Beyond The Stock Market Episode 10 Part 02

He Had Money To Invest, But They Wouldn’t Let Him In the Room: Rethinking Who Gets Access to Institutional-Quality Deals

Shawn Muneio, Oct 15, 2026

Episode Summary

Host Brian Dally continues the conversation with Shawn Muneio of Bequest Asset Management about the FIRE movement’s “cash flow problem,” arguing that many paths to income (like rentals or buying businesses) become another job, while true passive income options are limited and why private credit can help.

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EPISODE 10 PART 02

He Had Money To Invest, But They Wouldn’t Let Him In the Room: Rethinking Who Gets Access to Institutional-Quality Deals

Shawn Muneio, Oct 15, 2026

Host Brian Dally continues the conversation with Shawn Muneio of Bequest Asset Management about the FIRE movement’s “cash flow problem,” arguing that many paths to income (like rentals or buying businesses) become another job, while true passive income options are limited and why private credit can help. Muneio explains the “forgotten investors of America”—sharing a story of how he was literally not allowed into the room despite having money to invest, and why it’s always bothered him when non-accredited investors are blocked from alternative investments. Dally and Muneio talk about bringing alternatives to everyone using paths like Regulation A. Both note regulatory compliance can improve products and that even accredited investors are attracted to regulated, stable structures. Muneio says younger investors are drawn to alternatives due to frustration with public markets and desire for connection and impact, then shares growth goals toward $1B AUM, rapid scaling with AI, and rapid-fire investing views, emphasizing diversification across uncorrelated assets.

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Episode Transcript

Ep 10 Part 02

Brian Dally: Welcome back to Beyond the Stock Market, a Groundfloor production. We're back for part two of our conversation with Shawn Muneio, co-founder and managing partner of Bequest Asset Management. Shawn, thanks again for joining us. We've got a lot to discuss, so let's dive right in.

As I said when we left off with part one, I want to ask you about the FIRE movement. This is Financial Independence Retire Early, F-I-R-E. There's a lot to like about FIRE. Save aggressively, invest consistently, build enough assets so that you're not dependent on a paycheck. That's the pitch. But I understand you argue that the movement has a fundamental cash flow problem. What's the problem that you see?

Shawn Muneio: Well, I think we kind of touched on it briefly in the earlier part, and that is, when people finally get here, likely they've started a business, they're an entrepreneur, and they've had a [00:01:00] nice exit on that, and now they've acquired a bunch of assets and they realize wherever they put that money, it turns out to be just another job. Another something that they're tied to that exchanges their time for money.

And so whether you're a successful entrepreneur and you decide, "Well, all right, I'm just going to go and buy a bunch of rental property and put my money in that," and you realize, "I just bought myself another job," or, "I'm going to go invest in another company and find out I now have to go run that thing."

There's very few options where passive income, true passive income, when you actually look at the true definition of the word, very, very few options where people can get that from. And so I think that's the beauty of private credit, and what we do and what a lot of investors are looking for.

Brian Dally: I guess part of that [00:02:00] kind of conflict or trade-off is around control. Because you bring up the example of an entrepreneur. You're an entrepreneur, I'm an entrepreneur. The thing that we most want and that we position ourselves for is control, right? We want the locus of control. We'd rather not give that up. And I know because it's one of your Cs, you guys position yourselves that same way. Is it fair to think about it as Bequest taking the workload of the control off of the investor?

I mean, I guess if you had enough money, you could go out and buy private notes yourself and get into the market, but then you've got to look after them. So that asset management work is part of the value you guys deliver.

Shawn Muneio: Yeah, and absolutely. So, at the end of the day, those investors have to trust that we actually know what we're doing. Obviously, in any world, and when you're investing alongside an asset manager, that's probably the number [00:03:00] one barrier that you've got to get over is trust. You're relinquishing control to another body who hopefully has more experience and more tools and processes and can efficiently do what you probably can't, like go buy your own pool of mortgages. You could absolutely do that.

