Hello there,
Welcome to the best of the Altea Community.
This week:
Let’s go
Table of Contents
New Members
Welcome to the 27 new members this week
A few notable members..
️ Kelly Araja is a podcast producer based in Sydney, and she’s the editor behind our recent Persimmon Farm Q&A with Miguel Basomba.
She had fun with that one and learned a lot along the way, and she’s got more of these in the pipeline, so keep an eye out.
Abderrahmane built TCGIndex, a market-data platform that tracks the secondary market for all 14 major trading card games at the set level, which no one else does. Think of it as a Bloomberg-lite for cards.
He came in with a sharp opening data point for anyone eyeing cards as an alt asset (more on that in Discussions below).
Altea SPV Updates
Farmland I docs going out this week
Thanks to everyone who expressed interest in Farmland I.
We’re gathering final commitments. Investment docs go out this week.
Want to get in last-minute? Express interest ASAP or smash reply. Doors are closing on this one.
Tip: Use your IRA to fund this deal
Farmland I is about as long-term as investing gets. It’s a 22-year hold.
If you’re in the US, that makes it a natural fit for a self-directed IRA. You can put this investment into a retirement fund, and let earnings grow tax-advantaged along the way.
Don’t have an SDIRA yet?
We’ve partnered with two companies to make it easy. Both give your discounted fees.
- IRA Financial: SDIRAs, Checkbook IRAs, Solo 401(k)s, and Self-Directed HSAs. Use code ALTS for $100 off your first year of fees on any account. (Questions? Talk to John Maas)
- Alto IRA: An IRA platform purpose-built for alternatives. Altea members like you get 50% off account fees for the first year. (Questions? Talk to Kacie Connors)
New Events
LA Event: Creative Financing in the Creator Economy (Oct 6)
Creators are building real businesses now — with real revenue, real audiences, and predictable revenue streams.
And a whole new private financing layer is emerging to fund them: advances, revenue-share deals, credit lines, catalog loans, film gap financing.
We’re bringing together the people building that layer for an evening of straight talk on how it works — where the debt & equity opportunities are, how deals get structured, and what it looks like from both sides of the table.
Expert Speakers
Joining our CEO Stefan von Imhof will be a lineup of some of the most active lenders and investors in the creator economy.
These three people are writing the checks, building the tools, and structuring the deals:
Josh Stein — Founder & CEO, Attention Capital
A former leveraged-finance banker and lawyer turned media operator (VICE, Univision), Josh Stein now originates senior secured loans to creators, media, and sports businesses at Attention Capital. His thesis in a line: audiences are the new collateral, and he built the platform to underwrite them.
Sam White — Co-Head of U.S., Copyright Capital
Fifteen years structuring creator deals across WME, Snap, and partnerships with the likes of MrBeast. Sam White now leads U.S. expansion at Copyright Capital, building financing that fits how creator businesses actually earn — across platforms, and constantly changing.
Corey Livingston — Co-Founder & CEO, Splitz
An investment banker and music-industry operator turned founder, Corey Livingston is building Splitz — the fintech layer that helps creators track their work, revenue, and rights in one place. It’s the tooling side of the same equation.
The essentials
- Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2026
- Time: Late afternoon into the evening, dinner to follow (exact timing to come)
- Location: Los Angeles — venue being finalized (a creator economy space; exact address to confirmed guests)
- Price: Free for paying Altea members (use code ALTEA), $50 for guests and everyone else. Includes catered food & drinks.
- Capacity: 15-20 people max
Anyone can bring a guest — a colleague, a friend, someone you’d like to introduce to the community.
RSVP early to hold a spot.
This is an early RSVP so we can size the room properly. The date is locked in. Other details, including the venue, will follow shortly.
If you’re in LA and interested in creator economy financing and investing, you don’t want to miss this.
Boston Meetup (Sep 14)
On Sep 14, join me, Stefan, and Chris Daniels from Launch Film Finance our hosting our first ever Boston meetup.
This will be a casual (and probably chowder-filled) evening discussing alternative assets — with a focus on investing in Hollywood bridge loans
We’re in town for one night only, and we’re making it count.
The focus: Film bridge lending
There are only a handful of folks who know this space inside and out, and Chris Daniels is one of them.
Expect in-depth conversations about how these deals actually get put together, how the downside is protected, and why film gap financing is arguably the most underrated alternative asset class in the world.
Details
- Date: Monday, September 14, 2026.
- Time: Early evening — roughly 6:00pm to 9:00pm.
- Location: Boston, MA — venue being finalized, exact address shared with confirmed attendees.
- Capacity: 8-10. This is a meaningful dinner, not a huge event.
- Price: Free for Altea Paid members. $50 for everyone else. Includes all food and drinks.
- Guests: Feel free to bring someone who’d enjoy the room. Colleagues, friends, and fellow investors are welcome.
RSVP early to hold a spot.
This is an early RSVP so we can size the room properly. The date is locked in. Other details, including the venue, will follow shortly.
