The WealthTech Podcast Transcript

Guest: Dean Palmiter, CEO & Co-Founder Asseta AI

Host: Mark Wickersham

Episode: Drowning in Data – Can AI Save Family Offices

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Mark Wickersham: All right, Dean, welcome to the Wealth Tech Podcast. I am excited to have you on the show. Today, we're going to be talking about a couple of my favorite subjects, certainly AI, but also the modern family office. How is AI impacting family offices? Is AI forcing

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Mark Wickersham: family offices, or driving family offices to modernize. Certainly, you have the next-gen trend. We've got a lot to dig into today. Before we get into it, would you mind giving our audience a quick introduction of yourself and Asseta AI?

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Dean Palmiter: Yeah, sure, thank you, Mark. I'm Dean Palmer, the CEO and founder of Asset AI.

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Dean Palmiter: Asseta AI is the intelligent family office suite.

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Dean Palmiter: We're a purpose-built accounting platform designed for family offices who are managing complex multi-entity wealth.

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Dean Palmiter: We were started just about 3 years ago, in January of 2023.

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Dean Palmiter: We're a group of experienced financial technology and family office professionals.

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Dean Palmiter: So we're bringing modern architecture, intuitive design.

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Dean Palmiter: To a small but fast-growing market that's long been underserved by traditional enterprise software systems.

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Mark Wickersham: It certainly has been a market that has a lot of legacy software in it, right? So it's great to see, I think, two trends happening there. One is purpose-built software for the family office market, which is…

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Mark Wickersham: fantastic, and you're seeing more and more of it, and then also, you have this kind of second-mover advantage, where you're on kind of a completely modern platform, AI native, you don't have necessarily the legacy or the tech debt that

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Mark Wickersham: maybe a legacy platform would have. Tell me a little bit about Asseta's ideal client profile. Who's a great fit for your firm?

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Dean Palmiter: So, Asseta really focuses… On 2 main clients.

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Dean Palmiter: the single-family office, and the multi-family office slash RIA.

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Dean Palmiter: On the single-family office side, We are typically working with the controller or CFO,

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Dean Palmiter: Of a family office with at least $200 million in assets under management.

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Dean Palmiter: So, again, that's a single-family office, that's…

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Dean Palmiter: decided that they want to bring accounting in-house, and they therefore have a controller, a bookkeeper, maybe a CFO.

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Dean Palmiter: And then on the multifamily office side, Some of our clients.

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Dean Palmiter: are groups of family offices. They might be from the same family, or friends of the family, so related in some way, or it might be just a family office that has an emphasis on bookkeeping, accounting.

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Dean Palmiter: And bill pay services for their clients.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, you certainly see, I think,

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Mark Wickersham: Multifamily offices, right? They can service family offices, so they're providing those type of accounting and concierge services to family offices, or in some cases, they're offering that directly to their ultra-high net worth clients around bill payment, tax prep.

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Mark Wickersham: Property management, those type of things.

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Mark Wickersham: The family office market in terms of technology, I like to say, it's the golden age where, you know, the good news is that you have more choices. The bad news is there are more choices, and it creates a little bit of buying.

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Dean Palmiter: confusion.

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Mark Wickersham: out there sometimes.

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Mark Wickersham: What makes Asseta unique in this marketplace?

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Dean Palmiter: So, yeah, there is definitely a golden age, as you put it, or a birth of a lot of new technology entrants that are aiming to serve the family office market, so it is quite an exciting time.

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Dean Palmiter: We're seeing a lot of the competition arise, not so much on the general ledger side, but on the investments performance, the portfolio management side.

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Dean Palmiter: So, there have been a dozen of new entrants in the last 2 to 4 years.

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Dean Palmiter: Who are really going after Addepar?

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Dean Palmiter: So Addepar's got a big target on their back.

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Dean Palmiter: They're seen as the gold standard, the 800-pound gorilla when it comes to investments.

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Dean Palmiter: So, I could name a dozen or so companies that are saying, hey, we're less complex, we're less expensive, we're easier to implement, we're easier to use than Addepar. So, ton of competition on that side. On the general ledger side.

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Dean Palmiter: There's really only 2 or 3 of us.

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Dean Palmiter: So, it's kind of… Yeah, I would say maybe crowded or confusing.

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Dean Palmiter: But when you look at the market, and you do any amount of research, or you're shopping around.

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Dean Palmiter: You pretty quickly can determine

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Dean Palmiter: What's gonna be the best path for you, as every family office is different and has different needs.

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Dean Palmiter: So there's multiple segments of the market.

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Dean Palmiter: There's the more institutional family, Or multi-family office that has many billions.

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Dean Palmiter: hundreds of entities. They might be international.

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Dean Palmiter: They might have their own private equity fund.

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Dean Palmiter: They might be invested across many private equity funds.

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Dean Palmiter: They might serve multiple generations, multiple households.

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Dean Palmiter: And they might have a huge staff.

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Dean Palmiter: That is probably the minority.

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Dean Palmiter: The majority of single-family offices Are in that mid-market.

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Dean Palmiter: The $150 million to the $3 billion mark.

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Dean Palmiter: And those families They want something that is manageable by a one- or a two-person accounting team.

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Dean Palmiter: Family offices, I say, are kind of like startups.

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Dean Palmiter: In the sense that they are resource constrained. Despite managing hundreds of millions of dollars, They have lean staff.

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Dean Palmiter: So the average family office has 50 entities.

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Dean Palmiter: But they only have a 2- or a 7-person team.

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Dean Palmiter: And that means that they only really have a one- or a two-person accounting department.

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Dean Palmiter: So, those larger systems, like Eton, Archway.

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Dean Palmiter: Fundcount.

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Dean Palmiter: They're overly complex, they're incredibly expensive, They're very difficult to implement.

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Dean Palmiter: And difficult to use.

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Dean Palmiter: So they're very institutional-focused, they're very overbuilt.

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Dean Palmiter: And all 3 of those who I just mentioned cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

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Dean Palmiter: And are now more than 20 years old.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think if you look at the,

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Mark Wickersham: the family office market, I think that's a good point in terms of the…

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Mark Wickersham: the size, I think you see a lot of the bulk, the vast majority in terms of numbers, not necessarily maybe in terms of overall wealth, but in terms of numbers, is that

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Mark Wickersham: you know, 200 million to a billion, and you're looking at 5 to 10 people, they're managing a lot of complexity, right? And yet, you only have…

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Mark Wickersham: Maybe, you know, 10 people overall, but 2 in the accounting department, so you need something that's…

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Mark Wickersham: Easy to stand up, easy to use. Right.

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Mark Wickersham: missing.

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Dean Palmiter: That, I would say, is, like, the high-end segment of the all-in-one platforms that are legacy players. Then you have the, the middle of that market.

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Dean Palmiter: Which is these families who are trying to use ERP systems, like Sage Intact, or Oracle NetSuite.

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Dean Palmiter: And the reason why family offices buy those softwares is because they're multi-entity, general ledger-centric platforms.

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Dean Palmiter: Unfortunately, they are not purpose-built for a family office.

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Dean Palmiter: So, they don't have anything specific

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Dean Palmiter: To the needs of a family.

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Dean Palmiter: So they have a full enterprise platform, but that often comes with modules like inventory management, customer relationship management.

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Dean Palmiter: e-commerce, widget, manufacturing, modules, fixed asset management.

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Mark Wickersham: That's in the wet, but…

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Dean Palmiter: They don't

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Dean Palmiter: Yeah, exactly. So you're having to customize these platforms to meet the needs of a family. They're not really built for families. And then on the lower end of the market, you've got these mom-and-pop accounting systems, like QuickBooks Desktop, QuickBooks Online, Xero.

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Mark Wickersham: I am.

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Dean Palmiter: Yep, retail, they're low-cost, they're easy to implement, easy to use, many bookkeepers are familiar with them.

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Dean Palmiter: But they're single entity.

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Mark Wickersham: Single editing, no controls either, no auditability.

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Dean Palmiter: That's right, no controls, no governance over the data, because…

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Mark Wickersham: You can say.

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Dean Palmiter: No permissionability, that's right. So every single tax ID that a family office sets up, an LLC, or a fund, or direct investment, or even a home, they're having to set up a separate QuickBooks company.

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Dean Palmiter: And that means you're setting up a separate database, so you're siloing, you're fragmenting your data across many separate logins. And that makes multi-entity financial management a pain, it's unscalable, it's error-prone, and you're ending up having to do more than 50% of your reporting in spreadsheets.

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Dean Palmiter: Again, spreadsheets are very flexible, but they're not a system of record where you can govern the data and implement controls.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I, I think…

93

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Mark Wickersham: too many family offices are relying on retail software, like, I think you noted, you know, some of the issues on that. Certainly.

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Dean Palmiter: That's right.

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Mark Wickersham: bill payment. It's either retail software.

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Mark Wickersham: paying the bills, you'll be the person approving the bill. I mean, just basic kind of, you know, controls in there that a multi-entity family office needs to have. I also think that the one thing I found really interesting about Asana

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Mark Wickersham: And you see, kind of.

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Mark Wickersham: and I feel like the marketplace has evolved on this too, but, you know, previously it was like, you know, best of breed, so you had point solutions, and then you had to integrate them in together, or you had an all-in-one. And certainly, sometimes, I think, with the all-in-ones, they say, well, we're gonna do it all, we don't really need to integrate, with other

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Mark Wickersham: components and plug into your tech stack will be your tech stack, whereas I think Asseta kind of, you know.

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Mark Wickersham: Really does a good job of saying, hey, we're gonna provide those core pillars for you, those core functions around data aggregation, investment, reporting, general ledger, tax prep.

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Mark Wickersham: But then also to be able to integrate around a broader ecosystem, which I think is smart, and then you can kind of be configurable for clients. Hey, if you wanted us to just be the general ledger.

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Mark Wickersham: We'll take it in from your investment side. If you need that, we'll take care of that, too. If you need to be able to plug into RAMP, or Bill, or whatever it may be, we can certainly do that, too, which is…

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Mark Wickersham: It's not best of breed, it's not, all, you know, completely 100-point solutions, it's just kind of…

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Mark Wickersham: you know, pillar or platform play that also integrates into a broader ecosystem, which I think is great.

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Dean Palmiter: That's right. I've seen this debate play out between Oracle NetSuite and Sage Intac, so I… just for the listeners who don't know me.

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Dean Palmiter: I worked at Oracle NetSuite for 4 years, and then I worked at Sage Intact for 3 years, where I built out Sage Intact's family office practice. I implemented Intact at more than 70 family offices.

