Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:08] Speaker B: Welcome to the Victory Show. I'm Travis Cody. This is where seven figure founders, entrepreneurs and executives reveal the real playbook behind scaling past that first million in revenue. We go beyond the highlight reel into the hard lessons, the costly mistakes, the key inflection points and the human decisions that shaped the numbers. And here's the twist. Every conversation becomes a chapter in the Victory book series so the next generation of builders doesn't have to start from scratch. Today, I'm sitting down with Thomas Miller, the founder and CEO of equivista, an equity management and valuation platform trusted by more than 23,000 companies worldwide. Under his leadership, Eco Vista has processed over $270 billion in private company valuations and is now building real time company valuation, which is infrastructure designed to deliver live audit defensible valuation signals for modern businesses. Thomas, thank you so much for being here.
[00:01:06] Speaker A: Thank you so much for having me. Thank you. Thank you so much.
[00:01:09] Speaker B: So walk me through a little bit like your, your background was you started in Hong Kong and, and, and, and first off, I mean how was it when you first moved to Hong Kong because you grew up in.
[00:01:22] Speaker A: I grew up in Czech, I grew up, grew up in Czech Republic and I moved to Hong Kong. It was early, like 2000.
Well, 2011. It was 2011. 2010, 2011.
But prior to that I spent few, few months, I would say around 10 months, 10 plus months in Beijing and prior to that I was in Belgium. I studied at five different universities in Finland, Canada, Turkey.
[00:01:52] Speaker B: A bit of a culture shock though going from Japan, Czech Republic to Hong Kong.
[00:01:57] Speaker A: Not really as you know, you don't really think of it. It was my, you know, by that time I lived in, it was my like 9th country living in, you know, I was living in Finland, I was living in, in Mexico, I was living in, in Turkey on the Asia side, you know. So I would have to take Delush. It's a small transportation, public transport Delmush.
So I would have to cross the Bosphorus to get to the school, right? So I was, for me it was one of these, one of these destinations, you know. So I can give you an example. I was like Tuesday would be, I would have exam in, in Gabza, which is the Asia Asian part.
And back then I would study two different schools. So I would finish exam Tuesday let's say, you know, 10:00am I would jump on the, I would jump on the train, cross the, cross the box to a European side and flew to Finland flew to Finland to finish another, another exam which would be On Thursday, two days later, right. So at some point I would see dolphins swimming in the, in the ocean, right? In Istanbul. And then I would have a few, few days later, amazing Jacuzzi time with my professor, you know, and swimming in the lake, seeing the borealis.
That's, you know, so who knows for me, you know, Hong Kong or Beijing.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: So what took you to Hong Kong originally?
[00:03:42] Speaker A: So originally, you know, I'm, I'm a post credit card graduate.
I have double master, double master degree, you know, in finance specification was quantitative methods and the jobs were not there in, in Western World 2009, 2010. Right. So I saw Asia as a, as an amazing opportunity where we can strive, strive and to do business, right. So first I moved to Beijing.
I got to Beijing with, through one of the, one of the councils I was sitting at in Brussels. I was, I was working for European Commission and the dean of the faculty, he just basically put me on the Chinese management program.
So I finished, I graduated from the Brussels University, one subject and moved to Beijing.
The idea was to start a company there. But then I pretty much quickly realized that for European man, being in China is very tough.
So I was looking for common law, you know, Western, Western, like Asian city. Well now city. Back then, well, still was. We was already city.
So I moved to Hong Kong. You know, we have a common law in Hong Kong. You can open a company in under 24, 24 hours.
The jurisdiction operates, still operates as independent common law company ordinance jurisdiction.
It's a special administrative region of PRC people, Republic of China. But still amazing, amazing destination if you want to launch a business.
You know, so that's, that's, that's pretty much the, the story. So Beijing, after 10 months, there's no go. I took a train, moved to Hong Kong and it was the right, right move.
[00:06:07] Speaker B: Wow.
So what was it about finance that made you want to spend so much time, you know, getting your education and that was that. Have you always been good with numbers or did you have like a specific
[00:06:19] Speaker A: goal, you know, you know what the specification was. The closer, you know, if you, if you look at the money as a part of the society and part of the company, closer you are to money, you get better margins.
