SPEAKER_03
["Self Outfired Yo Foon's Sway"] I'm still trying to get it like every day. Humble this is hard when you start receiving praise, start feel, but some words can never be taken away. Gotta do what's best for you to make my point.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. We made it. Here we are.
The room where it happens.
SPEAKER_01
This is it. We're here. And you're here.
SPEAKER_03
Months of preparation. We're so excited to have you here with us. We want to tell you a little bit about why we're doing this.
The room where it happens, it's a show, a podcast. More importantly, it's a community. We had this feeling that podcasts always stop.
They left something. They left you wanting something. They left you wanting more.
Because the conversation was always one-sided. It was always one way. And we're looking to do more with this.
We're looking to bring you all into this conversation, open the door to the room, so that you're really a part of this with us.
SPEAKER_01
This is a two-way conversation. You're in the room. Come join our Discord.
Ask us questions. This is as much about us as it is for you. So so excited that you're here.
So excited that we'll deconstruct frameworks, grow together, come up with startup ideas. This is the beginning.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. And we're going to do a pretty cool take on this whole show. We're going to have basically every episode is going to be the two of us.
We like to deconstruct stuff over a drink. So we're always going to have a different bottle of something with us. Encourage you, if you're open to it, have a drink, sit back, relax, and join us as we talk through these frameworks.
We're going to have guests joining us for about half the episodes that dive deeper on these concepts that we're getting into. And then like we said, we're going to get into the community afterwards. When we roll things out, we want to continue the conversation with you guys.
We want to dive deeper, go further with all of these conversations. And that's going to come from engaging with you. And it's going to come from the guests being a part of that with us.
So we're so excited to get into it. And here we are, first episode.
SPEAKER_02
Greg, question for you. If banks want companies to open accounts, why do they make it so difficult? They like punishment? Maybe, but not mercury.
SPEAKER_03
It's banking built for startups. And opening an account is so smooth, you basically fall into it. You can apply for an account from anywhere in the world in 10 minutes.
And you get access to everything you need to be able to do banking well. The sign up flow is beautiful and intuitive. All accounts are FDIC insured.
They offer virtual and physical debit cards. And you never have to visit a physical bank branch. And the whole product has such an elegant design.
I'm a mercury investor and a mercury customer myself many times over. If you're a founder or creator, this is the banking product you need.
SPEAKER_01
Sounds like startups can just like start when they use mercury.
SPEAKER_02
Super low friction. Exactly.
SPEAKER_03
Mercury is where startups can just start. Check out mercury.com if you want to see it for yourself.
SPEAKER_01
I wonder what founders will do with the time they save by starting with mercury, you know?
SPEAKER_03
Build great products, grow their businesses, I guess. That's a pretty good guess.
SPEAKER_01
Thanks, Greg. You're welcome.
SPEAKER_03
Today's show is sponsored by AppSumo, the leading digital marketplace for entrepreneurs and a great way to get your product in front of one million plus entrepreneurs, founders and small businesses. They have the tools you need to automate all the busy work that comes with running a business. So you can boost your productivity, scale beyond your skill set and focus on building something you're deeply passionate about.
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So go sign up at appsumo.com slash the room. You don't miss these special Black Friday deals before they sell out.
SPEAKER_01
Should we get into it?
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, let's dive right into it, man. I think this is really funny because we're here for the first episode and I was telling you about this. I was telling my parents about what we're doing.
The idea of this podcast, the show, the community. And you know the whole thing, your parents, they don't really get it. They're like not in the tech world.
My parents grew up in the 50s, 60s, 70s. And so I'm talking to my dad this weekend and I was like, dad, you know, it's, it was his birthday, we're hanging out, we're having a couple drinks. Like, dad, I'm super excited we're filming the first episodes this week.
It's gonna be a blast. It's gonna be so fun. We've got some guests coming in.
It's gonna be a hell of a time. And he kind of looked at me and he was like, oh, who you got for guests? And so I was kind of laying out some of the people we have. We've got some cool people coming in.
We've got Gary V coming in for the first season. We've got Howard Linsen with us today. We've got a bunch of really cool people.
And he just looked at me kind of with this blank stare on his face and he was like, well, how about, how about like Elon Musk or like Jeff Bezos? Cause they would be good. And I sort of just looked at him and he was dead serious. Dead serious saying this to me.
And I just sort of sort of said, you know, dad, I appreciate that you have this faith in me. I think they're a little hard to get. Like maybe we'll loop them in when we get Obama and Jesus.
But man, that was something else. So my dad's got a lot of faith in me.
SPEAKER_01
I mean, I like that he, he like, he's a dream big type of guy.
SPEAKER_03
He is a dream big kind of guy and I appreciate it. So let's dive into it. All right, let's do it.
I know we're gonna get some drinks going. For every episode we're gonna have something. We are so lucky to have what is in my opinion, the best tequila in the world, Como's from our friends over at Como's.
Yeah, Joe Marquesi shout out. Thank you so much. Bottles really cool.
It is the best tequila I've ever had in my life. And unfortunately or fortunately, I've had a little bit too much tequila.
SPEAKER_01
Well, this is my first time trying it. So, well, you're gonna enjoy it. Cheers.
All right, cheers.
SPEAKER_03
Welcome in with us. We're so excited. And let's dive right into it, man.
So good. Damn, that's good. So good.
All right, so what are we talking about today? So, I don't know if I told you this,
SPEAKER_01
but I went to the bank because I wanna buy a condo in Miami. And so- As one does, by the way. As a tech guy, as one does right now,
SPEAKER_03
we buy condos in Miami, apparently. Well, you know, I moved to Miami and you gotta live somewhere.
SPEAKER_01
And I call it a day. I'm not sure if I'm gonna get it. And I call up the bank and I said, I found this great property.
I'm really excited about it. And my banker was like, yeah, I can give you a loan. And my heart sank because I was so excited about this property and I mean, I was banking on the bank, you know? And I said, why? You know, I've, and he goes, well, you know, you started a new company, you work for yourself, you know, you don't have W-2 income.
I'm sorry, but you know, Chase cannot give you a loan. And, you know, I like to consider myself like I've done some things, I've sold some companies, I've invested in stuff, and I can't get a loan. So I was just, that's what's been on my mind recently.
