The Breakfast Club - INTERVIEW: Isaac Hayes III On The Rise Of Fanbase, Microdramas, Owning Our Content + More

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Today on The Breakfast Club, Isaac Hayes III On The Rise Of Fanbase, Microdramas, Owning Our Content. Listen For More!YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@BreakfastClubPower1051FMSee omnystudio.com/liste...ner for privacy information.

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Have you ever listened to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of Footloose? I'm comedian Rory Scoville,
Starting point is 00:00:18 and I'm here to tell you, Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast. Listen on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse
Starting point is 00:00:44 and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. It doesn't matter how much I fight. It doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to what happened in. Nashville on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Stefan Curry, and this is Gentleman's Cut. I think what makes Gentleman's Cut
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Starting point is 00:01:34 Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting. Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
Starting point is 00:01:50 Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leveh, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name. And this season, I've sat down with Black Pumas, Alessia Kara, Sarah McLaughlin, and more. Check out my new episode with John Legend.
Starting point is 00:02:07 I feel like, in a lot of ways, our careers are paralleled in some ways, but they just never intersected for some reason. I know. We should take it slow with just ordinary people. We don't know which way to go. Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, it's Chuck and Josh from The Stuff You Should Know podcast, and it's that time of year again when we knuckle down to do our annual holiday episodes.
Starting point is 00:02:43 We collected our best past classic holiday episodes and compiled them into a 12 days of Christmas toys playlist that the whole family can enjoy. That's right. Maybe you missed it the first time we detailed the history of Beanie Babies, Monopoly, or Yo-Yo's, a whole lot more. So listen to the 12 days of Christmas toys playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
Starting point is 00:03:05 Woke up, wake you up. Program your alarm to Power 105.1 on IHartRadio. Morning, everybody. It's DJ Envy. Just hilarious. Salomey and the guy. We are the Breakfast Club.
Starting point is 00:03:17 Lauren Lerosa is here. And we got a special guest in the building. You have Isaac Hayes III. Good morning, brother. What's up, guys? How you doing? Bless Black and highly favorite. How are you, my brother?
Starting point is 00:03:29 I am excellent. I'm highly favored and blessed as well. So what are we doing today, Isaac? What are we doing? What are you doing? What do you mean when we're doing? We're closing this round for fan base. We're closing this equity crowd for fan base.
Starting point is 00:03:42 It closes today. I feel like this is a great opportunity for everybody to give an investment as a gift for people. You know, I've been here before, talked about the importance of investing, but especially with social media. I think we really need to galvanize right now at this time because the world is shifting. And so I'm telling everybody go to start engine.com slash fanbase and invest to own equity in the company.
Starting point is 00:04:07 $3.99 is the minimum of investment. But it's a bigger story than just investing in fan base. So when people ask the question, they say, okay, you know, you've raised millions of dollars for fan base. You know, they may want to invest. Walk us through line by line how that capital gets deployed. So, number one, infrastructure so we just built a brand new algorithm
Starting point is 00:04:29 you know we spent almost half the year working on that we have some new key hires all of this capital gets deployed in hiring better people like really people that used to work at meta they used to work at TikTok they used to work at Snapchat and those salaries aren't cheap we also have to hire engineers to build what we're building and develop those products and it takes time Honestly, the amount of capital that I've raised over a five-year period, some people get deployed five times that capital in one year and they burn it all and they go out of business.
Starting point is 00:05:07 And so we've had to really stretch. You know how they say, you know, my mom would say you make the money stretch, make the food stretch. We've had to really make this capital stretch with this company. But it's a testament to our ability to spend wisely, hire effectively, and continue. continue to build the best product. Now, I agree with you, because, you know, we see these tech companies. They get, you know, crazy donations all the time, raise a lot of capital, a lot more capital than you have.
Starting point is 00:05:35 How much of you raised over the last, what, five years? $23 million. $23 million. Like, yeah, that's, I mean, I'm not going to say that's nothing because it is something. Right. But compared to the other tech companies, you know, they get $100 million in a month. man listen some of these
Starting point is 00:05:54 some of these companies have raised like $150,300 million and have not built but one feature and they're not even around anymore and that's because they blow the money it's really it's really tough for black founders people don't understand
Starting point is 00:06:07 like black founders get less and half of one percent of all capital raised they don't want DEI they're not trying to give us money especially someone like myself that is disrupting the tech space in building something that we can own and then, you know, black people are on the side of ownership.
