SPEAKER_01
Social products community products, especially it's not like you need everybody on there You actually probably don't want everybody on there You just want like a really tight-knit group of people who are really excited about what you built and then that kernel can grow into something much bigger Dude, it's great to finally have you on I feel like this has been a long time coming and we're excited to get a chance to To jam and and hopefully do some like kind of live ideation on some ideas and different things along the way as well Cool. Yeah. Yeah, I've listened to a number of your podcasts I am I think I'm a third of the way through the Tim Urban one from I think a week ago or something He's easy Tim is a fascinating guy and a deep thinker on a wide wide variety of things I mean that was like I was sitting there having that conversation with him and none of those things were on my bingo card for the day I felt coming away from it like I never thought I would learn about Boots void, you know the massive expanse of space that is unoccupied on a random Friday afternoon, but go figure Yeah Today's episode is brought to you by element a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything you need and nothing you don't That means lots of salt with no sugar It contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio a thousand milligram sodium 200 milligrams potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium, but none of the junk No sugar no coloring no artificial ingredients no gluten no fillers no BS I absolutely love it and how it's fit into my lifestyle Whether you're keto low carb paleo or just want to feel better and more active element is the drink for you I drink it after an intense workout to replenish my electrolytes I also drink it after a few too many whiskies late at night. It totally helps with the hangovers When you sweat the primary electrolyte lost is sodium athletes can lose up to seven grams per day When sodium is not replaced it's common to experience muscle cramps and fatigue The same goes for after a big night out drinking Element will fit into your lifestyle no matter who you are right now Element is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any order That's eight single serving packets free with any element order It's a great way to try all eight flavors or share element with a salty friend Get yours at drink element comm slash happens.

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SPEAKER_00
Love that Ryan do you listen to a lot of podcasts because I feel like I see you on instagram posting stories of you listening to a lot of podcasts

SPEAKER_01
I think you're referring to my So I have this this semi new ritual So I've been lifting weights for a long time like that's been my like exercise the kind of activity And maybe a few months ago. I was like I should do more cardio but I really don't like running and and so I got a recumbent bike not not like a Peloton where you have to like sit up you got a recumbent bike where you get a sit back and email and tweet and I have like my ipad set up here so I watch podcasts and so I think that's what you're seeing is is my A promotion of the recumbent bike multitasking podcast email There's a there's a powerful learning in there by the way of like pairing behaviors You know like pairing a behavior you dislike But you want to you know adopt with one that you like or find productive I've I've always done the same thing like whenever I need to try to get back into cardio I'm the same as you like I have always been a lifting nerd from back in the baseball days And so I'm still that way, but then I neglect cardio for long periods of time and realize like hey, I'm 30 I should probably you know take on more of this whatever and I've always paired it with Listening to something watching some show. I've been wanting to watch You know like reading emails whatever it is something where I'm like, okay I just unlocked 30 minutes a day make up the number of time that is now considered productive that I can like Justify doing this thing that I generally hate Yeah, there's a I'll give you a shout out to Huberman podcast.

I don't know if you've seen his stuff It's it's quite dense. It definitely feels like I'm in a lecture like back in college But it's great. I mean for those that don't know it.

He basically goes into the science of psychology rounds number of different things like how dopamine works or You know anxiety depression and he talks He actually has one podcast on I forget the exact topic But he talks a lot about that that same thing and how he actually recommends not listening to podcast or music if you enjoyed at the gym every single time because you start to essentially your Your brain starts to expect that and and it doesn't get as much joy over time And this is the unfortunate reality of like how dopamine works and I know very little about it to be honest, but it's it's unfortunate that like what goes up must come down and And over time you start to acclimate it's kind of like hit Hedon I kind of like treadmill that we're all on Start to acclimate to those things. So He sort of recommends that like actually don't don't always do all the things you enjoy Maybe don't listen to podcasts at the gym Just like enjoy the gym as it is and maybe the next time listen to your podcast that you enjoy And I find that find that interesting Because I'm a very habitual person I do the same thing all the time and make this copy in the morning I I'm very very routine

SPEAKER_00
But always listen to where it happens at the gym, please

SPEAKER_01
He mentions that yeah, I know he said something about the where it happens podcast. Yeah, I think he did recommend that He's actually I have him coming on the show this summer I want to do like a kind of layman's version of his podcast Like what are the 10 things that every person should try to adapt into you know Adopt into their life to make them a healthier happier person and do like the takedown version of huberman lab Um on on our show, so I've got him coming on this summer. He's supposed to be in new york A couple times.

I'm gonna try to try to get him live. Yeah, I think that'd be great. I do I would like a tldr Yeah, totally his podcast because I've listened to several of his I mean, he's kind of the lex fridman You know joe rogan like it's that length sometimes and density where like they'll do an episode on sleep that is At the you know unbelievable like with matthew matthew walker.

I think is that sleep scientist's name Um, but like, you know, I'm sitting there for three hours learning about sleep Like I kind of want the you know, what is the cliff notes version of this that will get me 80% of the way there with You know 10% of the thought Yes, yeah, I mean, it's our it's our era of uh, you know low attention spans I'm actually amazed that people sit through and listen to really long podcasts, but people do You know those long episodes people love them Yeah, I actually like I like conversational podcasts. I like Joe Rogan for the format in part because it's It's one of those things you can kind of dip in and out of you can multitask to I don't watch all of them, but this sometimes are interesting guests and um I don't know it also feels like you're in the room with other people and I think You know, I think more and more people are understanding that that format and and kind of adopting that format more and more but I don't know it's it's better than like the sterile like interview question answer back and forth It's format in my mind. I agree.

