Liquidity for Corporate Tax Risk with Andy Lee at Parallaxes Capital
Andy Lee of Parallaxes Capital discussing liquidity for corporate tax risk

Esoteric Assets and Rap Music with Parallaxes Capital’s Andy Lee


Episode Overview

Episode Topic:

Welcome to an insightful episode of PayPod. We get into the niche world of tax receivable agreements (TRAs) and esoteric assets with Andy Lee, founder of Parallaxes Capital. The discussion revolves around how Andy’s innovative approach provides liquidity for corporate tax risk, helping businesses navigate complex tax landscapes. TRAs, though not widely known, offer significant financial opportunities for corporations. Andy explains how Parallaxes Capital standardizes terms and enhances transparency in TRA transactions, creating liquidity and diversification opportunities. This episode is a must-listen for anyone interested in alternative investments and understanding the intricacies of corporate tax management.

Lessons You’ll Learn:

Listeners will gain valuable insights into the world of TRAs and the importance of liquidity for corporate tax risk. Andy Lee shares his journey from an aspiring rap star to a successful entrepreneur in the fintech industry, providing a unique perspective on leveraging esoteric assets. Learn how Parallaxes Capital helps businesses monetize long-dated, annuity-like cash flows, transforming complex tax scenarios into manageable financial strategies. Andy also highlights the importance of celebrating small wins and continuously striving for excellence, offering practical advice for budding entrepreneurs and finance professionals alike.

About Our Guest:

Andy Lee, founder of Parallaxes Capital, is a trailblazer in the field of tax receivable agreements and esoteric assets. With a background in investment banking and private equity, Andy has carved out a niche in providing liquidity for corporate tax risk. His innovative solutions have positioned Parallaxes Capital as a market leader in this specialized area. Andy’s entrepreneurial journey, marked by resilience and creativity, offers inspiring lessons for anyone looking to make a mark in the fintech industry. From his early aspirations in rap music to his current role in finance, Andy’s story is one of passion and perseverance.

Topics Covered:

The episode covers a wide range of topics, starting with an introduction to tax receivable agreements (TRAs) and their significance in providing liquidity for corporate tax risk. Andy Lee explains how Parallaxes Capital identifies and leverages esoteric assets to offer unique financial solutions. The discussion also touches on the challenges and rewards of entrepreneurship, the importance of domain expertise in niche markets, and the evolving landscape of fintech. Additionally, listeners will hear about Andy’s personal journey, his experiences with different investment strategies, and his vision for the future of Parallaxes Capital. Whether you’re a finance professional, an entrepreneur, or simply curious about alternative investments, this episode has something valuable to offer.

Our Guest: Andy Lee- Leading the Charge of Providing Liquidity for Corporate Tax Risk.

Andy Lee is the founder and Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of Parallaxes Capital, an investment firm he established in 2017. Andy’s journey into the world of finance began at Citigroup, where he gained valuable experience that would later influence his entrepreneurial endeavors. He subsequently joined Lone Star Funds, focusing on investments in the Americas. His time at Lone Star was marked by significant contributions to innovative financial strategies, particularly in the realm of tax receivable agreements (TRAs) and other esoteric assets, with a keen emphasis on providing liquidity for corporate tax risk.

Educationally, Andy is well-grounded with a solid academic background from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He holds both a Bachelor’s and a Master’s degree in Accountancy, showcasing his deep understanding of financial and tax-related matters. This educational foundation has been pivotal in his ability to navigate and innovate within the complex landscape of TRAs, especially in strategies centered around liquidity for corporate tax risk. Andy’s expertise and thought leadership have been recognized widely, with features in prestigious publications like the Wall Street Journal, Institutional Investor, and Forbes, where he was included in the 2020 Class of 30 under 30.

Throughout his career, Andy has been a prominent voice in the investment community, speaking at numerous conferences and events, including those organized by the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM) and leading academic institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania and Texas Christian University. Beyond his professional achievements, Andy is known for his ambitious personal goals, such as completing a marathon less than 180 days after undergoing major knee surgery. This blend of professional rigor and personal determination defines Andy’s approach to both life and business, making him a respected and influential figure in the investment world.

