This Week in Startups - E1007: DoNotPay CEO & Founder Josh Browder built an AI lawyer to fight corporations & governments, demos product features & how it helps consumers, shares insights on following in footsteps of his father Bill Browder, & future of consumer empowerment

Episode Date: December 6, 2019

0:51 Jason intros Josh Browder & DoNotPay 2:48 Starting DoNotPay in college 6:12 How much $ has DoNotPay saved citizens since launching in 2016? 7:46 Josh explains his product roadmap to Jason 15:14 DoNotPay's mission and how Wells Fargo scammed its customers 17:37 Josh takes us through DoNotPay's suite of features starting with the robot lawyer/chatbot 19:57 Josh describes the "Skip Waiting on Hold" feature 23:37 DoNotPay's "Contract Reading AI" 28:31 Benefits of capitalist markets when consumers are treated poorly 30:51 Thoughts on Facebook? 34:05 "Hidden $ Discovery" on DoNotPay 34:47 What is DoNotPay doing for immigration 41:59 Jason asks Josh about his father, Bill Browder life and book, "Red Notice" 48:47 What is the CCPA? How does it relate to DoNotPay? 54:59 Long-term vision of DoNotPay? 56:24 Full audio of Ryan Block's call with Comcast

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you welcome to this week in startups. I'm your host, Jason Kalakannis, and this is the podcast where we talk about startups that are trying to change the world. One of the big problems in the world is injustice, and there's many levels of injustice. One of them is the average citizen and how they interact with corporations, how they interact with governments, and how unfair and sometimes how opaque those relationships and transactions can be. My next guest is named Josh Broder, and he is some kind of a combination of activist and entrepreneur. He doesn't run a nonprofit. He runs a for-profit called Do Not Pay.com. Welcome to the program, Josh. Thank you for having me. I described you as an activist and an entrepreneur. You are not running a nonprofit. This is a

for-profit company, correct? That's right. But would you agree that you have a level of activism in your entrepreneurial efforts? I think so, but I think all entrepreneurs, at the end of the day, solve a big problem that helps the world. I'm very optimistic. I'm optimistic as well. Yeah. It's hard to be optimistic right now because the world is so chaotic. But overall, you feel it's trending in the right way? I hope so, yes. You hope and feel? Yes. Yeah. You read Steve Pinker's book, Better Angels? I did, yeah. It kind of, I mean, I know some people have given it a hard time, but it does feel directionally correct. Like the idea of being murdered or suffering injustice in the modern world is lower than it's ever been and inhumanity is lower, but

there's lots of pockets of injustice. With Do Not Pay, you've started looking at some of the injustices we face on a daily basis, and I believe the first one you addressed was parking tickets. Explain that. So I started driving at the age of 18 and I got about maybe 30 tickets since I started driving. And I was right. I obviously didn't have the money to pay for these really. expensive tickets. They're like $100 to $200 a piece. And so I had to figure out other ways to get

the tickets dismissed. And I learned something very interesting, which is that these tickets are not necessarily always issued because people do things wrong, but sometimes to just make money for the government. I am shocked. You're telling me that governments will build their citizens unjustly to hit their budget. I am in shock. Yeah. So as a young person, I was sure. I was shocked as well. And I learned that although they issue all of these tickets, they don't follow their own rules when giving them. And so you can get out of your tickets very easily by writing these legal letters. And so I spent about 10 hours late in the night researching all of the obscure ways that parking tickets are dismissed. And I learned that I could get my tickets

dismissed. And is this in the United States or in London? This started in London. Got it. And you, how many of the 30 tickets did you get dismissed? I got about 15 dismissed. 50%? Yes. And what was the, where are the number one, two and three reasons that they do get dismissed? Is it for improperly filling out the form? Is it? So the number one reason is the signage.

