This Week in Startups - $AMZN & $AAPL earnings, $META investors losing faith, Jay Trading + OK Boomer with Nate O'Brien | E1521

Episode Date: July 30, 2022

Jason is BACK and he's ready to Jay Trade! Jason and Molly wrap up big tech earnings week with a major deep dive on $AMZN's impressive quarter (1:53), $AAPL's slowing revenue growth/growing subscriber base (26:04), and the lack of faith in $META's big bet. (31:44) Producer Rachel wraps the show with another great edition of OK Boomer, featuring popular YouTube and investor Nate O'Brien! (40:18) (0:00) Jason is BACK for a huge news day! (1:53) $AMZN Q2 was highlighted by two insane business segments: AWS and advertising (18:20) iTrust Capital - Visit https://itrust.capital/twist to create your Crypto IRA today (19:24) Continued breakdown of $AMZN's Q2: Amazon Prime and retail; Jason makes another Jay Trade and gives his investment thesis for $AMZN (24:43) MicroAcquire - Sell your business with no fees at https://try.microacquire.com/twist (26:04) $AAPL earnings: slowing growth, but still putting up huge numbers, Apple's 800M+ paid subscribers (31:44) Antitrust action against Meta, Jason gives his take on Meta's all-in bet on the metaverse (39:01) Odoo - Get your first app free and a $1000 credit at https://odoo.com/twist (40:18) OK Boomer: Investor & YouTuber Nate O'Brien joins to talk growing his YouTube to 1M+ subscribers, his journey to investing, and more

Hey, everybody, happy Friday. Jason is back just in time to wrap up the Super Bowl earnings week. Yes, and I am itching to make a J-trade. I was off the grid for 72 hours. Had a wonderful time, whitewater rafting in Northern California. But I got a J-trade in me today. Let's go. What's it going to be? Amazon, Apple, we might talk a little bit about Facebook. Could be anything. It's not investment advice. I want to be clear. When I make a trade, I'm not encouraging you to make the same trade. No. But you should do your own research, obviously. But we also have another edition of OK Boomer from producer Rachel because, yes, it's Friday. And it's going to be a great show.

Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by I trust capital. Did you know that you can invest in crypto through your retirement account and still get the same tax advantages as a traditional IRA? Visit I trust.competal slash twist to start investing to today. Microacquire, the startup acquisition marketplace. Start the right acquisition conversations at your own pace. Get free and instant access to over 100,000 trusted buyers with total anonymity. Say goodbye to brokers and meet your ideal buyer today. Go to try.microacquire.com slash twist. And Odo is a fully customizable and fully integrated

suite of business apps that lets you build and scale your stack as you build and scale your business. Your first app is free forever and right now O-Doo is offering $1,000 off your first implementation pack at O-D-com slash twist. That's O-D-O-O-O-com slash twist. All right, let's go with the most important news. Amazon crushed it, Molly. What do we got here? I mean, after a really meh Super Bowl week of tech earnings, we got a touchdown. A very, very exciting end zone spike. Amazon reporting strong earnings. The stock was up as much as 12% early on Friday. In fact, I think the numbers are not just strong. In some cases, they are. And this is a direct quote from producer Nick. Outright ridiculous. We're in redonculus territory. Okay. Let's go through the

numbers here. Really are, yeah. Because it's three businesses, Four businesses. I mean, they're firing on all cylinders, but let's go through it. And every one of them is killing it. Q2 revenue was up 7.5% year over year to $121 billion. That's a quarter of one quarter's worth of money. The Q2 net loss was $2 billion. Last year they made $7 billion in profit. So they did lose money this quarter, but that's okay.

Wait for it. Yeah. AWS revenue was up 33% year over year to $19.7 billion. AWS by itself. Just one of the three-legged stool that is this insane juggernaut is currently on a $79 billion run rate. Unbelievable. Just unstoppable. In fact, Jemimine Ball, who is just so great from Altimiter, had a tweet breaking down the current state of the cloud giant.

So just the question of like who is winning the race to the cloud. Amazon, $79 billion run rate growing 33% year over year. The last quarter growth was 37%. Azure coming up so fast, that's Microsoft's cloud, $55 billion run rate, going 46% year over year, last quarter grew 49%. And then you have Google Cloud, which is in it and growing. This includes G Suite, though, so $25 billion run rate growing 36% year over year. Last quarter grew 44%.

There's a little bit of gamesmanship going. on here in what people are including in the cloud. Yeah. So, but. That G Suite thing is real interesting. I think Microsoft is also including some things in cloud. I was hearing some back channeling about like, well, is that cloud like you're providing compute services to people or is it like some internal services that you're bundling

into the cloud? Putting aside the definitions, this category is redonculus. And it's only to sustain 30% growth. on, you know, tens of billions of dollars is extremely hard to do. These are large numbers, Molly. These are, it's just not like a startup that went from, you know, 10 million to 15 million or 10 million to 14 million. You know, this is 50 billion dollars, 30 billion dollars, 80 billion dollars.

You went from 15 billion to 19 billion in a quarter? Yeah. It's nuts. And it's not stopping because there's tons of people who are still running their own clouds. You know, you set up a data center. you might hold on to it. It might have a 10-year lifespan.

And then at some point, you're going to say, hey, I'll move it over. And then plus, consumption of information on the web probably grows at 20, 30, 40% a year, right? Our usage of storage space,

I just put my camera on raw files for some photos. Because my friend was like, you don't do raw. I'm like, no, how do you do raw on your iPhone? He's like, you got to, they don't put it on by default.

They kind of hide it. But that's because you're going to be doing whatever it is, like, you know, seriously large photos. Yeah, you're going to fill up your, And Paltry iPhone storage immediately.

Well, I have the two terabytes that I have like over a terabyte open. So I was like, well, you know, I'm going to start taking some raw ones and I'm going to start editing it. And then you look at video. You know, we weren't shooting an HD. You used to have to click to shoot the HD button on on your iPhone. Now that's on by default, right? And let alone. I mean, that's just consumer stuff.

And then you have like massive compute projects and entire companies running on these servers and podcast. And video. All of this. All of this. All of this. All of this. run rate, which I feel like we're saying, 80 billion. We also talked about, with Dear Durbosa, Google potentially on purpose, sort of, spending to get customers, spending to get growth, losing money on purpose on Google Cloud to try to catch up.

But these numbers show you why this is so competitive. And if Google is, in fact, spending a lot of money to catch up in this in terms of the market share, like, you can see why, because once you lock it in, it prints money. Yeah, and Azure, you know, has been on this. I know this from the, I know this from the startup space. Amazon in the early days used to sponsor a lot of what we do, a lot of my events. Then they were like, yeah, we don't need to sponsor. And they were playing all kinds of games. They would give Y Combinator a better deal than TechStars.

They would give Y Combinator a better deal than my accelerator, our accelerator, launch accelerator. They were just like, Amazon was a bit arrogant. The AWS team was like super arrogant with me. And they were like, oh, we're coming to this. We're going to this. And I was like, no, you're not. You know, like, oh, we're coming to Angel Summit. And I was like, no, you're not coming to Angel Summit.

