 Yeah, grants are interesting, right? Yes, especially here in Canada. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it like so I mean, there are some obvious things that we don't want grants to do. Yes We don't want grants to directly fund things that will otherwise be done Exactly It's not really you don't say every time so So there is a thing and this is where you know, you know, well, I'm coming from the left side I'll agree with your libertarian instincts on the political process When it comes to funding innovation The political process demands wins too early and So what you have as you have politicians and I want to fund stuff But I also need to have during the time of their During their election cycle a win from it. Yes Well, what are you gonna do if you want to win? You don't want to take a risk. No You want to for instance fund something that already looks like it's a success Exactly. Yeah, you want to fund something that isn't a Isn't going to look like it was a big failure But we know that with regard to innovation or innovation of things That's not what you want Like so there was always this discussion in the US where they funded some solar company and then lost a whole lot of money on it because solar was Difficult of when it gets picked up and of course the punishment for losing all that money was Huge political things and I'm not saying that, you know, there should have been no punishment for failure But you have to understand That it's just like if you are going to do things innovative you're going to have failures so You know One thing we've done at CDL recently Is we opened up a space stream A space stream. Okay. Space stream. It's led by uh, chris haffield. Okay. Yeah, why not? It's not actually just that he's a public figure. Um, uh He There is something about somebody who has commanded the international space station that makes them a very clear thinker But what to do no the decisiveness the question is no mistake. No, it's no tolerance. It's a quite impressive thing But he also has domain expertise In this area Canada doesn't have a space program. We don't anymore at all. No, none of those sorts of things It's nothing like geographically. We're not in the right place in the world to launch rockets Why set up a space program in Canada? Well One is because we'll CDL and no one else was doing it But two is like it's it's a thesis All of a sudden we've had thanks to SpaceX and other things a massive drop occurring in the uh cost of accessing space Astronomically and it's going to keep keep going down to some huge degree And so now and now we're not there yet, but now we're we are if we continue on that trajectory we'll be at a point Where there will be the ability for people to think of a business that Requires access to space and do it. Hmm And that's what the space stream is Now here's the difficult part about that is half these things are like If you do a thought experiment say if I had very cheap access to space, what could I do? And think a lot of ideas that are almost no-brainer Romans is that rate of decrease. Yes. We still don't know what it is We don't know what the access is. We don't know what the you know, all sorts of stuff could happen in the meantime You know, we're one SpaceX crash away from things slowing down, etc So it's very very risky Um But we open that up Because the idea is like you have to sort of start at some point And the expectation is that most of these companies will be failing And they'll be failing for things like timing issues As much as execution and other things we want to lump it in together Yet Imagine if and and so it's going to be hard to get capital for those startups We're already off to the races. Yeah, hard to get capital for those startups for good solid reason. Yeah, however Let's imagine that the government decided to put up capital for that and said we're going to have Space expertise in Canada. It's got a benefit. We you know country With very long remote areas and other things like that. So just on a global scale. That's good People when they talk about going to the moon and the asteroid belt. What are they talking about mining? mining That seems familiar We have expertise there as well And so you can see that you could align some stuff. You could have a vision, but it can't be a vision That says we're going to have stuff in orbit. We're going to have stuff on the moon This is where I agree with you where government funding does benefit Yeah, because no private individual is just going to give a hundred million dollars You can't and most of these big innovations sort of push things along There's been some sort of government seeding sometimes by accident But you know like something spitting out of a department of defense or whatever Yeah, I think it's good to have you you come to a point where at least R&D is done Then it can go to commercialization. Right, but also I've thought about this before I don't know if anyone's done it. Maybe Canada can be the first where it's like Will you cdl space program for example? Yeah Um, you know, Ontario just had a hundred million dollar tech cluster fund Let's say we have a hundred million dollar space program fund goes into here And then we're attracting it's a think tank. Yeah, right. Okay. Let's bring in the brains. Yeah, we're gonna make stuff. Okay The money that the government gave us comes from taxpayers, right? Directly, yes, right businesses and income tax wherever the streams, but anyways tax dollars to this fund This is where I see an opportunity of you're familiar with ubi. I know you Yeah, universal basic income. So my buddy Floyd. He's leading like ubi works in Toronto Um, I've always said okay I'm a firm believer in a ubi dividend fund as opposed to just like right right And so like if they have an Alaska