[00:06:38] Speaker B: Interesting.
[00:06:39] Speaker A: You know, so in the, in the
[00:06:40] Speaker B: chain, the money, the closer you are to money, the better margins you get.
[00:06:45] Speaker A: The money is always like, let's say this, you know, the, the, the mouse, right? That's in the chain.
You always, you know that the money is always the first thing in any chain, right?
As a commodity, right. If you commoditize money if you can put it anyway. Right. So I understood that very quickly when I was at high school.
And you know, the banking institutions are always very savvy about hiring people. You know, the top, the best, you know, hedge fund managers. We have so many different, different type of businesses in the finance. So I was kind of amazed how, how much money small companies can not just, not just make, it's really about making, but even though to, to move or be part of the, of the, of the, of the club, of the society. Yeah. So if you look at for instance at Krista, as of now we do. We have done close to $300 billion in class asset violations.
[00:08:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: So the numbers. Impressive. Impressive. So that's what I really liked.
[00:08:07] Speaker B: So was there any like a particular sort of experience or time frame that led you to the like getting the idea for ea?
[00:08:17] Speaker A: You know what I, I was always opportunistic this evening. So you know, I believe that, You know, I was, I moved to Hong Kong. I was 24 and the, the, the first thing I had to figure out was how to get revenue and be profitable from the day one.
So,
[00:08:48] Speaker B: so that, that was, that was it. So, so where I'm like, so what was it that for you that like. Because obviously the real time company valuation, like that's a really kind of cool idea. So what did that come about? Because you were, it was just taking you so much time to like value companies or like. Yeah, that's where I'm going is like what was it specifically where you went? Oh, let's build something where we can do real time valuation for people instead
[00:09:13] Speaker A: of having to, you know, I think, I think it's about knowledge. Always the opportunities are there. Right. It's just how much you know and how far you can figure out what to do with that knowledge. So the path is very simple. So I moved to Hong Kong.
We started incorporation company formation. Right. So we were helping companies to get incorporated. The company still exists. We became one of the largest in, in, in Hong Kong.
We were online.
Then we launched. We started CPA firm audit in, in Hong Kong to have an audit. So I was getting all these.
I was fortunate. Whatever I built was successful.
And with that came in knowledge. Right. So on the incorporation side we understood pretty much quickly that the ownership needs to be recorded. So that's equity management. That's what we still do.
Right. But then there's always, there's always a trick in every business.
So we pretty much quickly figure out that once we have the client we can offer them more services.
Right.
So for us it was audit. But the problem with the audit is that you need to have a license. It's just the practice takes us a really long time to build.
Extremely long time to build.
So the audit, we had to get a certification, we had to get, you know, just the practice up and running.
It took us roughly two, three years to get off the ground.
Just to build the forums. Right, Just to build the forums and the processes.
It's pretty much the heavy lifting.
So we launched Equity Management because of our previous experience in company formation.
And then we're like, you know what? We know actually how hard it is to launch, to start the evaluation business.
Right. We have CPA firm. So I took the best people from my CPA firm.
We got multiple licenses, which allows us to certified evaluation because it's very important in our business.
The reason is that sometimes if you get audited by IRS or big four companies, the valuation auditor must have a license.
Yeah, there's a term called defensibilities or audit defensible valuations. In terms of know Big four comes. It's like, hey guys, what was the formula? Why did you land on that, on that particular number?
So again, it's just knowledge and just to get things done.
[00:12:29] Speaker B: So what was the journey then? Pivoting from kind of doing things manually to then building out a software platform and company? Like what. Yeah look like for you?
[00:12:37] Speaker A: So the real time. So going back to your original question.
Absolutely right. It's the, it's the, You know, and it's about scaling and your podcast, you know, how you get to 1 million, over $1 million. And I think it's, it's very, very smart to say that. Very good to say that the scaling part, it's when you want to build larger, larger company.
So that's, I think every founder goals should be to optimize everything.
Right. Even though your decisions, even though how you hire, how you do.
So. Yeah, if that answers your question.
[00:13:40] Speaker B: So what was the big challenge for you once you had the software in terms of getting companies to come and actually start using it?
[00:13:50] Speaker A: The biggest challenge, I think it's always the first users, the first client.
