This Week in Startups - Board Talk Empire with GRIN's Brandon Brown, Founder Hacks & SEC Memecoin Clarity? | E2091

Episode Date: March 1, 2025

Today’s show: Jason and Alex break down the latest head-scratching SEC ruling on meme coins—did they just legalize pump-and-dumps to protect Trump’s token? Plus, they dive into why venture debt can destroy startups, the rise of AI-driven companies, and how Tesla is gearing up to challenge Waymo in the self-driving car race. Then, Brandon Brown from GRIN joins the show to talk about scaling to 8-figure revenue, surviving brutal market corrections, and why he’s stepping down as CEO after a decade. This one’s packed with insights for founders, investors, and anyone watching the future of crypto, startups, and AI unfold.*Timestamps:(0:00) Jason and Alex kick off the show!(1:39) Palmer Luckey feud, and supporting Trump in Silicon Valley(9:36) AI's impact on startup growth and job displacement(10:11) Paddle. Go to https://www.paddle.com/twist to get started with your exclusive listener fee-free period.(12:20) Product market fit and Salesforce productivity(15:01) Howey Test and its application to cryptocurrencies(20:07) LinkedIn Ads. Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups(26:13) Jason's libertarian views on meme coins(31:13) Hubspot for Startups. Get up to 75% off plus 3 months of Perplexity AI for free. Go to https://www.hubspot.com/startups(32:16) Meme coin regulation and political implications(37:22) GRIN's Brandon Brown interview and company evolution(46:10) Leadership changes and challenges at GRIN(53:28) Venture debt risks and business cycle preparedness(59:00) Leadership skills and defining reality(1:04:13) Updates on Waymo and autonomous rides(1:09:06) Tesla and the global autonomous vehicle market*Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.comCheck out the TWIST500: https://www.twist500.comSubscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp*Check out GRIN: https://grin.co/Checkout Angel University with Jason Calacanis & Mike Savino: https://www.angel.university/Check out the Founder Friday City Competition: https://www.founderfridays.tech/city-competition*Follow BrandonX: https://x.com/Brandon_BrownLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brandon-brown-0898731/*Follow Alex:X: https://x.com/alexLinkedIn: ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/alexwilhelm*Follow Jason:X: https://twitter.com/JasonLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis*Thank you to our partners:(10:11) Paddle. Go to https://www.paddle.com/twist to get started with your exclusive listener fee-free period.(20:07) LinkedIn Ads. Get a $100 LinkedIn ad credit at http://www.linkedin.com/thisweekinstartups(31:13) Hubspot for Startups. Get up to 75% off plus 3 months of Perplexity AI for free. Go to https://www.hubspot.com/startups*Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland*Check out Jason’s suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis*Follow TWiST:Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartupsYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekinInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartupsTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartupsSubstack: https://twistartups.substack.com*Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

There was some SEC notes about mean coins and the Howie test. Yes, there it is. Security is an exchange commission with a doge dog on it. Okay, here we are, folks. We went from too cold in the Goldilocks zone with Gensler. And I guess we're now going into the too hot under Trump. Maybe? I don't know.

So essentially, what they're saying is you could launch Jason, dollar sign Jason. Okay. You could pump it. Okay. You could lobby to get Coinbase to list it. You could hold 80% of it yourself and you could dump your bags on the community that bought your token. And that is all entirely copacetic, legal, and safe. And to me, that is not the case.

Everybody can have their own opinion on this and what makes a great democracy is that we debate stuff. This feels like, to me, I'll just say it in no uncertain terms, that this was written and designed to get the Trump coin and the Melania coin out of hot water. Yes. This Weekend Startups is brought to you by Paddle. Self-Serve software is global by default. But selling to every country is complicated. Paddle's merchant of record manages payment, sales tax, chargebacks, and refunds so you don't have to. Wherever you want to take your business, go there with Paddle.

Go to paddle.com slash twist to get started with your exclusive listener fee-free period. LinkedIn ads. To redeem a $100 LinkedIn ad credit and launch your first campaign, go to LinkedIn.com slash this weekend startups. And HubSpot for Startups. Smart founders aren't piecing together random tools. HubSpot is the customer platform that thousands of startups used to scale efficiently. Get 75% off plus three months of perplexity AI for free. Go to HubSpot.com slash startups.

All right, everybody, welcome back to this week in startups. It's Friday. We're here three days a week with me, of course, Alex Wilhelm. How is your little fake, hey, brother? You have a good time. You play a little poker. You had baby with baguette. It looks like you had a good time.

Had a great time. We love going to the parades in New Orleans. If you don't know, Marty Graz not one day, it's lots of braids across the city. So it's just, it's an amazing time to be there. And I did get to go play some one three, Jason. You know what? It's a lot more fun to play poker when you can afford a couple of buy-ins versus me when I was like 20 and I always had one bullet whenever I went to go play, you know?

Yeah, that's not good. You get a bad beat, you know, you get into a 65-35 situation, which you always want to be in. You'll take that all day. But, you know, the villain hits the one out of three chance and there you are. Now you're out of the game, which is why you need to. to play a smaller game. Well, I mean, but I was 20, I was making like $8. There wasn't a small enough game for me at that age.

I guess that's why tournaments are nice, because without the ability to re-buy, you know, you get to maybe last a little bit longer and it's all good. Well, it is a great Friday here, but I do want to address the Palmer Lucky feud. You know, the Parmar Lucky feud is going to keep happening. So here we are. Okay, so I said some spicy things about Palmer Lucky on this podcast years ago. you can just type in Palmer Lucky Jason Calacanuson. You'll find it. Essentially, he got fired from Facebook by Zuckerberg and Cheryl Sandberg. And I think the reason they fired him, he's admitted,

was he funded something that was, you know, he covertly funded something at the time is the allegation that was like an anti-Hillary campaign. Putting it aside, I said on the program, you know, I think it's dumb to do that because if you're a leader, it's going to blow up in your face. I did say it a little bit spicier than I'm saying it now, which I, I'd maybe I didn't need to be as spicy as I was at the time. And I guess I could have put a caveat on it if the Guardian story, if the Verge story is true, right? Because now nobody trusts media, so everybody assumes anything the media says is false. But the truth is at that time, he was fired. And I guess, you know, maybe in Trump 2.0 era, he wouldn't have been fired. He would

have been lauded, right? So times change. But I think my advice to founders stays the same. And the advice I gave to founders at the time was pretty simple. Don't do anything covertly because it winds up blowing up in your lap. Okay, putting that aside, I did say it a little spicy. And I guess, you know, somebody told me amongst our mutuals, um, and I got a lot of mutuals with Palmer, he sees me as the avatar of that very, you know, painful time in his life. So he's going to unload on me every chance he gets. Well, it's Friday. The Epstein files were supposed to be dumped. As I've explained, a gazillion times when I was in New York in the 90s and when I was going to the TED conference in the early 2000s, I met Epstein. Probably have met Epstein a half dozen times. He would be at these

billionaires dinners. He would be at TED. And he would be there giving Marvin Minsky and, I don't know, like all these MIT professors. He was there giving them donations to charity to their research. Probably have spoken to him for 30 minutes total in my life. Obviously not his type. And never flew on the planes. Never went. to his island. But I am in his black book, like hundreds and thousands of other people who are notable in New York City, finance, or tech. So what does Palmer Lucky do today? He insinuates that I'm in the logs because I guess they were supposed to release all this stuff. But it's the same thing. It's his black book. So I'll say it again. I was never involved with Epstein. I was never on his

island. I was not involved in all those alleged shenanigans. And there were thousands of other people in his black book. I'm not going to mention the 50 people who Palmer Lucky and I are friends with who are also in his black book, who were also at the TED conference with him during that period of time. So the feud continues, Palmer's going to dunk on me and his partner posted like, oh my God, I'm going to have a terrible weekend, I guess insinuating, like, oh my God, you know, something terrible. Do I look like I'm worried? This has been going on for like literally 10 or 20 years now. Anybody who met Jeffrey Epstein? or ran into him, Donald Trump, Woody Allen, Bill Gates, Reed Hoffman.

