The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Discover Thumzup: The Uber for Social Media Advertising

Episode Date: December 8, 2024

Discover Thumzup: The Uber for Social Media Advertising Thumzupmedia.com About the Guest(s): Robert Steele is the CEO of Thumzup, an innovative advertising platform often described as the "Uber for advertising." As an experienced tech entrepreneur, Robert has successfully led several technology ventures, raising more than $30 million in financing across three startups. With a background in computer programming dating back to his early childhood, Steele has consistently demonstrated a knack for leveraging emerging technologies and adapting them into business opportunities. Prior to Thumzup, he made significant strides in pioneering mobile technology, such as creating software that allowed users to view Microsoft PowerPoint and AOL MapQuest on mobile devices. Episode Summary: Join Chris Voss on a thrilling journey into the world of innovative advertising with Robert Steele, CEO of Thumzup. With a colorful background in technology and entrepreneurism, Steele shares insights into his journey from computer geek to industry trailblazer. This episode uncovers the unique approach Thumzup takes in redefining advertising by simplifying the process for brands to engage customers through social media, offering monetary incentives to everyday users for sharing posts. This intersection of modern advertising, technology, and gig economy presents an exciting future for both businesses and consumers. In this episode, Chris and Robert delve into the vision driving Thumzup, unveiling strategies that enable gig economy workers to capitalize on their social media presence. They discuss how Thumzup empowers anyone to become a brand ambassador, providing new revenue streams by getting paid for social media posts about brands they love. The conversation also touches on the challenges faced by startups, lessons learned from the ever-evolving tech landscape, and the importance of resilience and balance in the entrepreneurial journey. Through the lens of Steele's career, the episode provides actionable insights for budding entrepreneurs interested in the technology and advertising sectors. Key Takeaways: Thumzup offers an innovative platform likened to Uber for advertising, paying users to post about brands they enjoy on social media. The app bridges the gap between consumers and brands, bringing the power of word-of-mouth advertising into the digital age. Steele's entrepreneurial success is attributed to his persistence and adaptability, showcasing how important resilience is in overcoming challenges. By allowing everyday users to earn money, Thumzup taps into the trend of the gig economy and society's interest in multiple income streams. The platform focuses on smaller influencer engagements, emphasizing authenticity and trust, and providing opportunities even for those with smaller followings. Notable Quotes: "We think of Thumzup as like Uber for advertising." "If you think about it today, you're gonna interact with more, probably more than a dozen brands… Imagine if a significant amount of those businesses and brands were willing to pay you to just make a social media post about 'em." "We're essentially aggregating that and making it so that they can get the effect by more posts, made by people with smaller follower accounts." "My number one advice is don't give up. That's the biggest thing." "We really have invested a lot in Instagram and there's a risk, but we think we can ride that wave."

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. It's Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com.

There you go, ladies and gentlemen. The hour and ladies, thanks for listening. It's a pleasure to welcome you to the show. There you go, ladies and gentlemen. They are ladies and gentlemen. We certainly appreciate having you guys for over 16 years, and 2,200 episodes are going on now. The Chris Vaughn Show has been here, and hopefully it'll be here for another 16, and probably thousands of more episodes the way we're pacing at this point. So refer the show to your family, friends, or relatives, or else.

Don't make me come over there. Don't make me pull the car over and come back there, kids. Go to Goodreads.com, 4chesschristmas, LinkedIn.com, 4chesschristmas, chrismas1 on the TikTokity and all those crazy places on the internet. Today we have an amazing young man on the show. We're going to be talking about his business insights, his entrepreneurism, things you can learn from him because that's why we have guests on the show. Do you understand that?

Has that been clear for 16 years? We have these amazing guests. You can learn their stories, their amazing journeys through life. Robert Steele joins us. He's the CEO of thumbs up. He's in it, which is built as an Uber for advertising. It's just about time. I've been using taxis for advertising all this time, and now there's an Uber.

So and it just went public just a couple weeks ago before Thanksgiving on the NASDAQ with stock symbol TZUP. Robert is an experienced tech entrepreneur, and Thumbs Up is in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store. It makes it easier for a brand or business to pay people cash to tell their friends about their business on their personal social media. Maybe we should do that too. We should tell some people about this podcast. Anyway, welcome to the show. How are you, Robert?