I mean that was the original insight of where it happens too, by the way It was like, you know, it was the room where it happens It was like We know that these conversations are happening behind closed doors though And so like smart people or interesting people are having interesting conversations that generate insights that are then creating innovations in the future And changing the future And so how do we open the door to those type of conversations and basically just bring guests on? You know super smart people that think about the future for a living like you and just jam on interesting things that are happening and And publicize that conversation and you know and and go put it out so that other people can hopefully benefit from it in some way So that's kind of the spirit of it in general as we've thought about it and selfishly

SPEAKER_00
You know both Sal and I have twitter twitter audiences and We were talking about like how can we build affinity? Basically with our audiences. There's one thing about actually going and tweeting 200 200 and some odd characters But you know being in people's ears all the time Um definitely build affinity I'm wondering You know, would you ever start a podcast? Why or why not and how do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, so early product in days. Well, I've listened to podcasts like probably you as well like for many years And I really enjoy them and I used to mow my parents lawn with um gun muffs on with my like old school like uh, you know headphones underneath them um And listen to like Stupid financial podcasts like I don't know I just would love to soak up like information and insight and perspectives And so um, I've listened to podcasts forever and then product and started and I was like shoot now I have an opportunity to actually start a podcast like it makes sense like we have an audience We have a brand, you know, it kind of wrote itself The product and podcast was actually very similar format to kind of this to some extent We bring on one or two people who are interesting. Maybe they're investors founder or someone in technology And we just talk about like what products you love what's in your home screen like what things have you seen recently that you're excited about And um, we did that for a while and then I stopped doing it just because it was it wasn't like the highest ROI thing um We never really cracked the the growth thing for for the podcast like You know the people who are most engaged and product would listen to it But it wasn't anything that reached like hundreds of thousands of people let alone millions So the growth part of podcasting is the hardest part.

It's it's kind of like twitter itself twitter is really hard to grow your audience Um for most people it takes many many years in some cases to grow a sizable following And I feel like podcasts are bad, but even harder because you don't really have built in like social dynamics to to grow it and um get those ski backs feedback loops that you kind of get from from social media Um, but I thought about starting a new podcast and I'm just hesitant to commit anything right now I'm just like do I really want to do that right now? It's uh, so can we get into the um What you hit on is like an interesting insight more broadly around building products and it's like driving and creating these like incentives and referral loops that kind of create growth and create community Um, and it strikes me that like product hunt was a great example of that in the early days Like how you built this incredibly fervent community of product lovers and product minds You know, I imagine I don't know the whole story So I actually would love to hear it of like the earliest days of like planting that seed of growth that then sprouted and obviously It's become something really massive globally. Um, I would love to just hear a little bit more about that Like how did you think about creating those and you know referral loops incentive loops getting people to share getting people to interact and build that You know community fire that you could then kind of pour gasoline on Um, yeah, well, so I was talking to a founder yesterday. Um, he was exploring some different social community ideas and uh So I'm gonna I'm gonna almost counter my own advice or experience.

Um on one side he has a lot of really good ideas. He's brilliant kind of designer product thinker and people like him, um Can be challenged with overthinking things because we like to think in systems We like to think in flywheels we like to think of like, oh if we have this thing and unlocks this thing and unlocks that thing and That's important. I think very valuable to like dissect and try to understand however You can also become paralyzed and like overengineer a product if you think if you think you're too if you're like too clever basically and what I mean by that is is um I've made mistakes in the past where we built new products within product that were like way too complicated Like because I thought I was so smart.

I was so clever. I was like, oh, we can do all these things and what about this feature and that feature I went up spending way more time on it to bring out like the v1 than we needed So going back to product in the very beginning. Um I wasn't actually trying to build a company or product.

I just was like I like finding cool new products You know, why do we have to like hunt for the link inside of tech rush articles? Why isn't there just a simple list of here's what's cool that launched today? And I was also kind of weird that was like brass in the app store in my various countries and that was brass angel list looking at new companies Just to see what people were building basically and so the the initial idea was there was no systems thinking There was no like grandmaster plan. It was just oh, what if I started a newsletter? because that's easy to do first of products that launched or products that people find interesting and that was sort of the spark that You know proved out that okay some people some other people not just me like this type of content And then it sort of naturally fell into okay. Well A newsletter is a great start, but obviously we we don't have any place to like Curate this and you know at scale.

We have no place for comments There's there's so many things missing that can make this better And so a lot of the I would say like first 12 18 months of product The roadmap sort of just like fell out. It was just like almost obvious Based on what people were doing the feedback we were receiving And then over time we started thinking more like system that's sort of organically meaning I'll use an example So initially when the product on website launched it was kind of like reddit We were like, let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's have posts and comments and upvotes and keep it simple And what we found was makers the founders and people that built those products would increasingly come to the site and be like Oh, I made this thing in the comments like if you have any feedback if you have any like questions let me know and Then it was like very obvious to us It was like, okay Why don't we actually productize that and make it clear that this person made the thing or these people made this thing? so that people in the community could identify those people and Now that might seem like obvious and kind of trivial But actually what that unlocked is you think about it like a system it unlocked a really interesting dynamic where okay? People follow these people know these makers.

Maybe they want to know what their friends launched or people that they follow launch So it led us to unlock sort of these engagement loops through email So like if Greg launched, you know, his new like islands back in the day Everyone that knows Greg or follows Greg on product hunt would now get notified and those would have really high open rates and engagement rates and Then of course it the next part of the system is oh now you can build a profile You can have this profile of things that you've made and kind of show it off to other people and For a certain subset of people, especially like indie makers or like young entrepreneurs. They're like very proud of that and And so all those things sort of like unfolded sort of naturally in the roadmap but But yeah, I tried to like think of all those things from day zero in some ways it might have been like Paralyzing because it's like okay. We have all these ideas But like at the end of the day you have to just prove out like the core dynamic the core like value problem early on yet Two things you hit on that I want to double click into one You know, you mentioned like overthinking and paralysis and I mean you guys are both builders and have built multiple different products and different things over your years I've always thought that like overthinking tends to come from inaction and it's not that you're like not acting and so you start over It's sort of like when you're not acting and when you're not You know having that bias to just get things out test learn iterate etc That's when you find yourself prone to overthinking and overanalysis because you're just you're sitting there and you're like I'm not gonna act.

Let me just pause wait etc. And so you get caught in that Um, and so I'm curious just for your guys perspectives on that like have you found in general that overthinking results from inaction?

