Welcome Tom is here at my apartment in Brooklyn because I
think he's doing sort of Insider stuff and taking tourist
meetings and he needed the real Mike set up.
So my girlfriend who's a video producer has him with all her
camera mics set up, but he's in the same room.
Is me, and I feel like he's, he's dealing with a sort of
dystopian sound overlay. So, we're gonna see how that
comes out. And then we're here with Daniel
list who is the CEO of dispo but we are equally excited that he's
been deep in nft World in this last week for NYC and ft and so
we want to talk about that sort of building on the metaverse
conversation from last week and yeah.
I'm excited for Daniel to play a little bit of tour.
Guide in nft World. Daniel like what?
How deep how deep into the world of nft.
Sorry, right. Would you consider yourself a
Believer or where? Give us the sort of where you
stand right now? I'm a I'm, you know, as the
people I don't have see. NYC would say, I've taken the
red pill. I'm absolutely a Believer but I
think the caveat and we'll walk through it.
I'm sure but You have to believe as an operator and someone
leading a company that this is what you're in.
I'm building a social media company.
With my team, we have to believe that this is what our community
wants, if our community doesn't want it, right?
And we're trying to skate to where the puck is going and
build a once-in-a-generation company.
Then we shouldn't be using this technology.
There's a lot about this promising.
There's a lot about it. That's really frightening.
So I think we'll get into that Tom, you.
Good, tell me about the most red pill person you met at the
convention so far like you're somewhere in the It all you're
buying it but you still need to be convinced like, how who's the
most fucked up person you met in this in this conference?
I wouldn't put it that way but the person who the biggest
believer. So I was at the fun part of this
week is he was just dinners parties activities coffees.
It was an incredible social week and you know, for me who, you
know, we started this company a year and a half ago, we have not
been doing these social networking events and no pun.
Intended. And so it was just a rush of
human interaction activity, you know, with vaccination cards and
mass and safety protocols. But I was at one of these
dinners and an investor throughout a question, to all
the founders and CEOs in attendance and the question was
your portfolio, your personal Investment Portfolio right now?
What is the allocation? And I said, okay, I think it
would be, you know, I'm 33. I'm risk on A lot of my net
worth is tied up in the equity of our company but for of my
liquid assets, I would put 75 percent in the Vanguard S&P 500
ETF. I would do ten percent in bonds,
maybe if I'm being aggressive, you know, of the remaining 15%
seven and a half in cash, seven and a half across.
Bitcoin is here, IAM in Solana, right?
And the guy sitting next to me goes, 100% etherium.
Deadpan. Look in his eyes like I did not
know what I was talking about that.
I was an alien of some sort right.
And maybe I am and I understand looking at that man's net worth
that it has quintuple. You know, gone up 50 acts.
I don't know when he bought right.
If he bought in 27 at the bottom of the last cycle, you know, if
you know I was at a meeting with buying Is, you know, one of the
most senior people there and 12% of their Volume last week was in
Shiba Inu, right? So the world in which were
living the volatility of the assets, I'm even in a world
where in the public markets Peloton can go down two thirds
in less than a year, right? But in, you know, the Bitcoin
world or just the cryptocurrency world, the volatility of the
world in which we are living is shocking amazing.
Incomprehensible to the average average.
Joe Oh, but it's still exciting and I think, you know, we
haven't gone into it, but there is real utility to the
technology that was not necessarily there in 2017.
So if you're serious about building a company, particularly
in the gaming and social world, you have to be looking at this
incredibly intensely but it's so it won't get to sort of the use
cases and with this phone when you're thinking about, but just
like the people part of this story first like so how did you
even? I feel like the nft NYC
conference sort of came on to my Twitter.
Feed all of a sudden or like I was clearly not ready to flee.
Like right, did you? Are you where are you based?
When did you realize this was coming in?
Like why did you decide to go? And then you said, it's like, is
it mostly like going to panels? Or is it mostly going to dinners
around it or like what is the conference as sort of a start-up
CEO going to this thing? Great question.
So I first of all just interest in cryptocurrency, I would call
myself a web to lot of. I assume that's most of Of our
listeners who we can be run through this.
For those of you me, who are not quite sure about the specifics
of web to, and web three. What is web to versus web 3
because I'm assuming web one is eBay, right?
Well, web to is the cloud, right?
It's how I would Define it, right?
You're in a previously. I mean, in, I'll talk about it
in terms of our business, right? 04 to 0-6 when the Myspace
friends stirs, Facebook wars were on Mark Zuckerberg, dad.
Famously put a hundred thousand dollars of server costs on
Personal credit card, right? Because you can.
Now we talk about the network Dynamics, and soccer Bridge
genius, and the news feed and f/8 and all the amazing
technological developments. He really is the greatest
operator in software of our time, but at that time, you
know, Friendster don't forget had every advantage.
And a lot of the closed Network just magic that propelled
Facebook ahead of the dangers of the stranger danger of Myspace,
but friends are couldn't keep their back end up.
And so technical a Excellence in a pre Cloud world was a huge
part of the game and now of course, with AWS has your, and
Google Cloud, I'm able to have a much smaller back-end team and
worry about a lot less. Of course, our team is Best in
Class. I'm really proud of them but we
worry about that. A lot less in the web to world
than the prior generation did. And you know now of course, web
3 is about the blockchain. So it's about smart contracts in
the uniqueness and provenance of, and of teas.
And Jurors and I mean, it's like a distributed internet powered
by the economics of cryptocurrencies.
The let us drive away from sort of centralized Gatekeepers.
The even the cloud itself is too centralized in the web.
Three definition. There has been a history of
across the centralized the database.
Yeah, absolutely. Decentralization.
I think is the core premise. The court magic.
Anyway, that's web to web three. Your web to going into this sort
of web, three World, figuring out what you think, and then,
The conference itself, how it came on your radar and sort of
talk talk me through that sure. So Ryan Hoover, you know, the
founder of product on and we can fund is an adventure of ours.
I put in a very little money to be an LP in weekend fund.
He's also an investor and dispo and he sends out the best LP
letter I've ever read better than Howard marks just he not
go. What they do is incredibly
ornate, really thoughtful and So I read it religiously and the
last one he sent I mean, was he the last quarter?
