YouSaid · the spoken record

Anthony Zhang

lines on the record: 58
first: 2021-12-10
most recent: 2021-12-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Absolutely. I mean, first of all, thanks for giving me the time. I really enjoyed our conversation as well. And I think for me, I realize that most people listening are probably brand new to wine investing. And I want to be a direct resource for you. So Anthony at vinovest.co, I read every single email. So if you want to personally give me a shout out or ask me any question, I'll be there for you. And on Twitter as well, I'm Anthony underscore J underscore Jang, which is my first middle last name. And I also respond to everything on Twitter. I realized that, you know, wine can be very intimidating to most people. Wine investing is a whole other dimension. And I want to be that resource that I wish I had starting out in this industry.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Called natural and what you can not call natural, there's a lot of controversy in the winemaking community, right? Is it the fact that you are not using pesticides you can be called natural? Or are you actually fully devoting yourself to being organic, right? What is that sort of hard definition? And because there isn't one, or at least there's no guidance issued by the FDA or anything like that, there's been a lot of back and forth in the wine community. But I think at a high level, it's usually lower sugar. It's usually lower in additives and it's made with more respect to the land where you can be able to use less water the next year around and be able to not have to put in a ton of pesticides for it to get to the right yields, right? I think moving back to that style of farming is better for all of us in general.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great question and a very controversial one in the wine industry. But I'll give you my take. We all want to be healthier, right? The natural movement has swept through everything from your food to now spirits and now wine. The reality is that most of investment quality wine is natural and has been natural since day one. A domain de l'Amro Mani Conti, the one that I mentioned earlier, that's $100,000 a bottle. They've been organic for decades. They've been sustainable and biodynamic for decades, but they just don't publicize them as being natural because for them, it's not a fad. It's not a trend. It's a way of living. It's a way they believe will get the best results out of their vines, and that's why they do it. On the flip side, a lot of the newer, I think, trendier wine companies are doing it to catch a trend, right? And because there are very loose rules around what you can”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Your local wine swap, you know, Somalier or employee there could point you to some pretty special stuff that's usually undervalued. If you're looking ahead to something maybe a little bit bolder for the main course, think there's a ton of value in Italian and Spanish reds. Napa Valley, great Napa Valley lines are incredible world class, but they could also cost you easily into the hundreds of dollars for the same level of quality, for the same level of attention and detail in history. A lot of the Italian Brunellos or Riojas from Spain you can get for under 50 bucks and it is just every bit as good. It just hasn't had, I think, that same sort of reputation and name recognition as your Bordeaux or your Napos or Burgundy's.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a great question. So I think now that we're on the holidays, right? A lot of us are thinking ahead to Christmas, New Year's, I think Champagne is going to be one of your best bets. But champagne isn't cheap, right? It's expensive for a reason. And I think the main reason is that it's from Champagne. However, you can have some pretty incredible sparkling wines that can't be called champagne because they're not produced there, but are made in the same method or have the same level of care and detail. A lot of the proseccos and kavas, especially when they're made by, to your point, the estate, right? There's a lot of producers that just buy bulk grapes, but the ones that do grow their own grapes, ferment their own grapes and sell them, those are the ones that have most control over the quality. So if you look for grower,”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The average American is drinking $20 wine. It's really hard to break into that luxury segment of these crazy bottles that we've been talking about because it just takes time, right? And another thing is that wine takes time to age too. So how do you even know as a new winery if you can make a bottle of wine that can age 20 years, 30 years and stand up to the grades? That's another thing that only mother nature and time can tell. So if you think about it, it's like the learning cycles are so long on an industry like wine, which is why a lot of people are attracted to it because of that sort of romanticism and traditionalism that a lot of winemakers still have to respect.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's a really funny point that you brought up because it really is, I think, such a tough business. If you think about it, A, it's agricultural, right? So there's a lot of things that you're at the mercy of that you don't have control in. Number two, there's a very long cycle, right? You actually need to wait five to seven years after planting the group for it to actually mature and produce fruit. They're ready more than a decade in the whole, or almost more than half a decade in the whole. And then you need to find a winemaker to actually age the wine. So that's another one to two years, which puts you at the seven to nine year mark. And then you have to find distribution and licenses, and especially in the United States, we're all familiar with how convoluted the three-tier system is where there's a different license you kind of need in each state. Those license alone can take up to a year, year and a half to obtain. So you're a decade in, you burn a ton of money and you haven't even sold your first bottle of wine yet.