It's for angels. So like, oh, yeah, but we want to go, we'll buy two tickets. I'm like, no, it's by invite. If you want to sponsor something, you can sponsor something. But then Azure and Microsoft, you know, for the last 10 years, I've been like, hey, J-Cal, can we help your startups? We'll give them, you know, $100,000, $150,000 in credits. And then what Amazon was doing, which was, you know, I always found very offensive. And I told it to them, I'm always very honest.

They were favoring Y Combinator companies. They were giving Y Combinator companies a better deal than our companies or tech stars. And I told them, I was like, you know what? It's lame. I don't want to work with you guys. go pound salt. I'll just work with Microsoft and Google. And I did that.

And Microsoft has been incredibly generous to startups, and they don't require them to go to, like, be anointed by Ycombinator. I'm not, and I'm not, there's nothing against Y Combinator companies, but if you're Amazon, just don't be arrogant. Like, help everybody equally. Yeah.

And Microsoft did that, and Google Cloud started doing that. And I am seeing more and more founders using Azure. I haven't seen more founders using Google Cloud, if I'm being honest. Everybody used Amazon. then because of the credits I've seen so many people go to Microsoft and they're like, hey, this is good stuff

and what's happening also, Molly, is there's going to be parity. So all of these services are going to be the same and then I've started talking to a lot of founders they're building their software to be portable. So, okay, Microsoft gave me some credits, great. Then you check your bill and then there are companies now

that will monitor your bill, tell you how to lower it or say, hey, move your storage over here. Or here's a better deal for you. So this is going to be a dogged fight. And I think you'll see people take their whole startup, their whole company, and it'll be cloud independent. And I think that's going to be a big part of this. But these are the three winners, right? Here's your gold, silver.

Oh, yeah. Because it's gold, silver and bronze. This is an unswimmable moat, right? Like nobody's going to come in here and pop up cloud services. It's like the CAPEX that it takes to build, you know, I mean, it's sort of like so easy for people to forget that the cloud is. a lot of computers taking a lot of space. Like this is not a fortress that can be climbed by some startup. So absolutely, these are your three winners, no doubt.

Yeah, and I do think, you know, I wouldn't count out a Google at making a run. They haven't been super focused on it, but they could keep investing. They could lose money on it for a while. They could give huge discounts to get people to move over there and test their stuff. But Microsoft is gaining ground. to get your, you see if you are growing 13% faster than your competitor, which is really a third, you know, more than, uh, that 13% is a third more than 33% or a little bit more. So they're going to catch up. I think it'll be a, it's right now going to be a two horse race. And I think I wouldn't count Microsoft out. I could see a flip happening here. I could see Microsoft, you know, reaching AWS level and then maybe even beating them. It's unlikely, but I do think it's the gap is going to continue to close. That's my take that unlikely. Yeah. I'm, I'm 100% with you on this. And I see no reason. and why Microsoft wouldn't reach at minimum parity. At minimum.

All right, but that's only one. We're only through one of Amazon's businesses right now that's in the billions of dollars per quarter. Amazon's Q2 advertising revenue, a business most people didn't really even realize that Amazon had generated $8.7 billion in Q2 up 18% year over year. It had generated $16.6 billion of revenue

through the first half of 2020. so it's on pace for over $30 billion this year. That's bonkers. If you just combine AWS and its ad business, a business almost nobody even realizes that Amazon has, then this company is on pace for $104 billion of dollars of revenue, and that is entirely excluding the whole retail business in Amazon Prime. Right.

And there's a reason for this. If you look at Google's advertising, you type in, you're looking for, you know, an iPad case, iPad keyboard. The ads, I mean, the advertisers don't have to guess. There's no cycle graphics here. You're looking for an iPad keyboard. And we know you're in Palo Alto, so here's your options in Palo Alto. And, you know, the ads, therefore, on Google Search are content.

What Amazon realized was, if you were to put ads all over the search results, and you just put, this is the Amazon consensus pick. You could insert natively, this is what native advertising is, the ads are no different than the content, you could just throw in a couple of paid ads, and nobody knows the difference. And what happens organically, Molly is, and it should be obvious to everybody,

if you're making money, then you can spend money on these click ads, right? So you do a search for the iPad case on Amazon. Well, people go to Amazon first now. I don't go to Google. and search for an iPad case, I go to Amazon first. If I go to Amazon first, and that's a vertical search engine for shopping, they have better data.

So page rank is great for content. But page rank is not great for sorting products. What's great for sorting products? Reviews, return data, and all that kind of stuff. So that is why Amazon's ads are content. They feel like content, if they're good. and it doesn't detract from their actual sales. It's super also.

I mean, Amazon has such a crappy UI in so many ways, but the advertising insertion is so seamless. I mean, it genuinely is. And a lot of times I'll see the sponsored result at the top. And then the third organic result will be the same thing, but all these great reviews and whatever. And I'll end up clicking the sponsored result because I'm like, I don't know, sure. It's the exact same.

It's right here. I can see that it's like a real thing. It's got all the reviews. It's not just like somebody bought this placement and it's a scam. And it's so smoothly inserted from a user experience perspective that you're just like, yeah, sure, fine. I'm not about this at all. There's a dark side. There's also a dark side.

They also are. Of course there is. It's advertising. Well, no, but it's really sinister. Google had a massive controversy. You would do a search for, I don't know, Zendesk, right? Or HubSpot. well then HubSpot and Zendesk's competitors would buy the three ads above the first organic result

and people fought this and said hey this is unfair Google said okay sue us if you don't like it but we're doing it so they would sell your keyword for your company to your competitors what does that mean you have to do well you have to buy your own keyword so if your Zendesk or if your HubSpot or if your sales force or whoever you are Volvo Volvo has to pay to put Volvo up top so that people who are buying whatever Mercedes similar model don't take the top slot above them

so you're basically paying for every organic click and the users on Amazon and the users on Google don't know the difference I would say in 60 or 70% of the time this is something the FTC should investigate they don't actually know they're clicking on it it is absolutely an FTC investigation waiting to happen but these companies, you know, have figured out a way to dodge this one.

But my lord, how many times have you looked at a search result on Amazon and you see like, oh, this iPad case is ranked in the top five? But then there's another version of it just three clicks away, you know, in the ranking. That's the ad version. So you see it twice. Yeah, exactly. And so it's pretty sinister, but it's super effective, right? Yeah.

And now if you... Same with Google, where if you're at this point, especially if you're a content and creator. It's, you know, you have to pay to have your own stuff seen on Google. Yeah, it's, I, look, nobody, advertising is among the more pernicious business models that we humans have created, right? There's nothing like, of course, there's nothing altruistic about advertising ever and there never will be. So keep that in mind. However, it is a very, very effective way to make money. And Amazon figured that out, like, really quietly. I remember several years ago, you know, talking to my producers at Marketplace being like,

we shouldn't do stories about this Amazon ad business. And then as of last year, Amazon hit 10% of U.S. digital ad market share. It's probably closer to 15 now. Yeah, it's going to keep going. And they were shipping all that money to Google. So this has been a 10-year plan by Amazon to not have to shift their, shift their money to Google and get people to go over there. You know who else is doing this at the same exact time? Apple. Yeah. Apple, when you search on your phone, is starting to show you a collection of data. They'll search your local. device and they'll look for things in apps on your iCloud account, your photos, and their own app store before they send you to the web. So Apple is trying to intercept searches as well,

and that will be highly effective, right? So the things that will not be affected in advertising just to put a pin in it is what you're going to see is the people who don't have this very clickable targeted advertising where the search advertising, search advertising, basically. with the search matches the destination and the keywords, which includes Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and Snap. Those are less essential.

You have no choice but to pay Google and Amazon, and I predict you have no choice but to pay Google Play Store and Amazon Play Store if you want to participate in those. But you can kind of take off during a recession, Pinterest, Facebook, TikTok, and Snap. And that's what you're going to see is the bifurcation of the ad market during a downturn, which means there might be an opportunity to actually buy those names that are going to flatline over the next year.

We're already seeing what SNAP, you know? Right. You buy the stock you mean or by the companies? Well, the companies could get bought, certainly. But I do think the stocks will really get pummeled. And, you know, it's going to be a one-year, you know, advertising downturn. And we're in the first quarter of it. Like people are just pulling back their ad spend

because they plan the ad spend for the year or six months typically. So, you know, Q2, Q1, 2, and 3 were kind of baked in. Q3 start to see softness. Q4, maybe people have to buy for the holidays, but they'll move to only what's essential. So I do think you're going to see the slowdown in Q1 and Q2 of next year.

And that's when you'll see Snap will lose 20% of its value. Facebook will have a rough first half of the year. They might do okay with a dead count bounce in the fourth quarter, but you're going to see the first half of 2023, in all likelihood, be a really challenging half a year, two quarters for the... Which we did see from meta earnings

already reflected. I mean, the fact that the fact that Facebook ad buys are now totally optional, it shouldn't be, you know, like I want to highlight that bit of that, that's a big deal. And that it does not bode well for that company combined with the Apple privacy changes. It's like Apple

made these privacy changes. Like Apple seems to be executing a perfectly played hit on Facebook at this point. Like, it's just an assassination. They're like, the privacy thing cost them $10 billion. And they're going to come in and scoop up some of that ad share. And it's just a, it's just a cut in the throat. Somebody watched the gray man this week. Exactly. It was me. A bunch of asset classes have been hit hard so far in 2022. But of course, that can be where the opportunity is. And if you are long-term believer in crypto, you need to take a look at ITrust Capital. It trusts let you invest in crypto through your retirement account.

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fees may apply. Cryptocurrencies are a speculative investment with the risk of loss. I trust Capital, Inc. does not provide legal investment or tax advice, and you need to consult with qualified legal investment or tax professionals. So you got the AWS business on fire, the advertising business on fire, but the business. businesses that we all use are retail and Amazon Prime. So how are those doing? Yeah. Third leg of the stool. Also, an $8.7 billion quarter. That's Q2 subscription revenue, which includes Amazon Prime and all of that stuff that you accidentally buy through there and can't figure out how to cancel, like Showtime and Motor Trends. I went through the other

day. I finally figured out where to find all my digital subscriptions. I was like, for God's sake, there's like $100 a month. However, all of us paying for that plus Prime, generated almost $9 billion in a single quarter, and that was up 10% year over year. Prime has over 200 million subscribers cost $15 a month or $140 a year, and they just keep adding stuff to it, potentially including eventually one medical, has Amazon built the super app, basically. Let's think about that. You can get music.

You can buy whatever you want. You can do commerce. You get music, you get their video. Yeah, I mean, if they bought Lyft or Uber, you know, there was a lot of speculation in the early days for Uber investors. The team did not want to sell. They wanted to go public. But there was a lot of back channel amongst the investors in Uber that Amazon and Apple were the two likely candidates to buy it. Apple because, you know, the iPhone, you know, wanting to have, it was the most valuable app on the iPhone for a very long period of time.

Amazon for obviously reasons like last minute. And so I still think that that's a possibility. I could see Amazon wanting to buy Uber now. Would they be allowed to? Under LenaCon, probably not. Hard to say. I do think that groceries, I would be curious to know how much of a win that's been for Amazon. Because I have tried, like either the Whole Foods or the Amazon Fresh thing, and neither of those have ever stuck for me.

And I'm a pretty dedicated grocery delivery person. and I would love to have that all in the same app. Why? Is it the interface? The interface is terrible. Then they changed it. Amazon does this really brutal thing internally where it's like they try two things. And if it doesn't work, they just nuke it.

So it's like the grocery thing went to Amazon Fresh. They changed the interface. The app change. You know, it was just this sort of like it was like weirdly hard to find. Then during the pandemic, Amazon Fresh deliveries were way slower than Instacart and DoorDash. Now DoorDash has groceries. I actually weirdly feel like that's the one. This is purely.

anecdotal and so I would be curious to know what other people think. But for me, that's the weak part of their stable. Yeah, you know, here's the thing. When you have a business that is printing large amounts of money and then you have smaller businesses. And when I say small, you know, it's not a hundred billion a year or 180 billion a quarter. It's very hard to get up for a five billion a quarter of business. Management can only focus on so many things. The short term memory is seven plus or minus two, right? You can remember seven numbers. That's why phone numbers are seven.

A management team can only remember seven plus or minus two. And in those seven are, you know, probably three of them are internal things like hiring people and finance, you know, and managing the stock. So you can arguably manage four or five business lines before your management team, your board breaks. Yep. It's too many pokers in the fire. It's just too much to handle. And then you just don't do a good job at it. And so that's what's happening here.

The only way to really make that work is when you have highly distributed systems. So, you know, they'll get to it eventually. But I'm very happy with my J-Trade on Amazon. I bought $50,000 worth of Amazon as an official J-Trade. I think it was my second at $124 a share. And it's up 100. I bought 400 shares. And you know what?

I feel like when you got a winner, you got to keep buying the winners, right? So I am going to live on the air right now Oh my goodness Open up my app Hell yeah I'm opening up my app right now I'm just taking a look at my Amazon Nick is like I click the trade

More Stitchvix He's like let's go No I have 400 And let's see If I bought if I had a thousand shares If I buy 600 more shares I was like 80 grand worth of shares Let me review this trade

If I had 600 shares Now I'm on an even thou I swipe up to submit Order is for sure received on my thing and the order's complete. So I'm just adding another 80 dimes to my position here. J-trade is completed.

We got a completed J-trade. Not investment advice. Here's my thesis. I think Amazon is going to get broken up in the next five years. Yeah. And I think that's going to double the price of everything.

Exactly. When they separate these businesses and AWS is its own standalone business and then everything else is in the other company, you know what's going to happen? the other company, the retail company, is going to raise prices 10%. We're all going to be addicted to it,

and they're going to be wildly profitable because they have to be. They won't have the ability to ride the AWS wave anymore. I can't wait until it gets broken up. This is not investment advice, but let's see if we hear ourselves soon in this next story, too. I'm making my own trades. It's not investment advice.

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All right. Speaking of to the moon, Apple, let's talk about the other big elephant. Let's finish off. Finish. Bring this tech earnings plane to a landing. Apple also reported earnings. I mean, I don't know the last time.

This was like a super moon, blood moon situation this week where they all reported in the same week. Two days, yeah. Apple reported earnings for fiscal Q3 beat expectations for sales and profits, but growth slowed a little bit. The stock was up slightly today, up about 3%. It's down 11% year-to-date, but is doing way better than Google, Meta, Netflix.

Yeah, meta-down 50%. Right? Cute, yeah, which honestly, just keep it going. Fine by me. Q3 revenue was $83 billion. dollars. I mean, again, you read these numbers sometimes and you're just like, bonkers. That's a quarter. That was, however, up only 2% year over year. And the revenue growth was, I mean, this is actually like almost a hard break at this point. Revenue in Q3 compared to

2021's Q3. 2021, they grew revenue 36%. And then in Q3. Over the year before, which was a pandemic year. So you have that like, you know, reopening. kind of trade, right? Reopening. I'm going to buy my new iPhone and get on the road, get some AirPods, get on the road, got it. And then during the re-reopening, they only grew 2%. Reopening part-de. Everybody already had their phone. And also, you're kind of not as, the thing you need when you're stuck at home is gadgets, honestly. Like, again, anecdotally, this is exactly what we did. Like, my kid and I got new iPhones. We all got new laptops because we were all a sudden at home. Then we bought the Oculus. Like, I was buying consumer electronics like a fiend.

And now I'm like, forget that. Let's get airplane tickets. That makes sense. And if you, if we are in a recession and you're feeling the pinch, let's say you're feeling the pinch or you're feeling pessimistic. Are you going to drop? I think I spent $1,400 with tax on my last iPhone because I always buy the one with the max memory and everything.

Because it's my job, right? And so I don't, I'm trying to save money on it. I'm just like, this is a place where I'm not going to be efficient because I spent so much time on it. So even if you're only spending a thousand on your phone, it's a thousand bucks. It's a lot of cheddar. I mean, these things are not, everybody's like living in this fantasy land where like a smartphone is still five or six hundred bucks. There's no subsidies. You're paying a thousand.

And maybe if you trade yours in, you get two or three hundred off. And they're awesome. I think people are going to skip a year. There's no reason to get a new. They're awesome. Yes. That's the other issue is that these things are awesome. Why would you upgrade if you don't have to?

If you're on a business account or you're flush, I understand. It's a luxury. It's well worth paying for. The thing I would look at here is services. I was just going to say that. I'm scrolling to that right now. They're at 19.6 billion in services. They have, I think, 800 million people paying for subscriptions with them. Now, I talked about who's going to be the first to get to a trillion, I'm sorry, a billion

subscribers. And I said Disney Plus in the video space. I believe Disney Plus will get, be the first between Hulu, ESPN and Disney Plus. I think they get, and whatever else they add to it. I think they'll get to a billion paid subscribers globally. Well, here we go. This includes AppleCare, which is a, I wish that would take that number out, but this also includes news, music, Apple Plus TV plus TV. Fitness thing.

TV Plus, the fitness nonsense, which nobody cares about it. So terrible. It's garbage. Yeah. Side note, I can't, but you should be embarrassed. about how terrible that product is. However, let's keep going. Let's keep going. So anyway, they have... I also want to compare this to, like, let's go back to those Amazon numbers. Remember how we were like, Amazon is bananas, right? It's bananas. Apple's got $19 billion in services revenue,

including all of its subscriptions in a single quarter compared to Amazon's 8.7 billion. Like, Amazon with the prime juggernaut is pulling in almost $9 billion a quarter and Apple's doubled that. Yes. I mean, people who buy iPhones, buy AppleCare. I don't because I just factor it. I don't lose my phone. I don't drop my phone. I'm that guy.

I got a lanyard. I got a case. I don't lose or break my stuff. There's another person who I cohabitat with who breaks her phone all the time. And my three daughters don't have phones. So that narrows down who else in the family is breaking their phone all the time.

And she has to have AppleCare because breaking her phone is like one of her, you know, key skills in this life. And so she gets AppleCare. I mean, if Apple ever loses money, it's going to be because of the number of times my wife breaks her phone. So I think there's a lot of people who do buy it.

So I would love to take out the 825. Is it half Apple care? The other thing I wonder, too, is whether if services includes apps and just includes that 30% Vig? That includes their Vig for taking 30% for the people, but it does not include the 825 is not people subscribing to Netflix

or whatever else subscriptions people are making through the App Store. Although I don't think Netflix does their subscriptions to the app stores anymore. Anyway, we'll double click on those and get back to you on that. But great job, Apple. Yeah, I mean, great job. Let's not gloss over the fact that it includes that 30% cut of every transaction you make, because that's the, that just to be clear, is the antitrust complaint.

That's the one they're coming for. So that's like, that is a business that could be in some danger from antitrust regulations, and it's the, you know, it's growing. Yeah. And it's the majority of that service is. see Lena Con did her first action and it was against Meta reputation matters

so meta was going to buy some VR app for some exercise app and they're blocking it so I did see that for Lena Con's first action I think kind of silly because it's such a small

acquisition but I think it's indicative of who to go after. They were all small acquisitions before they, right? It's catching kill. It's like, yeah, get them early when it's small and then. Yeah, I mean, but it's not like

it's going to change the fate of the industry kind of thing. You know, like, you could argue buying whole foods or buying one medical feels like, whoa, you know, this could change the balance of power

in groceries at some point. Buying one app from your app store? Is that really going to change things? I don't know. But this does show the difference, Molly, between Apple and Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg would have, if he owned the app store,

would go down the top 50 and he would buy them or replace them. He's never been able to run an app store. This is why Zuckerberg will fail with meta. VR is going to be the biggest failure. And trying to take on Apple will be the biggest failure. I think Zuckerberg's ever been handed in his career. I think he's going to blow $30 billion and cripple Facebook. Yeah.

With this stupid bet. He can't be. print money can't beat Apple it's the stupidest bet I mean wouldn't they lose almost three billion dollars trying to compete against Apple with this I think so Fouca and investors are just

are losing faith in that by the second right they're just like really yeah well I mean why not focus on if it's one of the most all in bets I've ever seen in tech and as I said on my Twitter I was just having a moment of clarity

I was like you know all the people I know who are into VR are just huge dork and I didn't say this. This wasn't like content farming or some bullshit. I was just like, I stop pitching me on VR nonsense. Like, I understand for education, and I think AR is going to be big, and it's like another five years from now. But all of this, like, I just have zero interest in doing anything in the metaverse.

And nobody I know does. And the people who keep who shut up about it are like seven dorks or really socially awkward weirdos. Sorry. And then I, then these people are like, oh, I love it. I'm like, how many hours did you do this year? And they're like six. I'm like, six hours when? Oh, in 2022.

I'm like, okay, it sounds like a great business to be in. I don't think it's going to work. I honestly don't think VR is going to work. I think it's D-O-A already. I don't think people want it. Sorry. Yeah, I think most people don't want to live their lives in VR. However, I would be curious to know what kids say and kids think.

Man, kids want to go. curious about. No. I don't bite either. I think kids want to go out. They want to have experiences. You should, you see them when they get together,

like especially like after the pandemic, right? You'd see kids get together and it's just like their little bodies are like, ma, blah, let's go do so. I mean, speaking of kids, let's bring on producer Rachel.

Let's do it. Yeah. Producer Rachel. Not necessarily, but if we talk about it on the road to okay. I mean, you're half my age. How old are you,

Rachel's like, HR. How old are you, Rachel? How old are you, I'm 24. Okay, I'm double your age, young lady. I was talking to your dad and your mom this week.

They were checking in. They were like, how's my daughter doing? What do you think about VR? My family does have a headset, and it was really cool when we first got it, but it died pretty quickly. So we were like power users right after getting it for Christmas, and I have a ton of siblings. My two brothers, one's two years younger, one's four years younger, than a little sister, six years younger. So we're hitting everybody, right? The only one console that has just like with hold, like with help the test of time has been the we and specifically we sports.

That's like the only thing honestly. Besides like my brother's obviously playing like Halo on an Xbox like a traditional console game and like we have Nintendo Switch. But the only thing that has really kept like everybody as a group. Yeah, we sports. Okay. So you did the buy try goodbye. Exactly what I've said. Try.

Oh, no, it's the buy, oh my, goodbye. You buy it, you're like, oh, my, this is incredible, and then it's goodbye. This thing is sitting in the garage. The one use case. Or it's under the TV. It does really well when you first bring it to college, I think. I think it's phenomenal. Like, my brother has it in college, at his dorm.

And I think it does well if you're in a college dorm. But at that point, are you just doing it? Because, like, you don't have anything else to do. You know what I mean? I don't want to. The second you make a friend. Bring up the, Mom didn't let him bring up the ex. box because it was my other brother wanted to have it at home. So is that that just what it was

stuck with? Yeah, Molly, my friend has a theory. I was speaking to my friend the other day. These tech, this tech, if it doesn't get you chicks, this is my friend said. It's a little misogynistic. I would never say this. He's like, this stuff. If it doesn't like, just say dates. Just say dates. Save yourself here. If it doesn't get you dates with chicks and chicks don't dig it, it's going right in the garbage. And I've, You have two ladies on the program. Do you, if a guy's like, hey, you want to come play VR with me? You already bashed the number one game for girls already on Twitter.

Yeah, that's true. You did do that. Stray is the best steam game. I was out looking for like a Raspberry Pi like earlier today. I was like I want, I want Strait. For those of you who don't know, it's like a cat simulator. And Friedberg. Got it.

Okay. I love it. I think that is, I thought it was brilliant. I do think it's. It's cool. Mm-hmm. Now, I'm walking back on it. All right.

I got a good though. I got a minute. So what do we, what do you got for OK Boomer? Tell us what you got for OK Boomer. Me? Yeah. That's right. Yeah.

So I was joined today by my friend Nate O'Brien of Roadrunner VC. It's a rolling fund that he started. And Nate is a very popular YouTuber. He has 1.2 million subscribers. Absolutely kills it in the finance productivity space. And I got to talk to him about his experience starting off. at Penn State University where I went, but he then switched over to become a full-time content creator and now has a rolling fund. They invest in pre-seed and seed stage startup. So that was

really interesting to see his path in here, how it's been learning to raise a fund as a 24-year-old. Amazing. Wow. 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube where he talks about finance, investing, entrepreneurship, minimalism, and productivity. Yeah. He lives remote in the woods sometimes, like with with no phones and stuff. He does a full Jason. Love it. He pulled to Jason. 72 hours on the room. Right. Great job, Rachel. And I will see you. Can we play multiplayer cat game?

Oh, we'll see if we can do Stray. We can just walk around. Walk around. Yeah, let's play. I want to play Stray live on the show. Next week, set me up with Shray. I'll play it live on the show. Raspberry Pies for all. Before we get into the ad, everybody, it makes our team so happy to see our partners celebrate big wins. And I'm thrilled to hear about the huge funding round,

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OK Boomer. I understood the assignment. Thank you, Nate, for coming on today's segment of OK Boomer. Nate O'Brien is a YouTuber. He has 1.2 million subscribers on YouTube, where he talks about finance, investing, entrepreneurship, minimalism, productivity, you name it. I met Nate quite a few years ago now actually on my own podcast, which kind of, so I guess, thank you, Nate. You probably helped me get this job because your episodes did very well on my podcast because

most people that listened went to Penn State. And although we didn't know it, Nate and I went to Penn State at the same time. But Nate dropped out because he absolutely freaking killed it on YouTube and now has funded this awesome thing called Roadrunner vC, which I want to dive in and learn more about. But first, Nate, again, thank you. Can you give everybody the story of going to Penn State, YouTube, and then ending here with Roadrunner? Yeah, sure. So I think Penn State is one of the biggest alumni networks in the world. And so that's whenever someone goes to Penn State is sort of like an instant thing in common. And that's kind of, I think, how we sort of connected there. Yeah, so I went to Penn State,

2016. I went to college with the intention of dropping out, but I kind of used college as like an insurance policy. It's like, okay, look, I'm not making enough money. I need to make sure that I can figure something out. So I started launching YouTube channels in 2016. And then every year launched a few more. So now we have 10 and a handful of blogs as well. Wow. That is super duper awesome. How did you know that it was the right time to drop out of school? So I said a goal. I think it was like 10 or 15,000 a month that I wanted to be making just so I could, you know, really justify it. Because I didn't want to be the person where I dropped out with no plans and nothing going for me because I knew that businesses usually take at least 12 to 18 months to really start to ramp up. So I just wanted to make sure I had

that nice safety barrier there. Yeah. And you said you went to college with the intention of dropping out. Why did you choose to go to Penn State rather than a community college for people listening. Penn State is a super expensive college. It is, I believe, one of the most expensive state schools in America, like maybe number two other than Wisconsin. So that seems like a pretty big deal. to attend, like, college in general is expensive in the States. Penn State is super expensive, even if you're in state. Like, why did the decision to go there? Yeah, I really didn't want to live with my parents.

I love my parents, but I was, you know, I was 17. I was like, hey, I need to get out of the house. And so Penn State is just kind of the go-to school for anyone in Pennsylvania. It was between that and Pitt. I just flipped a coin and it landed on whatever it was, heads or tails. And so I said, okay, I guess I'm going to Penn State. Oh, my gosh, you almost went to Pitt? Yeah.

Oh, no. Oh, man. It was a 50-50 chance. Yeah, I was between Syracuse and Penn State because I was like, I just want to go to like the most like American-y kind of college there is. I was like, I want like big sports, like either big basketball or big football, visited Syracuse and there was like five feet of snow and I'm like five feet tall. So I was like, nah, it's Penn State.

Penn State for me because I visited Penn State in the summer and like little did I know, Pennsylvania also gets a ton of snow. So very interesting that you just, Penn State, it seems like, was a very like not a huge decision for you. And do you think like your time in college at all helped you start a YouTube career was something, or were you doing YouTube already before attending school? So I was doing YouTube, but it wasn't too seriously. I was essentially just for AP exams that I would take in high school, I would make YouTube channels for them. And that's how I would study is I would create videos.

And that was my form of studying instead of doing other things like taking practice quizzes. So yeah, that's, I've been on YouTube for a long time. And I've had a lot of failed channels, like farming channels and stuff in the past. It's just one of those things that, like, you probably start five or six channels before you take one seriously. Yeah. And so I know this because I know you outside of the wonderful world of the internet. But you actually did some other stuff before in business, I would like to call it, before even YouTube, having you do that ag space. So what are some of the businesses you had, I guess, starting off, like, as a kid?

I think my first business was, I would steal my sister's toys and then sell them back to her, which was like my first. main profitable one. It was really good margins. After that, though, probably I started a chicken farm essentially. So I had over 100 chickens and I was selling eggs to all my teachers in school and all the neighbors. Turns out a lot of agricultural businesses are really, really tough though. And not only labor intensive, but the margins are really tough. And so, like, I was selling eggs for $2 a dozen, but my cost was probably $1.90 per dozen. And had a firewood business with my brother. as soon as he turned 16, got his permit, and then got a truck. And so we started the firewood business, lawn care business. Just very cash, cash-heavy, cash-oriented businesses straightforward. You know,

you go mow 20 lawns at 50 bucks a piece and, you know, it's $1,000 a week or something along those lines. So that's sort of how I paid for college early on as well. Wow, that's super-duper awesome. So you've always been entrepreneurial. That's always been in your blood. Why did you decide to start a YouTube channel? And then evidently also, what really was the reason it took off. Yeah, so I started with my personal brand, which was finance videos specifically. And that was really just because I was trying to learn about investing finance content in 2016. And there was nothing on YouTube. And people don't really remember this now because it's like, if you go on YouTube, there's so many, there's so much content, right? But it literally did not exist.

If you could type in how to save money or how to invest on YouTube and videos of, you know, elephants would pop up or something. It would just be totally irrelevant stuff. So there's a really big gap in the market. There were a couple of people starting to make finance videos, and they were getting a decent amount of views, and they were making a couple thousand dollars a month. And I said, okay, this is a good opportunity for a 17, 18-year-old kid to get started. But I wasn't expecting it to grow so much.

You know, the niche really, really grew every year over the past five, six years. Yeah, that's how I, I mean, like first came across. I've always been really interested in personal finance. my dad is super interested in personal finance, but when I got to college, I obviously wasn't living with my parents anymore. So there are some other questions I had, and I liked seeing a YouTube channel. Graham is like another person in personal finance that was pretty big in the YouTube space. And now I see like you're on his channel and stuff like that, which is so cool, but Graham is really the only other person that was on, but you were closer in age. So I was like,

ah, yeah, like this makes sense, like checking out needs content. And there are some of your early videos and it looks like they're they're recorded like on Penn like now that I know you went to Penn State I'd look and I would be like wait is that like a Penn State classroom like were you recording out here in classrooms yeah I got out of double life so I didn't tell anybody that I had a YouTube channel until they just found it so my roommates did not until I had like 15,000 subscribers like a full year later so I'd say hey everyone I'm going to study and then I would disappear for six hours I'd go film a bunch of videos in I think it was the science lab I forget what it was called, but it was that science building at Penn State.

And I'd be filming at like 2 a.m. on a Friday and just cranking out videos. That's awesome. And when did you actually start making money from it? Did you start this YouTube channel like with the intent of making money? And then at what point does the money like actually start rolling in? Yeah. I did start it with the intent of making money because I had to pay for college. And as you know, Penn State was pretty expensive.

I think it was 20,000 a year for tuition. So back when I started, you can actually monetize YouTube from day one. So the first day, I think I made. seven cents from from ads because you could monetize literally like with zero subscribers. So I would go to the computer labs and I would just turn on all the computers and then just watch all my videos like in loops on on playlist. And so I, you know, probably made, I don't know, 50 or 100 bucks in the first month after the first year. Maybe it was making a couple thousand a month, but it was definitely a slow start. Yeah. And what advice do you have for people? I know that.

Jason always says there's this statistic of how many people like continue on with podcasting after the first few episodes and that number is incredibly low. How were you able to like, obviously I can't be super motivating being like, wow, like I just made seven cents today, time to do it tomorrow. How do you really keep up on the motivation to stay consistent? So it actually was really motivating for me even making, you know, a couple dollars because my videos were getting 40 or 50 views and some of them were real people. it wasn't just me watching. And to me, I kind of viewed it like, hey, this is 50 people. This is a full classroom of people, right, who are listening to an 18-year-old kid talk about money.

And I was definitely worried about credibility. I didn't think anybody would take me seriously. But yeah, it's just, it took a long time to get started. But I kind of just viewed it like, look, if I'm getting 50 views or 100 views, that's actually a lot of people. In today's world, we kind of forget that because we're so used to, you know, expecting millions of views, but if you visualize the amount of people, like, if you get 40,000 views on a video, that is in a full stadium of people that's massive. So it's all just about

perspective on that. Yeah. Yeah. It's obviously incredibly motivating, too, to even just think, like, I feel like I'd get butterflies knowing that one person, like, listen to this segment. Like, it's at the end and it's on Friday. So whenever I get, like, one person that, like, DMs me on Twitter, I, like, freak out. And this is, this is something that's like, obviously, I'm not getting paid like separately to be on Jason's podcast or anything, but it really, I'm definitely also motivated knowing that like somebody is at least watching something that I'm putting time into. I think that is a big, a big motivator for me. So if anybody, if anybody's listening right now, let me know because I really like to know I'm not speaking out into the void. And to pivot a little bit here. We also spoke a few years into getting to know each other about VC, about startups and investing. when I first had you on my podcast, I think I was doing a venture capital fellowship or I was just about to start a VC fellowship.

And since then, I've grown to absolutely love the space and we were able to talk about it, which has been amazing. So I was super excited to see your rolling fund that is also led by fellow YouTuber Sebastian Fung. You guys invest in pre-seed seed startups, which I love. Can you talk a little bit about Roadrunner VC

and why you decide to start that? Yeah, sure. So kind of going back over the five, six years, you know, I started promoting Robin Hood in its very, very early days in, you know, 2016, 2017. And over the years, I've driven tens of thousands of users, like just that are tracked users that I've driven. And I've gotten some cash for it. But over the years, I've realized, hey, you know, it would be really incredible to have some equity in the companies that I'm talking about so much. And Sebi was sort of an early thinker on this as well. And so he started to put together syndicates with creators, with the whole idea of.

of bringing creators onto the cap table, especially these early stage companies, precede and C, maybe some series A, can really, you can put your hand on the scale and really make a difference on with the customer acquisition side, marketing side, helping founders understand ad rates and connections with influencers.

We felt like it was a really solid value prop there. And so, so you started running some syndicates. We don't want with like Yada savings and oxygen bank and a handful of others. But eventually, we realized that the syndicates, as I'm sure you know, it's kind of a, it's a lot, right? To round everybody up together, put everybody on meetings,

especially influencers who always tend to be doing stuff and busy and traveling. So we came to the conclusion that it's probably better to just launch a formal fund. We went with the rolling fund structure so that we could bring on the majority of our LPs as, as creators themselves. And so, yeah, that's the whole thesis there of just really investing into mostly consumer-facing tech. We didn't really want to pigeonhole ourselves into becoming a creator fund that only invest in a creator economy because personally, as a creator, I'd see a lot of creator economy startups that I think are not so great or not very practical. So yeah, really anything consumer

facing. Yeah, that's awesome. So I saw, I also was watching before we jumped on this Zoom, your YouTube video that kind of announced it all, and you guys were talking about beacons. Is that something that you invested in through this rolling fund? So we did not invest into Beacons through the Rolling Fund. Those were just personal investments that Sebi and I made into Beacons. on their previous round. So the rolling fund we launched in May. We made two investments because it was toward the end of the quarter. Typically, we're making anywhere between two and five investments per quarter.

Got you. Why two? Why between? Yeah, Ray. I was about to ask if you did because Paige Finn Doherty, super awesome investor, friend of the pod, was actually on a segment with Jason talking about being a first-time investor, but she's our age. Also invested in Beacons.

And I actually found out about Beacons through Jules Terpec, who is an amazing podcast. Excuse me. Yeah, she is an amazing podcaster, but found her off TikTok. Great commentary over on that end. So Beacons seems like they're freaking killing it. It is kind of a competitor to LinkTree, in my opinion. I just think Beacons looks a lot nicer. We have a link tree for this Beacon startups.

And I'll let you know once I can convince everybody that we can switch on over. Are you allowed to say what any of your investments have been so far? Probably not right now. Super excited to see. Yeah, yeah. We were very excited about the quarter two investments. It was kind of a rush launch. We were planning on launching the fund for quarter three, which was July 1st.

But there were two companies that popped up that we were just really excited about. And so we just said, you know, we need to just launch it now in May so we can get allocation to both these companies. So probably later on down the road we can share. How are people pitching to you guys? Is this something that like you, just because your creators, like you are. already have a presence. So you're getting a lot of inbound or are you having a do outbound? It's a lot of inbound. So we have a decent creator network and so we see a lot of companies just coming in actually trying to run ads. And so for example, we've seen

companies where they want to sponsor us and they say, okay, actually, you want to hop on a meeting because we'd love to get on the cab table. So that's one that's worked pretty well. And then Sebastian also has a company called Subscribe that helps creators get equity. And so there's a lot of inflow actually from that company. And he's super well connected. He's out in SF. And so deal flow hasn't really seemed to be much of a problem for us. The reason I ask that

is Jason and Molly have their own personal brands, personal presence on the internet. One of the reasons why we push out so much content at this weekend startups is because this is how we get deal flow. People don't know about us. People reach out to us. It helps a ton the fact that Jason and Molly

are doing their own thing in terms of having a personal brand. and are doing stuff on the internet, do you have advice for any other people that are trying to build their personal brand in a professional way? What do you think that first step looks like? My suggestion would be,

don't try to monetize too early. So I've never focused on monetization on my stuff. Like, I don't sell online courses. I don't have any products. I really just make videos and make some money off of ad revenue and some affiliate stuff. And I think not monetizing too early,

that's what Graham Stephan did as well. And I think that's why he grew so well. I see a lot of people stunt their growth because they have 50 followers and they're just trying to like sell something all the time. And I think it's it's really important to really build some rapport with your followers by just going like playing the long game. Kind of like taking that Gary Vy approach of just always having free stuff and then eventually like you'll start making money just sort of as like a like a byproduct of getting attention. Yeah. I saw this. I forget who where I saw this advice, but it was definitely from another YouTube channel where they were saying like almost all of your content.

should be free because they know how much of a value out there there is. And then that little top portion, like that little special extra sauce should be the thing that people pay for. So I always think that's really interesting, especially in like the day and age where so many people have things like Patreon, really like that mindset. And why was like now a good time to have Roadrunner VC come to fruition? Like you're killing it on YouTube. You've said before in videos that like you play on on like just like slowly stop making

videos as frequently. Why was like Roadrunner VC like the next step for you? Obviously, I don't think it doesn't look like you're stopping YouTube anytime soon, but why is Roadrunner VC like your next venture? Yeah. I think YouTube is, it's fun, but it's sort of, I kind of view it as a stepping stone. I think it's just really exciting to, to, I mean, I could sit and get pitched on a dozen companies a day for the next 10 years. And I think I would thoroughly enjoy it. just sort of seeing these new ideas and concepts. And I really like to think a lot. And so this is just something that feels right up my alley.

And I love sort of working on asset allocation and investing. And so with YouTube, honestly, it's, I don't want to say it's boring, but we sort of have streamlined it with all of our channels. And we have a set up. So it's pumping cash. But we've said, all right, we're not starting any more channels. We've 10 and I don't want to start 10 more and have 20 channels. brother right now? Are you and my brother? Yeah. So he's like the operator on all of that.

Yeah. And he has his own. I've seen some of his content too as well. He does tech reviews, right? Yeah. Yeah. So sometimes like people will DM me and like like with random videos that one of us is in and like what's this web development video or something? Yeah. It's just funny. Yeah, that's awesome. So you've grown like a ton of different channels. Like what has been the thing that has helped the most in making channels grow? In making channels grow, we really focus on search. So we treat everything like a blog essentially. So most people on YouTube, let's say 95 to 99% try to make viral videos like Mr. Beast, which is great. But we don't really start with views. We sort of start with search and then potential revenue from that search.

So we look at who's running ads. We look at what the ad rates are in specific niches. And then we target those because I think you can sometimes make a lot more money from 50,000 views on a very specific video than you could with 5 million views. on a general video. Totally. That definitely makes sense. And it's, it's been really, really cool watching your content, especially about finance, kind of progress. Like you said, I was watching your stuff. I think you were wearing, like, Robin Hood socks back in the day. Jason is actually, he talks about this a lot. Jason was an investor into Robin Hood, pretty famously into Robin Hood, Uber, come. So really cool to see you wearing those Robin Hood

socks and now moving over completely to Roadrunner VC after watching like your finance content for so long and seeing how long you've just been passionate about it. And you say in all your YouTube videos, you can't give financial advice. It's in all your, all your comments and things like that. You won't. Also, Nate will never sell you crypto. That seems to be a really big thing with you. A lot of people scamming, like doing crypto scams with you.

There's so much scammy stuff. Yeah. You're the best example of somebody that should be verified on every platform that has ever existed because of how many fake accounts I've seen for you. Do you think that's just because you're in like the finance space? Like, what's up with that? Yeah, it's especially finance, but there are essentially a multi-billion-dollar scam operations going on right now. And the platforms either don't care enough or actually just can't do anything about it.

So most of the comments on my videos are fake. And they're like really elaborate now. And it's just there's so many of them that you can't, like you can't stop them because they pop up everywhere. And you can't filter them out and YouTube doesn't really do anything about it. I know Twitter has this problem. Instagram has a problem as well. But it's really getting out of control. Yeah.

So, yeah, I won't ever sell you anything. I'm probably not going to reach out and ask you for crypto or something. Right. Yeah, the bot situation over on Twitter has been. Absolutely. I'm helping we're on Twitter. If anybody wants to join the Twitter community for this weekend startups, please do. But we obviously have some bot issues as well that we're seeing on our end,

which really, really sucks. And some of the other financial YouTube videos that I've been watching have been talking about how we've, how people, especially young people, people that did not live through 2008 or other things happening in the market, like what they're doing right now. Some people are choosing to double down and invest. And we've talked about that a lot in the show, whereas other people are choosing to be a little bit more conservative right now.

As a young person who is really interested in the investing space, where do you think like the right way to go is? Okay. So obviously this is not financial advice. but I have an honestly pretty simple strategy. Really, I'm inclined to do the opposite of what everyone else is doing at any given moment. So last year, we were in an obvious bubble. I went pretty heavy risk off.

And it's why I love Twitter too, because you can like, you can like date all these things and you can like, you know, go back and look in history. And so in December, January, I went like full risk off because I was worried and everybody was full risk on, right? Everybody was like buying Dogecoin and all these like meme stocks and everything. And so that was very worried. some for me. And so I went risk off. And I went into inflation plays. And then, yeah, so really just doing the opposite of what other people do or just looking in places that nobody else is looking at.

Like last year, everybody was so excited about EV that was obviously overvalued. Now that EVs down, I'm starting to look at EV. Because nobody's looking at it now. Because everybody's looking at oil now. So I'm exiting out of oil and getting in the EVV pot probably. Yeah. We'll see. Yeah. Just in general. Yeah. Where do you think, where do you find most of the information that, like, influences your investing outside of startups in VC. Yeah, definitely I don't like to read blog posts or something, not to take shots at like other financial YouTubers or Motley Fool or something like that. But, you know, like if you're seeing or if you're taking advice from people to buy or sell

stocks, it's probably, you're probably going to get burned. Like I said, there's a lot of scammy like YouTube finance people. And so that's why I never tell people to like buy or sell stocks. I get most of my stuff, honestly, from a cycle of FinViz, which is, it's just like a stock screener. You can do some really in-depth screening on there, and so you can see, for example, you can set things like earnings growth and you can look at their stuff, like just set so many different metrics on there that that's sort of how I sort through. And I'll create like a thesis and I'll say, okay, I want to find companies that are down 50%, but their earnings are still growing right now year-to-date, something along those lines,

and then kind of just sort through that. How long have you been investing? Um, so yeah, kind of going back to like how I was sort of interested in business from a pretty young age. Uh, I got lucky that I just, I had hit that wave very early and I was a weird kid. So, um, over, over a decade now. Wow. Like I started seventh grade. Were your, were your parents like really into it or was this something that like you found all by yourself?

Yeah. Um, well, we had a seventh grade project and like home act. We had to learn about the stock market. And so, um, my parents, you know, they have a 401k or an IRA or something. thing, but they didn't really, like, I tried to get some information from them. And luckily, we have the internet. So that's, that's where I got everything from, just Google, you know. Yeah. And self-taught. I feel extremely, extremely privileged that I had a parent that was like financially literate. I did not know until much later in life how important it is to have a financially

literate parent. So right now, thank you, Dad, for teaching me how the stock market works. I feel like being introduced to that at such an early age and just knowing that things like taxes and the stock market exists or just having that in vocabulary really does make a difference later on. And like you said, living now in the age of having almost too much information really, really, really helps when you're passionate or interested about something as a kid. So if anybody's here interested in finance, I obviously highly recommend these videos because those are some of the ones where when I was doubling down and learning more about personal finance and college are ones that I checked out. Like he said, he gave you guys the name of where he likes to look at other

places. Do you see Road Order Ventures ever making content for itself, like maybe talking a little bit about, like, do you ever see yourself making videos about what you look for in founders or anything like that? Or do you think you're going to try to keep like the NATO Brine brand separate from VC? I'm probably going to keep the natalbrien brand separate from VC just because I've always tried to keep my personal brand very, uh, just sort of what I'm, I want to talk about. And so that's why I also don't monetize it too much. I see a lot of influencers who kind of get trapped in it and they have to make videos to pay

their bills. So I kind of want to keep Roadrunner for the most part separate. We've talked about maybe launching a podcast and bringing on some guests just to kind of stir things up a bit. Heck yeah. That would be awesome. Yeah. Very pro.

I know you had a podcast for a little bit. You got to get back into the podcasting game. Yeah, I know. I know. I just need to find a producer for it. So if anyone out there wants to. Yeah. Anybody else looking?

And you create a lot of your YouTube videos I've noticed are evergreen too, which I really, really like. How has being a YouTuber and doing content creation helped you become a good investor? I would say you just, so I would say the best thing that it's helped me with is actually connections and just getting into deals, for example, because maybe you don't have to introduce yourself to as many people. Like we've invested into some companies that, like very early stage companies where, the founder was like watched my videos years ago. And so they already had some maybe respect for me or something. And so it's easier to slide in to the deals.

So that's probably how it's helped me most. Oh, okay. That's interesting. And what is it like working with somebody that also has an experience as a creator? Are you talking about Sebastian? Yeah. Yeah. So really, really happy that I partnered with him.

So he had a company that he sold to a firm back in 2015. So he's been in the tech world for a while. And so he's super logic-based. And his wife, Mandy, super logic-based as well. And so I think we just mesh really, really well overall. And I also like that there's sort of an age difference there as well. They're a bit older than me. And so we kind of have different perspectives and like different networks.

And so it's just a great sort of relationship. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, I didn't start checking out his videos until you guys like officially launched Roadrunner. So it's been really, really cool seeing the differences between you guys, not only in like content creation, but just the different kind of like energy you bring to the table. Obviously, like you said, having the difference in age and people that watch your videos, it's just really interesting, seeing how you guys are navigating.

And I think I'm going to be pumped when you guys finally released some of the companies that you invested in. It's going to be really interesting. Yeah, likewise. And if you can, where can people find you if they want to pitch you guys a startup? You can always slide into my Instagram DMs. It's just Nate O'Brien with one extra end on the end. And same for Twitter as well.

I'm suddenly a big fan of Twitter. I love the book. Like, it's just so fun. Well, I never used to be into Twitter. And I just started tweeting things like in the past year. Oh, you got a stir up drama. I love. I know.

I just did that with Coinbase. Oh, really? What did you say? Anything good? Oh, yeah. It was a bit of fear mongering. But it like blew up. Like, yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah, you're out here. You're out here putting fear. When I go and I check, check how they're doing. Are they going to look like they're on a roller coaster? You're impacting the market. now with your tweets. Well, that's awesome. Like he said, Nate O'Brien with two ends for Twitter and for his Instagram slide into

his DMs. And then for YouTube, you're just Nate O'Brien, right? Yep. Cool. And then just for forerunner have any place where they can go check out, you guys? We have a fund page, but it's, it's kind of hidden. Okay. But roadrunner.comvc is a site. It's not fully built out. It's kind of, yeah, but you should be able to find it on there. Awesome. That's really, really cool.

Again, it's very excited to see what you guys are up to. And thank you so much for joining. I'm definitely going to have to have you on again another time. Anytime, yeah. I always love going on here. Awesome. Thanks, Nate. All right, thanks for listening, everybody.

And make sure you tune in for an amazing Sunday show when we're going to talk about diligence this week, folks. It's like a really big topic. And Molly's having to deal with that because climate startups are very technical. Very technical. We're just going to dive into research on research and an awesome this week in climate. at Startups Interview, of course. All right.

Follow us on Twitter at Jason at Molly at TWAS startups and leave a five-star review on Apple or Spotify, if you're so inclined. Bye-bye. Have a great weekend. See you Sunday. See you Sunday.