Full Transcript — Meeting between Dmitri Sunshine and Juan Maldonado
Date: 2026-03-23, 3:30 PM MDT Duration: ~36 minutes Platform: Zoom
Dmitri Sunshine: This meeting is being recorded.
Juan Maldonado: Hey, Dimitri, one.
Juan Maldonado: Hey, brother, Give me one second.
Juan Maldonado: Got it.
Juan Maldonado: Well, how are you?
Dmitri Sunshine: Pretty good. I mean, it’s. My wife and I are expecting our. It’s our first son together. It’ll be my third son, but it’s our first and she’s. Yeah, it’s. It’s been. It’s been a journey to prepare for.
Juan Maldonado: Got it. Very cool. How. How soon are you expecting the child to arrive?
Dmitri Sunshine: Mid. Maybe.
Juan Maldonado: Okay, Very soon.
Dmitri Sunshine: Very soon. Yeah, it’s coming up. So. Yeah. So, I mean, a lot of life, you know, just kind of up in the air and the launch of this new consulting firm and.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah, time to start a company.
Dmitri Sunshine: It is kind of what I actually did with my first kid, by the way. Do you mind of my note takers in here?
Juan Maldonado: No, that’s fine.
Dmitri Sunshine: Okay, cool. Yeah, but that’s what I did back in 2007 with my first son. It was. I mean, we. I started the company before we found out that we were pregnant, but it was like not too long after, so kind of. Yeah, kind of repeat.
Juan Maldonado: Very cool. That’s awesome, man. Well, congratulations. Undoubtedly. Very exciting. It’s gotta be super exciting for her as well. And so, yeah, would love to, you know, thank you so much for the message that you sent earlier in the year. I. I listened to it and I’m like, oh, I have to get back to him. And. Yeah, that’s. That’s unfortunate. That’s on me. But hope. Hope that you’ve been. You’ve been well. And so the new consulting company that you’re working on, what. What are you specifically focusing on?
Dmitri Sunshine: So essentially making sure that organizations are not having their untied shoelaces. Because, like, if I’m really like, going through with someone and going through their practices, I find a lot of things that’s like, you know, we gotta really address this before something goes wrong. Because a lot of things, people don’t realize what’s about to go wrong. Right. And that’s kind of been my experience with. With my startup was, you know, it’s like, oh, I think everything’s great. We have backups. And it’s like. And then you bring someone in and they’re like, dude, your backups don’t restore. It’s like, oh, shit. Well, that’s important to know. Right? So all these little things that I found through my lifetime of experience doing, you know, really delicate data, because my company before we were doing child welfare management software, so we’re handling a lot of sensitive data. And yeah. So I Mean, that part is kind of like the baseline, but then doing AI implementations because I feel like right now there’s a lot of people rushing to implement things. Like I was working with a founder who’s like, just help me set up open Claw. I’m like, dude, this is not a good idea. Like, how about we first start with just cloud cowork, use the official connectors, see if, you know, we get you 80% there. And yeah, it’s like a lot of people are just kind of listening to the hype train. They’re like, oh, we need AI agents without understanding. It’s like, okay, well do you have all the SOPs? It’s like, okay, well we need all the SOPs. Like, well, the AI will write all the SOPs. Like no, no, it can help you, but it, you have to like have everything really ready for it to come in. So that’s essentially what we’re doing is like preparing people to do this properly instead of this. What I’m seeing is kind of very haphazard way of like just, just do.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah, for sure, a hundred percent. And are you focusing on. Not, not technology forward companies or technology companies?
Dmitri Sunshine: So we’re actually focusing on the wealth management ecosystem as our main niche. It’s a longer term play for this lasting legacy foundation, probably be launched in 2028. But essentially it’s a, I have a vision for this leases to grants model because it’s, you know, largest generational wealth transfer that’s happening right now. And I think that we could do a much better job if we just, you know, innovate. Because we’re not innovating. Right. It’s like that space is completely stagnant in many ways. So anyway, so that’s long term. Um, right now it’s just setting myself up with the relationships and that, that network to be able to make that happen more easily because it is a, you know, it’s a world where trust is really the, the main asset.
Juan Maldonado: Sure. And so then you’re focusing on wealth managers, like small to medium market. I would, I would guess so we’re
Dmitri Sunshine: focusing on not just the, the wealth managers, but like the estate planning, attorneys, private foundations. So kind of that whole ecosystem which, you know, it is pretty wide in that sense when you really look at all the people who are playing it within it.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah, for sure. But not institutional size, correct?