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I can make to myself to be able to learn faster, be a better person, and be a better CEO to my company as well. And in turn, I believe that breeds better outcomes for our investors on VinoVest, who are trusting us, investing in WineTwart platform, but also our shareholders. We've raised venture capital funding for this company as well. And I have two different duties to serve them the best I can in addition to my duty to our employees.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The Chronicles of the largest wine fraud in history, this kind of mad genius type slash con man person scammed some of the world's most influential and wealthy people in the world out of nine figures worth of wine over the course of almost a decade. And today this guy is still free in the world. So it's a really, really intriguing story as well on kind of that sort of high-end wine world. In terms of investing, I would say I read a really impactful book about a month ago called The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership. It's more so investing in yourself, but I believe that that's the best way for you to gain clarity on what you want to invest in, right? Not just money, but your time. So that book has been really impactful for me and I often flip back to it in chapters and commitments.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm more than happy to. I think the book that really got me into wine was called The Billionaire's Vinegar. And if you haven't read the book, it's fascinating. It's a quick read and it's detailing a story of a bottle of wine that people believe to be from Thomas Jefferson's cellar. It was going to go up in auction as one of the most expensive bottles of wine ever sold. And it was just whole kind of like a almost like a national treasure type forensic hunt on determining the origin and authenticity of the bottle. I won't spoil it for people who do want to read it, but the mystery and intrigue just really drew me into the world of fine wine and got me into the mindset of why old wine is that valuable. And I would say another bonus resource if you're not a big reader is going to be a movie called Sour Grapes. It's on Netflix. It's on most streaming platforms and it details”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Own job, but also give other people jobs, right? That's part of what I love about starting and building and scaling companies. And I hope that what I'm doing can inspire others, not just the spinal queen energy, but any sort of life-changing event where a lot of people are just faced with a decision where it's like, hey, do you want to just roll over and give up and feel sorry for yourself? Or do you want to push through and really having that decision? And I remember just staring at a ceiling in the ICU for weeks on end, just being like, when, you know, what's going to happen to my life again? Can I ever go back to normal, realize that like, hey, life moves on with or without you? And you can choose whether you want to still try to pursue your dreams and do the best that you can. Or if you want to just let fate happen to you. And that's really the biggest lesson I learned through having a spinal cord injury.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Muscle function to be able to feed yourself with a fork and not have to be on an IV drip for months. The hardest thing I've ever had to go through. And even today, five and a half years later, I've been really fortunate to be able to regain some function. But I'm sitting here in a wheelchair. I still need a lot of help in my daily life to be able to work and be independent. still do the things that I love to do, which is building businesses, but having that experience in my life. And I just remember having a statistic stuck in my head after I learned about my injury is that 80% of people who have a spinal cord injury never go back to the workforce again. And for me, I was like, holy, I didn't want to be that 80%. I wanted to not only get a jahub, or now I guess I made my”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm happy to Trey. And I think how to say this. About five years ago, I had an accident. I broke my neck diving into a pool. And what that did, in addition to just breaking my neck, was it rendered me a quadriplegic. I had a spinal cord injury on impact, and I was unable to move anything below my shoulders. I knew immediately something was wrong. What I didn't know was the extent of that injury. It's a permanent injury. I spent four months on a ventilator learning how to breathe again before another almost a year in intensive inpatient rehab at a wonderful hospital called Craig Hospital in Denver. They're specialized for traumatic spinal cord injuries and brain injuries. And I learned how to live life again, just something as simple that you take for granted, like being able to breathe without the assistance of a ventilator or developing the”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great question. So we have our own secondary trading platform where you can interact with thousands of other traders who are looking for that wine. So you can put it up on the platform. You'll be able to see all of your bids and offers just like a stock market would be. And you get matched up to the highest bidder.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Restaurant, the same town, that bottle of wine could be a completely different price, maybe 20, even 30% off. And I think with the data that BNOS is bringing to light in the secondary market, it helps not only consumers have more trust in the market in general, but it also helps winemakers, right? They know their wine is going to increase in value in the future. But by when, right? By how much? Should they be holding back some of their inventory and release it on like a 10-year anniversary or on a 20-year anniversary when they know they could probably make more money on the release rather than releasing it all on day one? So we believe that data can really empower both sides of the industry to be able to have more transparency, more trust. And I think that also breeds greater participation, which is the whole mission of VenoVest.