[EO Silicon Valley] Real Estate’s Best Kept Secret: Land Development Investing With Alice Chen

Alice Chen is a Partner at Pender Hastings Capital, a private equity firm specializing in niche, high-return land development investments in the US and Canada. She is also the Founder of Alice Chen Companies, a portfolio of ventures spanning international trade, financial services, consumer products, technology, and investment management. A former mergers and acquisitions attorney, Alice transitioned her legal expertise into capital allocation across private equity, venture capital, and tax-advantaged strategies. Her work has been featured in major outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, LA Times, and Success Magazine.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

[4:06] Alice Chen explains Pender Hastings Capital’s approach to solving big problems in real estate
[11:17] What makes land development real estate’s best-kept secret
[13:18] Alice shares her entrepreneurial beginnings
[16:56] How Pender Hastings structures its funds to diversify projects and minimize risk
[30:41] Alice talks about how timing can make or break company exits
[32:54] Insights on raising capital, investor trust, and balancing risk with opportunity

In this episode…

What if one of the most profitable opportunities in real estate was hidden in plain sight? Many investors chase multifamily developments or single-family rentals, but few explore the less obvious paths that can generate outsized returns. Could the real secret to long-term growth lie in a strategy most people overlook?

According to Alice Chen, a seasoned investor and private equity fund manager, the real estate industry’s best-kept secret is land development. She highlights how a shortage of millions of single-family homes in the US has created an urgent demand for finished lots, which national homebuilders rely on to expand. By partnering with best-in-class land developers and focusing on large-scale problems like housing deficits, she explains how investors can minimize risk while achieving strong returns.

In this episode of the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, host Dr. Jeremy Weisz sits down with Alice Chen, Partner at Pender Hastings Capital and Founder of Alice Chen Companies, to talk about land development investing as real estate’s best-kept secret. Alice shares why major homebuilders outsource this process, how her team structures funds to manage risk, and why timing is crucial in achieving profitable exits. Alice also discusses her personal routines that keep her grounded as an entrepreneur and investor.

Resources mentioned in this episode:

Quotable Moments

“Real estate is actually hyperlocal, so what works for one market does not necessarily translate.”
“There’s actually a deficit of 4.8 million single-family homes in the United States today.”
“This is real estate’s best-kept secret. How come we didn’t know about it, right?”
“Whoever harnesses capital can do a lot of good things and could do a lot of big things.”
“We wanted to raise a fund maximizing capital return by minimizing risk across multiple projects.”

Action Steps

Focus on solving big problems with capital and strategy: Targeting large-scale challenges creates opportunities for meaningful impact and sustainable returns.
Diversify across multiple projects in a fund: Spreading investments reduces risk exposure while maintaining the potential for strong overall performance.
Build partnerships with best-in-class operators: Collaborating with proven experts enhances execution, strengthens relationships, and ensures access to valuable industry networks.
Pay attention to timing in market cycles: Recognizing when to enter or exit investments can dramatically affect profitability and long-term outcomes.
Invest in personal routines that strengthen decision-making: Practices like meditation, gratitude, and fitness foster clarity, resilience, and focus for improving business leadership.

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Episode Transcript:

Intro: 00:02

Welcome to the Rising Entrepreneurs Podcast, where we feature top founders and entrepreneurs and their journey. Now let’s get started with the show.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 00:12

Dr. Jeremy Weisz here, Founder of InspiredInsider.com, where I talk with inspirational entrepreneurs and leaders. Today is no different. I have Alice Chen of AliceChenCompanies.com where you’ll see she’s got a portfolio of companies and Alice is quite a background and she’s got a diverse set of companies in her portfolio which we will go through. Alice, I always like to before I formally introduce you, I always like to point out other episodes of the podcast people should check out.

You know, since this is going to go on Inspired Insider also Rising Entrepreneurs where we feature top EO members. Some of the top EO members I’ve had on the podcast include Mark Bealin, where he talked about driving digital dominance. He’s got an agency I also had on Mike Maddock. He talked about innovation and conquering business plateaus, and that was a great episode. Also, Michael Attias was a SaaS company, caters in a SaaS company, else for restaurants to offer catering, you know, and that was a great one.

There’s many more on inspiredinsider.com and check it out. This episode is brought to you by Rise25. At Rise25, we help businesses give to and connect their dream relationships and partnerships. We do that in two ways. One, we’re an easy button for a company to launch and run a podcast.

We do the strategy, accountability, and the full execution and production behind the scenes. Number two, we’re also an easy button for a company is gifting. So we make gifting and staying top of mind to your best clients, partners, prospects, even staff very easy. You just give us the addresses and we do everything else. Everything’s branded to your company, you know else we call ourselves the magic elves that run in the background and make it stress free as possible for companies to build amazing relationships so they can focus on running their business.