SPEAKER_00
so consumer social first of all is its own beast in my opinion and when you think about zero to one consumer social it's probably 90% art 10 science now once you actually build some level product market fit that changes over time and you know if you think about like facebook like You know they had instagram and then they're like they bought instagram and they're like, okay, let's just sort of like Bring what we learned on facebook and apply it and optimize it on instagram So then you end up just running experiments and it becomes 90% science 10% art so I think what Ryan is saying and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what you're saying in the early days It does feel a lot more organic when you're building community or social products and you kind of have to just Go with your intuition a lot of the time if you have a unique insight in a particular, you know feel like you you understood At the time like and I was there like sf tech Products makers like you understood that and it was unbelievable Like you understood that and it was under it was underserved and you're and correct me if I'm wrong like the first time I heard of product hunt was I think I was invited to a brunch and

SPEAKER_01
We did use some brunches. Yeah. Yeah and some meetups. Yeah

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and could and yeah, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about in the early days the importance of You know the events and brunches Because when you think about building a tech product, you know, you don't really think about over easy eggs that much

SPEAKER_01
There you go. I don't know I think of over easy eggs immediately, Greg Yeah, that's a good avocado toast That's a good chapter title for your next book. Um Yeah, I mean So a lot of this was organic too So even before product and I was actually doing some brunches and the kind of meetups with like other founders and people and I don't know.

I was trying to build like, you know Relationships with people and learn and I was basically trying to soak up as much as I could Meeting people in person especially when you're in San Francisco was enjoyable and so when product kind of kind of like Well, when we hit some level product market fit we we had just just I felt obvious to me like, oh, why don't we just meet up in person? We've been like talking about this tech, you know online And so we started our first meetups and then over time other people in the community like, hey, can I do a meetup in? Bangalore can I do a meetup in berlin? And so I don't know how many we've had but maybe over a thousand meetups across the world Hosted by the community where you know, we support but basically they they run it all And and that's been just really affecting and building more tight-knit community and it really is a almost like an iRL version of what's happening on product in in some ways where People want to connect with the people people want to learn about technology. They want to geek out about this thing and there was kind of a You mentioned this earlier, right? There's sort of that was missing to some extent on the internet Yeah, there's subreddits for tech there's twitter But there wasn't sort of this destination for new products and like this optimism that we were trying to to encourage so um I think it goes back to like the do things at scale component like I think Social products community products, especially It's not like you need everybody on there. You actually probably don't want everybody on there You just want like a really tight-knit group of people who are really excited about what you built and then that kernel can grow into something much bigger Do you think and this is a question for both of you guys? I guess just from your product building experience.

Do you think that the best products Feel extremely obvious like you said that Ryan in the early days of product on like you were just letting Customers guide you and like every you know the product roadmap was informed by things that just felt obvious like oh We definitely obviously need to do this because all the customers are asking for it. We had a discussion with with Greg's friend This guy Nick Salter really from midday squares and he was like there was this change that I just had to make which made no Sense on paper as like a financial move But it was just so abundantly obvious from the consumers and from the people that cared about the product that I needed to make this Change and it started getting me thinking about this loop of like Is a good heuristic to just say like the new rollouts need to be the things that just feel so obvious to you when you're going and doing them? Do you think that the new product that you're doing is just so obvious to you? When you're going and doing them. Do you think that's an effective heuristic or do you need to? You know kind of be more dynamic than that I'm curious to get Greg's take on this.

I mean I Hindsight is always obvious is the challenge Right because if you look back at some ideas, you're like, you know, let's take snapchat, you know It's in hindsight like oh, it makes a lot of sense why you know kids were we're sending a femoral photos But in the moment, you know, most people didn't get it most people didn't realize that that opportunity So I think a lot of it is there's another kind of like question to ask that's related to this in my mind which which we asked a lot on the investing side which is um You know what's changed like what what is their regulatory shift? Is there a consumer behavior shift? Is there a technology shift? what's changed in this world to enable this this new thing to emerge and Going back to snapchat like I wasn't obviously like in the company and I don't know You know every all the details about snapchat, but a big shift a big part of that was You know kids on you know, facebook just didn't want their parents and their teachers to see their posts They were also concerned I think it's just also the rise of like cancel culture kind of emerging and and other things like that and so the ephemerality Um was very countered to like older generations who want to save everything and like go back to those things That's really not what that younger generation, you know wanted Um, so I don't know. I think a lot about that like what's changing especially in consumer products there there's always Even if you just take the generational shift like people that grow up in different times like grew up with smartphones have very different expectations and ways of speaking and engaging that that maybe don't um Adapt or align with like today's modern day like giants like, you know, let's take facebook as an example facebook.com Um, so I find that really interesting.

I try to understand that when I'm speaking with founders It's almost like I guess the nuance or like the tweak I would make to what I said originally is like the initial insight If you want to build something huge world changing, etc. The initial insight has to be Contrarian really. I mean it has to be something that No one really agrees with you at the time and then everyone agrees with you later that it's like, oh, yeah snapchat You know you use that example.

It's a great example like at the time You're like probably no one agreed with it. There is most people and because if everyone agreed with it Someone else would have built it. There would have been a thousand snapchats already And so it was like an initial insight that was novel and contrarian that in the future everyone agreed with and that's kind of As an investor or as a builder.

That's what you want. You want to build things that everyone agrees with you on later Um in the future. There's some great kind of quote Investing adage around that but maybe it's that that initial insight has to be contrarian and very different Um, but then as you get that flywheel going and like as product market fit exists You're able to be led by the customers into things that feel very obvious And so then like the next layer of rollouts the next product the roadmap starts to be informed in a way that feels Really more obvious because your customers are kind of leading you directly there post pmf

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think uh the way people's brains work is Uh Everything seems obvious in in in hindsight. So people will say oh my god, I Obviously that product would fail because of xyz in hindsight or obviously that product would work because of xyz in hindsight and I think the truth is when you're building consumer product It's all about having some key insight in a particular niche and being Like weird basically being weird and building a product. That's weird and weird that's in a good way for the people in that niche And weird that the people outside that niche are kind of like well, that's weird.

