OZ Pitch Day - Nov 14th
The OZ DisneyLand For Growth, With Hall Labs
In this webinar, Will Walker shares the unique OZ investment opportunities available through Hall Labs.
Webinar Highlights
- A history of Hall Labs and the Hall family, back to the invention of the manmade diamonds.
- The prolific patent activity of the Hall organization.
- A review of the Fund 1a portfolio companies, including Vanderhall Motor Works, Bacon, Sure-Fi, Medic.Life.
- A summary of some of the successful exits from Hall portfolio companies.
- Q&A with webinar attendees.
Featured On This Webinar
- Will Walker on LinkedIn
- Hall Labs
- Vanderhall Motors Works
- Medic.Life
- Bacon
- Sure-Fi
- MicroClimate
- Milken Institute Best Performing Cities
Industry Spotlight: Hall Venture Partners
Hall Venture Partners provides capital to grow patent-protected technology companies in the Utah region. With a 60-year track record, Hall Venture Partners is located at a state-of-the-art campus in Provo, Utah alongside Hall Labs and its team of innovators. Hall Venture Partners was established to address the growing demand by investors for curated opportunities in early growth technology companies.
Learn More About Hall Venture Partners
- Visit HallVP.com
Webinar Transcript
Jimmy: Hall Venture Partners brings a little bit different flavor to the Opportunity Zone structure. They invest in..I’ll let him present it…but basically in operating businesses companies that are being developed some of which are in revenue and profitable within the hall labs Opportunity Zone accelerator camp is located in Provo, Utah. So give Will another minute or two here to get his camera turned on and his microphone unmuted. And I do see your screen, though, Will, so I can see your presentation deck. It’s looking good.
Will: Yeah. Hey, Jimmy, thanks for having me.
Jimmy: Here you are, Will.
Will: Yeah, here I am, live in person.
Jimmy: Great to have you here today. So you’ve got 10 minutes. I’ll start the clock now and please take it away.
Will: Yeah, well, thanks. And our first slide actually has a quote from you and I was very pleased to have you and Ashley, as well as some other esteemed investors and family offices, visit our 130-acre campus here. And here’s an actual direct quote from our esteemed host, Jimmy Atkinson ,who visited in-person, live, and in-person and saw this amazing what I call a Disneyland for growth accelerator for OZ tangible technology products and services, and the 70-year history of Hall in turning out operating companies in the Opportunity Zone format.
So with that, you can kinda read for yourself what Jimmy put on there, you know, this innovative campus, 130-acre campus right along before its OZ designation, which it did. We actually invented the man-made diamond. I didn’t, but the Halls did in the 1950s, which is still used in drilling all over the world today. And this should be an example for other QOZBs moving forward.
So one of the things I’d like to add besides my 28-year background in private equity and venture capital is I look for companies or incubator accelerators that can check all the boxes, whether in or out of an Opportunity Zone, tax advantage strategy format. And when I found Hall about three, two and a half, three years ago working with numerous family offices, numerous accelerators and projects and groups around the country, it really did check all the boxes.
This is a picture of Tracy Hall on the right here who invented the man-made diamond. He did it, he was a professor at BYU university where our campus straddles,130-acre Opportunity Zone on campus. So you can see that right there. But one thing I’d like to make clear right away, every investor of any caliber with capital gains should consider having a balanced portfolio strategy of utilizing, operating companies in an Opportunity Zone format.
So, yes, real estate’s great, and certainly, Jimmy, Ashley, and I have worked with many real estate projects. I’ve raised, you know, lots and lots of money and structured lots of deals in real estate. But to have a balanced portfolio here going forward and a balanced strategy, operating companies should be considered for diversity and profit and other reasons. So I wanna encourage everybody to keep an open mind on that.