Dmitri Sunshine: No, no, we’re not there yet. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of bigger players that are already doing that and the institutional people are more, I mean, a They’re better served already. But B, they’re less, they’re less willing to do more of the kind of AI implementation. Right. Their, their AI implementations are usually boring.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah, no, I mean, it’s, yeah, it’s going to be proprietary. It’s going to be in house. Your sales cycles are going to be super long. I mean, by the time you get a client, your child will be going to kindergarten type of thing. You know, it’s like, that won’t work.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah. Yeah.
Juan Maldonado: Okay. All right, cool.
Dmitri Sunshine: But one, what about you, man? This is the fun to find thing. I was checking that out before our meeting is like, sounds super awesome. And it’s something that I’ve been, you know, kind of thinking about. I’m like, why isn’t there more of this ability to invest? And actually, maybe you know better about this, but there was also a bill recently. I don’t know if it made it through the Senate, it made it through the House, but it’s essentially changing the regulations on who can be an accredited investor.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah, yeah, I, I don’t know necessarily if it’s been officially done. I, I know that they were going to kind of raise some of the minimums for you to qualify just because it’s been a while since those were updated. And now it’s like, well, you know, the person that’s earning 200,000. Really? Now, I do know that a couple years back they did something where it’s like, okay, you are not in a credit investor because you don’t have the net worth, maybe you don’t have the job, but let’s say that you’re sophisticated, you can take a test and you can prove to us that you are, which is great, you know, but unfortunately, the tough part there is you’re just adding more hurdles for people. Right. And not saying that everybody should be able to invest their money, because I understand the, the, the bumpers that the SEC wants to, wants to do just for safeguard for folks, and I think that they’re great, but at the same time you have, you know, well, sorry, shouldn’t have said apps like Calshi or whatever, where you can like bet on whatever. And like, it’s like, oh, now you can gamble on is it going to rain tomorrow? Yes or no? I’ll take the over. You know, and it’s like, those aren’t regulated. So why, why is that okay for people to bet on? I mean, I don’t know if you heard, man. There were bets being placed on that platform about when the US Was going to strike Iran and like, a bunch of internal office, like, officials in the government, like, got made millions of dollars by bet certain times and things like that. And it’s like, that is.
Dmitri Sunshine: So that. That will get regulated then at some point soon, because that’s.
Juan Maldonado: Oh for sure. It’s on people’s radars now. There was. There was some governor or some senator already that was like, this is legalized gambling, basically. And nobody’s, like, overseeing this. Like, you can’t have this. You can’t have government officials making bets that they could or could not have information on. Like, they’re like, this is open insider trading, like, happening. So, you know, it’s just crazy. But, yeah. So basically what happened is, man, probably a year and a half ago, interviewed Josh, who’s the founder of Fundify, and he had started a company that became our dot com. He sold it. He had a really good. He had an exit to Walmart. And then after that, he kind of just became angel investor, and everybody wanted him to be on the cap table as an advisor. And. And so he started investing. And after a couple years, he went back and he’s like, man, my private companies, these startups that I’m investing in, are doing much better than the traditional. What my traditional wealth manager is doing. Why are more people doing this? And then he came across, well, private companies, unless you know they’re raising capital, very hard to know when a company is raising money. So there’s the deal flow problem. Josh didn’t have that because when it was announced that he had sold the company, everybody was reaching out to him, right? So he had deal flow. Then the other one was he shared a deal with a friend, and he’s like, well, Josh, this is cool, but I’m not a credit investor. And then that’s when Josh was like, what does that even mean? And then he kind of started looking at the jobs act, and he’s like, okay, well, cool. Crowdfunding seems to be a way to at least cure the deal flow and then be able to let anybody now participate. And so he started crowdfunding as a crowdfunding portal. And then he started seeing some companies that price should not be allowed to raise capital on the platform. And he reached out to the sec. He’s like, hey, I just want to make sure that I can dictate who gets on my platform and who doesn’t, because there’s some companies that are not very good. And basically the SEC is like, well, no, Josh, actually, we want anybody that wants to raise capital to be able to do so. That’s what it’s supposed to be. And he’s like, yeah, but there’s crap companies out there. And like. And then he, he’s like, okay, we’ll let everybody. And then the cup. The first couple were pretty decent companies, and then there was one in his. Couple of his friends were like, josh, that company’s crap on your portfolio. Like, I’m not gonna invest in that. He’s like, yeah, don’t invest in that one. I wouldn’t either. I’m like, well, why