Okay, there you go. I mean, the list goes on and on. I think none of these people were involved in the alleged shenanigans. It's probably 0.001% of the 10,000 people who Jeffrey Epstein knew or was, you know, at conferences with her in his black book were involved in this, but here we are in the conspiracy age. I'll have to deal with this forever. I will make it clear forever. It seems like an unnecessary amount of pick. on his part, peak on his part. I don't know Palmer at all, to be clear. And I saw this and put it in,

I was like, haven't we already gone over this? And so I talked to Lon and Lon was like, we've gone over this. Because I think we've gone over it together on the show. It's been a while, but I mean, it's not, it's not new. And I think there's a lot of Trump supporters throwing stones from glass houses when it comes to certain people that may or may not be in the logs,

the real one. And I'll be honest, I don't think even though Trump knew him and there's like this famous video of him, you know, at a party with him at Moralago. I don't think Trump's involved in any shenanigans with him. I think he probably knew him. They probably, you know, these guys are 30 years older than me. At that period of time in New York, I was in my 20s running my magazine.

I was kind of notable, you know, not like super notable, but I had a magazine. And, you know, I think he was, this is my very, I think Epstein was like a CIA, Musad, KGB agent. And I think he was trying to get compromise on people like. Trump, Gates, you know, anybody who was powerful. I know I sound like a conspiracy there is there, but that's what I heard from many people who were in the circles, was that he was probably some sort of a spy of some type. But anyway, here we are. Year 15 or 20 of this for me, I'll explain it every year. I'm an open book. I've never been questioned by any CIA FBI. I guess I'm not

important enough to compromise. I'm a peripheral figure here. at best. Man, let me tell you that, Jason, I'm so glad that I'm peripheral to your peripheral because... Yeah, you'll get dragged into this. No, no, I go with that, whatever. But like, I just, I see, I've been close enough to people of note

in various types of note that I know that spame just seems miserable. Or being of note seems miserable. I guess, I mean, I'll be totally honest. My life is so great. I've got a great family. I've done better than. I have ever expected. I get to pick what I do. I have the greatest friends in the world. I get to ski 24 years this year. I'll probably get another 10, 15 days. And I mean, everything in my life is so

great. The only thing I'm ever worried about is, you know, my dad's a little bit sick or whatever, you know, things I have to do as a parent. You know, that's what I'm focused on. So I actually don't care. And I didn't get Palmer Lucky Fire. To be clear, I think people, some people think, like, I said something on this niche podcast about startups that got him fired. Yeah, no. The end. You know, I'm not in the Epstein flight logs. I didn't get Palmer Lucky fired.

Like, let's try to get back to reality folks. Palmer Lucky got fired by Cheryl Sandberg and Zuckerberg because it was really untenable to be at a Silicon Valley company in that Trump 1.0 era and be a Trump supporter. It's not like today where you can be a Trump supporter and not. get fired. At that time, if you were like a high-profile person and you were supporting Trump, it was, you know, kind of cataclysmic here in the valley. You can say what you want about it, but if that's the truth, I just commented on it. I commented in a spicy way, you can look it up. Anyway, let's move on. The other things to talk about. I wanted to start with a chart because

this, I think, really boils down a lot of stuff we've been talking about about startup growth, how quickly startups are expected to grow in the AI era. So take a look at this. And for those on the audio version. This is a chart that shows how long it takes the median company to reach $5 million worth of annualized revenue, comparing the top 100 SaaS companies on Stripe back in 2018, and then the top 100 AI companies that use Stripe in 2024. The median time amongst these top 100 companies to reach 5 million ARR, Jason, fell out from 37 to 24 months. Did you know you're required to pay digital sales tax wherever your customers are? Well, no one likes dealing with this type of administration, whether it's taxes or accounting,

especially when you're in a busy startup. And that's why Pada has stepped in to put your billing and your taxes on autopilot. Whether you're launching a SaaS product or maybe you've got an app, perhaps a game, you now can reach billions of people globally. That's the magic of the internet. It's the magic of the app store. And it's awesome. And it's one of the things, hey, as an investor, we love too. But this scaling brings tons of challenges. It's like taking payments and local currencies. navigating all those regional tax laws. They're complicated. Plus, you got to manage fraud. You got to manage refunds, right? And that's different in every market. And that's a massive headache. That's going to slow you down from doing, you know, important work with product market fit, hiring and raising money.

So let me tell you, a messy payment stack is going to eat up all your time, all of your energy and money. These are big company problems that you're going to face, even as a small company, and they compound every time you enter a new market. Well, Paddle was built to handle this for you. Hey, listen, maybe this is unsexy, but this is what building and scaling a startup is all about. Sometimes you've got to do your chores and you need a partner. Paddle's going to be your merchant of record, your M-O-R, and they're going to handle payment localization, fraud prevention, tax compliance, customer billing support so that you can grow faster. Hey, hey, man, if you need to launch in a new country, you're done. You want to add a payment method, easy.

And you want to set local pricing and you want to do it intelligently, one click. So here's your call to action. Wherever you want to take your business, go there. with Paddle. Paddle.com slash Twist to get started with your exclusive fee free period. That's paddle.com slash twist to unlock your no-fee startup period. This is great that Stripe's releasing this. You know, we have this problem with data we get from different sources. Data from Stripe is, you know, pretty great data because it's the actual money flowing. And this is what we're seeing inside of our organization, the startups we invest in, smaller number of people ramping revenue quicker.

if they get product market fit. So this is predicated on getting product market fit. If you don't have product market fit, you can't have your revenue ramp. So just as founders, understand that. You got to get product market fit first. What does product market fit mean? It means like you're actually really solving a problem that people are willing to give you money for. And if you do, what this shows is you're going to go a third faster or so to hit those

incredible numbers. So congratulations to those companies. And thank you to Stripe for releasing it. This is really good for the American economy as well. What this means is the productivity caused by AI is seen in AI companies in the most pronounced way. That makes sense because the people who are running AI companies are the first to use AI. So what you can take from this is a non-AI company will see similar gains. Maybe not as pronounced.

It might not be a third, but it might be 10%. So overall, great for the American economy, great for innovation. and we're not seeing a job implosion yet. We probably will see that in self-driving, maybe retail or factory work. But I gotta be honest, until I see us, Alex, lose jobs because of AI and those people not find work,

I think I'm gonna stick with, there'll be job displacement and we'll be able to absorb those people or new people and NetNet will be able to navigate this here in the United States. I think that's probably right. I think economies that are very service-based. If you think about the Indian IT sector, for example, that could be a bloodbath.

Challenging. What I think we're seeing, instead of job destruction, is instead just capped team size. And I know we talked about this all last year with our static team size theme, but I just want to pull from Salesforce's most recent earnings call. Mark Benioff dropped earnings earlier this week, Jason. We won't go through all the numbers. But he said, we're not going to hire any new engineers this year. We're seeing 30% productivity increase on engineering.

and we're going to really continue to ride that up. So to me, I think what this means is engineers are just not expected to be a lot more productive on a per person basis. And so companies are going to delay hiring they would have done this year, probably five years out. And that could, you know, change the labor dynamics, depress the prices for engineering skills. And speaking super crassly, for startups, that's great. Because think about how much money they had to compete with when Fang was going crazy.

Yeah. Now, Fang doesn't want as many people. So that means there's more brilliant folks out there for startups. startups to hire. So to me, I can see a positive lining there. I've brought that up as well. It's a really interesting point. If you don't have five job offers from the Mac 7 plus Coinbase, Uber, etc., yeah, you're going to be more likely to take a startup job, which might be less revenue. Yes. In the short term, more revenue in the long term, because you get to take a chance. There was some SEC notes about mean coins and the Howie test.

