initiatives for Opto's fiduciary partnerships and the systemization of institutional-quality private markets investment techniques and programs. Before co-founding Opto, Miller spent nearly five years as an investor at Bridgewater Associates. Miller has a passion for sensible long-term investing, systematizing investment processes, and distilling complex market dynamics into clear, logical linkages that help people better understand their investments. Having managed money for family and friends since he was 16, Miller is a certified market junkie. While he has a background in macroeconomics and high-yield debt, he finds the challenges and opportunities in the private markets space far more interesting and important, both for investors and society.

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TRANSCRIPT

Below is an AI-generated transcript and therefore it may contain errors.

[00:00:00] Jacob Miller: I don't want our clients to be like, Jake's so smart. I couldn't do this without him. I want my clients to be like, I'm really glad I had that help. And now I understand better. And maybe my next fund or next year, I can be in a more active voice. I'm not as scared anymore. This makes sense. 

[00:00:15] Stacy Havener: Hey, my name is Stacey Havener.

[00:00:17] I'm obsessed with startups, stories, and sales. Storytelling has fueled my success as a female founder in the toughest boys club, Wall Street. I've raised over 8 billion that has led. and follow on assets for investment boutiques. You could say against the odds. Yeah. Understatement. I share stories of the people behind the portfolios while teaching you how to use story to shape outcomes.

[00:00:45] It's real talk here. Money, authenticity, growth, setbacks, sales and marketing are all topics we discuss. Think of this as the capital raising class you wish you had in college, mixed with happy hour. [00:01:00] Pull up a seat, grab your notebook, and get ready to be inspired and challenged while you learn. This is the Billion Dollar Backstory Podcast.

[00:01:12] I had an amazing teacher in high school who was the most passionate person I've ever met. She taught Latin, and she loved it so much that to her, it was anything but a dead language. It was alive and well. She spoke Latin to us. She made jokes in Latin. She had Latin terms of endearment. Her favorite, and mine, was rara owis.

[00:01:38] It means rare bird. I've never met anyone with the love of classics like Ms. Rajat until I met today's guest, Jacob Miller, co founder of Opto Investments, a tech driven private markets platform. Jacob is a rare bird. He studied classics in college so he could read the [00:02:00] great philosophers in Latin. He's a writer, a thinker, an investor.

[00:02:05] In fact, before Opto, he worked at the largest hedge fund in the world, Bridgewater. Now he's bringing his magic to the wealth community. This is a great conversation with a brilliant mind and a kind soul. Meet my friend, Jacob Miller. Jake, thank you so much for being here today. In the green room, I was saying, I've been geeking out on your website because your name is so cool, but it's more than that.

[00:02:33] You are cool, your story is cool, but your building is cool, and I am so excited to dive into all of that today. with you in the studio. 

[00:02:42] Jacob Miller: Thanks for having me. Hopefully I can, uh, live up to the coolness. 

[00:02:46] Stacy Havener: I think you will. I think you will, my friend. You can't see this listeners, but behind Jake are four guitars, including a banjo, which I was very, very keen to know if he plays and he does.

[00:02:59] We're not going to have him [00:03:00] play today because that's a lot, but maybe he'll come back and play us a song. Um, okay, Jack, I want to start at the beginning. You mentioned to me in the green room, you consider yourself a storyteller. So we are instantly best friends. I don't know if you know that, but we are best friends now.

[00:03:13] There's not a lot of storytellers in the investment world. So I want to hear more about your journey. Did you always know that you wanted to be in the investment space? Like, did you think you were going to be a rock star, for instance, with the guitars? Like, tell me more, like go way back. 

[00:03:29] Jacob Miller: Yeah. And you always have to be careful with these things.

[00:03:32] Cause when you think about what separates humans from everything else, obviously there's a lot of things we have good hands and thumbs and all that stuff. But I do think that. Storytelling drive really is one of the key differentiating about every society on earth, having a creation myth, having stories of how the ancestors work, et cetera, clearly something that is deeply ingrained in our evolutionary mindset.

[00:03:55] And so I always, you always have to be careful because you can become too good of a storyteller about your own [00:04:00] life and tell this. Amazing story of how it was always going to be this way. And you were always going to get to this point and everything led up to this. And it's a nice idea. It's probably not true.

[00:04:09] Stacy Havener: No, and not that great of a story. And to be honest, who wants to cheer for that person? Right. I want the movie version, which means there's got to be some conflict in here. 

[00:04:18] Jacob Miller: Yeah. There's got to be a second act, but, uh, so going way back, I have always been interested in the investment world, not. You know, I think came across it a little bit earlier than most.

[00:04:30] I was growing up in San Francisco during the dot com boom and bust. I was sort of, as I was starting to notice the world and, you know, notice things like our next door neighbor going from driving a beat up old Honda to a Ferrari back to a beat up old Honda. 

[00:04:44] Stacy Havener: Oh no. 

[00:04:45] Jacob Miller: Seeing the ups and downs of the market firsthand.

[00:04:47] And when you're, you know, Eight year old boy seeing a really nice car come and go. It's kind of an interesting thing. And I asked my dad, what happened? And he told me about very high level about the market, what that is, you know, started paying attention, [00:05:00] started doing paper portfolio stuff. Um, also, you know, then in terms of it not being just a linear story, that was always a passion and interest, but looked hard at.

[00:05:10] Medicine. I worked in a hospital in Sri Lanka for a few months, made it halfway through a chemistry major at University of Chicago before realizing that not only was I, you know, when you're just fighting an uphill battle, like I had to work twice as hard to do as well as the next person. Like, maybe this isn't my thing.

[00:05:26] And then also just thinking, Hey, you're kind of like a high level, big picture kind of guy. Maybe being a doctor is not The best place to practice that if you miss a detail, Oh, you don't just go edit it later. People get hurt. And so it really came back around after just kind of nurturing as a hobby to my investment passion started trading, you know, on behalf of friends and family, mainly in like emerging market debt, uh, currencies, other sort of more traditionally macro stuff.

[00:05:55] I don't believe I have any edge over all the stock analysts in the world who are [00:06:00] trying to do the same thing. I do believe that sometimes governments pay. People who trade currencies because they're not profit seeking actors. I started writing about that. Some of the CIOs and investment folks at Bridgewater were reading that blog, which is still surprising to me.

[00:06:13] I still have no idea what I'm talking about, and I certainly didn't then. Um, and that led me to going out to Bridgewater as an intern and spending four or five years there. You know, it's a really interesting place. There's lots of stories to tell there in terms of the culture, race principles, which a lot of people have heard of what that looks like.

[00:06:28] Yeah, actually practice with a large group of people and then, you know, making the tough call to leave. Like it's a very cushy job. Golden handcuffs are real, but I'm usually bored and, you know, the learning curve had started to go like this and, you know, it's one of those things where. It's not just about the work you're doing and that being interesting, in many ways, the problems I was tackling on a day to day basis at Bridgewater were probably more interesting than the ones I'd, than 80 percent of what I do today here, but you were such a small sliver of such a big pie in a pie that wasn't growing, you know, we were [00:07:00] a hundred billion dollars levered five to 15 times, depending, like you can't grow that strategy, um, you can't grow the company, you're not growing the number of things you're doing.

[00:07:09] And that's just a lot less exciting if you're young, easily bored, care about this stuff to not be able to attack the new problem. And so lockpick the golden handcuffs in late 2019, um, convinced my then girlfriend, now wife to move back to California and met Joe Lonsdale, founder of Adapar, Palantir of ABC through mutual friend.

