Adam Torres and Chris Snook discuss FII PRIORITY MIAMI 2025.
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Show Notes:
Listen to FII PRIORITY MIAMI 2025 coverage. In this episode, Adam Torres and Chris Snook, Founder and Managing Partner at ATOMIQ, explore Investing in the Arbitrage of Bits and Atoms and FII PRIORITY MIAMI 2025.
About Chris Snook
Chris J Snook is a serial technology entrepreneur, alternative asset manager, and sought after global business and investment strategist. He co-hosts the web3show podcast, and is the international bestselling co-author with Travis Wright of Digital Sense (Wiley 2017) and its forthcoming sequel, The Generative Organization (Q2 2025). He is the Managing Partner at ATOM!Q – a boutique alternative asset management firm and AI-Web3 powered Venture Studio. He is a cofounder of the nBrain AI enterprise Agentic AI platform that agnostically embeds AI across the enterprise without friction and full ownership of the training data. He also advises a handful of deep tech web3 portfolio companies and speaks globally on the topic to conference and corporate audiences.
About ATOMIQ
An Alternative Asset Management Company and AI Powered Venture Studio. Creating explosive returns with human brands on top of exponential technologies.
ATOMIQ acquires and transforms established, profitable businesses by integrating their cutting-edge AI and web3 technologies—developed through their venture studio and powered by our open-source nBrain enterprise AI agent platform. They partner with ambitious, accomplished mid-career entrepreneurs to revitalize these acquisitions, while simultaneously creating meaningful succession paths for retiring business owners.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hi, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to mission matters com and click on be our guest to apply. Alright, so today is a very special episode. We’re bringing Chris Snook on the line.
He’s founder and managing partner over at ATOMIQ. And this our summit, Chris. Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here. All right, Chris. So first thing, first this year was my first time attending in Miami that the FII priority 2025. And I’ll tell you, it was, my mind was blown. It was such an experience, so many great people, and it was just.
Attended the the summit and really just, there were so many conversations that I was like, I should be recording this. I was like, man, I gotta do a series on this on this conference. So hence how we met and how we came together. I’m just curious to get off, have you been to FII like priority before, or like what, what’s your connection there?
Yeah, I actually I met Richard through one of our. Portfolio companies that’s in the events and media aspect at Atomic back in well three years ago, whatever that was. Mm-hmm. And it was the first I met him actually through a couple of his team members during New York Fashion Week. And it was the first time that they had brought FII to Miami was three years ago.
Obviously they’d been doing it Riyadh for the last eight years. So I was familiar with it from afar, had never been to. Either one of the conferences, but I we ended up getting involved in a project together and then I got invited to the first FII priority in Miami three years ago. So I’ve kind of had the privilege and, unique perspective of seeing it as it’s grown from the last three years I believe the first year that.
It was in Miami, you know, maybe there was 300 people at it. Obviously very curated, but what, it was about 300 people I think last year. You know, doubled that somewhere around there. And then this year was whatever it was, but it was, I think about 800 to, you know, a thousand. I’m not quite sure. But it was obviously.
Bigger this year and, having a president come and all those other things obviously brought probably more attention , and involvement to it than, any of the other prior years. But it’s been phenomenal all three years. And from a networking standpoint, from a, insights and perspective standpoint and it’s just been fascinating to kind of watch their, I think organic and also, mm-hmm.
Earned growth. it’s been very interesting. What do you think makes this conference so special? Like what do you think makes it different or unique? I think timing has a lot to do with it. I think, the focus that, PIF and, Richard have put into why FII priority needs to exist.