The quarter prior there was this company called Eternal .g G
which is an N of T Marketplace for twitch streamers.
My eyes are like, nosing over laughing, but right, but if you
think about it, right? If you actually do the work, you
realize that the gaming Market is bigger than the MBA market.
So if the volume that Dapper Labs did with Top Shot is, you
know, billions, why wouldn't gaming highlights and gaming
moments and collectibles be a multi-billion dollar market.
And then you start to think, wow, these guys are really on to
something. And so I asked Ryan to introduce
me to the co-founders of Eternal who just raised again,
incredibly incredibly sharp guys who you know Jeff and Derek or
the name of the co-founders who have been in the crypto world
forever. So five plus years and they you
know, Jeff has a tokenized community called Jeff's buddies.
I hope I'm not saying anything. I'm not allowed that not doxxing
the Jeff's buddies communities, but shout out to them and he Did
me but, you know, you had he had ascended to Discord or what's
the commits a Discord? Can he said he sent you, the
tokens, you had to use collab land to prove that you have the
tokens. Then you're included in the
Discord server and then they're in this random Discord Community
for four people speculating on criminal nothing you speculate.
It's just an Enthusiast Community for people and the
people in this chat. I'm not going to tell you who
are in it, but our real crypto investors builders Credible
group relatively small group of people and I was I felt the
least intelligent on the subject matter but also they were
interested in my experience, right?
And our experience, it just bow. We have more downloads and a
bigger Community than most of the people involved.
So it wasn't just people still like web to people want to make
money off by 3. But yeah, it's all right.
Keep Goin sure. So you know they're interested
in scale we're facing a lot of the same problems and are
interesting. A lot of the same subjects
fundamentally right? How do you Something that really
changes the world and has an impact and, you know, has scale.
So I was a part of this and then there was a channel in it.
That said, well first the first one was main that.
So then I went to Maine that and then the next channel was nft
NYC. And when I went to Maine that
all people could talk about it, may not was, bro.
What's going on? And it's a lot of bros not
nearly enough women, which was shocking to me, because I'll get
there. My team is majority women.
Our team is majority women at dispo and our community is 30
women. You know, if you're building a
social product in any generation teen girls run the world.
So the most interesting part and also, the scariest part for the
dispo team is when we're our audience is primarily teen girls
college kids, and the primary. Crypto audience is the 20,000
open sea whale Bros. There is a huge disconnect and
gap between what our community is interested in, right?
And when we say the world, say the word Madam asked or wallet,
or seed, phrase, or a pin or Wagner.
You know, all the lingo that's now begun to dominate our
Twitter feeds. Our community don't care, and
haven't noticed. And so thinking about what the
future is and what they will tolerate, I think the gaming
world is going to break down a lot of barriers and not actually
Infinity but when the real AAA Publishers when you know, this
past quarter, the CEOs of EA and today to both had questions
about and FTS like the gaming world is going to break down the
barriers, but basically you're in this like sort of like all
male Community, obviously you're right.
Representing sort of a super female Community predominately
male, but a couple of, Yeah, couple rain.
And the, but the hope is that still, the technology is like
relevant to your company. Correct.
So now you're in the nft NYC disc or group, and that's where
they're chattering about it. Well, there was a channel in
Jeff's buddies about it and then, if, you know, there were
spreadsheets of all the events that were happening and then
that was, you know, months ago. And then I started meeting
everybody's gotta by Southwest when people would like sir.
Try and get the good events and you send around spreadsheets
with that kind of or Sundance or any of these content industry
contract versus you've been do or there's just everybody's
there, right? And that became obvious to me
and then I started meeting as we really did a deep dive and did
some out of T. Testing a couple of months ago
I'm just bow and we started getting a lot of inbound calls
from investors and potential employees interested in building
that out. Then the first question within
the first five minutes is oh what's your schedule?
And of tem I see we got To get together, you know, oh, are you
going to the board Apes party or what's going on with FWB or oh
this, you know, CAA is throwing something with their new?
And I thought, wow, this is not all, you know, there's a lot of
really interesting cross-current, you know, we're
in La based company. I've been in La for five years.
There's a lot of interesting cross current between The
Chainsmokers. I heard they were out there.
Unbelievable, unbelievable. They will be the next great,
their investors and dispo. No, my good next great.
Yeah, I was waiting for that anytime.
Seems to the audience. If you are not co-investing with
The Chainsmokers and mantis, there's something wrong with
your portfolio. The amount of work that they do,
they're incredibly incredibly bright switched on guys who's
there? Like who's the who's the man
behind them? The team.
There is no man behind them. There on all the calls from Alex
are sending out the emails. I'm so impressed by them.
There, you should have them on. I think they're incredibly
thoughtful and I mean when you see their name in the deal,
announcements now it means Thing right there, not just investing
in random companies. They're investing in a lot of
categories, potential category. Yes, Chainsmokers also have 100%
exposure to etherium, so that's also very concerning the future
of don't don't, don't let me down sequel is not going to be a
promised, should the crypto Market tanked, but otherwise,
enjoy. Well, I'm going to the salon.
A conference in Lisbon this week.
Oh my God. Yeah, I introduced them to a me.
Woo-hoo just announced her fun with ft x and Solana, so I
assume The Chainsmokers will Soon have plenty of Salon
exposure. That's actually super smart just
for gigs, right? I mean, if you just appear as
the house band at every crypto conference, over the next
several weeks, like your solid booked, do they play a?
Did they play or they got. I'm sure they did.
But, you know, little baby performed board.
Apes after buying one or maybe they gave it to him.
It's hard to say there's not a lot of trees.
There may be no little baby, not debating.
Yeah, sorry. Okay.
I was about to say we come, we had a much bigger story on our
hands. But you see you did good.
There were jumping now. I mean, you went to the board
Apes thing. Our yeah.
Well was this I didn't I didn't make it but I have a lot of
friends he did and it's interesting, right?
You start to realize as a social media company and now we're kind
of heading into people call this social 3 as well.
Social media is a cultural artifact in many ways, right?
You've seen the Cycles. Now first it was Facebook
friends to her. Myspace, there's Instagram
hipstamatic. Please that was Snapchat and
then Tick Tock, triller whatever else.