SPEAKER_03
This is crazy. So I've been thinking about this exact thing in like a number of different contexts recently. This whole idea that the traditional financial system is set up for really what is like the old way of working, right? It's this whole idea of you go get a job when you get out of college, you work for 40 years, they give you a gold watch and you retire.
That's like the way that our parents worked. That's how the world has always worked as it were. But that's changed a lot.
Now there's a lot more people taking on entrepreneurial roles. There's a lot more people doing 1099 stuff. This whole idea of like the portfolio theory of jobs and people doing a bunch of different things.
The hustle culture, young people taking on a bunch of different side hustles and building. And so the idea that the mainstream financial ecosystem does not work for a huge and growing population of people, like you by the way, who you have, I imagine you could buy the place out right in cash if you needed to. So the fact that you cannot get a loan is like crazy to me.
But I keep seeing this type of thing popping up.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I think it's gonna happen more and more and there's a ton of startup opportunities there. I think also about immigrants. So when I first moved from Canada to the US, I had no credit.
And it was right after I sold one of my first companies. And I literally couldn't even, I went to AT&T. I was like, I want a phone and they were like, sorry.
And that's why a lot of immigrants use T-Mobile, which is what I used up until recently. Like I literally just got off of it. Cause I was loyal to T-Mobile, cause T-Mobile was the only phone company in America who had my back.
T-Mobile, if you're listening, like sponsor us, do something.
SPEAKER_00
I appreciate that. You heard it here first.
SPEAKER_01
For all the immigrants. I think like. It's better than cricket wireless.
Yeah, I mean, it's a step up for sure. I mean, I was definitely in San Francisco, you know, in like the downtown area and like my T-Mobile reception wasn't working. But anyway, the point is like so cool that, you know, they had my back, but crazy that like, you know, the financial, yeah, the financial system is kind of stuck in the past.
All the rails.
SPEAKER_03
I mean, the rails of the entire traditional financial ecosystem are broken for where the world is heading. I just saw this with a close friend of mine, this guy, Josh Fabian, founder of this business Metify, amazing company, raising money at a huge valuation, backed by some of the biggest BCs in the world. And he is a founder who came from not a lot of means.
He grew up very poor, he had tougher times when he was younger and has now risen to this amazing position. He's building this incredible company. He moved his company into New York, creating jobs in New York City, could not get anywhere to accept him to rent an apartment for himself.
He said, I will pay for the entire year outright in cash. They wouldn't let him do it because he had bad credit from what his past was. And that's insane that we live in an ecosystem in a world where the rails have not adapted enough to be able to underwrite someone differently than what their traditional system has set up as.
SPEAKER_01
So what's gonna happen? Is it gonna be like the chases of the world innovate? Or is it gonna be like there's startup opportunities, creating chase, but entrepreneurs or chase for immigrants?
SPEAKER_03
It's a good question. So first off, the mainstream financial world is not good at innovating. I mean, you see big companies in general are just slow to innovate.
You see that across the board in most industries. We both know that. They're just not good at it.
It's not part of their culture. It's not part of the DNA to move quickly, to pivot, to innovate. So I think of this, I'm a frameworks guy.
And so in every episode, you're gonna hear me talking about different frameworks. I know you're gonna get sick of it eventually. But for this one, I just keep coming back to what is one of my favorite frameworks, which is the Clay Christiansen.
Have you, so Harvard Business School Professor, very famous managerial thinker and has this model of disruptive innovation. And this is basically a framework that talks about how small upstarts can come into new markets and completely disrupt incumbents that are very large. And so in the financial world, I think this is a great model to think about because you have these massive incumbents like a Chase or Bank of America or whatever they're doing.
And what they have done is created this massive ecosystem. But what in reality has happened is that they are either over-serving or under-serving a ton of different customers. And so Christiansen's model says that there's a huge opportunity that exists for people to come in and really just serve one particular customer, or archetype, extremely well.
Provide either the minimum viable product for that one customer or the best potential product for that one customer and use that as your launching pad and as your wedge to then go and expand outwards. And so I think when you look at the financial world, that's what you're gonna see. You're gonna see people coming in and using this tiny wedge of going and providing the best service for that one archetype to go and expand out and completely take over this ecosystem.
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that's the whole unbundling, right? I mean, this happens on the internet in general and that's just, it's coming to finance last just because finance is traditionally super slow and there's a lot of red tape. So regulated. So regulated.
But yeah, I mean, totally makes sense.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. There was an interesting, I've seen a few interesting ones recently that I wanna talk to you. So one that I saw recently was, I think it's called Carrot.
And they do, what haven't heard of it, tell me about it. Okay, so what they're trying to do is creating the financial rails for the creator economy. So creator economy has become this big buzzword.
We'll definitely be having people on to talk about it and go into more depth. And we can talk about it in the discord later and jam on it. But the creator economy has a very distinct set of needs associated with their finances.
It's 1099 income. Typically the loan and credit market for those type of people that are earning 1099 is low. So you could have a YouTuber that's making a million dollars a year on YouTube and has a $5,000 credit limit through Bank of America.
And that clearly doesn't work. Like Mr. Beast has to spend a ton of money on the videos he's making.
And there's an incredible opportunity for a company like Carrot, which is what they're doing, to go and think differently about underwriting rather than just looking at all the traditional metrics and underwriting that way. Think a little bit differently. And it exists for YouTubers.
It might exist for knowledge, creator economy people like sub-stack writers, the Twitterati, all these people that are creating in different ways. But what Carrot is saying is that's where they're going to go create. They're going to create the best product for the creator economy and use that as a wedge to take over more of the banking for them.
They've started with a credit card, I believe, and that's their first product. But then the whole idea of going to the market with just that, very small, make it the most amazing product for that customer, and go and expand outwards from there.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, that's my whole thesis on how to build products for the internet, not just finance, is start with the community and then build the software versus build software and then go find a community to attach it. So I think if you're listening and you want to come up with ideas that for startups that are going to work, pick a community that you really connect with, that you have inroads with. So if you're a creator, you understand creator's needs.
So what are other, just off the top of your head, what are other kind of communities that you can see there's opportunity in financial services? We talked about creators, maybe entrepreneurs.