And for me, over the past decade, I have the number one thing for me is relationships. And I found no better way over ten years plus to feature the people I admire in my podcast and also send them sweet treats in the mail so you can go to Rise25.com or email us at support@rise25.com. I am excited to introduce Alice Chen. She’s an investor, private equity fund manager and much more.

And over the past 15 years, she’s founded, scaled and successfully exited multiple businesses. We could say across international trade, financial services, consumer products, technology and investment fund management. She’s been featured in major publications like The Wall StreetJournal, Forbes, Canadian Business, LA Times, and Success Magazine. She, like my business partner John Corcoran, was a practicing attorney, and I guess John calls himself a recovering attorney, but she transitioned from practicing as a mergers and acquisitions and securities attorney and parlayed her skill set into investing across, you know, allocating capital across private equity, venture capital, tax advantaged strategies and public equity. She’s a partner at Pender Hastings Capital, which is a private equity firm specializing in niche, high return land development investments in the US and Canada.

I had to get all that in because it’s impressive, Alice, but thanks for joining me.

Alice Chen: 03:28

Well, thank you for having me.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 03:30

You know, what’s interesting is I want you to talk about, you know, Pender Hastings and what you do. And there’s a couple key things that you point out when I’ve done my research is one, you talk about there’s a big moat, right? There’s actually a big barrier to entry, which is always good in a business. And also, do you plan for the exit from the get go? So those are two things that are kind of music to my ears with what you’re doing.

So talk about Pender Hastings capital and what you do. And I’m going to pull up your, your site as we as we talk.

Alice Chen: 04:06

Sure. Yeah. And thanks for doing research. I love that I was your workout companion in the past week. So clearly you’ve done your homework.

So as you said, I’m a partner at Pender Hastings Capital. We are a real estate private equity firm. We have strategies in both Canada and in the US. So as a private equity firm, what we’re looking for are big problems to solve, big problems to solve with capital as well as strategy. And real estate is actually hyper local.

You know, I’m sure yourself and also people in the audience that have invested in real estate, you would know that what works for one market does not necessarily translate to another. So for us in our home market, which is Vancouver, Canada, what we do is specifically something called multiplex development strategy. So it’s a subset of multifamily development. And what happens in Vancouver is that because of the lack of housing, the government passed a new law about two years ago to exempt zoning. If you want to convert a single family home lot into a multiplex, meaning a four plex, a five plex or six plex, right?

So that works for cities that have very confined land to build on. So urban centres like Vancouver and then, you know, going south into Seattle, a Bay area, San Diego, we call it Adu accessory dwelling units. So Adu increasing density through Adu build outs. That’s what we the term we use in the states. But in Canada we call it multiplex development.

So we have a fun family that’s focused on that. And in the States, my business partner James, who you see here on the, on the, you know, on the website, We’ve spent the last couple of years actually taking our time to look into different potential strategies. So in 2022, James actually spent the entire year in Texas, mostly around Dallas area, looking at value add multifamily. But of course, we know that the interest rate started to hike up in the second half of the year. And so with that happening, as well as some of the rents falling in certain geographies, that basically wiped out a lot of the equity in the deals in multifamily.

So that makes that strategy not a thing to pursue. Right? So then since then we, you know, focus on the Canadian strategies and then looked at different things. We looked at building single family homes in Florida in scale, you know, build to rent communities. We looked at different things.

And I would say sometimes in business, you, you just kind of encounter a lucky break. And that’s kind of what happened to us. So about a year ago, I attended a conference, a real estate conference, and I bump into a best in class land developer. So we are now capital partners to best in class land developers in the country. In the US that turn raw land into finished lots for national home builders like the D.R. Horton, Lennar, Toll Brothers.

These really scaled home builders. And so we land development is not something that you hear about every day, right. So certainly, you know, in everyday conversations it’s rare that someone would be talking about that. And so it feels to me that well, one, it’s a very refreshing thesis. And we like a big problem.

It’s a big problem because I don’t know if you know, but there’s actually a deficit of 4.8 million single family homes in the United States. And that is partially or mostly due to the the trend of under-building since the last financial crisis, you know, of 2010. So builders halted the build outs as well as the kind of went into this pattern of under building, and that created this pent up demand of single family homes. And so yeah, so we, you know, as a private equity firm, we want to look at a problem that’s big enough that we can solve with capital n strategy in the coming three, five, ten years. Right.

Because we’re putting in all this infrastructure, human capital bandwidth into studying something. So we want to have a return on that on that investment. And so that’s why we decided to focus on land development. And I’ll talk about the moat as well as the built in exit. So why is there a moat.