And here we are with this bow and a bunch of other companies
emerging that are trying to reinvent the photo sharing
memory making category and really get to the point where we
can Embrace some of these new values that you know, have come
out in the discords and clubhouses the world.
So that they're about Community about intimacy about
authenticity and figure out how to bring that into the future.
And I think how do you do that? And do that on a scale that
takes on the titans of social media.
The, you know, one of those answers, one of the hypotheses
has to be that it's built on the blockchain and taking advantage
of whether it's etherium or or Solana what we choose to build
on. But secondly, I think what acts
he's done with the progressive decentralization model.
So you know, functionally inverting your cap table, and
having the community participate in a real substantial, you know,
almost a b Corp on steroids manner.
Is interesting, no one's done that before.
And in many ways, it would be as if Kickstarter gave equity in
their company to the community that shows and equity in the
products, to the people who chose to build them.
But obviously, like Kickstarter mini over those products never
materialized in the form that people expect them to.
Well that's the danger, right? You have to figure out as an
operator and what we're trying to determine the dispos.
All of our testing is how do you layer in the blockchain?
To your product in a way that is not fundamentally changing the
nature of the game. You know the game play, right?
So in social media, what we're building will be closest to read
it in that you your contributions to the community
are valued and denoted in some way that, you know, we haven't
settled on quite yet and whether you're contributing to roles or
otherwise, you know, which are the group albums on our on our
Network or other contributions to the community people.
Value your contribution. And this is a long history in
the internet from Wikipedia moderators to Foursquare,
mayor's to whatever else you might want to keep hearing about
the conference. But let's talk about this book
because obviously, okay, that's what you do and we're getting
we're touching on it. So like, I guess in my very
Layman sense, my understanding of dispo and you can disillusion
a, but like super hot with, you know, obviously David dobrik
co-founding and the sort of Disappearing messaging thing He
gets like cancel delayed. Not am delayed, right?
Always the court can delay. Sorry, you take a photo and you
can delay till 9 a.m. right opposite of disappear.
Yeah. Okay, I'm sorry.
Okay, good very web to we're so then he's gone.
That's Insider cancels him, right?
Yeah. And then you guys like your
investors have different Stakes, but like, we're spark sort of
like, says, oh, we're like giving him back or something,
but then whatever. So there's that whole thing.
And you've been able to, like, I've watched the gross stuff
obviously in covered a little bit and like in some of these
other countries, particularly you've sort of held on to growth
and are trying to sort of, despite sort of like a media
sort of like losing your sort of like favored status in the
media. Keep growing is that the journey
is that a reasonably Fair version of the journey and now
you're like trying to figure out sort of how to capture the
growth you've built in. Like so part of it is exploring
web 3 and like, Nerve or where is that?
How is that a fair Journey or where would you say you're at
now in that and that path? Absolutely.
I think you know, I wouldn't exactly put it that way if you
know but we're that 18 months into this code base.
The team went from six and March to now 22 on four continents, I
think it's incredibly exciting. If you were to ask me or anyone
were working with any of the co-founders that this is where
the Pretty would be. And obviously, there were some
incredible ups and some incredible Downs along the way.
We have a company we're really proud of.
We have a product that is resonating with you know
millions of teens and college kids around the globe and I
think yes, we where we're at now, is we need to figure out as
any social media company would at this stage.
How do you really? You know, you can get downloads,
you can pay for downloads, you can partner with an influencer
celebrity for downloads. You know, acquisition is only
only one part of the game and in social media, you know, when
investors mute us and whether it's tiger, or SoftBank or GST,
or you know, whoever would hypothetically call they will
never ask about our download numbers.
They're going to ask about retention, right?
Because if I were to pay, is it working?
Is it working right? And particularly D30?
So, on the discrete day, 30 days later, or, you know, it camera
apps are often weekly. So weak for, you know.
How are you building? What are the features?
You're Developing to capture more of the users time in a way,
you know, especially for us, the very Mission driven almost
political company and what we're trying to accomplish.
How are you doing in a way? That's different from the
companies of the past and how are you going to set yourself?
What do you mean all political? I think you know the choice of
non am development or delayed development.
In any sense is a choice to untether you know the community
from their phones. And when we asked the girls in
particular why do they like this is is I feel so much pressure,
use it, you know, taking photos, sharing photos online.
And this isn't just an Instagram problem.
This is, you know, everyone's seen what came out in the
hearings. This is really a problem that
the, you know, the phone has created, right?
And what are these social media platforms, make them feel.
They feel alone. They feel not good enough.
They feel issues about their body.
They feel like they have the wrong lifestyle.
They don't have the right clothes.
It's this incredibly Sad and negative impact.
And so for us and I spent my 20s primarily in politics.
How do you genuinely create a social media Network that you
know, delivers joy and connection?
Even if that was the intent of these original platforms?
15 years ago? That's the the question.
And so for us not in development means when you take the photos
you can't access them immediately and that powerful,
right? Because you don't, you know,
next time you go out into the wild and you watch someone no
matter what age or gender. Either they are they take a
photograph or a video the immediately are clutching and
you can see the veins and their neck pop out as they look at and
they say off my arm is fat or whatever it is, right?
It's an incredibly stressful experience.
And so the magic of, you know what, we call the digital
disposable camera is you can wait a little bit, and when you
get the photos back, the next morning, something we hear quite
often, you use your user interviews, is that it feels
like Christmas morning again, right?
It feels like going to the one-hour photo with my mom or my
dad and Up back my role of 24 36, and, you know, almost 20
percent of our users are sharing photos.
The next day, or no, to almost 20% of the photos are being
shared the next day, so that core Loop of taking and sharing
is defensible and magical and inherently viral.
And I think that's what's so exciting thus far.
When we don't think it's important for you to put Eric.
I mean, maybe you're going to same question, but explain to me
the crossover between the instant - of photos and social
media. Leah and the delayed reaction of
it of the nine, a m-- development, that you think
ameliorates the problem of self-image and negativity that,
you know, something happens between the photo being taken
and 9 a.m. the next day that allows people to feel better
about themselves. I don't get that, I think it's a
first of all, you know, on the scale of Purity, you know, I'm
not going to stand here and say we have the solution, right?