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really, I think that is our secret sauce because no matter how good our algorithm is, if you don't have the best data set, it's useless. You need clean data, you need reliable data, and you need the most, let's say, largest access to data in the world. That's what VNOBES is today. We've spent a lot of time and resources in ensuring that we have sort of the best bird's eye view of the market than anyone can have. And for us, we want to be able to leverage that into our technology, but we really do believe in increasing transparency in the secondary market. Thing I don't like about auctions is that it's very opaque, right? You have no idea who else is in the room. You have no idea what the past comps are. Sometimes the fee structure isn't really transparent. And I'm sure everyone's had a similar experience, maybe even at a restaurant. They see the price of the wine on a wine list and they go to a different.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I'm glad you mentioned that because there is built out in the next called Avino of S100. So we track all the major regions as well as the major players within each region. And then to your point, we've also got sub-indices, right? So we've got the Burgundy 50 or the Bordeaux 50, where if folks wanted to dive in and develop a thesis around a certain region or a certain producer, we've got the tools for them to be able to have that analysis and be able to make those decisions as well if they wanted to.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so VNOVES doesn't charge a carrier. We lump all of our services under one management fee. So that includes your acquisition of the wines. It includes your storage, insurance for the storage, which is really important because wine is one of those few asset classes where custody is one of the most important things for it to retain and increase in value. And for us, all of that ranges from 2.85% all the way down into below 2%, depending on the package that you choose with Veno Vest, depending on how many assets you have on the platform in terms of your dollar value.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say it's very much so not like crypto or the stock market. Maybe one day. But the cool thing is that because it's not a regulated financial market, it is 24-7. It is global. So was wine. So when you're looking at the liquidity, especially as a lot of these wines get closer to their peak maturity period, so maybe could be 10 years, could be 20 years in the future. We start to see a lot more activity when they reach their drinking window. So for example, if you knew you wanted to hold this ball of wine for 10 years, everyone else is probably having the same view as you or they want to probably hold it for the first seven. And then once you get to eight, you're eight, your nine, a lot of people are looking to buy and sell an offload. So we do see different liquidity windows where some mine start to really pick up in the”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's what we're really passionate about at VOVES is to be a market leader in providing data for the wine world. Because if you don't know how to value it properly, how can you treat it as an investment, right? And the wines that we deal with, we're gathering massive amounts of data points from all different sales channels, whether it be auction, whether it be the primary market, whether it be wine exchanges happening both in Europe, in Asia, and in the Americas, gathering all these data points, normalizing them. and showing our end customer what somebody paid for it most recently so it could be last week could be you know last hour the more so i would say liquid secondary market wines are being traded multiple times a day as well”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which means that they left the champagne in the wine caves of Don Pignon for an extended amount of time, and they only recently released it less than 10 years ago. So that means that the Champagne has had more time to interact with the wine cave, with the yeast, and be able to have a more complex set of flavors than a regular bottle of dom even from the same year would be. So it's what we call an extended elevage. So it just stays in the cellar for longer than usual.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, thankfully I have got my drinking cellar here at home, and then I've got my Vino bestseller far, far away in France. So the temptations are easier when it's out of sight, out of mind. But I'd say for my favorite bottle that I've had recently was got to be, I got married a month ago. So we had a really special bottle of wine. It was a, thank you. It was a 1995 Don Perignon Onate.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a fun one. We've had bottles of wines that are over $150,000 a bottle. These are going to be really high-end burgundy, so wines like DRC, which stands for Domain de la Romani Conti, and Domaine Le Rois. Those are two balls of wine where when I started investing in wine, I was like, there is no way a ball of wine could be worth 50K even in. Every single year, those wines just continue to appreciate and defy all expectations of just being more and more desirable because of the yields. It's just so like they have such a commitment to excellence and quality that if it does not pass their test, they're just going to make less. And especially with, you know, the sort of volatility of the climate in these past few years, they've not compromised on their bar of excellence. But what they have done is just released less and less wine.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We actually have both options. So, for our retail investors, the option is for them to each own their own wine. So Trey, if you wanted to, with your $1,000, you know you own these, say, 10, 12 bottles, you could actually come to our warehouse and be like, hey, this is my locker. If I, for any reason, wanted to drink it or visit it, you could do that. And it's not shared with anybody else, which gives the end user a lot more control on when they want out and when they want in, right? With our fun product, which is primarily catered toward RAs and family offices, they have more so of a set strategy, right? They're money managers. They're managing money on behalf of a lot of clients and they want to get consistent exposure. So say we put together a $10, $20 million fund for an RIA that's going to look very different than if we're constructing a $5,000 portfolio for a retail investor.