I'm doing great. I'm still smiling from your intro about guests so smart that you may get a brain bleed. That's quite an image there. Yeah. I mean, the brain bleed is's that's that's quite an image there yeah i mean it's the brain bleed is what it's all about it gives you that chris voss show glow it's hemorrhaging as well but that's another story but it's a disclaimer i think everything's covered legally so robert give us a 30 000 overview what you guys do there at thumbs up yeah so we think of thumbs up as like uber for advertising so just like uber was able to make it really easy for anybody to make a little extra money driving people around. And just like how Airbnb made it easy for anybody to make a little extra money running a room. That's what we're doing is we're

making it easy for people to make a little extra money telling their friends about brands and businesses that they that they love on their personal social media. You know, so if you think about it today, you're going to interact with more than probably more than a dozen brands from the shoes you wear to the car you might drive, what you have for lunch. So imagine if a significant amount of those businesses and brands were willing to pay you to just make a social media post about them. You know, we think that that is the future of advertising.

When you personally tell your friends you like something, think that that is the future of advertising. When you personally tell your friends you like something, that's the most powerful form of advertising. And how do you bridge the gap between, you know, we've seen paid Amazon reviews get out of hand. You know, how do you enforce the integrity of maybe some of the reviews? Oh, brilliant question. Yes. You know, we actually use the law as the guideline. So our users have agreed, you know, like when you download an app, you agree to the terms and services. So in our terms of service, our users are agreeing to obey the law. So actually, there is an organization called the Federal Trade Commission that has rules about this. And so their main rule that they use that we teach and educate our community on is that you have to have experienced the thumbs up brand or business in order to receive payment to tell your friends about it on social media. So you can't just, you know, so for instance, what will happen is that people, so we started off near the beach

in Los Angeles, Venice beach. And so that's, we have a very high concentration of small businesses in that area from launching there. So what happens in LA is if your pizza shop or your coffee shop or your boutique signs up on the Thumbs Up platform, generally within about an hour, one of our users is going to come by and experience your business and make a post. But what happens, Chris, is that people will do it at night. So new users that don't understand what's going on, they hear about Thumbs Up, oh, wow, I can make some money. They'll go by the coffee shop at 10 p.m., it's closed, the lights are off, and they'll take a

photo or a video of it and post that. Well, they don't get paid for that. And then we have a community manager team that communicates with them and says, you know, thank you for downloading Thumbs Up. But you have to have experienced the product. So we have a review process where, you know, we're making a judgment that they either have or have not experienced the product. And then many of our advertisers just outright require a purchase. So our users are not going to get paid for their social media posts unless they present a receipt digitally. And that totally solves the problem of making sure people aren't abusing what we're set up to do.

And there were a lot of apps that kind of did stuff for advertising. What was the app back in the day that you could be the mayor of your city if you did check-ins? Foursquare? I think that was Foursquare, yes. Was it Foursquare? So many, I don't even know where they're at now. I think someone bought them, but there was kind of a bonus sort of, it wasn't really a payment, but it was, you had to brag to people. You were the mayor of your local grocery store. Ooh, but you know, people did it. People would, people would game, you know, it was gamified basically. So people would gamify it. Would you call this gamifying

advertising for, for social media? Yes and no. Okay. So we think part of the story here that your audience will be interested in is that they can get paid. So we think there's a shift in society where people, there's a large amount of people, gig economy workers, they want to have multiple streams of income. They don't want to have a traditional office job. So that's part of the trend that we're onto is that so a lot of our users are realtors or they're driving for Uber or they're doing, you know, they're doing graphic design on Fiverr or Upwork. And we're just giving them one more easy way for them to get paid. So we think from the days of Foursquare that the user intent has changed and people,

you know, in 2024, I think there's a larger consciousness of, you know, what's in it for me, which we think is okay, because we think we can ride that wave. But then, yes, we are gamifying, okay? So we are public, so I have to be careful about what I say about the future. But don't be surprised if you see things in the Thumbs Up app like a leaderboard where we show you, you know, who made the most money today, who made the most money this week. So we definitely intend on making it fun. Our users are having fun, our advertisers are having fun. So this is intended to be fun, but it's also intended to be profitable. So we have users right now that are making more than $1,000 month the the cbs station in los angeles they did a piece on us a little while back and the commentators in the studio were amazed to hear that people are making more than a thousand dollars a month putting on thumbs up you know

