CrowdStreet’s Brent Hieggelke is joined by Michael Winston, a CrowdStreet investor, to discuss his current investment strategy and how he’s thinking long-term by focusing on projects that will hit the market in years, not just months.
CrowdStreet
Brent is a high-growth tech marketing executive focused on start-up and early category innovators and disrupters. He is a seasoned evangelist, and public speaker across a wide-range of topics.
He is a former CMO of several leading SaaS companies such as Urban Airship (mobile), Brandlive (video), Webtrends (data and analytics) and Touch Clarity (AI, machine learning), which sold to Omniture. In 2009, Brent co-founded a real estate start-up, Second Porch, which built the first sharing vacation rental site and ultimately exited to HomeAway, now Expedia. Brent has keynoted and led panels at global events like SXSW, Mobile World Congress, Cannes Lions, Advertising Week, Adtech, and hundreds of other conferences. Brent has been featured or quoted in The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Advertising Age, and hundreds of other publications.
Brent holds a BA in Economics with honors from the University of Chicago.
Brent (00:07):
Hello, everyone. I'm Brent Hieggelke, Chief Marketing Officer at CrowdStreet, and welcome to our next episode of StreetBeats, our short video series designed to keep our entire community in touch with one another from investors to sponsors to capital markets experts. Today I'm very excited to welcome one of our investors, one of our active investors to speak and talk about what he's feeling and what he's seeing out there. So Michael Winston, thank you. And if you wouldn't mind, take a minute to introduce yourself and talk about your experience on the CrowdStreet platform.
Michael (00:43):
Thank you, Brent. My name's Michael Winston. I'm a shareholder with law firm of Carlton Fields down here in West Palm Beach, Florida. My background is in finance and accounting, and for about the past 15 or 20 years, I've specialized in, in litigation dealing with financial transactions. I first started investing on the CrowdStreet platform when I was looking for an opportunity zone fund, so towards the end of 2019. And, and since then I've invested in several different projects most recently just this week.
Brent (01:14):
Well, that's great. That's great. Glad, glad to hear you're that active. And as you're thinking about, you know, kind of the state of everything today, you know, how, how are you thinking about investing? Are you, would you still consider yourself active? Are you still, obviously you were, you know, looking as recent as last week, and you know, how do you kind of characterize your activity right now?
Michael (01:36):
Well, right now I, I'll say I'm nervous, but optimistic. I, I've had an investment strategy that I've used for many, many years, and it focuses on sustainable cash flow of the business. And typically, I always look at best case scenario, everything being executed perfectly versus worst case scenario, everything goes wrong. Right now we're in a situation where everything's going wrong and it's not simply what the sponsor feared, but it's things that they couldn't even envision fearing. So for me, right now, I'm very focused on looking at does the, the sponsor, does the project or does any investment have, have cash on hand? Do they have access to cash? Will it get them through the next few months? And then on the backside, what is their product? What is their service? And is that something that's going to be in demand and have a sustainable demand?
Brent (02:34):
It sounds like you're taking a, a very practical approach and applauding for that for sure. As you think about looking at future investments, you know, how are you gonna be evaluating those kind of projects?
Michael (02:48):
Well, first off, you know, we're looking at an incredible amount of, of government stimulus happening, and at the micro level, you have individual payments happening to individuals and also some support being provided to small businesses. And, and that's certainly going to help people keep their heads close to the waterline. But what we also have happening behind the scenes is massive amounts of capital investment by the government to sustain markets and create stability. And that stability to me is, is the key for looking forward. It's creating sustainable stability in the capital markets that's allowing for lending in the mortgage markets, that's allowing for mortgage lending. And so what I'm looking at going forward are, are things that are going to work long-term and that will come back quickly. Also within the CrowdStreet platform, there's a lot of projects that are, that are built not to have a cash flow for one to three years or sometimes even longer. And so those projects, I, I think this view, this is a bit of a blip for that. Because they're, they're designed, they're built not to be worried about the short term. They're, they're worried about the long term and in long term while this is not a small blip, it's a big blip it is going to be a blip that I think most will be able to push through.
Brent (04:16):
Yeah, I mean, certainly that's what we've, we've been talking about is that, you know, most of these projects are, you know, five to seven year kind of projects, which means they'll out ride this. Certainly. as you think about next, you know, sort of asset classes or markets do you have any, anything specific your, you know, your, your, your considering as you look forward?
Michael (04:42):
Well there are, there are investments on the platform that are, I won't say re recession proof, but they're re recession resistant. They provide a, a lower cost basis for their customers. Those seem like very positive investments, especially the ones that have a, a one to three year timeline. There are also, again, certain ones that are providing sustainable opportunities where they don't come online for another year or two. For example, multi-family housing in an area that has not been horrifically impacted by the coronavirus. There's going to be a need for housing. And if it's something that's coming online in one to three years the timing I think will be, will be perfect. That's when the economy is gonna be picking up again if it hasn't already picked up. And those to me seem like good fundamental investments for the long term.
Brent (05:38):
Well, sounds like you're taking a a really measured and balanced approach and a savvy one as well. So definitely great to hear your perspectives and I'm sure our community appreciates it well, so as well. So any, any closing thoughts before we wrap up?
Michael (05:57):
Nothing other than like the rest of us, I'm, I'm hopeful that we're all able to go about our business as normal as possible in the, in the near future. You know, I'm, I'm looking at every statistic as it comes out and, and hoping it all works for the benefit of, of everyone, and that we can all have a very positive future going forward.
Brent (06:17):
Great. Well, Michael, thank you for joining us for our Street Beats update today. And for the audience, if you're interested in getting notified when these come out we do allow you to sign up your email address to get notified for street beats on a weekly basis. And Michael, thank you. We'll see you back on the platform soon and to everybody else, stay safe and stay healthy.