Hello there,
Welcome to the best of the Alts Community.
Stefan and I are in Southeast Asia this week (Hong Kong, Thailand & Malaysia), so we’ve got a short update.
Performance update:
This week:
- Volleyball deal is back on
- Pictures from our first Altea Flight Nights
- You can invest in our SPVs with a self-directed IRA
- Official warning for FranShares
Let’s go 🚀
Table of Contents
Live Deals
🏐 Sport I: Pro Women’s Volleyball SPV
Good news: You may recall in January we collected interest for a potential investment in a professional women’s volleyball team.
Demand was through the roof. $5.3 million in interest from 115 investors — one of the highest we’ve ever seen. The sponsor, however, preferred that investors go directly through them, with a $100,000 minimum investment.
Today, after much negotiation, I’m happy to report that we have received approval to let Altea members invest through Sport I — our very first sports-related SPV.
This is still a secretive, sensitive deal with a few steps we must honor:
- Express interest if you haven’t already
- We will send you an NDA to sign
- From there you’ll be added to the Sport I space, where we will coordinate investments.
If you have already expressed interest in this deal, Stefan will be in touch very shortly.
It’s not every day you get to invest in a pro women’s volleyball team! We are very excited for this one. 🤾♀️
Points and tags: Applied ✅
Congrats to the 28 investors committed to Whisky I and Maritime I!
We are excited that both deals are moving forward, and points and tags have been applied to those who invested. ✅
Tags are for showing off your investments, but points get you all sorts of great stuff in our Rewards Program.
With these new investments, a whole bunch of you are about to get shipped some high quality gifts.
Keep an eye out for an email from Stefan shortly.
👋 New Members
Welcome to the 35 new members since last week 👋
A few notable members..
🇵🇹 Keely Capel is the founder of Private Luxury Collection, a private real estate advisory based in Portugal.
She works with international clients operating at the top end of the market — primarily on discreet acquisitions, off-market opportunities, and legacy assets that rarely, if ever, reach public platforms.
🇨🇭Francis Osih is half-Swiss half-Cameroonian with a deep and stubborn passion for location-based applications.
He is the founder of Bwendi.com — the contextual geocoding engine he’s been looking for his whole professional life. It’s similar to What3Words, but the API does a lot more.
🇦🇹 Laszlo Bihary is a web wizard & blockchain buff with 24 years of tech wizardry. He likes experimenting with modern stacks like Next.js and deploying fast prototypes, while playing around with things like tokens, NFTs, and social protocols.
💬 New Discussions
- Blackstone made their first sports investment with a stake in Royal Challengers Bengaluru, the reigning IPL cricket champions.
- Our friends at Forward Inheritance have developed a platform for managing family inheritance.
- Brian Flaherty wrote a nice piece on The Big Music Royalty Roll-up
- We’ve partnered with AltoIRA to make Whisky I available to folks who’d like to invest via SDIRA.
💡 Top Comments
“Cricket is a great angle because it seems the sports hobbys are really geared to the big American sports but there are lots of other sports that don’t have any ecosystems.” - Michael P. on cricket sports cards
“Not surprised – the commercial quantum of cricket is much bigger than we think in the US. IPL represents the “NFL” of cricket, but Associate nations are similar to Italian soccer – extremely undervalued and lots of room to grow! I love talking about this stuff.” – Omar Kholkhar on Blackstone’s cricket investment
🥂 NYC Flight Night Recap + Pics
Tequila Masterclass at NYC Penthouse
Last week in New York City we launched Altea Flight Nights: An intimate tequila tasting and masterclass led by our good friend Miguel Ortiz of House of Rare.
Held at a luxurious penthouse suite at Manhattan’s Beekman Tower, this was a night to remember.
Flight Night #1 set a high bar.
More cities to come!
🗳️ New Poll Results
Results are in from last week’s Sip It or Flip It poll:
55% of you stated you’d flip the bottle of Genesis PX.
NOTE FROM STEFAN:
“You’re nuts! There are a million ways to make $400 or whatever. There is only one batch of of Genesis PX. You’d be insane not to try this stuff. One sip and you’ll see why.”
Wanna taste the Genesis PX for yourself?
⚠️ New Warning
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Altea member Bob McRae posted an official warning about the firm FranShares — and is asking your help if you’re involved with them.
You may have seen this post from a few weeks ago: FranShares shutting down at the end of March
Here’s where things stand today
What was proposed vs delivered
- The fund’s thesis was 30 SMT territories across 5 states and 25 TMAD locations across 4 metros.
- What materialized was one SMT truck in New Orleans — not even an original target market — which has since been shut down, plus one TMAD location.
FranShares is closing
- Kenny Rose announced FranShares is winding down at the end of March 2026, that the SMT assets would be rolled into TMAD, and that management of the fund would transfer to Marlin McClure, who independently operates the Teriyaki Madness business.
- In direct conversations with Marlin, he has stated he does not want the fund manager role, and does not support the plan to roll SMT proceeds into TMAD.
- As of April 2, Marlin has still not heard from Kenny, and has received calls and/or emails from other TNT investors with similar concerns.
Financial transparency — zero
- No audited or unaudited financial statements, no cap table, no NAV per share, and no accounting of funds raised vs. deployed has ever been provided to investors.
- The Reg A offering was withdrawn in May 2022; Reg D carries no SEC reporting obligations. There is no public financial data on this fund anywhere.
- Kenny Rose has not responded substantively to multiple written requests for financial disclosures, governance clarity, and formal objections to the SMT-to-TMAD asset transfer and the conflicted manager appointment.
Share ownership records in question
- Ownership was transferred from Colonial Stock Transfer to Securitize, then to FranShares itself — the last transfer done without notifying investors.
- The Securitize portal shows a $0 balance. I currently have no independent third-party verification of my shares.
Tax compliance gaps
- TNT is a C-corp (1099-DIVs, not K-1s). No distributions were ever made and no tax documentation has been provided.
- He spoke with the firm who filed the 2023 taxes and he indicated they did not file the 2024 taxes. It’s unclear whether the fund’s own corporate returns are current.
⚠️ What to do next
A private space for coordination
We have created a private, invite-only space to discuss the situation confidentially and share verified information.
If you have been affected by FranShares, feel free to reach out to Bob.
We’ll invite you to the private space and coordinate from there
See you next week, Wyatt