We think we should explain. Yes, there it is. The Securities and Exchange Commission with a doge dog on it. Okay, here we are, folks. We went from too cold in the Goldilocks zone with Gensler. And I guess we were now going into the too hot under Trump. Maybe? I don't know.

I saw this brief note from the SEC. It feels like they're crafting the law around the Trump meme coin. If I'm being candid. It feels like, oops, Trump did something. Yep. Let's make the law fit. Now, also myself do believe we should redo regulations and people should be able to invest in anything they want through an accredited test. But just for intellectual curiosity here, let's look at how we test and what the SEC said and just try to make sense of this.

Okay. So we put together a little graphic for everybody to break down kind of like. the Howey test to define what is the security. And if you don't know, Howie was an old Supreme Court case, and it set forth kind of policy for what is a security and what is it. So what matters, Jason, is that a security per Howie is an investment of money into some sort of common enterprise, something that people are working on or taking part in. A startup would be an example. For sure. Yeah. With the expectation of a profit, which is why the startup investing point makes sense. You don't put money into a series B hoping that you have less money in the end. You want to make

money. And a security is something that you expect other people to generate value for it, that you can accrued to yourself. So if we were to put Bitcoin against this, you do invest money in Bitcoin. Is it a common enterprise with a central group of people? No, it's by definition distributed and decentralized, right? There's no one person who can make the decisions for what happens to Bitcoin. right? It's literally was designed in the famous white paper to be decentralized. People do have the expectation of profit when they buy it. Nobody's buying Bitcoin just to own some ones and zeros. And it's to be delivered from the efforts of others. Okay, now that one's kind of on the Bitcoin a jump ball, right? Like you have Michael Seller out there pumping it. So it does

feel at times like a common enterprise, but the truth is you have no control over him. He could one day wake up and say, no, I think Bitcoin's a scam. I'm selling all my Bitcoin, right? I'm going to buy Solana, Eith, whatever. So it doesn't feel like Bitcoin passes this test. I don't think so either. Bitcoin does. Wait, Bitcoin does pass to Howard test. Well, it depends on the pass is positive or negative. Right. How we test indicates that Bitcoin is not a security. The only way I should see Bitcoin as a security is it. Let's say it that way, so we don't confuse people. Yes, we're trying to be very clear here. And the reason why I agree with you is that mining of Bitcoin is insufficiently centralized to me to warrant the idea of a common

enterprise. If there was one miner, maybe that's a little bit different, but it's not the case. Okay, so the Howie test would say Bitcoin is not a security. The Howey test, if you did XRP as an example, and they centrally control it. It's a company, that company has venture investors. That would say it is a security. And I think the SEC did believe XRP is a security. Now, that's a controversial one, but- Very much. You can say XRP is very, very different. Perhaps they're trying to put the genie back in the bottle in the XRP example. Okay, continue. Let's see if we can thread this needle here. Okay. So that is the how we test. That is why we think Bitcoin is a commodity versus a security. Now, what about meme coins? Meme coins are something that we've talked about on the show, both through the Trump and Melania token launches and then also recently through Miele in Argentina and the Libra. And Hoctua. Oh, that's right. I forgot about the Hoctuah coin.

I mean, there's like literally 10,000 coins released a day. So that's in favor of, like, you know, this ruling. But okay, let's go through it here. So the SEC comes out with some new guidance. And this really matters because the SEC has been dropping cases. It's been giving kind of, you know, free range to a lot of, I would say, crypto companies and activities that had previously been under the thumb of the SEC. So the SEC says, what is a meme coin?

It defines a meme coin as a type of crypto asset inspired by internet means. characters, current events, or trends for which the promoter seeks to attract an enthusiastic online community to purchase the meme coin and engage in its trading. And frankly, Jason, I think that's right. But I want to hear from you. Is that back your understanding of meme coins? Okay. So there is some centralization of a meme coin because there's a website. there's a person who writes the copy on that website, the terms of service, and they own 80% of it and then they distribute them. Hey, founders, I want to share with you an experience I love.

It's when I get an ad that is relevant and not some nonsense. Like the other day, I got an ad for a fund management platform, and it was like a new one I'd never heard of. I clicked on the ad because, well, I managed four venture capital firms. we scheduled to call with them, and it was amazing. How did this happen? Well, I was on LinkedIn because I'd like to share links from the podcast, this weekend start up, right on LinkedIn.

In fact, we live streamed to LinkedIn three days a week, and we get a great audience over there, and I happened to be presented with this fund management platform, and it was a direct hit. Like, I mean, talk about hitting the bullseye. If you're in business and you're making a product or service, it's really hard to find customers in the business-to-bus space, and doing B2B advertising is hard,

but LinkedIn makes it so easy, because, you know, their tools let you target people by job title, industry, company size, and more. So this fund management platform obviously was looking for people in venture capital, who had a fund size and a number of people, maybe 10 people, maybe 50 people. And they found me. They got me. They split the arrow, boom, right on target. And there's two things you really need to know about LinkedIn going into 2025.

First, they broke a billion members. And 130 million of those billion are decision makers. And 10 million of the billion are C-level executives like myself. Where can you get to those people? It's really hard. And the second thing you need to know, LinkedIn makes an impact. B2B markers report two to five times higher return on ad spend or ROAS return on the ad spend. You should know that acronym.

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terms and conditions do apply. Okay. So if we pull up the Howie test again, I'm just going to run through it from my perspective with the Howie Test. I'm going to be as intellectually rigorous as I can here. Okay, it's an investment of money. Check. You're giving money. Two, it's a common enterprise. Well, if the people who released a mean coin own a large percentage of it,

that means they have something in common with you. And you're working on this together. And the people who are buying it certainly have an expectation of profit because they're sharing charts and drawing on the charts where they expect it to go and they're using a ticker symbol,

and it's traded on a platform like Coinbase or Robin Hood right next to other securities. And is it to be derived from the efforts of others? Well, I do, that's where we get interesting, because Milet was tweeting it, right? Malay tweeted it. So that sounds like you're relying on him to tweet it to get the pump going.

So I'm going to use Milley here, because I don't want people to weaponize this against my friends who are in the administration. and they'll be like, oh, J-Cal says this, you know, I'm going to use Malay. You invested money. People are collaborating on it. People expect a profit. And you expect that other people will keep pumping it and people are disappointed when

the pumping stops. Like when Hoctua stops pumping it and gets called out on it or Malay gets called down and they stop pumping it, people are disappointed. So for me, meme coins do scream securities. How does the SEC get around that? Well, okay, yes. Please explain it to me because I just went through the test and Millay coin and Hoctua. I'm going to leave Trump and Malani out of it so we don't have the political issues.

Both of those are clearly securities to me. Mm-hmm. What do you think? Do you think those Malay is a security or not? The Libra token? Yes. Yes. But I personally have a wider umbrella view of what constitutes of security.

But let's just narrow down to what the SEC says because their logic here is. that we can just vet against, you know, reality. Okay. So one thing they say is, any expectation of profits that meme coin purchases have is not derived, I'm quoting here, from the efforts of others. Skipping ahead a couple of lines, the value of meme coins is derived from speculative trading and the collective sentiment of the market like a collectible. My issue with this is is that if my expectation of profit is not derived from the efforts

of others and the value is derived from speculative trading, aren't I depending on other people to make me money, ergo, it's a common enterprise with the expectation of profit into the work of others. That to me does not obviate the Howie test. And so to me, the SEC's logic here, while popular with folks you like mean coins and once you keep doing this, isn't exactly airtight. And there is an enormous, I would say, loophole built into this. So you said, Jason, that when Hocktua girl stopped pumping her token, people were a little bit

mad, but also people were concerned that by hyping your own token, you were perhaps making it into security or committing some sort of illegal act. Well, there is a footnote, footnote nine at the bottom of this SEC note. And it says, for example, I'm quoting, if the promoter's efforts are limited primarily to hyping the mean coin on social media and online forums and getting the coin listed on crypto trading platforms, then there are not likely to be sufficient, and dig, it's a Latin word, indication to establish that purchaser had a reasonable expectation of profits. So essentially what they're saying is you could launch Jason, dollar sign Jason.