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Dean Palmiter: And the intact approach was best of breed.

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Dean Palmiter: We do general ledger, core accounting. NetSuite's approach was the all-in-one, unified business management platform.

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Dean Palmiter: Intact ultimately had, you know, to build out. They built banking and bill pay, and other modules as well. So I think…

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Dean Palmiter: this has been played out, and it's not a question of best in breed. Best of breed.

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Dean Palmiter: or all-in-one. You really have to be both.

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Dean Palmiter: you have to have a best-in-class, best-of-breed general ledger. It has to be multi-entity. It has to be multi-dimensional.

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Dean Palmiter: But family offices also need you to do more.

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Dean Palmiter: no family office comes to us and says, I just want a general ledger, and I want to have to keep my 5 other applications, and then worry about getting the data integrated.

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Dean Palmiter: So, they're really coming to us and saying.

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Dean Palmiter: I want an amazing general ledger, But…

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Dean Palmiter: I can't buy you unless you also do banking.

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Dean Palmiter: bill pay.

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Dean Palmiter: Budgeting.

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Dean Palmiter: Document management, and more.

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Dean Palmiter: They want a unified data model. They want to integrate as much as they can.

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Dean Palmiter: On one native platform.

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Dean Palmiter: So you have to be both. You have to have an amazing general ledger at the core.

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Dean Palmiter: And you have to have really amazing… bill pay.

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Dean Palmiter: And banking natively integrated on the same data model.

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Dean Palmiter: But then, of course, There's family offices that come to us.

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Dean Palmiter: who already have systems like Addepar that they've spent

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Dean Palmiter: A long time implementing, a lot of money they've invested.

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Dean Palmiter: And Addepar's the gold standard for those who can afford it.

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Dean Palmiter: And therefore, we're not going to go in there and convince them to rip and replace Addepar.

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Mark Wickersham: Right.

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Dean Palmiter: Same to your point about RAMP or Bill.com, they might feel passionately about those tools. They might really like RAMP. They might really like Bill.com.

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Dean Palmiter: For certain features.

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Dean Palmiter: Expensify is another one where we have multiple customers who have Expensify and they like it.

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Dean Palmiter: So we need to be able to pull data in, and that's part of the modern architecture, is having open APIs, and being able to aggregate data, and push data as well to those other platforms.

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Dean Palmiter: But the general ledger is the core, it's the hub. All roads lead back to

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Dean Palmiter: The chart of accounts and the debits and the credits.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think it's a… it's a smart play.

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Mark Wickersham: And it makes a lot of sense, and I think this platform player, where you can say, you know, as a consultant, when I went into family offices and they had trouble with their technology.

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Mark Wickersham: We weren't looking to rip stuff out that was working just fine, right? You optimize what you have, you get that working great, hey, if you're covered on the investment side, that's fine, or you happen to like your banking bill payment solution, you just need it integrated, that makes a lot of sense.

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Dean Palmiter: Exactly.

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Mark Wickersham: So, Dean, I hear we got some breaking news for you, that you've recently secured some… a round of funding. Could you tell me a little bit about that, and how that will accelerate and impact your vision?

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Dean Palmiter: So, up until now, we've been completely… I would say grassroots… backed by.

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Mark Wickersham: Friends and family type of…

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Dean Palmiter: friends, family, customers of ours who have chipped in $10,000, $20,000, $40,000, and I patched together

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Dean Palmiter: About 23 friends and angels.

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Dean Palmiter: Who chipped in $905,000. That was our pre-seed.

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Dean Palmiter: And just recently.

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Dean Palmiter: we secured investment from two amazing fintech and wealth tech-focused venture capital firms, Nyka Partners and Motiv Partners. So the two of them

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Dean Palmiter: Both co-led our Series Seed.

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Dean Palmiter: Contributing $1.5 million each.

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Dean Palmiter: We also had participation from a Fortune 500, president.

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Dean Palmiter: We also had participation from Tanya Neild.

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Dean Palmiter: Dr. Tanya Neild of InfoGrate.

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Dean Palmiter: So, we have raised a combined total of $4.2 million for our Series Seed that we'll be announcing on November 12th.

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Mark Wickersham: Well, congratulations, I think that is exciting. Certainly, Tanya Neal is one of the best and the brightest in the industry as well, so if she's backing you, that's,

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Mark Wickersham: That's the goal seal there. Tell me how… how this impact's gonna… how this funding's gonna impact your firm going forward.

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Dean Palmiter: So, we built everything that you see today Everything that our customers use.

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Dean Palmiter: with one engineer, my CTO and co-founder, Daniel.

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Dean Palmiter: So Daniel wrote over 150,000 lines of code himself.

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Dean Palmiter: We spent 3 years Designing and building the general ledger to get it to where it is today.

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Dean Palmiter: this funding… Has enabled us to quickly ramp up our engineering team from one person to now…

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Dean Palmiter: 7. Two people in product, five people in engineering.

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Dean Palmiter: So, we're now a 12-person company.

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Dean Palmiter: And more than half of us are just focused on product and engineering.

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Dean Palmiter: So it's going to enable us to execute faster on our vision.

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Dean Palmiter: So, taking the foundation, the core that Daniel has architected.

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Dean Palmiter: Combining that with our vision and our customers' desires.

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Dean Palmiter: To execute faster on our product roadmap.

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Dean Palmiter: And deliver the absolute best, modern, all-in-one family office platform for our customers.

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Mark Wickersham: Love it! So now Daniel can come out of the basement and see daylight, and .

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Dean Palmiter: He's actually…

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Mark Wickersham: get a day off.

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Dean Palmiter: Yeah, he's actually managing a team now, and he's…

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Dean Palmiter: able to be more strategic with me, which is great. We can focus on partnerships, we can focus on just architecting the next modules, and really thinking from a strategy perspective. So yeah, Daniel's out of the basement, and he is upstairs with me.

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Dean Palmiter: Focused on the vision and laying that groundwork so that

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Dean Palmiter: The very talented engineers that we've hired can just execute.

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Mark Wickersham: Fantastic. Alright, well, congratulations on that.

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Dean Palmiter: Thank you.

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Mark Wickersham: Yeah, Dean, every time I get a chance to talk to a founder, I love to hear about their founder's journey. Can you tell me a little bit about that? Why did you start Asseta AI? And looking back on the 3 years of it, you know, kind of…

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Mark Wickersham: where did the journey go? What was unexpected that you… maybe it was a little bit harder than you thought, and then what did you learn that you didn't necessarily think about with starting out?

00:18:54.850 --> 00:18:57.769

Dean Palmiter: Okay, do you want a long version or a short version?

00:18:57.770 --> 00:19:00.509

Mark Wickersham: I could always edit it later, so I'll take as much as I can get.

00:19:00.510 --> 00:19:15.490

Dean Palmiter: Okay, so I grew up in a very entrepreneurial household. My father, very entrepreneurial. He grew up on a farm, raising pigs, breeding dogs, selling Christmas trees.

00:19:15.550 --> 00:19:21.049

Dean Palmiter: Trapping animals, and then his father, my grandpa, he was a Navy SEAL diver.

00:19:21.300 --> 00:19:27.409

Dean Palmiter: Who worked on submarines, so… incredibly focused, determined work ethic coming from my dad's side.

00:19:27.830 --> 00:19:33.279

Dean Palmiter: And my dad is a master salesperson, so I grew up watching him being able to convince

00:19:33.410 --> 00:19:35.460

Dean Palmiter: Anyone of anything, so…

00:19:35.590 --> 00:19:44.470

Dean Palmiter: I'm not even… I'm not kidding, my dad can walk into a car dealership and have the dealer throwing every discount him… at him in 15 minutes.

00:19:44.660 --> 00:20:03.040

Dean Palmiter: My dad ended up starting multiple successful restaurants in Philadelphia and New Jersey. He married my mom, who is fifth generation ice cream royalty in Philadelphia. I'm half joking about the royalty part, but my mom's family did found America's oldest ice cream company.

00:20:03.330 --> 00:20:19.880

Dean Palmiter: So my great-great-great-grandpa started Bassett's Ice Cream in Philadelphia in 1861 with a mule walking around in a circle in his backyard churning the ice cream. So it is one of few American businesses that has successfully been passed down.

00:20:20.010 --> 00:20:21.670

Dean Palmiter: 6 generations.

00:20:22.650 --> 00:20:33.220

Dean Palmiter: My dad sold his restaurants when I was younger to start a career in financial services. He went on to be very successful in financial services sales, and he ultimately started and sold a fintech company.

00:20:33.560 --> 00:20:40.150

Dean Palmiter: So, I got my work ethic and sales education from my dad, and I learned about family legacy, and…

00:20:40.330 --> 00:20:42.219

Dean Palmiter: From my mom's family.

00:20:42.780 --> 00:20:45.070

Dean Palmiter: So, in family office terms.

00:20:45.200 --> 00:20:51.379

Dean Palmiter: from, like, a wealth or a business perspective, from my mom's side, I might consider myself Gen 6.

00:20:51.870 --> 00:20:55.110

Dean Palmiter: And on my dad's side, I would say Gen 2.

00:20:55.370 --> 00:20:59.759

Dean Palmiter: But I've grown up with an insane fire inside me since I can remember.

00:21:00.160 --> 00:21:14.100

Dean Palmiter: And it probably started when I was 12 or 13, always wanting to be independent, outside the control of my parents and authority figures. So I've grown up wanting to chart my own path with a very Gen 1 mindset.

00:21:15.210 --> 00:21:21.970

Dean Palmiter: And in my family, inheritance is kind of taboo, and passing down money isn't really talked about.

00:21:22.310 --> 00:21:30.710

Dean Palmiter: So I've always operated with the understanding that besides education, food, clothes, and shelter, that nothing would be given to me.

00:21:30.920 --> 00:21:37.650

Dean Palmiter: And so that really put an emphasis on me, of what I could learn from my parents from a values and skills perspective.

00:21:37.930 --> 00:21:41.660

Dean Palmiter: Because I would have to build my own family and my own success.

00:21:42.350 --> 00:21:47.919

Dean Palmiter: So… A younger, more ambitious, and tenacious version

06

00:21:48.060 --> 00:21:54.590

Dean Palmiter: of me probably felt a need to prove myself, that I'm actually an entrepreneur myself.

00:21:54.700 --> 00:21:59.990

Dean Palmiter: And so, when I found myself working in corporate America for Oracle and working for Sage.

00:22:00.120 --> 00:22:02.710

Dean Palmiter: I found it really hard for me to sit still.