SPEAKER_03
Gig economy is a huge one. I know a lot of people jumped into this, but this is this whole idea, you and I have talked about this. It's like, go talk to people, just go ask questions, figure out what pain points they have, figure out what's stressing them out.
And so creators, if you went and talked to creators, and I'm assuming this is what the founders of Carat did, they talked to creators and they realized, what the hell, why the hell do I have a $5,000 credit limit when I'm making a million dollars this year? It feels ludicrous. And so they realized that, and now you can create a product, create a service, create a community around fixing that. Same thing for gig economy.
I mean, one of the biggest issues that people perceived when they talked to Uber drivers was that they weren't getting paid quickly enough. They were getting paid every other week originally, or once a month, and that didn't work for the way they were having to pay bills, pay their gas. And so startups came in and said, oh, okay, we can actually front that.
It's just an arbitrage product. And go in and do that. And so I think a lot of this, just from a kind of way of living standpoint, is just opening your eyes and talking to people as you go about your daily life, because you end up learning and having all of these ideas come up on a daily basis from just going out and doing that.
SPEAKER_01
And I think when you're to, so completely agreed, and to add to that, I think one mistake, especially a lot of Silicon Valley companies do, is the product needs to speak to, for example, the Uber drivers. And that means, it has to give them that warm and fuzzy feeling, that aesthetic, that artwork, that copy, that combined, they're gonna use that over existing financial products or whatever, because they're like, these people are speaking to me, these are my people, right? I think that's the goal. And we do that a lot at Le Checkout.
Like we help all these companies do that. But I think...
SPEAKER_03
You're point on immersing in the community. You gotta immerse yourself. I wanna really harp on that, because I haven't thought about it that way, and it's so important.
Like if you just went and immersed yourself within a creator community, and just talked to people, you didn't even have to talk. Listen, be present for it. That is how you garner all of these insights.
You end up realizing that a bunch of creators don't know how to manage their invoicing, they don't know how to manage their taxes, they don't know, they're not optimizing around what's deductible expense. I mean, that's the most simple thing in the world. And if you're a creator, and you are paying for different things, and you go about your daily life, most of that is deductible if you're doing it the right way, and it'll save you a lot of money at the end of the year.
Most people don't know that, because they don't know how to set up different entities, they don't have an expensive tax guy, because they're just on their own. And so in this whole world of like businesses of one that are being built now, and the way we are working is fundamentally changing, how do you go and create products for these people? It's by listening, understanding what those pain points are, and where they're missing out.
SPEAKER_01
And being there and immersing yourself. Did I ever tell you this, like what I did 2017, 2018, when I went back to college? There's like articles, I think, written about this. But basically I was running a company called the Islands, and it was like Slack, but for college.
And I was living in San Francisco, and the people around me were just like tech people. And I never, like, I dropped out of school, grew up in Canada, where the US system's a lot different. My exposure to college was like watching Van Wilder.
So we ended up hiring a team in Alabama, which is like the most college area of all time. Yeah, college area. And the team and I immersed ourselves in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, and we did a whole college road show where we spent six, eight, nine months immersing ourselves with the students to come up with a product that would work.
And we landed in Tuscaloosa with a product that we thought worked, and we left Tuscaloosa with a product that worked. And it was all through this daily kind of interaction with college students. And I think that's the missing, like there's so many great products out there, and the only missing ingredient is the immersion.
SPEAKER_03
So what's the lightest touch, like make this tactical. If I'm a person listening to this, what is the lightest touch way for me to start immersing myself within different communities? Is it Discord, is it Reddit? Like, how would you do it? If I decided I wanted to go do something like this.
SPEAKER_01
Not everyone wants to hang out in Tuscaloosa at a frat party.
SPEAKER_03
That's pretty heavy. That's like a heavy touch approach to community immersion.
SPEAKER_01
Exactly. The more lighter tones of...
SPEAKER_03
That's the platinum, give me the bronze.
SPEAKER_01
Like I want the bronze, but how I could do this at home at night. So I think the beauty about Facebook groups, Reddit, Discord, is it's these communities, right? And you can just teleport yourself into these groups and communities. So I think it's about making a list of like the most interesting, for example, like creator communities, teleporting yourself there, and dissecting the conversations, and also like creating posts, speak their language, comment, and then try to get them into like smaller group conversations.
So if you're in a Discord with 10,000 people, it's hard to actually build intimacy. How do you get them into like, a group chat, a WhatsApp group, whatever, of 20 people? And that's when a lot of the key insights come.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, I think it's so interesting because it applies so broadly. It goes beyond, like you can talk about it with tech, NFTs, Web3, this is huge. This is how I learned, was I just went and dropped into a bunch of these Discords that were happening around the different NFTs projects, and lost some money along the way, and did some stupid stuff, but I learned a lot by being immersed into the community.
So it applies to tech. I also think there's just really interesting, more blue collar, like meat and potatoes type stuff with this. I was driving the other day, and this like biker gang in Connecticut drove by me on all of their Harleys with all of their gear.
And the first thing that came to my mind was just like, holy shit, this is an amazing, fervent, enthusiastic community of people, bikers. They love it, they live in it, every weekend they do it, and they spend tons of money on this hobby. There has to be a ton of businesses that can be built around that community, providing them what they need.
SPEAKER_01
One of the smartest marketers I ever met, I was on a flight from Vilnius, Lithuania to New York City, don't ask, that's maybe for another episode. And the guy next to me was the CMO of Harley-Davidson. And I noticed, because he looked like, he looked like the leader of the Hell's Angels.
He was wearing all leather patches everywhere, skulls everywhere, and we started talking, and he basically told me that they do immersion. And that's the difference between Harley, like Harley's an incredible case study around, start with the community and then build with the product.
SPEAKER_03
And not every business has to be some massive venture scale business. And there's something really interesting around creating these micro businesses for those fervent communities, and you can bounce around, and especially with how easy it is to create products now, I mean, you could go spin up an e-commerce brand for a specific niche community that you found on Reddit, immersed yourself in on Discord, wherever it is, very, very quickly.
SPEAKER_01
And that's especially true in financial services and fintech, right? Because you don't need that many customers to create a huge outcome.
SPEAKER_03
And it's also really easy with the infrastructure that exists, Mercury, this company, I have a small investment in, it's a bank for startups. And their whole thing was this same Clay Christensen model of disruption. They were like, we're gonna create the best banking product for startups.