Okay. You could pump it. You could lobby to get Coinbase to list it. You could hold 80% of it yourself and you could dump your bags on the community that bought your token. And that is all entirely copacetic, legal and safe. And to me, that is not the case. So there is an exception here designed, I think, to give Trump a legal out. And I think this is not regulation based on a plain text reading of law, which is how I would like to go about things, but instead a carve out for what I would say is the Miele token, not the other two.

Well, anyway, you can say whatever you want. I'm trying to be judicious here. Everybody can have their own opinion on this and what makes a great democracy is that we debate stuff. This feels like, to me, I'll just say it in no uncertain terms, that this was written and designed to get, the Trump coin and the Melania coin out of hot water. That doesn't mean I don't think regulation changing is a good thing. So two things can be true at the same time. I do think we need to open up regulation. I do think Americans should be able to buy meme coins. I do think they should be able to gamble. I wouldn't bet on the jets. That's a disaster. You know, sorry. Jet fans everywhere.

But I bet on the Knicks. Almost every game. And I love it. And I play poker. And you play poker. I am very libertarian. People should be able to do what they want to do. I do think when powerful people with platforms like myself, Haktua, Malay, Trump, Melania, you do need to think about that because the people who might get hurt are your fans

and you can only do it so many times, just on a practical basis, but also there is a massive amount of confusion here. If things have a ticker symbol, if there are charts, and if they're trading alongside things on platforms like Coinbase in Robin Hood, which and other ones, and I'm obviously a shareholder in Robin Hood, and I just had Vlad on the program Wednesday, great episode with Raoul and

Vlad, Raul from Superhuman, go check it out. You know, I kind of think it quacks like a duck, walks like a duck, has feathers like a duck. People are going to be confused. Here's what the regulations for meme coin should be. If it trades on a platform like CoinBiss, then there should be and incorporation, it should be a security. And those non-things should maybe trade on a different platform or there should be a massive disclaimer when you try to trade them. I traded. I bought a thousand dollars in Trump coins. I lost, I think, half my money. And I did it just to make a point so I could bring it up that I lost half my money on it as a joke with my friends and tweet it. But here's the thing. Those coins, I believe, will go to zero. Full stop. I think Trump coin will be worth zero.

I think when you buy them on a platform like that, it should say, this is not a security, this is a collectible. Do you agree you're not buying a security, even though it has a ticker symbol, whatever? You know, because there is some freedom of speech here. But this is a bad precedent, I think, to set. I don't think it's a good use.

I think the SEC should really maybe examine what they're doing here, because now we're going to have a bunch of other meme coins come out. There's going to be, I mean, this means, if this is the law now, you can list every single meme coin on Robin Hood and Coinbase. Yes. Right? I mean, that's the law now.

And so just a lot of people are going to get hurt. I'll go back to what I've always said, have an accreditation test. Yep. If you're accredited and people explain, hey, meme coins are a new device, NFTs are a new device, utility tokens are a new device.

Bitcoin is, you know, this distributed network, is decentralized. And like literally, people have to take a test to show they understand what decentralized versus centralized is they have to take a test so they understand the how test. Sure. Like, how is that a bad thing? So why are we focusing on this, carving this stuff out, when we could be focused on a sophisticated investor test? So I think the SEC is doing this

to cover up for what happened with the Trump coin. That's obvious to everybody. Come on. Oh, yeah. Are we going to call balls and strike here? Are we going to lie? This is a cover up to make a carve out around that coin. Okay, so here we are. I wonder if this is going to get challenged. I don't know how when the SEC puts a notice like this out, can people sue? Are attorney general is going to sue on behalf of people who lost for Hoc2a coin? I bet you the answer is no. Okay. Because I think if you think about like the broader American left, if you will, I think that this is probably pretty far down their agenda of things they're concerned about at the moment. Got it. So I think it's going to go ahead and pass. And also, I'll just say it's popular with folks who have a stake in the crypto

economy. So here is opposed from Katie Bibber. She's the chief legal office. over at Paradigm, which is a crypto VC firm. And I thought she had a pretty reasonable response to this, Jason. She said that it's, quote, refreshing to see the SEC adopt a constrained view of its own power. And that to me is more conservative of a position small C conservative than I would take regarding what the SEC should do. I think that the securities exchange commission should be a little bit more aggressive than constrained, just because people are always trying to do fraud. But then she follows up by saying, quote, fraud is and always has been illegal. And I think that's a good caveat to this, but I don't see how allowing for the meme coin explosion to keep exploding

is going to limit fraud. Yeah. So that's a struggle. All right. Everyone knows that CRM isn't just software. It's basically the heartbeat of your business. But it can get ugly quick if your data isn't organized and you're dealing with a messy tech stack.

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So I guess two things can be true at the same time. This is revisionist history. Probably not good for our democracy. You're only going to get so many of these as Trump and the administration, I think. These things will build up in the American people's minds. So I think you do need to consider that. when you're representing all Americans, while many people want to see crypto be legalized and have that great, I'm in that group, you're in that group, I think most people are in that group,

regulate this, figure it out, create clear guidelines. Gary Gensler didn't do that. But then I think if you're Trump, I think what Trump needs to think about in this administration needs to think about is you get so many of these kind of inside deals, you know, questionable moves. January 6th, the violent folks, Republicans didn't like it, 80% of the country didn't like it. I think this is going to be up there where like 80% of the country is not going to like this. You could only queue up so many of those before you lose credibility as an administration and maybe the good stuff you're doing, like I believe the Doge stuff is good. I don't know if you saw Joe Jebbya from Airbnb is working on this very interesting thing

to help people retire within two days instead of taking eight months and make it paperless. Like, that's the kind of stuff that we need to hear more about is the Joe Jebia stuff. And so, please, let's try to minimize the number of these, you know, things that feel conflicted, corrupt, wrong. Let's just use the word wrong. This feels wrong. Sure.

January 6th, pardons, for the people who were violent feel wrong. I don't know about the other ones. Maybe, you know, in some of those cases, those were overzealous prosecutions. But we know that violent criminals should not get away with it. So that's for me, what I believe is that you get so many of these things and Trump's using them up pretty fast here. I don't think a lame duck president who has an imperial perspective on his office is going to slow down.

And then the lawsuits like last time will build up. Yeah, but I don't think it's going to become such a distraction that I think he's going to just get, then he loses the midterms, right? If people feel like you do too many of this, then he loses the midterms, then gridlock, then lawsuits. And we're back to the Trump 1.0 president. see. Yeah. Let's go to the Joe Jebbya thing and then bring on our guest. All right. So, Joe Jebio is the co-founder of Airbnb. A friend of mine, by the way, for full disclosure. Well, okay. When did you

guys meet? Tell me that story. Real quick. He came on the pod and I met him, you know, in circles. He lives here in the same town as me in Austin. And yeah, we've seen a basketball game together. All right. So we're friendly. Yeah, we're friends. I would consider us friends. That is perfectly fine. So here is... I mean, it's not like a full-on bromance, I'll be honest. I would like it to be. I think it's a cool dude.

I would like to maybe have a, you know, maybe extend it to a bromance, but it's not at bromance level yet. All right. Well, Joe writes over on X.com, everyone's ye old favorite footer. I'm excited to share, I'm bringing my designer brain

and startup spirit into the government. My first project at Doge is improving the slow and paper-based retirement process. Since leaving Airbnb in 22, I've been looking for my next design challenge. I'm paraphrasing. And I think nothing's more important

than improving our government. If anyone else wants to help out, let me know. This is at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management or OPM. And I think this is exactly and precisely what I was hoping to see from Doge. Okay. I want the government to be more efficient, less inefficient, faster, less slow. And there's a lot of things that we can do. And I do think that having a perspective that the way we have done things might be the wrong way

is a good way to approach the inefficiencies in government. Jason, you and I are on a slightly different side. of the cost-cutting approaches and how that's going. But no matter what, we can all agree that taking a paper process that takes too long, digitizing it and making it beautiful, it's a great thing to do for our government and sports. So I'm a huge fan of this. And I'm really, really proud of Joe. Good for him.

