Yo, technology.

What is it all about?

I would wake up all the time for years in the middle of the night and just say like, what have I done, right?

I had this huge opportunity cost.

Not only did I sort of like started a company and put my own money into it and pay myself nothing for a while,

but I left behind this, you know, this other career where I could be doing really well and very comfortable.

Welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.

I am your host, Danny Fortson, and we are back. How was your Christmas?

Or perhaps the more appropriate question, were your Christmas plans upended in some way by COVID?

Mine were. One of our kids got a false positive. Actually, no, he got two false

positives, two false positives on an at-home test, which were then overturned by a negative

PCR test. But by that time, we had canceled our plans, which we'd been making for months.

Short version, these are, of course, all first world problems. Everyone's healthy. We ended up having a great break, but it was kind of a wild ride, very stressful. And I got to say, I don't know if anyone's plans weren't disrupted either because they got sick, somebody they know caught COVID, whatever may be. My hope is that this is the last desperate gasp of this pandemic before it turns into something less

scary, less lethal, less disruptive, and we can all just kind of get back to life. So that's

what I'm speaking into existence for 2022. But now, let's get to our first guest of the new year,

the first one of 2022. You guys are going to really enjoy this one. I have

Ryan Fight on the pod. He is the chief exec and co-founder of a company called Seed Invest. And

what they do is have created a platform that really allows anyone to invest in private startup.

So think of them like Robin Hood, but for private companies, which, as you'll soon hear,

these type of companies for decades were only really eligible for investment from professional

accredited investors. It was a very high bar, which meant only a small slice of people could

actually, you know, make a bet on the next Google or Facebook or Apple, whatever it may be.

...