it's been interesting you know it used to be on youtube like we used to review a lot of products on youtube for come for companies and you know the you know the grift was we'd get the grift the grift was we get i'm just gonna use that word fuck it that we would you know they give us we get like a free product and you know a lot of times it was just like not worth it but we would make money off of youtube advertising and so it was kind of like the companies are getting a free ride for a long time where they were you know riding that wave and then you know think it was COVID, things kind of fell apart. You couldn't get product. A lot of the supply chains were fucked up.

I mean, if you had chips in your product, it was kind of a problem to produce it for a while there. But there was kind of this weird way that I used to look at it and just go, this is kind of fucked up because these companies really get a free ride. I mean, they're right off the advertising. Whatever the product is, they're writing it off. And of course, they made it for probably pennies on the dollar compared to what their retail is. Like I would sometimes have a company go,

we're not going to send you a $450 thing. You make it for $200 in China, give me a fucking break. You're not losing $450, you're losing $250. And you're writing it all off as advertising. But it was weird because they wouldn't really pay for the stuff. It was really YouTube that was paying for the stuff in our advertising. And of course, that went away as YouTube transferred from something that was, you know, ergonomically you could get on the leaderboard based upon what people liked in your videos. And they really started selling the advertising.

If you wanted to, you know, they really started selling the advertising if you wanted to you know they basically started selling the trending and so now you see like tiktok where a lot of people are getting paid by brands and they're you know they're on their tiktok channel doing advertising live and and it's kind of interesting to watch because some of them do like how do you make money on something that's five dollars or something? There's a lot of cheap junk over there in TikTok. And yeah, it seems like the thing to do. I mean, I've been, you know, writing reviews on, on companies that I love without getting paid. I don't really mind so much, but you know, there's some people that if you want to put

in the work and really advertise the company, you know, we see that going on a TikTok right now that people are doing a lot of work actually, and they're making some really good money. Thumbs up is designed to be easier than, than that. It's, this is kind of like a, it's the opposite of an impulse purchase. It's an, it's an impulse makes money. Okay. So for instance, here in Los Angeles, there's a coffee shop down the street called La Frenchie cafe. So one morning I just needed a cup of coffee, Chris, and I actually forgot they were an advertiser in my app. And I'm standing in line. The woman in front of me orders a latte.

I say, pardon me, do you use Instagram? She says, yes. I said, see that sign on the counter? This coffee shop will pay you $10 to share a photo of your latte with your friends on Instagram. And before I even finished the sentence, she pulled her phone out of her purse, points the phone camera at the counter, and she makes her $10. You know, back, this is a year ago, so the latte was four bucks. Now it's six bucks. But she's still ahead. You know, she made money on the trade. And the reason why that's so powerful is because there's another woman that does not know that lady. They're not friends. They're not friends

on social media. Another lady says to me, Robert, Robert, I just found my new favorite coffee shop called La Frenchie Cafe. And she says, I didn't even know it was there. I've lived in the neighborhood for years until I saw someone post about it on Instagram. So that's the magic here that, you know, when you go out on the street, what are people doing? They've all got their face in their phone. So for the small business owner, if they don't have a way to get a social media presence, then people in their own neighborhood don't even know they're there. So in that story, you know, the reason, so the woman liked the coffee shop, but until she heard that she could make 10 bucks, you know, she wasn't going to take her time to promote it. And then when she did

choose to take a moment to promote it and then when she did choose to take a moment to promote it it literally took a moment and that's what we're up to whereas the the the the person that's that's making money on tick tock today that takes a lot more effort than this this is a more casual experience now they're not going to make as much money on thumbs up as they might make being a professional influencer on tiktok but it was better than none that's true that's true most people aren't gonna do the tiktok thing they have real jobs i guess exactly that's our audience that's our audience i mean some of the people they have to stand there for hours on live tiktok hustling shit and it's real it's a real hard sales game.