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Out an algorithm that can automatically be a robo advisor for each customer. So everyone gets their own portfolio, everyone gets their tailored strategy based on those factors of time horizon, investment amount, timing in the market, aggressiveness in terms of your risk appetite. And what we'll then do is we'll go source out all those wines from our connections, so winery partners, merchants, wine exchanges, and be able to store them next to strategically located professional wine storage facilities. So we've got one in Napo. We've got one in Bordeaux, France, we've got several that are also located next to major wine trading hotspots like London, Hong Kong, Singapore. And our goal is to really take away all of the hassle, the stress, the unknowns out of investing in wine, like access, custody, storage, and give you a beautiful online experience just like if it were on Robinhood or just like if”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a great question because I think with a concept this new, even though people may understand why you shouldn't invest in wine, the fundamentals of the asset class, when they look at our platform, they have a ton of questions. Am I investing in wine? I'm investing in a wine fund. And the short answer is that for a retail investor to come on board, we don't expect you to know anything about wine. What we do expect you to know is your expectations financially, right? Is this tray for you, a five-year hold? Is it a 10-year hold somewhere in between? What is your asset allocation when it comes to your entire portfolio, right? Is this a 1% thing, a 10% thing for you? And then also, what's your risk appetite? If you're only sitting on bonds and cash, you might want to get a little bit more aggressive with your wine portfolio strategy. But if you're, say, all in on crypto and startups, maybe you want something a little bit safer to counter that volatility. So once we narrow in on those parameters, we've actually”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So that's really the biggest difference. And because of the extra labor that goes into a steak grown wine where maybe grapes are handpicked instead of having machine go through them, right? Or they're buying really high quality grapes from mountaintops where the yield is just going to be a lot lower than if you're just buying it from say Fresno or like somewhere in the middle of California where it's just flat land, right? And they're just optimizing for production all of that moves into the price, moves into the desirability. and also ultimately the taste for the consumer.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It absolutely does because if you think about it, the estate grown wine is a very specific place and the winemaker has a lot more control over that specific place, but that also means that they're limited, right? They only have this, say, five or ten acres to farm with. So even if their demand doubles the next year, they only have this five or ten acres to farm with compared to bulk wine, right? Usually, if there is more demand, they can just scale up and just grapes from other places that might not necessarily be from their main winery just to scale up and scale down demand. And because of that and because of the different grapes, they still know that the consumer wants a consistent flavor year in, year out. And because of that, they add a bunch of stuff in it that is chemical, that does kind of strip away from what makes a single vineyard or an estate grown wine a lot more unique. And it just kind of starts tasting a lot more homogenized.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe up and comers where they don't have that same brand value as NAPA or a Bordeaux wine, but there's certainly a lot more upside to grow.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think where one door closes, another opens, right? For a region like Napa, you're seeing the average yield go down over the course of five, 10, 15 years. And what's special about this fine wine industry is that they can't really just shift their vineyard to another part, right? Then Napa wine wouldn't be Napa. That's why only certain parts of the world have great wine. So they're doing a lot to be able to convert back to, say, more organic or sustainable practices to be able to get the most bang out of their buck, the most juice out of their grape. But when you look at the opportunity side, not only does that create lower supply for even greater demand, but it also forces price appreciation. And then when you're talking about those colder regions or climates that I mentioned, those are new sort of your, say, emerging market stocks, right? Those are your”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, thankfully, with auctions, technically anybody can participate, but there are minimum thresholds to be able to participate in some auctions versus the other. If the starting price of a case of wine is $100,000, most people are priced out of that auction, right? If they want to start with something smaller. So I would say that's really the only requirement for wine, especially if you're just buying it direct. There's really no regulation around it. You just need to be drinking age so you can purchase alcohol.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yield, right? If your yields are 24% down, you have to release your wine at a higher price. And then on the other side for wine regions that maybe previously were a little bit too cold to produce great wine. So regions like maybe Oregon or northern parts of Germany are starting to come into the climate where they're producing some really incredible world-class wine. So newer regions are starting to pop up and gain a lot of consumption demand, which is then driving investment demand.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you think about your sort of blue chip line regions, it is going to be what we call the old world. So in Europe, regions like Burgundy and Bordeaux are the ones that Thomas Jefferson invested in, right? The Romans invested in, and that was kind of your starting wine growing regions. But now it's become a much more diverse and global landscape where you're starting to see wines out of Napa, out of Oregon, out of maybe lesser known wine regions in Italy and France that are really coming up. And one of the big reasons other than just changing consumer preferences is also climate change. It really can't be ignored that at the end of the day, this is an agricultural industry and there are some really real effects that climate change has had on a lot of these blue chip regions. Number one is the higher volatility in temperatures, which they unfortunately destroy a lot of the”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had tariffs in the US against most European wines until earlier this year. And that led to a 25% cut on all French wine, all Spanish wine, UK wine, German wine, but those tariffs actually excluded the country of Italy and it excluded all sparkling wine imports. So champagne. And because of that, over the past two years, the region of Champagne and Italy as a country have outperformed the global wine indices and they're returning 15 to 25 percent on average over the last five years.