Today we’d like to introduce you to Hamiz Mushtaq Awan.
Hamiz, please share your story with us. How did you get to where you are today?
I was raised in Karachi, Pakistan and moved to Dallas, TX in 2014. I came from a family of entrepreneurs so pursuing my venture was natural. I caught the bug early when I started a business with my first and oldest partner, my brother. I worked short stints at some great organizations, but once I developed a taste for entrepreneurship, it became difficult to go back. Someone might wonder why I left corporate America for more work and less pay, but it is simple to me. The money, lifestyle, and workload were irrelevant. I simply did not want to build someone else’s dream at the cost of my own.
And my dream was to build an institutional-grade investment firm for misunderstood and underinvested assets. We launched the firm while we were still students at Southern Methodist University and slowly built a name for ourselves and gained the trust of our partners. At SMU, we were being trained to understand and invest in unique assets through the Alternative Asset Management Center. We internalized this training and combined it with our experience working at other financial firms to build a portfolio of high quality, otherwise underappreciated, alternative assets.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Building our firm has been the most challenging thing that my partners and I have ever done, but that is not a negative statement by any means. I think most entrepreneurs enjoy the process and find stimulation in how difficult it is. The tougher the challenge, the sweeter the victory.
We are lucky to have the best team in the world. If you are lucky enough to find a team that you can go to battle with, overcoming the challenges together is extremely rewarding. We have taken an uncharted path in an emerging space with plenty of unknowns but there is no other team I would take this journey with.
I am a strong believer that if you put your heart and mind into a venture, there is no reason that it will fail, in the traditional sense of the word. At the very least, you will grow as an individual and become a stronger member of another organization.
One of the biggest challenges in the adoption of blockchain assets in everyday life and as part of investment portfolios is the massive price volatility. We use tools and strategies deployed by traditional investment managers to further improve the risk-adjusted returns and reduce portfolio volatility.
Price volatility is an issue in this market because you have early-stage ventures being traded every day. Traditionally, early stage ventures remain private when they are in their growth phase as to not be distracted by short-term price movements and have investors that are committed for the long term as the business faces growth challenges. Digital assets are at the mercy of the market from an early stage and so really, for the first time, we are seeing the price volatility of early-stage ventures as market participants can express their opinion about the asset in a liquid market. This expression causes noise and can inhibit adoption.
Using a long/short investment style and staying market neutral when we expect the market to fall or experience greater volatility should help reduce the portfolio volatility while also capturing the growth of the overall market. We are looking forward to rolling out some of these strategy changes over the next 6-12 months as we continue to get more comfortable with the counterparties and infrastructure available to execute some of these more complex strategies. We like to have exposure to the growth of early-stage ventures while also maintaining flexibility through liquidity like the stock market. We strongly believe that we can improve the economics of traditional venture capital and capture massive growth by deploying this unique and differentiated strategy. I love what I do and love the people I do it with, so I am always looking forward to the future.
Please tell us about your business.
Plutus21 Capital is an alternative asset investment firm focused on blockchain infrastructure. We invest in the underlying platforms, protocols, marketplaces, and other infrastructure plays for the rapidly growing and massively disruptive blockchain space. We take our traditional finance training and combine it with blockchain sector expertise to understand the emerging and innovative asset class of digital assets.
I am most proud of our team’s ability to learn and grow. We work in an extremely challenging market that has resulted in roughly 70 investment funds completely shutting down just in the last year. We are always learning and willing to change our views. The deep understanding of the landscape with a healthy level of curiosity and flexibility helped us successfully navigate many tough market conditions.
Blockchain became a buzzword a few years ago. You either met people who thought the technology was completely worthless or you met people who thought it would solve every problem faced by mankind. We are strong believers that both groups will be proven wrong over the next 10 years. What sets us apart is that we have always taken a responsible and strategic approach to invest in this rapidly changing landscape. We focus on adoption over everything else. The only reason that technology can have sustainable value over time is if it helps improve people’s lives. While people speculated on which blockchain venture would win, we let the users show us which applications of the technology they were using and finding utility in. Using a disciplined and strict investment process, we were able to zone into the few blockchain ventures that were seeing actual adoption and has a good chance of continuing to see adoption in the future.
Any shoutouts? Who else deserves credit in this story – who has played a meaningful role?
When I moved to Dallas, I did not know anybody. It is through the generosity and support of others that we are here today. We will never forget that and try to pay it forward through firm initiatives like Plutus21 Academy.
A lot of people will say this but none of this would be possible without our team, family, and friends. From all our team, we particularly owe a lot to Richard Raizes and Daniyal Awan. Before they joined us, it was just an idea but with them, we have been able to execute at an incredible pace and a high level. We are also extremely fortunate to have the most supportive and inspiring investors and advisors at this critical point in our journey. Last, but not least, my fiancé, my parents, my siblings, and the rest of my family and friends have sacrificed a lot and been an integral part of our growth. We give it everything we have every day, to do right by everyone who has put their trust and confidence in our team.
Contact Info:
- Address: 6116 N. Central Expy, Suite 700, Dallas, TX 75206
- Website: www.plutus21.com
- Phone: 469-626-8994
- Email: contact@plutus21.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/plutus21/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/plutus21
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/plutus21cap
- Yelp: https://www.linkedin.com/company/plutus21
- Other: https://medium.com/@plutus21cap
Image Credit:
KERA TV
Rising Tide Initiative
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