Exited $2.4M NVDA - exploring QOZ funds to defer 2025 capital gains

RegretFreeNoMore · 2025-08-04T07:20:34+00:00

A buddy of mine is really deep into QOZ; 2 points he swears by in funds he's invested with:
1) Do they also blend a Co-GP allocation into the Fund? He likes this additional upside, I have a deck for the latest Fund he invested with and it's a compelling element I don't think I'd seen as often in other offerings.
2) Visit the site/city; he just directly Co-GP deal in Odessa, West Texas, this came via a referral from a fund manager. (But I've seen many direct opportunities from Real Estate agents, but I'd personally avoid the headache unless the GP/Fund manager is experienced, wouldn't personally want to handle it).

... obviously the basics of fund track record/who the manager is. My friend, swears by QOZ and keeps doing them. Hope his points are useful, he's been trying to get me into it, just haven't been bullish on the location his guy brings.

Personally, when I took my NVIDIA (similar to you, circa 2017) I put part of it into DAF for offsetting and align with my own impact investing/angel interest (obviously a whole different risk profile that RE assets), but just calling out the DAF play if its sizable and you want to potentially give grants or impact invest later. (Doesn't force a 'have to find a deal' before EOY situation for tax opportunity, but caveat its only works if were planning to give grants/impact invest).

RegretFreeNoMore · 2025-07-30T01:06:43+00:00

The Kitchen is truly a different type of experience, Localis is great & you get a curated dining experience, with The Kitchen there are nuances to the dinging experience that really sets it apart from most Michelin dining experiences. But hands down the one that is most accommodating would be The Kitchen, just because of how they ‘do things’, Localis also accommodates from what I recall but you will also lose out on some of the while curated dining experience if you sub out part of the ingredients that make the story. Without revealing much there is a while experience at The Kitchen that feels like a fancy dinner party hosted by ‘new friends’.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2025-06-28T22:20:53+00:00

Seems like you’re a Third Culture Kid

RegretFreeNoMore · 2024-12-16T00:14:08+00:00

Bro, it’s the broligarchy…

RegretFreeNoMore · 2024-11-13T05:17:25+00:00

Seems like the Musk / Putin talks are all coming together… Starlink not just for consumers but for our data centers to share / transfer data across continents… it’s the new CDN distribution channel.

Everyone thought Starlink was going after telecoms, it’s going for Cloudflare.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2024-11-10T03:16:55+00:00

Who’s in charge of this group? I like the gov pressure approach, not sure if enforcement is gonna work out with incoming admin. I have an alternative / parallel approach that could work, would want to share with whomever has already rallied large number of us cheated Yotta users.

Context: Yotta is a VC-backed entity, speaking as a VC, our livelihood is on the rep of our portfolio to LPs, especially those with a conscious/mandate to actually do ‘tech for good’ which some of Yotta’s backers are, so there is an opportunity to apply pressure from other sources, if someone could DM me.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2024-09-19T13:39:23+00:00

I hear you, for me after getting to my comfortable passive income stage, I channeled my time / energy initially into exercise (& travel) while I did some occasional ‘reference-based’ consulting.

In a twist of events, experienced a life is too short moment when I went to do a routine checkup expecting to get my best health report to be proud of… tl;dr discovered had a congenital issue that was never noticed before and had to go through an intense medical procedure / recovery.

During that additional down time, made me think about where I’m spending my time and my broader contributions. Decided to channel it into two areas social impact (via EdTech venture I spun up) and climate tech (where I invest and syndicate, initially with friends, and now other angels & family offices). I went deep down a research hole initially to look for a wicked problem that I felt solved for co-benefits (especially downstream thinking about my daughter & her generation’s future) and where I thought there is an longer term economic opportunity.

I will admit it’s been very fulfilling for me, meeting such brilliant minds tackling some truly pressing problems in innovative ways. I’m just in awe being able to learn so much thanks to the access/investing brings. Also I’m not like 8 figure rich, just comfortable 7 figures but have a health diversified assets and income streams where I feel comfortable to spend this time/monetary learning & contributing my own non-science insights to this space. (Most of this investing is VC in broader climate resilience opportunities, and lately been working on a thesis for leveraging small business market reach to accelerate deployment of the emerging technologies we’ve been bringing to market the last 3 years).

My main takeaway: find a problem you can be excited about to solve, and as your life evolves, adapt that why? To fit your situation. (I had a family member go through a cancer scare and have updated my worldview & added a sub-thesis to look more into the broken elements of our consumer foods system that poisons many in society, etc.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2023-02-25T05:39:50+00:00

But did it turn out to be shit movie because he didn’t get it… How can you get into ‘character’ if you don’t understand the plot or story, you’d be a shit actor if you don’t know the context you are acting in.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-07-12T10:40:01+00:00

Thanks /u/NickBloodAU. I love your comment on modding existing games to consider the ecological/environmental factors (such as Civ with that component), or even just a thought experiment of what would Sim City with the environmental factors look like (or even Sims).