Episode Transcript

Andy Lee: Gifts to us.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s great. I love how it’s sort of like your taco seems kind of your company ambassador.

Kevin Rosenquist: He’s my alter ego. My white boy is like, “He has your personality.”

Andy Lee: Hey, welcome to PayPod, where we bring you conversations with the trailblazers shaping the future of payments and fintech. My name is Kevin Rosenquist. Thanks for listening. You’ve likely heard about TRAs or tax receivable agreements, but how much do you know about them and other esoteric assets? Ever thought about monetizing them? Well, Andy Lee did, and he founded Parallaxes Capital in 2017. Their approach aims to standardize terms and enhance transparency in TRA transactions, providing liquidity and diversification opportunities for its clients. This was new territory for me, so learning from the TRA expert was fascinating. We also talk about entrepreneurship, trying to become a rap star and corgis. Joining me from New York City, Andy Lee.

Andy Lee: Your corgi taco is adorable. We’re online to get a second shortly.

Kevin Rosenquist: Nice, nice.

Andy Lee: My parents have one called salsa. This one is a darker-haired one. So I want to call it Waka, she wants to call it mole. I like carnitas, Asada, burritos, a little army.

Kevin Rosenquist: I used to have a three-legged corgi. She was awesome. It was pretty fun.

Andy Lee: Got it. They are incredible gifts to us.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s great. I love how it’s sort of like your taco seems kind of your company ambassador.

Andy Lee: He’s my alter ego. My white boy is like, “He has your personality.”

Kevin Rosenquist: It’s funny how that works.

Andy Lee: Never met a stranger. So I’m very thankful, very blessed to have him in my life. That’s awesome.

Kevin Rosenquist: So you’re a U of I grad?

Andy Lee: Yes.

Kevin Rosenquist: I went to Northern Illinois myself, so not too far. I spent a fair amount of time at U of I, seeing friends and stuff. Fun place, a fun campus.

Andy Lee: I’m going to say, what’s up with Illinois and Wolves? Because you’re the Salukis down south, and then the Huskies up north.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s true, that’s true. I don’t know.

Andy Lee: I guess it wasn’t entirely clear to me why, how do they come up the wolf concept.

Kevin Rosenquist: Maybe it was random. Who knows? It’s not like there’s a lot of huskies roaming around in Illinois, so who knows?

Andy Lee: You guys had a phenomenal quarterback a little bit ago.

Kevin Rosenquist: A while ago. Yes, Jordan something. I can’t remember his name, but they were bad for a while there.

Andy Lee: Then SIU, for some reason, have been doing a phenomenal job in recruiting for basketball.

Kevin Rosenquist: Over basketball, really?

Andy Lee: It’s getting stolen from the NIL, because of the transfer portal. When we poached Marcus Domask from them, and they had two four-star recruits leave the floor recently. I was like, how in the world is a four-star recruit going to SIU? I’ve ever seen outwards below Carbondale. It’s not exactly the hotbed, not in basketball recruiting.

Kevin Rosenquist: No offense to anybody, Are you a big Illinois basketball fan?

Andy Lee: Unfortunately, I was born on campus, so my family always jokes that we bleed orange and blue, like the two streets are the street that divides Champaign and Urbana, right Street. I was born in the hospital on that street.

Kevin Rosenquist: Wow, that’s crazy. So that makes sense why you went there, why you ended up in Illinois. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about your exit from the tournament this year.

Andy Lee:  I’m incredibly proud of the run that we made. The Elite Eight, we haven’t been relevant for 20 years. What a smackdown by UConn. That’s an incredible team. I was thinking, I remember during the game or where they showed all the Elite Eight teams and where the place all started. Obviously, with the creation of the transfer portal, everyone had not a ton of players who had started there as freshmen, and grown up, like Illinois, We had one in Connecticut, and all five started at UConn, and we’re going to leave the UConn as Huskies. I thought that was an incredible testament to their program, and the kind of team that you want to play. I mean.