I don't think a lot of people are up for that sort of sales and you know, you're putting yourself out there and you're getting all sorts of people throwing crap at you in their comments. But, but no, I like this idea cause it's much more simpler. And you know, I,

there's a couple of brands that I really love that I talk at nauseam about. Like I think some of the people on Facebook are like, okay, enough about your local farm, some of the people on Facebook are like, okay, enough about your local farm, man. It was cute for a while, but enough already. But if you love a brand and they make great stuff, I like to champion them. And I think most people do.

Somebody goes above board on quality product or quality of service, et cetera, et cetera. Tell us a little bit about yourself. How did you grow up? Where did you grow up? Where did you get the entrepreneur bug from? And what was some of your journey that got you to this point? Sure. My dad was in the Air Force, so I moved a lot as a kid,

almost every year of elementary school. So that forces you to make friends fast. And, you know, I was a computer geek from a very early age. You know, I had a life experience. It was kind of like something out of a movie. You know, when I was in fourth grade in Maryland, one of my neighbors, you know, this is the 70s. One of my neighbors had a mainframe computer in his basement in a single family home. And, you know, I was a kid, so I don't know why or how, but this was very unusual. And he worked from home. And, you know, he lived like three doors down from me. Literally, when I was eight or nine years old, I'd go over there every day after school. And so I learned to program a computer very, very early, very young. And,

you know, that has a life impact. And then the second thing that happened to me that really put me on my entrepreneurial journey was because I because I did have some skill as a as essentially a child, you know, right when the microcomputer thing was taken off, I, I was I was invited to a trade show in Boston when I was 14 years old to man a booth, you know, because I knew what I was talking about as a kid. And so I got paid to go exhibit in this booth in the early 80s. And Steve Wozniak, there were two founders of Apple Computer, both Steve, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

So Steve Wozniak walks by my booth. I'm 14 years old. And I said, hey, Steve, how you doing? And he starts talking to me. And I said, do you have time for lunch? So he was 28. I was 14. Apple had just had the biggest IPO in the history of NASDAQ. And he took time to have lunch with a 14-year-old kid. That changed my life, you know, because here I was, because he really was, you know, he was my rock star, you know because here i was because he really was you know he was my rock star you know and and to be at a sit with your rock star you know for an hour and

chat with him and you know and i i got the bug i was like he can do it i can do it so i've started several technology companies and and you know it's it's been a good ride i mean you you caught the you caught the perfect timing of that rise of computing and all that good stuff. And Steve's a really nice guy. I've talked with him privately. I mean, he just seems like a really down-to-earth, nice guy. Yeah. And so how long ago did you start this new venture?

Thumbs Up formed in October 2020. So that's when we started building the technology. And then our first client, we launched in Venice Beach, January 2023. Again, we think of ourselves similar to Uber. So in the beginning, it takes time to get this off the ground because think about the early days of Uber that if you'd ordered a ride and no one showed up, then you tell all your friends it stinks. Okay.

So in the beginning of this type of thing, we have to have a good experience for both sides of our community. We have to have a good experience for the advertisers. We have to have a good experience for the users. So the way you do that is what Uber did is you just focus on a small area first and you get dominance and density in a small area. So for us, that was Venice Beach in early 2023. So right now today, if you go to Venice Beach, there's 30 places on the boardwalk that'll pay you to post. So you can have a burrito at Lit Burritos. You can have pina colada at Bell's Beach House.

So people do a treasure hunt. You know, they'll go to Venice Beach and they'll just stop at all the thumbs up advertisers and get paid to post. It's a lot of fun. So that gave, that density gave our advertisers a good experience because they had enough users coming and participating. Then we expanded in 2024 to greater Los Angeles. So we're, you know, we've got advertisers in Santa Clarita. We've got advertisers down in Orange County. We've got advertisers out to the east in Monrovia.

And then right now, what I'm focused on, Chris, is since we just IPO'd, we raised $8 million. So now we're rolling it out in Miami. There's worse places that someone could have to work. So I'll be spending some time in Miami in the new year. That sounds really rough, dude. If you need help with that, let me know. There's a lot of clubs in Miami that probably need to be recruited for this app, so I was trying to help out there.