are you putting it on your portal? Like, that’s a statement on, like, kind of who you are. And he’s like, well, I kind of told him about the whole SEC thing. And he’s like, yeah, this, this doesn’t work. Like, you can’t have just any company raising capital. So that’s sort of when he approached the sec and he’s like, hey, why can’t there be a manager that it makes the decision on behalf of the. Of the crowd? And they were like, well, you know, Josh, in our Jobs act, when we passed that, we never contemplated somebody being interested in being the micro LP fund manager. So we never thought of it. Well, it took them a long time and many, many years. But today Fundify is basically, that is, you download the app, you tell us basically how much per month you want to invest in early stage companies, and then we are constantly looking for the best opportunities that are out there. And then while you as a user do have the opportunity to say, hey, Fundify, I don’t want to invest in this one. That’s not the idea. The idea is that we will invest your money into the best companies that we can and make basically early stage investing easy for the user. So right now we have about 35, 3600 people that have told us how much they want to invest. And the way that it works is as you’re going through the process, you’re actually setting up an account with a custodian, a custodian bank. And you’ll say, hey, Juan, I want to put in 10 and that sits in the custodial account until we make that first investment for you. Once that’s done, we’ll draw the next one. And so we don’t have like a mandate per se, but our goal is to find our users at least one early stage company per month. We’re in a period of 36 months. Hopefully they’ll be in like 70 to 90 type of early stage investments. Because that’s the other thing is you can invest in all in one company and expect it to be good. Right. You, you have to be able to diversify and have many, many at bats, otherwise the, it just won’t work. So that’s kind of what fun to fight is. So we invest in early stage companies kind of reminded me a lot of, kind of the world that you wanted to start dabbling in when we met in Colorado and build those houses for these like, I mean I kind of saw those more as like adventure studios. Right. Separate sort of venture studios, incubators that each kind of have their own little niche. And like Fundify would be investing in those type of early stage companies. So we invest in like early stage up to small series A rounds and we, we take a look at a lot of companies and we’re pretty,
Dmitri Sunshine: I
Juan Maldonado: want to say conservative, but we’re definitely very careful with the companies that, that we invest in. Like I do believe that for the average person they’re getting, they’re getting into pretty solid companies and that’s it. So Fundify, we’re early stage company as well. We’re a small team of maybe like 12 people all together. We have four companies that we’ve made offers to that are now going through the regulation crowdfunding process because even though the capital is there for them, because we did raise our money from undercredit investors, the company still has to go through the regulation crowdfund process. So we’re going through, through that right now. But hopefully we’re at a point where in the next two weeks those four companies are going to start actually being live on the platform and are, it’ll be, it’ll be fun once those announcements are made because so far they’ve just. If you’re a user of Fundify, you, you see that like, hey, you have a reservation into a fintech startup, but that’s really kind of all it says. So once you’re able to announce it, it’ll be, it’ll be pretty neat.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah. So people still have to choose. It’s kind of like I don’t know if you ever did Kiva. Right?
Juan Maldonado: Yeah. So think about people with fun to find have the opportunity to opt out, but by default you’re opted in.
Dmitri Sunshine: Love it. Yeah.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah.
Dmitri Sunshine: And are you guys needing help with the streamlining of this? Because this sounds super exciting to me to be like. Yeah, especially, I mean you’re working with somebody who’s a veteran, which to me is like, man, that’s so valuable, the insights you get from somebody who’s been around the. The game for that long.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah, I mean, yeah, potentially. So there’s definitely a lot of systems and processes that need to be streamlined.
Dmitri Sunshine: Do you guys. Sorry, I was curious, do you have a cio?
Juan Maldonado: I don’t think we have a cio. I think we have somebody. His name is Harry and he is sort of trying to put all of this together and I don’t necessarily know if he will be more on the like. Right now I think he’s splitting time between like COO and cio. I think eventually he’s probably gonna end up being more on the COO side.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah.
Juan Maldonado: So, yeah, we definitely need to continue to build out our team, but right now I think we’re just trying to figure out the process and procedures of more on the operational side. Great. We’ve made Dimitri an offer. We’re going to be doing $350,000. Then you get just all of these things that the startup has to do. That’s the part that I think we’re probably need a lot of help streamlining right now.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah.
Juan Maldonado: Would be my guess.
Dmitri Sunshine: So I’ve been through the reg CF procedure when I was at Cohere Network, which is the co living community.
Juan Maldonado: Okay.