Is also a big asset. I mean, again, as an outside looking in, I think anytime that there is a narrative in the market that may be incomplete or may be polarizing, and you, could look at Saudi and the US as, one of those narratives, right? Regardless of, your political vendor or the nuances that you agree or disagree with when it comes to.
global economic development and a platform for kind of what’s next and who’s emerging. Mm-hmm. I think timing has a lot to do with it. And then obviously competence. I mean, you know, Richard Addus and Associates and their team and their entire leadership and everybody, I don’t wanna leave anybody out, has been doing what they’ve been doing for decades.
and I think when. they merged and got acquired by PIF several years ago, and then they had this vision for what FII could become, it also mapped to Saudi’s, vision of the new Saudi and Vision 2030. And so they needed a platform to kind of tell their story because otherwise the story was just gonna be rinse and repeat of what you thought of the old Saudi and.
so I think there’s just a deep focus on it, and I think there’s a real focus on the humanity of it, not just the business side of it. And I mean, obviously all the things you’d expect, like the networking’s great, you know, the people that are there. Sure. Are, you know, at the top of the food chain.
But I, think there’s a diversity there that is unique and it’s been embedded from the, the, again, I’ve had three years of experience there, so I can only speak to my own experience. Mm-hmm. But I think there’s a tremendous amount of organic and embedded diversity in there that other people, including a lot of the recent mandates that obviously didn’t work, gave, Lip service to, but with FII, I think it’s just embedded. And when you, when you kind of take the juxtaposition of, female leadership or diverse leadership and then you put that over what people might think of Saudi, it doesn’t really fit your, picture right away until you’re in it. Mm-hmm.
and similarly, you know, Miami. Miami’s a cool spot, right? And it’s got its own, brand. And some of that brand resonates with certain people and some of it turns other people off. But at the end of the day, I think there’s this hunger. There’s this, ambition of both of these, Geographies. Mm-hmm. Miami and Florida being one, and Saudi, Riyadh, you know, Neo, all the other, all the, not leaving anything out. Jetta, all the different things, right? There’s this kind of shared ambition on a future that, is unfolding rapidly, but they’re place in it and kind of a leveling of the playing field.
And so I think you have a blend of. The anti-establishment status quo, but at the same time, obviously there’s still a very establishment kind of audience in it. And so it’s just an interesting, it’s an interesting dynamic meaning like mm-hmm. It’s certainly not, it’s certainly not grassroots and at the same time, right.
I mean, like you, you wouldn’t call it grassroots and at the same time. There’s also this kind of meritocracy or inclusive version of new bodies at the table. And, and so I think it’s at right now, it’s kind of at a, teenage stage or whatever you want to call it, where it’s pure than some of the other platforms that would have similar levels of power attending it.
and so they’ve done a good job kind of nurturing that and yeah, I think keeping it unique in that way, but I think timing and also intent has a lot to do with it. And so it’s just unique as it relates to events of similar ilk. Yeah. let’s switch it up a bit, Chris. Let’s get into your work over at Atomics.
Maybe start off by telling us a.
Sure. So we are a boutique alternative asset management firm and a venture studio hybrid. So we, we have a couple different divisions, but essentially at the end of the day, our mission and, our thesis is built around the fact that humans are not gonna stop being humans, but increasingly we are going to be.
Immersed with and eventually converged with these exponential technologies that we read about all the time. And so we have taken our 25 years and my 25 years kind of in the entrepreneurship early stage investing realm. And we’ve blended that with, a business that essentially now acquires and bets on Human brands, human businesses that are lower technology, meaning like they may not be known for technology, but what they have is they have loyal, stable customer bases. They have proven owners and entrepreneurs or, operators. Those people are looking at some point for a succession, meaning they wanna either go on and do something else or maybe they wanna retire, whatever, whatever it is, right?
But they’re looking for an exit and they’re. The business is heavily dependent on their involvement, and we believe that those are great arbitrage opportunities to buy stable cash flows and then build a retooling of exponential technology underneath them so that we can take those businesses, not only grow them forward, but keep them very human.
While at the same time, positioning them for a world where we’ll never build businesses and operate them the same again because of ai, because of blockchain, because of the things that we have been watching emerge for the last decade or so, and that ultimately over the next decade will transform most aspects of society.