00:22:03.500 --> 00:22:13.569

Dean Palmiter: So, while others in my class were patient and careful to not rock the boat at Oracle or Sage, I wanted change, and I wanted results, and I wanted speed.

00:22:13.850 --> 00:22:20.490

Dean Palmiter: And so an example of this is for my family office clients at Sage who really wanted partnership accounting.

00:22:20.960 --> 00:22:26.110

Dean Palmiter: And I said to the sales leadership, If we built partnership accounting.

00:22:26.310 --> 00:22:30.019

Dean Palmiter: Family offices would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars a year

00:22:30.410 --> 00:22:35.689

Dean Palmiter: And we would be able to deliver a more comprehensive platform for them.

00:22:36.250 --> 00:22:38.330

Dean Palmiter: And it got put on the roadmap.

00:22:38.680 --> 00:22:44.469

Dean Palmiter: And after 2 years, it was never delivered. I grew impatient, our customers grew impatient.

00:22:45.090 --> 00:22:51.119

Dean Palmiter: And I realized, after being told hundreds of times by my Sage Intac clients.

00:22:51.250 --> 00:22:58.429

Dean Palmiter: of what they really wanted, and I realized Sage is not going to innovate or pay attention to the family office market.

00:22:58.570 --> 00:23:02.490

Dean Palmiter: I actually need to go out and build this myself.

00:23:03.950 --> 00:23:10.569

Dean Palmiter: So that's really the… the kind of personal background, blended with the professional…

00:23:10.680 --> 00:23:15.710

Dean Palmiter: Early career development and realization for the gap in the market.

00:23:15.860 --> 00:23:19.859

Dean Palmiter: of coming to the realization that I'm an entrepreneur at heart.

00:23:20.170 --> 00:23:22.300

Dean Palmiter: There's a need in this market.

00:23:22.650 --> 00:23:25.379

Dean Palmiter: The legacy incumbents aren't gonna change.

00:23:25.770 --> 00:23:29.089

Dean Palmiter: I need to go out and build this company myself.

00:23:29.620 --> 00:23:32.089

Dean Palmiter: And so, I set out…

00:23:33.660 --> 00:23:38.779

Dean Palmiter: Partnered up with Daniel, my co-founder and CTO. It was just the two of us.

00:23:39.530 --> 00:23:41.570

Dean Palmiter: Less than 150 grand.

00:23:41.820 --> 00:23:43.360

Dean Palmiter: Built the prototype.

00:23:43.990 --> 00:23:47.969

Dean Palmiter: Got our first customers, 15 months in.

00:23:49.950 --> 00:23:52.539

Dean Palmiter: Worked really hard to make them happy.

00:23:52.970 --> 00:23:54.820

Dean Palmiter: Added a third customer.

00:23:55.290 --> 00:23:57.610

Dean Palmiter: Slowly added a fourth and a fifth.

00:23:59.280 --> 00:24:05.110

Dean Palmiter: And then, all of a sudden, at the beginning of this year, We exploded from 5 customers

00:24:05.550 --> 00:24:07.299

Dean Palmiter: To 23 overnight.

00:24:08.930 --> 00:24:13.309

Dean Palmiter: So we went from $18,000 of recurring revenue

00:24:13.590 --> 00:24:16.309

Dean Palmiter: to break in the half million ARR mark.

00:24:16.870 --> 00:24:26.979

Dean Palmiter: And we had… Two small clients, not… really the core ICP, to now serving.

00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:33.600

Dean Palmiter: Several billionaire families and dozens of ultra-high net worth families.

00:24:33.730 --> 00:24:37.630

Dean Palmiter: Managing a combined $10 billion plus in assets on platform.

00:24:39.680 --> 00:24:42.400

Dean Palmiter: So, it's been long.

00:24:42.620 --> 00:24:45.520

Dean Palmiter: Hard… very difficult.

00:24:45.890 --> 00:24:50.270

Dean Palmiter: Daniel and I have… Paid ourselves, each.

00:24:50.440 --> 00:24:53.720

Dean Palmiter: Less than minimum wage for 3 years.

00:24:54.130 --> 00:24:58.879

Dean Palmiter: We've crawled, we've… Chewed… chewed glass.

00:25:01.200 --> 00:25:08.569

Dean Palmiter: to lay that foundation for the company. And so, for the majority of the history of the company, it was just the two of us.

00:25:09.030 --> 00:25:11.000

Dean Palmiter: And then the team was 4.

00:25:11.210 --> 00:25:15.300

Dean Palmiter: And then 5, and now, all of a sudden, we went from 5 to 12.

00:25:15.600 --> 00:25:17.940

Dean Palmiter: 2 customers to 20 plus.

00:25:18.900 --> 00:25:22.299

Dean Palmiter: And with that came a lot of interest from investors.

00:25:24.390 --> 00:25:28.549

Dean Palmiter: So that's a little bit about the journey. Was that helpful?

00:25:29.450 --> 00:25:44.310

Mark Wickersham: It's great. You know, they often say those overnight successes are years in the making, so… Appreciate you sharing that journey. What was one thing, you look back on the 3 years, that was surprising to you that

00:25:44.430 --> 00:25:48.689

Mark Wickersham: You know, you didn't know about going into, or wish somebody had told you about it?

00:25:49.160 --> 00:25:55.490

Dean Palmiter: Sure, so I knew going into this that building accounting software is very difficult.

00:25:55.790 --> 00:25:58.480

Dean Palmiter: We're not just building a module like BillPay.

00:25:59.050 --> 00:26:02.980

Dean Palmiter: We're building the core, the heart, the brain.

00:26:03.430 --> 00:26:14.129

Dean Palmiter: of any business, which is the general ledger, and it has to be multi-entity. It has to enable intercompany transactions. So, it's very complex, what we're building.

00:26:14.340 --> 00:26:17.140

Dean Palmiter: That's not the part that surprised me.

00:26:17.750 --> 00:26:21.889

Dean Palmiter: The part that surprised me is how hard it is to actually raise money.

00:26:22.910 --> 00:26:24.630

Dean Palmiter: You…

00:26:24.910 --> 00:26:36.529

Dean Palmiter: are on LinkedIn, or you're reading news headlines about young… young kids raising millions of dollars, this is a golden age, AI.

00:26:36.550 --> 00:26:46.120

Dean Palmiter: You know, we saw the internet.com bubble, we saw… you know, so we've seen markets be exuberant, and it seems like millions of dollars…

00:26:46.120 --> 00:26:51.520

Mark Wickersham: Putting AI in the name, trying to get a 10X-er versus a… That's maybe not that. Right.

00:26:51.520 --> 00:27:07.890

Dean Palmiter: I had an internship in 2014 in Silicon Valley, where there was a company that raised over a million dollars for an app that was called Yo, and all it did was allow you to send a message that said Yo to your friends, and they raised over a million bucks, so it seems easy.

00:27:07.890 --> 00:27:11.849

Dean Palmiter: On the surface. But raising money is actually really hard.

00:27:11.980 --> 00:27:17.950

Dean Palmiter: There's only a few hundreds or a small amount of thousands of companies that get funded every year.

00:27:18.440 --> 00:27:21.620

Dean Palmiter: And VCs are really pattern matching.

00:27:22.000 --> 00:27:39.130

Dean Palmiter: They're looking for $10 billion plus outcomes, and they're pattern matching, so it's easy for them to only look at startups who were co-founded by best friends in a dorm room at Harvard, or a Stanford dropout who was accepted into Y Combinator, or a second-time founder.

00:27:39.280 --> 00:27:41.560

Dean Palmiter: So, if you're not one of those three.

00:27:41.920 --> 00:27:48.879

Dean Palmiter: It's very hard to get the attention of VCs, and I'll say it's even harder

00:27:49.210 --> 00:27:55.500

Dean Palmiter: To build a purpose-built Platform for family offices, and that's why

00:27:55.620 --> 00:27:58.200

Dean Palmiter: Family offices have been so underserved.

00:27:58.660 --> 00:28:10.570

Dean Palmiter: And they're forced into general-purpose, generic enterprise software systems, like Oracle NetSuite, or Sage Intact, because those platforms are trying to be everything to everybody.

00:28:10.570 --> 00:28:11.580

Mark Wickersham: horizontal markets.

00:28:11.580 --> 00:28:12.480

Dean Palmiter: Horizontal.

00:28:12.750 --> 00:28:17.909

Dean Palmiter: What we're doing is we're focused on a niche. We're focused on a market

00:28:18.190 --> 00:28:23.070

Dean Palmiter: That some say is as small as 12,000 or 17,000 family offices.

00:28:23.690 --> 00:28:31.280

Dean Palmiter: So convincing a VC that, actually, this market is growing faster and bigger than you realize.

00:28:31.590 --> 00:28:35.110

Dean Palmiter: And the opportunity is a multi-billion dollar outcome.

00:28:36.020 --> 00:28:41.529

Dean Palmiter: So, raising money… Took longer and was much harder than I anticipated.

00:28:42.590 --> 00:28:46.750

Dean Palmiter: But now we've found two amazing partners, and…

00:28:46.930 --> 00:29:00.819

Dean Palmiter: You know, that conviction that we built up in them, it was really about… as much as it was about them finding a needle in a haystack, it was the same for us, is finding that right partner.

00:29:02.690 --> 00:29:14.639

Mark Wickersham: I think it's, you know, that family office market, it is a quirky market. It is, you know, the data on it, the addressable market, you know, because they are private, they don't register.

00:29:14.640 --> 00:29:15.120

Dean Palmiter: That's right.

00:29:15.120 --> 00:29:24.079

Mark Wickersham: necessarily the hard numbers on that. You see that kind of the range from 3,000 to 10,000. I feel like that 3,000 number's been out there forever, and I think probably the…

00:29:24.180 --> 00:29:33.110

Mark Wickersham: 10,000 number, especially globally, is probably a more accurate one, but… and it's a harder market to sell into, right? It's something that you need to be invited into. You can't necessarily.

00:29:33.110 --> 00:29:34.380

Dean Palmiter: That's right.

00:29:34.380 --> 00:29:43.329

Mark Wickersham: traditionally sell your way in, and the buying behavior, because they are cost centers, is a little bit different. Absolutely. More event-driven than maybe ROI-driven.

00:29:43.330 --> 00:29:44.140

Dean Palmiter: That's right.

00:29:44.700 --> 00:29:51.069

Mark Wickersham: But then you also have the overlap of the multifamily office, which I do feel like is the market… is the business model that's…

00:29:51.330 --> 00:29:53.830

Mark Wickersham: Having a lot of success these days.

