YieldTalk #35: Informed Investment Crowdfunding

Hello Reader,

This week: Invest in OG Tetris; Some optimism for hotel investors?; What VCs really want.

✨ New Review ✨

​Eastview Capital is a relatively new entrant into the investment crowdfunding landscape, with a range of commercial real estate offerings, including multifamily and office properties. CEO Daniel Drew was previously CEO at now-shuttered First Real Fund, and Drew says that his experience at First Real Fund (and before that with iFunding) taught him the importance of working with a broker-dealer (Eastview has partnered with North Capital Private Securities to provide broker-dealer services for their offerings). There are 3 open investments, all with a $5,000 minimum, open to accredited investors.

Our rating: Very Good. Read the full review here.

Notable offerings

​Azalea Hill Apartments is a 160-unit apartment community located in Greenville, SC, currently offered by Holdfolio (our review). They are targeting 9%+ annual cash on cash returns, and 16% - 19% annualized total return. Minimum investment is $20,000, open to all investors.

...

​Precision Livestock Technologies 🐄 is a Texas based AgTech company that uses machine vision sensor technology and artificial intelligence to develop products that optimize animal production operations and make them more environmentally efficient and humane. Offered via Harvest Returns (our review), with a minimum investment of $10,000, and a target return of 53X over 3-5 years. Open to accredited and "limited" non-accredited investors.

...

👂 AudioCardio is a startup using data- and science- backed "Threshold Sound Conditioning technology" to assess users' hearing to generate personalized barely audible sound therapies to maintain and strengthen their hearing. Offered via Republic (our review). $100 minimum investment, open to all investors.

...

Maybe it's because my kids are in the "playing their Nintendo Switch incessantly" 🎮 🎮 🎮 stage of the pandemic, but I've got a soft spot for these video game offerings. The latest from Otis (our review) is for Tetris and Tetris II "in a 9.8 A++ grade, which is the highest attainable seal grade at Wata. The games were released in 1989 and 1993, so finding them in a high-grade condition is rare." $10 minimum investment, open to all investors.

Worth Reading this Week

Bloomberg's Matt Levine is one of the best Finance writers in the business (I have no idea how he comes up with so much great material every day!), and in a recent newsletter he covered some of the profound changes in capital markets (especially for high-growth companies) over recent years:

My basic view is that once money was worth a lot, and now it’s worth less; once cool business ideas were worth a certain amount, but now they’re worth more. Global markets and electronic communications make it easier to raise money from anywhere; all investors everywhere are in competition to provide capital to the hottest companies. Meanwhile global markets and electronic communications also make it easier for hot companies to scale; if you make a good app, you can distribute it to everyone in the world a lot more easily than you could once have distributed a good ball bearing. Entrepreneurs have relatively more power, which means that they can demand better terms from investors than they used to; they can insist on having more control of their business, treating investors as suppliers of a relatively unimportant input (money) rather than as full partners in the running of the business.

...

The Urban Land Institute looks at Nontraditional Investors Eyeing Hotel Assets, Driving Optimism for 2021.

...

From SaaStr, a look at What VCs are Really Looking For: A Super Simple Guide. (Spoiler alert: "Simply put: Seed VCs are looking to make 100x their money.") Worth reading not because that's how you should level set your own investment expectations, but more as a reminder of the game that traditional VCs play: make lots of bets, knowing only a very small fraction will succeed. Which is fine, but also neglects a lot of perfectly reasonable businesses that won't return 100X but may well still be worth funding.

... speaking of investment expectations, this post about "time preferences" starts out with a (helpful!) perspective on one's career, but pivots to important parallels for investing. Again, there's no "right" way to invest, but expectations matter.

...

📊 I'm a sucker for charts and graphs, and have to consciously remind myself that their precision does not necessarily imply accuracy. But they can still be very powerful tools for distilling a ton of information into an easily digestible form. An overheated stock market has lots of implications for the wider economy (and at least a glancing effect on plenty of alternative asset classes), and this look at the current status of the "Buffet Indicator" is food for thought.

Odds and Ends

• LexShares (our review) Receives Majority Investment From Brockhurst Capital Partners [Link]
• Just a friendly reminder to do your homework before making an investment! SEC Obtains Final Judgment Against Advisor Who Defrauded Investors of Millions​
• AMA session with iconic investor Hans Tung from GGV Capital Thu, Mar 4, 2021 at 6:00 PM EST [Link]

Before you go ...

Thanks for reading! If you enjoyed this newsletter, please forward it along to someone else you think would find it interesting. Questions? Comments? Ideas? Complaints? Just reply to this email.

Want to learn more about investment crowdfunding but aren’t sure where to start? You can explore more than 120 crowdfunding investment platforms in our database and learn more about the nuts and bolts of crowdfunding and alternative investing on our blog. Stay safe and healthy out there! 😷