If you’re in Boston and are interested in alternative investing, you don’t want to miss this.
1 spot left!
In planning..
New York, Sep 16
- Planning an event in Brooklyn on Wed, Sep 16
- Stefan and I will both be there
New Discussions
The US just banned foreign-made humanoid robots
Stefan’s post on the Trump administration’s ban on Chinese humanoid robots kicked off a discussion on protectionism, the EV parallel, and a few field reports from the road.
“I’m in China now for 30 days and blown away on how advanced it’s become since my last visit. Eveything is just ultra efficient and even the supposed shitbox EVs make for a good ride share journey. Lots of solid models besides BYD…
Currently have mixed feelings about robots. The rude cleaning robot at my hotel hogged the elevator by standing in the middle and then shoved me off to clean floor 10. It’s getting there but also a reality check for the potential of robots gone wrong” — Bryan Cooley
Pokémon isn’t the trade everyone thinks it is
New member Abderrahmane introduced TCGIndex, which tracks the secondary market across all 14 major trading card games — with a counterintuitive finding.
“If you rank the 14 games by 90-day market movement, Pokémon, the name everyone assumes is the best buy, is only the 8th fastest-growing (+8.7%).
The real outperformers are niche and anime-driven games: Sorcery +43%, Lorcana +37%, Dragon Ball Super +34%, One Piece +20%. The broader point: it’s not one market, it’s fourteen, and they don’t move together.”
Airtable is selling to Bending Spoons for $1.28B
The WhatsApp space dug into Airtable’s sale ($1.4B raised across six rounds, last valued at $11.6B in 2021) and what the Bending Spoons playbook means for anyone who relies on the product.
“My question would be: Why in the world do you have to raise 1.4bn USD over 6 rounds to build airtable? 😉 selling for >1bn should be a good outcome for a company like this, but not with this financing history”
What comes after the squishy dumplings?
A Labubu-successor thread shifted from toxic-filling class-action jokes to the economics of fad toys and where the next trend comes from.
“Reissuing toy lines from the 80s. Kidults would lap them up for nostalgic reasons… Or as an excuse for buying them for their kids “ — Peter Ng
New Space: AI Managed Finance
We’ve spun off a new space for members experimenting with AI-managed investing. Practitioner-level stuff, not hype.
It kicked off with Mandar Mirashi sharing a detailed, hands-on rundown of the tools he’s actually running: ChatGPT-based Autopilot for agentic trading (via Public.com), and Rallies for portfolio analysis and account aggregation.
He walked through how he made the jump from analysis to letting an agent manage a real (small, isolated) pot of money, what the subscriptions cost, and where the friction shows up.
“When gold rallied in December, silver outperformed by a wide margin. I pasted minute-level charts into the AI and asked when to enter, how to size a trailing stop, and when to exit — then made the trades manually based on my own risk tolerance. Over that Dec/Jan window, silver ripped and I saw a ~40% return.” — Mandar Mirashi
If you’re curious about where AI fits into a real investing workflow, this is the place to be.
You can find this new group under the Altea Community in WhatsApp
Or scan this QR code:
New Public Deal
⚽ Invest in the IP behind an official FC Barcelona VR experience
At our recent Barcelona meetup, Stefan met Jordi van Even, founder of Rooftop Immersive, an extended-reality experience studio.
In VR, the living room has been a graveyard for investor capital. But location-based experiences are a different story — the Las Vegas Sphere and Sandbox VR have shown immersive entertainment works at scale.
Rooftop is building one attached to one of soccer’s biggest brands: FC Barcelona. Its flagship experience, A Day in the Life Of, puts fans in the boots of a new Barça player — walking the tunnel, hearing the roar, scoring the winner. That’s the proof of concept; the business is the platform itself: IP and tech that can be licensed to other clubs and venues.
This is the proof of concept, but the business is the platform itself: the IP and tech that can be licensed to other clubs and venues.
Notes
- Commitment from Barça Vision. Rooftop will get full access to the club, players, stadium and the FC Barcelona brand.
- Winter ’26 launch. Production has started and Rooftop is in the testing phase as we speak.
- Help with scale. FC Barcelona will provide location, access to players, and execute sales — a meaningful vote of confidence. Designed to expand to Barça Stores, airports, malls and other clubs.
- Second Barça project in development. Vortexia is an AR game: “the Pokémon GO for football.”
Investment Opportunity
- €500k already raised, €1m left to raise
- Investors become direct shareholders in the HoldCo that owns the IP and platform
- Launch investors acquire ~36% equity, with profits shared pari passu after full return of the €1.47m
This is not an Altea SPV.
New Asks & Offers
Indian sporting opportunity
Omar Khokhar met the league owner, Vineet, in Dubai, with cricket legend Harbhajan Singh serving as commissioner.
It’s an investment opportunity in Indian sports, and Omar’s happy to share the details with anyone interested. Reach out to Omar.
That’s it for today!
See you next week, Wyatt & Stefan
