The Breakfast Club - INTERVIEW: Isaac Hayes III Talks 'Fanbase' Vs. Social Platforms, Black Culture, Wealth & Investment + More

Episode Date: June 18, 2024

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Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club. Morning, everybody. It's DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, Charlamagne Tha Guy. We are The Breakfast Club. We got a special guest on the line right now. We got the brother Isaac Hayes III. Welcome, brother. What's good? What's up? How you feeling? I am feeling excellent. How about you guys? Blessed, black, and highly favored, Isaac. Isaac is the founder, creator of Fanbase.

For people who might be new to Fanbase, Isaac, just tell them what Fanbase is. Fanbase is a social media platform that I founded that allows anybody to have followers and subscribers on the same page. We've raised about $11 million in three rounds, and we're raising $17 million right now on StartEngine for our latest round. So it's really a successor to what I call what TikTok and Instagram are. What is the benefit for the non-creator to switch to fan base? I understand the creative benefit of fan base, but what's the benefit for a non-creator to switch to fan base versus using other social media apps?

Well, i think the first thing is that most everybody's content is suppressed on all these platforms and so there's a there's a change that's happening where people feel like they are stifled um even the average user just doesn't seem like they're getting uh visibility for the content that they make so we want to make sure that you know we provide an opportunity that nobody's content is suppressed we don't run ads i just want to make sure that everybody has an opportunity to see all their content. So it's just like any other social networks, free to download, free to use, doesn't cost anything. So I look at it, like I said, as a transition from all these platforms that shadow ban you, crush your content,

and don't allow you to really connect with people. Now, I was going to ask that. A lot of people have been, in the last couple of months, really been complaining about a lot of these social apps because they're saying that they are suppressed, that, you know, you could tell that they want them to pay for advertising and it's not really getting this stuff out like that. What's going to stop fan base from doing the same thing later on? Well, I think the current platforms have to charge you. I mean, you got to think of Instagram is now charging you $350 a month just to get visibility. And that's because they run ads. Ninety seven percent of their revenue comes from advertising. And so I'm like, you know, we can't

we can't have platforms like that. We don't run ads. And so since we're a rev share platform that has subscription and love, love is like digital currency. So you can tip somebody for all their content on the platform. So it's really super really super easy you know you give somebody a love it's about half a penny those add up um and you can like stuff for free so we don't really have to worry about suppressing content because again we don't run ads i always say that these platforms have to suppress your content because they work against you like you know what i'm saying so uh why would why would instagram let you reach a million people when they're about to charge Target to reach a million people?

So that's why they suppress your content. And so for me, that's one of the reasons why we don't do that. What do you mean when you say they charge you $350 a month, Instagram? So MetaVerified has a new program now where they're charging you $350 a month just to be visible in the feed, like in the search and all this other stuff. It's really, really tight on these platforms. It's getting crazy right now. Like, you know, it's time for a change anyway, though. I think none of these platforms can last forever. I think for us, especially why I founded Fanbase is that black culture is so much a part of what makes

social media popular. And we don't own any of these platforms. Again, I've said this before, like, you know, this is a black founded but not black only app so i take into care and consideration that black culture needs a place that it can be global and not be stifled and exploited and so that's the reason why you know i'm doing it a little bit differently we just it's time for it's time for us to own some infrastructure i'm just i'm over i'm over everybody you know having disagreements or issues with tiktok and instagram and those are always going to be problems unless we own the infrastructure these I'm over everybody having disagreements or issues with TikTok and Instagram. And those are always going to be problems unless we own the infrastructure, these platforms, which is why I raised capital and built the platform to begin with.