[00:07:30] You know, from my vantage point at Bridgewater, where I focused on a lot of like high yield, corporate debt, riskier debt, I had seen just how important private credit had become and how hard it was to access. And then I started expanding that viewpoint, talk to people in the equities team, real estate, et cetera, and, you know, didn't see anyone applying like a systematic holistic view to how to access this, how to do this at scale.

[00:07:52] And, you know, Joe had seen a very similar thing as chairman of Adapar. They report on over 5 trillion wealth, you know, very few firms had a [00:08:00] robust through time strategy, the way they do for public markets across the board. And so it was funny, our first meeting, he asked me to go on a run with him. I'm a weightlifter, not a runner.

[00:08:10] Um, so I spent the weekend practicing. Talking and running, I would, you know, read out loud, uh, trying to hold up 830. It was, uh, painful, maybe puked once, maybe not, but convinced myself that I could make it through a few mile run. So did that, didn't make an absolute fool of myself that turned into some hydration, some lunch, some time at the whiteboard for us the day.

[00:08:34] And this was early COVID. So we both had plenty of time, um, really by the end of that day, we knew there was something to build together here. And so, yeah, was it always going to turn out this way? Like there's a, you know, a fanciful story you could tell if I wanted to make other people feel bad about, you know, not knowing what you want to do from age zero, but at the same time, there are common threads, you know, always looking for how to bring together ideas versus like focus on the differences.

[00:08:59] Stacy Havener: Yeah. 

[00:08:59] Jacob Miller: Yeah. How do [00:09:00] I make private markets more like public markets? Not just tell people they're different and make things actually work for people. You know, I guess the last thread there that is very consistent is, I think I have a pretty dogged passion for incentives. I didn't like how. The industry was really based off of, uh, you know, what I see as very poor incentives of, you know, you and I both know the best funds in the world don't really have to pay to raise capital.

[00:09:26] And yet that was how all of the RIA space was accessing private markets largely through placement agent sort of relationships, um, wanted to turn that on its head. Wanted to make sure that nose to tail, everyone was focused on the same goal of investment excellence and what works for portfolios. 

[00:09:41] Stacy Havener: Such a good story.

[00:09:43] It wouldn't have been as cool if you had airbrushed it, right? Because, like, when you left Bridgewater, you didn't know that Opto was the thing. But you were open, obviously, to conversations and maybe you had ideas, but it's okay not to [00:10:00] know. It's okay to let it evolve. 

[00:10:02] Jacob Miller: And you really, you can't know, right?

[00:10:04] You can't! If you plan Yeah, we just, my wife and I just welcomed our first child and our doctor was very clear with us. I mean, mainly for her, but good for both of us to hear like, you can have a birth plan and then it's going to happen and whatever happens, that's right. Founding is pretty similar. Like you.

[00:10:20] Because if you've had an idea for five years, it's probably not a relevant idea anymore or else someone would have done it like a big question ABC asks, Joe and I ask ourselves with companies is like, why is this possible today? And it wasn't possible five years ago. And so if you've had an idea for too long, and it hasn't, someone else hasn't figured it out, probably there's a good reason that that gap exists.

[00:10:41] Stacy Havener: Isn't that interesting? I like what you said. So first of all, the idea of talking and running is very real. Like that is really difficult to do. And when you said you weren't a runner, that was my first thought is, Oh my God, I would have died because I can't talk and run. And I played soccer, like my entire college and, you know, [00:11:00] before, and it's still one of the most difficult things.

[00:11:04] So I give you so much credit. Like, I don't know how you did that and didn't just throw up on his shoes while you were running. 

[00:11:11] Jacob Miller: That would have been, uh, an even less airbrushed story, but fortunately we made it through that, uh, but yeah, weightlifting and distance running are basically opposite disciplines, so I had to, uh 

[00:11:22] Stacy Havener: So good, I just love it.

[00:11:23] Um, okay, so now you guys come up with this idea for Opto. I, you know, I wanted to ask you what's different, but I'm not because there's something you said in your backstory. That's very interesting, which say the thing about things being the same. Can you take us back to that part of the story where you were like, it's not enough to just be like, Oh, private markets are different.

[00:11:43] Jacob Miller: Yeah, 

[00:11:44] Stacy Havener: it's how can you make private markets more like public and I want I want to unpack that a little

[00:11:48] Jacob Miller: yeah So if you'll indulge me for a second, yeah, I'm a huge Physics nerd to be totally frank. I don't think I could have cut it like actually being a physicist from a mathematical perspective But I've [00:12:00] always been a lot of economists have physics envy.

[00:12:02] Um, 

[00:12:03] Stacy Havener: really? 

[00:12:04] Jacob Miller: Yeah, they're like, their equations are slightly more complex, they're definitely a little bit smarter than us, you know, all that 

[00:12:09] Stacy Havener: good stuff, but 

[00:12:10] Jacob Miller: uh, has always been a passion area. I still read journals, understand 15 percent of it, but it's still cool. But the concept of symmetry has been pivotal to physics moving forward over the last century.

[00:12:21] And you know, what does symmetry mean? Interesting things happen when you approach a problem and you say, are these two separate phenomena? Or am I looking at the same thing through two lenses? And so we had two fundamental forces. Electromagnetism, which makes lights and radio waves and all of the interactions we kind of feel, like when you press a screen, that's the electrons in your finger repelling the ones in the screen.

[00:12:43] And then this really esoteric force called the weak nuclear force, which is what causes radioactive decay and nuclear bombs. And they seem very different. One explodes and creates craters and mushroom clouds, and the other is the only thing we really feel besides gravity on a day to day basis. But it took someone saying, you know, [00:13:00] what if they're the same force viewed from different angles?

[00:13:03] And that united, you know, a huge branch of physics into a single electroweak theory, which we don't need to get into symmetry breaking and a bunch of the esoterica there. But you know, after studying that in college, and there's a bunch more examples of, you know, take maybe a more common example, you have the periodic table, there's 160 some odd elements, looks like a lot of differences.

[00:13:24] And then someone saying, what if they're all the same three things? What if it's just, yeah. 

[00:13:29] Stacy Havener: Okay. 

[00:13:30] Jacob Miller: And so that's always been, I think, a more compelling way of thinking for me. I like frameworks. I can'tology is I like taking a list of a million things and saying, really, this is five things in different categories.

[00:13:42] And the same thing definitely applies to markets. And one thing that always frustrated me was I find a lot of people in our space. And this goes back to the storyteller point, hide behind complexity. 

[00:13:52] Stacy Havener: Yes. Good 

[00:13:53] Jacob Miller: stories don't need to be complex. 

[00:13:54] Stacy Havener: Yeah. 

[00:13:55] Jacob Miller: But you can justify pretty high fees if you make people feel dumb when describing what you [00:14:00] do.

[00:14:00] Stacy Havener: Oh my God. God, that's so good. Jake, keep going. 

[00:14:05] Jacob Miller: So looking at that and just the amount of, you know, obfuscation, ripping off poor storytelling and just poor performance. And, you know, everyone can explain why they have poor performance, why they're still the smartest person in the world. Like you had poor performance.

[00:14:18] It's okay. Um, wanted to take a much more common sense approach to stuff. It's not rocket science. We have. Engineers who were rocket scientists, I think they would all agree this is, it's hard in a humanistic way and we can talk more about where technology helps versus where there's still a human element, but the end of the day, what is private markets?

[00:14:36] I mean, they're buying quality companies at a low price in hopes of selling them at a high price or lending to quality companies and attractive yield. And With adequate protections, like those are things anyone can understand if they're explained in the right way. Most of us have some experience running a business, buying a business, thinking about a business.

[00:14:53] And when we hide behind, you know, 80 page PPMs and leverage ratios and we take something that [00:15:00] could be a really compelling story and we turn it into something so complex that people sort of out of shame, I think, just kind of accept it and move on. And so we've really strived to make this accessible and that's not just in terms of explaining things clearly.