Well it’s because well one, it’s hard to break into that industry. So typically people become land developers because they are from construction background. Or maybe they are in some type of development projects, and they just started to do a lot of land development and notice that they have an advantage in that, right. So due to their team, due to their skill set or temperament relationships, they they then find themselves wanting to really focus on that. So our best in class land development operating partners have very long standing relationships with these national home builders.

So D.R. Horton is a very interesting company, $35 billion annual revenue company backed by Warren Buffett, for example. It’s a public company, you know, a multi-billion dollar market cap company. So for them, such a, you know, at a such a big company scale 81 profit centers across USA, guess how many homes, guess how many homes they they typically build in a year?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:39

I mean, I’ve listened to you so many times, so I actually know the answer to this, but usually you say 90 to 100,000.

Alice Chen: 09:46

So yes. Okay. Very good. Yes. Yeah. So I mean, that was a surprise to me because I would think a company at that kind of scale they would be building at least.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 09:55

If you if you asked me and I didn’t do the research, I yeah, I would, I would say like a half a million. I mean, I don’t know based on what you’re saying, the stats are, you know.

Alice Chen: 10:05

There you go. Yeah. So we’re talking about all these home builders needing pads to build their homes, and the reason why they don’t like to do the land development themselves is because ownership of land while you do entitlements or while you do horizontal developments, that actually shows up. The ownership of land shows up as a liability on your balance sheet. So they tend to want to outsource this part to third parties. So yeah. So that’s why we saw this opportunity.

It’s a very tight knit group of people that just focus on land development, pure play land development, where they, you know, by, let’s say they buy an entitled piece of land from a home builder at $30,000 a lot, and then they sell it back to the home builder $70,000 a lot once they put in the roads and infrastructure. So such a thing is called horizontal development. Yeah. So it’s.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 10:57

I’m curious. When you were at the conference, right. Someone speaking, you could just I’m sure there were a lot of people at the conference that didn’t do anything with the information. Right. And you actually saw what you see in that short period of time that the person was talking that you’re like, I think this is our next big thing.

Alice Chen: 11:17

Well, I mean, that’s kind of the secret sauce of being in the investment business, right? You’re constantly scouting for something that’s different, something that has alpha, right? So for me, well, one, I’ve never heard of it. So I’m intrigued about something that I didn’t know. So that kind of piqued my interest.

And, you know, wanted you know, I felt this urge to learn more about it. And, well, this person that I met at a conference seems to have done really well doing this. And so the more we dug into it, it took us about eight months of operator due diligence, like we began a dialogue with this party, and we met every two weeks or so, literally, with no kind of business in mind and just got to know each other, got to know the business. The more we learned about it, the more we’re like, wow, like, this is real estate’s best kept secret. How come we didn’t know about it, right?

And, I mean, there’s incentive for people in this field not to talk too much about it because they want the business to themselves. Like our best operator, they have businesses across the Sunbelt states, like multiple states, like, you know, hundreds of millions of, you know, Project value pipeline. So if you can execute at that scale, like, why, why share the pie, right? So I don’t think there’s much incentive for, for the people in this space to be talking too much about it. But for me, it was it was just kind of a rare unicorn combo of, okay, hearing something new, something that kind of makes sense just based on what I know about the economy and where we are in the economic cycle.

Meeting an operator that seems to have done really well for himself and, you know, just kind of liking all these elements. So it’s no different than when you’re, you know, if you’re working in entertainment, you’re scouting for a new, I don’t know, Taylor Swift or some pop star or, or an actor. You just kind of have it. You kind of hone the instincts over time and you just kind of know you, you know something special when you see it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:13

Totally. And talk about how did you meet James?

Alice Chen: 13:17

Yeah. So James is actually my original mentor in finance. So I, I think before we started recording the podcast, we were talking about just kind of what I’ve done. So I’m an entrepreneur that is driven by passion. So I go where my passion goes. You know, I, for example, would not ever see myself owning a toilet manufacturing company because I’m not passionate about toilets. I never will be.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 13:45

I’m passionate about bidets, actually. So.

[Continue to Page 2]

Alice Chen: 13:47

Okay, there you go. Yeah. Well, that’s actually, you know, some people have made really good business out of that thesis. But for me, my first business was in international trade, exporting Canadian wine to Asian markets. And that got me a top 40 under 40 title back in 2013.

It’s hard to believe that’s more than ten years ago. So from there, I then went back into mergers and acquisitions. I ran a boutique advisory firm, which was then acquired by PricewaterhouseCoopers. So when I did these interesting things, I got a lot of media attention in my home market of Vancouver. And I think James looked me up on LinkedIn when I was doing M&A advisory firm, and he was just building his very first private equity fund.