in Norway and yeah, exactly, right or Kuwait with the oil funds for everybody Where let's say the space program with the hundred million dollars goes and we discover something, right? It's government funded we start using it makes a profit, right? Theoretically us as a taxpayers should get some dividend from that. It's it's a way to do it I mean like it's I don't know how it's aligned in that way. No, they're great I mean, obviously we're mining. So this is where we sort of have historical problems is it's In mining, you know, most of the stuff there's Think about what what it takes to get rich from a mine. Um, you have to discover something. Mm-hmm You then have to pull it out and sell it But The fact that it's there already Is an endowment from the land So if I give you just randomly allocated mining rights over a certain thing. Yes, it's like a gift Yes, yes, you have to do some work still to get it out there and we want you to do work So you should have some upside. Mm-hmm, but you shouldn't necessarily get the whole friggin lot Um, you know a few years ago, uh, australia actually decided to pass a resource rent tax basically To tax mining Basically and then distribute it there's a way of getting income Um, and of course the mining companies push massively back with the lobbyist funding and things like that But it's the kind of thing that we have in mind. In other words, if something is there and it's obviously pure luck We should have a stake in it. But the same is on these moonshots. I agree with you Now how you do it because you've got to be careful. Um, you don't want to stifle the extra innovation that needs to occur So you have to find some way of measuring We're mining. It's easy to work out a way. It's like, uh, you know, you There's enough certainty there. We can do the calculations and work it out With space would be a little bit harder But not impossible. It's not impossible. There would be ways of which You could set up a sort of corporation or an entity that could hold It can be no different than united doing a startup and we hold 10% equity for employees So we have 10% equity of whatever 90% you can do whatever I'm already the reason you even exist right because I'm putting my labor in x I'm paying tax from this random labor right and the only reason you have this because of my labor It's a different story. What's private? I want to do whatever hell you want on Go spend it all burn it all. I don't care make trillion dollars If you're gonna have a government seat and this happens at other things like, uh, you might be quantum computing or some of these other things that Long payoffs That might be required. There may be entities that way. There's a yeah, I admit there's attractiveness to it The only thing is you don't want to stuff that up No, because again, you've got this other side. You've got the permissionless innovation For instance creative destruction lab, you know for all of its success. It's kind of unique in another way Um, we don't put money in although we have some streams that that have some money available, but it's private um And people sort of talk about well, we've got costs Shouldn't we be raising it shouldn't and so people, you know, whenever we think about funding the costs of a thing like cdl People come and say, oh, well, you should be taking a stake in these companies. That's how you should should get around And I look at that and I I And why I combinated us that and stuff like seven percent And they don't need that. Yeah, and they don't they do stuff and they, you know, people make that trade off but I look at us doing it and I'm like Then when we're getting people who are applying for it, they've got to sit there in the calculation in their mind Yes, they're going to be We're going to be sitting on their friggin captains forever. Yes so The difference between that and a mining royalty a mining royalty is not like it's a share of corporation a mining royalty is a If you pull this ton of ore out you pay this amount. Yes If we could work out the same thing Uh, the same measurable planable instrument Then it becomes like the It's still permissionless, but I know what the cost is And that's what you kind of want to come up with. I don't know what the solution would be for space But I think we're at the end and I don't think anyone's proposing putting in the canadian space agency or whatever It's going to be yet It'd be nice if they did but we can think about that But yeah, but that's so we have to think of something measurable So you don't want to have something you don't want to harm permission You don't want to you don't want to create a problem. Yes and cap table mess ups startups are It's it's it's a costly piece of crap that these founders had It's not my idea. It's been done before. I think some areas in new york, um I was his name. I forget his name one of the original angel investors in the states anyways, it's How do we stimulate more because when people talk about startups they talk about the for example the fan companies Right, right or they look at the silicon valley companies. I tell people that's the 0.01 percent They're the outliers of outliers, right? You look at the medium of a successful entrepreneur A male. This is a stats male mid 40s, right? Three million dollars to ten million dollars. That's the normal right entrepreneur hopeful Horrible. Yeah, you know, maybe as a team of 15, you know, okay um So we look at toronto then we look at then this can be applied anywhere actually And we look at surrounding cities in ontario What would be interesting is having a grant like system and this is goes to what amazon got So i'm kind of repeating what amazon but for like me starting off. Yeah Like can you give me tax-free or maybe like rent-free or something of incentive to have a