Yeah. And more of this. Like, so to the dogey, again, I'm just going to call balls and strikes. Everybody knows some of these people are my friends and yada yada and associates. And everybody knows that I'm a never-trumper who is rooting always for the president to succeed. I've been very clear about my positions on all this. I was a double hater this election. Not that I'm the main character here,

but I mean, on the show, I guess I am, because it's my show, but I'm not the main character, but just to put it all in perspective, I understand how people can be absolutely, like, shocked by how aggressive Doge is being.

I happen to agree with it because I got to see it during the Twitter reorg, and I happen to believe in it, but I do understand it's not everybody's cup of tea, and you might not understand how powerful it is to shut off every credit card and then watch all the SaaS subscriptions turn off and how good that is when you have fraud, waste, and corruption. Okay.

But this is great. This is great. And Doge needs to do more of this. Tell more stories like this. And I think Doge is getting the message. I kind of know they're getting the message. I'll leave it at that. You did see them say they're going to give raises and promotions.

to people who are doing a great job in addition to the layoffs they're doing for people who can't even fill out an email that says, what did you do last week? We do that every day here at our company. Every company does a stand-up. Anyway, we got a guest, so let's welcome our guests to the program.

Jason loves to just to swing by in his play and drop like eight grenades out that I want to just that I want to swing at and then we could go all day. And we're fine, you're fine, you're fine, you're fine. Let's keep it moving. I mean, we covered a lot already. I know.

I just. Meme coins, Epstein, Parmer Lucky, doge. I mean, we're cooking with oil now. Just, just don't let me start talking about poker. We'll never make progress. All right, Brandon Brown. So he is the founder and incoming board chair. Hey, it's up, Brandon.

Over at Gren. I know you guys have known each other for a while. And Brandon is transitioning away from his former role into being a board chair. It's a great moment to talk about different roles at startups, why you might change up your role. CEO ten years, Brandon. Welcome to the show, man. Thanks.

Yeah, happy to be here. Been fun watching backstage and be a good conversation. Yeah. For folks who don't know, Grin is a really special company. Went to our accelerator. I'm on the board. We invested in, I think we invested in the company three or four times, which is not normal.

Usually we will do an accelerator investment, then maybe a seed investment. And then we're kind of done because there are Series A investors, B investors who are better at that. But we've been lucky enough. to invest along the way. The company's done spectacular, gotten to eight figures in revenue. They do a great job managing social media campaigns at scale. And the big question when I met Brandon was, is social media going to become a channel? Now, let's talk about that. You had this thesis that social media would become a marketing channel and an important one. How many years ago?

And I would describe it social as a channel, but also as like the new publishers are going to be people and not companies. And so brands, I need to understand that and harness it. And that was, I met you in 2017. We started the company in 2014 and this is a pivot for us. First thing that we did for the first three years didn't work. And then met you and pivoted here and you joined the board. And we've been kind of on the ride ever since. And it's been fun.

Just walk us through that, I guess. We have some examples of influencers and then maybe just for background, we'll talk about how the product works. Then we'll talk about you transitioning out of the CEO slot, which is a big controversial moment in any company, an intense moment. And we'll get all those great founder stories after we just sort of queue up what the product is and why it's important. Yeah. So a big way that consumer brands go to market these days is, is they work with creators on social. So they're doing ads, they're doing SEO, they're creating a lot of content,

but a huge channel is they're sending product to Instagramers, people on TikTok, YouTube. You can imagine that process once you start doing it at scale is just incredibly complex. How do you find the people? How do you recruit them? How do you contract with them?

How do you report on all of that? And brands are typically in spreadsheets using a bunch of different tools. They've got a cobbled together team. It's doing it. And so we built SaaS. Kind of like how an account executive in an inside sales team would use something like Salesforce, but they use these marketing managers at brands use Grin to manage influencer marketing

and manage these creators at scale. Yeah, so its software product makes that easy. And it's pretty crazy because it's kind of like a common thing in the zeitgeist and it's known now, but 10 years ago, this was an emerging thing and had a bunch of problems around it. And so we were one of the first to go solve those problems. So I'm curious how, long it took Grin to go from starting this to being ready to help Uber, for example, build its global TikTok presence because that was the case study that I was most excited by that you guys have out there. It seems like a big project, big brand, lots of different touch points, and controversial in some markets due to regulation. So what was the process

like building the first product and then getting it to the point at which you were ready to help Uber go from zero to 60 on TikTok? Yeah. So, I mean, the company stories, it's been, you know, like all startups, I think from the outside looking in, like you see the tech crunch headlines and you see the fundraising announcements and it looks like it's a linear up into the right trajectory, but we all know that's never the case. We started the company in 2014. We were working on a different product for a while, realized it wasn't going to work, pivoted in 2017. Actually, Brandon, pausing you there, what was the moment you realized that the first product wasn't going to work and then you had to let it go? Because I'm sure some founders

out there right now are thinking, am I on the right path? Should I pivot? So how did you decide to make that decision. Well, for me, so the first product we had built, and again, this is a long time ago, but it was called Jump Start, and it was Big YouTuber, promote small YouTuber in exchange for money. So it was like a collaboration marketplace. And this was actually before I'd met Jason and Grin, as you know it today existed. And what I started to realize was that the only creators who were trying to like pay for growth in this paid collaboration way, typically were like trying to hack growth. And they didn't actually, they shouldn't be paying for growth. They needed to be improving their content. Because the core thing that was actually making them not grow is that their

content wasn't great. And so, like, I had this realization. I was like, oh, wow, like this product that we're building has a bad customer. These are kind of hobby, solopreneurs. They're not really investing into the right things. So we just didn't feel like it was going to be big. And so we changed everything in 2017 and looked at, you know, my background, our core competency as a team, like, where can we pivot and how can we go build something meaningful? And then transitioned into this software for brands to collaborate with creators, which is a pretty big departure at the time. And you've built what is effectively, as far as I can tell, kind of a two-sided marketplace, you have clients come in and you also work with a lot of different influencers.

How has been the social media changes we've seen in the last couple of years? And how has that impacted Grin's business? Because to me, search has lost its primacy. People don't blog as much as they used to. People don't read the news as much as they used to. It seems that social media has become ever more important, even if it gets a little straining in times over on X. But I mean, has that been a major accelerant to the grin business?

Yeah, the way we think about it is, so I think a lot of it comes down to like, what do you think the atomic unit is? And if you think the atomic unit is the creator, so the person on the other side of the phone or the camera who's creating the content and then the platforms are responsible for distribution, and you could argue this, especially on TikTok and with 40U, like the way that the algorithms change. But as long as brands need to organize around creators, then like there's going to be a for a product that simplifies that and products that simplify that.

And so that's how I think about the changes. Like, I think platforms will come and go. Like, you know, we've seen kind of the wild ride with TikTok. We saw a clubhouse had their moment a few years ago. And so I think as long as brands have a need to stay organized around managing creators at scale, like there's going to be a need for products like you're in. Okay. I have a question about that because to me, and I know this is me being an outdated,

essentially boomer. But when I think about product placement and I think about influencers, I really had this like 2014 Instagram vibe in my head. And I presume that that's really not the case. So, Brandon, is it still as effective today in a more commodified social media era to go out and reach out to people that have followings and give them stuff to promote? Because to me, the juice has been squeezed from that lemon slightly. But it sounds like I'm actually behind and things are getting bigger than they were before. Well, I think it needs to be part of like multi-channel, right? So like, I still think paid is it is extremely important. Or

organic-owned social for brands is extremely important. But then organic social from creators and influencers and using that as a way to reach the consumer in a really honest and authentic way and then repurpose that content across paid and other channels, like, that's not going anywhere. Like, that's extremely important in today's world. And I think, like, this product and this company is at like the, it's at the bleeding edge of marketing, right? And so I'm a marketer.