And in my mind, I’ve always wanted to work with capital, right. Because who, like whoever that harnesses capital, can do a lot of good things, right? And could do a lot of big things. Hopefully not bad things, but you know, it’s just such a valuable asset. So I wanted to learn everything about capital.

So I figured, well, you know, James is building his first private equity fund. He has a temperament of a teacher and coach. Like he really loves teaching. And so he said, okay, well, this is what I’m doing. I love to teach you everything about private equity.

So I was a very willing and again, lucky student to have a comment on my teacher. So I invested as his early investor. His fund did really well. I went on to kind of cut my teeth.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 15:25

Fundraising was that fund in real estate as well? The one.

Alice Chen: 15:29

It was actually traditional private equity. So buying businesses, boring gadget factories that spit out a very quality, you know, earnings stream of cash. Right. So we like those businesses and private equity. So yeah.

So just kind of, you know, practice and fund raised using his fund and eventually She learned enough to aggregate all the top real estate funds in Canada and became a fund and fund manager myself. So this is apart from what James was doing. Yeah. And then we reunited about two years ago when he’s exited his prior venture. And I, you know, have done a five years or so of startups and wanted to come back into investing.

And coincidentally, we’re both looking at real estate and wanted to come come together. So it was a little bit like the band had disbanded. The band members went on to do their solos, but then they came back to do a reunion tour. So this is a little bit of that reunion tour for us.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 16:28

I’m curious. So you’re like, okay, let’s let’s start Pender Hastings Capital. We have a thesis. We have what you call real estate’s best kept secret. That should be a tagline on your web page there under Pender Hastings.

But how do you decide how much money? capital to raise. And then also, I don’t know how many different funds you have to raise, you know, throughout.

Alice Chen: 16:54

Yeah, those are great questions. So one, it took us a long time to decide on a strategy because we took it very seriously. Right. We didn’t want to just become yet another multifamily value add strategy fund manager. So we were looking for something different. And I just explained how we got there.

And so we wanted to raise a fund that can accommodate our thesis in a way that’s maximizing capital return by minimizing risk. So the difference between a syndication and a fund is that a syndication is typically a singular asset, and a fund is typically multiple assets, but in the same thesis. So how much goes into a fund. Whether a fund is 5 million, 15 million, which is our kind of, you know, ceiling or 500 million. It depends on a variety of factors.

So for us, each project that we invest in are typically requiring about $2 million of investor equity. So if you think about a $10 million land development deal, horizontal development deal that builds 500 homes, for example. So typically in that capital stack, 75% comes from the debt. It’s a loan acquisition and development loan. And then there’s a portion.

The remainder of the 25% of a portion of that actually comes from the home builder themselves. They have a deposit of 10 to 20% of the ultimate sale price or buyback price that they have to pay, like throughout the project length. So in the two years that the project is underway, you have a take down schedule you got to follow. So every 50 lots delivered, you pay down a little bit more towards that deposit. So our fund actually funds the rest which is called investor equity.

So because on average. We are typically looking at, you know, the projects needing about anywhere from 2 million to 8 million of investor equity. So if we are fine, we want to diversify our risk by investing in multiple projects. Let’s say in a $15 million fund, we’re looking at investing 4 to 6 projects. Then then, you know, you just kind of work backwards to decide what is an appropriate amount.

And also you want to maybe do a smaller fund one. And then once you prove out the concept, you can then go to a fund to maybe fund two would be 30 million or 50 million, right. So there’s different. It’s an art. It’s a science.

But it’s more of an art, I find. And it’s just, you know, you have to rely on your business judgment and understanding of the market conditions to, to make those determinations.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:34

Is there an active fund raising now or are the funds closed?

Alice Chen: 19:38

Oh, no. We actually just launched the fund beginning of the year. So we’re very much active. Yeah. So we are looking.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 19:44

A fit to invest. I know not everyone is. Obviously. Yes. Who do you find is a fit?

Alice Chen: 19:49

Yeah. So we are a Reg D 506 C fund, which means we only work with accredited investors. So if you’re accredited investors, if you’re an accredited investor and you are in the growth mode, you want to multiply your capital. We are a short term fund fund of three years. So if you want to look at a quick multiplication or, you know, we have a equity multiple 1.75 to 1.81, and I’ll explain that what that means in a sec. You want to see kind of this fast paced growth of your capital.

Then we are for you. So we don’t do distributions right away because we are deploying your capital into these projects. And then we exit to the home builders. But because your capital is tied up in the project, you can expect a higher, you know, higher return. So we are, you know, looking at a targeted 25 to 27% annual return and it would be three years.

