As global leaders congregated in Davos for the World Economic Forum, a special edition of AssetRush marked the public unveiling of Assetization. The sold-out event featured the launch of the new book by GenTwo’s co-founders, as well presentations by GenTwo Board Member Pete Casella, Vivents’ Sarah Schlagenhauf and Daniel Andonovski of Pioneer Asset Management.
Over the past five years, AssetRush has established itself as one of the premier events on the Swiss financial services calendar. It brings innovators and investors together with bright ideas and emerging technologies to examine and create new models for investing and new ways for changing our future.
On January 18, during the week of the World Economic Forum, a special edition of AssetRush was held in the famous Steigenberger hotel on the Promenade in Davos. In front of a packed room, the invited guests were given a deep dive into the exciting new world of Assetization as well as key topics around the future of finance.
RealVision’s Damian Horner, who acted as Master of Ceremonies, tried to capture the atmosphere by comparing AssetRush x Davos to the first-ever Sex Pistols show: although only relatively few people saw it, it marked the beginning of punk rock and a revolution in popular music.
Tonight, Horner said, could go down in history as marking the start of a revolution in finance. “And all of you in this room,” he added, “will be able to say: ‘I was there!’”
Assetization: Opening investment opportunities for all
A combination of “asset” and “democratization”, Assetization is the result of a new approach, pioneered by GenTwo, to what is known in financial services as securitization. It makes it possible to turn almost any thing or idea into an investible asset and unlock vast new investment opportunities – including the 78 trillion dollars in currently non-bankable assets.
It’s such a big idea that GenTwo’s co-founders, Patrick Loepfe and Philippe A. Naegeli, wrote a book on the subject. After Horner’s introduction, the authors presented their work.
Naegeli compared the impact of Assetization to the introduction of the standard shipping container in 1956, which completely revolutionized global trade and led to the explosion of globalization. “What containerization did for global shipping,” he explained, “Assetization is doing for global investing”. Loepfe emphasized how Assetization fits into the overall mega-trend of the democratization of financial products, and explained how Assetization expands the investment universe by making non-bankable assets bankable.
The future of finance
The evening was not just about the book, however. In keeping with the AssetRush tradition, it included a look at exciting new innovations in finance from several different areas.
Pete Casella, previously founding partner of the well-known US VC firm Point72 Ventures (and today a member of the GenTwo Board), unveiled his new company, Stack. As he explained, Stack is based on a rethinking of the whole approach to venture capital.
“The goal of a manager should not be to find startups,” he said. “It should be to identify unsolved problems, and then find the companies who are solving them.” The new firm, which he described as a “modular platform for the financial ecosystem”, would be putting this premise into practice.
In a talk entitled “Wild Wild Web3”, Sarah Schlagenhauf showed how her company Vivents was revolutionizing e-commerce and Web3. This includes “phygital assets”, which major brands are using to link physical products to on-chain digital counterparts.
Under the motto “Build your world, your way”, Daniel Andonovski of Pioneer Asset Management presented two exciting new investment opportunities – one in maritime shipping and the other in the world of classic cars.