my operations here? Yeah, I'm starting out. I'm whole i'm hiring local. I'm getting people here. I'm not a i'm not a amazon I'm not a google so they do do those sorts of things they have those sorts of things available They're often contingent on hiring enough people and stuff like that trying to create jobs So so that does exist I think There's a tendency to focus on that as the sort of constraint I don't know if space and other things rent and other things are the real constraints I think that's just like this there are options around. Yeah, I you know for us it was the constraint was The bigger thing that was you know what silicon valley had that the Toronto didn't have was People around who are able to provide the network but advice. Yeah, it's not just a network. It's like just being able to It's experience and expertise and so, you know, if you have a place like canada that hasn't had as many startups go to scale That means there are fewer entrepreneurs And so you want to make sure you can sort of attract that and so the miracle of what CDL currently has it's It's like an ecosystem in a room Brings together all these people every two months. I've been to a couple of them. They're fantastic but that In terms of remember I said that you know the between idea and getting some money to it. There are all these steps The more you can push down and de-risk Yes, each one the better it is much better than a break off the rent Yeah Much more valuable, you know, if I can save you three years of mucking around that's much more valuable than any tax break And rent that I could get and so I think those sorts of things are What we want to encourage. I mean, I I think You know What has surprised us is like when we started out CDL was like I think the first color was 20 companies Okay, well 20 companies. That's yeah, how are you going to do that? And now we're up to hundreds a year Where the hell did they all come from? The answer was they were always there always there. Yeah now just latent. Yeah Um, and uh, and I don't think it's just a Toronto thing because we've been popping this all right We've got in Halifax this I heard they didn't create awesome stuff over 25 companies here in Halifax. That's a small place That's a small place, but it has some Uh entrepreneurs there and has some others who have stayed there and Calgary is the same thing happening And imagine just forget just Canada just popped around the world. How many of those sorts of things are so The challenge is trying about the challenge is not to create a silicon valley The challenge is to to get that same ingredients unlocked in all the places. Yes Now the thing we like silicon valley for me is you know, um You look at like the venture capitalist model The model is very simple. It's like we double down. We want unicorns. So we want asymmetrical returns. Yeah, right We want a thousand percent returns. Yes, we look at the the statistics right now Less and less companies are going public. Right. We look at for example. Oh, what's that big fund? Um, soft bank So they're gonna outcompete me by just ridiculously Valuating startups. Here's a hundred million dollars. Like we work fiasco. Yeah. Yeah. And so for me It's like I kind of I personally see the running on the wall Right to me was like a pretty much a Ponzi scheme when I first got a long time in the VC. I'm like, wait a second Like why is your company worth 30 million dollars? Am I am I like the schmuck in the room? Am I missing some data points? Like you have zero profit, right? Am I is this like reverse entrepreneurship? Profits don't matter You know, so I kind of see the writing on the wall with this type of I mean people I don't know whether there's a bubble in this stuff What it seems to me there's a few things one is I think and it's related to inequality You know, there are a lot of extremely wealthy people. So there's a lot of stuff sloshing about And that's where they end up in the soft banks and In these firms like will allocate some of our capital to these highly risk stuff Um, so I think that's going to fuel stuff now part of that's good I mean, you shouldn't want to then throw it away and and things like that. I mean, I I I want to throw it away like Okay, so I I'm not a name names. They do their job Some do great. Some do pearly Um, you look at for example companies go public At that point all the value has kind of been extracted by the time it hits whether it's an rto or an IPO, right? And uh, let's say retail investors Hopefully they eliminate the a credit investor. That whole thing is another way of creating inequality, right? Although you've got to be careful because the the rationale for that is that people um it's Seed funding and but they can go gamble. It's gambling, but they can't go the beautiful again. One is it's Regulated. Yeah to some degree. Um and two is at least, you know, the odds I'm not saying anybody gambles and necessarily those are the two but this other stuff is gambling I mean we had this problem with cryptocurrency. Yeah And so you've got to be a little bit careful. Well, they have like the jobs act where you can do up to 25k Just kind of erroneous paperwork. I think if they streamline that I mean, we've got these funds like angel lists and other things like that I mean, we could open it up. Yeah. So what I'm trying to get at though is Let's say you and I have a startup. We raise five million series a right We're doing okay. We're not profitable we raise a series b and We're profitable whatever the margin is I think having an option of going faster Something something similar to even how Spotify did the sideways IPL like price discovery but more or less Um, like I said before they went public the value was extracted Right, how can we and I'm looking at the stats because less and less