There's a tree covering the sign. Or in San Francisco, for example, there are two signs that say the exact opposite thing. Another reason is that there's no paint on the sign, all of the issues. If they don't even tell you how to park, how can you follow the rules? Right. The number two reason is mistakes on the. the ticket. And then the number three reason is that the parking bay is physically impossible to actually park a car in because it's too small. Got it. And in just by filling these out,

you can get the ticket dismissed roughly half the time. That's right. And did that apply in America as well? Yes. So I was really successful helping myself and my friends get out of our tickets and I realized I should create an app that helps everyone worldwide get out of their parking tickets. And I just did this for fun and I could never have imagined that three years later, be in the business of fighting for people's rights. And it seems trivial in a way, like a parking ticket, but it is the perfect example of government overreach. And it's a small injustice, but it's something we all feel consistently.

And governments need to be held in check if the police or the enforcement individuals are jumping the fence and acting inappropriately. Yeah. In some places, 20% of the budget comes from tickets. And that is not where the budget should come from. It's an incentive for them to be mischievous like this. Yes. A cynic would say perhaps the signs are purposefully convoluted or complicated unnecessarily to create this situation.

Do you believe that? Or is that me being a little bit two, three days of the condor conspiracy theorist? I would say that's definitely true. They treat it as a business. Not necessarily false signs, but certainly misleading people. And then also a huge level of incompetence. You can always count on the government to not follow their own rules. So you launched this app when, like in 2016 or so?

In August of 2015. Got it. And a large number of people have used this. Is there some public number you can share of the number of people who've used it or successfully gotten out of tickets? What's the running percentage? Yeah, so we've saved over 20 months. million dollars of fines worldwide.

But although that sounds impressive, it's just a drop in the water. New York City every year has $1 billion of parking ticket and other ticket revenue. And wonder what percentage of the budget comes from those ticket revenues. Yeah. Wow, but you've had over 300,000 people do this successfully with your app. And other services as well. And other services. Yeah.

So you create the service for parking tickets and then one would wonder, hmm, what other things are purposely opaque and unfair. And you must have made a list and then created a roadmap for Do Not Pay. What were the three or four things that were the low-hanging fruit that you went after later? Because now the service is, I think,

$3 a month or something? Yes. So do you sell a yearly or is it just only monthly? You can cancel any time. And by the way, it only starts when you win. Okay. So everybody can sign up for Do NotPay.com right now. Get a subscription.

And it's free to check out and only once you've used the product for something. So if you save me 50 bucks or something, then I start paying. That's right. Which seems beyond reasonable. Yes. You're like,

eat the steak. If you enjoy it, pay, if you don't, no need. And we're happy because it's all software, so we're not spending lots of money to operate the service.

You got about 10 people working at the company. You raised a couple million bucks. What was the second thing you added? Third thing you added, take me through the roadmap. So what's in the product now? Yeah. So I had a contact form on my website, and unfortunately, people assume that because I could help them with parking tickets, I was some sort of lawyer. They didn't know my background. That was just a dorm room hacker. And they sent me all these ideas and asked for help with all sorts of things. And so the second thing was helping people with landlord tenant disputes. The third thing was helping people with delayed flights. And then I just realized it's unlimited potential from there and now do not pay it off as 100 different things across five categories. Can you show me the product? I know we have a little demo here.

that we could pull up the video. And as we pull up the video, I see we have a little screencast here. You have to remember most people are not watching. So let's start over the video, Nick. So sure. So this is our most popular product. We call it the free trial credit card.

And lots of people sign up for free trials and they forget to cancel. And so we actually give people, as you can see on the screen, a physical card not tied to their bank account or identity that they can use for any free trial and it will just cancel for them. and so people are getting free Netflix, Hulu, all sorts of great things. So this is for when I have this specific problem of the Wall Street Journal. I cannot believe that our company with journalists and integrity would allow you to buy the Wall Street Journal. And here it is in one of your top ones there, Spotify, Wall Street Journal, ESPN.

