You can do a lot with money.
After you’ve spent it on necessities like food, housing, and education, if you’ve got money to spare you can buy stuff.
Or, you can use your excess money to make more money.
There are fundamentally two ways of doing this. Investing. And gambling. There are people who will argue that those two are actually the same. It’ll be interesting to see if my lunch guests today draw any similarity between their two occupations – which are, investing and gambling.
As founder and Chairman of the Board of Gulf South Angels, Mike Eckert oversees investment in startup businesses in 13 states across the south
On the investment side, Mike Eckert is Chairman of an organization called Gulf South Angels. The word “angels” refers to angel investors. These are people who put money into very early-stage businesses where there might be little more to invest in than a concept, a business plan, and an enthusiastic founder.
The last time we met Mike was 2014. At that time he was launching a New Orleans angel investment group called NOLA Angel Network. That was to become the nucleus of the current, much larger organization.
Gulf South Angels network is spread across 12 states. There are around 135 angel members. And to date they’ve invested over $20m in a diverse range of companies, from aerospace to pet food.
And so, to the other method of using your surplus capital to generate more money: gambling.
If you’re a certain age you may remember a time when there was no legalized gambling in the state of Louisiana. The state legislature eventually figured out a way to compromise between the anti-gambling faction and the pro-gambling folks, by allowing gambling, without actually allowing it. They achieved this seemingly impossible feat by permitting gambling only on riverboats, not on land. But they also allowed riverboats to tie up to a dock, and didn’t require them to actually sail anywhere.
One of these gambling vessels was the Treasure Chest Casino Riverboat, tied up to a dock in Kenner.
Well, as they tend to, times change. Somehow, the non-gambling folks were won over and today Louisiana has a number of what we still call, “land-based casinos.”
Rodney Miller, Director of Marketing at Treasure Chest Casino, says catering to the more social aspect of gaming is the draw for the younger generation of gamblers
In June 2024, just over the levee from the riverboat, a much bigger, land-based casino and entertainment center, called The Treasure Chest, opened in Kenner’s Laketown neighborhood. The Director of Marketing at Treasure Chest Casino is Rodney Miller.
In the 1980’s, a book about deal-making called “Getting To Yes” popularized the concept of “win win” – conflict resolution in which both parties feel they have benefited, rather than one side winning at the expense of the other.
This same feeling – that everybody benefits – is the core belief of both casinos and angel investors. At the casino, the theory goes, even if you don’t come out ahead financially, you’ve had a good time. And, like any other pastime, hopefully you only spent discretionary capital, not your rent money. With angel investing, the theory goes, you’re risking your own money by sinking it into somebody else’s dream – but if it works out, everybody wins.
Whether this is how you think the world works, or whether you’re more of a cynic with less of a Pollyanna perspective, there are always going to be people with discretionary income looking for a way to invest it. Whether that’s gambling or angel investing, for Mike and Rodney it’s win-win.
Mike Eckert, Peter Ricchiuti and Rodney Miller are joined by a trio of bankers from JP Morgan Chase at Columns on St Charles Avenue in Uptown New Orleans
Out to Lunch was recorded live over lunch at Columns in Uptown New Orleans.
