Investment banker Ivan Rogachyov on crypto markets

0:00I'm Jay Addison from event change audio for investor pitch media and FinTech news network today on blockchain interviews Ivan rogachev investment banker Ivan how are you doing today I'm good yeah how about you I'm doing fantastic thank you tell us a little bit about your background in business and finance so my background has been ever since I can remember myself have been really

0:22passionate about finance I know it's a weird thankfully passion about but I remember just reading my first book which was doubt to me of Finance by George Soros and it just the whole world of finance fascinated me so I went on start reading reading more of a finance like a cool old historical books about how Wall Street used to be and the whole world fascinated me so I bought my first

0:46dock when I was 16 ended up going to school for it and my first job actually associated was finance was me selling marketing contracts to bring in investors to publicly traded companies and then through my way around I ended up kind of being on the investment banking side helping companies raise money out she had by zhing them what's the best way to take their company

1:11public and working in the whole venture space and so far it's been a very good experience for me and I've been joy at every second of it now there's a lot of companies in the blockchain sector right now that have been doing I cos and a number of them also be moving into the public sector tell us why a company that is in the blockchain sector would want to go into

1:34the public market it'd be listed on an exchange tell me isn't it crazy and what is it there has been like around 100 different icos that have happened over the years and now some of these guys are actually wanting to go public well I'll say one thing it's definitely not for everyone because some companies have just went out there to make coin and that's how they decided to create value

1:57but if you're a company that went into this space to create a company and I co was just away as a means to an end for you to get some additional initial financing interr actually to be able to grow your business then public markets are absolutely a way to go for you people tend to overthink how complicated or IPOs are you should definitely hire professionals but it's a very manageable

2:24process and the cost over the years was the technology it has gone down a lot like a very significant amount without the lawyers the whole process will only cost you about fifty thousand dollars lawyers if you can get a good deal maybe another 50 or 60 thousand so it's not that expensive to be able to do an IPO these days just from the legal standpoint getting him financials and

2:51everything okay so what are some of the challenges of going public like a CEO of a blockchain company today that was thinking about it what would be a couple of the obstacles that they'd have to that end they have to overcome well that's a good question before the challenge was really was just so damn expensive to list your company it was so expensive for you to be able

3:13to exist on the exchange and the number of compliance issues as a company that we go through was very very rudimentary now the world has changed the most challenging part about becoming a public company is actually getting enough financing and having enough money to be able to list so the most challenging part is actually finding a guy like myself or different independent groups

3:40that are going to go out there and raise money for you get investors get you over the minimum threshold and everybody should know about this if you want to list on the exchange you need to have a minimum depending on the exchange about 150 to 200 different shareholders in your company and getting the capital and getting that number of shareholders is

4:04the most challenging part but however there are many ways of being able to do it and hundreds of companies have done it so capital markets can be a very great space for you to be able to access capital and to build your business long term and I don't encourage guys that you want to just use public markets just get their company listed sell their stock and yeah Bob is young go that's

4:31the end of story I would never work with a guy that's never never gonna work anyway realistically most of the companies that should be getting listed on the exchange or the ones that want to build their business for the next five to ten years and those are the companies that we would like to work with and those are the ones that end up prospering now if a company whether it

4:56was a blockchain company or any other company wanted to do an IPO what would be the first step the first steps there would be a few but you can start in many different places but number one thing is that you should be worried about is making sure that you have enough capital to be able to go through the IPO process not only to pay for the lawyers but to

5:22have a lot of spare capital for you to sustain yourself for some time so what I would look at is finding people that will raise capital for you and the rest will work itself out because if you have a good law in team in place you have good management for the company all these things will be able to get sorted out the most challenging thing that I find is that I see with companies is

5:46they just can't get enough capital for them to be able to stay operational for a long enough time and they can't bring in revenues and the amount of time that the market expects them to do so okay so my next question and you've almost answered a favor my next question is going to be do all companies do well on the public market and maybe you can just

6:07answer that for us yes so this is kind of double-edged question there are companies such as I'm not sure if you call it up there it heard of the ice tea company it was just a random company on the East Coast yeah that had even added blockchain to their yeah the end up adding blockchain to their name and then their stock went from like I was sent to $8 it was just ridiculous how much it

6:35ran up so short-term they did well but long-term with a plan or a vision their company is probably not gonna do well in long term not all companies do well long term but if you have a good management that actually wants to build their business and they exist just like any other company would and at the end

7:03of the day their intention is not to sell stock but to grow business build shareholder value and make their dreams come true though those are the companies that tend to do very well and number one thing that I'll say once again all the main thing that everybody should look at is the management team that the company has so if you have a good management

7:23you're well financed the stock market is going to be a great place for you to build value for your shareholders and grow your business for next five to ten years Ivan rogachev it's been fantastic having you on blockchain interviews today thank you very much if somebody wanted to get a hold of you and learn more about IPOs or any of the information we discussed

7:45today how would they get ahold of you yeah absolutely people can actually reach out to me I'm pretty open you can reach out to me on social media where I can give you my email and my email is pretty simple it's just Ivan dot a dot rogachev just like the last name here at gmail.com fantastic and you can reach out me through that I also add that into the description below perfect once again

8:10once again thanks for being on the show today and we hopefully will do a follow-up in there in the coming weeks thank you I'm good thank you okay okay