Why would I ever use that? And that basically buys you time to iterate on a product in that particular niche in that particular niche and really really serve them in a in a remarkable way And like snapchat, you know snapchat was a product for Los Angeles high school students To send nudes basically um Initially and it was for them like the best product in the world for a period of time and then they expanded that and expanded that and expanded that So much at the point where now there's you know hundreds of millions of daily active users so You know, I'm not uh recommending, you know create products that send nudes to people but what I am recommending is Is going you know pick a niche go into that niche niche and serve them serve them well

SPEAKER_01
I mean Nikita did this right like um with uh with tvh and with any like, you know new stuff He's working on it's like he even if it's not some like amazing and you know insight about People it's like, you know what high schoolers are already doing they're gossiping about each other They're talking about each other behind their backs and they're saying things about each other And so like what is a product that you can build around that natural human instinct for gossip? And there's there's a ton right there's just like um having a small insight or being willing to kind of like Play to a natural human instinct or desire it can be a really powerful building insight if you're going to go create things

SPEAKER_00
and the truth is you need As a maker You need one small insight which could absolutely transform your life That's your point. Yeah, like if you come up with one small insight in a particular niche it could literally Literally change your life just like You know you can have one tweet that gets a hundred thousand likes or five hundred thousand likes And then all of a sudden you have this new audience and it might transform your life

SPEAKER_01
So just changing gears a little bit because I do want to get into some like ideation stuff Ryan What are you? What are you working on now? Like I know you're not Formally working on product hunt stuff anymore. What's what's your focus day today? What are you? What are you thinking about or getting excited about? Yeah, um, so I'm investing full-time now. Um And we're investing early stage precede, you know, uh seed stage companies across Everything.

Um, so we we do love weird consumer stuff We're investing in web three stuff. We're investing in boring sass stuff like really a lot of our through line there Is like what is what is change? What's the consumer behavior shift? What's the value shift? and part of that thinking is Obviously startups are not private market startups are not 100% like efficient But they're getting more efficient because more and more people are building and trying new things So that's why we think so much about the why now like what's changed kind of question on the investing side. So So veda kaniyia working on on the fun side.

We're also constantly trying to experiment with different things I would say like we kind of break up the fun and like one is Um, uh, how do you say it? Business as usual meaning you meet founders you evaluate founders you do do diligence support founders sort of like The table stakes and investing and then there's another thread which is like experimentation and we're always experimenting with different ideas We've had I don't know how many experiments we've done But but basically we we try to build things not necessarily products but build Um different different products not in the software sense. So the most recent one is operator lp's Is what we're calling it? I don't know if it's a great name, but that's what we're calling it for now and the idea is we're seeing a lot of our friends a lot of people that we know raise funds And a lot of them of course like raising a fund from lps is very difficult for a lot of people furthermore We also have a strong belief that investing is increasingly customer driven community driven network driven And and that's why we raise from 370 lps in our latest fund So we raised from tons of operators like some top designers data scientists engineers salespeople We have hundreds and hundreds of lps who are financially invested in our success and therefore the portfolio success So we started this experiment called the operator lps basically like a gp demo day to connect operator lp So not necessarily the fund of fund the endowments, but really these are people that might write 10k checks 100k checks into funds Who are excited to get involved and back these these gps mostly smaller funds is what we focused on like mostly like sub 20 million dollar funds and Our selfish goal is well Our selfish goal is really to build a stronger network with lps and with gps to sort of help, but we're not taking we're not Charging for this. We're not getting economics.

We're just experimenting to see kind of where this can play out And so far we've run two gp demo days With three people in each demo day First one went about a 1.1 million dollars in interest second one's 1.5 million dollars in interest So, you know, we're still kind of gathering data points to see like is this valuable to people like this And sort of the next step is to figure out.

Okay. What does v2 look like? How do we expand this to more gps to more lps? just to really decrease the friction from from the fundraising side and What we really want to do is push push the industry forward towards a more collaborative work community investing Beyond just the investor Founder side, but gp and lpside as well If you're anything like me your portfolio is a mix of the usual suspects Stocks bonds and mutual funds Maybe you've even dabbled in some alternative assets like crypto, but those investments can be incredibly unpredictable You know what typically isn't unpredictable? apartment buildings rental homes Industrial facilities places we go every day to work eat and live That's all private real estate and thanks to its historical stability as well as its reputation as a reliable income stream These investments could be a valuable addition to your portfolio This is where fund rise comes in Fund rise is changing the game when it comes to real estate investing and making this powerful asset class Easily available to investors like you and me They're easy to use app lets you build a real estate portfolio tailored to meet your goals It's a great way to benefit from real estate's many perks while adding some much needed diversification to your portfolio So join over 250,000 other investors building a better portfolio with private real estate Signing up is easy. Just head over to fund rise.

com slash room Again, that's f u n d r i s e dot com slash room to get started today Today's episode is brought to you by element a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything you need and nothing you don't That means lots of salt with no sugar. It contains a science backed electrolyte ratio a thousand milligram sodium 200 milligrams potassium and 60 milligrams of magnesium But none of the junk no sugar no coloring no artificial ingredients no gluten no fillers no bs I absolutely love it and how it's fit into my lifestyle Whether you're keto low carb paleo or just want to feel better and more active element is the drink for you I drink it after an intense workout to replenish my electrolytes I also drink it after a few too many whiskies late at night. It totally helps with the hangovers When you sweat the primary electrolyte lost is sodium Athletes can lose up to seven grams per day when sodium is not replaced It's common to experience muscle cramps and fatigue.

The same goes for after a big night out drinking Element will fit into your lifestyle no matter who you are Right now element is offering my listeners a free sample pack with any order That's eight single serving packets free with any element order It's a great way to try all eight flavors or share element with a salty friend Get yours at drink element.com slash happens. This deal is only available through my link.

You must go to dr i n k L m n t dot com slash happens to take advantage of this special offer try element. You won't regret it So this is kind of a question for both of you. That's um I'm a branch off of that Ryan because I think it's an amazing initiative.