[00:15:14] That's the baseline. You have to do that. But also just finding those commonalities like our private equity and public equity fundamentally different. Well, no, I mean, they're different in terms of the liquidity you can get easily, but they're both claims on the upside in the company. There's a probably a similar kind of risk of the economy tanks next month.

[00:15:31] Probably both of those are going to suffer. Your private equity managers might not mark themselves down. That doesn't mean that they're not underperforming, or maybe not underperforming, but performing poorly. Um, and so if you understand things at a fundamental level, you can understand less things, but have more clarity.

[00:15:48] You know, as a quick, one last example here, you know, what we saw, this is something Bridgewater was saying for a very long time. Um, but that environment just hadn't happened. You know, people think about stocks and bonds is diversifying. I'm going [00:16:00] to hold my 60, 40, 70, 30. And when stocks go down, bonds will go up and I'll be protected.

[00:16:06] That worked really well from like 1982 until 2020, because when growth is the dominant factor, they do work opposite to each other. When growth falls, equities do poorly, but bonds do well because the Fed can cut rates and vice versa. And you basically were in a growth dominated environment for that 30 plus year period.

[00:16:24] When inflation is a dominant factor, they work the same way because margins get compressed. I have to pay workers more for the same amount of output on the equity side. And the real present value of my bonds is less because a dollar is not worth a dollar anymore. And so in that, in the inflationary period of the last few years, you know, surprise, surprise, they've moved in tandem and the protection people thought was there wasn't.

[00:16:44] And so I could line up 18 different asset classes and have a correlation matrix and a bunch of colors and complexity. And I could fool myself into thinking I'm protected, or I can say, there's probably five or six things that owe a long one really matter for markets. And I can understand how those [00:17:00] things interact and I can do my best to prepare for a wide range of outcomes.

[00:17:04] And we think private markets just add to that toolkit, gives you a couple more levers to pull. And in the world where there's really only five or six levers, adding one or two is a big deal in terms of reducing risk and improving outcomes. 

[00:17:15] Stacy Havener: That was so good. Like, I literally had to, like, bite my tongue to not just, like, start cheering and, like, mic dropping and all the things.

[00:17:23] There are so many gems in there, Jake, that you're talking about things that so many people in the investment industry are thinking. But very few will actually say 

[00:17:32] Jacob Miller: no one wants to be the one for like, I'm fine looking dumb. I like to look dumb. 

[00:17:39] Stacy Havener: But it's not even that it's like, nobody wants to challenge the status quo of some of the things that are like fundamental to the investment industry, like incentives, like complexity bias.

[00:17:55] Things that, like, make the engine work, very few [00:18:00] people are willing to say, but that doesn't need to be in the engine, does it? 

[00:18:05] Jacob Miller: And I credit Bridgewater's training with a lot of that, you know, it's a complex place, but the training I got there was way better than, like, I learned more in a year there than I did in four years of college by far.

[00:18:15] You get a big packet the first day of about 50 percent of stuff you're going to learn to get another packet later. The first page just says, everything you're about to read might be bullshit. So that's your job. You're there to ask questions. If everyone thing was solved. 

[00:18:29] Stacy Havener: Why are we here? Yeah, exactly.

[00:18:32] Exactly. So, okay, I've got to get my brain back to some of the gems that you had because I want, I want to come back to incentives, but I don't want to start there. When you said levers that there are probably like five or six levers that actually, you know, matter to markets and to portfolios, my guess is like lever to you does not mean asset class, but everybody else when they're building portfolios is building around asset classes.

[00:18:58] Is that fair? 

[00:18:59] Jacob Miller: Uh, that is [00:19:00] definitely fair. 

[00:19:00] Stacy Havener: Yeah. 

[00:19:01] Jacob Miller: Because I mean, asset classes, again, there's fundamentally two ways to hold. Financial positions, you can have an equity like claim on a financial position or a debt like claim. So that's your first like high level framework. And then within that, you know, it's, what are you holding?

[00:19:13] Am I holding a property, a company? Am I lending to a property or a company? Is that asset back, et cetera. These are all things that then help you get to, okay, well, what causes me to outperform and 

[00:19:25] Stacy Havener: underperform? So 

[00:19:25] Jacob Miller: by understanding how these classes actually work, I can say, You know, what actually matters here, does it matter to my equity portfolio, what the rainfall in Australia is next year?

[00:19:35] Probably not. Um, does it matter what happens to consumer spending? Probably yes. You know, what is consumer spending based on? That's based on growth in the economy and how cheap it is to borrow. Okay. Those are probably fundamental levers, growth and interest rates. You know, what else might drive consumer spending while people get scared of inflation's high and also things get more expensive.

[00:19:55] And then, you know, you get down to the Bridgewater four factors is growth, inflation, [00:20:00] and interest rates and risk premium, which is just sort of, well, risk premium is. The most amorphous, but it's sort of what's the total level of risk in the economy. And then also how much do people want to be compensated for that risk?

[00:20:11] You know, I think there's a few more you can add just the overall level of liquidity and economy, and then alpha is a big one we think about of, you know, how can I get really uncorrelated return on my portfolio and how can that. Because almost every asset has some relationship to growth. It's really hard to get rid of that bias.

[00:20:29] And unfortunately, most people's lives also are related to growth. Most of us make more money if growth goes up and our houses are worth more. We're all already like much more than our portfolio would say long growth. So I can add diversifying elements that either perform well and growth is falling or even if they just are agnostic to it So actual alpha uncorrelated return that can provide that cushion in times where you know The rest of my life is probably a little bit more stressful and then you you know, you're not dealing with this hundred asset Multi factor [00:21:00] framework.

[00:21:00] You're just asking a simple question of How'd all those assets relate to growth, inflation, interest rates, risk premiums, et cetera, et cetera. And it's, you know, it's not two things. I wish it was two, two or three is always nice, but you know, it's five, six, seven things. You can just peel back so much complexity.

[00:21:15] People spend so much time running Monte Carlo Sims and 

[00:21:17] Stacy Havener: XYZ. 

[00:21:18] Jacob Miller: It's like, how different do you really think your industrial and commercial REITs are going to be in a 2008 like scenario? Not different. It doesn't matter. 

[00:21:29] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Are you an investment boutique looking to grow your business and need a little help?

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[00:21:55] You'll refine your story, Focus on your ideal target market and practice your [00:22:00] pitch. You'll rethink your marketing materials, rewrite your emails, and refresh your differentiators. We'll even help you step up your LinkedIn game and give your profile a makeover. You want to grow your biz, we've got your back.

[00:22:12] Learn more about The Collective, the curriculum, and the amazing coaches who will help you on your journey. Visit havenercapital. com slash collective. High five! Hope to see you in a coaching session soon.

[00:22:32] So this is I mean I could sit here and literally talk with you all day like we could order lunch But I mean, this is amazing I am sitting here thinking a great thought which is if i'm listening to this podcast i'm like, okay jake What do you do? Like because you're wicked smart and cool and you think differently And i'm loving this conversation and I want to know what you do.

[00:22:56] Like what is opto? And then I want to talk about the name too. 

[00:22:59] Jacob Miller: So what [00:23:00] we do is, we saw the private market space, private equity, venture capital, private credit, real estate, infrastructure, as the most sort of burdened by poor incentives, by complexity, by lack of access. And so we might expand beyond that someday, but really saw that as a clear and present need for clarity of thought, for common sense, for access to higher quality products, for alignment of incentives, and maybe most importantly, for technology that actually makes that experience workable.