companies are opening up the books the valuations are ridiculous This is like, oh, we're valued a hundred billion dollars privately. So you have to be valued almost a trillion dollars what to go public? You know, I mean, uh, so And this is where like security tokens are interesting in the future and not currently right now It's way way way too early But how do we create systems where we can get more companies? Whether it's a new system like an stl or our new type of IPO model where we can get earlier access to retail investors Yeah, I don't you know That's a That's far. So let me just give you my impression My impression is that If you have sort of passed the master of the quality process that that we see it at cdl, um, which is just basically nine months of intense performance come a car to go. Yeah um You are and you come out of that with a Solas, you know, it looks like a stable business model. The idea seems to be proven, etc You can you can raise those funds. It used to be the case in Canada was like really hard now Without working, it's getting totally So you can do that the ones that don't raise. It's usually a signal that they shouldn't be raising They can't get that once So I can't I don't see the constraint to the retail thing is the as the problem Uh, I think the the problem is getting the companies up to speed Uh, so they are investable Investable, um, and I think that's a you know, that's a huge challenge And certainly a challenge with the companies we have that are very science-based that sometimes it's like a Four-year time horizon was time you get regulatory approval for something or whatever it is Uh, but you know, there seems to be There seems to be a bit more patience for that now Uh, so I don't I don't know if we need to unlock more funds necessarily Um, you know for for that something maybe I'm you know, I'm not wrong, but that's the impression I get Yeah, like I I'm going perspective as um There's a lot of really good Small smb's and lifestyle businesses in Canada globally not just can these aren't the unicorns. Yeah They're really good casual businesses right from me well And a lot of people use the products on a day-to-day basis. Yes Um This is just behind closed doors talking with these people using their products If the opportunity did arise they would take a position for the upside it would help the incentives align So you think oh no, okay. So I mean that that may be true I I haven't seen I haven't I don't get to see that so so so that might be true There may be this sort of unlocked things that could scale But we haven't you know that it's just the opportunity isn't there the match isn't there Or you know people are happy doing what they're Doing and no one's taking it to the next level that could well because you know Whenever everyone talks about startup they talk about unicorns, right? I'll put that aside in that basket Um, there's but let me let me just say yeah The what retail retail investors aren't going to get you the answer to that the reason is because The other thing you get from the right sort of investors Is it comes with that boatload of advice? Yeah, it comes with the network knowledge. Yeah, I mean, you know Retail of it. I don't know do that. You know do that. It doesn't have that not like The reason why I bring this up is there is a massive long tail of amazing businesses They'll do like a couple of million dollars to 10 million massive long tail Hmm And you have you have entrepreneurs where the premiums aren't that sexy of these businesses, right? Maybe 2x. Yeah, so They ponder wait shoot. I sell my business for 2x But then where am I going to get cash flow of this business anywhere else? I'm not going to sell it for 2x. Right. The premium's too low. Yeah, it's not in a sexy industry No one's going to give me my 10x whatever I okay, so it's like I'm not really getting a payday as an entrepreneur I might be taking like 150k dividend for us in my life But that's what we get from moving all this out of Silicon Valley. Yeah the things that are the unsexy businesses Pretty darn interesting And that's that's another thing that we like to see I like to see these ones You know that look like they are well, you know Used to be said to have come up and said oh, well, that's a loser category And that used to be it but now people are getting more open to that Yes, because it was a loser category because everybody's saying it's a loser category. Yeah got going Uh, but people are working out how to make the case Now if you can if you can prove where the money is There's that and so I think moving out of the mindset of geographies and across different countries would hopefully do that Yeah Is there any last final things that we should kind of talk about to uh To get across to people. Um, I don't know. I you know, like we've been pretty far away. So it's been pretty good Uh, I I uh, I'd love people to read the book. Please do. It's a fantastic book It's like policymakers to read the book as well. Yeah, it's a light read which is gray It's organized beautifully like I had I went through it last night. It's fantastic. That's excellent. Yeah Yeah, no, no, I think I I think we've covered it all You know covered stuff. There's there's other things we can You there's each Bit of there could be drilled down for some period of time We didn't even talk about you know the downside of technology and all of that sort of stuff Also sitting there in the book and how to think about that. So that'll be part two Another future time. We do worry about that quite a bit. So yeah, cool. Well, Joshua. Thank you so much for coming on the show Uh, guys, please go check out the book buy it. I'll leave a link below in the show notes Joshua once again, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you. Show the best