You wanted to retire, you needed a cash flow, you want less stress in your life, and so you've taken that control and you've given it to somebody else. And so, we have to win over that control right to our investors by instilling trust in our processes.

Brian Dally: They're hiring you to delegate control in a way, which is, I think, a different thing from having to do it themselves or being completely beholden to some random fund or set of funds that people have put them in.

There's another term that I've heard you mention before, which is the "forgotten investors of America." [00:04:00] Tell me about that group of investors. Who are they and why do they matter?

Shawn Muneio: Yeah. It's interesting. I remember early on as a successful tech guy, I had accumulated some wealth, not enough to be accredited, and I went to my local angel investing group, and I'm like, "I'm a big tech guy. I've done pretty well climbing the corporate ladder."

I went to their first angel investor group, and there was a guy at the door and he's like, "You want to get into this group?" I'm like, "Yeah, I want to get into that group." I'm like, "I'm an entrepreneur, I want to be in there." He's like, "Are you accredited?"

I'd actually never heard that term before in my life. I'm like, "I don't know, going to have to go look it up, but probably not." But he's like, "Well, you can't get in this room if you're not accredited." I'm like, "Well, I have some money to invest, and I want to participate in this community." And it was like, "Nope, there's a gate here and you can't get through it."

So [00:05:00] early on as an investor, I kind of felt like, well, that's really weird because, I can go down to Vegas and put this money on the roulette table and nobody's going to stop me from doing that. But if I want to invest in local businesses, people that I know, I can't do that. That had scarred me early on as an investor.

And as I got into this business, I realized that, man, there's so many rules that are just around investing. When you look at anywhere else, I could go make a bet on the game. Now with Polymarkets, I can go bet on anything, but I couldn't invest where the wealthy invest. And I felt like there's this unfair gate, there's this moat, that somebody should go and tear it down. And so it wasn't but four years into as we were building our own asset [00:06:00] management company that we figured out how to reach these people. And what hoops we had to jump through in order to be able to offer products to folks like this, which is... I don't really think it's fair in the industry, but we've done what we're supposed to do, and you find out that there's so many people who are looking for higher than average returns, that don't have many options at all in the marketplace.

And so we felt like that was our calling, that was our new mission for the organization, to try and take alternatives to everyday hardworking Americans and stick to that. Not stick to that until we got enough money to go after the wealthy individuals, but stick to that from a company, forever. Those are the folks that we're going to support. And it's not a cheap model, which is why a lot of operators [00:07:00] don't go after it. But for us, it's a mission that we think more people should take on. We know Groundfloor has done that, but really it's just a huge passion we have to really meet the needs of the folks that have been forgotten.

Brian Dally: So we've obviously been at the forefront of working with Regulation A and other exemptions to the requirement to register securities if you want to sell them to everybody. And we've done a lot of work in this area. I think there are two interesting observations that I would share and test them with you as well. See if you agree. So, number one, so many people think of regulation as a burden. They think of it as, "Why is this in my way?" "What kind of value could we create if this regulation weren't here?" "It's expensive." It is expensive, that much is true. But what [00:08:00] surprised me as we went through the process is that the regulations, complying with the regulations, and having to wrestle with the disclosures and make sure that we were meeting the various requirements and following the rules as best we could. I'm sure we made mistakes along the way and didn't always do a great job of that because we're a young company. It surprised me, but I think the regulation actually made our products better. Have you experienced that, too?

Shawn Muneio: I would absolutely agree with you. When you finally figured out the path, there was really not many people to help guide you along the way, because very few people done it. And I wish we'd known each other a few years ago. You'd have probably gave me the the roadmap. Go, turn right, and go straight.

Brian Dally: I could definitely show you all potholes I hit.

Shawn Muneio: But once we got there, I would completely agree. The audits that we go through and [00:09:00] the disclosures that we have to go through, and working with the SEC, it is the right thing to do. And in fact, now that I look back, and where we were operating before, when we just ran funds for only the wealthy, none of this was required, and in fact, maybe should be.