[00:23:28] And so what Opto does, we're a technology company and platform that has built a set of tools that allow fiduciaries to confidently invest in private markets and to do that in a way that is. Aligned, you know, soup to nuts with their clients and is easy to scale with their practice. And so what does that mean in a practical sense?

[00:23:48] The primary way people work with us is use our technology to build custom allocations for their client basis but to do that in a way that is operationally Yeah, actually workable. And so they [00:24:00] build sort of co mingled vehicles, you know, maybe a growth fund, the Stacey growth fund, income fund, each one holds five, 10 managers in it, maybe some room for co invests and direct deals.

[00:24:11] But now it's just a single sub document, a single tax document at the end of the year and inherent diversification right off the bat. It's been tailored. You know, two of those things that we just talked about to what your growth inflation interest rate needs are, how that's going to fit together in a total portfolio context and how are we going to build that out over time?

[00:24:28] You know, I say often we're not product providers were partners. I'm not here to sell anyone anything. I'm here to say, where do we want to be in 10 years? And how do we start laying bricks right now to get there? Cause you don't start private markets zero to one. You have to build it out year by year. You have to think about what your long term strategy is, what you're trying to achieve.

[00:24:48] How are we going to evaluate together if we're on track to achieve that? And that's where technology makes this addressable to, you know, our smallest client has 60 end clients and our largest has 30, 000. [00:25:00] You're not going to be able to work with both groups unless you have technology that scales up and down, can think about goal setting in different contexts.

[00:25:06] Can. Help CIOs communicate with advisors, communicate with managers with the end goal of just making this whole, you know, half of the capital markets ecosystem actually work for savers around the world. 

[00:25:17] Stacy Havener: Love it. And I think for me, when I replay our combo so far in my head, and now you say an opto is a technology company.

[00:25:26] There's a part of me that is sad, and I want you to tell me why I shouldn't be sad. The sad part of me is like, dang, because Jake, you have such a brilliant investment mind, and I want that. Like, yes, I want the tech, and yes, I want the operational, and yes, I want all those things, but I am sad that I don't get The Jake's mind part.

[00:25:52] Jacob Miller: Here's why you shouldn't be sad. 

[00:25:54] Stacy Havener: Okay. 

[00:25:54] Jacob Miller: Most people build agnostic technology. Marketplaces, [00:26:00] platforms, like, you do with it what you want. We build opinionated technology. 

[00:26:05] Stacy Havener: That phrase, do you say that a lot? You need to say that all the time. That is so good. I say 

[00:26:09] Jacob Miller: it more, but, you know, the idea then is, how many people could I work with?

[00:26:13] And this, you know, even smarter people I've hired here, You're limited by hours in a day. Like at the end of the day, you're just not going to impact that many human beings. And that's what we're trying to do here. We're trying to impact the maximum number of human beings in the best way through technology.

[00:26:26] If I sit down with the best product managers engineer and I tell them, here's how I think about the world. I mean, time and time again, they've been, our team has impressed me and been able to turn, you know, what felt like a totally me human thing into a scalable piece of technology that now a hundred RIAs can use 300 RIAs can use.

[00:26:43] And of course we're still there. Yeah. We have that. Dedicated support people. I know all our clients on a first name basis, like it's still very human, but you get over that resource limitation, that linear scale problem by saying, you know, like what I just described of how to assets relate to fundamental forces, [00:27:00] I could sit down and do that in Excel with a client and that might take three hours due for their portfolio.

[00:27:05] Or I can have every asset class in the world preloaded in that tool to them. Autogenerate reports and then get on a call for 30 minutes and dive into what are we going to do about it? Um, and so technology, I think there's two flavors and we've set pretty solidly in one camp for now. One is about how do I do things that humans can't do or don't want to do?

[00:27:26] And that is very important and there's a lot of stuff that really isn't suited to human. There's another that I think is getting particularly interesting as we think about the impacts AI will have. Is how do we make the human who's in the loop 10 X more valuable 10 X more impactful and also happier because they're doing less repetitive stuff and that's really where our technology sits both to like scale me and the investment team and help us talk to way, way more people and more impactfully.

[00:27:52] But also our clients, you know, the CIOs of our A's don't want to do the same thing all day every day. And that's not what humans were built to do. Again, we [00:28:00] are fundamentally storytelling creatures. No one wants to tell the story of I did the same thing I did yesterday. Today, you want to get better. You want to improve.

[00:28:09] Stacy Havener: So I'm not sad. Let me say this back to you. So I don't need to be sad because you don't have an agnostic technology. You have an opinionated which I love. And what you're saying is that And this is where I'm gonna need you. There are Jake portfolios or Jake allocation models that I can access on this platform.

[00:28:32] Is that the opinion part? 

[00:28:34] Jacob Miller: It's even maybe a little bit deep in that. So to play it back. So imagine a world where we didn't. So we're closing in on 100 people. Over half of our staff is engineering. Okay. Imagine a world where we hadn't done that. We hadn't invested that. We had operations. We had investment team, but we hadn't invested in engineering.

[00:28:51] Okay. We would essentially just be a boutique consultant. Maybe we could work with a dozen clients. Yes, I'm tracking. 

[00:28:56] Stacy Havener: Okay. 

[00:28:57] Jacob Miller: And that would just limit the impact we could have and the [00:29:00] number of people we could work with and also the quality of the work because we'd, you know, be up at 4am trying to get something done and all that fun stuff.

[00:29:07] With the technology, a couple things happen. One, you know, a lot of what seems maybe smart when I'm doing it is just something I've done a lot of times and Computers are really good at following Instructions for how to do things in a repeated way and so we can hand clients Workflow tools that are highly opinionated that are gonna say if you want to be at X percent in private markets in five years And you want it to be doing this to your portfolio.

[00:29:32] Here's the path we would choose. Okay And it can do that without a human in the room. And then of course, you know, there's, we have help buttons everywhere and we catch up with our clients every week. And it is still a very human process, but you get so far down the fields, I'm sure you've seen this, it's part of storytelling.

[00:29:47] We never lead with a menu or you have these three options. We lead with, if I was in your shoes, I would do this. And here's why. And we're wrong sometimes about the shoes. We thought you were in sneakers and you're in loafers or whatever that is. [00:30:00] But you, you just accelerate progress and you, you unlock so much value by starting with, here's what we're going to do.

[00:30:06] Tell me why I'm wrong versus which one of these three things, like 

[00:30:10] Stacy Havener: the agnostic part. Yeah. 

[00:30:11] Jacob Miller: Yeah. The agnostic. And we all experienced like when, you know, I asked my wife, you know, what do you want for dinner tonight? She's like, I don't know if I say, Would you be cool if we had x then it's in your head.

[00:30:21] It's real. There's a story there and you can say yes or no. 

[00:30:24] Stacy Havener: Right. Okay. I love this. So that was missing for me when you first described what you did. 

[00:30:31] Jacob Miller: Yeah, I should have said the opinionated. It 

[00:30:33] Stacy Havener: really it was, you know, because and I want and not the point of the podcast, but like I'm so impassioned about you and your brain and your team and what you're building.

[00:30:45] That I feel compelled to say this, which is like you're so much more than a technology platform. The thing that resonated to me most when you were just talking was that you said we're like a boutique consultancy. So if you said, this is what opto [00:31:00] is, and you know, you told your Bridgewater story and you and the way you think about things and you're taking technology to optimize that to get that brainpower and that thinking and those opinions, if you will, to help more people that hits for me, because now.

[00:31:18] The tech part just made me feel like it was agnostic. And I thought, Oh my gosh, like, here's this brilliant mind. And now I feel like I'm not getting it. So I love that. That's basically what you're saying, right? 

