The Future is Fractional
We’re all collectors, says Rob Petrozzo,the chief product officer at Rally. He joined us on the podcast this week, and it made me rethink how the company is building their fractional ownership marketplace:
I collect things that are individual moments for me. So like I have an odd, a really oddball collection of things… like in our office, we have one of the Theranos centrifuge machines
While the business may have started with auctioning classic cars, and most recently moved to other types of collectibles assets like first-edition complete Pokemon sets, they’re using the bizarre and the unique to drive new interest to the platform.
For those unaware, Rally sells “initial public offerings” of corporations with collectible assets on the books. The effect: millennials can own 1/1000th of a full Pokemon set, a classic Mustang, or the signed Kobe Bryant Final Game floor. By selling fractional shares, and providing a secondary marketplace, Rally is attracting a new kind of investor. The kind who might be into owning something really unique, like an NBA floor — or even one of the 20 original, certified, copies of the Declaration of Independence. No kidding.
Rally sits somewhere between alternative asset class and hype culture, and they’re among a new class of fractional ownership investment models — like Roofstock and Masterclass — who have enjoyed the liquidity that bored retail investors have had on-hand during the pandemic (like yours truly). We covered this in-depth in our Vision report earlier this year. According to our study, 53% of consumers have invested in alternative asset classes, with nearly half of those putting that investment into consumables like wine. Fractional ownership has provided the vehicle for a brand new paradigm — assessing value in things that have never-before been valued in a public market.
Hear more about the future of fractional ownership, and how Rally is using it to create a new type of investor, listen to our most recent episode of the podcast over here.
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Hot Now. Krispy Kreme makes plans to go public for the second time. The donut dealers announced their filing to the press on Tuesday.
Soiled Undies Needed. We humans, the most rational and highly intellectual beings on the planet, have discovered that the best way to determine the health of our soil lies in the process of dirtying our drawers. Farmers and school children alike are letting microbes feast on the cotton fibers of their skivvies for science, as it seems the ultimate litmus test (and bragging rights) for happy, healthy soil come from observing the fastest decomposition rate of buried tighty whities.
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