Brian Dally: Well, and that brings up the second thing that I learned through this process that I thought was kind of interesting, not obvious, and created a lot of value for a lot of people over the years, which is, once you do go through that process, you have to structure a product. And, the product may be a very traditional product, or it might be something very innovative where you're trying to create new types of value for people in new ways with new structure, but it's a product. And when you look at the universe of Reg D [00:10:00] investments that private wealth advisors are maybe navigating between, or accredited investors are trying to navigate themselves, what surprised me is how many accredited investors were drawn to the constancy and stability of the product that going through the regulatory process forced us to create.

We weren't allowed to make it up as we went along. We were sort of pot committed, to follow through on the product the way we had designed it. And you can amend, but it's expensive and time-consuming, and it should be. And so I think what's interesting to me is I thought we were just building this for the other 99%, but it turns out there are a lot of people who are accredited investors who like it also, because it feels more like what they get in public markets. More understandable, less esoteric, less work, [00:11:00] because they're buying into a structure. I'm sure you're already feeling the benefits of that, having gone through this, too.

Shawn Muneio: Yeah. That was not something that we were expecting either. I find it interesting. I was just looking at some orders that were placed recently and almost 75% of those orders last month actually came from the accredited world. Our mission is still, it's not changing. We're going to deliver these products to the folks that have not had access in the past.

But just to your point, coming alongside those folks are people who are looking for regulatory oversight on some of these products that haven't seen it because it was never required. And so yeah, it's a huge benefit to us, and also it's a huge benefit as we attempt to target markets, we don't have to worry, are [00:12:00] these the right people, anymore. Now there's really no barriers to anybody coming in our products, which is a much different world for us than it was just a few years ago.

Brian Dally: I appreciate your origin story where you said you quite literally were not allowed into a room. It feels like you had every bit of the standing that you needed except for the rules, about accredited investors, where you'd probably be a good value-added investor who would do pretty well in that room. But you weren't allowed. I appreciate that origin story, and also the fact that you wanted to take your career experience and use it to drive investing. And do it in the community. I like that.

When you stop and think about what's drawing people in, it turns out the younger you are, the more likely you are to want to invest in alternatives. From your [00:13:00] perspective, what do you think is driving that? In your case, it was because you wanted to put your money to work in a way that felt familiar. What do you think are some of the other reasons that are drawing people in?

Shawn Muneio: I think people are just tired of public markets. I really think there's just so much that goes on, so much manipulation and hype and you get caught up in this game. You really are just along for the ride like everybody else. You can impact it in no way.

And so people are just looking for more ways to use their capital to impact certain areas. They really do have some much better options as to people's investment strategies going alongside and really understanding that they can pick up the phone and speak with the [00:14:00] CEO of the company. Good luck trying to get Elon Musk on the phone if you invest in SpaceX.

So I feel like people are coming alongside alternatives because they can interact with the organization in a way that seems more normal than just the public market. I think people are really intrigued as to how we invest and people who love our strategy can come alongside and really participate in something that's fairly unique, and learn something along the way. It's not like we hide our strategy. I think people just are trying to get connected with something.

Brian Dally: People do want to learn about it. I used to joke, well, people are interested in online poker, for as much time as it takes them to start losing serious money, and then they [00:15:00] realize that's not really what they want to study and learn. So I think part of it is, it has to be worth the attention. And it has to have some reward to it. And I think one great thing about your model among many is the fact that there's cash flow. You know. You see it in your account coming back to you. We've aspired to do that for people too, and I think it's one of the things people appreciate about our products.

Okay, so I'm going to step back and ask you an entrepreneur question because you started this company, and you've gotten it a long way already. I understand you have a pretty audacious goal here in the next few years. Tell us about your goals for the company. Where do you want to be a few years from now, and what's going to get you there?