So that’s why a 1.75 equity multiple means if you invested 100,000 with us into the fund three years later, you can expect to come, you know, to see 175,000 back. So that’s that’s the, you know, the terminology.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:07

And then obviously accredited investor, someone wants to growth mode. And is there a minimum amount that someone needs to invest.

Alice Chen: 21:17

Yes. Yeah. So it would be 100,000.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 21:21

Got it. And then you know, I guess you know, the the question around, you know general like hiring. At what point do you decide okay. Like I saw on the team page, you have several team members. And you know, at what point do you decide, okay, we need another general partner.

Alice Chen: 21:47

Yeah. So we are actually interested in meeting the right one right now. Because James and I are both Canadian and we came from the Canadian market. Our current fund, the land development, is not set up to taking Canadian capital. So it’s only for Americans.

And so we’re very interested in meeting a potential general partner, or maybe two of them that have a very strong foothold in the American market in real estate and really see the potential in this land development strategy and thesis and want to join us.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 22:24

What kind of background do you find that person would have?

Alice Chen: 22:28

So we are looking for someone that has actually done fundraising successfully for funds for for many years. You know, if not a couple of decades. So yeah. So someone that is very fluent in the space and has commands a following that would like to invest with them. So someone like that would be very ideal.

But of course, you know, this person would offer other type of input. You know, whether it’s marketing, whether it’s operational efficiency. And you know, they they would have a say in terms of the in terms of being a part of the investment committee as well.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 23:07

Yeah, that makes sense. And then what about what do you look for in a team member? I know it’s you and James and you have several team members. I’m curious just from like a culture perspective. You’ve worked in a lot of companies.

What about from that end?

Alice Chen: 23:21

I think we’re looking for someone that is open minded and very keen to learn, because a lot of the success that you find in investing has to do with understanding patterns and understanding the economy and macroeconomic factors. So we want someone that is a very open minded learner in terms of their disposition. And we want someone that is a great team player. Right. Because we are going to be in this partnership for a long time.

And, you know, even though fund 1st May wrap up in three years, we want to go on to do fund two, fund three. So we want to look for someone that we can get along with for a very long time.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:03

You know, I have someone coming on. Maybe by the time this releases it will already be happening. So I’ll have to mention Scott McGibbon of Matterhorn Venture Partners. He’s on more of the commercial side, but he may know some people he I know, acquired and developed 10.6 billion in transactions as some principal deals, but in more of the industrial office hotel sector. But he may know some people so I’ll do share this with him.

Alice Chen: 24:32

Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 24:33

Please do. Some good people. You know, I want to talk about it’s really interesting your portfolio companies a little bit because they just span the gamut, right? Even from a tequila seltzer. Okay.

So in a family office, software and the wine company. Talk about the tequila seltzer for a second.

Alice Chen: 24:56

Yeah. So that was kind of a Covid hobby company or company that that kind of got spun up because my co-founder, Brent and I were so geeked out on mixing tequila and seltzer water or tequila.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 25:12

To drown our sorrows during Covid.

Alice Chen: 25:14

Well, there you go. Yeah. And then so we went to the stores, like, we went to Whole Foods and we couldn’t find anything that we saw a lot of hard seltzers. So we said to ourselves, what is the hard seltzer like? Is it gin based?

Is it vodka based? What is going on? Right. So we realized that the hard seltzer is actually made from malt. And malt is actually kind of a leftover ingredient.

Once you’ve done making the beer, you have leftover ingredients. So brilliant marketing play where they reposition something that’s basically of no value into the bases of a new, completely brand new category. So we, you know, we’re so geeked out and tequila. And if you’re going to drink tequila, I’m sure you’re probably the same. Like for me, if I’m going to enjoy tequila, I wouldn’t just drink anything, I would drink something of quality.

And so we couldn’t find anything in the, you know, I we couldn’t find anything in the market that actually was made with very clean and, you know, premium tequila. So if you know tequila, the back of the bottle usually has a four digit code. And that’s called a nom nom nom number. And that is a number assigned by the Mexican government. They have a branch called CRT that just governs agave and tequila, believe it or not.

And then they assign you this four digit ID that tells you where the tequila comes from. So none of the Rtds are ready to drink canned drinks in the market with tequila. Well, now maybe there’s a couple. But when we started, no one actually had that four digit number. We’re the first one to actually feature that, because we actually use very premium blanco tequila to make this product.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 26:56

What’s what’s your favorite flavor?

Alice Chen: 26:59

My favorite is actually Tamarindo because I like that kind of sour, tangy taste. And so that’s my favorite. That’s a crowd flavor favorite as well. I mean, a lot of people really like they like guava spice. If you scroll to the left.

Yeah. So guava spice is kind of a popular favorite. Our mint is a great chaser. The guys seem to really like elements really light as my second favorite. Yeah.