Starting point is 00:06:24 Like, you know, we don't own nothing. I know we talk about a lot of this, you know, a lot about building generational wealth and, you know, those types of things, but we don't own the sports teams. We don't own the record labels and we don't own, you know, Hollywood. And we help build up all of these infrastructures and we don't own them. And social media, we help build up social media. And they tell us the kids stay behind and they don't want DEI and all that kind of stuff. And so for me, this is a mission.
Starting point is 00:06:50 and this has been my mission will continue to be my purpose and my calling to continue to build this company allow us to finally have the infrastructure of something that can be worth hundreds of billions of dollars and pull us all up
Starting point is 00:07:01 and give us opportunity. We do have to acknowledge the black people who do own things though, I think I've heard you say that before but you know, I think, you know, the urban ones of the world, you know, Kathy Hughes, you know, worldwide technology, you know,
Starting point is 00:07:14 like there's, you know, things like Uncle Nairus, like there's a lot of things that black people do own. Yeah, but look what's happening In a lot of these spaces A lot of these companies either Don't get the capital that they need
Starting point is 00:07:26 They're tried to They're, you know, handcuffed And what they're able to do And you really just name like three businesses Out of like, you know, half a million Oh, I can keep going I mean there's hundreds of black own businesses I'm just saying like we
Starting point is 00:07:40 I think sometimes we put that narrative out there And I think we got to be more specific Like black people can own more in the tech space for sure But we do own Yeah, but the biggest problem about it, Isaac and Charlemagne, I feel, is sometimes we talk to people like they should know, right? A lot of these businesses that are getting these millions and 20 million and 50 million and raising $150 million are investors that have the money and know why they're investing and hopefully know where their money's going. But for somebody like you, Isaac, who, you know, who's been on the breakfast club a numerous times and asking for money for crowdfunding, I think people want to know where that money is going. And why?
Starting point is 00:08:20 Break it down on a level where people will understand it and what's next for fan base. No, no reason I'm asking it and break it down for what fan base is and how much money is needed to make sure this gets to the place of a metter or Twitter or Facebook or, you know, Instagram. Because you have to tell people like what's the overall goal and what's needed to this, to fan base is self-sufficient. So we don't have that. Or will it always be a thing like that for people that don't understand it, don't know? No, I think to explain how capital's deployed is, you know, it's kind of what I said earlier. Tech companies are not, social media platforms are not cheap, right? Correct.
Starting point is 00:08:59 And so there's two things, is how fast you can build, how well you can build, you know what I'm saying? And so if you don't have capital to build the right product, then it's not going to happen. So we have salaries, we have infrastructure, we have all the tech stats. You know, all the things that we do. We employ about 40 people. We have a lot of C-suite executives that are working, and all this stuff is built and rolled into a company that is trying to fight the fight against major tech operations.
Starting point is 00:09:31 Now, to explain what fan base is and understand why that it costs, what it costs, fan base is basically social media through the lens of black ownership, but the functionality is the same, right? We do have posts, we have stories, we have live, we have short form, we have long form, we have audio chat, we have algorithm, we have DMs, we have subscriptions, we have tipping. All of those parts are put together in one platform, right, and integrate it so that people
Starting point is 00:09:57 can have the ability to monetize their content from the moment that they sign up, build community. And when you compare fan base, like, and I'll tell anybody to do this, compare fan base to your experience that you get on a TikTok or experience that you get on Instagram, and just grade us based off that. But remember that those companies have. 30,000 engineers and have, you know, billions of dollars of capital. And here we are, you know, building up from the ground up from scratch with a small team, and we're still here.
