Interviewer: What is Noyack?
Sam Suechting: Noyack aims to be the go-to source for all things financial education and access to private investments. We’ve perceived a real opportunity in the market where younger investors, in particular, have a real interest in participating in private wealth strategies, but they don’t have the tools to do so. Those being, number one, financial education, most importantly, and number two, access. Traditionally, in private markets, you need to have a check size of at least $500,000 in order to participate. Noyack is doing away with that paradigm with much lower minimums and coupling those with financial education tools on our platform.
Interviewer: Can you tell me a little bit about Noyack’s founding story?
Sam Suechting: I can. So, we’ve been operating for almost 40 years now. I believe we were founded in 1984 by CJ Follini, and we initially were a single-family office primarily investing in real estate. Over the next 20 to 30 years, we evolved into a multifamily office with nine families, again primarily investing in real estate but also in some special situations as well. What we realized during the pandemic is that, number one, targeting smaller dollar investors is a huge opportunity, but number two, we also want to have more impact on our investors and hopefully create transformational wealth that actually has a material impact on their lives. When you’re investing on behalf of billionaire families, it doesn’t move the needle in terms of their overall wealth, so it’s not as gratifying. We wanted to take the same strategies that we deployed for the billionaire class and ultimately do it for anyone who wants to participate on the Noyack platform.
Interviewer: What was the inspiration for Noyack’s evolution into the wealthtech platform?
Sam Suechting: So, I think we’re at the forefront of three different and really important trends. The first being the passage of the JOBS Act in 2012, the second being the maturity of fintech in 2022, and the third being the great wealth transfer. So I’ll start with the JOBS Act. The JOBS Act in 2012 created what’s called the Regulation A offering that allowed, for the first time, retail and non-accredited investors to participate in private wealth offerings. Number two is the maturity of fintech. It’s now economically viable to actually accept small check sizes in order to participate in private strategies, whereas prior to now, it’s been exorbitantly expensive to do so. Number three is the great wealth transfer. Over 70 to 80 trillion dollars in assets will be transferred from the baby boomer generation to their heirs, and we’ve increasingly perceived that this younger generation has an appetite and a desire to participate in private markets, but they need financial education and the tools to do so. So right now, for instance, we’re working on Alternative Investing 101, a true course so that investors can learn how to participate in these markets in a safe and hopefully yield-generative way. So that’s our goal right now with Noyack.
Interviewer: You mentioned goals. Could you expand upon some goals that you have for Noyack?
Sam Suechting: Our overarching goal is to create accessibility within private markets for any aspirational investor, whether you’ve got $1 or a billion. That’s really critical to us because we know that there’s an increasing appetite for participation in private markets, especially as the number of publicly listed companies has declined almost 50% over the last 20 years or so. But you need to have the right tools and education to do so. So we’re focused on building out a robust course and series of educational micro-lessons to help these investors access private markets safely and, hopefully, with credible institutional managers that can help steward and grow their money.
Interviewer: What would you say the biggest struggle for Noyack has been?
Sam Suechting: I think the biggest struggle has been dealing with incumbent gatekeepers within the financial industry, many of whom charge exorbitant fees. For instance, they’ll ask us to invest 90 cents on the dollar. So if an investor gives us $100, 90 would go towards actual investing, and 10 would go to these legacy institutions. So you’re already starting underwater. It’s hard to generate an investor-friendly return if you’re only investing 90 cents. Dealing with those types of relationships within the traditional financial markets has been difficult. We’ve said no a lot over the past year to many different partners, and we’re charting our own course.
Interviewer: Who are your aspirational mentors?
Sam Suechting: I would sort of categorize them in two ways. The first would be more thought leadership on the tech side. I love following Ben Thompson, who lives in Taiwan. He’s very up-to-date on tech and all things software. I love following James Currier at NFX in California. He’s a brilliant investor, and I like following his blog as well. Operationally, the three CEOs I most closely follow are probably Bob Iger at Disney, of course, Dan Schulman at PayPal, who’s done an incredible job since the 2015 spinoff from eBay, and lastly, Satya Nadella at Microsoft.
Interviewer: Okay, and who would you say your biggest competitors are, and how would you differentiate yourself from them?
Sam Suechting: Our biggest competitors—and there are a variety—I’d list a few: I would suggest Republic, YieldStreet, CrowdStreet, Moonfare. There’s a whole host of them. We’re distinct because most of our competitors are either single-asset, and they focus on something like fractionalized real estate or fractionalized art in the case of Masterworks, or they’re asset-agnostic, but they’re mostly pushing fad investments. It’s sort of like a private version of an AMC or GameStop, where they aren’t credible investments. So not only are our offerings, we think, more professional and will have better returns, but number two, we’re also focused on the financial education component. Not only do we have offerings that we think will benefit our investors, but we’ll provide a host of opportunities that they can select from using the tools and education that we provide on our platform.