So we we put, we build human brands on top of exponential tech, is what we say. Right. talk a little bit more about ai. I mean, some people talk about beam and, maybe some type of bubble or something like, what are your views on that? Well, I think there’s, you know, there’s the price of an asset and then there’s the value of the underlying fundamentals, and those things oftentimes aren’t the same.
Mm-hmm. Sometimes the price is higher, right? And then, then it’s actually worth, right? And the fundamental value has to catch up. Sometimes the price is way less because people don’t understand the fun, value value yet. And sometimes those things fluctuate. violently like we’re seeing. You know, in the first quarter of 2025, and sometimes they just sit for a while that way.
Right. For years that way. And, and you could argue Bitcoin is that way, right? So if I, if I talk about Bitcoin, for example, you’ve got people that still don’t know what it is, still don’t think it’s real. that’s the majority, that’s 99% of the world. But those who have spent more than a thousand hours looking at it, maybe owning it, maybe sending a little to each other, whatever, right?
They’re almost like religious about it. Because they understand the problem that it solves and they understand the freedom and like there, there’s a thing that happens to you when you start to use a thing, but the friction to start using a thing is so high that the reality of the world doesn’t really get it yet.
And so all they can focus on is the price. And when they look at the price, they’re looking at the price denominated in dollars or Euros or whatever their local currency is. And that price is volatile, right? And so when you say something like, well, one BTC equals one BTC, they don’t know what you’re talking about because they’re going, well, no, it’s 84,000 or it’s 109,000, or it’s right, it dropped 30% overnight.
And you’re like, well, in what terms? So the fundamentals are a bet against. Digital collateral and digital money being something valued in society as we look forward over the next 50 to a hundred years, and if you look at the fundamentals, you go, well, this is inevitable, this is unique. And then the price doesn’t match up to that.
So you’re just basically going, okay, well if it’s that fundamental, if it’s that unique and if it’s that hard to replace and it’s that impossible to kill, and everybody’s tried. Well, then it’s inevitable. So it, either goes to zero or it doesn’t stay here. And if it doesn’t stay here, I’m just picking my entry point based on the price action, but I’m not having a conversation around the value.
I understand the value. Well, AI similar, right? Like AI’s been around for 50 years, like it’s not something new. But what happened was we got to a point where we put a, layer of ai, large language models into the pocket of every human being that wanted it for free. Or for 20 bucks a month. Right. So Chad, GBT two marches ago, basically changed the game.
And then we’ve had this run of ai. So now everybody’s going, oh my God. Because what we did was we made, we, the equivalent I give people is when we made electricity safe enough where you weren’t gonna burn your house down. Right. And then we made it cheap enough back in the early twenties where every house that wanted it could have it.
We never built houses or buildings the same again. we always from that point on, pre-wired them to have electricity. And so when you think about ai, you’re evaluating, well now we have intelligence that’s artificial. That’s. Available to be harnessed and, and flow through any organization, small or large, whether it be a family, whether it be a, a teenager in high school, or whether it be a Fortune 100 company or anything in between.
We’ve now democratized electricity, right? When it comes to intelligence mm-hmm. We’ve now made it, we’ve now made it possible to have in your building, in your life, in your business. So we’re at the phase now where we’re still talking about ai, ai, ai. Because if we’re not talking about it, we don’t seem relevant.
But at the end of the day, are we in a bubble? It depends on what your, your horizon of time is. If, you think that every SaaS tool that has AI in it is gonna go to a billion dollar valuation, then yes, you’re in a bubble and you’re probably gonna lose all your money. Mm-hmm. If you think about it through the lens of this is the new electricity, we’re never gonna build houses the same away.
Like no one goes to a building and expects to see a sign out front that says we have electricity. Like that’s a given. Mm-hmm. and I’m of the belief and the thesis I have is human beings are not gonna walk into a business and ask if they use ai, they’re not gonna do that now. They’re not gonna do it in five years.