Kevin Rosenquist: UConn, no one was beating them, so.

Andy Lee: There’s just no way. They rolled everyone. There was another study showed that in the tournament last year, and this year, they have rolled everyone by a minimal margin of 18 points. I was like, 18 points! That’s a lot. Last year’s championship and this year’s championship wasn’t a game.

Kevin Rosenquist: No, no, it wasn’t. You’re right, neither one. The women’s was way more competitive.

Andy Lee: Finally, women’s sports are on the map.

Kevin Rosenquist: I know. I have to say, It’s pretty cool. I got into it. It was fun. It was a lot of fun to watch. It was a good tournament. All right. So back to you, you wanted to be a rap star when you were a kid. I understand.

Andy Lee: Trying to. Mama Lee wasn’t having any of it. Who’s ever heard of an Asian American rap star? Hopefully, we’ve made some progress in the rap scene, but clearly, I’m not cutting it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, I saw your video on LinkedIn. I think you have a future.

Andy Lee: Well, we are posting that later this week for wider consumption.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s awesome. I love it.

Andy Lee: But putting yourself out there is incredibly uncomfortable.

Kevin Rosenquist: I liked the woman in the inflatable donut costume around her neck.

Andy Lee: I love that. That was a great improv loop altogether.

Andy Lee: Yes, it’s very funny. If you have anybody listening have a chance to go check it out. It’s a pretty funny video.

Kevin Rosenquist: Was this one of those things kids say, I want to be a rapper when I grow up or is it something you legitimately had aspirations to do?

Andy Lee:  I think there were two things I wanted to be when I grew up. One, an archaeologist, and two, a rapper. I think Papa and Mama Lee weren’t having either. Even though I have multiple degrees from Illinois, by the time I graduated at 18, they didn’t care. They were like, as far as we’re concerned, the range of outcomes for archaeologists is making $70,000 a year for purgatory. That’s not cutting yet. You are already the only son of an age, who is about late and being a rapper, that’s cool. You clearly are as outgoing as you are. You’re not going to Hollywood and trying to cut it as a rap star, probably eating it for you. So here I am, trying to put one foot in front of the other and shuffle paper for money, and you’re excited.

Kevin Rosenquist: You abandoned your hip-hop career, and you got a master’s in accountancy. What did you see yourself doing out of college when you decided on that career path?

Andy Lee: Candidly, the only reason I did that master’s was because it was a one-year program. You had two options for the price. It was, one, it had no coursework participation. So if you didn’t need to go to class to get a grade and two, it had an open book exam at the end of the year. So for someone who didn’t want to go to class, that was an absolute godsend. So I don’t think you’re as proud as I am of Illinois. I’m not sure it was worth the paper it was printed on. Especially, for I feel as if for as tax, that’s a game where you’re not supposed to memorize rules. You’re supposed to be relatively familiar with the application of the memorization of all the exceptions, as a good use, especially, with the outgrowth of artificial intelligence, among others, where you can query something better than you and I would ever memorize it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Good point.

Andy Lee: So the elements I thought about my career like I definitely thought that, I would end up becoming a professor and someday I might, well, embark on that journey. To date, I would say, between rap song rap music as well as, potentially, being a long-term career creator, I think that dream is far afield.

Kevin Rosenquist: You spent a little over two years with Citi as an investment banker, and then another almost three years with Lone Star funds, and it didn’t take long for you to found Parallaxes, a company that specializes in esoteric assets and TRAs or tax receivable agreements, certainly not the most common specialty. But before we dive into what Parallaxes is all about, I’m curious what led you to entrepreneurship?