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So you're exactly right in that wine has very little correlation to your global indices like the SP or the Nasdaq. What it is correlated is most strongly with is actually emerging market growth. So if you think about wine and the high-end sector of wine, it really is kind of that upper class that is consuming it, right? They're taking the supply out of circulation, which then drives the market even more. When you're looking at emerging market indices like developing countries like China or India and see that upper class become even wealthier, that's been the strongest correlation point that we've seen to prices of fine wine. And if you look on a more micro level, you're seeing that certain regions are falling in favor or out of favor, which also leads to some pretty dramatic price increases in certain regions versus others. So for example,”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so Seth Bees and Christie's are, I would say some of the two biggest auction houses for wine. They sell everything, but wine is definitely a big part of their business. And the great thing about auctions is that they've been around for a long time. And it's a format that a lot of people are familiar with. I think the downside is that there's a lot of information asymmetry and the fees, right? You have to pay 25% on top of the strike price. And for someone who's looking at it as an investment, wiping out 25% gains is very significant and can't really recover from that even in a year or two.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then you also have the appreciation the wine that actually changes its flavor profile. And then I think the third factor is really based on brand equity, right? Why are people paying $2,000 for a Louis Vuitton bag that's made of the same leather material as another bag that may be from a cheaper retailer? There's that sort of brand value that is intangible that happens with a lot of luxury goods and a lot of art or cars. And that's really that third factor that we look for that is it sought after, right? Does it have more global demand than the winery can actually produce? And those are really the factors that drive fine wine versus regular wine.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think that's a great place to start because I was in the same boat five, six years ago. I didn't even know that you could invest in wine much less what made wine investable versus the stuff at Trader Joe's, right? So to me, it's a few criteria. Number one, it's going to be longevity. Most of the wine that's produced in the grocery aisles is actually meant to be consumed within a couple years. But there are a subset of wines that actually age and get better with time. And that's why you have that old adage, right? Age is like fine wine. As the aging process happens, there's inevitably going to be less supply than it was on day one, right? Like say winery A, they make 10,000 bottles by year five, maybe there's only 5,000 just due to natural global consumption. Maybe at year 10, when it's reaching its peak maturity, there's only 1,000 bottles. So that supply and demand dynamic really plays into the price appreciation.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I realized that I could either just start a wine hedge fund or open up a platform so that anybody could learn and invest in wine with the technology and infrastructure that we built at VinoVest. And the latter was just a much more interesting opportunity that could affect hundreds of thousands, even millions rather than just having a few large LPs and a fund.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Realizing that all of these pieces needed to be in place for even just someone like me who's just a retail investor who wanted to just put a couple thousand dollars into it and see how it went, it just was very obvious to me that this needed improvement, this asset class that's been around since even before founding fathers has returned great appreciation and yield to investors all around the world yet it's only available to less than 1% of people in the world. So what VenoVest, we really sought to democratize that process first just for me just to figure it out myself and have an easier way to invest in wine and then I realized after talking with friends and telling them how excited I was about investing in wine a lot of them were like hey Anthony why don't you manage some of my money too and I'd love to be able to try my hand out of being a wine investor and had that cool factor and”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To me, it just had such a cool factor that the other asset classes didn't. The fact that you could drink it, could invest in it, you could sell it. It was just really aligned more with my identity than I thought it would. And I wanted to try my hand out at it. And when I tended or attempted to get into my first auction, I realized why wine collecting for most people is out of attainment, right? You need a ton of capital to even have a wine seller to hold your wine. You need access to the best wine auctions, to the best winer reason. Usually those mailing lists or waitlists are even a decade long to even get on it. And then finally, the knowledge, right? There's a lot of information out there on tasting notes and wine and how it tastes, which critics like what, but there's really no stock analyst equivalent talking about, hey, you should buy this winery's wine because of reasons A, B, C that are more financially driven.