At least for me, for someone it can be the fundraising.
But I was always revenue driven.
I moved to Hong Kong and in Hong Kong you can't really fail. Right. It's not like in the United States where you have a multiple, multiple options. So for me it was, it was the first user, pay user because, you know, at the end of the day we see all these massive rounds, right.
But I would rather see massive revenues and profit.
And again just probably it came from my culture, you know when I was starting businesses and career. That's why I grew up very quickly in Hong Kong.
So I think was the, the first, the first user because you will learn the pattern how to build a client or to take care of and how to multiply the acquisition.
Then I think that's that you win. People waste time on, on pitching to investors but they, they just, they completely fail in a, in a sales.
Even though you sell equity for money. Right. Also, but it's different type of sales.
I was always jealous of all these big rounds because you know I'm. I'm spy. Always, always been, you know, I'm for the guy. I mean from compliance to legal through you know, technical. Technical things, you know.
[00:15:46] Speaker B: So yeah, so what like who's the like your ideal client? Like who is equivista built for like and who's going to be like the person or the company that's going to get the best use out of it? Is it anybody looking to just valuate a company whether it's acquisition or to sell? Like maybe I have a company and I want to sell. I come to you guys.
[00:16:05] Speaker A: You know what it's, it's a private, it's private market. The whole private market. It's.
And they became a video with a massive transformative purpose. It took me a while to understand what it is.
But the MTP for us is that the asset in the public market, it's permanently valued right by supply, demand and for us in at least our goal is to permanently permanently valued asset for private market. Wow. You know, so that's, that's, that's. That's the goal. You have a fund, they raise 200, $300 million and they invest all the money but they don't really know what's the asset value.
They rely on a PDF, they rely on internal processes, you know, mostly corrupted.
You know, it doesn't necessarily have to be intentional but, but they are wrong.
They are super late that once a year they don't reflect anything. You know. So sometimes it's overvalued or undervalued.
And our goal is to value the private, the private market on a small.
From small deals, you know, three, $5 million revenue company or one $1 million company all the way to funds and large institutional businesses. So that's, that's our goal and to be a little bit more specific. So if you are a safe note. Safe note. Or pre company or even those small. Small shop. Right.
The market we will have to switch to a real time valuation where every single barber shop or you know massive restaurant chain will have private chain and we'll have to understand what's the.
What's the.
What's the value because loans against equity, the portfolios for the funds. There's multiple ways how to help all of us with the pricing. Yeah.
So that's our goal.
[00:18:52] Speaker B: So we're. So you're working with 23,000 companies now that are using your platform. What's your goal for the know this next three to four years. Where do you want to. Where would you like to see Equitus to get users?
[00:19:05] Speaker A: So so we're launching pretty much soon something called Equista 500. So it's as. As the name. As the name tell it's alternative to SMP 500.
We're going to pick or we pick 500 largest privately owned companies and would like to provide the pricing for them.
A as a data first probably that's the most most likely path.
It says 500 but we have 1540 unicorns in the world.
Trillions. Trillions of dollars. Right.
And they don't. Nobody really knows what they are worth. Right. So because of Our benchmark of 5 years practice now algorithms we've been working on for a couple of years now we want to become and we want to launch launch this.
Pricing in.
Wow.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: So if somebody's listening to this, this interview or they're reading the book how do they. How do they find equ Vista or how they get in touch your platform.
[00:20:33] Speaker A: So it's a crystal.com so they can. So it's a SAS company so they can self on board or they can always email us. They're always pretty much available.
That's. That's the company culture. We are busy with clients, not busy with anything else.
So calls we also have a phone number which is very unreal. You know for SaaS company you can really call someone and we pick up a phone. Simple thing and works believe it or not.
[00:21:14] Speaker B: Go go an old school business.
[00:21:17] Speaker A: Yes.
[00:21:17] Speaker B: Have people that answer phones.
[00:21:19] Speaker A: Yes. Yes. You have no idea how.
How people love it.
That's funny.
[00:21:26] Speaker B: Well Thomas, this has been a fantastic conversation. I think you appreciate you taking time out of your day to come and have a chat with me.
[00:21:32] Speaker A: Thank you so much Sam.