Starting point is 00:10:27 And I think that's really the most important part. And then the things that we're actually breaking, we're actually breaking the opportunity for black people to get into the microdrama space for users to actually monetize their data and have it trained by AI if they want to. but on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, they're training off your data right now and not paying you anything. And so this is a real challenge,
Starting point is 00:10:51 but it's a lot of moving pieces and parts that come together to make this machine run. How many months of runway does fan base currently have? We have about 18 months of runway, a little bit longer than that. So, you know, that gives it. And you understand, like, even in that amount of time, there's so much that you have to accomplish
Starting point is 00:11:12 in that period of time, because you're always going to be raising capital. I think the difference between what I do and what everybody else is, you publicly hear that I'm raising all the time. But startups are raising all the time, 50 million, 100 million, 200 million, 300 million. But it usually comes from VCs and private equity, and those deals are always made public.
Starting point is 00:11:31 This is made public because the people that are investing are not the rich guys and the billionaires and the oligarchs. It's you, it's me, it's the people that we know that are putting their money into the business. And so that's why it's so public and you see everything all the time. So when you say people are investing, so you say the minimum investment is $3.99. So if somebody invest that $3.99, what percentage are of the company or how much of an investment are they getting? What's the ROI on that for somebody who, you know, because it's tough out there.
Starting point is 00:11:57 But so if somebody wants to give $3.99, they want to know what they're getting back. Yeah. So every investment that you make, especially in the early stage company, you ride the life of the investment. Correct. So you're here from the beginning all the way to either IPO or somebody acquit. the company. So you see like if Warner Brothers is about to get acquired and that's a different scenario. But when that company is acquired, the shareholders in that company will all be bought out, right? And then Netflix or whoever will acquire that company. So when you do early stage investing like that and see startups, that's what you get. And so for $3.99, you're getting a small,
Starting point is 00:12:35 small, small piece of the company. But the upside of what I tell people is that the value in which these tech companies get to is where you see a return on your investment. So we're valued at $160 million right now. I want to put that in perspective of what meta is valued at. Meta's a $1.9 trillion company. So you think about $1.6 billion, $16 billion, $160 billion. That's $1,000 X return. So someone that invest $3.99, even if we get to something that is 10 times less valuable than meta, five times less valuable than TikTok and Instagram. That's still a thousand X return on the type of investment that you're putting in there. And that's the part that people don't understand. When you invest in any business, they tell you like 15% is an amazing
Starting point is 00:13:21 return on an investment. And I didn't raise capital this way to give somebody 15% back. I didn't want somebody to put in $400, right, and give $440 back. I'm not doing it for that or $445 back. That's not what I'm doing. I'm investing. I built a tech company so that people could put $400 in, $250 in, and together we build something that can be worth hundreds of billions of dollars. That's still far below what other tech companies have and exit that company. And then at that time, you know, we're distributing generational wealth to our people because it's tech. The fastest way to grow wealth right now currently is in the tech space. And you can't save your way to wealth. You have to invest. We don't think a lot about investing nowadays. We're not really thinking about. you know, putting our money into things that we can see a long return. They will tell us to go do prize picks and gamble and play the lottery and go to Vegas. Like that's all that, all of that is the stuff that they push on people of color. No one in these other rooms, people are getting together quietly and saying, hey, put your money in this startup, put your money in that startup.
Starting point is 00:14:23 And they're not telling the average person to do this kind of thing because that's the lockout. They want the access to the best deals. All the VCs and investors want the access to the best opportunity to invest. And so that's why this is important. This is breaking a whole system down that a lot of people don't. I've seen more people now use equity crowdfunding, especially people of color since I started, and I was one of the first people to really start doing
Starting point is 00:14:46 to have major success at it. Now, everybody does equity crowdfunding. I've seen startups, and I've introduced multiple people to equity crowdfunding, because it's a way to circumvent the racism, the discrimination, and all the things that exist. And so that's why it's important. So when should investors reasonably expect the return? And in what form would that ROI look like?
Starting point is 00:15:06 So that ROI would be probably eight years. I always say like, you know, six to eight years is when you invest, right? And you see a return. Like prime example, again, like Uber had seed investment in 2010. In 2019, they went public. So it took nine years. But the people that invested in that nine year period saw 5,000 X return, right, on those, on that investment.