And this is what we're gonna do, we're gonna make all the things that suck much easier. And nowadays, they just had to create the customer facing ecosystem. They didn't need a banking license, actually.
You could go get a partner bank on the back end. So all they focused on was beautiful, intuitive design, an amazing product, and it just works. And it works when you do something like that.
And so I think it's really interesting, there's a real opportunity for it. I do think we're at a point where we should bring someone in to jam with us on this. And we have someone amazing coming in for this specific topic, because Howard Lenzin has a background in all of this.
He was one of the first investors in Robinhood. So like when you talk about disrupting financial services, what better business exists than that? Stock Twits, I know he's an investor in Rally Road, which is a really cool business that's fractionalizing, investing in everything, opening up this huge opportunity for this investing class, the rise of investable assets. So I say we bring him in and let's continue to jam with him here.
SPEAKER_01
He also invested in islands.
SPEAKER_01
So he understands niche communities and not going big. So let's bring him in. I'd love to hear his point of view.
Awesome, let's do it. All right.
SPEAKER_00
Where do you want me to look?
SPEAKER_03
We're just having a conversation.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yeah. Say I get bored.
SPEAKER_02
You don't like to run. Oh.
SPEAKER_00
I mean, there's a lot of pressure.
SPEAKER_01
All right. Super excited to welcome you, Howard. Cheers.
You're kind of like, I've known you for how long? 10, 15 years? Since you were 11. Pretty much. So like two years.
He's kind of like my like Canadian. I mean, I'm Canadian. He's like my uncle.
We both have like skinny legs.
SPEAKER_00
My biking leg is skinny jeans. You have skinny legs and skinny jeans.
SPEAKER_01
But I don't know. I kind of feel like we've got like similar vibes. You're into community.
I'm into community. I've done finance stuff. You've done finance stuff.
You feel that way?
SPEAKER_00
Or is this a one-sided situation? I think I'm in community. And I believe in community. I don't think it's a good business.
I don't, you know, it's a good, it's great to build communities. Yeah. It's not a DC, as I've learned over the years. You know, is Reddit a community? They stopped it's community? Yes.
Is Reddit a community? You know, defined community. There's different communities within it. But it's very hard to build a community.
So it's a term that's thrown around a lot that people should use more carefully. I think it became a term because of real estate, build a community. Right. And it's very hard to do.
SPEAKER_03
It just became this sexy buzzword. Just like everything else in the BC world. Capture one word.
You're like, oh, community is the word of the day. So we're just going to talk about community. We're going to do massive valuations.
It's a creator economy. Everyone's like, oh, creator economy. If you put that in your pitch deck, it's $100 million post-money valuation.
It doesn't matter what it is.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah. Well, I think we're entering the first time where community has a chance to be worth something from the start because it doesn't have to be VC funded. Right. Like I said, I don't think community is a VC-fundable idea much like need has been, in general, a terrible these days. We need community.
We need media. Does that mean it should be VC-fundable? No. I think in the web 3.
0 world, which, yeah, of course, I wish I was born yesterday. Even though I've had a good life. But you always say, oh, if I had only the technology I'd been around, we finally, theoretically, maybe, closest to the potential, like we talked earlier, of having community start in a way that should scale without having to sell your soul for VC money.
Because once you take money, that's a different type of community.
SPEAKER_03
So go deep on that for a second. What do you mean by that?
SPEAKER_02
That's all I have. Yeah. We're just going in there. All right, guys.
Hi.
SPEAKER_03
So now talk to me about that a little bit. What do you mean? So when you say you don't need the VC money, you can scale community in the web 3.0 world without having to go raise a bunch of cash at the outset.
What does that mean? Like make that tactical for people that are listening.
SPEAKER_00
Well, that's a good question. I mean, make it tactical. I mean, of course you can write.
Everybody, there's a lot of money out there. So it's 2021. It's October.
And I know when this all air. It's real time. So let's say this air is in 2023 with editing.
But no, it's October 2021. You have all the pieces together, right? You have incredible equities. So people will find a lot of different ideas.
You have incredible platforms, both in the old school platforms like Twitter, Facebook, Discord, Telegram Signal, WhatsApp. You know the risk of being building on someone else's platform. You're their bitch, as VCs have said.
Like if you build on someone's platform, or if you build on someone's roads, or if you build inside someone's backyard, you're prepared to be sued or screwed. But now we have this whole new super freeway, or super highway being built, or many of them being built, and scaled. And they're wired in a way that you can build on top of them.
Theoretically. They're not fully decentralized. I'm not quite sure how to label all this stuff yet, because I'm not a super technical person.
I don't think they're fully decentralized. But you have a lot of choices. And then you can build stuff on top of them.
And they're open in a sense that the rules are a little more set. Like here's what you pay. There's fees.
And in that world, these are open highways where people theoretically can build something, and then really think through who the rules, or what community means, and then figure out how much money it really needs to build a community. And then make a thoughtful decision about how much money I need, or what's my real goal of this community, and who do I want in this community. And in Web 2.
0, it really was exciting. Like Twitter came out, and they were open. And Facebook was open.
And the VCs all piled in. And they were like, everybody's open. But guess what? We learned to make money.
You have to kind of close things off. And you raise enough money, the VC starts to take me to at least show that we intend to be revenue focused or profit focused. And that's the beginning of the end.
And with Twitter, they were an open API. And so at the beginning, when we built StockTwits, it was like a no-brainer. I don't know tech.
Twitter was this amazing real-time product. And at the beginning, I was like, when we invented the dollar sign, I was like, I just want to talk about stocks on Twitter. But I don't, hashtag doesn't really make sense.
And if you search hashtag Apple or hashtag Google, there was no context. Like I'm going to the market to buy an Apple, hashtag Apple. Or I hate Google.
Like there was no context. So when we came up with the dollar sign and said people talking a certain language, there was finally a way to use Twitter for like-minded people. Just like the hashtag would help you work again.
So we had a decision to make. And at the time, I'm not a technical person. So we went to Twitter and we were like, you should just do Twitter finance, like Yahoo Finance.
Like all the old companies before. But they were like, no, we're open. You guys just go run with it.