You know, I know More and more people are interested in investing You know want you know have some unique network or some unique angle value at etc But don't have the LP relationships or don't really know how to go about like sourcing deals or deploying capital at scale like if you were For either one of you and I'm happy to weigh in on it as well if you were kind of like Dropped with nothing and wanted to begin angel investing or begin investing in earlier stage companies What what some of the advice or what actions would you take in order to kind of establish yourself and start to execute against that? I'll jump in real quick. Um, so i'm gonna speak on on vedica's behalf So her and I are the two on the fund met her over three years ago And she she was a product manager working at a company, but she was writing fantasy memos is what she called them So she was looking at companies Like I remember retool was one of them way back in the day And writing up a memo as if she was investing almost like an analyst would like as if she was Proposing an investment in this particular company and she wasn't sharing that with anyone It was actually wasn't even online, which maybe she should have shared it online but she wrote it for herself is like almost like practice like an exercise and And anyone could do that today. You don't need money.

You don't need connections You don't need any of that But what it will do is help you I think refine your thinking if you were to invest and furthermore It creates a paper trail when when I interviewed her for the role She just sent me these fantasy memos. I was like, oh my gosh You're basically doing the job already and I can see your work and can see how you think So I think that's an obvious like brilliant step and if you don't want to do that then maybe you shouldn't be investing like Like that's the job to some extent at least that's part of it. So That's like a donation That's such a cool example too because there are real case studies of people doing that now like, um, you know In a very public setting like I think of both packy And mario at the generalist as like two examples of people who built a you know owned audience via their newsletters through writing and dissecting and deconstructing businesses and trends and principles Um, and then on the back of that are able to go and say like you know How I think about businesses like two lps or two people at scale you can go say like you know how I analyze businesses You know how I think about bull cases bear cases etc Because here look here like the 10 cases where I've written about it in a in a specific context And so you can go on the back of that and like leverage the information you've generated at scale to go and raise capital and deploy it um, the other one I always think of that I think is just an untapped opportunity for I it's mostly like for um, you know people that I think have a lot of ambition or like a hustler mentality Is just the opportunity to be a scout for some of these like emerging managers that have come out Um, you know, I think about like I think saw hill of vignette has like a scout program more formally, um, which is great It's like a formal construct But this whole idea of like, you know for people that don't know it It's like you're a scout like you kind of go out and search and hunt for deals And when you find one you kind of like bring the deal to some manager And if they do it you get economics in that deal i.

e. you know future profits if it goes really well a portion of the carry And things like angel list make it amazingly easy to do that on a deal-by-deal basis, which is To your point earlier ryan on like what has changed Um in an industry that enables some great thing to happen That is something that has changed 10 years ago It was super complex like you had to go hire lawyers and pay them 25 000 dollars probably to like dock up Some like simple thing like carry and splitting it on a deal-by-deal basis within a fund It would have been too hairy like as a manager I would have been like oh no it doesn't make sense for me to do that now If a kid comes to me and says like hey, I have this deal. It's a close friend of mine.

He's starting this. He's at You know mit he's building this this and this Um precede You know like you split the carry with them in one click on angel list. It's freaking amazing um, and I don't think enough people are thinking about that as just like Honestly like a little side hobby if you're just if you have networks, um, if you're you know getting out of school or you're A builder you're like in internet communities wherever and you have these networks of people that are building cool Shit and you have a good eye for it and you have those ends You can go you I mean if you sent me a blurb you sent 10 other people a blurb on these companies Someone would probably take you up on the intros on opportunities And all of a sudden you're like building carry in a bunch of interesting future companies.

That's kind of a You know a massive hack or unlock from a wealth creation standpoint when you don't have to raise any money to do it

SPEAKER_00
And a name for yourself. You can say like I brought You know notion to to saw hill or I brought this deal You know, I think that that helps add a lot of credibility. I think my biggest you know advice here would be to You know if you do want to get more into investing is to become the x y z person So, you know, for example, like some people called me the community person or Ryan, you know the the product person and stuff like that and I think if you develop that niche then people just start coming to you Um, and you become the center of gravity for your vertical

SPEAKER_01
So I think is this like neval neval has that like, uh, what is it like type four luck or something like that? Greg, have you seen this? No, you were ryan like neval has this whole concept of like four kinds of luck Um, and I think it was like type four that was this exact thing. Greg where it's um, You're just like the person in a given space And so people come to you like if you are the world's best I think he used the example of like scuba diver Scuba diver like buried treasure diver then when there's some like Weird buried treasure that gets found in some place like you're the person they have to call because you're known as that guy And so now you're getting lucky because you're getting a cut of certain things by just being the guy in that space

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think you know and I think with like twitter and stuff like that, you know building the audience on those platforms, but also like Owning these email addresses. So what I would be doing if I was put on an island is like picking Picking a vertical being really different and weird um, and just putting out content that uh Is is unique in that space and then doing like um, maybe weekly luma um video session so for those you don't know luma basically it allows you to Uh rsvp to different events. So you maybe you do a weekly like, you know, if it's me I'm doing like weekly community social web three stuff or whatever and then I get people's email addresses and then You know after I get 5 000.

I'm like, okay everyone like Big announcement like I'm launching a fund and you know, that's what I did basically with you know the late checkout Rolling fund like we raise seven figures yearly of a fund in a matter of days And I never even took one meeting and I've never raised a fund in my life And it was all through the magic of of being weird and You know standing on the the shoulders of giants of platforms like angelists and twitter

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I want one note on that actually or one comment. Um So that that's the similar advice in terms of like if you're starting to to invest You should probably just be like an expert in one thing and just like own it. Um, ironically, that's not what we do but uh Like my dad says like do is do is to say not what I do.

Um, but I think that's the ideal advice However, the only caveat like asterisk's output on that is I think it's super important to figure out what What it is what you choose because let's let's take an example Let's say you're like the chatbot guy from like 2016 You don't want to be the chatbot investor because once you brand yourself as that and then you know people realize Oh, this isn't a hot space. It actually isn't as big of an opportunity as we thought you're now actually, you know Uh, you're starting from behind the starting line. Basically, you have to like rebrand yourself So I think I would choose something that you have extremely high conviction in That's authentic to you that's sustainable and that that can be hard to figure out like what is sustainable.

