Future-Proofing Family Offices - The Case for Asset Allocation

[Music] so um time is short so we'll move quickly but future proofing of family offices so I would say to the audience um if you've come to listen about tax planning wealth transfer then you're at the wrong stage so go somewhere else um my guest really requires little introduction I dropped out a University at the age of 20 has founded three unicorns himself is a self-confessed investor in mental research whose stated aim is to shape the next human agenda where technology empowers people to be living longer healthier and happier lives so with that Christian welcome so there are four key areas I think you're looking at at the moment um and they sit around mental health longevity fintech and Krypto um and then also future Tech but where should we go first first I mean I think um is longevity a good area really whatever you want like whatever people want but I think longevity which is actually the let's say theme which brought us originally to Abu Dhabi that was sort of the first uh uh topic we discussed with adgm and adio is what interests everybody because like hopefully like what does everybody here in the room want you want to be happy you want to be healthy and once you're happy and healthy you want to live very long so one of our core investment topics and actually we started several big companies ourselves uh is the topic of longevity which means developing medical drugs so really new drugs which are not on the market yet to push both human life expectancy in terms of time so that we live longer but obviously don't want to live longer in a very frail state so it's also how to live sort of in a good State like so Health span uh and lifespan and what is very interesting I don't know because a lot of people here talk about taxes and that the environment here is amazing which is all true but also what we were very very positively surprised is that Abu Dhabi also is about to become a real hub for biotech drug development so you have really good universities here you have really good clinics here biotech in my family office is sort of as you said it was actually the first company I started with 19 was a biotech company um so it's one of our core if not the number one sort of theme within our family office so and we realized very pleasantly surprised that Abu Dhabi has the infrastructure to really move biotech companies here to do research on the ground to do FDA clinical studies and all of that so that's one of our big sort of focuses is to bring some of our biotech companies here on the ground and Longevity is sort of the most important theme we're pushing and is it easy to Source those ideas how do they present themselves well mainly this is the ideas coming out of University so um so we we work with universities globally um to find sort of or have ideas for new medical drugs and then you embark on sort of the development Journey okay and then um moving it back then slightly if we were to talk a bit about you know where where life is at different levels and so on your views around the whole mental health and mental health research okay me my my core thing is like as an entrepreneur and investor you always want to find um markets which ideally you serve meaning the dream for an investor is always a so-called Tam total addressable Market of 100% of the world population yeah this is what when I go back what I said at the beginning is like the really one thing every human being wants is being happy and healthy so from my point of view doing work or delivering at the end so to say products in our case Medical Treatments for both mental health making people happy and Longevity making people live longer is sort of the biggest Market you can dream of yeah coming to mental health sort of the um the sad part of the of the future we're going into is that unfortunately meaning I very optimistic for the next 10 20 years but I also think actually in a good way at the end but like the next 10 20 years going to be beyond crazy in terms of technological innovation I think we all don't really have a full feeling yet or can't really grasp how much the world will change because of AI because of Robotics not because meaning AI is maybe the the single most important technology ology we sort of advancing but also as as humans but like but also like all these Technologies sort of work together and will create the world which is completely different from the one we used to to have so I personally I'm very excited about that I'm also an eternal optimist so I think net that future will be great but also if you look at how our mind functions unfortunately that sort of change is is really making a lot of people sick mentally in terms of they can't cope with it because like actually our brain is wired or we're longing for um for not change like if you look at people 200 years ago actually even hundred years ago the world they were born into and the world they left when they died was exactly the same there was Zero change sure now the world on January first is not the same that on December the 31st and it's just going to get faster so coming to mental health unfortunately if you look at the numbers mental health or mental health issues like depression anxiety addiction of drugs and stuff like that is unfortunately already today the number one biggest problem in the healthcare system in every country here in the US in Europe yeah and we are like I'm very proud of that we're like the biggest investor global in various companies in developing new drugs medical drugs for U curing depression anxiety addiction and all of that so um I want to move on somewhere else but just quickly what are we doing about that socially what are governments doing around that how does that agenda fit with this change we see on an ongoing basis actually I think they not really you mean mental health yes yeah it's just starting that they sort of realize that how big the problem's going to be um and it's it's not so easy I mean I have very like because it's not like it's not you cannot say oh we're just spending more money on it because it's not a money question so at the very end my personal view why what people need if if you leave now medical side aside meaning again we're doing medical drug development but if you look what people really need and actually the Middle East I think has some very good sort of foundations for that what people really need to be mentally healthy or to stay mentally healthy in a crazy time and sorry for that cheesy remark but that's what it is yeah I think you lead uh you need Faith you need purpose and love so my my mental model of our brain is aside of drug development is like if you look at it I believe our brain has an immune system as our body has yeah so because actually everybody of us here in the room will be confronted at some point in their life with something very bad if life goes normal your parents gonna die before you which is a very significant negative effect on your