We have a vast team of engineers. We have over 750 full-time employees on our 130-acre campus. Once again, over 200 full-time engineers and scientists working on a multitude of large problems, solutions companies that have huge addressable markets, all of them in ESG type of format. So, you know, we’ve been practicing and developing, and exiting ESG companies, which you’re gonna see in a minute for 70 years. So it’s hot now, but we’ve been doing it, proving it and proven exits, profitable exits, and products and services for many years, so as we go along.
So this is our most mature, highly risk mitigated Opportunity Fund 1A that we’re just funding right now. And these are six of our most mature companies. We have over 1,200 patents issued. One of the things that makes the hall campus especially special among other things, we have our own patent office on our campus and we’ve patented early, patented often. But these are our six that we’ve got quite a bit of our own money in, which is always my first question to any investment for any GP or any other group that I’m evaluating for my investors is how much of your own money is in and how does the waterfall work and things like that.
We’ll get to that, but we’re gonna start with Vanderhall. Vanderhall is an in-revenue, yes, I said in-revenue car company that is just launching a very sought-after four-wheel drive, all-electric car, and many other all-electric power sports products right behind it including, you know, we’re looking at developing many things, snowmobiles, jet skis, trucks, inboard, outboard motors. But the Vanderhall is already, you know, well into revenue. Very proud of that. We grew that six years ago and the new electric brawler, which you can all request a deck or a video of has already got over 1,500 non-refundable deposits. So very excited about that.
Medic Life is an AI toilet that predicts 85 preventable diseases, COVID, high blood pressure, you know, hypertension, diabetes. We have 29 million of our own money in this. This is a very sought-after healthcare product for data real-time HIPAA-approved data and is very, very necessary in many residential and institutional healthcare facilities.
Bacon is setting the world on fire. We’ve tripled in growth and revenue in the last year in Bacon with temporary help. Do I need to tell anybody how much our differentiators are on our platform, patented platform that allows flexibility in both employers and employees for temporary workers, whether 1 shift or 200 shifts, this is the answer, and Bacon is exploded in 6 cities, and we’re doing 10 more.
I’ll move on to Sure-Fi here quickly, Sure-Fi here quickly because this eliminates the last mile of wiring. We already have Facebook as a big customer client. This is also a leader in two-way data and voice transmission. This goes through steel-concrete into buildings. In fact, we did all 80, tested all 80 floors of the empire state building without any disruption. So for a security voice data eliminating the last mile of cap-4 wiring [SP], whether in a home or a hospital or a building, this is the answer and Johnson Controls is our installing partner there, they’re the 800-pound gorilla.
So I could go on and MicroClimate is also…we have over four million of these mass sold. They’re not only very popular and healthcare professionals, but also industrial workers of all kinds. We’re work in electronics, other things. So this is also VR-approved for the MicroClimate air mass two, which is just coming out right now, but we already have over four million satisfied users. And this is also in revenue.
Smarter Home is a leader in green technology and developing smarter home technology well in revenue as well. So I’m gonna keep moving here as I know I’m running short on time, but I encourage everybody to get a deck and a summary, and a video of what I’ve just exposed here on all six of these because they’re all very handpicked and very necessary.
So long history of exits here. We’re very proud. You can see the ROIC there on the right of these last exits that we’ve had with our companies. Our average is 8.3X. Yes, 8.3X in a 2 to 5-year, 20-year historical return of capital and transactions, both public and private. So we’re at the very top tier of all venture capital, whether in an Opportunity Zone or not, that just happens to be a big cherry on top, of course, for people with capital gains.
So we’re very proud of our returns, our history, and all the highly risk mitigated properties that go into our companies. These are just some of the timetables that we’ve had for our exits. Here’s our Hall labs, our 130-acre campus. You know, like I say, it’s really a Disneyland for growth and proven exits and profits in a two to five-year time period at the historic top of the line 8.3X return and very, very proud of that.