Um, yeah There's also pivot to be fair like they could how many um This is one that I just cracked up about still like Every single VC in the world was a creator economy VC in 2020 and every single one of them is a web3 investor 2021 and it's like there was this hilarious meme I think it was josh baby and greg our friend from metify posted that was like the woody from toy story being thrown on the ground And it was like creator economy was woody and it was like I don't want to play with you no more throwing throwing the creator economy on the ground, but like I don't know. I mean I I do think You can you know on the margins you can shift obviously to your example on chat bot It then becomes very difficult to not be branded as like. Oh, that's the chat bot guy Um, but yeah, anyway, just like one caveat to it.

Yeah, there's also one one small thing I'm trying to understand this better. So this is like a um me me kind of shower of thoughting some of the people that have um In the investing world that have made a strongest name in this respect in terms of being known for this particular thing And an expert in this thing. They actually create language around this thing.

Usually they're emerging trends I would say like injuries and horitz as a firm is probably maybe one of the most exceptional at this Like christics and especially with with regards to web three related things like there's there's certain words He has like skeuomorphism as being one like skeuomorphism is is sort of reflecting back to like the steve job days and that This product is too much. It's too much of derivative of like a web two thing like web three So social isn't maybe just like twitter on the blockchain for example And so the ability to create language that then everybody adopts is actually a really powerful signal because now you become sort of indirectly Known as the person who's like pushing the language forward which pushes thought forward and an industry forward So I think it's like a really fascinating thing to think about like what language can you Introduce that isn't like cheesy or isn't forced. That's the hard part It has to feel it has to be something that people can like grasp on to and understand and in is valuable not you know something that's like Selfish in a way It's also interesting to think about whether you can brand yourself around your lever of value creation So we've been talking about it from like one end of it where you're branding yourself around You know the the industry or the focus area like your area of expertise from an investing standpoint Um, but you've kind of you could flip it you can invert it and say like I'm going to brand myself as you know Like julian Shapiro, you know like oh, I'm like the you know product like growth or growth guy And so like I know I can help you on growth And so when people need to think about that for whatever reason because it's a key part of their story of their company And in that case growth is in general in everyone's company you think of that person and when they're you know asking like oh Who should I talk to for smaller checks? Um, here are some of the core competencies we need on our cap table You get brought up a lot because that's your core lever of value creation.

I think about it for myself around like distribution and and And uh, you know kind of getting access to you know, large numbers of customers, etc And so it's um, it's just interesting to think about whether you can flip it on its head and do it that way Yeah, and that's a really good point But that might be there's a safer way of going about it too and arguably more valuable um to founders that you back Yeah, especially with small checks too. I mean, I think like it's a different game if you know It's like you Ryan and you're trying to more like lead seed or pre-seed deals And you're writing a bigger check and you need to really be able to offer something comprehensive in terms of An understanding, you know helping them navigate the idea maze, etc But if you're going to be a small check at the kind of tail end of a cap table It's much more about like what is the one you know one vector that I'm going to help you with You know one tiny thing you don't need to offer the whole you know buffet menu. It's just like what is that one thing? Mm-hmm.

I mean, I think about investing as a founder kind of like a product So you're selling equity and you know different investors cost different amounts of equity essentially and they help in different ways and um Harry Hearst from pipe has this this concept called the check size to helpful in this ratio. Yeah, I saw that that's good Yeah, it's a good. It's a good way to articulate.

I think um different trade-offs I suppose when you're fundraising and essentially what he's saying is you know, some of the people who write the largest checks May not be the most helpful Some of the people write the tiniest like 10k angel checks might be way more helpful than your lead investor who wrote a you know $5 million check in some cases And so if you actually compare it like Harry in this case He would have sold a lot more of his company's equity to the $5 million investor versus the 10k check angel investor And I think that's important for for founders to acknowledge and think about And it's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan and supporter of like small funds and angels and how do you enable How do you enable founders to bring on a lot of really helpful people who can can really roll up those sleeves and get involved without taking the entire round?

SPEAKER_00
Yeah, there's a lot to think about there

SPEAKER_01
Well before we run out of time Greg, I know you you or Ryan had one or two ideas that I wanted to uh wanted to jam through Um one of you guys want to uh want to throw something out that we can riff on? I'll start because I've been thinking about this the last

SPEAKER_00
last few days um, it's one of those Me and my co-founder have this uh, uh text read. It's called uh, bad bad idea of the day And uh, it's it's basically I think I know what you're going. Yeah. Yeah, it's kind of you know, 90 something Yeah, it's kind of you know 97 of the ideas are bad, but like sometimes they're so bad. It's like maybe good.

So Just that's the context. Okay, so um, I was watching Or I have a friend or friend of a friend who um Was in a boxing match with other influencers. So I'm sure you're all familiar with jake paul and and the paul brothers becoming You know transitioning from almost influencer to boxers and taking it professionally There was this event that happened a few weeks ago that was not, you know, paul level um of fame, uh, you know, not tens of millions of subscribers, but From the 100,000 subscribers to you know, a couple million subscribers And it was a boxing match that um, they rented out a university in um, in tampa and sold out and had this league um, where um, You know, I knew some people who were boxing in it And some friends of friends were boxing in it and it was like the most fun I had had in a saturday night in a really long time So it got me thinking like is there an opportunity to create You know boxing is cool and everything but like an nba league, but for influencers or A hockey league, but for influencers um, so Curious your your thoughts here and there's a lot of directions we can go it could be maybe web3 it could be um, It could be plain just like hey like I think there was a show called um joes versus pros or something like that like You know, maybe you do like nba type people versus influencer people.

So just yeah, I wanted to get your perspective there

SPEAKER_01
I went to um, I don't know maybe six months ago. I went to the tiktok versus youtube boxing thing, uh, which sounds similar to maybe what you're describing It was like basically to talk famous people youtube famous people going head to head And it was I think I was like me and me and susie are probably the oldest people there. I felt like Um, it was a lot of people I didn't even recognize, uh, but it was really fun and the energy was like insane.

Um, I think there's there's what you're touching on is sort of Reminds me of like reality tv in a sense like reality tv made um Well, it created an opportunity for regular people up at that near quotes to be famous and it made it more Accessible it made it made it for the viewers for the audience to be like, oh, I'm kind of like that person I could be like that person. It made it more relatable. Um, You're also touching on like, you know, people who are already famous doing something abnormal that they don't normally do So I think there's something there.

