Ilan Israelstam - Making Crime Pay
How do you profit from crime without risking a lengthy prison sentence? To find out I spoke with with Ilan Israelstam the co-founder of Betashares ETFs about the growing trend towards tech investments and the growing need for cybersecurity.
In this episode:
- A short history or ETFs and the founding of
- The growth of the technology sector worldwide and how you can tap into that investment
- Betashare’s Cybersecurity ETF,
- Strange recent hacks
- Buy Now Pay Later (BNPL) an Australian innovation
- What is a secular trend?
- What he's teaching his kids about investing.
Ilan talks about his entrepreneurial ambitions and interest in start-ups. After working in the corporate sphere for some time in China, Australia and America, his focus eventually shifted toward the ETF space and Betashares was born.
In this podcast we discuss how ETFs have exponentially grown from a 5-billion-dollar industry in 2010 to a 65-billion-dollar industry in 2020 and how this new way to invest is a must in everyone’s portfolio.
We talk about how Betashares passively managed ETFs make sense to regular people as they offer diversification across different asset classes and markets for minimal cost. They also offer exposure to thematic, fast growing sub-sectors like robotics and Artificial Intelligence alongside investments in mature, well-established companies.
"There are two types of companies in the world – those that have been hacked and those that don’t know they have been hacked’"
Ilan explains the importance of cybersecurity, due to the growing use of tech in our day-to-day lives matched by the ever-increasing ingenuity of cyber-criminals. 92% of Australian business have had a ‘Business Impacting Cyber-attack’ in the last 12 months.
Betashares recognized the importance of tech in Australia’s relatively immature ‘tech space’ early on. The HACK ETF offers diverse access to the cybersecurity sector from the US to Israel without having to research each individual company.
Ilan spoke about the fantastic website Visual Capitalist and this graphic below that shows the mind-boggling numbers occurring in each minute on the internet.
Ilan was a founding team member of BetaShares and is responsible for corporate & product strategy as well as marketing activities in the business. He is also a Principal of Apex Capital Partners, a financial services focused investment firm. Previously, Ilan worked for The Boston Consulting Group (BCG), one of the leading global strategy consulting firms. Based in the Sydney and New York offices, his work at BCG focused on the private equity, funds management and broader financial services industries. Prior to joining BCG, Ilan worked in venture capital where he helped to found a technology-oriented venture capital firm. Ilan has a Bachelor of Commerce and LLB from the University of NSW.
Many thanks to Taylan Behayi intern at the Australian Shareholders' Association for research and writing of this blog post.
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Shares for Beginners is for information and educational purposes only. It isn’t financial advice, and you shouldn’t buy or sell any investments based on what you’ve heard here. Any opinion or commentary is the view of the speaker only not Shares for Beginners. This podcast doesn’t replace professional advice regarding your personal financial needs, circumstances or current situation.
Thanks to Christopher Soulos for music production out of Garlic Breath Studio https://www.facebook.com/GarlicBreathStudio. Remember music flows when the money don’t.