That's a very dangerous proposition.
It's incredibly Are to fix the way that people look at
themselves in the mirror, right? That's an example, existed and
predated Instagram, and all of this, so sure.
Even before mirrors, let's go back to the Garden of Eden.
I'm sure we, you know, we all look at ourselves and we wish
something, we're different whatever, the societal standards
were at the time, right? And that's something that's
baggage that all of us have from birth.
And it's not a function, just of cell phones, right?
You know, go back to the Renaissance or the Roaring 20s
or, you know, pick your historical Epoch.
There were Trends, there were he's that were, you know,
certain body images that were more popular.
We're not, we're never going to fix the Francis Hogan of the of
the Medici era was a very different person, but we all
know that the portraits were extremely defeating to the
Arctic rubenesque this story. Yeah, sure.
Go ahead, sure. But I think what we're aiming to
do is create something that it's not perfect, but it's
fundamentally better, right? And so the act of getting back
specifically to the Question. The act of taking the photo
right now on your iPhone when you can see so much and you're
obsessing over it and you're immediately clenching and you
feel this intensity and in turn because of some feelings.
And maybe you're bringing negativity about what you see
that ruins the moment. And so creating that distance
for you from that or even you know will test a gentle reminder
to you to wait a little bit and allow yourself to enjoy Joy at
the next day, we found users. Tell us that they enjoy that a
lot more than the way. They've been taking photographs
in the past and if you can compare it, everyone on this
Zoom, I think is old enough to remember the way that we would
get photos back. When we were kids, it was a very
different feeling from the feeling that we have.
Now when we see them on our phone and our pie apophysis is
one, part of that is the just the time, the distance, you have
between taking it and experiencing it, and that
reveal, and then, Web three, right?
I get I if you lose like on the one hand, you know, if you're a
new up-and-coming consumer company, makes sense to like get
on and see what sort of the new trends are happening, maybe
you'll get adoption some way doing that.
On the other hand there's an argument.
You know that focus is good. You guys have sort of a cool
idea with the disposable camera thing.
Like why why do something else like complicated or Innovative
with like web three? Or I mean, it seems like you're
going through that Journey now or What sort of what got you to
say? Oh, we should think about
crypto. Is it the money side?
The enthusiasm? Or like, if you had to distill,
like, what appealed to you about it and then like, yeah, where
are you in sort of in that journey I think, first and
foremost is just a healthy sense of the history of Technology
knowing that at some point, the switch was made from the
Mainframe to the cloud and the people, the incumbents, you
know, it's hard to think of a company that is almost 18 months
old as an incumbent. But I'm coming from the prior
mindset was slow and, you know wasn't necessarily building.
You know, I met Devin from Open Sea, they were building from
2018, that's a lot longer than we've been building.
So, in Tech a big part of the job is reacting and reacting
because you're smaller with a speed and precision that a major
incumbent. So the metas the Snapchats, the
Pinterest, right? The, you know, 50 100 billion
plus market cap companies will never be able to A because of
the size of the company and, you know, the speed at which the
ship turns, but then also the regulatory concerns that they
have, and I think that was a really interesting part of all
of this is uoft, acts moving to the Bahamas, the Dow laws and
Wyoming. What is actually, what is
actually going? I love what you have to do is a
start-up founder these days like track.
All these like really, it's like what what the most ambitious
part about injuries and Horowitz?
This is an Assad, but related, the most interesting part.
Of injuries in Horowitz to me right now is not how they've
doubled the size investing staff, and that they're probably
going public. It is that they're
single-handedly becoming a regulatory, they don't call a
lobbying, so, whatever, whatever it is, a regulatory shaping
process. And, you know, that front-page
article in the New York Times last week is really breathtaking
when you think about it, right? It's as if we were, you know, if
you think about the analogy of the cloud again, right?
It's Amazon, Microsoft and Google are now the three big
players but imagine a world where those are the only three
players. So Bitcoin salon and aetherium.
And the same person owned a huge chunk of all of them and was
investing in all three of the platform's themselves.
And in all the companies building on them and had such a
head start in funding and access that they then went to
Washington and shape, the rules of the gray.
And the other major lobbyists is Many called coinbase, which they
happen to be a major shareholder in, right?
You know, and one of the partners and I'm sure she didn't
mean anything by it, but happens to be on the board of both
coinbase and Open Sea, which are now going, you know, right?
I think coinbase will destroy open, see your?
Or has a really good shot of just placing it in the popular
imagination, right? The just the breadth of coinbase
is wild compared to open sea, even if opens he continues on
this crazy growth path. So, to answer the original
Question, which is why are we looking at this so hard?
I think it's a belief, you know, it's to your first question.
Do I believe in deleted in the company?
Believe that the blockchain is real?
And it is the future. And, yes, unequivocally.
I think that it is really interesting.
You can talk about the promise of the chains themselves, but
when you think about the Dow model and what axi Infiniti has
done as an example, right? Which is you are giving your
users a percentage of the profits of the company.
By virtue of their participation.
So in the same way, you know, Abraham Lincoln with the
Homestead Act gave in the 1860s people I think was up to 140
acres of land, if they went out and they developed it and they
paid a registration fee, right? If you as a company, and this is
why I read it seems to be going so hard their collaboration with
Arbitron. And I was, I met up with Stephen
and their team this week to learn about what exactly?
They're planning, but it is really interesting.
He's Huffman or You're saying no, Steven?
Who runs our Bertram, okay? Who's a brilliant guy?
He came out of, they actually launched this company before
etherium launched out of a pH. A group of phds at Princeton
brilliant, brilliant movie. You guys, the idea is that for
all the pictures or some subset, the people could easily turn
them into n FTS or I don't want to specifically get into that
right now, but trying to get ahead of whatever you're
announcing but what's the intuition that's one hypothesis,
right? But if you can also If you open
the app and you look at what we're doing, we have cameras and
you have to open dispo to understand it.
But they're, they're almost digital objects in the way that
a skin on for tonight is or certain objects on Roblox and so
we just did our first big collaboration with YSL, the
fashion house, a couple weeks ago, and the user response to.
That was remarkable. It, shocked everyone internally.
And so that opened our eyes. Well, what if the cameras You
know, the images is one way to look at it.
But what if the cameras themselves were mft?
He's right are there are filter and ft's today or other.
I've heard of this idea, right? Or this exists.
It's an idea, right? But I think what's interesting
to the community, you know, the eith community Solana Community
is our scale already. And also the fact that we, you
know, if you compare it to the play, Turn gaming world, we have
a game of our social network, which is you contribute posts
and you contribute to Rolls images.
Rolls and your video will launch sometime soon and you are
rewarded, you know, whether through likes and up votes and
you know, whatever or equivalent of karma is the red of karma but
also emotionally rewarded, right?
So much of what we project on social media is a bid for
affirmation or connection or attention or flirting or
whatever it is that you're looking for in the world and so
layering in and of teas to that right where people can trade
them. You know, so there and we you
create a Marketplace. There's also a resale value to
the person who generated the asset a lot of the behavior.
When you look at what more tapes or crypto Punk's or
fundamentally enabling, right. It's peacocking by putting the a
poor, the crypto punk as your Twitter profile and then it's
access to a community. And so for us to do that on a
social media Network would not be a huge leap and then the
second part of the equation which is actually a very
separate discussion is do you issue a token as the company.
And I think that's the one that's very out there for two
reasons. One is the regulatory issues and
secondly, what is the App Store going to do?
And, you know, I think that it's because for now, they're really
not allowing from what I understand.
At least any company that issues a token to do that in app and
the biggest challenge, you know, and I keep asking this in every
single meeting and every single person I meet is the ux, the
user experience of the The web three native people is not even
close to what we do in the web to it sucks, right?
It's um, it's it's not even close.
And and so every time we say the word wallet or seed, freeze and
I said this earlier, but any of the lingo, right?
And I'm only getting to one or two of the words but in order to
now open a while at on metal mask or right?
Even know the names of all the companies you have to do.
Yeah. The process, the companies like
it requires charts to lay it all out.
It requires charge to lay it all out but you know, the
Counterpoint to all that and I think the really exciting part
is you look at axi and you have to open the Ronin wallet and
then you have to transfer the funds and then you have to wait
sometimes and they're still doing their taxes and they're
still doing it and they're still doing it and so maybe you maybe
you would say well the issue here is, this is a job and it's
not a game but they're all these stories back from 06.
Right, 07, when Facebook was rolling out internationally and
traditionally in Mobile, you know, in our team.
Well, it was mostly desktop then, but traditionally in the
internet, people are not willing to wait for things to load
right, but, you know, latency right?
Our back-end team were constantly reviewing how quickly
are people getting it to load because they will abandon people
have incredibly short time, you know, attention spans.
But with Facebook in the beginning, it was such a magical
product and people felt that it was the internet, right?
They were unable to understand that there was a difference
between the internet and Facebook that they were willing
to load. Wait 30 seconds, 90 seconds per
page load to use it. And so if axi really is, you
know, and most of the times, the first Market mover, when it
comes to the internet is not the winner, right?
Google is not the first search engine started Facebook, not the
first social network. So I think that's what's so
exciting to everyone in the gaming world.
And now, you know, I've met in AA.
Everyone at every, you meet every product manager or game
developer. A game designer at Zynga
supercell Riot, you know, and and and and Dan they're all
thinking about this. This is obsessing them, right?
Because they've existed in a world where people were willing
to buy spend real money on Virtual Goods which adults and
the media still don't really even though it's not a own
skins, I have a great you exactly.
But for my money, I think it made money in OverWatch.
People are people are still very He's skeptical of the digital
Goods economy even with Fiat right even if we don't talk
about blocks, right? And so why couldn't you Eric
trade your skin and have it then live?
Not just in for tonight but also in Roblox and the owner lots of
already met. Why would a centralized company
want to? I mean, we could that is so fun
to be no. But yeah, right?
But the big centralized companies, the incumbents are
not going to necessarily want that, right?
But all the Challengers will, right?
It'll help us scale much faster. So the fluidity it's the same
way that in social media social graphs, right?
It would behoove all of the Challenger companies to create
an interoperable social graph, but of course, the Legacy
companies will never allow it. So, what I think is interesting
about your company approaching crypto and then FTS
specifically, is that to me it could represent this jump from
gaming, towards mainstream usage, right?
Because at the Level, I understand it.
People are very accustomed to Virtual Goods.
The trading of that there is a there is a market, there is a
currency, there is a value for non tangible objects but what
you guys have existed on what your success has come on.
So far, has been through straight-up social media, right?
It's people taking photos things in the real world and gaining
social currency through the success in whatever.
Attention those photos get, where do you see on the your
users interest, the involvement of this kind of web 30 Approach
to social currency towards I guess financialization, when it
comes to like, potentially issuing a token.
I don't think our users understand this, but I don't
think we had Mark Zuckerberg when they announced the news
feed. And, you know, his product
manager was famously, threatened by the community, but the
numbers on the back, end told them, it was working, you know,
there's a part of, and, of course, Steve Jobs was the king
of this. There's a part of creating
consumer products, which is data driven.
And talking to users, of course, right?
Ultimately we are serving them, but there's also a part of it
that's intuition and trying to create something that's
different and enabling enabled by the technologies that you see
adult way, the whole Henry, Ford thing, they would have said I
want Faster Horses or more horses or whatever.
Right, right. Right, right.
I think that's that has to be an obsession of yours if you're,
this is the hardest category in the world.
I think to build in, right is, how do you create something
that's taking advantage? So much has been Built already,
right? I mean you talk to investors
who've investing in Social for the last 15 to 20 years and
there was a consensus, maybe five years ago that social was
over, right? And even Snapchat had to
overcome that in their road to the market.
And of course when Instagram copied stories, a lot of people
thought and the snap share price reflected.
A lot of people thought snap was dead and it's the essential
thesis, the bear case. At that moment was social has
been built already, no one's ever.
Going to touch it again and the emergence of tick-tock, which I
think will be bigger than any of these companies has really
corrected. The market.
It is extremely addictive. It is, it's amazing, it's
amazing. And then, you know, Discord is
surging Jason, and that team are amazing.
Are going to build a behemoth company and hopefully with not
an a driven model. It's really exciting to see what
they're doing seems with subscriptions and I think now
there's this energy out there that social is about to change
and you know my belief is that why is it changing?
Its really because social media is a cultural artifact enabled
by technology, right? Fashion goes through Cycles.
Why were skinny jeans in in last week and now mom jeans are in
this week. Music goes through psycho,
right? I was managing an R&B group for
a while and the the whole premise was.
It's the Boys to Men of this time which was inspired by the
new edition of that time. And then the Four Tops and the
Jackson 5 and The Temptations of that time, right?
And so when you look at social media, you Really, if you're
building it, you really have to believe that it comes in cycles.
And so you have to think about what are the product values.
And for us, that's the authenticity, the community, the
intimacy that gen Z seems to really care about.
But also, what are the unique? Technological changes of this
time, right? No one talks about it, but
Facebook, Surviving the shift from desktop to mobile was
triumphant. Right meeting ever thought it
was gonna happen media. Never never thought it was going
to happen. It's a testament again to why
Zuckerberg is just the best. But also That is why they
hundred here for. He said that earlier and I was
surprised, you didn't react, I was like, I'm not as far as
the antitrust issues facing Facebook and the fact that I do
believe if he's as smart as I think and everyone else thinks
he is, he should break up the company, but as a technical
innovator, he really is preeminent.
But that's all I have to say on that one.
Well, I mean, what's interesting to me, let's see if I can make
this analogy through media here because that because I covered
that for a long time. And to me the most impressive
transformation that happened on that side of things was Netflix,
right? You know, moving from DVDs,
through the qwikster debacle to streaming, right was incredible
and has left them far out ahead, at least for the time being when
it comes to subscribers. But it would also like reads
Reed Hastings, thesis from the beginning was that eventually we
will get to this point where content is going to be streamed.
Directly into people's homes, like DVD was the intermediary
between where the president was and his vision.
And maybe that was the case with shock to, you know, he always
knew that social media was something that needed to exist.
You know as an extremely personal level and on people's
phones is like crypto and N FTS the end result of something that
has been. You know when it comes to social
media something that is needed to exist.
For some time great question. That is exactly why we're
looking so hard and do it and I would actually separate Two
different parts of the web. Three worlds, right?
So first, there's n of T. So the product itself, what are
you? You know, the equivalent in
gaming on a Roblox or a fortnight is the skins or the,
you know, in-game assets. But then the more exciting part
in some ways or the equally, exciting part is Progressive
decentralization model and issuing a token, which enables
people and it's obviously in extract.
Lee link to the issuance of entities.
But if you look at axi right, just the nft of the back sees
themselves as not as interesting as tying them to a token that's
publicly traded and is tied to the primary sales of the axes
and then the resale fees generated by the platform that
go into the community Treasury and are then given to the
participants in the ecosystem. That's really interesting.
It's never been done before, right?
And Back to Zuckerberg because I know you like talking about him
as do. I the fundamental problem that
Facebook is facing if we ignore section 230 and First Amendment
issues. If we ignore privacy and data
collection issues, the fundamental problem they're
facing is one that's driven by the business model which is we
need to create an algorithm that drives engagement because
engagement creates Adam to Tori and Adam inventory creates
Revenue growth. And so, what's really, what's
really compelling to our company is if you were genuinely trying
to create the once-in-a-generation social
media company that will change that, right?
Because Evan and Snapchat tried to build Hardware, you know, had
a bunch of false starts went into the ad model Pinterest has
to be an ad model. Reddit has tried all these other
things, it's going to be an ad model.
So if you're going to try to Jet, if you have teen girls in
college kids, Drive Social Network adoptions excluding the
Pinterest case, which is amazing for other reasons.
If you have that audience, which is really, really hard to do.
And you can see from all that's leaked in the hearings that
Facebook and Instagram have lost that audience.
So, if you're our company and you're trying to create
something that has a business model, that is not a driven
because there's something wrong with that ethically and
politically, then looking very hard at what a token issuance
and what changing the business model fundamentally because
Jason and the Discord team are choosing subscriptions which is
one of the other models, but end of TS and a token issuance are
really, really interesting from an ethical standpoint.
And I think that's why we're so inspired and energized to spend
all this time exploring it because that could be a
game-changer. That's the numbers I've
understood. Why you're looking into using
the most, I believed it the point that it's like, oh, it's
an escape hatch from the ad model.
That is condemned, which is it. Has such strong gravitational
pull because I covered Snapchat during that period, where Evan
actually embarrassingly one of the Scoops that I had early on
covering the company was like, Snap doesn't want to do ads
because they were talking to the all the Chinese companies of the
time. Evan didn't?
I mean it's true that it's one of the journalists, like Escape
hatches of true at the time? Because yeah, you know, they
were looking at, you know, micro payments and people spending
money on individual filters and I mean I guess you could call it
early and have tea or whatever Shirley.
Why didn't they have? They should have had An mou they
should have had cash app, right? The snapcash I want to go back
to the conference where we all got were this guy started.
And there's like, financialization is part of what
excites web three. I mean I was joking online.
Somebody was showing a chart of like interest in web three
verses like the Creator economy and it's way bigger for web
three. And I do think part of it is
like there are others Financial speculation to go with web three
like web, three justifies people, who just want to like
bedding currencies, and on the flip side, you know, there are
founders, like, yourself who are like, oh, I To build a company
like some actual things in this new technology could be useful
and make it possible. So you're interested in more
like a product lens, but then you go to this world.
That's so Financial eyes. And, I mean, that sort of the
etherium joke, you sort of started off with that story and
even some of the founders, who are hardcore, how what's the
Speculator percentage? I guess at this conference, or
like, if you had to say they're just like, betting on currency
goes up, I make a lot of money. That's what I care about, how
How prevalent was that? It's very large, it's very
large, and I think it's fascinating to think, as well.
So, on the individual basis there, right?
All of the open sea, whales the 20,000 of them, the board Apes
holders, the crypto Punk's holders, not all of them, but a
large number of them are very much interested in this, it's
part Community Driven, its part Financial speculation driven,
right? It's very hard to, as an
outsider who's, you know, a Believer now, but still an
outsider because I haven't Been with them, for any real period
of time, it's very hard to see what the difference is.
And you know, to untangle the links.
I think what's really interesting, people will be
giving you some Spiel and is like empty and you're like, you
just want to make money. I mean, like, you have to say
like, I mean, maybe you disagree, but certainly, some of
the things people say around crypto.
It's like what's the there there?
Right. Sure.
But in any emerging in any emerging technology in that,
Doubly. There will be a bit of a wild
west feel right. Just think about all some of the
news that's been made in the last couple weeks, right?
The head of product to the top and of Team Marketplace is
front-running the transactions and they then have to throw out
the squid games token. Right?
Goes up through the roof and built into the smart contract.
You can't sell and then the developers Cash Out 12 million
dollars. It was a fake squid game token,
they cashed out 12 million dollars.
So Definitely their security issues.
There's a big, alleged alleged everywhere.
Anybody just said, alleged? Yeah.
Right. Right.
So we'll run the disclaimer at the end of the episode.
Sure. But I think the majority of the
people I met and interacted with do seem to be good and are much
more interested in the community elements.
The decentralization elements. But of course, there's a little
bit of a manager. It's also knew I was just yeah,
somebody just had a like a bunch of their crypto like stolen at
gunpoint a I mean it's constant. All of that, all of that.
When you say like the wild west, I mean, so what were you going
to a lot of panels or give us a couple more scenes?
There what was another, like striking striking event?
I would say, one of the interesting observations I had
was there were a lot more investors there than there were
people building. So it was a commentary and
reflection on the amount of dry powder and investor dollars
chasing deals and They're not being that many people with
experience in the space. And also, you know, we to dinner
Monday, where we're trying to recruit people out of the social
media, Behemoth for art, you know, different parts of our
company. And there just seemed to be this
energy. They're searching for a cause
write, like this is the future. I'm, I'm not quite sure for what
it is, but we do. I want the money is feels like
when you know, for people who build consumer products when we
went up when an iPhone was first put into your hands.
Ends and you realize what the Apple team had accomplished and
what this would mean. It feels like another
generational seminal moment, even if you can't, you know, you
couldn't have predicted the first time you and I phone in
your hand, all the use cases and all the magic that would happen
just feel like Uber or covering Uber, you know, a lot of people
went there because it was such a hot company.
I mean, coinbase people ask me. Oh, like, what's the Uber now?
And coinbase is already public and so valuable.
But they're doing so well, but it doesn't feel as exciting.
I mean, you were sort of saying, you think coinbase is going to
beat Open Sea which would presumably mean, they have a lot
of room to grow here. I mean, but yeah, it just seemed
like people are in search of like the company.
That's clearly owning the trend to go for the greatest product
there. I mean, like I want to go back
to your iPhone reference for a second there because one of my
favorite moments in, you know, whatever I periodically re-watch
the video, Steve Jobs introducing the iPhone in The
seven. It's a great hook and reporters
are cynical. You're like, every morning when
I wake up, I didn't get excited. I watch a Steve Jobs.
Yeah, I mean I think it's like you can talk about the world
that was created after that all you want.
But in terms of just like a great product reveal, it's
fucking incredible because it you know, before there was the
knowledge before the iPhone, there was a time afterwards and
you see him, everyone knew that it was coming.
We had a vague idea of what the iPhone was.
He takes it out, everyone kind of gets it and then at some
point in the movie, sorry in the video, he takes that he He shows
the feature where you can pinch to zoom.
So he's like you just take a photo and you take your finger
like this you should end the audience has this moment of like
fuck, that's so good that makes so much sense.
This is the perfect user interaction.
It's a it's a most I've never made in my life before and yet
now I knew exactly what to do with it and that to me is why
the iPhone works because they had like that feature in there
in which people intuitively knew what to do with it and it worked
and instantly this became the best product in a field of
people all trying to make this product.
And so that's sort of Do you see anything close to that with, you
know, at this conference that somebody has a product there in
which any, you know, lay person once they see, it does
demonstrate in front of them, it will click in some sort of like
visceral Atomic away, that they will get it and all the sudden,
all this bullshit that's been going on around, it will fall
into place and the good ideas will fall in and the bad ideas
will go away. And like this world is web three
world will actually exist in the tangible aspect.
Now I feel it coming right? That's fundamentally.
What we would hope to build, right?
Because the web three Community is building the technological
backbone. But on the ux side, all the
nomenclature we talked about earlier is not there, right?
So, even using for us, the word and have tea, or the word token,
is going to be a huge decision, right?
Maybe that's the underlying technology were using or the
architecture, but we may use other words, you know, my
friends, Eternal, the video game and of Company.
They called their nfc's moments. And right now they're built on
floats as the Dapper Labs chain, and so you can buy their moments
for nine dollars. You use.
There's a Fiat on-ramp. And, of course, you can also buy
them in flow, but they're incredibly sharp.
And, you know, the Dapper Labs Top Shot, you acts is probably
the best in class right now, when it comes to serving up,
users can consumers the your community, something that the
average Layman can understand. And I think, In the wallet
worlds, you know what, the team at Rainbow or building, which is
the best etherium wallet, or just crypto wallet by, you know,
Leaps and Bounds that wallet I think is going to do amazing
things for the adoption of cryptocurrency.
But even then, you know that team is coming from the crypto
world. So I think it'll be really
interesting when the two really Collide and you can find,
hopefully a product with web to design, you know, Qualities that
can be understood and really lead to mass adoption.
Did you pick up any new cryptocurrencies while you were
there? How much was there, sort of,
like, get on this one? It's about to go up or I heard
Whispers And rumbling of that but that's not what I was there
for seven. But does it come up like at
these dinners? But people are like, oh, like
what's the hot? Small currency or buying or
absolutely. Absolutely.
And I think, what's also interesting is You know, back to
the Open Sea. Ethical lapse that, you know,
they had to depart Reserve in there, keep their product guy
was before they would list it. You know, buying some of the
collection of nft is known on their homepage so he then knew
where the volume would then go, right.
He was bomb but then these kryptos lose found it and as a
result and that part of the promise of this technology is
how quickly someone was able to find it because it's all public
on The Ledger. And so, They founded.
And then he they had to fire him.