Starting point is 00:15:29 And those are people that put $5,000 in and saw $24 million come back. right and so any early stage company you would think between you know six to nine years you would get a return on your investment and then how that happens is through a liquidity event and the liquidity event is somebody either buys the company like somebody who says okay we're going to buy fan base at a higher valuation than it was before or we go public which is still selling the company and that's when you know you ring the bell in the stock market and everybody can sell their shares that day or and that's what money comes in and people um and buy shares and so that's how it works hold on now either you said five to six years so you
Starting point is 00:16:03 know people are going to be looking like, wait a minute, I put money in back in 2019, 2020. So you show you. We didn't, we didn't really raise capital. We didn't close our first round until 2021. Okay. Okay. So that's what I'm saying. We didn't close our first round until 2021. And again, but again, and also those are people that get like VC dollars, Charlott. I mean, that's what I'm saying. Like, this is, people don't understand how incredibly hard this is, but I love it because it's the, it's the biggest challenge of my life and it's, and we're being successful at it and will continue to be successful. But man, like, this is like, you know, this is, this is an amazing, um, a journey and process for me. But yeah, this is hard. It's also, it's also teaching.
Starting point is 00:16:45 It's also teaching because we talk about generational wealth and it talks about some of the times where people don't understand because we've never been taught. It's not like we've had millions and millions of dollars passed down from generations like, you know, other backgrounds have. So it's also a teaching method, right? So you're teaching people what it means to crowdsource and to get money and to put money down and how much money you can get back. So it's also a matter of teaching. So answering the question shouldn't be really a problem because you're teaching a generation that might not know.
Starting point is 00:17:12 No, absolutely. That's why I consistently have told other people to actually invest, right? And I mean, other people to use equity crowdfunding. I've helped like five or six other companies raise through equity crowdfunding and told them about equity crowdfunding. And that's a really good thing because it's an alternative to black people going to banks, an alternative for black people trying to get loans and trying to ask venture, you know,
Starting point is 00:17:35 go for venture dollars or angel investing where those deals can be predatory. A lot of what I do is disruptive because of what I knew coming from the music business, right? So I knew that I had to create two classes of stock and made sure that no one else has voting shares because that's when people try to force you out of your company, right? And I knew that the deals that you get from angel investors
Starting point is 00:18:00 are sometimes predatory. So somebody gives me $200,000 to invest in fan base. When I first had the idea, they get 20% of the company. And I put my own $200,000 in it. So I saved that 20%. So those are the things that most people don't know. Because a lot of my friends that are founders got forced out of their companies. They got taken advantage of.
Starting point is 00:18:18 They got in bad deals that don't allow them to raise capital from other people. So it's real, it's a dirty game. It's not as dirty as a music business. But for me, it's something that I was very, very familiar with because I know, you know a lot of founders just come in with a great idea and then they get some guys in there like yeah here's half a million dollars but i want a board seat and xyz and all that kind of stuff you get voted out of the company ask as stacey sparks i don't know if you ever seen movie pass but the guys that invented movie pass were two black guys they took in capital they had board seats
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Starting point is 00:20:42 How could I not follow him? Honestly, I got to follow him. He can see right through me. Listen to Crimless on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed.
Starting point is 00:21:08 We have some breaking news to tell you about. Tennessee's Attorney General is suing a Nashville doctor. In April 2024, a fertility clinic in Nashville shut down overnight and trapped behind locked doors were more than a thousand frozen embryos. I was terrified. Out of all of our journey, that was the worst moment ever. At that point, it didn't occur to me what fight was going to come to follow. But this story isn't just about a few families' futures.