I've been a marketer my whole life. I sell a marketing product to marketing. marketers at Grin for a long time. And I think at the, at the bleeding edge of marketing, there's always going to be these like unproven experimental channels that if you can unlock them early, there's like an arbitrage on the reach and distribution. And, you know, I would say arguably influencer and creator maybe has reached a saturation point there, but still is a really important part of the overall mix. Okay. So then Brandon, eight figures of revenue, companies growing, pivot successful, important market, bleeding edge. And you're stepping back.

So to me, it feels like you finally reached the plateau of joy in the startup game. Like, you've kind of built something that's robust and is going to last. And so I guess, first of all, you're going from CEO to board share. So tell us why that's the right move for you. And then also the timing here, just to me seems not in a bad way abnormal, but surprising in terms of what I tend to hear from CEOs in your position. Yeah, it's a good question. You know, I think like from so this here's a crazy stat.

And Jason, you were along for this ride. Like me and you were in constant communication about this. But we went from basically zero to a billion valuation in four years. So from 2017 to 2021, we went from zero to 480 employees. That was an incredible ride, like especially from the early pivot, finding product market fit, scaling really fast. And then 2022, we started to hit real headwinds as a business. And I think it was macro.

I think there was some execution missteps. But at the same time, like, you know, we, really started to see softness in the economy. The brands started to pull back. And then when brands pull back, like, where do they pull back? Like, they go and they look at marketing variable. And then they look at experimental marketing variable. And so I think our category was, was affected. And so from 2022 to 2024, I led the company through three layoffs, three riffs. So like a triple riff. And it's pretty wild to have gone from like that explosive growth to then retooling and then realizing like, oh, shit. hopefully I can pass on here.

Yeah, we didn't go deep enough. We got to go deeper. And so through that process, got the company to break even with a bunch of cash still in the bank. And I started thinking about succession, right? It's been a decade. Co-founder had left and moved on. Like, we've built a category and an enduring business.

But as I looked at what the company really needs, like in the CEO operator's seat, you got to be going 150 miles an hour, like if you want to build something really big and meaningful. And so I started to feel like the best thing for the company is to think about how we can get someone with this renewed energy vigor, someone who can really lead the company over the next three to five years to create the outcome that we're looking for. Found that in the new CEO. I mean, he's extremely talented. And so, but it's bittersweet, you know, like, it's, you build something. It's, it's so close to you for so long.

It's like, in a lot of ways, it's your family. And, but for me, it's about, like, what's best for the business. And then also just being honest about a decade-long journey, there's that quote from from Elon around, you know, building a company is like staring into the abyss and eating glass. Yeah, and actually that comes from Bill Lee, our Brent West Coast Bill on Twitter and good mutual friend of ours, you know, just from a board perspective since Brandon's being so honest here.

I would say, you know, every startup year is like dog years, put seven years on your life. So, you know, if seven of his years were those dog years, that's 50 years at the helm. Or for any other employee, right? For the CEO, the founder, whoever's in that pilot seat, you're putting on that much mileage. And then you look at during a down market or headwinds, like we saw with the Silicon Valley bank collapse and the correction and peak Zerp going to peak, it's the end of the world. That was a great swing. And, you know, I have to say, some founders are able to assess reality.

And there was this guy, Warren Venice, who was on the program that a friend of mine had put me in touch with many years ago. And he said to me, you know, I said, what's the nature of leadership? And he said, defining reality. And I think he had been in World War II or Korean War or something. He'd been of service. And other people had said this. And, you know, what you did really well, Brandon, was, you know, in our conversations

and your conversations with the team is you accepted the reality. And the reality was, you're not going to, like, beat that valuation that we got. And the valuation was incredibly rich when we became a billion-dollar company. And that the only thing we could do was not say, hey, there's another round coming. That's going to one up that. We can look at the amount of cash in the bank. Wow, that's a lot of money. We can look at the revenue.

Okay. There are people who are customers who are cutting back. They're cutting back the number of seats they spend on salesperson. worse because their sales team went from 50 salespeople to 25. And so the whole industry was watching this SaaS contraction. And then, of course, if you're looking at marketing, and this is an experimental new product line, okay, what's going to go first? Well, there's a retreat to what you know and what's the most effective. The experimental stuff, you're figuring out. You're figuring out. Do I give Kim Kardashian a million dollars, or do I give 20 influencers 50, or do I give 200 influencers five,

or do I give 1,000 influencers 1,000 or 10,000, 100 to market my watch, my glasses, my my sneakers? All that was being figured out. And of course, in a down market, that gets constricted. We saw that in the venture space. The number of venture firms went down a third. I had to look at reality and say, okay, is every venture fund going to be easy to raise and double the last one or quadruple the last one,

this is what great leaders do. And I think you did a great job, Brandon. You were always very sober about things, even when things got overheated. And, you know, I hope as a board member, you know, me having a couple of years experience on you and maybe one, I basically saw probably one extra cycle than you did from the dot-com era and the Great Recession.

You were, how old were you in 1999, 2000? Well, I was born 85, so what? 15 years old. Yeah, so I was 30. I watched it up close and personal. And during the great recession in 2008, you were 23. You're in college, right? So I had actually experienced those as an adult in the workforce. And so when you did things like, oh, we have a little bit of venture debt and oh, people really want to push us to take more venture debt to spend the venture debt. I just said, you know, I remember pulling you aside at one point. I was like, things don't grow to the moon. Sometimes things can get bad. Like, we should not. be using this for runway. We had like a really thoughtful discussion of it. I could tell you, some founders who I was working with Alex at the time, Brandon, they were just like whatever, J-Cal, old guy.

I'm maxing out the venture debt and I'm spending the venture debt. That is what will take you out for sure. And here's the truth. It did take out two or three of your contemporaries from that time period. And man, I was just like why don't these people listen like Brandon did? And you had a little bit of venture debt,

but you didn't go spend it on an office or some cockamamie third product before the first one actually had product market fit. It's a great thing to do to say, you know what? Somebody else has more energy. I put 10 years into this. I mentor them. I'll move up to the chairman position. Reid Hoffman did it.

Many other folks have done it. And what you'll see is the company will do better. And you'll come back even stronger. I want to ask what the Venture Debt thinks. A lot of founders are watching this. Brandon, you said that venture debt will take you out. Can you just explain to people why it's so risky for the founders out there? I mean, well, you have to pay it back.

So I know that's obviously on app blush, but it's like all of a sudden you have a correction and revenue isn't just flat, but reverses your tripping covenants. And then you don't have the cash to pay it back. They have a DACA. So they control your operating accounts and then they sweep the account. You wake up one day, you have no cash and your company's gone. Another person on the board was, I liked this comment he would use every now and then,

and it wasn't you, Jason, but it was one of the other directors is that's how you lose the keys to the kingdom. So there are certain things you can do that if you're not careful, we'll wipe you out. And too much, too much venture debt, especially, the other thing, too, I would say is like the equity investors, so the venture investors and your equity partners, like they have a vested interest in seeing the company succeed. Their shareholders, their owners, debt, maybe they have some warrants, but it's small amount. And so they're not, typically not working with you. Maybe some of the like the venture debt providers are, but especially the banks. The banks are extremely conservative, and they're wiping the accounts

if push comes to shove. And the covenants part of this, as far as I understand venture debt terms, is that you can borrow money when you raise money. You saw Silicon Valley Bank with loan you another five if you raise 30. And as long as your AOR was growing at some percentage, they wouldn't take the money back, demand the money back immediately. Is that a fair explanation of covenants? Yeah. And so it's, there's something like EBITDA, covenant, growth, rate hurdles like MRR to certain KPIs in the business. And it's fine when you're growing. But then I think in certain situations where if you flatline or if you decline,

yeah, it can be risky. The other thing too, I want to comment on, Jason, I agree with you about just the pattern matching in cycles. Like, I think, you know, I heard a mentor told me this quote. I just love it is in any 10 year business period, you have six good years, two great years, and two terrible years that could put you out of business. Yeah.

