On this week's Stansberry Investor Hour, Dan and Corey welcome Joe Milam to the show. Joe is the founder and CEO of AngelSpan, which provides investor relations for early-stage startups. He's also the founder of The Legacy Funds and managing member of the Texas Legacy Fund.

Joe kicks things off by recounting his background in finance and the "Forrest Gump-like experiences" that got him to where he is today. He critiques the venture-capital ("VC") world, as it requires no training or certification to enter. Joe explains that his mission is to bring professional standards and practices to early-stage VC. And he shares a few anecdotes of unprofessionalism in the VC world, including investing for access to a private jet, that you'll never hear reported by the media...

The distraction of the media selling the glamorous headlines and attracting the advertising dollars from the industry participants then means they're not going to cover the stories that are legitimate journalistic disclosure of really the underbelly of the industry. So you rarely see the real underbelly of what's going on in venture from those mouthpieces that tend to be the industry rags.

Next, Joe discusses the massive opportunity in bringing professional processes to VC, especially because entrepreneurship is growing, yet the financial infrastructure has not been modernized to accommodate for this growth. He also talks about lack of diversification being a problem, the history of angel investing since the Revolutionary War, the role hype plays in VC, why he believes we're at the top of the "hype cycle" for AI, and the unintended consequences of technological innovation...

There has been a lack of sense of responsibility for those consequences, intended and unintended. And again, we can look no further than the impact on the iPhone on the younger generations. That didn't put anybody out of work. [But] it had a net negative effect.

Finally, Joe points out that an understanding of financial history is directly linked to proper risk assessment and management. He notes that many folks will ignore risk even if they're warned about it, due to a lack of discipline and their fear of missing out on the next hottest thing. As Joe explains, there's an expanding pool of innovation and places to put money, so both VC and individual investors need to manage risk...

Innovation breeds innovation. It always does. So it's not a finite pool of opportunity... The very structure of innovation is exponential... But you've got to manage risk. And that's what's lacking [in VC], but the opportunity is there.

Click here or on the image below to watch the video interview with Joe right now. For the full audio, including Dan and Corey's post-interview thoughts, click "Listen" above.

Additional past episodes are located here.)

The transcript is coming soon.

This Week's Guest

Joe Milam is the founder and CEO of AngelSpan, which provides investor relations for early-stage startups. He's also founder of The Legacy Funds and managing member of the Texas Legacy Fund. Before pursuing his current endeavors, Joe owned and managed a multifamily office in Menlo Park, California for 20 years. When the Internet commercialized, he became an early and active angel investor for both himself and his clients. Joe has more than 25 years' experience as a money manager and philanthropy consultant.