Smash Notes
Anthony Zhang on Wine as an Asset Class
In this episode, Anthony and I chop it up an all things wine, investing, LA, and what it like to leave a company to start another. Hope you enjoy this episode of Forward THinking Founders.
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Notes
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Did you know that wine is an asset class that has outperformed the S&P for the last few years? Before Vinovest, choosing the right wine to invest in was a lengthy and tedious process for professionals. With Vinovest, a simple and modern tool, anyone can invest in wine without hassle and in just a few clicks.
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1. Take a short quiz about your investment tendencies, risk profile, etc.
2. The system automatically generates a custom portfolio for you
3. Your wine is stored in their facilities, where they appreciate over time.
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Anthony Zhang says yes. On Vinovest you own the bottle itself, the underlying asset, not a slice of a pool. If you want it for a birthday or a party, you take it off the platform and drink it. If you want cash instead, Vinovest matches you with a buyer and you can sell. The wine sits in a global network of professionally managed, fully insured warehouses. He says one site in England is a place the British royal family also stores wine. When you want a delivery, Vinovest lines up a shipper for that warehouse, or you can visit in person. His first company was a food-delivery business, so the logistics were not new to him.
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Anthony has a logistics background, as does his cofounder. Besides, wine business already has a heavy supply chain and logistics setup, so the challenges were more about building the software than dealing with the logistics.
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Wine is best to balance out your riskier investments like Crypto and startups. Wine is lower risk, consistent, and appreciates over time steadily. It is also a great hedge to a market downturn.
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To be global and to scale, wine no longer has to be based in California or France. Vinovest can ship to almost anywhere in the world and to scale.
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Anthony Zhang says he loves building Vinovest in Los Angeles for the life as much as the hiring pool. He names the beach, the weather, Hollywood, fashion, and real estate, and he says the talent is not one industry deep. Founding teammates had worked at Snapchat, at ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, and at Headspace. He thinks people in the city are generally happier. His picture of a day is twelve or thirteen hours of hard work and then a separate life with friends, which he says is available there in a way that keeps the job from becoming the whole day.
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1. USC, which is where he met his girlfriend 2. The fashion district and arts district 3. Santa Barbara 4. The west side and Culver City
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In short:
1. Investors want to help but not be in your way 2. When you need help, ask diligently. 3. Problems are ok, investors know you will have problems. Be forthcoming about them.
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1. Gotta hustle hard 2. Leverage their portfolio founders 3. Try cold emailing, but these are bottom of priority list for most investors.
Reach out to portfolio founder on LinkedIn, have a convo, then ask for a reference. This is effective.
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1. They probably get 200 emails a day 2. Their best deals come from a dozen different sources. 3. They may miss out on great deals from cold email, but the effort to find these deals are not worth sifting through all of them
Note, this generalizing. Some VCs like cold emails.