[00:31:30] Jacob Miller: Exactly. And it's, I'd say our goal is that it's a path to empowerment as well, because, you know, this is another thing that I don't like about how our industry currently runs is like you get, you try and addict people to your services, um, versus like actually providing consistent value and.

[00:31:50] You know, again, truth is, most of this stuff is pretty common sense. All of our clients are more than, you know, more than enough intellectual horsepower to hang in this. They just need the right team and [00:32:00] tools and, you know, advice early on. And like, definitely there's a education and learning that needs to happen.

[00:32:04] There's a, this is going to make me sound like a pedantic, uh, 

[00:32:09] Stacy Havener: something. You can do that. 

[00:32:13] Jacob Miller: The, uh, philosophy book, the data Ching I love. It's beautiful poetry. And there's a verse in it that really sums up kind of the experience I want our clients to have. 

[00:32:25] Stacy Havener: Yeah. 

[00:32:26] Jacob Miller: With the proper guardrails and it goes, you know, this is one translation, but something like, you know, when the master approaches her work, she rolls up her sleeves, pours her whole heart and soul into it.

[00:32:36] And when her work is done excellently, she steps back and the people say, look, we did it all by ourselves. Oh, that's so cool. And so that's where technology can play a role. Like it'd be one thing if I step in and like, I don't want our clients to be like, Jake's so smart, I couldn't do this without him. I want my clients to be like, I'm really glad I had that help, and now I understand better, and maybe my next fund or next year, I can be in a more active voice.

[00:32:59] I'm not as scared [00:33:00] anymore of this make sense. 

[00:33:01] Stacy Havener: Love that. That is a great nuance, a beautiful passage, and a great nuance on what I had said to you. So look, we're doing good work here right now, by the way. Like, this is really good stuff. Because what I think is interesting, that whole tech investment space is really crowded.

[00:33:21] I think. Yes. I think it's really crowded, and it feels like everybody's sort of doing the same thing, and I'm not even sure how they're differentiating, but like, there seems to be some between some of the big names that we don't have to name. And so then, here's Opto, and you, and your team, and you're doing something that's different, but it's hard not to group you in with the rest of the masses.

[00:33:43] Jacob Miller: Do you 

[00:33:44] Stacy Havener: find that it's hard to, not even differentiate is so tired, like I don't even want to say that, but it's like, it's a different, it's an opinionated technology, it's not an agnostic platform. 

[00:33:54] Jacob Miller: Totally, and I think the hardest part is, what we've hit on a couple times already today, of like, how do you do that [00:34:00] quickly?

[00:34:00] If I have 30 minutes with someone, it's going to be no problem. 

[00:34:02] Stacy Havener: Yeah. 

[00:34:02] Jacob Miller: But in terms of like, what's the, I always think in terms of like, what's the sentence? What's the paragraph? What's 

[00:34:06] Stacy Havener: the paper? The 

[00:34:08] Jacob Miller: paper is easy in terms of how we're different. The sentence and the paragraph get harder. 

[00:34:12] Stacy Havener: Hard. Yeah. 

[00:34:12] Jacob Miller: But, you know, I always think about it like at the end of the day, everything is people and process.

[00:34:18] That's what makes up all the units from families to companies. And so when someone says I'm different. My question is always what have you changed about people or process that makes different and I asked this of myself if like there's a chore I keep forgetting I don't just say I'll get it next time like what have I changed if I set up a new reminder system if I put a note on the fridge like what have what have I changed that makes it actually likely I'm going to be different next time and so I think you're right when you look at, you know, I'd say pretty much all of the competitors in this space.

[00:34:47] There's no fundamental difference. They're paid the same way they work with the same clients. They are targeting the same consumers. And, you know, most importantly, their clients kind of are their products, very social media ask like my. If you're not [00:35:00] paying for something, you are the product. You know, largely these are done by the GP paying for distribution.

[00:35:05] The RIA is the product. 

[00:35:07] Stacy Havener: Yeah. 

[00:35:08] Jacob Miller: We have a very clear answer to how we're going to do things differently. Alignment is a huge piece of that of like, we don't get paid unless our clients are succeeding. We don't get paid distribution fees. We will never take money from a GP. We could be making a lot more revenue right now early in our life.

[00:35:21] We did. We do not do that. Never will do that in this capacity. Two is the investment in technology. Like that is a lot of money spent by us for problems that are probably years away for our clients, but we want to get ahead of them and make sure that this experience actually scales and is high quality and doesn't create more headaches.

[00:35:38] Like we've heard about from our clients, from other platforms. Um, and then, you know, alignment technology and. The last piece that kind of comes as a result of that is access of, you know, like we talked about, the best funds won't pay for distribution. The best funds don't have a 158 person investor relations team.

[00:35:55] And so I couldn't work with thousands of families by working through the [00:36:00] technology. We simplify that into, you know, single commitments. They work just with opto. We look like the institutional investors they're used to. So in terms of differentiation and to bring it back to storytelling, the story that an R.

[00:36:10] I. A. Can tell their high net worth client or the prospect of trying to win. You know, this isn't something you can literally go to a website and buy yourself. This isn't something every person with 200k in America is in. This is the stuff that the best endowments and family offices are doing that historically has not been accessible and is accessible because of our partnership with Opto and the alignment and technology they use to make this possible.

[00:36:33] Stacy Havener: So good. Tell me about the alignment piece because and the incentives because you mentioned it at the beginning and I wanted to come back to it. So I'm glad it's here. So who does pay? Who does pay you? 

[00:36:44] Jacob Miller: Yeah, so I'll start with the way things work worked before we came about and still work by and large today, which is basically, you know, the 30 largest fund managers.

[00:36:54] Pay platforms, you know, between two and 5 percent to distribute on their platform, go raise [00:37:00] money for them. Um, two, 5 percent of the capital raise. Now what's the incentive there. It's just to work with the biggest funds. Cause you want to raise as much capital as possible to get your two to 5%. What doesn't matter to you, how that fund ends up performing, how well people doing it, does it fit in their portfolios?

[00:37:14] Is it actually the right investment for them? All things that, you know, we think of as important and I think most RIAs do as well, but it makes sense given how they had historically worked, they worked with largely wire houses, you know, broker dealers who got, who had transaction based comp, they also didn't really care about the long term success in many ways, it was a business model aligned for that world, it's now tried to pivot into RIA as broker dealer has shrunk and RIA has grown and is, you know, fiduciaries care about the long term success of their clients.

[00:37:44] Yeah. There's also platforms who operate like brokerages. That's just transaction based comp. Again, you care about volume, not quality, not fit, um, not success. We didn't like that. Um, Joe and I were, we're pretty upset. That's the status quo and saw a lot of bad outcomes as a [00:38:00] result of that. And so our question was, how do we make this as investor friendly and as possible?

[00:38:04] And what does that mean? What would it mean to win with our clients, not win from our clients? And you know, the, where we got to was. Through technology, we can also reduce our internal expenses a lot by abstracting processes, by making this consistent, by getting things as templatized as possible. And so we want to drive ongoing fees as low as possible, you know, where a fund to funds is one, you know, 1 percent management fee per year, where a lot of these feeder vehicles are up to 50 bps.

[00:38:31] As a quick aside, when I left Bridgewater, a UBS advisor tried to win my business, showed me a StepStone iCapital fund to funds. It was 10, 000. 2 and 20 to the underlying VCs, 1 and 10 to StepStone, 1. 5 to iCapital, and an additional 75 BIPS expenses. Plus a 5 percent load fee. 

[00:38:51] Stacy Havener: And 

[00:38:52] Jacob Miller: I just asked him how well would these funds have to do for me to break even versus like median performance, the S and P.