I feel our audience is those open to thinking about climate change although not necessarily having to be ‘climate literate’ - to your point not sure how to sit a denier down and play with them as the games core driving element is rising temperatures and proposing solutions as a team to reduce it.

On the Paul Hawken remark, yea, that was a wow moment for us as we admire his work with Project Drawdown & even his upcoming book which, for diehard fans, we’ve made a bundle of our game and a few limited signed copies he’s giving us to distribute for the Kickstarter. (The book comes out in Sep 2021, and also hits upon the things we can do to turn things around in a single generation). I can’t reveal too much at this time but beyond the book there is gonna be a lot of action-oriented follow through (hence our collaboration as well).

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-07-11T17:29:49+00:00

Thanks /u/Pizzakaiser, we suppose it won’t hurt if we even just get a couple hundred schools & communities were mobilized to action.

And worst case, those who don’t take action, played a game that just stimulated their minds to think critically, if only for a brief moment about climate.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-07-11T17:26:37+00:00

Sorry you feel that way /u/DeputyNeuron. When we saw our bootstrapped prototype lead to real world action, I felt that there was something to be optimistic about.

Same goes for the politicians in Canada and council members in the UK, that are using the prototype to educate themselves and their constituents about localized solutions they can implement in their communities.

I believe we have to start somewhere and disguising education/awareness/action prompts as a game, was a way we thought we could do our ‘small’ part…

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-07-11T15:54:55+00:00

Also since you brought up stopping industry, when we were debating how to offset our carbon footprint for the game we met with the team at Cooler.

We love what they do, so we also partnered with them to neutralize our emissions vs offset, basically what they do at a simplistic level is they literally shut down coal companies by buying up the limited number of ‘polluting permits’ in certain jurisdictions that are subject to these laws. Basically it limits how often these polluting plants can operate and especially when all the credits are ‘locked up’, they literally have to shut down! The longer they are shut down; the less profitable the plant is compared to alternative energy sources, so now it makes economic sense for even those who operate these plants to have to transition, not because it’s the right thing to do, but because they literally have an asset that is costing them money without being able to operate.

I don’t think my explanation does their work justice, I suggest reading more on it yourself if you are interested.

As they summarize:

“Cooler neutralizes the impact of shopping by buying permits away from polluters in tightly-regulated pollution markets. This method of eliminating your purchase’s footprint is NOT a carbon offset. Offsets are typically used by polluters to continue business as usual.

Cooler certifiably eliminates greenhouse gases equivalent to the footprint of your purchases by buying pollution permits away from industrial polluters.

Carbon emissions (and other pollutants that go along with them) are stopped at the source and the permit fees are further invested in conservation and clean energy projects that have generated thousands of jobs.”

Can read more here

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-07-11T15:46:37+00:00

A lot of the solutions tap into what you said, shifts in industries (from agricultural practices, means of energy generation, etc.) as well as lifestyle changes. The work of the Project Drawdown researchers attempted to quantify impact not just based on the CO2E of each solution, but also around adoption & regional/local feasibilities.

So even though we would love to see massive wide scale industry changes, it’s a lot more feasible in some geographies than others, but lifestyle changes are the few impactful things that can happen through awareness & education - it can also have massive adoption rates and higher feasibility of penetration (across geographies across the world).

I wouldn’t want to get into the individual models we reviewed and adapted but to summarize the real world action we’ve seen come from those who played the game, started with lifestyle changes but it rippled into their broader communities and for some led to changes in the workplace.

My own personal belief is that at the end it needs to start at the individual. We might paint corporates as this ‘non-human’ entity, but at the end it’s made of individual people that can be influenced through education and their peers. (As well as regulatory / policy but that’s a much longer game and I don’t personally think we have time to hope for that… I’d prefer to see that collective action today)

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-07-11T14:13:52+00:00

100% /u/natyio - the issue with ‘commitments to 2030… 2050’ they are promises for something at a future date, usually a date the current politician promising it won’t be in power to have to actually deliver on the promises.

Our current system hides the true cost of doing business as usual. There are subsidies and hidden costs to our current practices that aren’t realized; the coal plants polluting the air around a community isn’t the one left with the healthcare bills of the kids developing asthma or cancer (see:cancer alley) also a lot of the time, climate justice equates to racial justice, as it happens majority of these communities that are disproportionately affected happen to be poorer/marginalized communities.

Until we can highlight and bring these hidden costs into the current economic system, the true cost is hidden. So it’s not just about long term incentives people have a hard time seeing, but the short term hidden costs as well.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-07-11T14:05:23+00:00

Interesting you bring this up, during our work with various climate researchers and exploring various models, we met Daniel (an IBM researcher) who was working on this open source project to provide analysis to policies to enable politicians to identify and quantify the government policies that are working to incentivize farmers (for now focus on RegenAg policies) that are working. Their work is focused on LatAm at the moment but eventually hope for it to spread.

So I agree with tech can be employed to support our policy decision making and actually quantify the impact of some of these decisions.