So talking about the fact that you’re gonna use AI is a short term shareholder value. pump to stay relevant and not look like you’re falling behind. But implementing it is a whole different thing and implementing it so that you don’t have to rip out the wall every time you put it into a new division of your business is, the strategy and the architecture that is happening now.
And that is being debated now, and that is being implemented now by organizations large and small. But at the end of the day, what, what we’re really looking at is we’re looking at the development of power stations, just like we did with the electricity. Or if you want to use the railroad, we’re building railroad.
At some point there’ll be a consolidation, because you don’t need 15 railroads to cross the country, right? So there’ll be a co and you don’t need, 50 different brands owning power stations. The infrastructure is expensive, the infrastructure is necessary. And it’s being built. So you have the Stargate thing on one side, you have the XAI, and the, Nvidia thing that just got announced this week on the other side.
And those things are infrastructure and they’re very important and they’re indicative of the inevitability of this future continuing to grow. So you would argue we’re not in a bubble, right? We’re we’re just in the early phase of a massive shift in how energy costs will move, how infrastructure will play out, and then ultimately where that.
Connects into every other piece of society is TBD, and who are those connection points gonna be? Mm-hmm. But again, I’m of the a belief that you will never build a business again. Just like you’ll never build a building without wiring, you’ll never build a business again that isn’t built from the ground up with how it’s gonna move the intelligence through it in a way that is safe, secure, and proprietary so that it can deliver a customer experience that is seamless without having to tell your customer they need to become interested in ai.
‘ cause that will never work. And that’s the phase we’re in now and people are trying to figure it out. And if you’re trying to figure out that. In a company that was built in the last 20 years and that has boomed in the last 20 years built around SaaS, then you have to think about a world where humans will still be doing a lot of decisions over the next three to five years.
They’ll be in the loop for hopefully the next decade. At some point, maybe they won’t be, but at least for the next five to 10, you know, humans are still gonna be in the control seat, right? Augmented by all these different agents but at the end of the day, a lot of purchasing is gonna happen.
Bot to bot it already is back in 2020. Gartner had a stat, I think it was 6.7 billion was done in GDP bot to bot. That was in 2020. That was before the, ai, you know, unlock of chat GBT and all the, all the last two years. Right? So if that’s the case, then we have to start to think about, well, what’s gonna change in the way that these, existing businesses that dominate right now work?
Well if the average company has a couple hundred, technology integrations. And they’re not a technology company, and the small business has 30 to 40 SAEs, you know, between their accounting and their QuickBooks and their this and their social. Like if the smallest business has several dozen technology in integrations.
And they’re all SaaS and they’re paying for these things. Well, that’s because humans buy in bulk because they go, I need that one feature for my CRM. It does 95 other things, but I don’t really know or have the time to learn those, but I really need email or I really need this. So we pay 30 bucks a month per seat, or we pay whatever, because we’re buying a gym membership basically where we go, I need just need to lose weight and I’m gonna use the treadmill and I need to be motivated.
I don’t use 90% of the rest of the gym, but I’m paying 30 bucks a month. Yeah. Well, that’s how humans buy everything. So that’s how SaaS is built. Agents Agentic AI are gonna not do that. We don’t know exactly how they’re gonna buy. What we know is they’re not gonna buy in bulk ’cause they’re gonna buy micropayments of the feature they care about and that’s it.
And they’re gonna do it 24 7, 365. So they need new rails. this is why the digital asset thing, this is why all these things matter. And they converge, right? Because agentic AI need to be able to transact millions and millions of transactions per second. And they’re gonna do that not in $30 a month per seat, because they’re gonna be too efficient.
They’re not gonna, they’re not gonna buy stuff they don’t use. And so this entire business model that’s built all the venture returns for the last 15 years is at risk. And then everybody in investing in the market’s going, well, technology is what I need to buy. Well, yeah, but not if it’s SaaS, because the multiples on SaaS might change.