I guess the only thing is would it be Would it be a one-off thing or would it be like you said league which kind of implies like an ongoing like recurring thing? Um, Like would it get old? I guess would it get stale? It is sort of my biggest question But I mean I have to create storylines around it for sure like to the reality tv point You'd have to create, you know, good storylines that kind of like ran through it if you were going to make it a series But I mean like I just like if it's sports I think it has to be a sport that's individual enough that you kind of have You know real faces and personalities coming out like you couldn't do a football, you know team or something where it's like They're passing it to I don't know. It just it wouldn't it wouldn't um It wouldn't put the focus enough on these like individual personalities that have the you know name cashe and brand You could do probably like three on three basketball or like one-on-one basketball um golf could be a really fun one actually of like they kind of did that with like tom brady erin rogers with phil michelson and tiger I think it was which was like really fun entertaining to watch because you can even the playing field from pros vs. Joes with with handicaps um Um, but I don't know.

I mean, I think there's probably something to it because you do have like owned audience These people are entertaining to watch Hopefully like kind of funny or have some personality around like sucking at the thing that they're doing Um, it could be kind of interesting. Yeah, and I think uh

SPEAKER_00
What was also interesting is like you can do it. You can also do it like direct to consumer like there's like software out there that you can basically Do a pay per view sort of experience like I think we paid $30 or $40 to watch this thing for a few hours Um, you know, if you sell I mean you do the math, um, you know, if you can sell 50,000 100,000 at $50 or $30 like it adds up And I think I'm not sure if it's uh, you know venture scalable business, but it might be something where um, you know Someone who's listening might be able to like reach out to a few influencers and and and sort of bring this together Um And do something small in their local area And start and then start proving out the model. I think it could be I think it could be pretty cool.

Um, I really enjoyed. I don't know if you You know the youtube creator graham stefan He's uh personal finance finance. Yeah. He has like two or three million youtube subscribers And watching him get like punched in the face um And I don't even like UFC or boxing, but just like it was it was so interesting to watch and I think like Influenced a lot of these influencers are so they're entertainers. So they understand like um How to get the crowd going how to like, you know, where where really fun costumes it was, you know, it was More interesting than a professional boxing match

SPEAKER_01
And they had the audience to you know build up the hype and the story kind of leading into it and everything um, I mean it is something that you could like theoretically, um Uh applied to multiple communities like I'm thinking even thinking like can we do this in the tech community? Can we get like the most famous investors and founders to like punch each other in the face? Um, just for a night? Um, and obviously like different communities. It's like a broadly appealing like concept They could apply to different people, um in different communities around the world. I think

SPEAKER_00
I mean we've talked about that. So I think right in our group chat we often say like you know there's a lot there's always uh There's always drama and tech twitter, um and and people fighting back at each other. So it would be kind of fun to put like You know an erin levy versus uh, chris dixon and in uh in the ring and you could raise a lot of money for charity

SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it'd be pretty fun Maybe that's how they fight for their allocations, you know in these hot deals. It's like forget forget the pitches It's just whoever can like makes it out of the ring gets to write you actually have to fight It's a legitimate fight for the allocation in the deals. Yeah. Yeah I would watch I don't hate it. I don't hate it All right.

Well one more we've got time for one more here ryan one more, um So I didn't come with anything but I'll I'll share one idea that I'm this is actually going to be me asking for feedback and and uh So I thought about this for years. Um with zero action, so I'm and Anyway, not a not a good trait to talk about something for so many years and not do anything about it But the reason why I haven't is because it's commitment and I'm scared of commitments So I I don't I don't really vibe with any of the co-working spaces I've been to anywhere Um, so I've had this day idea when I lived in San Francisco. I had this v1 as an LA I'm now in Miami and especially Miami seems like a good place for this and essentially what I'm what I'm imagining is How do we how do we create a small intimate co-working space with good music? Um, it's not too cold, you know, ac is not too high Uh, and just good people like first degree setting second degree kind of connections and um, I've worked out of we works There's there's a lot of value in we works, but it's not my vibe.

It feels very cold Um, it's not where I want to hang out and like be productive And so I thought a lot about okay, what would you know, I'm calling it weekend cafe kind of naming after like weekend fun in my head What would weekend cafe look like and obviously there's some like basics, you know Maybe an open space with a bunch of phone booths so you can like take calls Especially as more people are working remotely, but now more recently I've been thinking well How could you actually innovate on the business model and of course my mind goes to nft's and web3 as kind of one one kind of thread to pull on and what we're seeing more and more of is people releasing a utility nft's or subscription kind of membership based nft's and you know the most obvious and basic kind of like application of that is Now you actually have better price discovery theoretically for these nft's so an example could be weekend cafe has a hundred seats hundred hundred membership slots available It's really small. It's intimate and the people that own the nft one of the hundred nft's get access to this space But you can resell it and you can of course have like on the secondary market the actual Business itself in this case like let's say me gets like secondary transactions like 10 of those cuts um That actually is interesting because you might find that actually weekend cafe is very valuable and actually it's initially Whistled for a hundred dollars per membership now. It's $10,000 for some reason Um, it's just interesting to kind of think through.

Okay. What would that look like? So I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this or other so innovations in that model so I like I've seen and Talked to a few people that are kind of doing variations of something like this like social club or you know Like the so-ho house of web3 type 5 Um, or like gary v has this hunting fish club. I think it's called and similar stuff My concern with it fundamentally is always like how do you prevent this from just being you know The wealthiest people buy into the coolest things and you like prevent it like it actually Goes to being less cool because suddenly it's like not the curated Um environment and group it becomes more like business and capital and money in the same way that like So-ho house was super cool when it started and they were very careful about who was in and it was more artists and designers and Um, then it became really financey and like all of a sudden every banker in the world was a member It so house and it probably got less cool because they got more corporate trying to make money to go be a public company So my question is always like my pushback on this is always how do you avoid it just becoming? Um, you know that like rich people kind of buy these nfts and are able to go to it when they become You know one two three four five eith