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's a question I get a lot. And I think to really take it back to the early days, I grew up abroad. I grew up in Beijing and Hong Kong for the most part. And wine was a huge deal there, right? It's especially wine from Bordeaux and Burgundy is a huge part of being culturally relevant or as a status symbol. So I always knew that wine had value, especially really rare wine. But I never really thought of it as an investment until selling Envoy Now I went to my first financial advisor and they're like, hey Anthony, you know, what do you want to do with the rest of your life? And I said, start companies. And they're like, all right, well, that seems risky. So let's put all of your money into really safe stuff. And I looked at the plan. I was like, I don't really want to do that. All my friends are angel investing or they're into crypto and they're buying real estate and a lot of people that I really respected were getting more and more into investing in wine.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Welcome me into their world, introduce me to people who had been there and done that, right? Like founders my age or even younger who have done incredible things. And I think just having those two folks be able to, I think, shine a light on that and obviously being backed by them helped to open a ton of doors. That's really the biggest value that I've gotten out of being associated with them.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Be honest in saying that the time that I spent with them was very fleeting. Maybe I would say two to three in-person meetings, a lot more over email, especially Mark. He's notoriously good at responding really quickly. And for me, it was really just having that sort of shift into feeling like I had the confidence and I could execute on this huge scale because I don't think I ever saw that my ceiling could be that high. Coming from a background where no one in my company or in my family had ever started a company, my ceiling was like just go to the best college ever and then go to a great investment bank and then try to make as much money as I can so I can save enough to start a business. I'd never really thought about the venture capital world where you're hearing about these hyper growth companies, you're hearing about these billion dollar valuations and just really opened my eyes to have them”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, and just to wrap it up, because I got that 100K, everyone got automatic A's in that class. So getting docked a letter grade for skipping did not matter at all.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was really a turning point in my life because just having someone that I looked up to so much give me that confidence to be like, hey, your business is worth something. And not only do I think it's worth something, I'm willing to offer you an investment to have you really be able to take it all the way. And that was, I think, between Mark Cuban and Peter Thiel, I was like, there's two billionaires offering $200,000 to drop out of school and run my business. This is never going to happen again in my life.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To go see him, you're going to get doctor Letter Grade. So I took the hit anyways. I was like, I need to go see him. I don't know when I can ever do that again. And at the very end of his speech, he's a executive producer of Shark Tank Mark Burnett was there. Our business school dean was there as well. And our dean was like, hey, Mark, everything's recorded already. Do you want to do an impromptu shark tank session? And we can pick some students in the crowd to pitch you. And Mark's like, sure, why not? I was just waving my hand like crazy. Like I was about to fall off because I wanted so badly for the opportunity to pitchmark Cuban. Thankfully, I was picked. I pitched him. And that was my first investment offer ever. $100,000 offer from Mark Cuban, Mark Burnett for 10% of my business, which meant that somebody valued Envoy Now at a million dollars. And from the time to the 19-year-old, that is like the biggest number I could even think of.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the Mark Cuban story, this was my sophomore year in college with Envoy Now. And I had not yet made the decision to drop out yet, although I was considering it. And he came to our school as a speaker. Idolized Mark Cuban, I thought he was so cool. So I actually skipped class to go and see his speech. And I remember the funny thing was that I was in an entrepreneurship class. And the whole goal of that class that semester was for folks to launch their own business. And I remember in the syllabus, the professor said that if the class was able to cumulatively raise $50,000 in funding, then everyone would get automatic A's. So just kind of remember that as I dive into this story. Our professor had trouble with me skipping his class to go see Mark U. He was like, you can see the recording online. You know, it's just a speech. If anybody skips this class,”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Problem solve instead of just be like, hey, you had a bad quarter, ignore you or they're in radio silence, which can happen sometimes too.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The founder side, they're the only help that I have. And then when you compare it to maybe an angel investor or a smaller emerging fund manager or they're just, I think, hungrier or more generous with their time, some of the smallest angel investment checks, like people would put in 10K, 20K of their money really went to bat for me in the early days and really were people that I could lean on as a confidant, not just as an investor that, you know, of course, they want me to make money so they can make money. It was just a lot closer than that. So that would really be my piece of advice for folks fundraising is that there's a lot of capital out there, but really focus on people who you think will actually spend that time with you because it's not always going to be sunny days and growth that's up and to the right. There's always going to be road bumps and you want folks that can actually help you who maybe have been there before in your shoes as a founder in the past who can then be able to help them.”
2021-12-10 · We Study Billionaires · TIP403: Wine Investing Gets Better With Age w/ Anthony Zhang · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT