The Wolf Of All Streets - The Power Of Community, In The Real World And The Metaverse | Greg Isenberg

Episode Date: January 27, 2022

Many of the internet communities that you currently enjoy or rely upon were built by Greg Isenberg. Greg is an expert in designing, building, and perfecting many of the communities we know and love to...day, including Reddit, WeWork, Microsoft, Tik-Tok, FedEx, NASCAR, TechCrunch, and WordPress. Greg is now focused on building communities in Web3, a boon for all of us who are passionate about the space. Watch this episode to find out what it takes to make it in the vast new digital world. -- HBAR Foundation: Fund your project quickly and easily with the HBAR Foundation. Apply for a grant and be put on the fast track to success at https://thewolfofallstreets.link/hbar  -- Bullish: Bullish is a powerful new exchange for digital assets that offers deep liquidity, automated market making, and industry-leading security. Combining the innovations of DeFi with the regulated environment of traditional finance, Bullish empowers users to trade with confidence across variable market conditions, while secure in a regulated environment that's backed by multibillion-dollar liquidity contributions from the Bullish treasury. Follow @Bullish on twitter or visit https://thewolfofallstreets.link/bullish to learn more. Not investment advice. Digital assets and cryptocurrencies are high risk products. Consult your professional advisor before dealing in them. Bullish’s services are available in select locations only and not to U.S persons. Visit bullish.com for important information and risk warnings. -- If you enjoyed this conversation, share it with your colleagues & friends, rate, review, and subscribe. This podcast is presented by Blockworks. For exclusive content and events that provide insights into the crypto and blockchain space, visit them at: https://www.blockworks.co ーーー Join the Wolf Den newsletter: ►►https://www.getrevue.co/profile/TheWolfDen/members

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Starting point is 00:00:00 This episode is sponsored by the HBAR Foundation and Bullish. Stay tuned for more information about both of them later in the episode. What's up, everybody? I'm Scott Melker, and this is the Wolf of All Streets podcast, where twice a week, I talk to your favorite personalities from the worlds of Bitcoin trading, finance, music, art, politics, sports,
Starting point is 00:00:22 basically anyone with a good story to tell. Now, one thing people don't talk about very often is that the success of a cryptocurrency and many companies is really based on one specific thing, and that is the community, right? We like to think that we're in it for the tech or for the price, but generally it's that strong community that drives the price of a cryptocurrency, drives the success of a coin or a company. Well, today I have a guest who's a master at building those communities. He's worked
Starting point is 00:00:48 with companies like TikTok, WeWork, Reddit, NASCAR, FedEx, and now is focused largely on Web3. We're lucky to have him here, I would say. Greg Eisenberg, welcome to the show. I can't wait to talk about Web3 and community building with you. Thanks for having me, man. And wow, what an intro. Yeah, well, it's true though, right? And I don't know how you originally got into it, but it feels to me like, especially now as NFTs and Web3 are starting to become more popular, it's really how many people are excited about it and feel that inherent draw towards the project that really drives the success. Would you say that's true? Oh, 100%.
Starting point is 00:01:29 And when I look at actually some of the most successful web re-entrepreneurs, it's interesting to see how nerdy they are, if you think about it. These are the kids who are killing it in RuneScape, crushing it in World of Warcraft, into the weirdest stuff. And because they've learned those dynamics of niche communities,
Starting point is 00:01:55 they're kind of equipped. They're the best equipped. Yeah, the people who are best equipped for Web3 are the nerds who are spending a lot of time playing video games. That's revenge of the nerds in real life. Yeah, exactly. From our childhood. So why are they then able? I mean, what is it about the experience of playing those video games
Starting point is 00:02:16 that makes them so adept at building these communities? Well, I think it's a few things. So it's the dynamics around earning digital assets, buying and selling. I actually used to, I don't even talk about this publicly, but I actually used to play professional Counter-Strike as a kid. And Counter-Strike, for those of you listening, I'm sure a bunch of you played, you basically, it's this five versus five game. You earn skins that you can customize your skins. There were secondary marketplaces where people were earning these skins and buying and selling it.
Starting point is 00:02:52 And the entire ecosystem from the professional standpoint was based on a protocol called IRC, which is basically a precursor to Discord. So if you think about it, it sounds pretty similar to how certainly the NFT and DAO community space works. You have buying and selling and trading. You have teams and hierarchies that exist. So for example, I was on a team. There were certain VIP people in my chat. It was this goal to bring as many people into the chat as possible and build community. And we did things like creating merch, all that sort of stuff, these community building tactics that I think just, yeah, equipped us pretty well. How rich would you be right now if you could have actually done play to earn Counter-Strike in the same way that exists on, say, Axie Infinity or
Starting point is 00:03:40 these games that we're seeing in development now, if those skins that you had won had had real world value and utility? I mean, richer than I am maybe today. I think it's one of those things where if you log onto a video game, you don't want to see how long you've played. Sometimes some video games is like, you've been playing for 128 days. And I think in the future, you'll look at that as as a badge of honor because you'll see how many digital assets, what real life consequences of earning those digital assets. But yeah, I mean, back in the day, we were just earning it for fun, which is cool too. But I still think that there's a place for play to earn as well. Yeah. But my feeling is that with play to earn, we're going to have a legitimate, uh, transfer of wealth to talented teenagers who are very good at video games.