So we like, I don't think I believe, we went and raised more money to build our own platform, assuming they were going to screw us. As VCC, you don't be careful of being someone's bitch. So we had a decision to make.
Like just let it be what it was, knowing it would never be a real business. Or try and create like a fork in Twitter system. And we went the fork road.
And that's a hard road to build. And now you gotta go build your own roads. And you gotta go do your own curation.
And you got your own garbage and your own like, infrastructure to keep up. So you gotta really think through community. Now in this new world, where there's, everybody's been on board of the internet.
So now there's hundreds of millions of users. And there's more than just one platform. There's more than just Twitter and Facebook.
It's pretty exciting. And there's communities everywhere. So now you have to decide how big I want my community.
Like for you guys, who is part of that community? What format do we want that community to be? And maybe everybody owns a piece of the community. That wasn't possible before.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. How do you, like I'm curious from pre your perspective on this Greg, cause you're doing a lot. I mean, you're a community guy by trade, but you're doing a lot within web three now.
And at the intersection of all this stuff that Howard's talking about, it's really interesting. So like, what do you perceive as the opportunities there that exist? And like, bring that back to, to investing and like investable assets. Everything is investable all of a sudden.
So we're in this world where you can invest in anything. Like how do you think this all kind of comes together? And what are the opportunities around it?
SPEAKER_01
Well, I would actually bring it back to Howard. And kind of be like, if stock twits were to be invented today, would it be web three enabled? Would you allow for it?
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it would have to. I'm shocked that it hasn't been, but I think, and it will be. Like it's just no matter of time.
Because if I am 56, I'm not building anything new. I'm like in, I'm in-
SPEAKER_00
I'm in harvest. I don't know what that goes.
SPEAKER_02
You're not in the third try.
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I'm inspired by other people, but like my goal is when I have a really good idea to get drunk and hopefully it goes away. The idea, that's like the old Mesopotamian rules. Like get drunk and see if it was a good idea the next day.
But my idea, my idea is now we're like, I'm 56. We've been building stock twits for 12 years. It's big company.
It's profit, big company in terms of revenue and profits. And we haven't raised a ton of money. But it took a real long time.
We had to make so many hard decisions along the way. And 12 years is a long time. I think a lot of founders don't really ask, and a lot of venture capitalists don't really talk that talk with the founders at the beginning, which is like, this could take 10 years.
Like how much do you love what you're doing? And those are honest conversations. Especially when you're building community or a media company, these things are grueling. Like what Henry Blodgett did at Allianzider, there's not many people that can do that stuff.
And there's an investor in Henry at the time and Allianzider, whatever you call it in 2007. He was that guy. Like when I met Henry, I was like, man, that guy can take a blow.
Like he just keeps coming. And so media and community are very different. As it comes to like Web 3.
0, if I were to build stocks with stick, for sure I'd, but I'd have to pick the right blockchain. Is it Solana? Is it on Polkadot? Or is it on, I mean, these names are silly, but like it's polygon, it's a flow. So there are like complicated decisions.
And, or do I just build it on Discord and just not make it a huge business and charge 20 bucks a month and find like-minded people or just start my own sub-stack or beehive or whatever it is that I'm gonna do. So there's all those decisions, but there at least are choices, right? And this goes back to investing. You know, until Robinhood and Coinbase and Etoro, which is Etoro's, I was an investor and even before Robinhood, you had basically, you had the 1999 bubble, which gave us, you know, Super Bowl commercials and Eatre, Baby and Datech and TD Ameritrade and Schwab and like there's hundreds of options in 99.
And even, and so you had this big boom in stock trading. And it's, you know, people like to make fun of Robinhood and Coinbase, but 1999, deep, these guys were pretty irresponsible. These Super Bowl career, you know, where people were like date trading, and they were glamorizing date trading at your office.
And there was a, you know, the Eatrade, Baby, date trading from their crib. And now we're so mad at Robinhood for like, was it like, I'm not saying Robinhood is right or wrong, I'm just saying, we're so mad at Robinhood for free trading. Or, you know, not telling us the whole truth about the show.
SPEAKER_02
The payment for a point of view is such a- Exactly, it exists.
SPEAKER_00
It's like telling people to this standard that in 1999 was ridiculous what the brokers were getting away with. But it was a new revolution. So now this Web 3.
0 revolution is an unintended consequence of centralization. You had centralization, everybody's like so worried about Facebook and how do we regulate Facebook? Guess what? Didn't need regular, I mean, obviously you can regulate them all you want, but they're not in Web 3. They're stuck in Web 2.
They can't get Libra off the ground. They're not in Polkadot, they're not in Solana. They're not in Bitcoin.
Maybe they're hoarding Bitcoin and driving the price up, we don't know. But even if they're hoarding Bitcoin, what are you gonna do with it? It's just gold at this point. And if they're hoarding Ethereum, what does that mean to them? So, and they're not in the compute business, theoretically.
So they've been disrupted by just technology, not the regulators. They're disrupted by printing money so good that they just forgot like there's other technology that's gonna come along. So that's why our investing's exciting.
So, you know, full circle, because we like talking about investing, you know, you had the internet bubble and then you had basically two choices, you know, stocks and bonds. And the government has slowly made bonds. There is no bond.
It's the government. So basically, they're not stupid. It's rigged or whatever you're gonna call it.
And 100% of the US population owns bonds. They may not know it, or their financial advisors recommending it. And the only decision is do they own 20% of bonds or 30 or 40? And while all this is happening, everybody's been allocated by their financial advisor.
Some kind of portfolio. Web three comes along, which is basically just a new stock market, right? And which is why the argument about whether the securities are not, it's silly. They're just stock, like they're securities for sure.
People are buying and selling them and everybody's arguing about semantics. They're just securities. So eventually they gotta be regulated or called the same thing as what stocks are.
But really they're a response to like 40% of the country's assets. They're in bonds, which are just a government regular. I don't even know what they are.
They're just terrible. And, or they're a bad investment at 0% or 2% interest, right? So, you know, not to get too in the weeds, but when someone who has 40% of their bonds can theoretically take 5% of that money, put it into a crypto and stake it at an earn 8% or 6% a year, they basically got the exact same return using one fifth of what they were using in bonds. And now they have all this free money to go take extra risks.