I agree with you. It's the stupidest thing in the world when I see people say things like, I think Elon Musk is racist and I don't like Elon Musk. But you're saying it on X, you idiot. Right. I mean, we can complain as much as we want to but until we until we change and transform um our thinking about you know what what we value i think building building black wealth is one of the things that you know we have to really focus on and the fastest way to build wealth moving in the future is technology um and so if you're gonna get mad at elon musk and yell

at him on his platform that doesn't make sense so there to be alternatives. And we've never been here before. Again, I say this all the time. Fanbase is really one of the first of its kind where we've never seen a black founder start a social media platform. From the bottom up, I spent my own bread to build this thing. We scaled it up. We raised capital. And so now I want to give people an alternative because we also have, you know, the ability that people own this platform. We have over 15,000 investors that have invested in Fanbase, have gone to StartEngine, they own shares in the company, and we got to build this black wealth or we're going to be customers to our own creations. We will never have a seat at the table at all. What is this $17 million, what is it, rega raise? Reg A? So, well, I'm the first black man to raise $10 million in reg CF. So So Regulation A crowdfunding is where you go up to the next level where you can raise up to $75 million in a year. So right now we're raising $17 million and the minimum to invest is $399. already rich guys, these angel investors that were part of Uber and PayPal and Instagram and

all these platforms that are enormously wealthy, they were rich to begin with. But with equity crowdfunding, which is something extremely important when we have this DEI attack that's going on right now, equity crowdfunding allows us to invest in ourselves, to work together, to fund our own companies. And so the Regulation A that we're doing on StartEngine allows us to be able to do that. So now the people on the platform, the users are the people that own part of the platform. And who better than to give, like I said,

ownership to than the people that make the platform successful. There's so many creators. If I was a creator, an average user, anybody, I think investing and understanding why we need to be able to do this is something that we got to lock in and focus on. So I tell everybody, go to startengine.com slash fanbase if you want to invest um you'll have equity again we've already

raised about 1.3 million in this new 17 million dollar round but we're taking it to 17 million um and so we're going to be able to you know build fanbase enormously uh faster and better now what's been some of your biggest challenges when it came to fan base so far? Oh, niggas. Well, I'll say this. I'll say this. Right. I think that some of the biggest challenges is that he's actually getting people to understand their content has value. Like we're transitioning.

Like think about all the content creators that existed for the last 10 years and then stop and think about Kaisa. Not Kaisa. That's probably making about 800 grand a month off subscriptions he's like 22 years old right but the generation before him that were trying to get brand deals and all this kind of stuff they don't understand that subscriptions are coming you know if you're not paying attention and understanding that your content has value you're going to get lost in the shuffle you're going to be left behind because someone like kai and all the younger creators that are coming forward they're making money off subscriptions They're making millions of dollars off subscriptions.

Anybody can do that. You can do that. I can do that. You might not have as many subscribers as Kai, but you can still be on a platform where Kai's got millions of followers, but he has people that also want to support his content. And so I wanted to provide a global platform for anybody to have that capability. And also what we did, what I did was i invented in-app peer-to-peer purchase subscription i have to say this every time like before fanbase you cannot subscribe to a person using apple or google the app store you don't you can only um uh buy a game or you can only subscribe to like spotify or netflix but i made it so that you could subscribe to people and that changed everything and then apple and google changed their model because again black people innovate everything they changed their model and they

allowed instagram to do it and tiktok and x and all these platforms now you can subscribe from your phone but that was done by this black man here in atlanta georgia um to be able to do that so i i take pride in being somebody that innovated the space on that way this might be a random question i don't know if you can ask it isaac but when i when i hear you say things like kai sanat is making 800 grand a month the first thing i think about with all those content creators is i hope they're paying their taxes what are they they got to pay taxes like everybody else right of course of course they got to pay taxes kai's got kai's got solid management i know i mean he's he's he has a great management team i mean he's you know he's making so much money i absolutely you absolutely know that they do that.

And also, what happens with us is we send out at Fanbase, we pay you out the first of every month, but at the end of the year, we send you how much money you made so you can file it with your taxes. So it's not really an issue that you can just send it over and say, hey, let me file my tax and let people know how much money I made. But we do that for every single person on the platform to make sure that you are paying your taxes because they will come get their money.