And so you need, you need to prepare. And so, and I think it's right, it's like, don't get too high in the good times, don't get too low in the bad times, but know that these 10 year cycles repeat.

I think for me, it's like, man, it's so valuable having just gone through that. You know, I wasn't a part of the dot com or the 08, as we described. And I think as I go into the next 10 year cycle,

because I'm an antsy person, you know, I'm helping at the board level, but I'm going to be doing new stuff. Yeah. I'm just grateful for the experience because I think the pattern matching is real, but you have to live through it.

No matter how much someone tells you, you know, you have to experience it. I mean, I agree with that. In order to really take the lessons in, you have to experience it. That's part of Alex, like playing cards, like we talked about. If you see your pocket aces lose, you know, or you see your set, you know, lose to a bigger set

or a set lose to quads or a set lose to a, you know, I don't know, a runner, runner, flush or straight, this is in poker analogies here because you can feel invincible at one point in time and you and then you know you get wiped up but statistically when somebody like Nate on 538 said Nate Silver said

oh listen this person has a one in three chance of winning the election people thought well that's not possible for them to win the election and then the poker players were like okay so it's like you know you have an over pair and somebody has you know a lower pair like or you have a flush grow. And it was just obvious to people, but you do have to have reps. You do have to see it yourself to really understand it. But it's also good to have mentors who can tell you because you will

learn the lesson faster. You can learn these lessons faster, more efficiently, and be aware of them and take them in if you do a little bit of research. Brandon, great job bringing the company. Thank you for your efforts and look forward to being the first check in your next company. You told me, you promised me, and you'll promise me here again on the air that I am your first call when you have your next idea and I get to put the first check in. You agree? That arm a little more. You agree?

Yeah, but 100%. I'll get the first. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. I've founders do this to me. I didn't commit to that, everybody. You have to commit that I'm in the first investor in your next company. But what a time, like, even as an operator and entrepreneur, what a time to just go experiment. Like, you know, I think just the pace that things are changing, it's, it's innovation and

opportunities everywhere. And I saw the growth rate graph you guys put up earlier in the show. I think the pace at which these companies are getting to like 10, 20, 50 million ARR is just crazy. Yeah. You don't get there by accident. And I can tell you because 99% of startups that are funded do not get past 10 million. And the one that does, like you did with Grant and other people have done, it really does take tremendous amount of discipline effort. A little bit of luck on the margins.

but generally, I think, you know, building a great team, being obsessed with your customers, and then refining that product incessantly is a pretty good playbook. Team, product, customer. Brandon, great job. Thanks, guys. Appreciate it. I appreciate you. Talk to you soon. Just a great founder, you know.

There's some people when you meet them, Alex, I tell people there's like a neon sign above their head. I see it. It just flashes winner. Winner. And so when I meet people, I am always. astounded when I see that neon sign. And with Brandon, I saw it. So it was great. We have polled the clip from the, I think, episode 219. You're kidding me. This is now when I know we're doing great on our production ability. Yeah, this is good stuff. The first primary task of a leader

is to define reality. Define reality. Yeah. That means being very clearheaded about what we're up to face. Now, actually, if you really feel this is in, that you've been ordered, let's say you've been ordered by the regimental, I'm, by the company commander, I'm a platoon leader, and it's a platoon leader who leads, two platoons that lead the charge, and you've been ordered, you're in the army, and this is not like in a corporation, it may be, it can be a little pushback. So you can't say, well, I don't know if I agree, you know, it's not a time for a dissent at that moment. Later on, you can, you know, complain about it. But, So you've got to say, guys, this is going to be a rough one, and we're doing our best,

and we've got a good battle plan, and here are the issues. You know, you're going to have these snipers over and a church steeple. You've got to define. This is true of any institution you're leading. Now, it doesn't mean you sound hopeless, because I remember when I was in. So I think that's a useful point. I like the military analogies. Jason, I want to rewind here and point out, since when is there Alex 1.0, another bald white dude?

Who's that? That's Tyler Crowley. Tyler Crowley was co-hosting and Lon Harris was the news reader and that was the trio in the early days. That's in our, I don't, what, do we know what episode this was? I believe this is 219. So if you want to go look at everybody. So this is probably year three or four. And you can see I got 10 more pounds of fat on me.

And yeah, we did that in Santa Monica. And this is the early days of podcasting. That was probably in 20, I don't know, 14, 15. or something, who knows. But that's Tyler Crowley, who was kind of my chief of staff and but was the original engineer producer of the show,

Lon Harris, who's now our editorial director here. He was the original news reader and worked with me at Mahalham. And so that was the old school crew back in the early days of podcasting. I wanted to do a founder lesson today. I think we can get one in.

And then any other lightning you want to try to get to here as we wrap up the week. Okay, so two options here. One from our dear friend, Fresh formerly of the launch team and one from Matt Turk about where you should build a company, Jason, pick a direction for us. I mean, you can't go wrong with Prash.

All right. So here is a tweet from Prash, and I think it does explain a very important concept. So, Prash writes over on Twitter, take every one-star rating personally. Don't take every five-star rating personally. And then Austin, Peter Smith, someone that I've known on Twitter for ages, summarize this and says, negative feedback. straight to the heart. Positive feedback, straight to the team. Perfect. This is just great leadership. These are two people I've worked with for a long time. Prush came to work with me. He dropped out of

college to work for me here at launch. And Austin worked with me on Inside and I'm an investor in his new company. Yeah, just two great entrepreneurs out there getting it done. Negative feedback. Very important. The detractors in NPS world are people who give you a six or less on the question or how likely are you to recommend this product or service to one of your friends? And what we're speaking to here is the value of detractors, haters. The haters usually have, now there are a drive-by haters, and there are a drive-by people praising you, and that's what they're sort of getting to here. I think the lesson at the end of the day is you have to not get too high on your own supply,

as Brendan just said in our previous segment, you know, and not over index on the lows, but inside of hater comments will be you know you're fat you're ugly you know you could

do a better job on X Y and Z reminder you're a fat bastard and you have to be able to parse through that feedback and find the actual kernel of truth the haters will make you greater is what I always tell folks

and then in terms of praise yeah I like Austin's feedback which is hey just send it to the team Team uses praise. And somebody told me, you know, the job of leadership is to repeat the same things over and over again and make people feel 12 feet tall. And so that's an actual, you know, it's impossible to be 12 feet tall. But you want to make them feel that way. No, no.

I think it's, I think it's well said because, I mean, there's various little acorns or co-ends or, you know, nuggets of wisdom that we talk about. My favorite is the job of the CEO is to make the secretary rich. And I know that's a slightly dated bit of phrasing, but I've always held onto it. But I really do like the idea of parsing out positive negative feedback and apportioning them to the right things. Because the least effective leader takes praise for the team, gives it to themselves, takes criticism of the team, and gives that to other people. Or as I put it, you know, criticism should roll up and praise should roll down. Basically. Yeah.

I mean, I think it's pretty good advice. I want to point out that this discussion of haters brings me to my favorite meme on the internet. I'm just going to bring it up because I can't help myself. Okay. This is an old historic tweet and it reads, The haters said I couldn't do it. And they were correct. Honestly, a great call from the haters.

That's so great. I mean, there is something to it. You know, I mean, yeah. Sometimes the haters are right. Sure. Or as I call them, the Jaters. Shout out to my guy. I'm like, oh, sorry.