[00:38:57] And he's like, I don't know. I was like, and I said, you know, you should [00:39:00] probably know that before suggesting it to people, but it's, you know, 35 plus percent. None of these managers have averaged that in any vintage. Um, yeah, no, So we want to get those ongoing and upfront expenses as low as possible. Those hurt compounding, right?

[00:39:12] Like the value of a dollar, if I can compound it at a rate is massive. If I start with jumping down 5 percent and having a bunch of, you know, additional expenses that drag me deeper into the date J curve. I have less capital to compound with. And so through technology, through efficiency, through templates, we've gotten the ability to create a fully custom fund for your RIA down to about 25 basis points management fee that sunsets to even lower than that on NAV.

[00:39:39] Thereafter. That sunset sounds tweaky, but is a big, actually a big deal because with all of our competitors, it's on committed capital throughout the fund life. And so, in year nine, when you have five dollars left of an additional hundred, you're paying like you have a hundred in. 

[00:39:53] Stacy Havener: Come on, no. Really? 

[00:39:55] Jacob Miller: Yeah.

[00:39:55] Committed capital throughout. We sunset to that NAV, so it goes down as you have less [00:40:00] money in it, which makes sense. Now to make up for that, like we are providing way more services. We do portfolio construction, manage selection, proposals, sub doc management, ongoing diligence, operations, et cetera, like more than our competitors for much lower ongoing to make up for that and make our business make sense, we participate in the upside and that also ferments alignment.

[00:40:19] So we charge a 5 percent performance fee. With a hurdle and so you have to, let's say you put your money into a growth fund, you put a hundred bucks in, you have to get 150 out back in your account as the investor before we're talking about that 5%. What that does is we make enough to keep the lights on from that management fee.

[00:40:36] We're also very lucky to have great backers on the VC side and so plenty of capital to lean into that. But the profit for this business comes from helping our clients succeed. We don't make money unless our clients make money. Um, and we like it that way, and I've been on both sides of this. If you ask someone to pay you five bucks and you've lost the money, that feels very different than asking them to pay you ten bucks and you made the money.

[00:40:58] Stacy Havener: Yeah. So that's a [00:41:00] huge, huge difference. Huge difference. Like, I don't think, or, I mean. Again, that goes back for me of like, when you say technology platform, all of what you just described, I would not have assumed or even I would have just put you over with your peers, I guess, but they're very different.

[00:41:18] And so I think what's really interesting here is the blend, you know, that sort of like the collab that's happening between the different worlds. And for you, it's really like the investment advice and the tech together. To me, it's the magic, 

[00:41:31] Jacob Miller: maybe to zoom out a little bit, too. I think part of this might come from a thing that we, you know, I think you're bringing up the need for us to address in our space, which is, I don't consider any of our competitors to be technology companies, and I don't think I don't think there's very much good technology in the finance space.

[00:41:48] Stacy Havener: Yeah, 

[00:41:48] Jacob Miller: stripe, flat, et cetera. Great. Like payments has a lot of good technologists, but the investment space has very few great technology companies. When I say technology. And, you know, maybe we just need to be a much clearer on this. [00:42:00] It's almost as much about mindset as it is about what we do. You know, I think it was only possible because we're a technology company to think about charging so differently.

[00:42:08] Technology mindset is all about innovation is all about, you know, what you said earlier of like, how do I say, maybe things don't have to be like this. Like that's the backbone of real, you know, Silicon Valley mindset. And so when I say technology. It's much more, I mean, a is like systemizing our processes and making them scalable to the most people is what will make this business both valuable from an investment perspective and valuable to our clients over time.

[00:42:35] But we really ask everyone who comes here to start thinking like a technologist to say, could I do things differently? Could this be better? And maybe the most important question, could I not do this tomorrow? Like whatever workflow I'm doing, am I filling out a sub doc? Am I integrating with a Salesforce thing to pull in investor data?

[00:42:50] How do I not do this problem tomorrow and focus on the next one? 

[00:42:53] Stacy Havener: Yeah, it's like massive simplifier, right? It's like Occam's razor at a level of [00:43:00] sharpness that like you can't even probably comprehend. 

[00:43:03] Jacob Miller: But then to your point, the goal of that though, is not to make the humans obsolete. It's. To empower the humans who are still in that process.

[00:43:10] And so I don't want to have to hire a hundred investors. I don't think it'd be easy to hire a hundred good investors. 

[00:43:16] Stacy Havener: Right. I 

[00:43:16] Jacob Miller: think I can hire 10 good investors. 

[00:43:18] Stacy Havener: Yeah. 

[00:43:19] Jacob Miller: And if I can make those 10 good investors feel like a hundred through technology, our clients will get better advice. They'll have better investments.

[00:43:26] We don't want to dilute by having to pull in humans to get the job done when they're doing repetitive tasks. If we can find those 10 super powered people. And give them the tools they need to have a crazy impact. 

[00:43:38] Stacy Havener: Yes. And you isolate, you're basically isolating and that, that alpha, right? Of that human alpha by taking the redundancies out.

[00:43:49] And I love that. That is so great. You're building something really cool. And I want you to hear this, like this, you were saying you felt like you were going to risk sounding pedantic. I'm going to risk sounding like [00:44:00] a therapist for a second. I really want you to hear this. Yeah. That's cool. I really want to hear this.

[00:44:05] The things that you say, like, are common sense to you, or even, like, when you say about technology and stuff, like, I hope you realize that it's not common sense to everyone else. And that is when, you know, you're in your unique ability because the things that are easy to you are really, really difficult to others.

[00:44:29] And so, you're doing something magical, and I feel really honored to have you on the show because I feel like, It's a story that needs to be told, and it's a story that has a lot of nuance to it, and a lot of threads. Um, and the more you get out there and talk about it, the more it's gonna pull the right people to you.

[00:44:50] Because it's not for everyone. And that's also what makes it special. 

[00:44:53] Jacob Miller: That's exactly right. Like, and again, I'll go back to storytelling. If we worked with every R. I. A. in the country, [00:45:00] The story of how we help our clients differentiate would be, would lose its meaning. Um, I want to work with the 10 to 20 percent of RIAs who get this and who are aligned with us in terms of values, principles, approach.

[00:45:13] And, you know, maybe we'll have other business lines down the road that are more mass market, but alpha is inherently capacity constrained. There's not infinite alpha out there. And, you know, at some point we're going to have to close the gates and say, Hey, if you were in before this point, you can have access to our best ideas and post this.

[00:45:30] Like we'll try and come up with something else. That's great. And you can have, maybe that's when we, uh, we'll have to be dragged kicking and screaming, but then maybe that's when we sell truly agnostic technology. But, you know, we have. I'd call it 10 to 20 billion of room to grow for now. So that's good.

[00:45:44] Um, but that's always, you know, in our minds is, uh, in the founding team of, you know, this story, we're not going to let the story get diluted. Um, and it may mean at some point turning off one growth path and saying, you know, we're, we're at scale there. We think, you know, through the technology, through [00:46:00] our approach, Our scale can be a lot bigger than the next person's in terms of what that looks like, but it's not for everyone because not everyone gets it and because we cannot offer it to everyone.

[00:46:09] Stacy Havener: Yeah, and you know what? That's actually a great behavioral tailwind to your scale. In other words, even though 10 to 20 billion seems like a big number, it is a big number. If you embrace that as you are, It lets the people who are raising their hand that are saying it is for me feel special and feel part of something as opposed to feel like a number.

[00:46:36] So I think, I think it's great. I think it's hard to explain because it is, it is a rah rah ah wis. 

[00:46:43] Jacob Miller: Yep. 