Yeah. Any place there's good food, which is, I think, pretty much everywhere. So looking at the app, now the brands, we should probably talk about that too because the people listening not only can be the consumers who are utilizing the brands, but the brands have their own sort of back end as well. Tell us how that works for brands that are out there that might be listening. Sure. So for instance, we have a Brazilian soda in the app. So they're in Whole Foods and Vons and Ralph's and Trader Joe's here on the West Coast. And so what they did to be in the app is they go on our website thumbsupmedia.com and they purchase a campaign so the first thing they pick is how much they want to pay people to

post so right now they pay people ten dollars to post then they pick how many posts they want to load up so they pay ten dollars bought a hundred posts so ten times a hundred is a thousand dollars and then we put 30 on that so we charge their credit card $1,300. So $300 is our money for the use of the platform in the community. And then the $1,000 stays in the system until 100 posts get made. Then the 101st attempt to make a post for Sotabasa in that example, they get a message in the app that says, this campaign's been so popular, please try again later. And then Soda Bossa gets an email where it says, click here to renew. We see people want to tell their friends about your product. Why don't you buy some more posts? So for the advertiser,

that's really simple. It takes three or four minutes for them to sign up. It's very, very simple. And then we give them what we call a dashboard where they can see all the posts and they only approve the ones that are good. So if someone takes a blurry picture or a blurry video, they're not going to be paid. If someone posts a picture of a pizza on Soda Boss's campaign, they're not going to be paid. So there's quality control. And it's only about saying positive things. This is not Yelp. Our users are not there to tell people that the soda is no good.

It's really interesting how they can approve. Now, they approve the posts that are paid. So there might be some, you know, posts that the people make. So maybe they can go back and update their posts or something, or they can make a new post. That's what we do. So think about how in the early days of Uber, if someone had told you, hey, I'm going to get into a car with a stranger that I met on the Internet, the first time you heard that, you'd tell your friend, no, I don't think that's a good idea. I don't think you should get in a car with a stranger that you met on the internet. But now Uber has created a brand and a community where we have a trust that the person they're going to send to us is going to do what we're paying them to do. And we're going to be safe. So we're doing the same thing with our community is that we do have people that try to, you know, they try to get around the

rules and not do it right. And we convert those people to being good users. So we communicate with them. We say, thank you for downloading the app. You know, if you, if you post a picture of the soda boss of soda, then we'd be, and it's clear and it's in focus or a video, we'd be happy to pay you for that. But you, you know, you posted a picture of your sock in your bedroom and you know, we're not going to approve that for payment yeah that that's definitely a sock in your bed which has happened i'm just gonna leave that joke alone comedy i can do off that anyway so they can approve the posts in the back and then can they can they can they ask they can ask for more i think you said from the consumer, they can build a relationship maybe with them.

Exactly. Yes. The way we explain this to the brand is we say, you know, once you run a thumbs up campaign and once several hundred posts have been made, you're going to see who your super fans are. Okay. Because, because you're going to, if you get 200 people to post, you're going to see that 10 of them posted five times or seven times. So they're, they love you. Okay. You've got their cell phone number. You've got their Instagram handle. So communicate with them, give them special promotions and they can do all that outside of thumbs up. So we're, we're giving the brand access to know for sure who really loves them so that they can send them new products and develop a relationship with them, invite them to in-store events, that kind of thing.

Now, I see in the app, there's something called brands and freelancers. What's the freelancer part? Oh, Chris, you're a very good interviewer. So, yes. So, we think that this could be huge potential here. So one of the freelancers that's in the app is a musician named Eric Gray. So Eric Gray is a professional musician. And I'm sure you're familiar with the fact that it's not the easiest way to make a living.

He's very talented, jazz guitar player. And he played for a while. He was on Venice Beach on the boardwalk with his guitar case out there. You can't really sell CDs anymore. So he's got his QR code there. And his goal is to get people to stream his music on Spotify and Apple Music. And he paid for the thumbs up campaign. He bought 100 posts to pay $5. So that's cost $650. And he told us that before thumbs up, that there was no way that he could find to grow his Instagram following. And his Instagram following has grown 20x since he started using thumbs up. So think how many freelancers there are out there trying to get visibility. He loves Thumbs Up. We have a testimonial from him on our YouTube channel.

And so we think that that is really powerful for entrepreneurs of every sort. So you don't have to be Coke or Pepsi or some big giant multi-billion dollar brand to be able to do this. Yes. A little guy can take part. Exactly. And that's really great. I mean, that's where you originally saw back in the day Facebook advertising really take off because anybody could run an ad and afford to run an ad, too, and depend upon the pricing. But, yeah, I mean, I love this because really, you know, a lot of those,

I think a lot of those reviews get picked up by Google. Do they get picked up and included in Google or is it? So most of these are our Instagram posts. So, you know, there's some terminology here. So the Federal Trade Commission would call TripAdvisor and Yelp reviews. They've actually recently been clear that it's not legal to pay someone for a review. Google Maps, those are reviews. What we're doing is social media posts. So you can be paid to post about a product on your personal social media to your friends as long as you've experienced the product. So it's it's it's similar to a review, but it's different because because this is your you know, just like you have your podcast, you know, everyone who has a social media account, they have a small audience.

You've got a big audience, but they have a small audience. So they're just telling their small audience about our advertiser, which is it's it's similar to a review, but it's different. It's more it's more like a shout out to your friends about what you're up to. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm here listening to Eric Gray, I'm drinking a soda bossa. So it's, it's, it's more like a slice of life type concept. So if I'm a brand and you know, I run one of these campaigns on your app, is there, you know, someone wants to post about my brand, but let's say they only have five followers on their Instagram account or whatever, you know, someone wants to post about my brand, but let's say they only have five followers on their Instagram account or whatever.

You know, they have a real small footprint. Is there a minimum thing where I could be like, you know, you really have to have some pull with some numbers of followers? Yes, the default is 50-5-0, but the advertiser can set it to whatever they want. So we're trying to activate the general public. That's why we encourage the advertisers to consider starting at that small level, but the advertiser can use thumbs up however they want. So they could set the minimum to 50,000 and they can pay $500. It's set up to. Uh, but that's not necessarily the market we're going after because there's, there's actually a lot of existing professional influencer marketplaces. Uh, so our vision is to, is to encourage them to have the lower follower count and the smaller

payout and, and get the, the trust factor. Because when the, when the, when the everyday person who's not a professional influencer posts about a product, the data shows that the response rate is higher. So they've got, they've got less of an audience, but their audience is really paying attention. So we're essentially aggregating that and making it so that they can get the, the effect by more posts made by people with smaller follower accounts. Yeah. I know a lot of people are like, you know, if they love a brand, they're going to make

posts anyway. But sometimes they added incentive to make a buck or two or, you know, you get a free latte or something out of it, I guess. You know, it gives you that extra push because I've had a lot of people tell me, oh, we're planning on reviewing that or whatever, and they just never get around to it. And maybe this can give them that little extra bump to finalize that review.

Because people are busy. Exactly. They've got things to do. That's it. They've got to watch Kardashians and The Bachelor, I guess, evidently. It's really important to watch that, but don't bother to vote. Anyway, it's interesting the priorities

people make in their lives. But, you know, this gives them that incentive to do it. What was the component that kind of brought this idea to you and you're like, hey, I think we can make some traction with this? I personally am a musician. I play guitar, keyboard, sing, write songs. Lived in LA for more than 20 years. A lot of people come here aspiring to big things.

But in the meantime, they're driving for Uber, doing a little graphic design, waiting tables. As a technologist, the last bull market was really driven by Facebook and Google. And so I thought there must be some way to distribute and share the wealth and make it so that my friends who need a little extra money can get paid to promote brands and things that they like. There must be some way to connect them to that $200 billion social media marketing and advertising industry. So when I started thinking about it, the first concept was, oh, we'll build an app that pays them to watch ads. Okay. Why, why didn't we do that? Because

that's not fun. All right. So we kept thinking about it, kept thinking about it. And that ended up with this, with this workflow that we have have here, where they're, where they can pick brands that they're interested in and businesses that they're interested in. They can find businesses that they're interested in because our app is designed for physical business like a treasure hunt. So really the goal was to allow the general public to participate financially in this huge digital advertising marketplace. And we have people right now that tell us that this is food money, that this is putting food on their table. And that's a win-win because their content's great the advertisers love the content and they're telling us that that thumbs up is buying dinner for them yeah and and thought and if you're picking up an extra

grand that is dinner anyway just don't do jokes people it's not that bad yet if you're watching 10 years from now although 10 years from now it might be that bad so you guys work it out on youtube i always have to say that because on youtube they're like they say stuff like 10 15 years later i think we've been on there for 20 years on youtube and they make comments it's funny i didn't like your review of the iphone 5 it's 2024 people why are you watching those videos but you've you've raised more than $30 million in financing over three technology companies you've built and done a lot of technology stuff. What advice do you have for burgeoning entrepreneurs? Maybe how to raise money, how to, how to stick it in there, you know, so that they can, you know, stick in through the rejection and all that sort of stuff that goes on with trying to

be successful. Oh, sure. That, that's my number one advice. If I could go back, I was a dot-com era CEO. I was really early in the mobile space. And the reality is that I gave up. And that is the number one thing is don't give up. Yes, it's hard. It can be very, very difficult. But you have to stick with it and you have to take care of yourself. And the other thing that's tough is that your friends and family are often not going to understand what you're doing. Okay. And, and, you know, like I got a lot of motivation when, when this project was hard, you know, right now we have $8 million in the bank that, you know, wasn't always like that here. And I got a lot of motivation from this Elon Musk video where in the crash of 2007, 2008,

he had, as I understand it from his video, he had put all of his personal money into Tesla and SpaceX, zero revenue, huge employee base, going to zero, no money, and the economy tanks. And he, as I understand the story, sleeping on a friend's couch and he's calling investors and they're, they're giving him the F bomb, you know, like when he's pitching. So that really helped me. Cause if, if they gave Elon the F bomb, then, then I can, I can do this. I think he had to really scramble. He almost lost everything at one point, I believe. Yeah, so it's a mind game.

Don't give up. Don't give up. Yeah, and now he's running the country. Let's see. And you mentioned take care of yourself. To expand on that a little bit, because I think I know what that means. Well, you know, people who, I think people who do this sort of thing tend to be, you know, the workaholic type. But, you know, if it's all type, but you know, if, if, if it's all

work, you're going to burn out. So you've got to, you've got to find the entrepreneurial journey of this type. You, you really have to, you have to take care of your body. You know, I walk in, you know, never less than three miles a day, you know, try, try not to eat potato chips and ice cream, you know, and, you know, have some sort of spiritual, you know, I think it's very important to get outside of yourself and be helpful to people, you know, so I've all throughout this, my entrepreneurial journey, I've always volunteered, you know, got out there, help people, you know, so even when they're, even when there's no money in the bank and things are looking really, really tough, I take time to go out and help somebody else. And otherwise you, you know, that's, that's part of why you might give up is if you're not taking care of yourself,

you don't have the, the, the hope you can lose the hope if you're not out, you know, taking care of yourself. Yeah. You got to have balance, right? But balance in life and it's, it's hard as entrepreneurs because you live the business 24 seven. We talked about this on a prior podcast yesterday. You know, you, you, you eat it, you dream it. I was, you know, people have heard on the, on the, in my audience, how I joke about how for, I mean, it seemed like a decade, it was a lot of years, but I would, I would dream about what was going on in business the next day,

who I was firing, what meetings I would have. And I would just long to, I'm like, can I just have a, a dream of a puppy running through a field or a beautiful girl on a beach, you know, Bo Derek or something. And it would just, it wouldn't be none of that. And every now and then I have a dream of something else and I'd be like, so relieved. I'm like, Oh God, it's so nice. But yeah, 24 seven, you're an entrepreneur. You dream about it. You, it eats up your life. You know, I've, I made the mistake early on

starting my first companies of putting my health second and our first, one of the first big companies is the courier company. And so we were in a car for 18 hours a day and doing deliveries and pickups. And, you know, I was eating at fast food restaurants and man, my weight ballooned and my health, my health has been really good. I'm kind of amazed actually for all I've done, but knock on wood, but still I put on weight and, and it's hard to get that weight back off. And, you know, it's hard to correct some of the health issues. Yeah. That's, I think it's hard to get that weight back off. And, you know, it's hard to correct some of the health issues. Yeah, I think it's a really important message to entrepreneurs. You created the first software to view Microsoft PowerPoint and AOL MapQuest on mobile devices.

What's this AOL you speak of? No. I had AOL 1.0, I think, at one point. Yeah. I had AOL 1.0, I think, at one point. Yeah, back in the day before the iPhone, the Palm was the first real smartphone that had a large following. This is in the dot-com era. So I built a software called iBright, and at that time we called it complex content. So I built kind of like a browser and server type architecture that allowed you to put real sophisticated content on a Palm smartphone. So, yes, the first time you could use AOL MapQuest, AOL, you know, Steam Case is a very smart guy.

And I really followed how he did what he did back then. But, yes, I was able to put digital maps, interactive maps on a smartphone for the first time with a partnership with AOL. And at the CES show in the year 2000, you saw my smiling face in the Palm booth with the Palm logo behind me and the Microsoft logo behind me. And I was showing people PowerPoint on a smartphone for the first time. Yeah, I've done some fun things. Those are the days i remember my friend andy grignan he helped build the original iphone and went to palm to help build their thing steve jobs was not happy about it but they they i mean they put out a product that was

supposed to rival the iphone i think if i remember rightly the didn't the palm ceo he was on stage one time and he said he'd never used an iPhone and people were kind of aghast. Like, how did you not, you know, how did you not analyze your competitor? Yeah. You know, the, one of the challenge, I mean, you know, now we're talking about almost ancient history, but the, the thing that really was tough for me, and I think, you know, other entrepreneurs might be interested in this, is that you do have to pick a platform as a technologist. You know, like with Thumbs Up, we've picked, we really have invested a lot in Instagram. And there's a risk when you tie your future to one of these technologies. So that was the challenge with Palm, is that for whatever

reason, at the top of the leadership of the company, they were really proud of the fact that people didn't have to pay for the software. So they missed the reason why the PC took off because entrepreneurs could get, they could make money writing software for the Apple II. They could make money writing software for the IBM PC. So when the Palm leadership came out and said, you don't have to pay our software company, I had raised four and a half million dollars to build a software company to only make software for the Palm. So talking about aghast, I'm like, he said, what? People don't have to pay for the software for the Palm? It should be free. And then, you know, the rest is history. You know, what was the one of the first things that Steve Jobs did with the iPhone is he said you're gonna pay for apps

We're gonna have an app store Yeah, so that was tough. Yeah, and it burgeoned a ton of Entrepreneurs that yes apps for a long time and all those things I mean it kind of became Abnasium at one point that like everybody had an app. I think our show had an app. I had an app I don't know. I don't even know where those apps went. But yeah, it's pretty wild in entrepreneurism. You've inspired some people and hopefully given some people some ideas on how to go to the next level.

Anything more we need to touch on for a thumbs up that we haven't maybe covered? Sure. Thanks for asking, Chris. You know, I really do think that for your, that they may want to take a look at the stock. Stock symbol is T-Z-U-P, Tom Zebra, Umbrella, Paul. If you've heard this story and you think it's possible that Thumbs Up could do for social media advertising what Uber did for ride sharing, then if you got involved with Uber stock at the stage that we're at, you'd be up a thousand times on your money. My job is to do that.

And so we'd love to have your audience pick up a little stock and go on this ride with us. So you can make money two ways, possibly. So thank you very much for coming to the show. Give people the final dot coms. Where can they onboard and reach out if they have any questions, et cetera, et cetera? Sure. So the company's thumbsupmedia.com, T-H-U-M-Z-U-P-M-E-D-I-A.com. And the stock symbol is NASDAQ, T-Z-U-P, Tom Zebra Umbrella Pole. So anywhere that you can buy Apple and Amazon, you can buy Thumbs Up. Thank you very much for coming on the show. We really appreciate your insights. Thank you, Chris. Thank you. And thanks for to the show. We really appreciate your insights. Thank you, Chris.

Thank you. And thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4sayschrisfoss, linkedin.com, 4sayschrisfoss, chrisfoss1, the TikTokity, and all those crazy places on the internet. And maybe we'll get on thumbs up, see if we can pay people to listen to the show. My audience is like, what? We could have got paid for this crap? Thanks for tuning in, everyone.

Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you next time.