Dmitri Sunshine: I remember the, all the hoops, but I mean, honestly, it was. It was fairly easy. And when you look back on it, it’s like, yeah, once you’ve done it, like, okay. I mean it’s really just like getting with the tax, like the CPAs and getting that write off, you know, like sign off. I mean. Yeah. But yeah, it’s just like, okay, cool, as long as you have somebody. And we did, we worked with somebody who, you know, was an expert at this. So that helped tremendously. It’s like, okay, here’s a CPA I work with. They’re going to get you guys set up and here’s all the docs and it’s like, just, you know, trust me and sign here is essentially what it was.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah. No, 100%. I think that that is a little bit of the part that when we’re talking to startups, like, well, how long does the process take? It’s like, well, honestly, the form C itself, the, the application, that could be done in four or five days, as long as you go in and you write it out. Right. But if, if you wait or you don’t send the information, then yeah, it could take months because that’s. So that part has been a little bit tricky. And then the other part that’s kind of interesting. The whole dynamic here is also that even though the company is the issuer, we are trying to help them with as much of it as possible as well. Just make it as quick as possible. And so that’s a little bit different because if you went to a we Fund or Republic whatever, they would be like, okay, yeah, please, you can leverage our, our, our, our portal and, and here’s a list and just get, get us back the information. We’re trying to do as much of it for them as, as possible. So there could potentially be opport. I mean I, I can certainly see where there’s opportunities to implement AI agents and things like that. And for the most part I know that Harry was looking to hire an AI engineer to start doing some of those things in house, but so there could be an opportunity potentially.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah. Well, I’d love to just send you over like the, the one pager that I’ve got in our pitch deck for what we do. Even though it’s geared more towards wealth management. I mean it in this case it’s more about working with people who are purpose driven.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah.
Dmitri Sunshine: And you guys are seem clearly purpose driven. And this is just really exciting because I’ve been kind of mulling over the same kind of thing in my mind like how can you get more, more investment into startups this way? And that’s one of the things with this lasting legacy Foundation. My, my vision for it is like people donate their homes now the homes are owned by the foundation. Foundation leases them out. Part of that revenue though should go towards, you know, essentially investments. And what’s the most powerful investments? It’s in startups. Right. So that to me is like how, you know, how do we make that happen? So that’s long term planning. But yeah, it’s, there’s, there’s a really
Juan Maldonado: interesting group that I came across here in Austin. Now that you’re kind of talking a little bit more about your lease to grants idea, have you ever come across the Alternatives Foundation?
Dmitri Sunshine: No.
Juan Maldonado: Check that out.
Dmitri Sunshine: How did you come across them?
Juan Maldonado: I was introduced to them because of Fundify actually and was talking to them about potential. Well, actually I talked to one of the members of the board there, but what they do is they go to universities and they’re like, hey, do any of your alums have any assets that they would be interested in pledging to the university? And that’s what they do. They do it, I believe at more of a commercial scale, but maybe there’s an opportunity there for you to see what they do and maybe adopt it into residential and maybe partner with those alumni associations and schools. Um, yeah, yeah, we’ll see.
Dmitri Sunshine: I mean, this, this for me is kind of like I said, it’s like 2028 kind of thing. So it’s in the background of taking steps towards it, like having a clear vision, having that, you know, at least a landing page with a newsletter for people who stumble across it. But right now it’s about getting this, this firm, Salonis, which is meant to really make sure that like again, people just aren’t going to trip over shoelaces because it’s like they’re having people come in to help them run faster. But if they’re running with untied shoelaces, like that trip is going to be really bad.
Juan Maldonado: 100. I mean, the amount of companies we see. So just kind of give you an idea. So fun to fight. We’re taking a look at maybe between like 100 to 150 companies per month.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah.
Juan Maldonado: They come in through different channels. One is our own website or just networks or I’ll talk to people and they’re like, yeah, they start referring companies. So just different, different areas. But I mean, undoubtedly three quarters of them are somehow doing AI or implementing AI or if nothing else, they just put on their deck just so that they have AI.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah.
Juan Maldonado: And, and yeah, I mean, when you start talking to people, they don’t. I mean, nobody knows. Very, very rarely do people really know what they’re doing. And so I think, I think that that’s good, man. I think it’s. I think if you are able to do what you just said and make sure that to help people, I mean, it’s like great, great that you want to implement AI, that’s phenomenal. But why, like, what’s the purpose? Like start. Like what’s the purpose? And if it’s just for. To say that you are implementing AI, that’s great for whatever because you want to talk about it or you want to tell your investors, but understand the real reason why you want to do this and then figure out kind of like start with the end in mind, you know, Franklin Covey kind of idea. But yeah, so I, I’ll keep my ears open, man. For different potential clients or different introductions. Please do send me what you have and, and I’ll share with Harry and just see if, if this is something potentially that fun because I know it’s, it’s on top of mind and I think that we have a lot to your point. You know, you have all these founders that want to implement it, but sometimes when you’re in the trenches it’s hard to see, you know, really what’s happening. Yeah, not saying that that’s kind of where Harry is, but I know that we’re running, trying to run as fast as we can and, and there’s nobody sort of outside really kind of over overlooking at this from like 10,000 foot view. I know it’s what Harry wants to do, but that’s not the reality of the startup world. Right?