Stray bullets everywhere. I love you brought that back. All right. So just a really quick things, everybody. Waymo announced that they are now at 200. thousand paid rides per week up fantastic. Keep in mind that Uber did 33 million a day

in its last quarter. So Waymo is growing but remains an absolute. It's 200 a week, right? So that would be... 20,000 a week, yeah. So you divide that by seven, it would be 30,000 a day to 33 million. It's, yeah. One thousandth as many. Here's the thing. It's going to take time. Everybody

wants to talk to me about this because I'm the early Uber investor, which is totally fine because I bring it on. And I'm not talking to my book here. but I'll tell folks once again, if you just build a model and you can ask Gemini to build a model, we did that here one time

with their deep research product. It's a billion rides a day in the United States. Around the world, it's a much larger number of office because the United States is but 5% of the global population. It's going to take a long time

to get to 10% or 20% autonomous rides. I think in the next 10 years we could see 20% of rides be autonomous. And at the same time, I think people will take more rides because it'll get cheaper.

You'll be able to drink when you ride. you'll be able to sleep when you ride. So the idea, like flight, you know, airplane rides used to be for the rich and, you know, they were a bit dangerous in the early days. And then eventually it became safe and cheap and ubiquitous and routes were everywhere. And so just common folk, anybody could afford, you know, a $49 to $149 anytime fair on Southwest or JetBlue. And it became more common. So imagine that. And cars used to be something only for the rich and the elite. And then you can. can buy a car now for a couple of grand. So we're going to see number of rides go up and we're going to see four or five players because the number of cars that will be necessary when we did the calculation is, you know, somewhere in the range of tens of millions of cars per percentage point. It gives you an idea, you know, as big as Uber is and the ride-sharing business is and to the delivery

businesses, it's less than one percent of rides. Ride-chering is less than one percent of rides. It might be like, you know, point A, 1.2. It depends on the country, obviously, and the density. So the pie's getting bigger. The percentage is tiny. It's going to take, I think, just in the United States, millions of cars being produced every year to just get that to 2%, let's say.

So what will the cars cost? I think Elon's been pretty clear. It's going to cost them $30,000,000 per car. Yeah. Maybe they get it down to $25,000. they did 1.8 million cars two years ago, 1.75, I think, last year. So let's give them the benefit of the doubt. They do 2 million cars. And I don't know, 10% of them go to the self-driving effort. So $200,000, quarter million. It's a lot of money. And well, that's the other thing people are, you got to really think about that. So let's take 1 million cars and how many rides they could do. They could do 20 rides a day, you know, 20 million rides a day. Okay, that's incredible. incredible. Okay, that's what Waymo's doing right now with their 200,000 cars. Oh, no, I don't know how

many cars they have, but that's what they're doing their 200,000. Wong's very short. If you put a million cars down the road, which Tesla's capable of doing, and B.D is capable of doing, Toyota's capable of doing, that's $30 billion. It's $30 billion for one million cars. We're going to need like 100 million cars. This is trillions of dollars worth of cars, folks, and batteries. So I think one of the other issues is, you know, When Travis brought this up, the founder of Uber, co-founder, I'm a lot like Garrett Camp. He pointed out, like, there might not be enough electricity in California right now to charge all the cars to do all the rides.

So we got to upgrade that and how many batteries can be produced. This is not to say it's not going to happen. No, no, no, no. It's going to happen. But it's going to take 10 years to get to 20% ride sharing. And that means the market grows 20x. And I think there's three or four players. Just like in e-commerce or commerce generally, it's not a winner.

take all market because it's the real world, folks. It's not one airline. It's not a network effect digital business. It's a network effect real world business. Yes. That's a very distinctly different XY matrix. And if we were make a four quadrant, is it a network effect business? Clearly, ride sharing is a network business. Is it atoms or bits? It's atoms. And you can just look at that to understand the real world. Yes. And I agree with all of that. I'm more optimistic on the timeline because we're seeing other companies advance so quickly. So Tesla, which you mentioned, just two quick little news items. They're doing some FSD in China.

We're still figuring out exactly what that is, but seeing that pop up for the first time. And also, Tesla is working to launch a free self-driving taxi business in California, which is the step you do before you start charging for it. I think that's the big win. I think immediately Tesla should partner with Lyft and Uber and put Tesla's with safety drivers in them for a year or two in each market with their hands off the steering wheel and prove like Waymo did nothing to worry about folks. And then you just can record for people, hey, look, we did a thousand rides today and we had two interventions per thousand. So it's like,

you know, 500 rides before we have an intervention. And of course, they have some of these statistics from me driving my car, but I'm not a safety driver. Safety drivers are clearly the first step. Now, he did say, Elon, that in June, there would be people in cyber taxis without drivers. So I think they're going to have, this is a prediction. I don't have inside information. I think they're going to have a constrained route like they did for the cyber taxi launch in a constrained area. Like they pick downtown, you know, area of Austin, they could very well make that work very easily. So if they pick like a two mile by two mile area and they just really nail that, yeah, maybe they don't need to have the, in-car safety driver, they could do that with remote drivers

and just have one person watching it. Like, people say Waymo has one. What do they call them? Not remote drivers. They had another word for them, operators or something. They had some weird. I think it was operator, but I, let me go back and fact check that. But someone who's overseen, what's going on?

They need to have an over, I would, that's what I would. If I was running the program, I would have 10 cars with 10 operators remote in, in Austin, maybe in a small area. And then I would have a thousand Uber driver. and just give them the Model Y with the 4.0 package. And I think actually my feedback on FSD is now outdated because I have the hardware three package. And Elon said the hardware three package is probably going to have to be replaced.

And he's kind of been warming up the shareholders to that. So my prediction right now is Uber Waymo number one, Tesla number two in the short term, then maybe tied and then maybe Tesla wins, you know, the number one spot because of their production ability. All I care about is that they're going to be competing. And me, Alex, as a consumer, does well. And one last note on this, We ride is expanding,

which is the public Chinese self-driving company that listed in the United States. They're expanding a bit in Europe and China. So to me, we're seeing competition internationally, definitely here in the U.S. It feels like it's accelerating. And so the Waymo milestone of,

you know, new number of paid rides per week is just indicative that I think they're trying to stay ahead of Tesla, which is great. We want them on their toes. We want everyone fighting. April 23rd, New York City.

You and Mike Savino, are heading down for Angel University. This is a great course we do. I think we'll have 200 seats. We're going to do it at a dim sum place or Peking Duck Place. We teach people how to angel invest. We do some live pitches and all the money goes to charity, or I should say any of the proceeds go to charity because, you know,

we do a little marketing on this and we spend a little bit on the dim sum. But we have donated a large amount to charity. I'm very proud of this. And we do our workshop. We try to teach people how to invest in. private companies more intelligently. We put you into a private Slack community. We give you some models and you can question us and, you know, tell us, you know, what you've learned in terms of there is you come to it. You meet another 200 people who are accredited investors, angel dot university

to sign up. I think we're charging a thousand bucks and it includes lunch and we'll probably have like a little after party, but a fun thing to come to if you're independently wealthy, accredited investor and want to hang out with me and Mike in New York. It's a fun thing. a lot of fun. We do it once a year. Join us if you want to learn from each other and us. We also have the Founder Fridays city competition coming up. All right. We're going to do a city competition. We did this in the early days of the show. Basically, if you're part of Founder Fridays, go to Founder Fridays. Tech, which is Meetups for founders. We're going to have each city do their own little competition. So you do a pitch competition between your eight to 16 members in your

community. You tell us which one won your community. So San Diego will battle soul, will battle, Sydney will battle San Paulo, will battle Sauganese, New York. The end. And we'll make a lot of fun about it. It'll be here on the program. So your city will get some promotion and that startup will get some promotion.

Go to Founder Fridays.Tech to start your own chapter. We do this just to help founders. Like everything we do, it's just to support founders and inspire innovation. It's not a complicated formula here. Thank you so much, Alex. It's great to have you back. Thank you, producer, Maddie, Port, and Chris and the sales team, Matt, Hannah, and Jamie, and of course, our co-host here, Alex Wilhelm.

We'll see you all next time.