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Starting point is 00:23:29 podcasts. ...ass and destroyed the whole company, some white dudes. And that's what I'm saying, is like, that's what happens when we try to build our businesses. It's very, very predatory. But it's going to take, it's going to be harder and it's going to take longer, but it's going to be well worth it because people can follow my blueprint and do exactly what I did. And I'm paving that way so that you know you can own your company, not get voted out, have as much equity as you possibly. can to give yourself more the ability to raise more capital all that stuff is important with the so you're because you're not doing it the VC way right you have everyday people giving like
Starting point is 00:24:01 smaller amounts of money when you do scale right so after you hit that profit margin and people maybe some VCs or whatever come in how do you say connected to the everyday people like people that are listening to the breakfast club who might not understand what it means when a company goes public or when they're acquired like anything that you plan to do once you hit certain points of you know return well you're connected we're connected to our investors all the time we have like, you know, over 29,000 investors in fan base. We have communications that are updated all the time. We send out newsletters. We talk on the app. We send out updates to the start engine page where when you invest in fan base, that's where you can always find your shares. So we're in
Starting point is 00:24:38 constant communication with our investors. They see the progress of the company. They see new hires. They see new releases. They see everything that's going on. But what we're doing, we have to be extremely transparent about all this stuff because this is an SEC regulator raise. All these things, you know, are above board. So they follow the journey. And then a lot of them use the app. A lot of them are on fan base. And that's the really cool part about it, too, is a lot of them are using the platform. And a lot of them have used fan base for what it's intended to do, which is to passively make money by using social media and have actually made the money back from the money, made the money back by using fan base that they invest in in the company. So people have made
Starting point is 00:25:13 thousands of dollars, you know, just getting loves and getting subscriptions on fan base. And they've already invested in the company for free. Because, I mean, that's the future of social media. Social media is the new TV, right? And we are all our own channels in these communities and that we'll be able to monetize without disruption, without middlemen, and be able to scale our businesses or scale our pages or scale our talent or our platform or our ideas without people interrupting. And that's the disruptive part about social media and fan base right now. Let me ask you a question. I think if no clear liquidity event is on the horizon, and why should investors, you know, stay in?
Starting point is 00:25:53 Well, I mean, I'll say this. A lot of platforms don't have liquidity events. They can't guarantee when they will go public, right? But that's what an investment is. It's limited risk, though. In these other instances, when people are putting their money into these companies and they're investing, especially at credit investors, they have to put $10,000, $25,000, $50,000,
Starting point is 00:26:13 just to be allowed to sit on the cap table. And they don't get any guarantee on when that liquidity event is going to happen. they don't know if those businesses are going to be successful and they still put that money in because the upside is that's the risk now if you want to put your money into the stock market and let it sit and maybe double and triple over the next 25 years yes but if we want to escape the generational wealth gap that exists for people of color and black people this country we have to aggressively invest in tech startups that can scale to hundreds of billions of dollars we're not getting out if we don't do that i'm just i'm being 100 percent you can't you can't retail invest your way about it about a lot of this stuff. The people that put their money into Nvidia 15, 20 years ago are the people that are sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars. And people never saw Nvidia coming. But somebody believed, and those are the people that are just believers in fan base the same way. Anybody that you see
Starting point is 00:27:04 that exits a company like this and that makes millions and millions of dollars, they're the people that were like, man, that's a dumb idea. You shouldn't invest in that. Every corporation that you can think of, every Uber, every Instagram, every Nvidia, all of them where people were like, man, that's not going to work, that's stupid, but that small group of people that believe that actually had the opportunity to invest are the ones that wind up winning in the long term. And so that's what it is. There is no platform, no startup will ever guarantee you a liquidity event. Like to this
Starting point is 00:27:34 day, the bite dance, the parent company of TikTok, is still a privately held company. They've never gone public and they're worth $400 billion. Now, that means people probably found a way out somehow to exit, but I don't plan on keeping fan base a privately held company in perpetuity because of the fact that we have investors that can see a return. So the company at some point will go public or will get acquired, and that's the energy behind. It's taking our, it's taking our capital and our culture, and then scaling it to a point that we can exit. So if it does not reach profitability or the liquidity event within whatever amount of years, what is the plan B for the investor capital?
Starting point is 00:28:12 it's still it's it's it's to continue to raise capital until you until you eclipse that the unfortunate part about that is is that um other other businesses will get funded infinitely until they raise that capital right they'll get they'll keep putting money into it even like you got to think about this even something like netflix i'll be i'll be Netflix is about to acquire Warner brothers right for 80 billion dollars they took out a 63 billion dollar loan just to acquire that a lot of these companies aren't necessarily proper when you dig into what it is That's why for me, it's harder because I'm doing it the right way. I'm doing it the way that's actually harder, and we're not playing games with investors.