So we live in this world where the government printed money, technology's doing its thing. COVID added a new twist and they have three massive things happening at a time when, you know, people have all this extra free time and boom. You know, as I like to say, speculation has become entertainment.
And so gladiators, when the Romans had all this time and they were fighting wars and moving people in Rome, they said, you know what, we got a lot of fucking time. Let's have people kill each other and we'll watch. Kill some lockers, whatever.
And you know, that's what people did this time.
SPEAKER_01
They're trading.
SPEAKER_00
And if they get killed, here's what getting killed is in 2021. You lose 30 grand on a stupid ass trade. Right, you put it on Reddit, guess what? You got killed on your famous and you didn't die, you just blew up your account.
So gladiators in 2021 is showing Reddit that you blew up your 30K account. Guess what, you dust yourself off. This is what the media doesn't get.
Yeah, you're an idiot, maybe. But you just learned something that you were never gonna learn.
SPEAKER_03
It's the man in the arena. It's the man in the arena.
SPEAKER_00
Except you have a second life. And you go get two gigs and you come back strong with 10K. And maybe you approach it the different way this time.
SPEAKER_03
That's investment. It's also the ultimate, the gladiator analogy is really good because it's like the whole thing that happened in January with Melvin Capital and the GameStop. They're just acting like God.
And it's literally like the reason those people became heroes, like Boren Kitty and all that.
SPEAKER_00
I don't know who they were, if they were heroes. They were just, I mean, like in Reddit.
SPEAKER_03
But again, this is the stupid thing.
SPEAKER_00
Investing is the purest form. You were on the ground, lines are coming at you, people are yelling in the stands, but at least you're not risking your life. That's the digital version of gladiators.
We all now get to be Melvin Capital for a day, for a lifetime, whatever. But our account is the true truth. If it's 10 grand, today, what's my goal? It's not to go to zero, it's to go to 100 grand.
Okay, so there's a million ways to go from 10 grand to 100 grand. It is a game. Everybody's arguing, no one wants to admit it, that investing is a game.
Who cares what you call it? The goal is to go upward to the right. And some people want to do it overnight, which is hard and carries extreme risk. And some people are willing to get there over 10 years.
But you don't know until you start. And so now people all have a chance to stake themselves 100 grand or whatever. And everybody's arguing about what we're gonna call this, which is silly.
In the meantime, young people are just doing it.
SPEAKER_03
The other thing that's interesting about it to me, and you brought it up, is we're in this new environment where it's not the establishment people within the financial ecosystem that have access to these arbitrage plays of generating outsized returns. Anyone in this room, anyone here, can go and do these unique staking mechanisms within the web-tier ecosystem and generate outsized returns right now right in this environment. And that is a fundamental shift.
It used to be that it was only like the insiders that were able to do this. And so the insiders are pissed because suddenly anyone, Joe Schmo on the street is able to go and do these things and generate these returns. And so then they start calling it and CNBC comes on the air and they start talking about how it's bad for the ecosystem and how these people are gonna get wrecked and it's gonna be this terrible thing.
I think it's just, oh, there's been a generational shift in the ability to go and generate returns. Suddenly anyone can do it.
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I mean, it's a really good point. Again, we gotta choose our wording carefully because not everyone has access. Sure. Like we like to think this is what got Robinhood in trouble. This is what gets anyone in trouble.
We're democratizing this. No one's doing anything. These are all on ramps to what we love, which is the internet.
It's the same thing with people bragging whether it's Tramoth or me or anybody, Brad, Jason, Calcown. Dude, it's a bull market. It's hard not to make money.
That's true. So everybody's bragging. It's the internet.
Before the internet, 90% of businesses failed. The last 20 years, you gotta be really, make really bad decisions to fail. Doesn't mean it's no shame in it, but you gotta make more bad decisions to fail within internet era than in a retail fixed world era.
The cloud expanded the playing field. Okay. So then you throw the money printing in. Very hard to lose money.
Okay. People need to like just stop thinking we're that smart.
SPEAKER_03
Now within that context. Everyone's a genius in a bull market.
SPEAKER_00
This has been a never ending boom, which is fabulous. Call it what it is. But the point is now the table stakes have been over, you can fractionalize your body.
We wouldn't be here where we were. Vanguard had said 10, 12 years ago, they were already figured out fractionalization. When you bought the S&P 500, they knew that you could buy 0.
5 shares of Apple. Like they had figured this out. All they had to do Vanguard is say, we're opening our API.
Like we're gonna allow people to buy the S&P Vanguard 499. Like I would like to buy 500 stocks. And I would like to take out Wells Fargo and Goldman Sachs and tell them that I took them out, text them for me and say, fuck you Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo.
What Vanguard decided to do is not offer that technology to everyone else. You had to buy the S&P 500. That pissed entrepreneurs off.
They didn't know what was pissed them off. It sure pissed me off. It's like, wait a minute, Betty Lou wakes up.
She hates Wells Fargo. She hates Lehman. She hates Bear Stern.
She hates Goldman Sachs, 2008. But she wants to participate in the S&P 500. She just, she wakes up and every month she's fucking contributing money to Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, whatever.
Like that was infuriating people, even though no one was talking about it. So basically all that's happened in the last 12 years and beyond is the unbundling of Vanguard. I wanna own the S&P 400, less these six destructive, I don't own the S&P 294.
And people just, it took a while for people to, and we're still not even explaining what it really is. Vanguard had this. There should be no Robin Hood.
There should be not any of this stuff. It should all still be CNBC and Vanguard and Goldman Sachs. They just didn't give their technology.
They hoarded the technology. They stayed closed. They stayed closed.
SPEAKER_03
I love that. The unbundling of the S&P 500.
SPEAKER_00
That's all it really is. And it's mind blowing in the sense that it took so long. Yeah. Right? We went, and this is why we have an explosion. Finally, people have more than 31% flavor.
SPEAKER_03
It's like basket and ramen. This is like Dornbush's law. It's like these things take much longer to happen than you think.
SPEAKER_00
And they happen much faster than you think they could have. Especially when there's, especially in finance. Because of the regulation.
And that was very hard for me. I was a financial, believing in FinTech before FinTech was a thing. It was like, I was way early.