00:29:53.830 --> 00:29:54.790

Dean Palmiter: C.

00:29:54.790 --> 00:30:02.519

Mark Wickersham: Maybe a lot of families go in that route, and say, maybe this is a better option for me than the traditional starting their own single-family office.

00:30:02.620 --> 00:30:18.080

Mark Wickersham: Certainly, there's the number of wealthy people has increased, so there is a need and a want for holistic service, family office-style services, whether it be on the RA side or on the single-family office side.

00:30:18.300 --> 00:30:31.080

Mark Wickersham: What… in terms of common client problems, what are some of the problems that family offices are coming to you with, the kind of regular reoccurring themes that you're seeing?

00:30:31.080 --> 00:30:33.260

Dean Palmiter: And then, you know, has any of that…

00:30:33.820 --> 00:30:36.249

Mark Wickersham: shifted over time.

00:30:36.910 --> 00:30:44.709

Dean Palmiter: Sure, well, I'll just go back to make a comment on what you were saying about the market size. So, you threw out a number 3,000,

00:30:45.050 --> 00:30:49.140

Dean Palmiter: We already know that there's more than 3,000 billionaires globally.

00:30:49.710 --> 00:30:50.040

Mark Wickersham: Right.

00:30:50.430 --> 00:30:51.900

Dean Palmiter: That's a small number.

00:30:52.130 --> 00:30:56.959

Dean Palmiter: Right? But every single one of them needs a family office, no doubt about that.

00:30:57.560 --> 00:31:07.629

Dean Palmiter: Then you have… 200,000 Ultra-high net worth individuals who have more than $50 million in assets under management.

00:31:08.170 --> 00:31:15.390

Dean Palmiter: So you can see how very quickly the number exploded from 3,000 to 200,000 when you start to go downmarket.

00:31:15.790 --> 00:31:21.669

Dean Palmiter: Going to back… back to the problem that they're coming to us with.

00:31:21.780 --> 00:31:24.739

Dean Palmiter: It's a… it mainly… it's a data problem.

00:31:25.980 --> 00:31:31.669

Dean Palmiter: You've got family offices who are invested across a broad spectrum of asset classes.

00:31:33.060 --> 00:31:37.909

Dean Palmiter: They've got public, Investments and private investments.

00:31:39.220 --> 00:31:45.900

Dean Palmiter: So, they're not only investing across real estate, but they have stocks, bonds, gold, cash.

00:31:46.500 --> 00:31:52.300

Dean Palmiter: But then they also have private markets, direct investments, private equity venture capital, hedge funds.

00:31:53.660 --> 00:31:55.590

Dean Palmiter: So those are all very different.

00:31:56.620 --> 00:32:02.419

Dean Palmiter: And you've got… The multi-entity problem, where you have family offices that have

00:32:02.580 --> 00:32:07.380

Dean Palmiter: Dozens, if not hundreds, of legal entities, creating data silos.

00:32:08.180 --> 00:32:14.270

Dean Palmiter: You've got many bank accounts, often as many bank accounts as there are legal entities, if not more.

00:32:15.080 --> 00:32:17.940

Dean Palmiter: You've got brokerage accounts, you've got credit cards.

00:32:18.620 --> 00:32:24.869

Dean Palmiter: You might have an operating company, or multiple operating companies, So you have this complex.

00:32:25.340 --> 00:32:32.630

Dean Palmiter: Data problem with disparate software applications, and investment structures.

00:32:32.870 --> 00:32:36.010

Dean Palmiter: That are causing data to be fragmented and siloed.

00:32:36.610 --> 00:32:42.169

Dean Palmiter: So it's a data problem that families are coming to us with. It's also a technology problem.

00:32:42.510 --> 00:32:50.300

Dean Palmiter: Because there are no purpose-built family office software platforms that can be implemented and used by a one- or a two-person team.

00:32:51.340 --> 00:32:55.889

Dean Palmiter: But at its core, it's a data problem, and software can be a solution to that.

00:32:56.110 --> 00:33:01.150

Dean Palmiter: But you have to implement it correctly, you have to integrate it with the other applications.

00:33:01.260 --> 00:33:03.359

Dean Palmiter: You have to unify the data model.

00:33:04.040 --> 00:33:10.860

Dean Palmiter: So it's about aggregating the data, normalizing it, Centralizing it, securing it.

00:33:11.510 --> 00:33:14.119

Dean Palmiter: So it's a… it's a data problem at its core.

00:33:15.850 --> 00:33:31.159

Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think these family offices are drowning in data, and as you know, data is so important these days. Data's the new oil, but if you can't… can't harness it, if you can't consolidate it, if it's not… if you don't trust the quality of it.

00:33:31.260 --> 00:33:35.860

Mark Wickersham: Then it just causes all sorts of other issues, because it's…

00:33:36.160 --> 00:33:40.779

Mark Wickersham: In spreadsheets, it's siloed per entity, per application.

00:33:41.420 --> 00:33:47.740

Dean Palmiter: And you've got, you It's really difficult to pull a consolidated balance sheet and income statement.

00:33:48.230 --> 00:33:54.140

Dean Palmiter: And that could cause a whole host of issues around tax season, or getting a loan from a bank.

00:33:54.320 --> 00:33:59.059

Dean Palmiter: Managing liquidity, knowing how much cash you have on hand.

00:33:59.290 --> 00:34:03.579

Dean Palmiter: Making capital calls. Making deals. Investments.

00:34:04.610 --> 00:34:07.769

Dean Palmiter: Having your data fragmented?

00:34:08.179 --> 00:34:10.309

Dean Palmiter: Leads to an incomplete picture.

00:34:10.620 --> 00:34:12.230

Dean Palmiter: And a lack of clarity.

00:34:13.000 --> 00:34:14.869

Dean Palmiter: And a lack of scalability.

00:34:16.150 --> 00:34:18.420

Mark Wickersham: And it introduces risk, right?

00:34:18.420 --> 00:34:19.080

Dean Palmiter: Absolutely.

00:34:19.449 --> 00:34:26.569

Mark Wickersham: You don't know what you own, or how much cash you have, or how much you have in terms of liabilities, and matching that, versus…

00:34:26.659 --> 00:34:44.729

Mark Wickersham: your liquidity, family offices could end up sideways, I mean, especially given their high concentration in illiquid assets, like real estate, private equity, those type of things. That mismatch can cause real problems for family offices, and they can spend a lot of time trying to manage that situation.

00:34:45.429 --> 00:34:51.000

Mark Wickersham: Talk to me about AI adoption within the family office. Obviously, I think…

00:34:51.219 --> 00:35:01.809

Mark Wickersham: all industries are being impacted by AI. The family office industry is no different, but what you tend to see with the family offices is maybe a little bit of a…

00:35:02.240 --> 00:35:19.260

Mark Wickersham: a laggard approach, and I think sometimes it's a prudent approach. They're not going to be the bleeding-edge early adopters on technology in some cases. They… a little bit more of a reserve profile. Certainly, the amount of resources that they have plays into that, but when you're speaking to family offices.

00:35:19.390 --> 00:35:26.220

Mark Wickersham: Some family offices, I'm sure, are eager and are adopting AI, other ones are hesitating.

00:35:26.820 --> 00:35:34.790

Mark Wickersham: What do you see in terms of… are you seeing two camps, and what's driving that kind of separation or divide?

00:35:36.020 --> 00:35:40.329

Dean Palmiter: Well, what I think is really unique about AI

00:35:40.880 --> 00:35:50.729

Dean Palmiter: And the excitement that we see around this innovation, it's very different than what we saw with crypto, digital assets, more recently.

00:35:51.030 --> 00:35:54.719

Dean Palmiter: And even different than what we saw with cloud.

00:35:55.810 --> 00:36:04.610

Dean Palmiter: So, I've seen, with my experience at NetSuite, the transition from mainframe accounting Meaning…

00:36:05.050 --> 00:36:09.259

Dean Palmiter: Putting your accounting on data centers that are actually on-premise.

00:36:09.900 --> 00:36:14.060

Dean Palmiter: To moving your sensitive accounting and finance data to the cloud.

00:36:15.680 --> 00:36:20.490

Dean Palmiter: to now, what we're seeing is this AI-native movement.

00:36:21.370 --> 00:36:30.780

Dean Palmiter: Right, so… To your point, family offices are laggards. They are traditionally, notoriously known for being slow.

00:36:31.310 --> 00:36:37.389

Dean Palmiter: Most family offices are still using an on-prem version of QuickBooks, QuickBooks Desktop.

00:36:37.930 --> 00:36:40.030

Dean Palmiter: They are the last ones that are…

00:36:40.330 --> 00:36:54.180

Dean Palmiter: left in the QuickBooks customer base who still hasn't moved from desktop to the online version, for many reasons. But a big part of that is security, privacy concerns. So yeah, they are laggards, without a doubt.

00:36:54.470 --> 00:37:02.200

Dean Palmiter: What's interesting to me about AI is that nobody is disputing the power of this innovation.

00:37:02.720 --> 00:37:09.109

Dean Palmiter: we saw a lot of resistance to Bitcoin and digital assets, a lot of skepticism.

00:37:09.440 --> 00:37:11.470

Dean Palmiter: Rightfully so.

00:37:12.040 --> 00:37:16.689

Dean Palmiter: with AI, I'll talk to a 70-year-old.

00:37:16.890 --> 00:37:20.740

Dean Palmiter: Who thinks it's the greatest thing, and they're using it in their daily lives.

00:37:21.440 --> 00:37:24.589

Dean Palmiter: And they're investing in AI startups.

00:37:26.820 --> 00:37:29.400

Dean Palmiter: So, it's really interesting.

00:37:30.180 --> 00:37:37.969

Dean Palmiter: that… AI has so quickly become woven into our everyday lives, and become mainstream.

00:37:38.550 --> 00:37:46.170

Dean Palmiter: Whereas cloud accounting has been around since 1998, 1999, with NetSuite and Intact.

00:37:46.580 --> 00:37:47.510

Dean Palmiter: Which were the first ones.

00:37:47.510 --> 00:37:54.399

Mark Wickersham: I mean, 25, 30-year migration. I think it really kind of took COVID that got a.

00:37:54.630 --> 00:37:55.120

Dean Palmiter: Totally.

00:37:55.120 --> 00:37:56.260

Mark Wickersham: Finalize that cloud.

00:37:56.260 --> 00:38:00.089

Dean Palmiter: That was right, that was the nail in the coffin, that was the kick… the last kick in the butt, where…

00:38:00.090 --> 00:38:03.370

Mark Wickersham: I couldn't get into the office, and now that on-prem.