Andy Lee: I would say, I’m an accidental entrepreneur. I think that many at my old firm recognized that it was not an end, but more so a when I would seek to go off on my own. So the question was, when was it time for me to and when would I be ready? As I think about where and where I was in 2016, right before I left to start Parallaxes, we had been messing around with a number of concepts. The group that I was part of, Lone Star on price research and development and innovative concepts, so the one that people always laughed at was if you thought that drones were inevitable in our lifetimes, then you would buy the air rights all along the Hudson. Anytime someone bought, someone flies a drone and to deliver a package, you would charge them a toll. Unfortunately, Liberty State Park on the south end of Manhattan blew a huge hole. That was the easiest, because you could fly around by the public easement to get into Manhattan. So a less harebrained idea that got off the ground was creating monetizing tax receivable agreements. There, the firm was like, how much can you deploy annually? I said, $150 million. They were like, you missed a Zero. Obviously, the size and scale of that opportunity relative to the size of the firm didn’t make sense at $100 billion. The firm was very focused on larger opportunities. So several of the partners were like, when you go to it, we’ll give you money to go to it. If it doesn’t work, you can come back in two years. So I would say I almost fell ass backward into it. There was no grand plan. I never thought this would be the right opportunity, but as we’ve grown and killed the risk along the way, it’s created incremental avenues for us to continue exploring the opportunity set and creating real relationships along the way.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s cool. Entrepreneurship, and we talk about it on the podcast a lot. You and I talked about it a little bit before we hit record. It’s not for the faint of heart. What’s been the biggest challenge in being a founder, being an entrepreneur, and what’s been the best part of the adventure?

Andy Lee: I would say, I view entrepreneurship to be a never-ending game of round robin game of basketball. You are rewarded for beating the Chicago Bulls. Our hometown team has the opportunity to play Steve Curry and the Golden State Warriors. Getting past them means you get to play LeBron James and the Lakers. You’re constantly if you rise to the occasion and are able to beat your current opponent, probably you’ll be entrusted with the option to play an even better opponent for better or worse, which can be both exhilarating, but also incredibly challenging. The problems that we face in 2017 pale in comparison to the problems that we face today. We’re much better equipped with more resources perspective on infrastructure, team personnel, the caliber of personnel that we’ve been able to attract as we’ve grown and scaled the firm, and has been very different to where we were recruiting historically, but that doesn’t mean that the challenges get easier. Once upon a time, we thought that deploying $25 million was going to be a feat. Today, people are asking us, why can’t you deploy 250, adding a Zero? So all of those are inherently things that make it both exhilarating but also challenging from an opportunity perspective. What has been the highest high? I would say that have been a number of things. There are obviously the small wins winning the recruiting battle, where you know that a talented individual had an opportunity with someone else, but ultimately they might have chosen you primarily because they truly do believe in the vision versus everything else.

Andy Lee: I think that can always be exhilarating. You have small wins, but also losses along the way. You have personnel that you thought you were going to be the right wound for that you didn’t necessarily win the recruiting vowel or, I would say the highest high was definitely, in winning a larger transaction, with a mega fund whereby we were the small upstart and winning that big contract, and ultimately realizing the value from it was a very big high. So for that, we came out somewhat left field, no brand, no recognition, recognition. Only a whole has been a dream. In that regard, building a real relationship, but also demonstrating that we would have various, and had the best value proposition was a big part of driving that outcome. So in that regard, that’s something that I continue to be incredibly proud of, a small, nimble team being able to navigate that outcome. But it’s one of those things where people always ask you, what have you done for us recently, for better or worse? And that’s incredibly challenging as an entrepreneur. So for that, you get the opportunity to celebrate in the moment. I always tell my team that we need to celebrate small wins. Inevitably the question is going to be, Alice, how are you going to build on to build on that in order to achieve the next big thing?

Kevin Rosenquist: You said that the challenges in 2017 pale in comparison to the challenges now is that because of the scale of your company and where you’ve come, or is it because of the environmental factors or economic factors? What is it that makes it so much more challenging now than it was in 17?