[00:46:43] Stacy Havener: You might be like one of the only people I know who knows what I just said. What did I say?

[00:46:56] So we didn't even get to talk about this, Jake. So I [00:47:00] had a Latin teacher eons ago, feels like, who was a very sweet lady who literally did not believe Latin was a dead language. She would talk to us in Latin, she would make jokes in Latin, and one of her terms of endearment was Rara Avis. 

[00:47:18] Jacob Miller: Yeah. 

[00:47:20] Stacy Havener: It means rare bird.

[00:47:21] I say it all the time years like year. I mean, she was my ninth grade Latin teacher, but you all talk about that 

[00:47:27] Jacob Miller: and I've always liked rare bird has even more meaning to us. Latin folks, just given how important augury was in ancient Rome. They were always locked watching for rare birds. 

[00:47:36] Stacy Havener: Yeah, 

[00:47:37] Jacob Miller: but yeah, it was a studied economics and math, but also classics at University of Chicago.

[00:47:43] I tell people I don't think they believe me. But they should. I learned way more about investing in classics than I did in economics. Um. 

[00:47:50] Stacy Havener: Really? Yeah, 

[00:47:51] Jacob Miller: you, you study essentially the long, big history. How do changes actually happen? What causes changes? How do these things? interrelate, but [00:48:00] also human psychology.

[00:48:01] And when you realize that, you know, you read Seneca or Cicero, people had the same problems 2000 years ago, thought the same way. There's fundamentals to how humans live and think that, you know, you can change the window dressing, but we're, we're all the same. But yeah, it was a, you know, I think the best learning get, I wrote a, my thesis on ancient monetary systems.

[00:48:23] So we got to blend, uh, blend both, but, and then got to, you know, name opto with the. The Latin. Yeah, let's 

[00:48:28] Stacy Havener: talk about that. I love that we're beginning and ending with backstory because I think we just totally rift from the get, which I love when a podcast is like that. But talk about the name Opto, especially given your classics background.

[00:48:41] Jacob Miller: Yeah, so it's hard to name a company. 

[00:48:43] Stacy Havener: It's very hard. I 

[00:48:44] Jacob Miller: think maybe even harder than naming my child, but they're close. Um, but you're like, I'm going to give this thing a name. It's gonna have to live with that. And. Um, you know, especially the company, you want it to mean something, but it can't mean that too precisely or else it's on the nose.

[00:48:59] Um, [00:49:00] and it was an interesting process. Like I, you know, we were coming up with the, you know, launch name for the company and it was the first one I thought of, you know, optare in Latin means, it means a few things. It means wish or desire, but it also means to choose or select. And that felt like a. A blend of going back to opinionated technology, it's not just about like selecting from a menu.

[00:49:21] It's about, Hey, describe to me your wishes. Where do you want to be in five years? Talk about outcomes, not about assets. And then let's help craft the portfolio of assets that gets you to those outcomes. But it had other connotations as well, you know, related to the Greek root for vision, you know, optometry, et cetera, overview of the space.

[00:49:39] How do we get back to that common sense and demystifying, like give people the visibility To get comfortable with these asset classes, but then also had descendant terms. You know, like optimal optimize all those good words, which is what we're trying to do to people's private markets, uh, allocation. So was, uh, seemed to touch on a lot of things.

[00:49:58] At first I was like, am I too much [00:50:00] of a classics geek here? Um, but it's also short, it's easy to pronounce that we do get a lot of differentiation somehow. But we then talked to, you know, we engaged a naming consultant, which I didn't know was a thing until we did it. And I think they have a almost impossible job, which is to understand who you want to be without being part of the company.

[00:50:22] And so we spent almost two months going back and forth with them on, on a bunch of different names, which made not a lick of sense to us and, you know, ended up back where we started. Um, but. Maybe with more confidence, I guess, of like, we exhausted it. We looked at all these things. Yeah, there you go. And now we get to put, as you were talking about earlier, play around with all the fun ways we can really make it our own.

[00:50:41] We call our employees Optinauts. A lot of space themed gear. We do Optimize with, and we actually have one logo with the, with eyes instead of 

[00:50:50] Stacy Havener: the O. 

[00:50:51] Jacob Miller: Oh, 

[00:50:54] Stacy Havener: cool. Yeah. 

[00:50:54] Jacob Miller: And, you know, more to come. Like, we want people to adopto opto or, uh, you know, we'll figure [00:51:00] it out. 

[00:51:02] Stacy Havener: That is so good. Shoot. There was something else I was just going to say about Latin and I lost, Oh, I know what I was going to say.

[00:51:08] I don't even have to ask this question. Because I know, I feel like I know the answer. So do you love the Oxford English Dictionary? 

[00:51:15] Jacob Miller: Yes, yeah. 

[00:51:15] Stacy Havener: I mean, it is, like, still to this day, if I go in a library, I have to go and see if it's there. Because with all the tech we've talked about, there is nothing like being in the library and going over to the OED.

[00:51:28] Now we're really geeking out. I mean, people listening are like, I gotta go. So you 

[00:51:32] Jacob Miller: just open to a random page. If you go and you search for a word, you already knew the word. But if you just open to a random page, you'll probably find something you don't know. 

[00:51:39] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Oh my gosh, like just the etymology of the words is just fantastic.

[00:51:44] I could talk to you all day, Jake, but I know you have other things to do in life and biz. I want to end with a couple questions loosely patterned after Proust's questionnaire, which just lets us get to know you a little better. Um, I'll start with an easy one, but I actually, I don't [00:52:00] think this will be easy for you.

[00:52:00] I have no idea. Where this could take us, but what book inspires you 

[00:52:05] Jacob Miller: hard to choose? Um, 

[00:52:08] Stacy Havener: I had a feeling 

[00:52:10] Jacob Miller: I'll give a, 

[00:52:10] Stacy Havener: or how about a book? It doesn't have to be your most inspirational. Yeah, 

[00:52:14] Jacob Miller: I'll give a two part two quick answers. Uh, huge sci fi nerd. Um, the Isaac Asimov series foundation basically centers around really good economists.

[00:52:25] People who use, you know, really? Oh, 

[00:52:27] Stacy Havener: interesting. 

[00:52:29] Jacob Miller: predict the future and, and save the universe. Um, so reading that as a kid was probably a part of what got me here. And then there's a book called the soldier of the great war that I think is just the most, one of more beautiful books and also a study of beauty.

[00:52:43] Like I'm, I think we have moved too far away from like trying to make this world beautiful just for beauty's sake. Like not everything has to have another purpose. 

[00:52:52] Stacy Havener: I love that. 

[00:52:53] Jacob Miller: It definitely pushed me to do something when I finished it. I finished it in a courtyard senior year of college and immediately it takes place in Rome.

[00:52:59] [00:53:00] Bought a one way plane ticket to Rome and went and I graduated a little early. So I didn't live there. Played online poker and walked around all the places mentioned in the book. Fun trip. 

[00:53:08] Stacy Havener: Oh my gosh, that's amazing and brave and badass. I don't know if you can say badass on a podcast, but whatever. Okay, so, well then, good dovetail, what place inspires you?

[00:53:20] I 

[00:53:21] Jacob Miller: mean, Rome is, is hard to avoid, uh, as a graphics person, just seeing, Greece has the best PR and Rome has decent PR, but could be better, like, it was a culture of builders, and that's not just the literal buildings, but building a, a society, a system that works, this is in the last, lasted a thousand years, and being able to walk through history, and they could, again, finding those commonalities, uh, you can go to the.

[00:53:45] Old catacombs and see, you know, graves people made for their dogs and cats and the inscriptions are in Latin. You and I could go read them and they're, you know, very sweet and they sound just like people today. And then just hiking in the Sierra Nevada in California, still [00:54:00] pretty pristine wilderness and harsh foreboding, but, but beautiful.