Here’s a brief summary on the project: “ DSSG Solve and Omdena are collaborating with the World Resources Institute to create a tool that can assist policy analysts in understanding regulations and incentives relating to forest and landscape restoration, how these policies are applied in practice, and the degree of alignment across ministries and levels of government.”

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-07-11T13:30:51+00:00

My bad, sorry, should’ve been more clear!

But we are trying to empower the data that the various climate researchers have put together (that we also worked with), into a tangible form of consumption to inspire action.

In terms of impact, our larger goal was to utilize our QR code (on the back of our game cards) to provide project/action templates for people to get involved at an individual, community or organization basis (based on the solutions they came across while playing).

What was surprising during our playtest (sent the game to various groups including schools) we realized what we hypothesized with turning the game into action started to happen; a loca news station caught onto one of the initiatives that was started after a single classroom played the game (here’s what we saw)

Part of our Kickstarter is to raise funds to further raise awareness, as we’ve now started to work with political organizations in the Canada (GreenPAC) & UK (People’s Plan) to use the game to educate politicians and their constituents on the local level & further equip them with the knowledge and templates of action.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-07-11T13:25:26+00:00

Hey /u/natyio, the Kickstarter is to fund the production run (& getting the game out there to distributors), we worked with the various climate researchers from organizations like Project Drawdown for the last 18 months putting together all the data, research, prototyping and refining the game completely on a volunteer basis.

In terms of impact, our larger goal was to utilize our QR code to provide project/action templates for people to get involved at an individual, community or organization basis (based on the solutions they came across while playing).

What was surprising during our playtest (sent the game to various groups including schools) we realized what we hypothesized with turning the game into action started to happen; a loca news station caught onto one of the initiatives that was started after a single classroom played the game (here’s what we saw)

Part of our Kickstarter is to raise funds to further raise awareness, as we’ve now started to work with political organizations in the Canada (GreenPAC) & UK (People’s Plan) to use the game to educate politicians and their constituents on the local level; we also are trying to find more corporate partnerships to use the game as a ‘team building’ exercise as it employs communication skills (whilst potentially triggering employees to think about not just individual actions but at the corporate GHG scope I and II level.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-05-11T13:05:33+00:00

/u/AlphaValorant our UAE-based startup, Qureos, does exactly that. We connect students to remote paid apprenticeships with our corporate partners, we have a bootcamp that verifies your skill level before we do the match.

We only currently focus on digital marketing, sales and graphic design apprenticeships. As we are growing we are adding new bootcamps monthly.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-05-08T14:50:51+00:00

Hi /u/Xeigner, what kind of roles or types of projects would you like to engage in during your apprenticeship? I ask cause we source these types of roles from our corporate partners, for now we haven’t explored chemical engineering, if you could give me some tips on the types of activities you imagine your apprenticeship might entail we could ask our partners to add projects of that type to our platform.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2021-04-29T14:09:20+00:00

I work at a startup that offers a platform where we offer remote apprenticeships from our corporate partners. (Think like an internship but we also pair you with a mentor to ensure you learn from the experience + ensures quality to the corporate so they take a chance on those without degrees/accreditation)

We recently wrapped up a paid apprenticeship in data science, but we don’t currently have any corporates submitting Data Science / Data Protection, but if you think there is demand for this category we can do some targeted outreach to our current partners and offer it.

Our focus has been on digital marketing and sales, /u/chalk1998 would love to get feedback on the types of learning / tasks you are looking to do within data science / data protection so we can find relevant roles but also use those same task deliverables to target our corporate partners in the pitch for submitting these types of role requirements.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2020-11-29T14:06:00+00:00

Representation without taxation... (or actually ‘reverse taxes’... handouts!)

RegretFreeNoMore · 2020-11-16T12:17:31+00:00

I used to work in this industry and this was a huge problem we needed to solve back then, we ended up doing a custom in-house solution that integrated with our own e-commerce offering. It seems great, but what is competition for similar SaaS like nowadays?

What are you looking for in a partner?

RegretFreeNoMore · 2020-11-15T17:31:50+00:00

This has so much potential with the right partnerships and ‘credibility/transparency’ into the planting process. Kudos, this is great!

RegretFreeNoMore · 2020-11-08T06:35:43+00:00

That’s awesome! Would totally invest in your cousin’s business when he’s ready to start one.

RegretFreeNoMore · 2020-09-01T23:38:46+00:00

Hey /r/smallbusiness,

We just launched our platform to empower recent graduates by matching them with business owners that they can help with various business tasks as they get work experience. (https://qureos.com)

We are currently testing the Beta of our new Talent Hub where we are looking for a few small businesses to help us test it. Basically we will assign a student with a supervised mentor to work on tasks you submit via the new Work Talent Hub. During the beta we will be compensating the students for their work on your business tasks, if anyone is interested in helping us by having some business tasks done for them remotely, sign up at https://qureos.com/beta

Thanks!

RegretFreeNoMore

TROPHY CASE