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah, no, I mean this is definitely one of the things that, so right now actually have cloud code building out. It’s actually, it’s going to be a cold email outreach to VCs but the idea being like, look like, are you investing in founders where if something goes wrong with one of the founders like that that’s your linchpin that’s going to break the system. Right. It’s like, do you, is the company set up to continue on if something falls apart with one person?
Juan Maldonado: Yeah.
Dmitri Sunshine: And a lot of this is, I mean it’s not that hard. It’s just a matter of having that kind of mindset of like, okay, I have all my keys in my, you know, password manager vault. Can someone else get into my vault if something happens to me? Right. Can they securely have that? You know, just things like. And I think right now this is where AI is going to get really scary because people share credentials like through WhatsApp and through Slack and I think more and more exposure is going to happen as people are tying in AI into it because there’s prompt injection attacks. Right. So yeah, so again this is where it’s like, guys, we gotta, it’s like you have to have all these practices in place and they’re not that hard. But I mean it’s kind of, I think what you guys are doing, it sounds like this hand holding for the startups, right? Because like you can give them the checklist but unless you sit down with them and you’re like, okay, have you actually done these things like what’s gonna, what is gonna take for you to schedule this in, to do this?
Juan Maldonado: Yeah, here, I’m going to share with you on the, on the chat here. So have you heard of Max Pogue?
Dmitri Sunshine: No.
Juan Maldonado: So he does virtual conferences and he does a really good job of marketing. And so I am going to send you one here just because you mentioned who your target demographic is and then just you can register, it’s free. But just by going here, it’ll give you a list of 100 VC funds of funds that could potentially be your ICP that you just mentioned you’re gonna do a cold route reach on. And this conference there’s gonna, if nothing else, maybe think about attending just to go check it out and see the way that he puts it together. I’ve been on a couple, and they’re pretty interesting. I’ve met some good startups raising capital. I’ve also been able to connect with some lps as well. And it’s. It’s probably going to be up your alley of the people that you’re going to try to be looking to connect with.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah. Awesome. Awesome, Juan. Thank you.
Juan Maldonado: It’s virtual. Yeah.
Dmitri Sunshine: Beautiful. Dude, I’m. I’m so grateful we got to meet back at Colorado Springs that you were willing to come out to that. Yeah, yeah. So. And, dude, yeah. I would love to just send you over some stuff and if there’s a chance for us to work together with Fundify in some capacity, I mean, would love to come in and just. I mean, right now I’m willing to just kind of like, sit down with people, give like 90 minutes of a discovery session of like, okay, here’s, here’s what I’m seeing because I think even that can reveal some really, Some gaps that’s like, oh, yeah, we do need to cover that. So, yeah, so if you guys are interested in doing that, because that’s like, essentially complimentary, just to kind of feel into what you guys are doing and see if I could provide any suggestions that could be valuable.
Juan Maldonado: Yeah, for. No, for sure. Send me. Send me what you have, and I’ll be more than happy to make an intro to Harry. He’s probably the person on the team that you would want to connect with, and he’s the one that’s kind of looking to hire the AI engineer to kind of start building some of these processes in house. But maybe it’s something where, who knows, Maybe it makes more sense to work with you than trying to do this all on our own or something like that. Or maybe, yeah, maybe you can do something fractional or. I don’t know.
Dmitri Sunshine: But yeah, that’s what we’re going for. I mean, essentially, that is what we’re doing. We’re doing fractional CIO and fractional CISO services, you know, for what is ciso, Chief Secure Information Security Officer. So making sure that’s. You’re not going to get, you know, hacked.
Juan Maldonado: Got it. Cool. Yeah, I. I don’t know right now how vulnerable we feel as far as potentially being hacked, because a lot of our. Like, the very, very sensitive data, I think, is more kind of being held by the bank. On the bank side. I mean, that’s. That’s. They gotta have pretty secure stuff, being a regulated bank. But. But, yeah, for sure. I think on the process part, I definitely think that there’s probably a discussion there to be had.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah. Yeah. Well, Juan, thank you. Thank you so much for your time. I gotta jump on to my other call and. Yeah, for sure, dude. So good to see you again.
Juan Maldonado: Absolutely. Take care.
Dmitri Sunshine: Yeah. All right, brother. Ciao.