They will send us a letter saying we about to garnish these users. We get letters from the IRS like, yo, give us this money. So it's crazy, but it actually does happen. So with the money that you've raised so far, where does that money go to? So what I explain to people right now is that when you see Fanbase, nothing speaks better for Fanbase than the app itself. And so Fanbase has six content creation tools, like six verticals or content creation functionality. So we got stories, live posts, long form video, which is like YouTube, flicks, which is like short form video, and then audio chat rooms. And so when you really see the app, you think that, okay, these guys have raised about 10 or 11

million dollars and have built something that most people would say would cost 50 million to be able to build. And we got staying power. I'm not going to be unapologetic that a lot of these companies that have been funded by venture capital, VCs have actually come in and give companies 35 million dollars, and they've blown the money in 18 months and had no product nowhere near as close to fan base. And so what we do is we spend our money wisely. We continue to scale the app. We have other functionality and features that we're doing.

We're adding RTMP streaming. So just like Twitch and Rumble, you'll be able to stream your video games and kick. You'll be able to do that. So we just keep adding and building to the platform. And we have almost 700,000 users. I know that people don't know that, but this is really, like I said, a one-of-a-kind social media app that people don't understand what's being done and how we're breaking the mold. Now, if people do want to log, I'm trying to log on my fan base right now.

It wouldn't let me log in that happens all the time but i was going to ask you so for people break down what fan base is if they don't know what they can do with it why would it benefit them over other apps so they get a better understanding well first the first thing i say is you can create a fan base account and we filed a patent on a migration tool that allows you to copy all your content from either instagram or tiktok and paste it over on your fan base page. So then now you put your content in a place where somebody can tip it. Anybody, any regular person can tip it.

So on fan base, you have followers and subscribers. And what's important about that is as AI comes into play and more people start to lose jobs, I think content creators and IRL content, which is in real life content, is going to be something that people are really going to rely on. Like the gig economy is going to explode because people can make, you know, the Keith Lees of the world, the people that discover that they have a talent or a knack to be able to do this. And so being in a position to already monetize from day one, if you so choose, if you just want to use fan base as a platform where you connect with your friends and have fun, you

can do the exact same thing. But I think we have to understand that content has value and there's going to be a lot of money. There's going to be a lot of money made in the next few years. Again, people are going to become billionaires off subscriptions. I know it sounds crazy, but I'm telling you right now, there will be billionaires made off people subscribing to other people's content, just like we subscribe to Netflix. And so, again, creating generational black wealth and being able to do this because, again, we are we are left behind. We are we are you know, I see these younger creators.

I see the the Aiden Ross's who got equity and kick. I see all these these people that have equity in these companies. Charlie D'Amelio, Bryce Hall. They have equity. But I don't see that. You know, I don't see the academics has equity in Rumble or I don't see Kass not has equity in Twitch. And so again, I think for users to be able to use the platform and then also become investors is something that's extremely important. How many subscribers do y'all have now? 700,000. We have about 700,000 users global.

We're on iOS and Android in 190 countries and territories. We are continuing to grow. We continue to scale every day, add new functionality, add new things. With this $17 million around, we're filing patents. We got to expand our team. Our team is pretty small. We started with five people. Now we have about 35 people that work for Fanbase, and we want to double and triple that team to be able to to really scale and compete at first this is a startup people say okay it's a startup but

now we're in scale up mode where we really got to take this this app and turn it into the next you know the next instagram the next tiktok and we'll continue to be able to do that and again i keep saying there's there's nobody out here in this space like this there's no you can't find a black founded social media app that's for every single person on the planet that allows you to monetize that doesn't suppress your content that's really changing the game and really people are again these platforms are copying everything that we do so i'm just going to continue to lead the charge and i'll make sure that we do everything we got to do to to continue to scale fan base you know i'm an investor in fan base you know i got i got it got we got to do to continue to scale fan base. You know, I'm an investor in fan base. You know, I got to say that, right?