So I mean all eight flavors are really, really good. And then they’re actually available in Whole Foods in Southern California.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 27:32

Unbelievable. And what about the so the we’ll talk about, you know, CPG. We have the private equity and then talk about software for a second. Myefo.

Alice Chen: 27:42

Yeah. So it’s interesting because even though it looks like my portfolio is such a wide range, I mean, I am not necessarily a founder of these companies. Some of these companies are. I’m just an investor. So this one, the fintech company, I am a co-founder.

And this is where I, I think I talked about how I exited my second business, which is a mergers and acquisitions boutique firm, to PricewaterhouseCoopers in Vancouver. So I went there and hung out there as a senior deals counsel for two years. And I would say probably my my biggest gain over there was meeting my co-founder of Myefo, Simran. So Simran is an accountant by training. She was kind of pegged as a next generation successor to the family office practice, and so her job is to advise family offices.

Like in Vancouver. We have family offices like Chip Wilson from Lululemon. You know, these different people and. Yeah. So yeah.

So that’s Simran and and so she always had this like knowledge in her head about how family offices actually invested or how they operated. And so, you know, at some point we decided to leave the mothership and to actually do our own multi-family office to set it up. And so we did. And then a lot of clients followed us. And as we were doing the service deliveries, we realized that everything was so zero tech, like low tech to zero tech.

We’re talking about managing billions of dollars, hundreds of millions of dollars on Excel spreadsheet. And we’re always dealing with lacking a document here, lacking document there, you know? So none of that was actually technology forward. So we decided to actually build everything and kind of transform the IP that Simran has on family office into a software. And so that was the beginning of my myefo.

I have since operationally exited Myefo as a co-founder, but you know the team is doing great. I’m really proud of my co-founder and the team.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 29:46

It sounds like two. There’s advisers of family offices that use the software to correct. Yeah.

Alice Chen: 29:53

Now. Yeah. So not not only do they license the software to family offices, they also license software to advisory firms.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 30:01

I’m wondering yeah, this is fascinating. And I encourage people, anyone who’s interested where we’re at. If you are listening, we’re at Alice Chen companies.com. There’s portfolio we’ve been on poking around Pender Hastings Capital than some of the other sites here that she has on here. But you know I’m curious going back to your background because you started as an attorney and I’m wondering, you know, what you saw some of the mistakes people were making in, in the M&A space, because I’m sure you saw a lot of different things throughout your early career, too?

Alice Chen: 30:41

Yes. I mean, you know, I saw a lot of companies suffer because of their decisions on timing. So sometimes, you know, when you look at a unicorn exit, really the stars have to line up like the the people, the company, the products, the timing, the timing has to be there. So like, for example, in in the beverage space, there was a company called nude. So nude was the first vodka based seltzer.

This is Canadian company based in Vancouver. And it was a huge thing, I would say ten years ago, 15 years ago, it was a really huge thing. And I haven’t fact checked this, but I think the rumor goes that right before Covid, they were actually offered to be bought for 150 million, and they turned it down because they were at their peak, you know, and then they. Exactly. And then they wanted to see how much more they can grow the brand and shoot for that much bigger exit.

Maybe the offer. I have no idea. This is not disclosed. But let’s say if the offer to buy was 150 million, maybe that thought was too low, so they turned it down. So then years later, they eventually sold, but they only sold for about 10 or 11 million and mostly to pay for debt, you know.

So. And the shareholders, the equity shareholders, actually the investors didn’t get any, didn’t make any money on this deal. And so I think in a lot of the ventures and this is what I’ve seen as a lawyer, what I’ve seen as a founder as well, it’s well, one, you have to have the right market. Another thing you’d have to have is the right team, the right partners, and then you have to have the right timing. So if you’re the right product but the wrong time, it’s not going to work.

Right. Because seltzer water is not a new thing like we’ve had that like 30, 40 years ago. There are some brands that you, I’m sure you’ve seen in the stores, but they didn’t pop because it wasn’t like it wasn’t the right time. Like recently, this functional beverage brand Poppy exited for a billion, right?

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 32:52

So how much do they exit for?

Alice Chen: 32:54

I think $1 billion, I’m pretty sure. Yeah. So that would be an example of okay, the right kind of product for the right kind of market at the right time, but you can’t really engineer that. And and that’s I would say probably one of the lessons I’ve learned is that you can’t really engineer such a unicorn exit. You have to just work on something that you are naturally drawn to and you’re passionate about.

And then you you wait for the market to kind of mature into, into circumstances that facilitate such an exit. Right. So for example Nvidia you know Jensen Huang. He talks about this all the time, like when he started with the idea of making GPUs 30 years ago. That was not a thing, right?

