Michael Sidgmore on the Mainstreaming of Alt Investments

The Altogether Show with Eric Satz

Lately, each week seems to bring a new headline about yet another hot trend in the alt investment space. It’s easy to get lost in this current wave of alternative investments. In this episode, Michael Sidgmore helps make sense of all these trends by breaking down how they’re playing out within the familiar arena of sports.

Michael has a unique appreciation for the sports world, having grown up playing soccer around the world. It’s an international experience that led to him attending undergrad in London and staying for an accidental gap year with the UK nonprofit Room to Read.

It was a formative time that seeded an appreciation for diverse perspectives and a desire to create an impact that’s threaded throughout his career and evident in how he describes the best parts of being a VC, a job where he’s able to “help build companies everyday that actually impact people’s lives directly.”

Through this lens, it's easy to understand Michael’s earnest enthusiasm for the alt investment space, particularly interest-based investing trends and the ability for individuals to more easily invest directly into the things they’re most passionate about.

Listen in to hear more about the collision of culture and investing across the sports stack, the regulatory changes making it possible, and tips for individual investors ready to jump into alternative investments.

• (1:59) Who is Michael Sidgmore?
• (7:20) Monetizing engagement in sports
• (11:33) The power of purpose-driven content
• (14:44) A fascinating time for new sports world entrants
• (18:50) The fractionalization of assets and the evolution of crowdfunding platforms
• (22:55) The upending of fundamental financial models of value
• (25:45) Moving beyond the 60/40 portfolio
• (28:00) Where are we on that adverse selection curve?
• (33:20) Reg CF: Did we start in the right place with regulatory changes?
• (41:07) Three important points on diligence
• (45:54) When do we stop calling them “alts”?

Michael Sidgmore is the co-founder and partner of Broadhaven Ventures, as well as the founder and partner at Sixth Man Capital, the founder of Alt Goes Mainstream, and co-founder of Community x Capital, where he and Alexis Ohanian educate others about the collision of community, culture, and finance.

Eric Satz—entrepreneur, serial investor, lover of hot peppers—is the founder and CEO of Alto. The idea behind Alto was born out of a problem. Eric found a clear need to give people more control over their investments (and investment opportunities) in a simple, streamlined way and created Alto to make these opportunities available to all investors, not just the ultra-wealthy or institutional investors.

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Podcast episode production by Dante32.