Starting point is 00:04:31 Yeah. Yeah. I think so. I think, um, I'm excited about the next wave of play to earn games. You know, I think the, the play to earn games today are early and really early. I'm sure you've played around with some of them. And I'm sure some of the people in the audience have too. But I think I'm excited for the, you know, the day when, you know, we get a Counter-Strike level game, but it's play to earn. And we're just not there yet. I agree.
Starting point is 00:05:00 But I think, you know, I guess you can take the half glass half full full or glass, half empty approach with that. I mean, Axie Infinity, I always joke, it's sort of like playing with a Tamagotchi or something. Right. And in the 90s, it's the earliest iteration of a game. There's nothing particularly great about the game, but because you can make money in it, people are finding a way and they're spending their lives doing it. So you sort of made the exact point I always make. Imagine if that's like Fortnite. Right. And it's actually entertaining to play and you would want to spend your time doing it. It's incredible the potential for earning there. backlash, though, this recent backlash of gamers around NFTs. And I'm curious, you know,
Starting point is 00:05:48 I'm sure you've seen what happened with Ubisoft, when they kind of put out this video that they said that they're going to build some stuff on Tezos. And then there was this massive, like, I don't know, 25,000 people dislike the YouTube video in like a day. You know, where do you think that's coming from that sort of resistance to NFTs from some of the bigger gaming companies? I'm not quite sure. Maybe it's because it's the centralized versus decentralized argument, the same people who would love to live in the metaverse, in the sandbox or decentralized land that would never spend their time in Facebook's metaverse. And maybe it feels like it's a cash grab from those bigger companies, but I can't tell you exactly why there's that feeling.
Starting point is 00:06:31 But I was going to ask you something very similar, which is Web3 itself has sort of become a four-letter word, right, amongst certain communities. So why do you think that there's sort of that strange bipolarity between absolute hate and love for the concepts of what's potentially coming. There's this really good Andy Warhol quote I like around Studio 54, which is Studio 54 is a dictatorship at the door, but a democracy on the dance floor. And that's what I really think Web3 is in some ways. I'll explain that a little bit. So yes, Web3, the beauty about Web3 is it's community-based.
Starting point is 00:07:12 You can be global. You know, you can buy into it. You can contribute to a community. But what's happened is some of these communities have, you know, you look at Cool Cats, for example, that NFT community, I think floor price is, you know, 50 grand. You look at Gary V's project, you know, the floor price is 50 grand. You know, some of these DAOs are getting really popular and it's hard to, you know, get noticed. So I think a lot of people, you know, outside the ecosystem have seen their friends get wealthy from this
Starting point is 00:07:46 whole rush. And they honestly just, I think a lot of people feel like they're just out of it. And I think we as like leaders in the Web3 space need to do, well, I'll speak for myself. I think I want to, you know, I want to do a better job at being more open to people who want to come in, teach them, provide more education, because it really doesn't need to be like an us versus them situation. Like I want, you know, I want it to be if it's us versus them, it's us versus the big platforms. Right. You know, it's not like, you know, the Internet users against each other. Yeah, it's interesting because that implies that
Starting point is 00:08:25 people feel like they're already late and they've missed it. Right. And, uh, which by the way, in crypto, I think is everyone's feeling at whatever point they come in. Right. I came in in 2016 and bought Bitcoin for the first time. And I so mad that I didn't buy it in 2013. Those guys were mad. They didn't buy it in 2010 and so on and so forth. But DAOs, NFTs, metaverse, I mean, we're in like the first 1% of the first percent of the first inning, right? So why would people feel like they're already late and already be hating on this when there's plenty of time for them to start engaging with it? I think it reminds me um i think in 2004 i went to my first fish show uh fish the band um and in uh saratoga springs new york in upstate new york and i drove i drove there i get there
Starting point is 00:09:16 and i get to the campsite and the vibe was basically like fish is done like you missed fish i'm like you're you know like it's a you know like 50 of the people were just like oh you know back in 99 and 98 97 this show in vermont like and i felt bad initially a little bit because um i was like wow it's am i getting like the disney world version of fish like is this not the real version of fish? And I think that's the same, you know, thing that people feel today with web three, which is like, there's, you know, crypto is in the news every single day, um, on major, major publications. Um, and I think because of that and just all the stories that come out of it, um, people just feel like it's 2004 uh you know fish and i think like