Starting point is 00:28:50 It's like you really have an opportunity to sit and scale the business, right, by being part of the company. So for us, every person that's actually using fan base and on fame base has the ability to scale the company too. If it doesn't happen, you raise more money. You raise capital, you continue to do that. That's why I say, for me coming on here and having public conversations about raising capital, There are people that are in round J, right, series A, series B, series C, series D, series E, right? And it just continues to raise and raise and raise, right? And so this is really our first, this is still our seed route.
Starting point is 00:29:24 We haven't even raised a series. When I do a series A, a series A is when I raise 50 million or 100 million at one time, right? Someone cuts a check for 50 million, 100 million, a group of people. That's a series A. Now we're talking. Now we've got engineers working around the sun and building, And I'm really competitive, especially with agenic AI and agents and being able to code. AI is really helping us actually stay competitive without it.
Starting point is 00:29:48 It would be a lot harder because now we can use AI to code, AI to do QA, AI to develop, all those things. And so it's a lot. This is the time for us right now to actually be involved in scaling the business because we have AI to help us scale. I'm not big on AI content creation, but scaling is important. And what do those microdramas look like? That's going to start on Q1 in favor. So if you don't know what microdramas are, microdramas are movies that are chopped into two-minute segments
Starting point is 00:30:16 with cliffhangers at the end of each of these. They are very popular platforms in China. The microdrama industry has the clips of film and television industry. And when I started looking at this about eight, nine months ago, I went on these microdrama platforms, and I noticed they were owned by Chinese corporations and all the content was white content. And I said, if we don't come in and distribute microdramas
Starting point is 00:30:37 and make it so that multicultural people can distribute microdramas, So we have black microdramas, Latin microdramas, African microdramas. Somebody's going to corner that market that doesn't look like us, make billions of dollars. And these are the same people that said they didn't want DEI and they didn't want black people and they didn't want diversity and they didn't want equity and they didn't want inclusion. So for me, I said it's easier for us to distribute microdramas on fan base because we already have the components of what a microdrama is. A microdrama is just vertical, short form video, currency that unlocks episodes, subscriptions, and an algorithm. rhythm. We already have all four of those. And so it made perfect sense to partner with Ty Walker and Keisha Perry Walker with Wild Peach Studios to produce. They're going to produce
Starting point is 00:31:21 microdramas and fan base will distribute those microdramas. And when I tell you my phone has been ringing, I went to Tyler Perry's Christmas party this weekend. Everybody that I talked to that was black there was like, yo, what's some of these microdramas? Because the microdrama industry is going to be a multi, multi-billion dollar industry. But the question is, who's going to own it and who's going to own the infrastructure of the platforms that actually produce and distribute those microdramas and fanbase is going to be one of those in 2026. And so it's just, just don't even listen to me. Research microdramas. I just got like Kim Kardashian, all these, everybody's getting into microdramas. But there's one thing that's different is that they're building microdrama apps
Starting point is 00:32:01 and all those microdrama apps have a retention problem. Once you see a microdrama, you leave. What gets people to stay? So when microdramas are built into an app that's already built to hold all media, then the retention is a lot higher, right? And there's more things to do. You don't want to watch a microdrama, then leave, right? You can watch a microdrama and then get right back over to your feed and see news or see your friends or see all, you know, the content that you see or create content yourself. And that's what we're doing. And make it, make it, you know, be very, very clear that social media is the new television. If you do not think that all media will be distributed through large social networks in the future, which is almost now, you're sadly
Starting point is 00:32:39 mistaken and so that's why I built fanbase. I built fan base to contain all media. I built this platform so that they can hold a podcast. It can hold music. It can hold audio books, audio rooms, short form, long form. That's the long game because that's where everything is going. Like a TV on a wall is done for these days, right? You know what I'm saying? It's either your phone, your tablet, or your laptop, because the screen is mobile and you can watch the content when you want, not at 8 o'clock in front of my living room, that changes everything because now your content could get billions of views as opposed to millions of views because you have to be somewhere at a certain time in front of a certain device. Do you think Quibi was too early
Starting point is 00:33:20 when they launched? Well, Quibi wasn't microdramas. It was just the thing about it. That was vertical series, right? Quibi was not microdramas. And be clear, microdramas are an art form. So anybody out there that's interested in doing microdramas, don't think they just take taking a movie and chopping it up into segments is what a micro drama is you have to study the art form they're written right they're produced written and directed a very very specific way that keeps the audience engaged it is not just taking a movie up and chopping it up so it's not just show form content quibby was just short form content okay that's just short form content and there are other platforms that have been doing that but um michael dramas are good and they've been popping up i've been seeing them on different fees and they're very interested right very entertaining the only problem i have with it and this would be good is they usually just pop up on your feed right and they're very entertaining but you never know how to get back to it right so you'll watch two minutes and it'll be something very stupid or very simple but it'll be entertaining but then you just never know how to get back to it you know what I mean so the fact that you can
Starting point is 00:34:18 get back to it and understand it is is dope how do you just said something key right you just said something really really key you have to leave wherever they advertise that so let's say you're on instagram or TikTok you have to leave TikTok or Instagram go download the microdrama app and then finish watching the rest of what you're watching. You're not going to have to do that on fan base. It's going to be in the feed. So if you see it, if you see a microdrama in your feed, you can watch it and you're already inside the app.