And it's very intimidating when you can't, I'm not a tech person, so I didn't know how to express it. The S&P made sense, because I couldn't beat the S&P 500. You can't beat them, join them.
But there's something just so maddening about it, that Wells Fargo could act badly. And if you put $100 a month in your 401K, they were getting, it doesn't matter how badly they behave. The game was rigged.
They wake up, and they're getting stock. They're stock bought. That's corrupt.
As corrupt could be, even though John Bogle had great intention. And this is why I believe, first of all, passive investing with a Y. There's no such thing as passive investing.
With Vanguard is a very active portfolio. Every month or quarter, they kick out poorly-performing companies, so it's a quant fund. So people are really buying an active portfolio.
It's just packaged as passive. And so we've never been passive, because passive is a dumb idea. You should garden.
If you let your lawn just grow, it's going to look like shit. Same thing with manscaping. If you let your balls hair grow, you're not going to get laid according to young people.
And I say that as an investor in Manscaping, but like the- Great company, by the way. It's an amazing company. And the fact that it's so much like investing, when we looked at Manscaped at the beginning, and Paul's a really great entrepreneur, I just thought it was a genius idea.
Because I'm disgusted. Like, once you hit 50, it's not about Manscaping. It's about, I can't even look at myself in the mirror.
I'm disgusted. And so you're grooming. Whatever you're going to call it, you're just shaving all day, because you're just repulsed by your own image.
And- Something to look forward to. Oh, it's terrible. It's terrible.
I told you. Which is why you get married. Which is why you get married.
Especially, I mean, if you're single and 50, you're screwed. You're shaving all day. Causefully shaved.
SPEAKER_03
This is why I got married.
SPEAKER_00
And then once you shave, they don't tell you this. You're shaving forever. Like, the stakes go up.
Just hair grows and crazes. It's just like, terrible. I think I know my big idea from the day.
No, but so anyways, when he was pitching us Manscape, I went to my nephews. And I was like, they're all torn. I'm like, you just seem genius.
But guess what they all told me? They were embarrassed to admit that they Manscaped. Because it's none of my business. So we got bad information from the actual user of the product.
It's no different than trading. Like, if you ask people if they'd aid trade or trade, they're going to say, no, I'm a passive investor. So again, this is just people.
Sometimes you can't get the information, even if you ask the right people. And so Manscape worked so well is because they offered a product that people wanted and no one was admitting to. And that's just when you get outlier wins.
And they created the branding. Same with Robinhood. People go, I don't believe people are trading.
No, it's what people wanted. They didn't know that they wanted it until it was presented in a design, in a packet that made it just incredibly appealing. Free trading had been around for a while.
Zappo, Zecho. You remember talking about it. And I passed on it because it was desktop.
And it just didn't. It was before the iPhone in many ways. And it took the iPhone and it took Robinhood.
Who knew it would take to 2014 was when Robinhood launched. That's not that long ago. It should have happened 2007 when the App Store launched.
So it took a long time. And no one can predict the when and the why. But in the end, it was a great packaging.
It was a demand that no one was admitting that they had. And then you obviously had the money printing and COVID. And then you had crypto.
And you had all these extra choices. And you had fractionalization. And you had all this unbundling.
And it was like, bam. And now people are like, it's bad.
SPEAKER_00
Good luck trying to put that back in the box. There's no shit all at once. That's what I'm saying.
People are saying, what? Just fucking figure out a tax. And figure out something fair. And let the people.
And you can't put the genie back in the bottle.
SPEAKER_00
And when you say education, because I agree, education. But what does that mean? Here's what it means. Give people a list of people.
I don't even know how you educate people. They have all these tools at home. They don't know how to learn it in school.
The parents are going to see. They're on Discord. They're on Stocktwits.
They're on Twitter. They're on Telegram. They're hearing rumors.
They're hearing things. They're playing with things before other people. They're using Roblox.
Let them figure this shit out.
SPEAKER_03
I think they're educated by getting punched in the face. And like you're better to get punched in the face when you're
SPEAKER_00
28 and have $5,000. Yeah, exactly. And when you have when your parents hand you $30 million that they were hired, they did it.
You know, they like you do estate playing, give your kids $30 million.
SPEAKER_03
Then you're going to teach them how to invest. Yeah. But we'll have a band of people. That doesn't make sense.
We'll get punched in the face. We'll learn. We'll be a cycle.
It's how it works. But I do think that like you, you're learning through playing the game.
SPEAKER_01
What do you think of the whole like NFT space right now?
SPEAKER_00
I'm curious your perspective. I'm just so fascinated. Forgetting the terms and everything.
I'm just, first of all, I'm happy. But it's scary because I'm old and it's just I wish I could you know, stay in the Discord rooms. Like Discord wasn't built.
You know, Stocktooth was built for what it is. Ticker based search. It's genius.
Twitter could have been that. I still can theoretically do it or by the way to do it. Discord and Slack are communities.
Like they're not based on like real time. Right. Looking at an object. So something new will come along or we'll keep innovating at Stocktooth.
It's up to us to think how people like searching for things. But what's amazing about NFTs is no one knows. Even the best crypto people.
Like they were just Bitcoin Ethereum and then NFTs just what? Yep. You know, it's taken still people are arguing if it's a thing, of course it's a thing. People are doing it.
You can't deny something that people are doing and having an endless amount of fun. And it's 24-7, 365. It's fucking, it's for thoroughbred.
You have to be, you can't just be some fat bond trader. You have to understand community. You have to understand technology.
You have to understand how to behave. You have to have social skills. You don't have to be in a high rise.
Don't have to be in New York or San Francisco. This is where the democratization doesn't mean it's open for everyone. You still got to like engage.
You got to show up at the stadium. But it's your effort. You can make some serious money.
Of course it helps to have a stake. And OK. That's never going to be fair.
Some people are born on third base. I'm born on third base. We're lucky.
I don't know. I can't put it back in the box. I'm not going to apologize forever.
I'm just going to pass on the information that I think I can get. But everybody should be building a stake. Somehow it could be through your one domain exerpti.
Steve Martin called it your special purpose back in the movie The Jerk. Everybody has a special purpose. They sent him out onto the street.
He didn't know what he was doing. He was just hanging. He spent three days in front of his house because he didn't know what to do in the movie The Jerk.