So how do people, what is the process of investing in fan base? So when you invest in fan base, you go to startengine.com slash fan base, right? And then the minimum to invest is $399. That money sits in escrow. You don't have it. We don't have it. After there's a process where everybody does a background check on the person investing, and then you'll get an email saying,

do you want to invest in Fanbase? You'll get that email. And then once you click that, that money goes into a disbursement queue. And as soon as we take that money and put it in our account, you are invested in Fanbase. And so again, we have over 15,000 investors around the world that have invested in this platform i keep telling people like when these companies have these exits and you hear you know these platforms sell for billions and billions of dollars and regular people are going to be able to exit fanbase eventually either we're going to go public or we're going to get acquired that's the eventuality of what we're going to do so again i want to highlight on investing and how important

this is because you me me, everybody has the ability to increase the value of Fanbase by simply using the platform, but then you own a piece of it. And we, you know, again, we have about $1.8 trillion of wealth, that spending power that we have in the black community every year. And we should take some of that money and start investing in multiple companies and other companies that we can fund through equity crowdfunding. Equity crowdfunding is going to be something that I think the black community is going to focus on a lot more because what happened with the fearless fund, what's happening with DEI, they're trying to shut us down. In 2023, black startups got less than half of 1% of all venture capital. So think about that,

less than half of 1% of all venture capital went to black founders. So we have to start funding our own businesses and look out for ourselves. I'm over the whole plan of, you know, we're trying to beg to have a seat at the table like I said, for the last three years. And so many other platforms have come and gone and failed. But we're still here because we know what we're doing. We're building community. And we're making a change in what we do with social media. So how do people invest if they wanted to right now? So go to startengine.com slash fanbase. And there will be, you'll pull up on the fanbase page on StartEngine and just click get equity.

And that's it. You'll get equity in the platform. You'll have some shares. You have some ownership. And remember these raises tend to go viral. I say this all the time. There hasn't been a raise that I've done, but we've reached our goal. And everybody's like, is it too late to invest? I'm like, nah, don't wait. We're going all the way with this thing. So invest as soon as you possibly can, because again, the raise is going to close. We're going to go on to the next level and continue to build the platform. So if you want to have an opportunity to invest, again, there's a lot of disposable income. I'm not going to tell you how to spend your money, but I'm definitely tell you that $399 is the ability to have equity in a platform. There's another stat that I say all the time when we think about this, when we're raising $17

million, 28,500 people investing $600. And this platform has millions of listeners, millions of viewers, right? So 28,500 people investing $600 and $17,100,000. We reach our goal like that. And again, with that kind of capital, we will catch Instagram, we will catch TikTok, and then we will surpass them because we're doing things that they're not doing yet. We're inventing and creating things in social media that none of these platforms have done. And we're not stopping. We're doing it right here in the A, right here in Atlanta, Georgia.

So we're going to keep pushing. Is there a minimum amount that you got to invest? $399. I don't know if you know. He said, well, how many subscribers is it? You just said $700,000. You just said $399. Listen, man. Sometimes when a person is talking people will miss things when you pose it

as a question and you say what is the minimum amount all right guys tell us again the minimum to invest is 399 that's right it's to invest but listen again man i i thank you guys man for providing the platform i think it's extremely important because we are at a we are at an inflection point in social media and technology. And again, we got to own these platforms. I'm just you know, I can't stress enough. I see I saw somebody else today. They got they got their platform. You know, they got their page taken down and they're mad at instagram and why are we always begging to be on platforms where they really utilize every dance we have all our music all

our skits all the things that we have but we don't have equity in these platforms and so we can continue to really you know beg to be included in these platforms we can build our own but again be part of it for the entire planet fan base for everybody to use on the planet globally i want everybody to use on the planet globally. I want everybody to join it. We got users from Africa. We got users in England and Australia and in Asia, all over the world. And I got to hop in audio rooms and hear people talking in different languages and having conversation and bringing the world together.

Audio chat is something that's phenomenal. And we even have something called branded audio chat that we filed a patent on. So there's a lot of dope things that we're doing that nobody else is doing. I'm going to continue to do that. I agree with you. You know, they treat social media sites the way television networks used to treat black people. Like, you know, the Foxes and the CWs and the UPNs. They use all the black content to build it up.