SPEAKER_00
To go to go purchase two thoughts. Yeah So first thought on on that piece Seile I think what you can do is just make uh make it the initial batch freedom in And you could have something like some level of like, you know Maybe you want to keep the the the first batch diverse and some in some in some way So there is some you know asking some questions up front, but ultimately You know people think that you know, but you know getting an nft is always You know they in their minds they think of board apes and stuff like that But it doesn't always need to be that case for example the number one project right now on open sea is a freedom in project goblins town um, so I think having freedom a freedom in component Um is very interesting in in this so it and by the way ryan It could also be hybrid like maybe you sell if you do a hundred maybe you do 50 freedom in and you sell 50 The second piece of feedback I would have is So first of all, I love this concept. I think miami needs it more than any any place that I've been to And I think what would be really cool is if you can reward long-term holders and good actors of the nft so One of my favorite projects in the nft space is a project by dom called corruptions Corruptions is basically this nft that the longer you hold it the more it changes And and it basically evolves And in the smart contract, there's basically this like it's it's basically built into it So I wonder if you can do something similar where Um, if I become a good actor if I you know, I hold it it change the nft changes I get certain privileges because of that um, and the other sort of analog um That I also would love to implement it something like this is Uh, the last week I've been really into bowling Don't ask why but and the bowling alley I've been going to has this uh leaderboard of people who've bowled 300 perfect games 300 I wonder if there's stuff like that you can do where it's like imagine you bought a coffee for someone every day And for 30 days, maybe you're on some sort of leaderboard.

So I will also wonder if there's like

SPEAKER_01
Fun gamification type things that you can do. Yeah, actually one note on the the corruptions concept um, so the moonbirds project have been um an approved uh collective Project have been following from the beginning moonbirds has this nesting concept. So I have a couple moonbirds I got them because I have a proof collective pass From the beginning and when you nest them every 30 days it like levels up into I think it goes from like bronze to maybe silver to gold diamond or something like that and what's kind of interesting is um as you sort of level it up The the actual nft itself Um carries as the tributes going forward.

So once you unnested it stops that that leveling kind of progression but you still maintain like the the status of that particular nft And so as you sort of hold on to the nft longer it gains in more value and has more abilities or um Uh prestige in the community over time that you can then sell So it's kind of like in a video game when you level up like a world of war craft character, you know It's a level whatever 100 it's it's a level 100 when you want to like give it to somebody else still And I find that concept compelling because it really rewards people for holding but it also rewards people financially theoretically Um in the future if they want to sell or or liquidate in some way uh to the buyer. So Yeah, I think there's a lot to play with there. Um And I think video games can be a great source of inspiration for all those ideas too Basically, how do you how do you take like what we do in video games and apply it to to these types of dynamics? So if you want to start we can cap day together.

Let me know. Um, I know I was kind of like Maybe there's actually something to it. There's what there was one that this guy started called maxwell social I think and um in new york that I saw recently Um, that looked like it was going to be pretty cool We'll see if the build out happens and then I saw another one that's sort of around like an athlete Um former athlete community network.

Um, that's a former nfl player that I know that's he's starting But some cool stuff going to happen in the space for sure. I just want to see it actually play out and not become like a you know highly You know like I don't know exclusive community that just like wedges people out Any final thoughts guys before we wrap I know we've taken uh, we've taken up our hour of time here Um, this was awesome I feel like we hit on a bunch of really interesting things and and threads within a single conversation Yeah, what about anything on your mind greg anything? I don't know. I didn't I didn't come really prepared with with anything formal So, uh, just wanted to jam and chat.

That's the best way. Yeah

SPEAKER_00
I mean the last thing my last question for you. Well, I have you is are you happy? Are you happy you made the miami move because you were You know almost the poster child for san francisco at one point um and and uh We and You know, I moved from san francisco also to miami and I'm just wondering are you happy? Um, are you happy you made the move?

SPEAKER_01
I am so I grew up in oregon then lived in san francisco for 10 years a life or two and then miami It's been a year now and uh, I am it's the thing is um, I mean I've always worked remotely product that was distributed So for me, even though I live in miami, I'll be in new york. Uh later this week. I'll be in la in july I'll be in to loom for a wedding the next month and So for me, it's miami just It's just one of many places I live in I suppose I'm here most of the time, but it's good I mean, there's certainly some downsides, you know, some are hurricanes are a little rough We had a lot of rain a few days ago.

It was insane. Um But you know waking up in the morning without like the pressure of you know west coast like rush is nice Um, some of the nightlife here is is amazing. I love warm weather.

So I'm a fan. Um, What is interesting though is I I to be honest, I think that more investors are here than founders There's a lot of talk about like people from tech coming here and I don't have any hard evidence or data on this But there aren't a lot of founders here, which is fine because I don't need founders in person I just go over video, but I don't know if you've noticed that greg but it doesn't yeah, like there's a substantial number of founders Uh, you know in the tech circles over here. I agree.

I'd love to do more

SPEAKER_00
Like we should do some sort of like event or something and when I say event I don't mean like a thousand person event, but like 10 15 20 builders in a room jamming on ideas Um

SPEAKER_01
That'd be fun. Yeah, I just feel like this is this is why we need a like a cafe a space because there's no shelling point right now I think that I'm aware of maybe I'm just not invited to one that exists. Um, But we don't have like a space to just meet up and jam and co-work and that kind of thing.

So Yeah, you wonder whether it'll be like and if you build it They will come type thing with the founders like now that more of the investors are there You know and as things go back to in real life, which hopefully they do because I think it's a good thing Um, in a lot of cases, you know, you wonder whether more founders will choose to build there because it's just the proximity and your access to capital will be very real Yeah So it's a good spot. We'll find out. How is it? It's great.

I will I will absolutely. I know I'll be back down there come Uh, I'm gonna wait until it gets a little less muggy probably, but I will be back down there. Uh, you know, maybe in September I'll look forward to it.

Well, thank you so much, Ryan. This was awesome. Really enjoyed the chat and uh, we will talk to you soon Yeah, thanks for having me.

See you guys later Thanks so much for listening to today's episode If you have any questions that you want featured in a future episode email us at high at trwh.com Leave us a review at apple or spotify to help us grow the reach of this podcast until next time. We will see you soon