Destiny CEO Sohail Prasad talks investing in private companies like SpaceX

A sex the destiny tech 100 fund ticker DXYZ offers a way to play private tech companies like SpaceX but also Epic games open AI close end fund. It's listed on the NYSE began trading in March. Joining us here on Set Destiny founder and CEO Sohail Prasad. Sohail, it's good to have you on. And I am going to start right there because as an investor in the biggest company started and run by Elon Musk that isn't Tesla. How much do you factor in when investing in a name like SpaceX, the fact that he does have so many different projects? Thanks for having me on. We keep we're we're really excited about SpaceX as a company. We think it's an important part of the American space ecosystem. And so the fact that Elon has had so much success, runs multiple successful companies is important, but doesn't change our excitement about the company. OK. In terms of what you are excited about, what is it? And I guess just as importantly, on a day where you have reports about a lawsuit by former employees of SpaceX alleging unfair firings and and tied to sexual harassment, I mean, when you see that happen with a publicly traded company, there tends to be a lot of fanfare attached to it, not so much necessarily with a private company. So do things like that give you pause? No. You know, as you said, there ends up being a lot of fanfare for publicly traded companies. Part of a company's growth and the privilege of being private is the ability to grow while having these matters handled with less fanfare. And so for Destiny, what we've been trying to do is give people the benefit of being able to access these companies that they know and love, but allowing the companies to still stay private and have the benefits that confers. Trying to look at this from the perspective of an investor, it, it's hard to understand. I, I would imagine the weighting of various start-ups within this whole bundle that you've created. And then there's a premium to net asset value where this is trading. So not only is it hard to know how much any individual startup is weighted, but then you're paying more for it than a private investor is going to pay. So how do you answer somebody who says, how do I know if I'm getting a good deal on any individual company here when they're bundled together and it's hard to know what they're worth? Yeah, I'm glad you asked, John. When when you actually think about what we set out to do with Destiny, we set out to create a fund that could bridge the public and private markets. And our target overtime is to have 100 of the top venture backed private technology companies. So when we listed, we had 23 companies and right now we're still in this journey while building publicly of building out that portfolio. So it's really important to understand that our portfolio composition is still going to change. Right now is just a point in time. And so the relative weightings of individual companies of sectors will continue to evolve as we add more names to the portfolio. So it's really an investment in your judgment in a sense that I almost see it as there are two phases of this journey. One is right now while we're building the fund in public, we're going to go from 23 companies, grow and evolve that portfolio get to 100. And so there's a class of investor for whom that's interesting. But overtime, long term, we're thinking about what's the best way to bridge the public and private capital markets. And then, you know, some people might want to wait to see what that portfolio shapes out to look like. So I mean, right now, and I know you said you're building this in real time here, but right now your top three holding SpaceX, Axiom Space, Boom, Supersonic, there's a lot of aerospace happening here. What types of companies, what areas of the startup ecosystem are you not invested in, but you're excited about and trying to invest in? So we built out the portfolio heavily between 2022-2023. We are vertical agnostic. And so we're investing across verticals. There's a lot of opportunity obviously with AI to keep adding companies at every layer of the value chain. So from the infrastructure and the silicon level all the way up to the applications that can benefit from that, from a consumer and a price level. So there are a number of companies and founders and VCs that we're talking to right now, OK.