00:38:03.370 --> 00:38:03.880

Dean Palmiter: Seems like…

00:38:03.880 --> 00:38:04.650

Mark Wickersham: Great.

00:38:04.910 --> 00:38:13.369

Dean Palmiter: That's right. So in 2015, when I started my career at NetSuite, I was still convincing people to move their accounting to the cloud.

00:38:13.600 --> 00:38:17.059

Dean Palmiter: And NetSuite had been around already for 17 years.

00:38:18.140 --> 00:38:25.239

Dean Palmiter: family offices are still moving off of QuickBooks Desktop to cloud-based platforms like Intact and NetSuite.

00:38:25.400 --> 00:38:31.370

Dean Palmiter: So yeah, they're laggards, but what's interesting to me is this new wave, this AI-native wave.

00:38:31.680 --> 00:38:34.360

Dean Palmiter: I think is coming way faster.

00:38:34.620 --> 00:38:39.859

Dean Palmiter: than Cloud did. It's not gonna take 17 years, or 25 years.

00:38:40.020 --> 00:38:46.600

Dean Palmiter: it might take… You know, 3, 5, or even 10 years, but it's coming fast.

00:38:47.260 --> 00:38:52.049

Dean Palmiter: And it's gonna be expected to be core to the application.

00:38:53.810 --> 00:39:01.669

Dean Palmiter: So any company that was architected and built on legacy infrastructure from the late 90s.

00:39:01.860 --> 00:39:08.150

Dean Palmiter: is going to struggle to keep up with the AI-native systems that are being born today.

00:39:08.620 --> 00:39:17.040

Dean Palmiter: So I'm not thinking about… So much as… where AI is right now, I still think it's very…

00:39:17.550 --> 00:39:22.209

Dean Palmiter: early days of AI, despite how powerful it already is.

00:39:22.940 --> 00:39:25.930

Dean Palmiter: I think that there's still a lot to figure out.

00:39:26.290 --> 00:39:35.130

Dean Palmiter: There's a lot to figure out on, how it'll be… Secure, private, governed.

00:39:37.540 --> 00:39:47.309

Dean Palmiter: So, it's early days, but there's no question about it that in 3-5 years, it's going to be expected that it's

00:39:49.030 --> 00:39:51.059

Dean Palmiter: Throughout the application layer.

00:39:51.860 --> 00:40:00.309

Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think it's one of those things that it is… we are early on, maybe, first three innings, but I don't think this is a…

00:40:00.740 --> 00:40:06.019

Mark Wickersham: a 5-hour ball game. I think this is something within 3 to 5 years.

00:40:06.470 --> 00:40:24.830

Mark Wickersham: you know, I can't imagine where it is gonna be in 7 years, let's put it that way. I think the acceleration is so fast, and it's accelerating, that this is gonna be a quick process where, you know, it's gonna be a before and after type of event, and I think,

00:40:24.830 --> 00:40:26.740

Dean Palmiter: That's right. There's prebiotics…

00:40:26.740 --> 00:40:31.610

Mark Wickersham: Like, electricity, I think, is a better example than, you know, maybe the technology.

00:40:31.610 --> 00:40:31.970

Dean Palmiter: Totally.

00:40:31.970 --> 00:40:36.789

Mark Wickersham: The internet, the cloud, like, no, this is, like, you know, the advent of, you know, electricity.

00:40:36.790 --> 00:40:40.910

Dean Palmiter: It is. It is a utility, and it's gonna be plugged into everything.

00:40:41.020 --> 00:40:45.969

Dean Palmiter: So, it's gonna be powering every single device, every single application.

00:40:46.420 --> 00:40:55.100

Dean Palmiter: And it's gonna get faster, and it's gonna get cheaper. So, only rich people were able to afford electricity, now it's as cheap as water.

00:40:56.200 --> 00:41:05.430

Dean Palmiter: Same thing with AI, to your point, just to stick with your analogy. So, it is getting smarter at an increasing pace.

00:41:05.810 --> 00:41:08.690

Dean Palmiter: And it is getting cheaper and more capable.

00:41:10.710 --> 00:41:16.439

Mark Wickersham: Where… what do you… tell me a little bit about the relationship between AI and data. Why is…

00:41:16.660 --> 00:41:22.620

Mark Wickersham: Why is having good, consolidated, quality data so important to get the results that you want out of AI?

00:41:23.810 --> 00:41:25.869

Dean Palmiter: AI is useless without good data.

00:41:26.450 --> 00:41:29.130

Dean Palmiter: So we were talking about the data problem before.

00:41:29.600 --> 00:41:32.469

Dean Palmiter: Family offices have a real data problem.

00:41:32.690 --> 00:41:40.239

Dean Palmiter: They can't even get their data into a centralized database, oftentimes, across their many bank accounts, brokerages, and…

00:41:40.550 --> 00:41:42.909

Dean Palmiter: entities, so,

00:41:43.530 --> 00:41:50.770

Dean Palmiter: AI, as I said, it's literally useless without good data, and it needs a comprehensive data set.

00:41:51.150 --> 00:41:53.140

Dean Palmiter: So if you want to…

00:41:53.300 --> 00:42:01.120

Dean Palmiter: if you want to get good results from AI, you need to give it as much of your data as possible to have a complete picture, right? So…

00:42:01.460 --> 00:42:06.129

Dean Palmiter: For example, if you want AI to forecast your cash flows.

00:42:06.760 --> 00:42:12.520

Dean Palmiter: That means you need to be pulling in data from your brokerage accounts, your bank accounts.

00:42:12.730 --> 00:42:15.400

Dean Palmiter: And all of your illiquid investments.

00:42:15.850 --> 00:42:20.239

Dean Palmiter: But you need to combine that also with your expenses and your bill pay.

00:42:20.340 --> 00:42:23.899

Dean Palmiter: And your cash on hand across your many bank accounts.

00:42:24.480 --> 00:42:30.219

Dean Palmiter: So, you can't… expect AI to be able to forecast your cash flows.

00:42:30.430 --> 00:42:37.510

Dean Palmiter: with just one piece of that puzzle. You could say, oh, look at all my illiquid investments across all my private equity.

00:42:37.690 --> 00:42:39.849

Dean Palmiter: And forecast my cash flows.

00:42:41.070 --> 00:42:46.080

Dean Palmiter: It can do that, but it's not going to give you the most accurate answer, because it's an incomplete picture.

00:42:46.970 --> 00:42:50.399

Dean Palmiter: So, for one, you need to have good, clean data.

00:42:51.720 --> 00:42:54.780

Dean Palmiter: In a centralized place for a comprehensive picture.

00:42:55.540 --> 00:43:00.869

Dean Palmiter: So that… that is… that is…

00:43:01.120 --> 00:43:07.389

Dean Palmiter: That is what AI needs. It needs a complete picture, and it needs good, clean, centralized data.

00:43:08.390 --> 00:43:12.490

Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think these firms that are looking to more broadly adopt

00:43:12.760 --> 00:43:21.180

Mark Wickersham: AI, in some cases, you already see them doing it, but if they're not, they should be taking a look at data governance as a key component of that, because

00:43:21.370 --> 00:43:28.419

Mark Wickersham: To your point, without good, clean data, holistic, consolidated data, it's kind of worthless.

00:43:28.420 --> 00:43:31.420

Dean Palmiter: It's the same… it's the same thing as an ERP migration.

00:43:31.420 --> 00:43:32.780

Mark Wickersham: Garbage in, garbage out, type of thing.

00:43:32.780 --> 00:43:40.929

Dean Palmiter: Garbage in, garbage out, right? Whatever you feed the AI, it's gonna spit out. It's not going… I mean, it could take unstructured data and make it structured, but…

00:43:41.670 --> 00:43:46.860

Dean Palmiter: Yeah, it's garbage in, garbage out, full of hallucination, incomplete.

00:43:47.180 --> 00:43:47.810

Mark Wickersham: Right.

00:43:48.120 --> 00:43:52.640

Mark Wickersham: Yeah, trust results. But on the flip side, I do think when you get quality data in.

00:43:52.920 --> 00:43:56.940

Mark Wickersham: The data that comes out or results comes out is far greater than your traditional.

00:43:56.940 --> 00:44:00.410

Dean Palmiter: That's right, and also, when you focus the AI,

00:44:01.240 --> 00:44:11.129

Dean Palmiter: On a particular dataset, you tell it, okay, pick, you know, these, you know, these data sources to formulate your answer, you get a much better response.

00:44:12.210 --> 00:44:15.580

Mark Wickersham: And it could do things just so much more,

00:44:15.840 --> 00:44:29.740

Mark Wickersham: rapidly than you were able to do in the past. I think you can do things, you know, certainly with large language models, the ability to have a conversation with your data. Maybe you don't necessarily know, like, BI tools or query tools, and you can kind of…

00:44:29.890 --> 00:44:36.999

Mark Wickersham: be able to have that conversation with your data, which is fairly amazing, so I think it's going to have a big impact on the user experience.

00:44:37.000 --> 00:44:37.880

Dean Palmiter: It's incredible.

00:44:38.420 --> 00:44:50.360

Mark Wickersham: The results that you're able to have, the analytical capabilities that you're able to institute, far greater than what traditional software is going to be able to bring, or does bring.

00:44:50.680 --> 00:44:53.640

Mark Wickersham: Tell me a little bit about…

00:44:53.950 --> 00:45:01.779

Mark Wickersham: It was one of my favorite subjects here. One of the things I've been thinking about a lot is the modernization of the family office, and what will cause

00:45:02.340 --> 00:45:16.699

Mark Wickersham: family offices to modernize, and then, you know, I'm talking in generalities, like, I certainly think that, like every industry, that it's on a bell curve, and you do see some very modern, progressive family offices out there, but you certainly see probably a little bit of…

00:45:16.750 --> 00:45:22.539

Mark Wickersham: More towards one side of the bell curve in terms of late adopters.

00:45:22.750 --> 00:45:28.490

Mark Wickersham: what… will AI cause the family office to modernize?

00:45:28.630 --> 00:45:44.930

Mark Wickersham: I think you certainly have seen a professionalization occurring within the family office industry, especially over the past 5 or so years, but talk to me about what you see in terms of the family office industry and how AI will impact the modern family office.

00:45:45.880 --> 00:45:49.720

Dean Palmiter: Okay, so… There's a lot of trends at Forest here.

00:45:49.870 --> 00:45:55.010

Dean Palmiter: You've got over $100 trillion changing hands, the great wealth transfer.