Shawn Muneio: We have a lot of interesting goals. I just got back from a three-day sabbatical that I'm going to try and take every four months. And so I [00:16:00] do have some fresh ideas in my mind. I haven't yet told my executive team, but we have some audacious goals.

Brian Dally: So we're going to get the scoop before the executive team.

Shawn Muneio: Well, they probably wouldn't appreciate that.

Brian Dally: You heard it here on Beyond the Stock Market, everybody.

Shawn Muneio: But, at the end of the day, I have some really talented individuals that I've surrounded myself with. I mean, one of the best business advice that I've ever gotten was surround yourself by people that are way smarter than you. And so I've really taken that to heart, and I've surrounded myself with some great executives.

We're trying to grow assets. We're trying to grow our assets rapidly. We think that there's a massive demand in the marketplace for alternatives and when the stock market slows down, we do feel like there'll be a massive surge, and we just need to be ready. We're just making sure that our infrastructure is [00:17:00] ready to handle what we think is coming our way. But, we would like to get to a billion, $2.2 billion, what you guys have done in 13 years is amazing. But, we'd like to get to a billion, and be able to have a couple hundred thousand investors.

And so we've got just massive goals that we're trying deliver. AI is a huge enabler of our business. There's no better time to be an entrepreneur with the tools that we have right now in the marketplace, the scale that we can take it without having to have a massive organization, which wasn't the case just a few years ago. And so we're just really excited about the market, the alternative space, assets that need to be managed, and we've got some great goals ahead.

Brian Dally: Sounds like it was a productive sabbatical. I like it. All right. I love to wrap these up with a rapid-fire [00:18:00] Q&A. See if you can answer these in a sentence. It's okay if you go over. It's not a hard rule, not a hard cap. Most misunderstood concept in investing.

Shawn Muneio: Underwriting.

Brian Dally: Okay. One market signal you never ignore.

Shawn Muneio: The Feds.

Brian Dally: You watch the Fed. It's going to be interesting. We're about a week out. We recorded this on September 8th. September 15th, big meeting coming up. Biggest mistake you see investors making right now.

Shawn Muneio: Biggest mistake I'm seeing investors, really just investing on emotions, really, honestly.

Brian Dally: Animal spirits are a real thing. A deal you passed on that you still think about. What's in the anti-portfolio?

Shawn Muneio: Oh, there was a portfolio of notes back in the day during the pandemic that [00:19:00] I remember would've probably changed a lot, and I remember exactly who that was, we were buying that from. So yeah, we missed out on that one.

Brian Dally: FOMO's real. Most overhyped trend in finance? What's the thing you hear about that makes you cringe? You're like, "Oh, geez, too much hype."

Shawn Muneio: I'm just not a fan on RIAs. I don't know.

Brian Dally: RIAs. Overhyped. All right. If you weren't in finance, what would you be doing? Back to telecom? Back to tech?

Shawn Muneio: Probably. I was so fascinated by technology and spread of information around the globe and AI is obviously a huge component nowadays. I just can't imagine what goes on in the back room of Anthropic and OpenAI right now with the tools they're creating. They're probably worried [00:20:00] about the future of mankind. But anyways, the technology's amazing. I love it, and I'm so glad we get to use it, even in our industry.

Brian Dally: For sure. I often think about my time in telecom and Silicon Valley and think of it in wireless industry fondly. Those were fun days. Now, one last thing. If you could leave listeners with one lesson about investing and risk, what would it be?

Shawn Muneio: It would be that, if you can diversify your risk, Ray Dalio taught me this. Diversify your risk, find 13 uncorrelated assets, build that into your portfolio, and about 95% of your risk goes away.

Brian Dally: Time to wrap things up. Thank you so much for joining us, Shawn. It was a pleasure having you on today's show. For our audience, you can connect with Shawn via his LinkedIn, which we'll include in the show notes, or you can visit [00:21:00] bqfunds.com. You can check out all of our podcast episodes at groundfloor.com/podcast, and I want to thank everybody for joining us today on Beyond the Stock Market.

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