Starting point is 00:34:44 That's what I mean by these apps have a retention problem. That's why I was like, okay, good. I want everybody to go out there and make another 40 microdrama apps and split the audience in a million different directions while we have microdramas built inside a community of people that are already there. Well, how do you compete with it? Because, like, I can't think of her name right now. I was trying to text my friend to get her name.
Starting point is 00:35:01 I follow a girl. She's been doing it for almost like six years. and it like skyrocketed her now she's working with Issa Ray she's been doing microdramas just on Instagram like before rules were even a thing it's just literally about how you cut your content
Starting point is 00:35:14 and make the episode the next one and the next one. How do you compete where people already are with making them come over to fanbase to do it they're already on platforms doing it like a lot of creators do it. No because again specifically the microdrama industry
Starting point is 00:35:25 they're next to no black microdramas like I'll give you I've never seen a black microdrama I'm gonna see y'all this girl she's fine I know Issa works with her now I just don't know her Instagram name but she was early She has a micro drama
Starting point is 00:35:38 It's about It's kind of like Devil Words Prada But it's like The young Black girl moves to LA version of it And she tip
Starting point is 00:35:43 It's like Episotic and every Like I'll see her But yeah That's a But again That's a vertical
Starting point is 00:35:49 Series Again that's different That's like Taking a TV show And making it vertical When I mean Microdramas are An art form
Starting point is 00:35:56 I promise you It is not It is like Very very specific They're shot In these two minutes Every two minutes It's a cliffhanger
Starting point is 00:36:03 Every two minutes, something dramatic happens, and it escalates over the course of the hour, hour and a half that that happens. And so these microdramas are getting 200 million views, right? Like the most watched movie on Netflix this year was the K-pop Demon Hunters, the anime movie, right? That got 140 million views, right? That got 140 million views. The number one microdrama in Asia and China in 2025 got 500 million views, right? 500 millions. That means like half a billion people watched a microdrama in China. One show, right? And that's what I mean by the art form is it's a lot different. Like if you go to any of the microdrama apps, just listen what I'm saying. Go download any of the apps, real short, drama box, all of them, right? Go in there. You'll see all white people or all Asian people. And my point is, is that nobody, you're not going to see a bunch of black microdramas, right? And the point that I'm making is that they're going to start producing microdramas. But who all. the actual production company of the micro dramas like when you get on real short real short
Starting point is 00:37:07 looks like a white company it's crazy maple studio real short that's owned by a chinese company it's the same thing they did with ticot it's like who owns it on the back end and we're at a point right now in in society the nutrition facts matter who owns the platforms that you use we know that fox owns to be we don't really we don't we don't we don't world star hip hop is not owned by anybody black but black people are on there every day and so when we're creating content and entertaining the masses, right? Who sits on the cap table and who owns it is also very, very important. That's why I say I'm making sure
Starting point is 00:37:41 that black people own the infrastructure of microdrama distribution. Because if not, we're just going to be giving our content back to other platforms again. And then when they get big enough, they'll stop making our microdramas and tell them, tell us to kiss they're behind like they did on Tube, like they did on the WB, like they did on UPN, the CW, like they did with black exploitation films, right, in the 7.