Andy Lee: Entirely, the former. Life is about expectations. We have a joke that, my job, as managing partner of the firm, is to set expectations below the ground such that we never have to lift our heels to overcome them. So it’s a game of expectations, one. Two, as we think about what people have entrusted us with, they’ve given us more and more capital. We want to be strong stewards of that. In that regard, as we think about what we were able to achieve. People are like, we now expect you to do what you did in 2017. Versus in 2017, they were like, let’s see where you end up. We have no real expectations for what you are able to achieve. Today, they expect us to deliver the best in class reporting. They expect us to deliver them a product that they find to be comparable relative to the remainder of our investments. That makes sense. The expectations for a 26-year-old pale in comparison to a 32-year-old. If I was 16 back then, the low expectations would be even lower. So all of those are avenues through which to, well, for one who has been interested more and more in this incremental responsibilities that we have to deliver our investor base to deliver on the value proposition that we sold them.

Kevin Rosenquist: You mentioned being an accidental entrepreneur. Do you think you’ll do it again, or are you kind of one-and-done?

Andy Lee: No, for real. If I think about Max Lufkin and Elon Musk of the world, I’m like, this journey has been all-consuming. But candidly my wife and I have put off having a family, primarily because we said that I didn’t have it in me, to have a work baby and a personal baby. So in that regard, someday I will be blessed with a family, but those who have it in them and their engines in order to not one startup, but multiple, God bless them. I cannot find it in me to bring and to give so much of myself, outside of the first world, it has been a heart-wrenching. In the same way, there are so many highs, there are so many incredible lows, and valleys, and inevitably that come with entrepreneurship.

Kevin Rosenquist: Yes, I talked to a lot of serial entrepreneurs here, and it always blows me away when I’m looking through their history. It’s like, oh, you founded four companies and you’re on your fifth. Okay, cool. Good for you. It’s a glutton for punishment in a lot of ways. I don’t know. I guess, this is wired differently because I’m with you. I don’t think I could do it more than once. I did it at all.

Andy Lee: It’s a labor of love. Hats off to them that they have it in them to do it. We need more individuals like that, that we celebrate, and so far that too many individuals die to themselves were in the constant 9 to 5. There are so many degrees of freedom that entrepreneurs can afford. If you are willing to take the risk and you’re willing to brave the challenges that come with it.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, let’s dive into Parallaxes. So you guys have a very niche kind of investment strategy, and I would love for you to talk about kind of what is meant by esoteric assets and TRAs and kind of help educate the audience because I bet there’s a lot of people listening who are like, I’ve heard of this, but I don’t know what it is.

Andy Lee: Absolutely. So think about a tax receivable agreement that looks not too dissimilar from what pharmaceutical royalties were in 2000, and what musical royalties were in 2010. The long-dated annuity-like cash flows have been around for almost 30-plus years. If you think about taxes, taxes are the largest asset class in the world that no one’s ever heard of, it permeates the fabric of our society. For many individuals, most recently, that was Tax Day, April 15th, Columbian Massachusetts, April 17th. You get two extra days if you’re in Boston for some reason. But associated with that, like people filed their taxes and some may have overpaid their taxes and may be due a refund for one reason or another. Businesses like H&R Block would factor that receivable. The IRS would say, Kevin, you’ve overpaid your taxes by $1,000 and we’ll pay that to you in two months. H&R Block might say, Kevin, instead of waiting for $1,000 in two months, why don’t we give you $900 today? You’re like, that’s not the worst option in the world if we don’t. On the other side of the pond, we have businesses like Global Blue, have you ever been shopping on what your significant other and you’re set upon by chance and gotten that tax refund?

Kevin Rosenquist: Have I ever gone shopping and gotten a tax refund?

Andy Lee: You would file for that at the airport. That’s a large business called Global Blue. All they do is whenever a traveler doesn’t want to file their taxes online with the EU, they’ll say, Kevin, in return for that $100 tax refund, we’ll give you $9 today for it. You’re like, I don’t want to like Eurocentric bank account wire information and whatnot. Let me deal with this nuisance now. That’s all they do. There are so many opportunities for attacks on what we do as the corporate version of that. We’re taking durations as long as ten-plus years instead of two months or two weeks rest. So fundamentally delivering dollars today and return for dollars over time is effectively a factoring solution. We invest on behalf of large endowments and foundations. Think of a university, where they are looking to compound money for the benefit of long-term students as well as the stewardship of the university.