So Provo-Orem just got voted by the Milken Institute as the number one business growth area, a city in the country. We beat out Austin. We beat out these high-profile incubation, accelerating centers for tech, and other premises. And because of what we’ve created, which is we’ve created 750 jobs in Provo at our headquarters. Also, we’ve created over 3.6 million outside jobs through our companies in and projects.
Hall Venture Partners here, you know, disrupt, accelerate growth. You can literally eat off the floors in multiple buildings with all of this activity growth, all of this science and engineering going into it along, with like I say, patented early, patented off and with our IT and IP properties, it really is something to behold. So I encourage everybody to get a video and deck and check it out for themselves.
Here’s our management team and some of our high-level management. You can see, we have a lot of experience in all facets. Once again, our 70-year history speaks for itself in this class. Well, that’s the end of my talk, and you can see my information up there and hope to hear from everyone. Jimmy, I know you’re a personal big fan of Hall and all things that we do, but I’m gonna turn it back over to you, and hopefully, we’ll be able to meet some people in I believe an after room later on today and answer some more questions or specifics.
Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. Well, Will, thank you for presenting Hall Opportunity Fund 1A. I do like what you guys have going there at Hall Venture Partners in Hall Labs. I was out there recently for a tour along with a couple of other people on this call, including Lawrence Jatsek, who I’m about to bring on stage in a minute here. And Lawrence and I got to spend some time together and driving around the Vanderhall car. That was a lot of fun.
It’s a really cool concept what Hall Labs has going there. The fact that that canvas has been there for so long, and it just happened to be slated into an Opportunity Zone and now they’ve decided to structure all of their operating businesses as QOZB Qualified Opportunity Zone, business companies able to take advantage of this amazing tax benefit for their LP investors. It’s really an incredible story. And, yeah, I would encourage anyone on the call today to reach out to Will to get more. I’ve posted links to their websites. And I’ve also posted Will Walker’s email address in the chat.
We do have a couple of questions for you, Will, before I cut you loose. And then, Lawrence, I’m gonna bring you on stage in a couple of minutes here. Gary asks what’s the minimum investment amount and what does the fund, the structure look like exactly?
Will: Yeah, 250,000, Jimmy, is our minimum for…we do that basically for Opportunity Zone DB clients, listeners, audience, that type of thing. Generally, it’s 500,000 and above, but we are making exceptions because you and I have worked together for a long time and properties along with Ashley who also visit the campus. And so it’s 250,000 and above is our minimum.
Jimmy: And then we’ll get to one more question then I gotta move along here, Will. But Michael asks, is there a way to invest in the individual assets and the individual companies as opposed to having to come into the full diversified fund?
Will: I’m proud of the diversity that the fund offers. Once again, you’ve got everything from AI toilets to, with 70 patents issued on it to the Vanderhall, you know, very profitable electric vehicle companies. So that’s great. But, yes, there are four specific situations I…you know, would like, anyone interested in a single issue. You had AngelMD on yesterday with Ashley. They are, of course, healthcare-mandated. So they’re a big proponent of the medic toilet, AI toilet, and they are involved with that. So, yes, is the answer. I would love to meet anyone with a specific interest in any of the six portfolio companies.
Jimmy: Fantastic. Good to know. A little bit of flexibility there potentially. So I did just post Will’s email address. Once again, it’s [email protected], and it’s in the chat. If you’d like to copy and paste it, if you have any for Will or if you’d like to reach out to learn more about investing please do so. And, Will, with, with that, I’ll have to cut you loose here. We gotta move along with the programming, but you’re absolutely right. We do have a group networking session that everyone who registered for OZ Pitch Day is welcome to attend. That’s gonna get fired up in a little more than a half an hour here after the conclusion of Lawrence’s presentation coming up next, but in the meantime, Will, it was great seeing you. I’ll see you in 30 minutes in the group networking session. All right.
Will: Very good. Thanks, Jimmy. Thanks very much.
Jimmy: All right. Thank you, Will. Take care.