And once they get it to a certain point, they box us out. Look what happened on tubi look what i mean yeah it's to be like people put all their movies on tubi blew it up and then they switch it like that they rebranded it now it's like they switch and they got all that they made enough money they built enough users up to now they can go run ads make money and switch the entire nature of the platform. A whole rebrand, a refresh. They're not going to start letting those black movies on there anymore. But black culture is really the reason that blew Tubi up.

And again, we do it all the time. We think it's funny. We think it's funny that we blow like, oh, my God, these Tubi movies are so bad. Yeah, but you're actually adding value to the company. And one, you don't own it. And two, when they're ready for you to go, they'll just switch it up and change the programming and change the style of the app. And then you're out of there. Yeah, I read something like two days ago.

I think it said Tubi had more viewers last month than Disney Plus and Paramount Plus. Wow. Yeah. I mean, we did that, though. We do that all the time. I mean, what do you think Instagram would be without black culture? How much do you think it would be worth?

How much do you think TikTok would be worth if we took all the dances, all the music, all the skits, and Funny Marco left, and Drewski, and Kaisa Knott, and all these creators were no longer part of these platforms that bring eyeballs to the platforms so that they can run ads? I mean, what do you think these platforms would be worth? They wouldn't be worth anything. So again, I recognize that, and I think a lot of other people out there recognize that too. That's one of the reasons why I'm just so adamant about making sure that people

understand that we got to start investing and they're going to keep stripping away DEI. You know, the diversity, equity, and inclusion is under attack. So unless we start funding our own businesses and investing in ourselves, you know what I'm saying, we're going to be left out. And so this is our shot. Again, I tell everybody, we've never been here before. Don't think about this. Like I tell anybody,

download the app. Nothing speaks better for Fanbase than the app itself. But go to Start Engine, look at everything we've accomplished, look at everything that we've been able to do. And I'm telling you, you'll see for yourself, like this is real. This is a growing platform. Like I said, people like you, Charlemagne, that are investors and so many other people that are part of the platform continue to invest and be a part of it. And we're going to scale this thing. Fanbase was when I first launched the app, we were valued at $20 million. Now Fanbase is $160 million app. So it's eight times as valuable as it was when I first raised capital in 2020. So I went from $20 million to $50 million to $ to 85 million to 160 million. And so we can scale

this thing to a billion dollars. Again, I'm telling people like, I even tell people like Kaisa and I, like, yo, I would love to have Kaisa and I have equity in fan base. Imagine if Kaisa and I had equity in fan base, he could bring a million people over to fan base probably in a couple of days and fan base be a billion dollar platform. We should be leveraging our reach to bring people to platforms that we own. Get some equity first, because again, Aiden Ross, Charlie D'Amelio, Bryce Hall, they're getting equity in these startups, man. They're taking these companies and exiting. Meanwhile, they're cutting checks to academics, and they might cut checks to cost a lot. But the bigger play is to have equity in these platforms and make sure that you got money.

You know what I'm saying? That the long game is really the ownership and when these platforms scale. Tell the people where to go again uh invest in fanbase start engine dot com slash fanbase come on in um we're raising 17 million dollars on start engine the minimum to invest is 399 we love to have you i'm on the cap table download the app share with the friend remember this is you have the ability to increase the value of the assets you own by simply using it so once you got shares and fan base tell a friend tell them to invest and then we raise the value of the platform and scale this thing to a billion dollar company a ten billion dollar company a hundred billion dollar company and we exit again I said I can't

wait to be standing in a room full of 25,000 people that invest in fan base in 2030 possibly and we exit the company and there's this is the largest uh distribution of black wealth ever and we can do this this is not this is not impossible this is totally doable that people can buy shares we can raise the value of this company exit this company and then we can do it again for another company another startup and another business and keep doing this over and over and over again before we didn't have an opportunity to do this the jobs act which is what I used to raise capital, has only been around since 2015.

And it really got popular in 2019. So that's the reason why I'm so heavy on this. All right, my guy. Appreciate you, brother. Thank you, guys, man. Appreciate it. The third fan base is The Breakfast Club. Good morning.

Wake that ass up in the morning. The Breakfast Club.