Kevin Rosenquist: Okay, so with the TRAs, you’re taking on some risk though, right?

Andy Lee: Absolutely. That forms a risk that we face as it. The first and foremost is around corporate tax risk. Should the corporate tax rate go down? We have a linear relationship with that. So those would ultimately decrease the value of the assets that we are stepping into, one. Two is around credit risk. As many of your listeners know, you’re fundamentally taking credit risk across from the individual meets the charge. So like we have to believe that the business is going to stick around and be a going concern for multiple years. finally, extension risk when we get paid has a significant impact on our internal rate of return on IRR. So for us, we seek to focus on mitigating all reforms or risks. That requires some level of capacity across credit, legal and tax diligence, for us to properly and appropriately diligence the assets that we’re buying. In the payment space that runs the gamut, including the likes of a Shift4 and i3 vertical way back when Phizer and Worldpay that it had acquired among others. So there are a host of such assets that live within the payment space. Many of the risks that we’re fundamentally taking are not too different from payment businesses.

Kevin Rosenquist: Not a lot of firms do what you do, at least, in my digging around, I couldn’t find a lot of other people who do what you do. Why is that? Why is it more of a niche kind of investment strategy?

Andy Lee: I think, a function or a number of things. The first and foremost is around domain expertise. In order to target the opportunities, you need to have two items that you can bring to bear, a strong understanding of tax and two commercial commercial capacity. As you probably tell from Tax Day, you probably found your interactions with your account borderline miserable. Tax personnel don’t oftentimes speak English, and that’s a big challenge. Oftentimes you bring someone with strong commercial capacity and that individual hears the word tax. He literally goes, see no evil, hear no evil. Do you like that? Literally is the reaction that most people have as it pertains to tax.

Kevin Rosenquist: You push it away, you let someone else handle it. That’s what I do.

Andy Lee: People talk about gender and the most recent generation, generation Z, and they’re like 25% of them believe they need therapy to get through tax. I’m like, what? Unseen, unheard like never even know. Why was that a thing?

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s funny.

Andy Lee: So it’s the lack of computational space is primarily driven by the lack of commercial capacity from personnel who understand tax. So we are on a journey to help shed that image. Rap videos, among others, are avenues through which we can help alleviate the image that tax personnel are valuable in helping make business decisions. They are strategic partners in that regard. That’s something that we need to do a better job of educating our stakeholder base as to the value add that tax can bring to bear, that it shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion, and that they should have a seat at the table. Those are elements that we are trying to drive across the investor base.

Kevin Rosenquist: What are some other esoteric assets that you’re involved with? I noticed on your website, that’s kind of what it’s TRAs and esoteric assets. What other things fall under that category?

Andy Lee: That’s what we do. Primarily, from a degree of freedom perspective. our investors don’t want, as you can probably appreciate, we sold them on a single asset, to begin with. With time we may migrate into other opportunities, but that’s not where we are today. That all those objects still fall within the tax realm, because that’s about competitive advantage. Tax on the dimensioned largest asset class in the world that no one’s ever heard of. The competitive advantage is always going to be domain expertise around tax and the ability to unlock opportunities. Once people hear and see the examples that I give H&R Block, Global Blue, they’re like, there are so many things that can be monetized in the tax base that people aren’t thinking about holistically. I think what you would hear is that similar to musical and pharmaceutical royalty, there are so many flavors of assets within the tax realm that can be unlocked that in the long term, we would see to journey into. But first and foremost, we need to deploy the capital that we’ve been given. We need to return the capital without profit. Ultimately, we need to create outcomes where our investors then say, and we believe in you, you need to grow and further afield into new opportunities will be supported. That is a labor of love, primarily in software that nobody wants to give you the keys to a Ferrari until you demonstrate it. Your Sean Stewart of my dad’s 1990 Dodge Corolla.

Kevin Rosenquist: I like that, I like that analogy. That’s good. What did you see that made you go into this kind of niche market? How did you how did you find yourself going into this?