Starting point is 00:10:07 now i spoke to some you know fish heads actually over the last couple weeks and now they're talking about how 2004 was like the good old days um so super interesting that's just human nature i don't blame them for thinking that way. Yeah, it is human nature. I mean, I'm 45 years old and I'm already the old man who talks about how good music was when I was in high school and college and how bad it is now. Right. And our parents said the exact same thing and that will exist into perpetuity. I would imagine the other side of Web3 being sort of a four letter word or, you know, being controversial is the VC side, right? That Jack has been sort of railing about on Twitter,
Starting point is 00:10:48 Elon Musk has been a bit dismissive of it. But basically the idea that venture capital is making all the money on web three and that the last sort of drops are falling into retail's mouth where we can earn a bit of a profit after the VCs have already gotten fat. Do you think that that's a fair after the VCs have already gotten fat. Do you think
Starting point is 00:11:05 that that's a fair assessment? It couldn't be more unfair as an assessment. Like I think it's too bad that that narrative is being spread because it's just certainly like, you know, it's not true. I think Bology has like put out some, some of the data around it. And yeah, I think like what we need to do is just sort of approach these stories and narratives and, and just put out the data. Like it's not, it's just certainly not true. You know, do VCs make money on, on, on, you know, protocols like Solana where, you know, they got in really early, like absolutely.. But at the same time, they took a lot of risk when people weren't willing to put the money in. And it's still largely a community-owned protocol. And yeah, I don't think Solana would be where it is today without the help of some of those VCs.
Starting point is 00:12:08 Yeah, I mean, I've had Kyle Somani on the show very recently. And I know the guys at Multicoin, they led the first three rounds on Solana. And they're still holding, right? Exactly. Not to their credit. You can be mad that they've, quote unquote, made all the money, but they could have sold out and dumped at any point along the way and had real conviction from the very beginning. You're talking about people who bought this thing at like five cents and 20 cents.
Starting point is 00:12:32 Exactly. That's what kills me about the whole thing is that they're literally holding it like they're literally holding it. If anything, it makes sense to have some VC capital in some of these protocols because VCs are used to getting returns seven to 10 years later. So you don't want flippers. You don't want a ton of volatility. Sell 5%, 10% to some great VCs like Multicoin. But I wouldn't sell 75%, right? I think, yeah. No. It's also that the whole argument you touched on the risk, obviously, it's also dismissive of the fact that nine out of the 10 things you might invest in could go to zero, right? And you could lose all your money. The other side of it, I think, that is totally missed by some of the people who are making those arguments. First of all, there's a few. One is that that's not something that's inherent to Web3. It's just the way money is raised because of who's allowed to invest in things in the United States. Right. I mean, there's accreditation laws. The little guy can't invest in anything. So this isn't a problem with venture capital in Web3.
Starting point is 00:13:46 It's a problem with if a company wants to raise money in any sector, they can only go raise it from venture capital, right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And put yourselves in the shoes of the founder and the founding team. They have this vision. They want to see this being built. For us to say, you know poo poo like you
Starting point is 00:14:07 can't go to vcs and vcs are bad completely i think is is indicative of you know how the media is today where it's very like polarizing one size versus you know uh gary v said on our uh on our podcast uh where it happens he said something really i I like this quote. He said, you know, it's very much fingers, not thumbs. People against people and not like being positive. And I think that's what we're seeing a lot of. Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. The other part that really drives me nuts is that you have this idea that VCs are the ones who are like getting fat and making all the money, which is utterly dismissive of the actual benefits of these platforms to your average person, right? I mean, I use Google every day. I don't care who got rich by being an early investor in
Starting point is 00:14:55 Google. I just care that Google improves my life, right? It makes the access to information easier. So the whole point here is that Web3 or whatever these innovations are, are an improvement in the everyday lives of the people that use them, which has literally nothing to do with who funded it. Yes. And I completely agree. And to me, what I care about is, are these communities safe communities, inclusive communities? Are we, you know, reducing the environmental impact of some of these transactions? How do we how do we think about security and privacy, and making sure that that's super, you know, simple? And how do we just get how do we make it easier for people to onboard to some of these communities, protocols, etc?. That's what I care about. How we get there in terms of like, do VCs own 30% or 20% or 15% or 5%?
Starting point is 00:15:54 I don't think is the major problem right now. Yeah, I agree. So zooming out, taking a sort of a wide view on it, why does Web3 matter? Where is Web3 improving our lives on a day-to-day basis or where will it when it really comes to fruition? So, yeah, we talked a little bit about, you know, where I come from. So, you know, I grew up like one of those nerds. I can get the vibe that you also nerded out on some stuff because you're into music I know for for a fact um and I'm one of those people that like I'll get really into like Colombian coffee and this like particular like region and then like I'll go into the subreddit and like I'll know everything about it and um or a particular car and you know I just like get really deep into it and my whole life I've been building internet
Starting point is 00:16:42 communities um starting just like not as a you know as a as a not to make a living but as just because it was i love bringing people together and i love nerding out i think what you know if you you know today i think what excites me about web3 is um what we can do is a few things to kind of supercharge what I had been doing for the last 15 or 17 years, which is like incentivizing people to contribute and coordinate, which is really difficult. If you have hundreds of thousands, tens of thousands of people, getting people to coordinate and getting them to contribute and incentivizing them is, you know, one of the hardest problems of our day. And, you know, if we can get people to do good things, you know, solve the climate crisis, you know, get plastic out of water, you know, stick it to banks and create like great, you know, great products, financial products for people. I believe that, you know, that's a huge, that's where the internet should have been in, you know, in the nineties. And so I'm excited that we're finally getting there. And I just
Starting point is 00:18:00 think that it, we're just scratching the surface of, of kind of kind of what that's going to be. So for you as a community builder, like you said, that's literally what you do for a living. How do you identify, I guess, the projects and ideas that are worthy of a good community and decide that that's where you want to build? Because I think with anything like the dot-com bubble of the 90s or whatever, you sort of have this flood of entrepreneurs, innovators, and 95% of them are going to be bad ideas that fail, right? Which is totally fine when people come to a space and try to innovate. And then you sort of have that 5% that rise out of it and become the most important companies of that genre or of that time.
Starting point is 00:18:40 So how do you choose the right idea where you're going to focus on building that community when there's so many options? The mistake a lot of entrepreneurs, Web3 entrepreneurs make is they'll go build a community. They'll go spend a lot of money building that, you know, product out. Maybe it's an NFT community, maybe it's a social token, whatever. They launch it and they aren't able to sustain a healthy, thriving community. I believe that if you want to start a Web3 community, the best place to start is to start a Web2 community. So go start a Discord, go start a WhatsApp,
Starting point is 00:19:16 go start an iMessage group, really small, and go hone in on the mission and the raison d'etre of what you're doing. If you can't start a successful Web2 community that brings together around a mission, even if it's in Web2 land, like even if it's just a Discord with no collab land, it's not checking your wallet. Or even if it's just like a WhatsApp, then you're probably not going to make it in Web3 land. So what I love to do is I love to pick untapped communities that have a strong reason to coordinate and come together and then create, you know, an aesthetic, a mission, a brand that speaks to them. And yeah, my hack often is just starting by a Web2 community first. That makes sense. I mean, it's very clear that Discord and Telegram groups and such are still
Starting point is 00:20:14 wildly popular and useful. And certainly I can speak for the crypto space, right? That's where everybody is interacting. So it would make sense, I guess, to start there. But when you start, say, an NFT community around one of these sort of JPEG projects, I've always been sort of dismissive or at least skeptical of a lot of them. I understand why a CryptoPunk or a Bored Ape has value, but I don't understand why random alliterative animal and, you know, adjective pudgy penguin or a lazy lion or, you know, a dismissive Dalmatian or whatever. I don't understand why those have value or why those communities are so passionate about those projects. Well, I think, uh, their passion, you know, not speaking to those, you know, particular communities, but specifically, but I think,
Starting point is 00:21:01 uh, there's tons of projects that the only thing that's bringing them together is making money and appreciation yeah i remember yeah exactly i remember my dad telling me this and i don't know if it's something that he learned or it's like a quote but he i remember him saying um when it when it rains when it sunny, they give you an umbrella. And when it rains, they take the umbrella away. Yeah, that's exactly accurate. And that's how I feel. As soon as people, with some of these NFT communities, as soon as the price appreciation, as soon as they stop going up in value, all of a sudden, the reason to be there is no longer. And it's going to be
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Starting point is 00:23:28 are available in select locations only and not to us persons visit the wolf of all streets dot link slash bullish for important information and risk warnings yeah not two of every single project that ever existed and that's exactly my take on it and people get pretty angry at me when i say that sometimes when i say listen the only reason you're passionate about this asset or this community is because the price keeps going up. And like, you're not going to be your turtle and your turtle's not going to be you. And you're not going to sleep with a picture of it at night if it goes to zero. You're going to move on to something else where you can make money, right? And you're going to probably feel pretty embarrassed. But so how do you build a community that is not there for price appreciation, even if they believe that they're not, by the way, and is genuinely there for a purpose, even if the price went down?
Starting point is 00:24:13 Yeah, I think there's a few things that people should look into. The first is don't do any cookie cutter projects, period. Like don't just take a zebra and make it a raccoon because the staying power is not very good there. If you're going to create an NFT project, think about what am I adding to the space, not subtracting. So that's the first thing. So, and I'll give, actually, I'll give an example of that. Like, I mean, let's just say, you know, with Dom Hoff, Dom, who created the, the loot project
Starting point is 00:24:49 co-founder of Vine, like his whole, that whole project, which is like, for those of you who don't know, it's like black background and like white text like that, you know, was completely new. No one had ever done an artist like that. And the fact that these, these, they call them loop bags. There's basically text of like different RPG, role-playing game, you know, character stuff. So like slippers and gauntlets and stuff like that. And people are actually building games on top of it. Like that concept was new. He added something to the space. So think about how do you add something to the space
Starting point is 00:25:26 is the number one thing. And the second thing would be before you create something, think about what community you're going after. So like, you know, I don't know how this project in particular is doing and this isn't advice or anything like that, not financial advice, but like crypto dads.
Starting point is 00:25:44 Like that's a community, like crypto dads like that's a community like you're a crypto dad so you might have something in common with these other dads and um if they actually you know go and create a roadmap around bringing you guys together and maybe like partnering with like link style who's buying a golf course and doing all these other things, that's a project that I can get behind. So yeah, those two things. Yeah, I think that's incredibly cool and accurate. But I guess to play devil's advocate, I don't know, I've been finding people that I like with no financial incentive my entire life and have groups of friends and we go play golf without having to have like, you know, crypto or, uh, uh, I guess a community behind it. So I guess like
Starting point is 00:26:31 what really makes, takes it from like me and my buddies to, I want to go meet 500 strangers at a golf course that we just bought together with a Dow and play golf, you know? Yeah. There has to be some, you know, deep utility that's bringing you together. Like the, um, someone asked me the other day, they were like, you know, I'm sure you get this too. Like, Oh, just a JPEG is just a JPEG. And the, you know, analogy I was using is like the other day I was at Soho house in Miami and Soho house, which is like, you know, I don't know, three, four or $500 a month is just a piece of plastic. If you think about House, which is like, I don't know, $300, $400, $500 a month, is just a piece of plastic if you think about it. But it's a card that gets you into a space. But it's the space
Starting point is 00:27:13 and the experience of the space, which makes them a multi-billion dollar company. So I think that the only projects that are going to survive are the projects that have that deep utility, have that space. And the projects that the only reason, like community isn't enough. There needs to be utility, to your point. You know, I think community plus utility plus a strong mission are some of the ingredients for, uh, you know, making a great project. Right. As I mentioned at the beginning, you've done this for some of the biggest and most successful communities that exist, but then you decided to start your own company, correct? Late checkout. So what exactly are you guys doing and why did you decide to do that when obviously you
Starting point is 00:28:02 could continue, uh, on the path you were on before? Honestly, because it's fun. I'm optimizing for fun. Late Checkout is a thesis-driven holding company that believes community-based products outperform non-community-based products. And we've set up three business units. We have a fund that invests and acquires community-based products. We have a studio that incubates our acquires community-based products. We have a studio that incubates our own NFT projects, Web3 project, community-based products. And then we have an agency, which is one of the leading community-first, community-based products, Web3 agencies in the world. And we help some of these brands transition to this new world we live in. And I think there's tons of brands that have such incredible IP
Starting point is 00:28:48 that if we, in a non-cash grabby way, actually create utility, community, mission, there's tons of ways that we can include digital assets to leverage and unleash some of that IP. Speaking of IP, one of the biggest companies in the world, Walmart, just announced, I believe they filed seven applications, this massive push towards metaverse, NFTs, and even potentially like a Walmart coin, I guess, their own cryptocurrency. Is it realistic that the biggest brands in the world are going to be able to leverage this properly without it looking like a cash grab, as you just said?
Starting point is 00:29:30 Will you walk into Walmart in the metaverse somewhere and have some replicated shopping experience and go buy your goods there? Or is that not what people want out of Web3? I don't think people want to throw, initially initially at least, I don't, you know, there's that video of like, I think a lot of us have seen it of like picking wine. Maybe it's at a Walmart. And it's like, honestly, no, you know, like I think like we're not there yet.
Starting point is 00:30:00 And as much as like Zuck, et cetera, you know, are trying to push that vision. I just don't think we're there yet. And I think that the most successful brands that go from Web 2 to Web 3 are the ones that are going to do progressive decentralization, do progressive Web 3 and just do it slowly. Like, just like, you know, I was having a conversation this morning with a fortune 100 brand and they have this whole idea of doing like putting their whole loyalty program on, on you know, crypto and, and doing, you know, a hundred thousand NFT project and like spending $20 million in TV ads. And I was just like, how about you just get one, you know just do $1 of on-chain revenue?
Starting point is 00:30:47 How about you just reward 50 of your biggest customers and start there? And I think what's going to end up happening is unfortunately, a lot of these brands are going to look like it's cash grab and it's going to actually make the space look not favorable. But I do think you're going to see some brands who are going to do a really elegant and powerful ways to reward customers. And it's probably over the, you know, you're going to start seeing this over the next 12 to 18 months. Are there any brands, large brands, not communities that are being built in Web3,
Starting point is 00:31:23 but people going from, you know, Web2 to Web3, or even just mainstream, like size of Walmart or luxury brands, who you think are doing it in an elegant way already and could win? I mean, it's really early. I think like what I what I like about, you know, the McDonald's, you know, McDonald's of the world is like they had a small project you know they were you know mcribs um i think nfts and what i'd like about that is it's pure um you know it's a really pure uh like mcrib is kind of like the most hilarious mcdonald's thing right like people saw that shakes and mcribs right exactly exactly so, that's funny and that's noteworthy. And I love that. Had a conversation with Billy, who is the co-founder of Dogecoin
Starting point is 00:32:15 the other day. And he was saying how, you know, we're just talking about why Dogecoin works and he worked and he was just basically like, he basically said, I understand the memes and I built the memes and I do pure memes. And because of that purity, my memes work. So I think the brands that keep it pure for a particular target audience are the ones that are going to win. And there's going to be some cringe stuff that's going to come out, unfortunately. Yeah, that's interesting because it's almost like the brand has to not take itself seriously and do something slightly self-deprecating.
Starting point is 00:32:51 It's a meme to be able to exist in this Web3 world where memes rule. That's not going to align with 99% of the people that try. I ran an agency in 2007 or something when it was the shift from web to social. And we talked to a lot of brands who were thinking about the move to social, like creating a Facebook page, creating a blog with comments, live streaming, all these things. And the biggest brands at the time, we often forget, but they were like, oh my God, having our community, giving them the ability to talk back to us, they're going to say bad things. We can't do this. We take it all for granted.
Starting point is 00:33:39 We take it all for granted. And certain brands did a good job. Certain brands did an okay job and certain brands didn't even try until later. But I think, you know, the lesson I have for that is, you know, in Web3 land, I think the brands that really, really didn't take themselves too seriously, understood how to create healthy conversation, but poke fun, think about virality, bringing in the community. I think those are the ones that won. And I think the same thing's going to be true. We can basically apply a lot of those lessons from social to Web3. Right. And I mean, if you look at the biggest companies in the world in the mid-90s or even
Starting point is 00:34:21 the early 2000s, none of them are there anymore. They sort of, the great analogy of they were the blockbusters and then Netflix came out, they've been sort of replaced. They weren't ready for mobile. They weren't ready for web too. Are we seeing that level of paradigm shift here? Do you think where even the biggest, Facebook's obviously already identified this as the move that they need to make, whether successful or not. Do you think that even the Googles and the other companies that are the biggest in Web2 could now find themselves obsolete with Web3 competitors coming in? Yes. And I know this because some of those Web2 companies have reached out to me and are like very scared. And it's like a tone of like, what do we do?
Starting point is 00:35:10 You know, for the, we felt, we felt so confident. We understood the playbook. There was a playbook. And now what is the playbook? But like even a year, like six months ago, this happened so fast. Yeah. And that's, that's. And that's not cool if you're VP product or chief product officer or CEO even of some of these companies, you need to have a plan.
Starting point is 00:35:34 Yeah. So it seems like these Walmarts of the world and a lot of these are completely reactive to Facebook's move. That's my feeling. I don't know if that's accurate, but I feel like Facebook, being one of the biggest companies in the world, had this surprise move to rebrand to meta and go all in on the metaverse. And now you just have a bunch of people trying to figure out a way to do something and not get fired. I need to go to my boss with a Web3 plan, whatever this Web3 thing is, and we got to make it happen. That's how it feels to me. But wasn't that the same with like,
Starting point is 00:36:03 I need to get to my boss with mobile, social, mobile, social. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And, but most of those failed. And I'm curious if you have thoughts then on what the next iteration of social media is because social media is largely dominates web too, right? I don't know if that's how it feels that way. You know, the, the Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, TikToks, are they going to also have to somehow find a web three plan like what's the next next iteration of social i mean i think that the large platforms will eventually um eventually surrender to web three in some capacity or another, either they create protocols that people, you know, build upon, or they, you know, ultimately get extinct. I'm talking,
Starting point is 00:36:51 I'm not talking about five years from now. I'm talking about like, it's probably going to take a long time because network effects in, so, you know, in all businesses actually are so strong. But I believe that, you know, a lot of these large platforms are thinking about integrating Web3 and making it, you know, they're taking baby steps. Friendster before that was actually kind of amazing. And people forget that that even existed. But I mean, MySpace died hard and fast, right? And it was dominant.
Starting point is 00:37:34 I mean, MySpace seemed to rule the entire world and a year later was non-existent, right? Could that happen? I started a social app in 2016 it was like a discord competitor uh focused really on college campuses and we raised a few million dollars but it was really like the the nuclear winter of social like it really no one was raising money for or doing much in terms of competing with the holy trinity at the time, you know, Facebook and Snap and Google and, you know, in some
Starting point is 00:38:13 respects. So I think that if you're, you know, you're listening to this and you're thinking about create, you know, do I create a social consumer social web three product? I think like now is the time you know like there's so much funding for it there's so much action for it there's a lot of demand there's some cool stuff coming out um i invest in a company called metalink um i don't know if you've seen that but it's an nft it's basically like a web3 version of discord um natively um and there's a bunch of products, you know, rainbows doing some cool stuff
Starting point is 00:38:48 and a little bit in terms of social, but yeah, I think a good time to be building social. And you know, I think the thing to think about if you're building it is how do you create something that isn't just, you know, Facebook is just going to, you know, grab that feature, like NFT verification, like that's going to be table stakes, right? You have to be thinking five years, 10 years ahead. Yeah. I remember having an argument with my friends and my wife's a social media expert. And I was like, Snapchat has killed Instagram. Instagram's dead. And then like five days later stories, right. Or? Or like Clubhouse, so amazing. Nope, Twitter's going to crush that in five minutes. Right, to your point is that if you just create something
Starting point is 00:39:30 that could be a feature on a larger platform, you're toast. But maybe then the move isn't to try to reinvent the wheel, obviously, but to do something more decentralized. I've heard a lot of CEOs starting to talk about decentralized social media. Nobody's gotten very specific as to what that looks like. But even you said, you know, the companies moving to Web3 that decentralize slowly will probably win.
Starting point is 00:39:52 Walmart's not going to decentralize, right? And so is there going to be a huge wave of pushback against more centralized platforms in favor of the few that may be successful at decentralization? Yes, there's going to be more and more pushback, especially as, you know, I believe there's going to be more and more hacks, you know, in these, you know, big platforms like Facebook. So, you know, you'll lose some of your data or it'll show up on the internet and you'll be upset. And because of that, a lot of people will look for decentralized versions of these products. So I think that's a trend that's definitely happening.
Starting point is 00:40:41 I think we've seen a lot of decentralized Twitters, decentralized Facebook, basically decentralized versions of a lot of these social products over the last maybe even five years, maybe even more now. And I just don't, I don't think the decentralized version of Twitter is the thing that's going to win, basically. I think that it needs to be decentralized, but you also need to come up with a new format.
Starting point is 00:41:02 It has to be different. Yeah, it has to be different. Like Clubhouse was cool because it was like, at the time it was like new format. This is cool. This is fun. I can't get this anywhere else. We need that plus decentralization.
Starting point is 00:41:16 That is what's going to win. Yeah, it reminds me of like, you know, you rebrand your company to Long Island Blockchain Ice Tea. And all of a sudden it goes up because you put crypto in it when the name crypto, right? So maybe decentralization, the first iterations will be people attempting to decentralize everything without innovating really at all, right? Exactly. And I think that that's actually what a lot of DAOs look like in their sort of infancy right now. I know that you're focused on that space, but you know, like let's do this,
Starting point is 00:41:45 but democratically, right? And I don't think that that's what's going to win. I'm curious to hear your opinion. Yeah, no, I completely agree. It's not going to win. And I think we're already starting to see it. We're starting to see it. And I think what's cool about the state
Starting point is 00:42:02 of where we are with, you know, Web3 product building, Web3 community building, Web3 growth, Azure acquisition is we may have not created the playbook yet, but I think we've created a few pages in the playbook, at least. Like we're starting to write the playbook. Um, so, uh, it's, it's great and it's exciting because it gives entrepreneurs like, you know, a reference point, um, which also allows for my opinion, better products to build. That makes sense. So in a, in a perfect world, let's say that there's a web three sort of revolution and let's pretend that the blockchains underlying can actually scale to the point of mainstream adoption because they can't right now. Let's pretend that though. What does
Starting point is 00:42:50 the world look like in five years, ideally, if you've built it? In five years, you own your content, first and foremost. The relationship you have with the people you care about and the brands you care about and the communities that matter to you are deeper and you have a deeper place to foster those connections. You work three to four jobs, realistically. You know, you do some bounties for some DAOs, you contribute here, you contribute there, you know, while you're waiting in line for coffee, you fill your gap time by playing, you know, a mobile play to earn game. And I think more people are artists, more people are creators. You know, and I think it starts younger, I think we're are artists, more people are creators. And I think it starts younger. I think we're going to see 13-year-olds, 12-year-olds, 11-year-olds, 15-year-olds making serious bank because they just understand that world. And they understand the trends and the tools for actually going and creating a lot
Starting point is 00:44:09 of these communities and products are going to be no code. So they'll be able to just do it and put it together like a Lego set. So you think the next generation skips college and jobs? I mean, obviously people are going to need to be doctors and lawyers, but like your average person who was maybe like myself going to college to find themselves and get a well-rounded liberal arts education and figure it out. Maybe you've figured it out already when you're 13. Yeah, I think, um, yeah, I think, listen, there's all the, the cool part about college is the whole social experience, you know, social to your point like if you do want to like be a doctor or lawyer but i think um the what is out there on the internet not just in terms of you know in web 2 land it was just like information and web 3 land
Starting point is 00:44:58 it's about like you can really like make a livelihood um i think is just going to be so attractive that um it's going to be hard for your yeah it's going to be hard to go to school when you're 18 like good luck competing with that you know yeah yeah exactly like let me go pay a million dollars probably by then to like get an ivy league education or go get really good at a video game and make millions of dollars. Yeah. Seems like a teenager is going to have a pretty clear choice there if they, if they can do it. Totally.
Starting point is 00:45:33 And you know, I think us as parents, I think we'll understand it. I mean, I certainly will. You know, I, I dropped out of college.
Starting point is 00:45:44 I think you, did you finish? I finished. Yeah. I finished. I didn't, you know, I, I dropped out of college. I think you, did you finish? I finished. Yeah. I finished. I didn't do anything with it, but I finished. You finished. I mean, I'm not going to ask you for your GPA or anything, but. Low threes ish, you know, not, not stellar, but I made it, you know, I could have tried
Starting point is 00:45:59 harder, but like, yeah, I was, I was there to, you know, to, I really, I never intended to use my GPA to get a job and to become a lawyer, get into graduate school. You know, I knew kind of always that I was going to do music or create something or find my own way. So I wasn't that passionate about the school side of it. For me, I grew up in Montreal, Canada. And if you're not, basically, the history there is most of the big jobs when I grew up moved to Toronto from Montreal. And so when I grew up, I knew that a degree wasn't going to get me a job because there were no jobs. There was very little jobs. So growing up, I was just like, OK, I'm going to spend a lot of time on the Internet. You know, like the Internet is my access.
Starting point is 00:46:54 And I think now you have access, but you also have real livelihood. And the tools that, you know, all of us are going to have, not just children, but also like, I'm really interested in like retirees. Yeah. You know, like, I mean, anyone with time and motivation will be able to find a way. Yeah. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's going to be a completely new world before we get done. I want to also ask about the podcast that you do with my good friend, Sahil Bloom. You guys started that recently. Uh, tell me why you decided to do that and how that's going. Well, first of all, thanks for coming on. We're, uh, we're throwing, you know, I think your episode's coming out soon. So for those listening, maybe you
Starting point is 00:47:39 subscribe to our YouTube channel where it happens, youtube.com slash where it happens. And you could subscribe to see your favorite Scott on there. What up? I'm the best, the best Scott. Yeah. The best Scott. Exactly. So, you know, we felt a lot of the podcasts today were very like kind of one way. It was like one way to the audience. So we created a Discord. There's about 3,500, 4,000 people on it. to the audience. So we created a Discord. There's about 3,500, 4,000 people in it. And we basically just hang out with our Discord. We ask them questions. We interact. We talk about like NFTs. We talk about Web3. We talk about building. And then we take some of those ideas and then we invite guests like you to hang out and chat on video mostly. And so far, so good. Yeah. I love doing it.
Starting point is 00:48:28 It was, it was a lot of fun and, uh, definitely made me even rethink the way that I do my show. I was like, I need to be on a couch in Miami and this needs to be much more casual. And, you know, well, I like, I like your, uh, your whole, your vibe and how, like your frequency of how much you do it. Um, cause that makes me, I your frequency of how much you do it. Cause that makes me, I'm just like an audience member. I feel connected to you in that sense. I love that. I definitely feel like this is the greatest job in the world and I would do it every day. If I could, you get to call, you know,
Starting point is 00:48:56 call someone smarter than you who has a, you know, deep knowledge of a topic and they'll spend an hour with you that you can't, you know, speaking of college, couldn't pay for that if your life depended on it, right? You get a, you get a free college course in whatever topic you want for an hour, anytime, you know, to me, that's the most valuable experience you could possibly have.
Starting point is 00:49:15 So I thank you for coming on when, when, where can people follow you? Check out the podcast, check out what you're doing after this. Twitter, I guess, atisenberg uh is my twitter and uh and then the pod just go to trwh.com our website or you can go to youtube like i said youtube.com slash i think it's where it happens um but yeah you'll see it around amazing well i can't wait to uh live in the metaverse with you and uh hang out there and see what we can build. Totally. We'll just have to recreate Florida in the metaverse. That's inevitable, man. Thank you once again for coming on.
Starting point is 00:49:52 Thanks, man. I appreciate it.

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