Starting point is 00:38:03 these, black exploitation films save Hollywood, right? Shaft, the Mac, Superfly. They brought Hollywood back from the brink of bankruptcy. And then when they got back on their feet, they didn't make those movies anymore. Thank you. Thank you for saving us. Boom.
Starting point is 00:38:16 So I'm intentional about the fact that we have to own the infrastructure of the microdrama community of social media because we contribute so much. I just wanted to mention her name, because I didn't say earlier. Her name is Candace Banks, and it's called Thanks, Candice Banks. But I don't know if it's considered a microdrama now, but I thought it was what you were talking about. No, like, even like, even as successful as Country Wayne is, he's, that's like a, that's like a micro soap opera.
Starting point is 00:38:40 Like, you know, to put, to put what he's doing in perspective, in the month of November, country Wayne showed that he got a billion views in the month of November, all his content on Facebook, a billion views, right? And so what I mean is the ability for large amounts of people to consume content, multiple different types of content especially in the micro drama space in 2026 we have to own the market you know because country Wayne doesn't own Facebook he's making
Starting point is 00:39:08 money off the ad revenue but imagine he owns the actual productions and the infrastructure of what he's doing on those platforms again I tell him to stay on Facebook because he's so successful but there are a lot of people that have been reaching out that are saying hey look a lot of people that we all know that are in TV and film
Starting point is 00:39:24 actors producers writers that are like yo I need to we need to talk about this because we have to own these industries. How did they invest? They go to start engine.com slash fanbase to invest. That's a, you know, start engine. com slash fan base. The minimum is $399 are raised closes today.
Starting point is 00:39:42 Raises over and see, after the raise closer today, I've been here before and been able to raise an enormous amount of capital, especially on my first time here. And so I'm letting people know that the importance of investing and have platforms like this. And thank you guys for allowing me to come on here and inform the community about the opportunity to do this is important. So start engine.com slash fan base to invest the minimum is $39.9.
Starting point is 00:40:04 You get 60 shares of stock and fan base, and you will own the infrastructure of social media and microdramas in the future. All right. Well, thank you, Isaac Hayes. The third, we appreciate you. And it's the Breakfast Club. Good morning. Hold on.
Starting point is 00:40:19 Every day I wake up. Wake your ass up. The Breakfast Club. You're all finished or y'all's done. Have you ever? listen to those true crime shows and found yourself with more questions than answers? Who catfishes a city? Is it even safe to snort human remains? Is that the plot of footloose? I'm comedian Rory Scoville and I'm here to tell you Josh Dean and I have a new podcast that celebrates the
Starting point is 00:40:44 amazing creativity of the world's dumbest criminals. It's called Crimeless, a true crime comedy podcast. Listen on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. investigative journalist Melissa Jeltson. My new podcast, What Happened in Nashville, tells the story of an IVF clinic's catastrophic collapse and the patients who banded together in the chaos that followed. It doesn't matter how much I fight. Doesn't matter how much I cry over all of this. It doesn't matter how much justice we get. None of it's going to get me pregnant. Listen to what happened in Nashville on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Starting point is 00:41:57 Hey, everybody, it's Chuck and Josh from the Stuff You Should Know podcast, and it's that time of year again when we knuckle down to do our annual holiday episodes. We collected our best past classic holiday episodes and compiled them into a 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist that the whole family can enjoy. That's right. Maybe you missed it the first time we detailed the history of Beanie Babies, Monopoly, or Yo-Yo's, and a whole lot more. So listen to the 12 Days of Christmas Toys playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you, get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back. I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together
Starting point is 00:42:35 in an intimate setting. Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians. Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leveh, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolfe, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name. And this season, I've sat down with Black Pumas, Alessia Kara, Sarah McLaughlin, and more. Check out my new episode with John Legend. I feel like, in a lot of ways, our careers are paralleled in some ways, but they just never intersected for some reason. I know.
Starting point is 00:43:19 Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the other people. iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.

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