Andy Lee: I think it was sheer accident going back to where we started. I had done the Masters and Accounting with a focus on taxation way back when, not because of papers. Probably not. I learned about TRAs when I worked at Citigroup investment banking, primarily because that was a transaction that went down between what was then Rio Tinto, the mining major, and Cloud peak. I had the option to look at it. I’m like, this is super interesting. Someone should provide third party liquidity for this. They effectively were selling it for a fire sale price. I was like, that needs to be that bid ask is not appropriate for the risk. So someone should provide liquidity for this. So that was what we experimented on at Lonestar. Given that the firm’s price, R&D and the fact that the only way to get promoted in the group that I was in was to create something. So that’s somewhat what drove on, how I somewhat fell into it by sheer happenstance. I’m incredibly blessed in that regard. Who gets the opportunity to work on something, out of sheer happenstance? Two, get told that they get promoted and rewarded for bringing random ideas. Most things in life, people expect you to you to a standard, and they never give you the option to spread your wings. I got to be at a firm in a group where they didn’t not care for that. You couldn’t serve your private equity career for years as an associate, for years as a vice president or as a principal. That didn’t cut it for them. They were like, you’re going to create something and that’s going to get you promoted every year or two, or you’re going to like, leave. I was incredibly thankful for that explains that’s great.

Kevin Rosenquist: That’s awesome. You take that and turned it into your own business, your own company. That’s pretty cool.

Andy Lee: Some days, being at the mothership is not the worst thing in the world. Everyone knows that.

Kevin Rosenquist: For sure, for sure.

Andy Lee: Especially, in the valleys that are of the lows.

Kevin Rosenquist: What’s on the the horizon for Parallaxes that you can talk about anyway. Are there any other things on the horizon that you’re going to, you’re going to go into?

Andy Lee: Yes. We have any product roadmap, that it’s large, it’s growing. We can we have not even kept pace with the size and scale of our industry. So like in 2017, it was $7 billion opportunity. Today it’s over $30 billion. Like our job is to be stewards of the industry as a market leader. To that end, we need to reduce the amount of variance, as you all know, like in order for something to scale as an asset class or business to scale, like you need to drive conformity. one of the problems that we have is what we do today remains a cottage industry whereby everyone knows a little bit, doesn’t know, and so as a result, there is significant technical debt across the system that we are trying to cure each and every day. With each conversation educating the sellers are holders of these assets as to what makes them valuable and what can create value for them are avenues to which people find to be different, because some avenues are variants that make it very challenging, the inability to transfer the asset, that’s very challenging. As you all know, in the payment space, the inability to conform to a processor’s requirements, result in you not being able to get distribution, not able to get best in class partnerships, among others, with banks, among others. You need to conform to the standards, and for us, we need to drive conformity across the asset class in order for us to necessarily scale the size of the longer term.

Kevin Rosenquist: Will you rap for us?

Andy Lee: I wish I was that talented. I have to say there are two items that I would highly recommend if any of your listeners try. We have bid on a bid to understand what AI can do for businesses where we have more successes. We’ve ever wanted to write a rap about PayPad. You should type that into ChatGPT. Upload a bunch of transcripts and see what comes out of it. So I’ll rap what was written by ChatGPT.

Kevin Rosenquist: Oh! No kidding, that’s cool.

Andy Lee: The tune to which it was made on Rat Two was created by a platform called, snowAI.

Kevin Rosenquist: Oh, I’ve heard of it.

Andy Lee: So it’s been phenomenal. We have been experimenting on the video front. You obviously saw a snippet of us, swaying to the music whereby could we superimpose celebrities on there to our likeness, so it’s been a scratch my head, like, what else can I do?

Kevin Rosenquist: It’s crazy. It’s totally crazy. Some of that stuff, I got a kick out of the video. I look forward to your music video debut. That’s coming up pretty soon.

Andy Lee: For sure. I’d appreciate the support.

Kevin Rosenquist: Well, Andy Lee of Parallaxes Capital, thank you very much for joining me today. Check out their LinkedIn and check out their rap because it’s pretty solid. Thanks for being here, Andy.