As Agentic AI take over at scale. So you just have this really interesting thing. So our bet again is I don’t wanna have to go convince a CTO and five layers of leadership inside of a middle market company to rip out whatever technology they’re married to, that they’re used to, that they’ve embedded.
I’d rather go buy a business that does five to 50 million, on the lower end, five to 10 million with strong cash flows that has very little technology. Nobody technical in a thing. Bring all that in and retool it with AI in the center. Because I don’t have to rip anything out. All I have to do is put electricity into a non-electric house and I don’t have to worry about getting to market because they already have customers that don’t care about any of that and just want a human experience and something that doesn’t feel overly technical or overly dehumanized.
And so you can, that’s the bet we’re making any of the atomic is we’re buying human businesses that are focused on creating a human experience with our customer. ’cause that’s the only thing that can’t be commoditized. And it’s the thing we’re all starved for because we’ve all gotten gadget out to death.
We’ve all got automated out to death. We’ve all bought food in a place with no human experience. we’re done talking with kiosk. It’s not gonna stop, but we’re just missing that. And so are we willing to pay a premium? More and more? I’m betting we’ll pay a premium more and more for something that feels like a human.
And those businesses are, are cashflow positive, they’re small. So private equity is not gonna go bother to roll ’em up because it’s too much work for too little fees. But we can aggregate those because we’re nimble and we’re, scrappy and we’re also strategic. And then we’ll get to the point where we have a portfolio of things that are big enough to be exited to private equity who now will go do it.
And so then we’ll just rinse and repeat that model. And that’s, kind of our unique positioning in the market. Amazing. Chris, this has been great having you on the show today. I really enjoyed our conversation and I learned a lot. I learned a lot, some perspectives on ai and from a love analogy would buy a.
That has, does it have to have a sign outside that says electricity? Like, like it makes total sense what you’re saying. Well again, you know, I don’t wanna pick, yeah. I don’t wanna pick on anybody, but there’s other ones just for people to think about it because it’s a rational way to look at it. and almost under.
Like not be overwhelmed by it and just think like practical, right? I’m not picking on the beauty company, but there’s a major publicly traded beauty company that everyone knows that was on a earnings call like maybe six months ago, and I heard the CEO say, we’re not a beauty, we’re not of this company.
We’re not a beauty company, we’re a technology company. And I was like, that’s such a stupid thing to say, right? Like the women and men who buy your makeup, your creams, your potions, your lotions, they’re buying hope. They’re buying, beauty. They’re buying something that they’re putting on their body, that they want to be safe, and that they wanna make them feel more confident and more attractive and better.
They’re not buying technology. So who are you talking to? That’s like saying I’m a hotel and I am a sheets and pillows business. Like, no, you’re not. Like that’s a given, right? You’re not selling me on the quiet room the comfortable beds, , the wonderful food you’re selling me on your accounting system, like you’re selling me on how you make the, power work.
Like why are you doing that when what I want is I want to. Beautiful, comfortable place to stay for a price I can justify. So, mm-hmm. We have to get back to the fact that like, if what we sell is makeup, well then, use technology to become better at creating that promise to your customer. But don’t say you’re a technology company.
you’re literally disconnected from all reality. You’ve said that your shareholder who’s chasing tech pump is more important than your woman or man spending money on your makeup at a hundred dollars a kiosk. And that is a mistake that will bite everyone in the butt. Mm-hmm. Chris, if somebody’s listening or watching this and they wanna follow up and they wanna learn more about your work, how do they do that?
You can find me@chrisjsnuck.com. You can read my substack at wealth matters to me.com, and you can check out atomic@atomicstudio.com, all those three. Fantastic. And for everybody listening, just so you know, we’ll definitely put those links in the show notes so you can just click on them and head right on over.
And speaking of the audience, if your first time with matters done. Hit follow button. This is a daily show. Each and every day we’re bringing new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along way your journey as well. So again, hit that subscribe or follow button. And Chris, thanks again for coming on the show.
Awesome. Thanks Adam. Appreciate it.
Let’s chat.