life if if unfortunately everybody of us going to have a a difficult difficult time in in their job whatever so life is not a a linear development there must be a reason why some people go through these adversities and still are fine and why some people and by the way why more and more people slide into depression anxiety and addiction whatever so so my belief is we have this mental health immune system and it consists of as I said Faith purpose and love Faith because I believe humans are wired I don't want to make the pitch that God exists which I personally believe but like but like at least what I can tell you as a scientist that humans seem to be wired to meet a transcendental element in their life yeah otherwise they more prone to developmental house STS second humans need a purpose we need to wake up in the morning and know what our place in society is and that we have a value and third the most important one I think we need love we need family and friends the problem is in that world I just described of technological innovation all these three things face sort of believe in some higher being purpose and and family ties are actually extremely on the decline and the worst one is actually purpose because take the taxi driver like even if the taxi driver doesn't understand AI somehow he or she knows deep down I think the ordinary people on the street are much smarter than we think they they might not be able to explain AI but they know they're not going to drive the car years yeah and I think so many people know deep down that in the world which we all of here are creating they might not have a place at least not at the first sight yeah so but that lack of purpose combined with a decline in faith combined with a decline in family values whatever I think is the underlying driver for that huge Mental Health crisis we seeing which we trying a little bit to combat with uh with uh new mental health drugs okay good um fintech and crypto let's let's start with crypto very very relevant for us here um from a banking perspective you know large concerns about being disintermediated bringing cost down massively you know now is a value choice you know is it a substitute to to gold what's your view where do we sit on crypto okay jumping from Life Science to our other big sector crypto I love it like allocation Christian allocation exactly I think as a family of is going to our big topic of the of the panel future proving I think because the world changes so much you have to sit down and think for yourself all over here like what do you believe how the future looks in 10 years from now yeah there going to be a lot of volatility but I think if you have a mental framework where the future is in 10 years then you can start sort of structuring what I doing for myself family office in a way that hopefully we make a lot of money uh and are still relevant in 10 years from now so I'm a super bullish person on especially Bitcoin I I would say I would want to say cryptocurrencies because there's a lot of out there yeah but Bitcoin uh is for me very simplified said a replacement for gold so and gold by the way has no value except or more less there is a tiny bit of a an industrial value and a tiny bit of a of a jewelry value but the main value of of gold is that humans some thousand years ago decided uh that gold is a is a store of value and humans always need a store of value because UAE aside yeah who has a very good government but most governments over time prove to be dicks yeah and this is why people want to have an escape yeah this is why they go in Gold this is why they want to escape in one way or another their government yeah or at least their monetary system yeah and if you look at Bitcoin it's just the smarter sort of way or the smarter thing for gold so the the big question is if you want to decide for yourself do you want to be MCO or not is do you believe if the younger generation sort of has taken over has accepted that that sort of use case of Bitcoin as a store of value I believe that among my friends who are younger than 30 most of them have Bitcoin none of them has gold yeah so it's a very so and if that's the case Bitcoin should be the most successful one of the most successful Assets in the next 10 years and then how does that uh translate to the whole fintech environment well with Bitcoin and then the whole blockchain as you said you have a whole sort of restructuring of traditional banking but even some older fintechs might get disrupted by the next sort of wave of let's say decentralized Finance which by the way does work like one remark like the whole crypto industry over the last 18 months went to a lot of problems yeah if you think like there was the the first thing was I think May last year uh this this three era what the name was hedge fund went down then Luna went down then FTX went down and now binance didn't went down but binance has some sort of leadership changes and some stuff so if the same thing would have happened in the traditional Finance industry it's it's similar to Leman Brothers going down but then JP Morgan going down and all of that yeah the entire world would have collapsed and you have to give it to the crypto industry because of the decentralizations nobody was crying for oh the government shall rescue us yeah uh there was no systematic problem yes Bitcoin went down now Bitcoin is going up again but the industry has proven itself remarkable resilient uh over the over the last 180 months which is a proof for me that the centralized Finance is actually the much better way than centralized Finance okay quickly we're close to time but congratulations excellent that you're here in Abad Dhabi now how does this all tie back I know you touched on it earlier on to Abad Dhabi and the ecosystem we have here and the growth you know well so first of all I'm really happy to be here because like many many said it before there is the the Baseline which is already great yeah people like me don't like taxes taxes are evil yeah so the lower taxes the better yeah so second quality of life is amazing third the regulator is very welcome like adgm big shout out yeah that was all super smooth so I think that's the Baseline then for our business especially as I said remarkably how far uh ahead or far or or well done sort of the the science infrastructure is in the UAE with clinics with uh uh with universities whatever so we can do real biotech sort of science on the ground the same the UAE is very friendly and open to cryptocurrency so for us it's sort of the dream setup because a sort of the foundation is right but then also for the themes we are looking at the most yeah the UAE and especially Abu Dhabi is really forward looking fantastic um well listen I think you'll all agree with me it's far more interesting than private Equity but please thank my guest Christian for joining us today thank you very much thank you Christian thank you very much thank you thanks 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