00:45:55.330 --> 00:46:11.549

Dean Palmiter: you've also got a vast amount of CPAs retiring in the next year. So, more than 10… in the next 10 years, more than 75% of CPAs will retire. It's making the family office talent market incredibly competitive.

00:46:11.950 --> 00:46:17.440

Dean Palmiter: So… CEOs, CIOs, CFOs of family offices.

00:46:18.010 --> 00:46:24.589

Dean Palmiter: Are coming from hedge funds, big banks, big consulting firms, and they're commanding top dollar.

00:46:24.830 --> 00:46:30.589

Dean Palmiter: Okay, you want me to come work for your family office? You need to pay me as much as my hedge fund pays me.

00:46:31.780 --> 00:46:36.260

Dean Palmiter: So, you've got… really expensive payrolls.

00:46:37.060 --> 00:46:42.470

Dean Palmiter: You've got… this… Crazy war for talent.

00:46:42.730 --> 00:46:50.049

Dean Palmiter: a shortage of CPAs, A generational shift of who controls the money.

00:46:51.140 --> 00:46:58.809

Dean Palmiter: Millennials grew up with the internet and technology, social media, iPhone, Apple products.

00:46:58.970 --> 00:47:01.740

Dean Palmiter: They expect a digital-first experience.

00:47:02.280 --> 00:47:04.549

Dean Palmiter: And so all these trends are…

00:47:04.940 --> 00:47:09.500

Dean Palmiter: Leading to the digitization of the family office, the modernization.

00:47:09.860 --> 00:47:15.400

Dean Palmiter: And family offices are forced to do that because they have to do more with less.

00:47:15.520 --> 00:47:18.890

Dean Palmiter: Going back to the 2-7 employee average.

00:47:19.080 --> 00:47:22.850

Dean Palmiter: Family offices are lean, they have to be efficient.

00:47:23.690 --> 00:47:30.130

Dean Palmiter: The CFO has to play the role, oftentimes, of the CTO and the chief data scientist.

00:47:30.440 --> 00:47:36.899

Dean Palmiter: So you're having to wear many hats, you're having to evaluate Select and implement software.

00:47:37.210 --> 00:47:38.850

Dean Palmiter: and organized data.

00:47:39.240 --> 00:47:41.500

Dean Palmiter: So, we're talking about…

00:47:42.800 --> 00:47:56.880

Dean Palmiter: being forced to implement technology so that they can be more efficient, do more with less, scale. And you've got a generation who expects that digital experience, that they're not afraid of the cloud, they're not afraid of AI.

00:47:57.010 --> 00:48:01.399

Dean Palmiter: They want a personalized experience. They don't want to use

00:48:01.540 --> 00:48:05.010

Dean Palmiter: Their… their grandparents, financial advisors.

00:48:05.150 --> 00:48:08.910

Dean Palmiter: They want to bring things in-house, they want to have real-time visibility.

00:48:09.370 --> 00:48:13.530

Dean Palmiter: So… It's all of these trends working in our favor.

00:48:13.640 --> 00:48:20.469

Dean Palmiter: And forcing family offices to modernize. So, if you want to be able to leverage AI,

00:48:20.620 --> 00:48:22.959

Dean Palmiter: Okay, you have to then put your…

00:48:23.190 --> 00:48:28.540

Dean Palmiter: data in the cloud. You have to… Get your data organized.

00:48:28.800 --> 00:48:33.270

Dean Palmiter: So, they're being forced.

00:48:33.640 --> 00:48:37.360

Dean Palmiter: To stay… and it also goes to staying competitive.

00:48:37.530 --> 00:48:41.799

Dean Palmiter: Both from a talent perspective, but also from an investment perspective.

00:48:41.910 --> 00:48:46.790

Dean Palmiter: Nobody wants to work for a family office that's using antiquated technology and spreadsheets.

00:48:46.830 --> 00:48:59.199

Dean Palmiter: How are you going to convince a hedge fund manager or a banker or consultant to come and work at your little family office that doesn't have things organized and have good technology?

00:48:59.230 --> 00:49:13.200

Dean Palmiter: And then, how are you going to be competitive by finding the best deals, the best investments, and allocating your, your portfolio correctly if you don't have the right technology, the right tools to identify those opportunities?

00:49:13.410 --> 00:49:20.060

Dean Palmiter: In the first place. So, I think… It's a combination of… of factors.

00:49:21.220 --> 00:49:26.130

Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think it is… there is a confluence of factors that are…

00:49:26.220 --> 00:49:33.019

Mark Wickersham: coming to a head, and I think AI probably just adds, you know, wind to the sails on some of these trends. Like, you have the…

00:49:33.050 --> 00:49:51.130

Mark Wickersham: the next gen… the next gen's, you know, they say most of these family offices, and even, like, your parents' advisors, 80% move on and either create their own family office or get their own advisor. So they're gonna… that's just gonna happen. So they're gonna be starting in their own family office. You have this next gen that is digitally native.

00:49:51.140 --> 00:50:06.220

Mark Wickersham: That they haven't experienced at the bank and… or at their brokerage firm that's online and almost real time, and then they go to their family office, and there's kind of this disconnect, and I think also, in terms of your point, in terms of labor, in terms of talent.

00:50:06.220 --> 00:50:19.180

Mark Wickersham: Family offices always had to do more with less. AI's gonna enable that, but certainly you see… you see talent at the top end is really expensive. At the bottom end, I think that the…

00:50:19.390 --> 00:50:26.350

Mark Wickersham: next generation or the younger generation coming out of the workforce, they don't want to re-key stuff into Excel, they want to have more meaningful work.

00:50:26.350 --> 00:50:33.010

Dean Palmiter: Absolutely not. Yes, and… the, let's say, the Gen 1 who made the wealth.

00:50:33.340 --> 00:50:41.390

Dean Palmiter: wants Gen 2 to be involved in the family business or in the family office. They want their kids to be financially literate and engaged.

00:50:41.570 --> 00:50:52.710

Dean Palmiter: But the younger generations, rightfully so, don't want to engage when they take a look under the hood at the technology that the family office is using, or the lack of technology.

00:50:54.450 --> 00:51:05.339

Mark Wickersham: Talk to me about AI and privacy. Obviously, this is something that you have to do a great deal of thinking about, but how should family offices be thinking about

00:51:05.520 --> 00:51:11.719

Mark Wickersham: keeping their data private when they're using AI, and what sort of policies and guardrails should they have in place?

00:51:13.360 --> 00:51:22.860

Dean Palmiter: Okay, so, first and foremost, you can't have a successful software company these days unless you're SOC 2 Type 2 compliant. It's just table stakes now.

00:51:22.910 --> 00:51:35.049

Dean Palmiter: It used to be a differentiator, and believe it or not, there's still a family office accounting software out there, a pretty well-known one, that has been in business for 10 years, and is not SOC 2 compliant.

00:51:35.050 --> 00:51:43.560

Dean Palmiter: And I just find that a ridiculous starting point. So, early on, we invested the money, we invested the time and the energy to become

00:51:43.590 --> 00:51:45.139

Dean Palmiter: SHOC 2 Type 2.

00:51:45.550 --> 00:51:51.750

Dean Palmiter: So that's a big deal, but it's also becoming the norm expected in table stakes.

00:51:51.970 --> 00:51:55.380

Dean Palmiter: So, when we evaluate implementing AI,

00:51:55.750 --> 00:51:59.689

Dean Palmiter: it has to adhere to SOC 2 Type 2.

00:51:59.900 --> 00:52:03.509

Dean Palmiter: We can't even consider using AI.

00:52:03.830 --> 00:52:09.440

Dean Palmiter: that isn't going to enable us to uphold that status. So…

00:52:09.610 --> 00:52:16.180

Dean Palmiter: We're not willing to compromise on our SOC 2 Type 2 status, first and foremost.

00:52:16.500 --> 00:52:22.450

Dean Palmiter: Secondly, Every family office wants to figure out how they can leverage this technology.

00:52:23.360 --> 00:52:28.120

Dean Palmiter: They don't want to be feeding their data

00:52:28.510 --> 00:52:35.259

Dean Palmiter: To some cloud or big tech company, and training the models, and their data being leaked,

00:52:35.710 --> 00:52:39.699

Dean Palmiter: It's just not something that they would even entertain or consider.

00:52:40.360 --> 00:52:44.029

Dean Palmiter: So… The AI has to be SOC 2 Type 2.

00:52:45.000 --> 00:52:48.139

Dean Palmiter: And it has to be able to be run privately.

00:52:49.080 --> 00:52:54.470

Dean Palmiter: So that often means not using the free versions of these AI products.

00:52:54.660 --> 00:52:59.769

Dean Palmiter: So don't go to ChatGPT and just use the basic freemium version.

00:53:00.090 --> 00:53:04.890

Dean Palmiter: You've gotta buy the Enterprise, buy the Business Level Edition.

00:53:05.200 --> 00:53:08.430

Dean Palmiter: And ensure that it is… that it is private.

00:53:13.790 --> 00:53:22.460

Mark Wickersham: One thing, too, one of the things… one is I totally agree on the SOC 2 Type 2. It's expensive, but it does demonstrate that you have controls in place and that you're audited.

00:53:22.580 --> 00:53:25.770

Mark Wickersham: to that, and I think it is a benchmark, it's a beginning…

00:53:25.910 --> 00:53:31.130

Mark Wickersham: It doesn't mean that it's the end-all be-all, but it is kind of a… you need to clear that hurdle. That's a big.

00:53:31.130 --> 00:53:37.599

Dean Palmiter: Stamp of approval. Okay, check. The other thing, I think, too, in family offices, when they're thinking about.

00:53:37.940 --> 00:53:40.039

Mark Wickersham: AI is that…

00:53:40.250 --> 00:53:46.459

Mark Wickersham: They need to adopt AI, because you need to worry about shadow use of AI, so if you didn't…

00:53:46.560 --> 00:54:04.850

Mark Wickersham: get AI, or you didn't get the enterprise version of AI, guess what your employees are gonna do on their phone, or they're gonna do at home? You gotta really… it's gotta… it's just like… it's like Jurassic Park, like, it's gotta escape. Like, you gotta give them an option and give them viable tools around AI in which they can use it in.

00:54:04.850 --> 00:54:05.360

Dean Palmiter: secure.

00:54:05.360 --> 00:54:06.170

Mark Wickersham: in private.

00:54:06.170 --> 00:54:07.379

Dean Palmiter: That's right.

