This week Horacio and I sat down with Chase Chamberlin and Brian Doxtator, CMO and CEO at Commonwealth, which allows anyone to buy shares in world-class racehorses.
In the chat, we discuss:
- How Rally inspired Brian to think about fractionalized horses
- What each founder brings to the table (Chase = horses, Brian = business & finance)
- How horse racing can be intimidating, and how they’ve worked hard to make everything so easy to understand
- How they spend their day-to-day (visiting their horses, talking to lawyers, keeping up with SEC regulations)
- Their bloodstock team, and the difficulty of selecting quality colts
- How they drive community and make everything feel personal (they have customers from 49 states and 16 countries)
- How they have aligned incentives by tying their business model to customer success
- How they think about racehorse valuations (there is tons of public auction data available)
- What goes into racehorse acquisition costs (horse itself, and 2 years worth of training costs, expenses & legal fees)
- Unicorn returns aside, what a good return actually looks like in this industry
- The excitement of watching their horse, Country Grammer, win a close race
- Where Commonwealth falls on the “investing vs gambling” spectrum
- What’s next for Commonwealth (trading, secondary markets, gamification, and education)
Best Quote:
Look, if you’re already gambling on horses, why not invest instead? Your losses are tax-deductible!
-Brian Doxtator
You can listen on Spotify or iTunes
Enjoy!
