What partnership, a handshake, & service before self means to us.

Discussing our principles is always on the agenda for the monthly partners call at Ikigai. This month was: "What partnership, a handshake, & service before self means to us." I discussed some lessons from my growing up on a 5th generation family farm & as a Captain in the Air Force...

Who you do business with within the Bitcoin & crypto spaces is as important as the decision to get involved. Recently, several crypto funds have had serious allegations brought on them by regulators. The market & technology are new...bringing scammers, charlatans, and cheats.

When investors are diligencing Ikigai, they need to be comfortable with and trust me and my business partner, Travis Kling.

"How do I know y'all aren't the next Bernie Madoff?"...is not an uncommon discussion path.

3rd-party fund admins, audit, compliance, directors, ... all help, but...I'd suspect that crypto scams have fooled many, likely up to and including their 3rd-party service providers. So, what then can you rely on?

Relationships. That's the short answer anyway. How someone was raised matters... Their background matters...

I was raised on a 5th-generation family farm. My great-great-grandfather homesteaded in Valleyford, WA in 1887. Grover Cleveland, the 22nd US president, signed his homestead act papers, granting him 160 acres. 134 years later, our farm is now 13,000+ acres.

This is the original certificate 👀👇

Not surprisingly, my family has been doing business with many of the same people for decades. With that comes some pretty invaluable lessons.

One of those is the value and meaning of a handshake. A signature on a contract is only as good as the person behind it.

My Grandfather explained it like this: I've never been much good at writing things, but there's just so much said in a handshake...a good, firm handshake where you look the person in the eye and shake their hand. That, between two honest people, is better than any signature...

“The signature on the paper is for lawyers. For good people with principles...a handshake means so much more.”

A rule of thumb: strive to do business only where you'd be comfortable if everything were just on a handshake. If you can't trust the handshake, ask yourself why.

After growing up on the farm, I attended the Air Force Academy. Two foundations there are 1) the AF's core values & 2) the honor code.

1) Integrity first, service before self, & excellence in all we do.

2) We will not lie, steal, or cheat, nor tolerate among us anyone who does.

Integrity first, the honor code, & a handshake all go hand-in-hand. But, that second core value of "service before self" means something different.

It means that I, Travis Kling, and our team at Ikigai serve others. It means we put our partners first, not ourselves. Putting others first is the entire premise of fiduciary duty.

It's service before self. It's putting others' best interests before your own. There's not really a more important principle when managing other people's money.

In our careers leading up to founding Ikigai, Travis and I were both fiduciaries. Travis was in asset management at Magnetar and Point72. I was a contracting officer in the Air Force.

Now, background and principles are helpful, but that doesn’t mean that I’m perfect or Travis is perfect or anything like that. We’re inevitably going to stumble. We’re human. But, we’re going to endeavor to give our best efforts across the board to ensure that mistakes are minimized both in quantity and significance.

And, what we can ensure is that we’re going to be transparent, forthright, and truthful in how we conduct business.

Most business agreements are made and entered with information existing to all parties at a singular point in time. We can sit down, put together a deal, and with all the information parties have today, everyone is happy to do the deal.

Fast forward 6 months or a year and things can change...one party can be completely upside down on the deal. But, you have to go back to that point in time and understand what was agreed, and stand up to that. Thus, there's a difference between peacetime and wartime.

This is where the power of relationships comes in.

Many agreements are made with hopes of a rosy & fruitful future. We all know that often doesn't happen. When it doesn't...you build real, trustful relationships with those that were THERE FOR YOU in peacetime AND wartime.

Thus, a real amount of fulfillment and joy in business comes from building strong relationships with those you choose to do business with. Much like the military, those relationships can be deeper and last much longer than most. This is especially true in a space like this.

The technology is new. The asset class is new. The Trust Revolution is intimately involved.

We're all just trying to make sense of it and understand how it can make the world and humanity better off.

With our partners, we are chasing that vision.

We're building and struggling together. We're sharing the ups and downs together.

We're better together.

Respectfully,

Anthony Emtman

CEO