Inside the Mormon Family Office that Invented Man-Made Diamonds

Written by Ricky Nave in Successful People

What’s better than turning lead ($1 / lb) into gold ($22,000 / lb)?

Turning graphite ($10 / lb) into diamond (~$1 million / lb). And Howard Tracy Hall was the first person to invent a way to do that.

Howard monetized his invention by creating Hall Labs almost 70 years ago. Since then, Hall Labs has evolved into a conglomerate that is part industrial empire, part family office, and part venture studio. And I flew to Utah to interview the heir-patriarch & Chairman of the company.

Hall Labs owns a portfolio of almost 1,000 patents and has built and exited multiple $100+ million spin-offs. These spin-offs have large, patent-protected moats, and nearly all of them are also opportunity zone businesses which come with tax advantages for investors.

Hall’s biggest portfolio company is Vanderhall, an EV powersports company that is profitable after only $25 million of funding. Vanderhall is considering an IPO soon.

Hall’s biggest current bet is on built-to-rent apartment complexes that don’t have to connect to any public utilities.

Hall Labs is currently run by Howard Tracy’s son, Dave Hall. I interviewed Dave about how Hall Labs allocates money and people to different portfolio companies, how they raise money from opportunity zone investors, how they hire talented engineers on an hourly basis with no benefits, and why most startups purporting to solve the housing problem are bullshit. You can listen to my full interview here.

Ricky Nave

In college, Ricky studied physics & math, won a prestigious research competition hosted by Oak Ridge National Laboratory, started several small businesses including an energy chewing gum business and a computer repair business, and graduated with a thesis in algebraic topology. After graduating, Ricky attended grad school at Duke University in the mathematics PhD program where he worked on quantum algorithms & non-Euclidean geometry models for flexible proteins. He also worked in cybersecurity at Los Alamos during this time before eventually dropping out of grad school to join a startup working on formal semantic modeling for legal documents. Finally, he left that startup to start his own in the finance & crypto space. Now, he helps entrepreneurs pay less capital gains tax.

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