But I mean, could he have forecasted that it was going to become the company it is today? He couldn’t because OpenAI wasn’t a thing. You know, AI computing wasn’t a thing. And so I think the lessons from what I’ve seen and from my own experiences is that it’s very important as a founder to just really focus on what really calls you and what really intrigues you. So you go to work happy every day.

So whether you’re making two more zeros, three more zeros or or no zeros, you want to be happy doing that. And if you can get to that place, then I think you’re in the right business.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 34:19

I remember no thanks for sharing that. There was someone posted on the poppy thing and they showed the before and after packaging. It was probably a marketing, you know, company that does branding and stuff, but they’re saying the reason they, you know, one of the reasons they were so successful. You look at their previous, like branding and then their current, you know, obviously everything’s popping and everything like that. The same thing.

People talk about liquid death. I don’t know if you’ve had that. Yeah. It’s like it’s, you know, carbonated water. But they’ve done a great job marketing and and doing that.

So I remember I had rant to your exact point, Rand Fishkin on who started SEO Moz, who he now runs Sparktoro, but he talks about they were having these just huge clips of growth, and they got offered a large sum of money from HubSpot. And with stock, I don’t remember what the amount was, but it was a lot because the stock was worth a lot. And he turned it down because like, no, it’s not enough because we’re growing at this clip and similar story to what you just what you just told happened. So I don’t know what the the lesson is, but I guess if you get a good offer, consider it.

Alice Chen: 35:36

I mean, if I. Yeah. I mean, if I were the person getting off, I would take it.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 35:40

Yeah. I do want to talk. First of all, thanks for sharing that. I do want to talk about something as near and dear to my heart and yours, which is health. Okay.

Because, like, all this stuff I feel like isn’t possible unless we’re feeling good, we’re healthy, we’re vibrant, and we can have the energy to do this. And I’d love to hear you have a cool morning routine if you can talk a little bit about that.

Alice Chen: 36:07

Yes. Yeah. So I’m totally with you. I think, you know, if you have a good foundation, a really calm nervous system that’s really the source of all good decision makings, right? So I do a lot.

I invest a lot, I do a lot, invest a lot of time and money on making sure I’m always in a very good state. So I have a morning routine that’s evolving. And I actually keep a score sheet. I’m looking at it right now. So every morning I wake up with a gratitude practice.

So three things I’m grateful for could be super simple things, but it’s just a good way to start tuning your brain’s frequency. And then I do a second thing, which is called lofty questions. So this is an exercise to transform your identity. So for example, if I want to I don’t know lift heavier weights, you know, in the next couple of months. But I’m not yet at that level.

I would say to myself or ask myself this lofty, lofty question like, why am I? Why am I such a badass weightlifter? So you can design these questions. They’re meant to trick your brain into believing that you’re the best version of yourself. So it’s an identity transformation exercise.

It actually works really well. And then I have been doing this is just in the last couple of weeks. I, you know, I kind of activated a new coach and she has a hypnotherapy background. So she gave me something called light shield meditation. So it’s a meditation that’s only three minutes and I do it and basically visualize a shield of light.

And that helps me create an energetic boundary between, you know, myself and the, you know, the person or the situation I’m interacting with. And so it keeps me grounded. So you’re not rattled, right. And and then I have a device called Lumen. So Lumen device actually measures carb versus fat burn.

And so I do it first in the morning before I have anything before I eat anything. And that gives me a sense of really how much carb I’m eating. Right. So unfortunately I have a bad habit at night of eating ice cream while watching Netflix. And so typically I wake up with Lumen score of three, which is middle of the road.

You know, like if I wake up at five, that’s a complete car burn that I know that I really screwed up my diet, right. But if I wake up with 1 or 2 bad burn, I know I’m in good shape, so it helps me measure and also moderate my eating habits. And then I have some sort of movement. So I work out with a trainer on zoom twice a week. I go to the gym and work out with trainer.

They’re lifting heavier weights. Another time during the week I would do yoga classes or go for a hike with my dog or do some, you know, stretching or yoga on my own. So I try to do some sort of movement because I think we’re always as entrepreneurs and investors, we’re always in our head. It’s important to kind of get grounded into your body. So movement is very important.

And then usually when I’m getting ready, like when I’m in the shower, when I’m getting ready, I listen to a podcast of some sort. Right. And that just helps me again tune my brain frequency. And then before I start work at my desk, I typically will take three five minutes to really focus, figure out, write down like the three things I must accomplish that day that will move the needle. And I do it at the beginning of the week as well to figure out my my weekly priority.

Yeah. So all of that.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 39:33

What do you have a specific diet or vitamin regimen that you follow?