[00:54:04] Stacy Havener: Yeah, I love that. Two very different places, but going back to our earlier comment, have that core thread. Okay, well, now the question is, you're gonna go give We're going to have it be an inspirational talk on entrepreneurship to all your fans, all your opto fans. And it's in a stadium, maybe it's in a Coliseum, uh, but it's a teched out Coliseum.

[00:54:30] Cause you are going to take the stage and. You get to have a walkout anthem play as you do. What is the walkout anthem? 

[00:54:38] Jacob Miller: That's a good question. What is my walkout anthem? I'll get this. Give me one second. 

[00:54:44] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Take your time. There is no rush. I mean, I'm looking at all the guitars behind you, so I know this is not an easy question.

[00:54:50] Jacob Miller: Yeah. There's a lot of music to pull from, but I think it would have to be This is a good question. This is not on the Proust list. I know the whole Proust list. 

[00:54:58] Stacy Havener: No, this is my version.[00:55:00] 

[00:55:02] Jacob Miller: There's a song by Father John Misty called Pure Comedy that is a bad walk up song and that it's not particularly positive, but I think it's one of the more. 

[00:55:13] Stacy Havener: So it's, okay, I have to, when we hang up, I'm going to have to go play this. So it's by Father John 

[00:55:19] Jacob Miller: Misty. 

[00:55:20] Stacy Havener: Okay. 

[00:55:20] Jacob Miller: Called Pure Comedy. Just very.

[00:55:23] Irreverent absurdist. 

[00:55:24] Stacy Havener: Okay. In 

[00:55:25] Jacob Miller: terms of getting people into a mindset where they might be more simpatico with me. 

[00:55:30] Stacy Havener: Yeah. That's, I mean, a walkout anthem has to do two things, right? It has to, it has to get the person who's about to speak vibed up to be able to speak, but it also has to invite the crowd into that.

[00:55:42] Vibe as well. So yes, I think you're you're doing that. Okay, we will all well some people might know this song I do not so I will listen to it after this and I will send you an email Okay, what profession other than your own would you like to attempt? 

[00:55:56] Jacob Miller: That's hard. I love investing. Um But, [00:56:00] I think, I'll go with one my wife always says I would be good at, cause I'm, I really like geometry, spatial reasoning, and I've spent a lot of time power lifting.

[00:56:09] Mm hmm. I feel like if I could design new gym equipment, um, I love that! 

[00:56:14] Stacy Havener: That's so cool! Focus on, on the forgotten muscles, 

[00:56:17] Jacob Miller: how do we, uh, target those in, in super high quality ways. Okay! 

[00:56:21] Stacy Havener: And we're putting it on the list, the list of ideas. For Jake. Okay. Flip side. What profession would you not like to do?

[00:56:29] Jacob Miller: Ironic given that I thought I was going to do that for a few years, but definitely working in medicine. 

[00:56:34] Stacy Havener: Yeah. 

[00:56:34] Jacob Miller: I think I would be so terrible at the day to day, uh, very large and clumsy hands. I can't, you know, wouldn't be good at the intricacies there. And then my sister is in med school right now and very proud of her, uh, but is not something I would wish on my worst enemy, let alone myself.

[00:56:52] Stacy Havener: Well, and it's good that you found it out, because you were sort of on that path. Okay, last one. And this is a long ways away. But what do you want [00:57:00] people to say about you after you've retired or left the industry? 

[00:57:04] Jacob Miller: I just want them to say, hey, you should reach out to Jake for advice or help. I'm, I'm very much looking forward to the elder statesman portion of my life.

[00:57:12] Stacy Havener: Yeah. Well, it's part of the, it's kind of falls into that Roman Cicero sort of a mentor. I mean, they were, they were the first to have that as well. So I think that is great. 

[00:57:22] Jacob Miller: Yeah. There's a feature I'd love to have in a future house. Cicero had this in his garden. In the back, there was a circular loop. And the way he agreed to meet with people is he'd walk one loop with them.

[00:57:35] Stacy Havener: It's 

[00:57:35] Jacob Miller: really short, but there were benches like every four feet. And so if he was having a good time in the conversation, he'd be like, please sit down. You could sit there for two hours and then keep walking the loop. But, uh, that sounds like a fun way to, you know, you have one loop. If you've piqued my interest, we'll sit down, we'll talk.

[00:57:49] I might even get lunch ordered to this bench. 

[00:57:53] Stacy Havener: I love that. So wait, I have to ask this. That was great, Jake, by the way, like wonderful. Thank you [00:58:00] for your candor and letting us get to know you a little bit more. But as a, as a classics connoisseur isn't the right word, but just being passionate about the classics, how do you feel about all the hype around stoicism right now?

[00:58:13] Jacob Miller: It is mixed for me because I, so I found a lot of personal growth and relief in stoicism, and it was not to be a hipster, but a few years before it was in the consciousness. Yeah, that's 

[00:58:26] Stacy Havener: right. 

[00:58:26] Jacob Miller: Yeah, I found it was a, in terms of issues I had with, with mental health and maintaining my tranquility, you know, as well as traditional therapy, but, uh, was really a necessary part to, to growing when I was in early in college and finding myself.

[00:58:40] Yeah. Uh, basically started the classics major so I could actually got it right here, read Seneca in the original Latin instead of in translation. And so in terms of like more people learning about, you know, I think a really meaningful way to live a more fulsome life. Like I'm very happy about that in terms of how it might be [00:59:00] perverted to push people to, uh, you know, hustler culture.

[00:59:04] Like that's not what it's about. But that's, you know, you're probably not going to get anything popular without a little bit of, uh, 

[00:59:11] Stacy Havener: mess on the edges. Yeah, exactly. 

[00:59:13] Jacob Miller: If, uh, even a hundred people find Solace and Truth in that, probably a good thing. 

[00:59:18] Stacy Havener: It's probably a good thing. Yeah. I haven't read any of the books, like the Ryan Holiday stuff.

[00:59:24] Jacob Miller: And he's actually pretty good, um, stays pretty close to the original meaning and text. It's then the people who start writing about Ryan Holiday stuff, um, you're a couple degrees removed, but, uh, I start every morning with one of Seneca's letters, so. 

[00:59:39] Stacy Havener: Do you really? That is so inspiring. I might have to like, I'm gonna have to think about this, but reading a text in Latin might have to go on my bucket list.

[00:59:49] Jacob Miller: It's pretty impressive. I need to have my pencil out and sometimes, but Seneca's on the scope of Latin writer. Much easier than Caesar. His sentences are less long. So. [01:00:00] 

[01:00:00] Stacy Havener: Okay. Well, thanks for the advice and thanks for the conversation. 

[01:00:03] Jacob Miller: Thank you. 

[01:00:04] Stacy Havener: What an awesome conversation and story and business that you're building and we are all cheering for you.

[01:00:11] We'll have to have you back on cause there's just so much more to talk about. And thank you. 

[01:00:15] Jacob Miller: I'd love to. 

[01:00:16] Stacy Havener: Thank you very much. 

[01:00:17] Jacob Miller: Thank you. It was great. 

[01:00:19] Stacy Havener: Okay. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. The information is not an offer, solicitation, or recommendation of any of the funds, services, or products, or to adopt any investment strategy.

[01:00:33] Investment values may fluctuate, and past performance is not a guide to future performance. All opinions expressed by guests on the show are solely their own opinion and do not necessarily reflect those at their firm. Thank you. Manager's appearance on the show does not constitute an endorsement by Stacey Havener or Havener Capital Partners.

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