Welcome to the best of the Alts Community.
📢 Note: Starting today, the weekly community update will be sent on Mondays. We think it will serve you better.
This week:
- New Weekly Poll: Should we create a “Random” space?
- Overvalued stocks, unprofitable Golden Globe films, and snail orgies
- Spanking new rewards
- Three new book recommendations
As always, do your own research; nothing here constitutes financial advice. Stay safe out there, kids.
Let’s go 🚀
Table of Contents
🚀 Live Deals
🏢 Tomball – Preferred Equity
This is a new and time-sensitive opportunity. From Adam, the sponsor:
Short-term investment at a conservative valuation (60% loan-to-value) on industrial real estate in Texas – 16% preferred equity, anticipated pay-off by June 30. The preferred equity will fund tenant improvements and leasing commissions once two incoming tenants sign leases.
Get in touch with Adam directly if you’re keen.
🍹 Tequila III
Subscription docs are with investors now but there’s still room for one more allocation. Get in touch asap if you want in.
👋 New Members
Welcome to the 23 new members this week 👋
A few notable members..
🇰🇷 Adrian Pollard is a designer from Seoul who has been working in the crypto space since 2013. He’s the founder of HollaEx, an open-source white-label exchange that connects your business to the blockchain world. He’s currently researching more about cars, rare alcohol and music rights.
🇧🇪 Bernd Fastenrath is our newest Altea member, a German living in Belgium and France. He’s the founder of Altered Principles, a strategy and go-to-market partner for physical-industry businesses in the AI era. Think of it as a third kind of partner, between slideware consultants and tool-first integrators.
📝 Weekly Poll
One thing we learned in our survey is that while people love the depth here, it can feel a bit…serious all the time!
So we’re considering adding a low-stakes “Random” space — a place for off-topic thoughts, memes, interesting links, and non-investing stuff that doesn’t really fit anywhere else. No asks, and definitely no deals, just whatever’s on your mind.
Before we do anything, wanted to sanity-check the interest here:
🔜 Leaderboard Revamp
As you know, each week we’ve been rewarding the community member who lands at the top of the Leaderboard.
I’m happy to report that we’re working on a comprehensive rewards and points system for the Alts community that better ties together engagement, membership, investing, and real, tangible perks.
The goal is something more thoughtful, more balanced, and more rewarding as you go deeper with Alts and Altea.
This is still a work in progress, but we wanted to give you a heads up. More details coming soon.
💬 New Discussions
- Lucas discovered a podcast interview called ”There’s No Place to Hide in Stocks” with Scott Galloway and NYU professor Aswath Damodaran.
“For the first time in his life, Damodaran is trimming exposure to stocks, and shifting into a combination of cash (T-bills), income generating real assets, and collectibles!” – Lucas King
- There’s a considerable delta between the Golden Globe nominees, and the amount each film grossed
- Mandar dropped in a note about Roomba maker iRobot, which filed for bankruptcy and will turn over its business to a pair of Chinese companies and go private.
“Tech became a commodity, they built the same 8/10 robot the same way for 15 years, margins got squeezed”
- Florian found a cool story involving a UK tax evasion scheme and snail orgies
📚 New Book Recommendations
by Emad Mostaque
This recommendation comes from Travis Mitchell:
“Emad Mostaque is one of the smartest guys in understanding how the present and coming technological changes will affect us all and what we can collectively do to avoid dystopian outcomes.”
Per Emad:
“As the founder of Stability AI, I’ve been in the rooms where the mathematics of your obsolescence were calculated. I’ve watched as artificial intelligence learned to see, to write, to reason, to create. I’ve seen the training curves that spell doom for every knowledge worker.
Now, I see the system I once exploited from the perspective of the force that will shatter it completely. This book is born from that unique, terrifying vantage point. It is both a diagnosis from an insider and a blueprint from an architect.”
Available here as a free PDF (but don’t let that put you off)
The Unaccountability Machine
by Dan Davies
Florian recommends this one:
“Well-written at the intersection of management cybernetics and systems theory with a strong connection to real world application. Strong recommendation!”
by Alexandria Breshears and Beth Pinkley Johnson
Tigran K found this book life-changing:
I was surprised that there are practically no books on the topic! In 2023, when I was reading it, there were only 3 books on Amazon with positive reviews. I picked “Lend to Live“ as the newest one and it did not disappoint. Practically, everything I learned on the topic or figured out myself can be found there.”
Eric Boshart agrees:
“This book helped us as well when we were just starting our lending operations, great recommendation! It’s now turned into a fund and our most important business. Happy to provide any info/intel to anyone interested in the space.” – Eric Boshart
🤝 New Public Deals
Texas Tax Deed Property Investing 🤠
Altea member Jon Berlet has been doing real estate tax deed investing in Texas.
His company is called CORE Tax Deeds, built around research, discipline, and transparency so investors can access Texas tax deed opportunities confidently through a regulated crowdfunding structure.
As of today he has 28 properties as of today and 7 exits on his first ten purchases. Discuss with John.