But everything comes back to some movie that we saw 30 years ago. Eventually he figured the shit out. And he got his first woman and went to the circus.
People should go watch The Jerk as much as it's a lifestyle. Oh my god. I got to see it.
Yes, you should. So these are just things that are rights of passage. And I'm an empty nest with two kids out in the world that are learning.
Get your first apartment in New York. These things have to happen. COVID slowed down that process.
And during COVID, kids had time. So they learned how to trade. They were just bored.
SPEAKER_03
I know we're running up here at the end of time. So want to wrap up, maybe just each one of us. Your one big idea.
What was your big takeaway? I feel like I learned a ton just from the 20, 25 minutes that we had with Howard. So what was it for you?
SPEAKER_01
I mean, my aha moment. I've never thought of the S&P 500 as fractionalization. You stole mine.
SPEAKER_00
They figured it out, right?
SPEAKER_03
Like they had to make just for like whole bundling the S&P 500.
SPEAKER_01
I never thought of it that way. Seriously, it was amazing. I was like, this is a new thing.
Raleigh Road, et cetera. Like this is new. But it's kind of all that's new as old.
Yeah.
SPEAKER_00
Raleigh's too new. What took so long for Raleigh? And I'm an investor in Raleigh Road. So it's talking my book.
What I loved about Raleigh, I'm not a car collector, but I loved the idea of fractionalization. Raleigh was so far ahead of its time, because people really hadn't yet been honest about what we were really doing, which first, yet, I'm bundling the S&P. Robinhood needed to exist.
And NFTs needed to exist actually before Raleigh Road became cool, because NFTs are purely digital. Raleigh Road's like training wheels for a digital world. So Raleigh was too far ahead.
And now the time is theirs. But it took NFTs for Raleigh Road to be cool, because for people that can't go full digital. And let's just say that 99.
5% of the population still. Like, let's be honest, NFTs are really early still, because even I'm not doing it at any kind of interest level. I want to, but I'd rather go buy a piece of a CryptoPunk on Raleigh Road, or at least I feel I own it, and the SEC approved it.
Like, there's different levels of the game. And you have S&P 500. It's great.
Vanguard, there's a million ways to do it. Then you have blow your brains out, like take your chance, spin the wheel, learn how to play the game, build your own portfolio. Then there's that at scale, which is NFTs, make your own portfolio.
It's just too hot, too loose, too tight, too, you know. There's something for everybody. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03
So we covered a ton. We're going to get into a lot more in the community. I know we're going to be in there after this release is jamming with all of you.
Super excited to do it. This was a blast. I learned a ton.
The unbundling of S&P 500 blew my mind a little bit. So I'm excited to dig into that more. Appreciate your time, Howard.
This was a blast. Thanks for coming on to the first episode of The Room Where It Happens.
SPEAKER_00
Cheers. Cheers.
SPEAKER_01
Cheers. Good to see you. Good to see you.
SPEAKER_00
Where the camera's going? I hope so. Oh, fuck. One more time.
That would be a live show. Thank you. Wait a minute.
We didn't even think we were on it.
SPEAKER_03
Howard, what a legend. That was fun having him in here. That guy's a legend.
He's fun, man. He's a fun guy to be around. I had never spent time with him in person, so it was really fun.
So we got to get takeaways. What was your one big takeaway from that conversation?
SPEAKER_01
I think a lot about unbundling. I've written about the unbundling of Reddit. I think that's huge.
When he mentioned the unbundling of the S&P 500, for me, that blew my mind. And I think there's a bunch of areas that you can unbundle that people are not thinking about. A lot of people think about now, especially unbundling of Reddit, unbundling of Facebook, unbundling of Instagram.
But what are some lesser known areas which you can unbundle? The unbundling of Spotify, the unbundling of Airbnb, et cetera, et cetera. So I'm like, tonight, I'm going to go make a map of a bunch of areas which I could go unbundle. And I'm pretty excited about that.
SPEAKER_03
Yeah. Sounds like a fun conversation to have in the community as well. So we should pop in there after this episode releases.
And we will get in there and talk about all this, because that sounds like a really interesting one.
SPEAKER_01
Yeah. What do you think should be unbundled? Next.
SPEAKER_03
So for me, my big takeaway from today is it goes back to early in our conversation. We talked about what I brought up, that framework that Clay Christensen model of disruptive innovation. And this whole idea that you can just provide the best product or service for a very niche customer and use that as your wedge to take down an entire industry.
You can go in, and it goes to that same point of unbundling. But in financial services in particular, which is where we talked about it, there's an amazing opportunity to do that. These incumbent players in a lot of industries, but financial services in particular, are playing this game where they are so wide reaching that they're not actually providing a really good service to anybody anymore.
And if you want to come in and find a market where you can be the best provider for X customer, it's a pretty cool opportunity that exists out there. So that was it for me. That's a big light bulb.
It is a big light bulb, and I think it applies broadly. And so I'd be excited to get in there, get in the community. We'll talk about it after the episode.
And we're excited to engage with you all on this. So look forward to it. And until next time, from the room where it happens, cheers.
Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.
Cheers. Cheers. Cheers.
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SPEAKER_02
Greg, question for you. If banks want companies to open accounts, why do they make it so difficult? They like punishment? Maybe, but not Mercury.
SPEAKER_03
It's banking built for startups, and opening an account is so smooth, you basically fall into it. You can apply for an account from anywhere in the world in 10 minutes, and you get access to everything you need to be able to do banking well. The sign up flow is beautiful and intuitive.
All accounts are FDIC-insured. They offer virtual and physical debit cards, and you never have to visit a physical bank branch. And the whole product has such an elegant design.
I'm a Mercury investor and a Mercury customer myself many times over. If you're a founder or creator,
SPEAKER_01
this is the banking product you need. Sounds like startups can just like start when they use Mercury.
SPEAKER_02
Super low friction. Exactly. Mercury is where startups can just start.
SPEAKER_03
Check out mercury.com if you want to see it for yourself.
SPEAKER_01
I wonder what founders will do with the time they save by starting with Mercury, you know?
SPEAKER_03
Build great products, grow their businesses, I guess.
SPEAKER_01
That's a pretty good guess. Thanks, Greg. You're welcome.
SPEAKER_03
Join our free community at trwih.com.