But, you know, you've got to believe there are employees at
coinbase and a bunch of these companies who are seeing flows
happen and acting on them, right because there's no regular
regulation about all of it. So to me it seemed and back to
the question earlier about the amount of financial speculation
it definitely was coming up and a lot of the you know, hushed
Whispers that I wasn't necessarily participating in
that. There is a lot of Of and even
it's interesting when you talk about the VCS themselves, right?
The multi coins, the Alameda research, the jump capitals, the
finance, a lot of them have both Venture arms and hedge funds and
that's new to the Venture Capital World, Andreessen
Horowitz. I'm sure we'll introduce it in
2023 but and you know and the changes that Sequoia just made
are preparing but they're going to think of it more as a mutual
fund approach less than a hedge fund.
But what's interesting in to me, You're going to this crypto
world, and I grew up in New York and her friends.
A lot of the hedge funds is hedge funds, entering the space.
You have to understand, you know, you have to approach it
with a sense of caution. And with real due diligence,
because their incentives in, you know, creating the ecosystem
around a currency, they were very early in which they're
incredibly deep holders. M are not aligned necessarily
with those of your company. And I think really getting, you
know, in terms of what you're building on Whose money or
taking thinking hard about that and who's, you know, when you
give access to the information, the private information of your
company who are you giving it to?
And why you have to be really, really careful about that, hmm.
He's yeah, these firms want visibility into how things are
going so they want access to companies, you might see it,
right? And I think they're all from my
interactions, ethical genuine, thoughtful people.
But still, you know, you know, this is an incredibly
capitalists. Machine.
Like if you had a an ape or whatever Krypto Punk like was it
obvious that you own like we're people wearing them on there
like t-shirts or was there a way to like in the real world signal
to people? Like I sunk a bazillion dollars
and do a hot and ft at this thing.
Yes! People wearing them on t-shirts.
Alexis Ohanian. Whom I love is our lead seed
investor. He wore his crypto Punk of his
wife Serena Williams to the Met Gala.
That's so absolutely there's a huge element of Pride taken and
being a part of this community is the nice side of it for sure
but it's also a status symbol. You know.
You see on Twitter people refer to their nft collections as the
equivalent of their Rolex, right?
So it's like having a really fancy watch.
I like seeing a huge crossover between like sneaker heads and
people that are in 2nf. TS, right, right.
Do you have a fancy nft? No, no.
I see nothing wrong with it though.
But I also don't have a fancy watch or a fancy.
The car right? Well, that's the next move.
I mean, if that's the end of, that's the culture, that
society, that decision not to wear those things is like, I do
think it's weird, and I think somebody else was maybe it was
like Sam, Lester's. I I mean, our culture,
especially Silicon Valley culture, moved away from like
the showy wealth of Wall Street and like Rolex type behavior.
And I think in like San Francisco that was always sort
of tacky, you know, you just like we're all birds and a
hoodie or whatever. It's Strange to me, that sort of
the yeah that's super consumerist showy.
And if tea culture has sort of become acceptable and I wonder
how long I think it's part of it is related to the rise of
injuries and Horowitz, right? Which is as much a media Empire
as an investing Empire and heard was so inspired by what Michael
Ovitz did was CIA, right? Why did it?
Why did Chris lines win the clubhouse deal?
It was because he was able to get Kevin Hart and a bunch of
celebrities even though You know, the clubhouse team had
been Benchmark, entrepreneurs and residents, right?
Brutal, right. So, they saw, they saw a real
strategic and again, to my point earlier, social media consumer,
Tech social companies are cultural artifacts, and
therefore, are inextricably linked to celebrity in this
country. Are you an and recent company?
No, we're not. I am an admirer, you know, I met
them. I think what?
And have met a number of the partners, over the years.
I think, what they do isn't Incredibly impressive for a
number of reasons. Yeah.
And the people working there very small, right.
But the truth is, when you look at the rise of Instagram, right?
Scooter Braun was calling, Kevin trying to get Bieber to be an
investor. When it because Bieber drove a
huge part of the adoption Snapchat, a little less.
So because it's based on intimacy but Clubhouse their
rise very driven by celebrities Twitter.
Of course, huge moment when Ashton Kutcher was using it and
that inspired Ashton becoming a VC and then Oprah, you know,
there's great. Beans in that Nick Bilton book
about their servers melting when Oprah.
First, you know, talked about Twitter on her show which was,
you know, the preeminent couch at that time.
So I think Silicon Valley has long wanted to believe that.
It's all about product and engineering and you acts but
celebrities have always driven adoption.
And so, there's been this uncomfortable relationship with
Hollywood, of course, because who's who's your most helpful?
Bertie investor, we got a number, you know, of course, in
the beginning, it was David, but can't pick among your children,
right? Yeah.
All that happened. But you know, now we've brought
Annie Leibovitz and her team Karen and Jason are unbelievably
help. We're going to hopefully do
something big with them soon. The Chainsmokers have been
amazing, you know I've course of a long relationship with Sofia
Vergara and her manager Luiz. It's like my brother.
They've been very very helpful to us.
We have a number card Delevingne got involved.
Kevin Durand Rich climb in. I just saw her.
Every dollar and Rudi with Mastery.
So I mean and and in right are coming wasn't going to mention
the name, you underestimate La tech companies.
Like name-dropping is the currency down there like he'd go
on for more. Well you can you can't leave
anybody out. They all want to help it is
amazing. I mean, it's yeah, it's cool.
It's a cool moment right now. I mean cool.
Well I don't know any final, thoughts from anybody?
I got one last question here. You know we're recording this
episode both Eric and I are in New York City momentous day
earlier this week when Eric Adams was not only elected
mayor, but made the announcement that he was going to be
accepting his first three paychecks in Bitcoin.
Can you pledge or sign a pledge on our show that the next couple
of paychecks that you get will be in some sort of
cryptocurrency to our accountants?
But I'm incredibly interested in that.
Thank you for. All right, thank you so much for
coming on. Covered a lot of ground, you
know, kind of Realtek, shit. You know, web three.
We use that phrase which I don't think we've said before on the
show, I'm not sure. Thanks a lot.
This is fun. So if I'm Valerie, goodbye,
goodbye. Goodbye.
Goodbye goodbye, goodbye, goodbye.