00:54:07.910 --> 00:54:15.299

Mark Wickersham: And I think the other thing, too, is that there's a lot of ways in which family offices are going to end up adopting AIS, because they're… the platforms they use are…

00:54:15.340 --> 00:54:31.130

Mark Wickersham: are going that way, but there's also, I think, a need for just a regular holistic AI that I think it makes sense. Like, you need to be careful, you need to have a policy in place, like, you can't just be, you know, hoping for the best, or be so restrictive that other things are gonna happen.

00:54:31.780 --> 00:54:32.910

Dean Palmiter: Yeah, and…

00:54:33.540 --> 00:54:49.530

Dean Palmiter: I think a lot of people misunderstand or don't realize this about SOC 2, Type 2, is it's not just about, the software itself, and penetration testing, and security, reliability, redundancy.

00:54:49.670 --> 00:54:52.010

Dean Palmiter: It's actually about policies.

00:54:52.240 --> 00:55:02.189

Dean Palmiter: As much as it is about the tech itself. So the policies that your employees adhere to, onboarding employees, offboarding employees,

00:55:02.640 --> 00:55:04.959

Dean Palmiter: The devices that they're using.

00:55:05.140 --> 00:55:15.930

Dean Palmiter: How the devices store sensitive documents and how those documents are disposed of. So there's all these policies and procedures. So part of it is the tech.

00:55:16.090 --> 00:55:22.919

Dean Palmiter: But another part is also the policies and procedures in place. And to your point, SOC 2 Type 2 is the starting point.

00:55:23.280 --> 00:55:31.409

Dean Palmiter: one of the things that we're using our money that we've raised is to invest back into security. So we invested in SOC 2.

00:55:31.520 --> 00:55:36.860

Dean Palmiter: And so I asked, okay, what's next? What's the next thing that we can do?

00:55:36.990 --> 00:55:44.380

Dean Palmiter: To really differentiate ourselves, but also demonstrate our commitment To data security and privacy.

00:55:44.500 --> 00:55:51.120

Dean Palmiter: and our forward-thinking, nature of AI. And one of the new things that has come out is ISO,

00:55:51.300 --> 00:55:53.470

Dean Palmiter: 42,001.

00:55:53.650 --> 00:55:59.559

Dean Palmiter: It's a new international standard. It's the first of its kind for artificial intelligence.

00:56:00.160 --> 00:56:13.620

Dean Palmiter: So that's something that we're investing in, and it's a framework for organizations to responsibly develop and use AI. So it helps AI, from a risk perspective, ethical perspective.

00:56:13.720 --> 00:56:21.029

Dean Palmiter: And then complying with regulations by establishing requirements for the software itself.

00:56:22.320 --> 00:56:27.769

Mark Wickersham: Love it. Let's, let's talk about the future of family offices.

541

00:56:28.070 --> 00:56:46.049

Mark Wickersham: what the… what does the future hold, looking 3, 5 years out for the family office marketplace? What do you… what do you… what do you see… let's put it this way, let's… what do you see changing? How do you see the family office evolving? And then, what is the… what is the one thing that's not going to change, that's going to remain constant?

00:56:47.720 --> 00:56:49.419

Dean Palmiter: I can't read the future.

00:56:50.580 --> 00:56:55.280

Dean Palmiter: But I can tell you that there's 3 times more family offices than there were in 2019.

00:56:56.040 --> 00:56:59.400

Dean Palmiter: Family offices have been around for hundreds of years.

00:56:59.870 --> 00:57:06.109

Dean Palmiter: But they are booming in popularity right now, so I can tell you that there will be more family offices.

00:57:06.580 --> 00:57:13.189

Dean Palmiter: I can tell you that, more people are going to do… want to do more themselves.

00:57:13.480 --> 00:57:24.680

Dean Palmiter: So, yes, they're still going to manage their money across Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, but they're going to want to bring things in-house for control, for visibility, for autonomy.

00:57:25.350 --> 00:57:31.420

Dean Palmiter: I think that AI is super interesting in helping uncover investment opportunities and…

00:57:31.530 --> 00:57:44.940

Dean Palmiter: Helping manage liquidity, and then also automating a lot of the tedious parts that are not the sexy parts of a family office, like paying bills, and reconciling bank accounts.

00:57:45.230 --> 00:57:50.850

Dean Palmiter: So, a lot of automation, a lot of AI from a…

00:57:52.450 --> 00:58:04.310

Dean Palmiter: Investment, due diligence perspective, but also portfolio rebalancing, liquidity management, document management, estate planning, Insurance?

00:58:05.020 --> 00:58:15.840

Dean Palmiter: Bill pay, banking, we're gonna literally have agents doing a lot of the manual, tedious, error-prone, time-consuming, unscalable work.

00:58:16.180 --> 00:58:19.789

Dean Palmiter: That has traditionally made family offices unappealing.

00:58:21.630 --> 00:58:24.709

Dean Palmiter: And so what… we kind of…

00:58:26.210 --> 00:58:30.970

Dean Palmiter: aspire to be is like Palantir, but for billionaires.

00:58:32.010 --> 00:58:37.019

Dean Palmiter: Where we give you the visibility to be able to see the future for yourself.

00:58:39.450 --> 00:58:49.209

Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I do think it's gonna be… those are all really good points. I think the capabilities and the functionality that they'll be able to access will continue to…

00:58:49.510 --> 00:58:54.659

Mark Wickersham: They come down, market, they're gonna be able to do a lot more with, with a lot.

00:58:55.050 --> 00:58:55.920

Mark Wickersham: Totally, I think…

00:58:55.920 --> 00:58:56.320

Dean Palmiter: Yeah.

00:58:56.320 --> 00:59:03.079

Mark Wickersham: The Popularity of the family office business model's a winning model, and there's gonna be more of that.

00:59:03.280 --> 00:59:04.599

Mark Wickersham: I think the thing that's not gonna.

00:59:04.600 --> 00:59:04.990

Dean Palmiter: We're changing.

00:59:04.990 --> 00:59:05.540

Mark Wickersham: closed.

00:59:05.910 --> 00:59:06.740

Mark Wickersham: Go ahead.

00:59:08.420 --> 00:59:13.360

Dean Palmiter: We're gonna see more family offices because it becomes more accessible.

00:59:13.530 --> 00:59:20.769

Dean Palmiter: Right? Where family offices used to only be available to, the dahlias and the sorroses of the world.

00:59:20.920 --> 00:59:26.189

Dean Palmiter: But now, everybody who has $300 million has a family office.

00:59:26.490 --> 00:59:29.050

Dean Palmiter: Okay, that bar is coming down.

00:59:29.160 --> 00:59:34.470

Dean Palmiter: With the accessibility from a technology perspective to do more with less.

00:59:35.460 --> 00:59:50.340

Mark Wickersham: Yeah, I think that number continuously crept up, you know, $100 million, $200 million, $250 million, and you're saying, like, well, really, a fully functioning single-family office was, you know, $500 million. I think you're gonna see that democratization of that family office model.

00:59:50.520 --> 00:59:52.469

Mark Wickersham: Start to come back down again.

00:59:52.470 --> 01:00:04.719

Dean Palmiter: you're gonna see the $80 million guy who likes to do direct investing, and has a lot of real estate, and short-term rentals, and may even be invested in a hotel. They have the complexity of a $500 million family office.

01:00:04.830 --> 01:00:09.440

Dean Palmiter: So they can do more by running the software, running the AI themselves.

01:00:10.010 --> 01:00:13.809

Dean Palmiter: And they're still gonna manage some of their assets across those private banks.

01:00:15.440 --> 01:00:25.269

Mark Wickersham: And I think the one thing that's not gonna change, it'll probably even get more amplified over time, is the… is the human connection. I think one of the things… one of the reasons why people have

01:00:25.420 --> 01:00:39.449

Mark Wickersham: family offices is, maybe it's not the most efficient business model in the world, but it's a trusted business model. There's a… you know, they become really, you know, valued members of that family, and really help that family a great deal.

01:00:39.450 --> 01:00:49.089

Mark Wickersham: I think that human connection, that human relationship, AI will help amplify that, because these people will be able to spend more time on the things that are more important.

01:00:49.090 --> 01:01:02.930

Mark Wickersham: But that's the thing that's never gonna go away with the family office. Ultimately, at the end of the day, why people create family offices for their families, will become, you know, even more germane and more important, and the AI is not taking that away.

01:01:03.500 --> 01:01:08.649

Dean Palmiter: I agree completely. We talk a lot about technology, we talk a lot about investing.

01:01:08.930 --> 01:01:11.459

Dean Palmiter: What is the point of all of this?

01:01:11.900 --> 01:01:18.950

Dean Palmiter: And it's to establish a more peaceful, harmonious, loving family unit.

01:01:19.370 --> 01:01:29.639

Dean Palmiter: And hopefully prepare the next generations with the right set of values and skills so that they can pursue their entrepreneurial

01:01:29.810 --> 01:01:34.120

Dean Palmiter: Spirit, they can impact, make their impact on the world.

01:01:34.250 --> 01:01:37.530

Dean Palmiter: So… I think, to your point.

01:01:37.940 --> 01:01:42.239

Dean Palmiter: It's never going to replace the human element or the human interaction.

01:01:42.390 --> 01:01:45.679

Dean Palmiter: Establishing a family office to serve the needs of the family.

01:01:46.250 --> 01:01:49.510

Dean Palmiter: And also to interact with other families.

01:01:49.880 --> 01:01:54.299

Dean Palmiter: We see a lot of families Going to family office conferences.

01:01:54.680 --> 01:02:04.000

Dean Palmiter: And the number one reason why they go to in-person events is to connect with other successful families

01:02:04.170 --> 01:02:11.660

Dean Palmiter: Learn from them, form relationships with them, Invest together, grow together.

01:02:11.760 --> 01:02:15.350

Dean Palmiter: So, yeah, there's no replacing that with technology or…

01:02:15.350 --> 01:02:19.620

Mark Wickersham: Peer-to-peer interaction, right? It's so important.

01:02:20.020 --> 01:02:26.859

Mark Wickersham: I'd like to end these podcasts on a personal note with 3 questions that have nothing to do with wealth tech.

01:02:26.990 --> 01:02:29.609

Mark Wickersham: Let's start with,

01:02:29.780 --> 01:02:38.159

Mark Wickersham: It's not fully, somewhat well-techento, but how do you use AI in your personal life?

01:02:40.650 --> 01:02:45.470

Dean Palmiter: I think… Doing…

01:02:45.640 --> 01:03:00.289

Dean Palmiter: I mean, I use it for search, so I'm not going to Google anymore and asking Google questions. If I want an answer to a question that I have to educate myself, I'm going to chat GPT, Claude, or Gemini to ask a question. And that could be, like.