Alice Chen: 39:37

I take a lot of supplements and I’m always experimenting. So right now my regimen has to do with maintaining and optimize gut health. Like it’s taken me a couple of years to actually get to that optimized level of gut health. So I take three different kinds of probiotics. I kind of rotate, and sometimes I’ll take two, two brands at the same time.

I have different adaptogenic supplements I take for, you know, focus. There’s one actually promotes oxytocin. So I can sometimes I take it before networking function, you know, so so you, you like, you know, more people you meet and and you can take relaxing ones too. Like I have one called calm. Right.

And I typically don’t have sleep problems. I sleep.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:27

That’s a popular one. I’ve seen that. Yeah.

Alice Chen: 40:29

You’ve seen that. Okay. Yeah. First person’s, first person’s I really.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:33

We have the gummies at our house. The calm gummies. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Alice Chen: 40:37

Yes. Yes. Yeah. So, yeah. So I, I take a lot of those, I take magnesium, I take a greens gummies.

Right now it’s called greens. So it’s basically all kinds of vitamins and minerals. And one I probably take too many. I’m taking creatine gummies. I think my my body I’ve been treating it like a lab.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 40:59

I do like creatine gummies. But I then got the naked creatine, which is just the powder, and I put it in cereal. Like, I like the Magic Spoon cereal or the three three wishes cereal, which is kind of a grain free version. So those are those are good ones. No.

Those are this is very interesting. What about from a protein perspective. What do you do.

Alice Chen: 41:24

Yeah. So I’m trying to eat more protein. So recently I’ve been experimenting with this muesli overnight muesli mix called hollows h o l o s, which is actually pretty good. They give you a jar and then they give you different flavours and you just have to pour milk. I’m typically using some type of plant based milk, so that gives me 20g of protein.

Protein shakes sometimes I’ll make I mean I like meat, I like eating steak. I like eating all kinds of animal protein, so I don’t shy away from that. I will do some plant proteins like tofu as well. Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 42:00

I love it. Alice, I love to hear your favorite resources. First of all, thanks for sharing your journey. This is the last question, but I do want to encourage people to check out AliceChencompanies.com and also you know, check out Pender Hastings which is phcfunds.com.

You can check it out. So you know if you heard that what they’re looking for Maybe at this time they’ve already found general partner, or maybe looking for more, but contact them if you know someone or if you are looking to invest and you fit those criteria we mentioned as well. But I’d love to hear your favorite resources. It could be podcasts, audible books, books. What are some of your favorites?

Alice Chen: 42:47

You know what? Like right now I’m super geeked out on AI, so my my best friend is GPT and I don’t seem to do anything without GPT. It’s with me when I’m creating a recipe for dinner. It’s with me when I’m working on work during the day, it’s with me when I’m planning my travels. So it’s just almost like a second brain.

I don’t know how I existed before, and now I’m actually kind of doing a deep dive into different AI tools out there.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:15

And what are some of your favorites?

Alice Chen: 43:18

Yeah, I mean, right now I’m just kind of looking at the common ones, right? So digging into the different ones. But yeah, I mean, I was just on a meeting a couple hours ago. Someone recommended Tripit for travel planning. I haven’t used it.

Opus Pro. Apparently it’s some sort of workflow for marketing or social media editing, so I’d love to check that out. Yeah, I think there’s a lot out there and there’s definitely a lot of opportunities in AI. So definitely very geeked out and, you know, working with it every day.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 43:52

And you mentioned podcasts. You listen to podcasts a lot. What are some of your favorites?

Alice Chen: 43:57

So right now I’m studying from this author. His name is David Gillham. So he’s actually.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:04

I know David.

Alice Chen: 44:05

Oh, you know David. He’s a teacher. Yeah.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 44:08

So yeah, he started Mary Ruth. Yes. Mary Ruth Organics and highly successful company. Yeah. Company.

But yeah I know he teaches. He’s big into Kabbalah and teaches. I mean, I don’t know how many like when I met him he said that, but he’s got a huge following on the Kabbalah front.

Alice Chen: 44:28

Yes. Yeah. So. And on the business front too. So yeah.

So I’ve been listening to his podcast last couple of months. Every morning. And so I feel I know him too. And I, I’m a student of Masterclass app and Mindvalley. So big fan of Vishen who’s the founder of Mindvalley.

He curates really amazing events with different authors on there. Yeah. I’m just always, you know, looking for for great podcasts and. Yeah, and thank you for this opportunity. I’ll be sure to tune in to.

Dr. Jeremy Weisz: 45:01

I love it. Alice. Thank you everyone. Check out alicechencompanies.com to learn more. And we’ll see you next time.

Alice, thanks so much.

Alice Chen: 45:09

Thank you.

Outro: 45:10

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