01:03:00.520 --> 01:03:03.320

Dean Palmiter: Something as simple as… like…

01:03:03.600 --> 01:03:12.180

Dean Palmiter: Tell me the history of, you know, this event in history, or this movement, or, you know, give…

01:03:12.370 --> 01:03:16.489

Dean Palmiter: It's really… it's like Wikipedia or Google, but better.

01:03:16.720 --> 01:03:19.880

Dean Palmiter: And then… Asking it to do things like…

01:03:20.320 --> 01:03:32.769

Dean Palmiter: optimize my vacation with my wife that I'm taking in the summer. We really value these three things. We want to see sights, we want to have good coffee and have good meals.

01:03:32.890 --> 01:03:39.060

Dean Palmiter: So, optimizing anything from a travel plan, or make me a recipe.

01:03:39.310 --> 01:03:45.110

Dean Palmiter: So… I use it to make myself smarter.

01:03:45.720 --> 01:03:46.949

Dean Palmiter: And to… and to…

01:03:46.950 --> 01:03:47.480

Mark Wickersham: Would it?

01:03:47.700 --> 01:03:49.690

Dean Palmiter: It's like an assistant, right?

01:03:50.280 --> 01:03:52.360

Dean Palmiter: Make myself smarter, and do…

01:03:52.710 --> 01:04:07.579

Mark Wickersham: I don't know if the search experience has just gotten worse, or maybe just because the search experience in AI is always… is so much better, but man, whenever I go back and do the search on Google, I'm like, why did I do that? It's such a…

01:04:07.980 --> 01:04:08.590

Mark Wickersham: Or it's fair.

01:04:08.590 --> 01:04:12.650

Dean Palmiter: Well, you still have to do all the research yourself. You have to, you know, you have to…

01:04:12.650 --> 01:04:14.519

Mark Wickersham: I'm waiting for all the ads, man, it's like…

01:04:14.520 --> 01:04:19.580

Dean Palmiter: You gotta go through the ads, right. The first page is all sponsored, and you've gotta look.

01:04:19.580 --> 01:04:26.060

Mark Wickersham: Something to do with, you know, because it has some sort of keyword, and God forbid, if you put family office on that search, you're gonna get, you know.

01:04:26.060 --> 01:04:27.049

Dean Palmiter: That, that's right.

01:04:27.050 --> 01:04:33.400

Mark Wickersham: sponsors on it, so it's kind of worthless, where, yeah, it can really be helpful. Itineraries are, or…

01:04:33.590 --> 01:04:35.900

Dean Palmiter: Yeah, how are you using AI in your life?

01:04:36.090 --> 01:04:41.770

Mark Wickersham: Well, I did… this morning, I got an interesting example where,

01:04:41.980 --> 01:04:58.400

Mark Wickersham: I'm a few nights short on getting Marriott Platinum status, so I asked AI to do, like, a cost-benefit analysis, like, say if I spend enough to go to get the extra nights, is it worth the additional benefit of getting…

01:04:58.400 --> 01:05:02.119

Mark Wickersham: you know, platinum or whatever, and it broke it down. It broke, you know.

01:05:02.120 --> 01:05:08.370

Dean Palmiter: That's the thing, and that's a really great example, like, the vacation optimization. It's like, you can give it…

01:05:08.520 --> 01:05:09.949

Dean Palmiter: a task.

01:05:10.070 --> 01:05:12.790

Dean Palmiter: Then, it'll optimize it for you.

01:05:13.060 --> 01:05:17.100

Mark Wickersham: Well, it would have taken me an hour if I could even figure it out, so it was so…

01:05:17.560 --> 01:05:34.359

Mark Wickersham: So great, so helpful. Obviously, the more you put into the prompt, the better your results, and I think that's something you learn over time as you use AI more and more, like, you really need to be specific and provide it much more context on the, on the prompt, and you'll get much better results, but

01:05:34.690 --> 01:05:37.200

Mark Wickersham: Let's talk about, you live in New York City.

01:05:37.350 --> 01:05:42.990

Mark Wickersham: One of the great cities on the planet, never mind the U.S, one of my favorite, spots.

01:05:43.450 --> 01:05:48.150

Mark Wickersham: What is a spot in New York City that you love that people might not know about?

01:05:49.410 --> 01:06:05.229

Dean Palmiter: That they might not know about. I'm pretty sure everybody knows about these spots. But I live on the Upper East Side, so I love being able to go for walks in the morning during off-leash hours with our dog. And we'll go to…

01:06:05.230 --> 01:06:11.819

Dean Palmiter: our favorite coffee shop across the street, or to Ralph's at Ralph Lauren, the coffee shop.

01:06:12.080 --> 01:06:13.410

Dean Palmiter: And…

01:06:13.710 --> 01:06:26.360

Dean Palmiter: For dinner, I really like Elio's Italian. It's a neighborhood, classic Italian restaurant. I also like J.G. Mellon, Best Burgers in New York City, and…

01:06:26.520 --> 01:06:32.760

Dean Palmiter: So I like the classic New York spots. Everybody knows about them.

01:06:34.510 --> 01:06:41.469

Dean Palmiter: But I just, I enjoy, you know, just going to a good coffee shop and having a good walk in the park with my wife and my dog.

01:06:42.940 --> 01:06:46.199

Mark Wickersham: It's such a great walking city, and…

01:06:46.420 --> 01:06:50.949

Mark Wickersham: for… if you like to go out, I mean, my God, you could spend the rest of your life going to restaurants, and .

01:06:51.170 --> 01:06:51.590

Dean Palmiter: Totally.

01:06:51.590 --> 01:06:55.649

Mark Wickersham: It's still, Doug, hit them all. I will throw one out there.

01:06:56.040 --> 01:07:02.570

Mark Wickersham: Milo's, up by the park at the Greek restaurant, one of my favorites, I love it.

01:07:02.880 --> 01:07:05.480

Dean Palmiter: If you want Italian…

01:07:05.800 --> 01:07:13.470

Dean Palmiter: Elio's is a great one, but also Sistina, so we'll go there on, like, a special occasion, whether it's, like, an anniversary or Valentine's.

01:07:13.470 --> 01:07:14.570

Mark Wickersham: And where's that?

01:07:14.720 --> 01:07:20.320

Dean Palmiter: That is… I think it's in the 70s, closer to the park.

01:07:20.460 --> 01:07:20.850

Mark Wickersham: Okay.

01:07:20.850 --> 01:07:23.320

Dean Palmiter: Sistina, S-I-S-T.

01:07:23.810 --> 01:07:25.000

Dean Palmiter: INA.

01:07:26.140 --> 01:07:33.969

Mark Wickersham: I won't get into the debate whether Little Italy versus Boston's North End is a better Italian area, but we'll save that for a different podcast.

01:07:34.120 --> 01:07:40.759

Mark Wickersham: My vote's the North End. A book that you've read recently that you'd recommend?

01:07:45.230 --> 01:07:52.499

Dean Palmiter: Well, I recently read Zero to One by Peter Thiel, but that's… that's… any… any entrepreneur should read that.

01:07:53.330 --> 01:07:59.240

Dean Palmiter: There's another book that has a… Kind of a harsh title.

01:07:59.420 --> 01:08:02.400

Dean Palmiter: The subtle art of not giving a F.

01:08:03.120 --> 01:08:04.210

Mark Wickersham: Right, right.

01:08:04.420 --> 01:08:10.720

Dean Palmiter: It's, it's always… Very popular. It's a popular one, and I just finally picked it up and read it, and…

01:08:10.950 --> 01:08:14.839

Dean Palmiter: I think… One thing I learned from that is.

01:08:15.350 --> 01:08:22.370

Dean Palmiter: There's struggle for all humans. Life is just full of struggle, and so you want to…

01:08:22.640 --> 01:08:30.829

Dean Palmiter: you want to be upgrading your problems, upgrading your challenges, right? So, more money, more problems, right? It's like, okay, there's…

01:08:30.990 --> 01:08:33.459

Dean Palmiter: Never no struggle in life.

01:08:33.580 --> 01:08:38.880

Dean Palmiter: But you can up… you can upgrade your problems. And then secondly, if you're going to struggle.

01:08:39.130 --> 01:08:40.430

Dean Palmiter: Pick your struggle.

01:08:41.160 --> 01:08:42.290

Dean Palmiter: So…

01:08:43.399 --> 01:08:51.359

Dean Palmiter: I think of building a general ledger accounting software as something that's incredibly difficult to do, so I have a ton of respect

01:08:51.460 --> 01:08:56.870

Dean Palmiter: For Alex at Summit, and any other entrepreneur innovating

01:08:57.180 --> 01:09:01.709

Dean Palmiter: In the family office space, and particularly trying to build an accounting software.

01:09:01.899 --> 01:09:07.500

Dean Palmiter: It's very difficult to do. So, to me, I think of it as, like, a journey.

01:09:07.840 --> 01:09:10.399

Dean Palmiter: Picking something that's really difficult.

01:09:10.920 --> 01:09:17.689

Dean Palmiter: And it might take a decade, or two decades, or three decades, but setting your sights on it, and so picking that struggle.

01:09:19.580 --> 01:09:21.640

Mark Wickersham: Love it. I… those are…

01:09:21.970 --> 01:09:33.080

Mark Wickersham: Great, I think that what a couple books, The Hard Things About Hard Things, I want to say it's Mark Condition, talking about scaling and why it's so hard to scale a business is a really good one. I'm reading, currently.

01:09:33.819 --> 01:09:48.400

Mark Wickersham: unrivaled, Michelle Heath, who I actually had the chance of working with back in the day at Fidelity. It's a really good book on trying to, how firms can grow, and what it takes to… for a firm to grow. I just find the…

01:09:48.490 --> 01:10:03.830

Mark Wickersham: a really interesting subject, because it's not… there's not, like, one answer, like, it's about, you know, really dialing in on your ideal client profile, and really, you know, understanding what makes you unique and successful. That's cool. It's a good one.

01:10:03.940 --> 01:10:08.539

Mark Wickersham: Anyways, this has been great, Dean. I really appreciate you being on the show.

01:10:09.090 --> 01:10:12.950

Dean Palmiter: Thank you for having me, Mark. Hopefully I gave you some good content.

01:10:13.050 --> 01:10:21.279

Dean Palmiter: And I really appreciate the opportunity, so let me know next time you're in New York City, and we'll either go to one of your favorites, or I'll take you to one of mine.

01:10:21.600 --> 01:10:23.250

Mark Wickersham: We'll do it, alright.