And I think ESPN and Spotify are pretty ethical, but the Wall Street Journal is not when it comes to their subscriptions. You have to call them on the phone, and it takes at least 15 minutes. Yeah. They'll take your money through a web form. You know what they told me when I told them, why can I give you money through your forms, but not cancel through your forms? You know what they said? What do they say? Security. And I said, do you understand how ridiculous that statement you just had is? You'll take my money and my credit card, which is dangerous to take a credit, or not dangerous, but that would be certainly more dangerous than saying stop charging my card. Yeah.

And the woman's like, I don't make the rules, sir. And I was like, I'm sorry. I don't mean to give you a hard time. It's the front line. But you're telling me, I get the fake burner number. And then instead of canceling with them, I just turn that number off? You don't even have to do it. We do it automatically.

And if it doesn't get turned off whatever reason, you're not even responsible. How do you do it automatically? I set a time limit and say turn it off at this date? No. Our systems can detect when they're trying to charge you and it just cuts it off. So I can get the free trial on that number. try it, and then it automatically cancels on the second charge or on the first charge or whatever I set up. It's not even by a number of charges. We know what's a free trial card charge and what's a

real charge and it will cancel. So by default it cancels. Yes. And if I want to keep it, then I have to take the action of using my real credit card and changing it at the website. It's opt in rather than opt out, which is how it should be. Oh my God. I just want to jump over the desk and just give you a hug. We can give everyone here free subscriptions to do not pay. Well, I mean, you don't want people to be hacking this. It's not like do it every month and get Netflix. So we limit people. It's about controlling finances, not helping fraud.

Right. Yeah. And it says here that you'll also on the screen, I see a temporary email generator. So you can also create a do not pay email for me. Yes. And give me a credit card number. And it forwards to your real email. So if you don't want to use your real email, protect your privacy, there's no, it blocks all the tracking.

That's a big trend these days. And so you can protect your privacy and your finances. So it's essentially like a burner identity. Yes. Which I love. And we're actually moving even more in that direction with some new products coming out in the next few weeks. Oh, you're going to have a burner phone number, aren't you?

Oh, look at you with Twilio. Not just that. We have many other stuff. Oh, post office box too. Maybe. Maybe. Oh, I can guess the roadmap. You know, because I'm into this cloak and dagger stuff because I'm like a little bit

famous, like mini famous. Yeah. and like in the internet industry, and I'll tell you something crazy. I mean, people think this privacy thing is not real. I signed up for a service. I'm not going to say which one it is because I happen to know the founder and I've become friendly with them and I like them and they've been on the podcast. Yeah.

But early in the life of this company, I signed up for the company. They shared my name and my address with the vendors who they were reselling. And one of those vendors emailed me and said, I'm a huge fan of your podcast. Thanks for buying our product. And I said, how do you know I bought your product? Can I ask? And they said, oh, this company told us the distributor. And I called a distributor and I went ham. Yeah. Is that the right term, millennial? Ham? It's good. It's good. I think it's a good drop. You're a millennial too. Ham, is that the word? I'm millennial, actually, on the border. I think ham is the right word. I went hard as a melon farmer on these melon farmers. And I was like, how dare you give my homestead dress to somebody without my goddam you realize that i could be a fishing account now some

stalker might show up and i understand that the person's a fan of mine yeah and they will they wanted to give me free product yeah that's the punchline so i i tried to be gracious about it with the person who got my identity but my god people do crazy ish with your second millennial reference i do crazyish and then i got to go ham yeah well in europe that's like completely illegal and you could actually sue the person in our app in Europe. There aren't the laws here. Oh, praise Jesus for you. Yeah. All right. When we get back from this quick break,

I want to see more of the product. And I want to know what your personal motivation is, Josh Broder. I want to know what makes you tick when we get back on this weekend startups. Listen, hiring takes a lot of time and you're the founder. It's going to fall on your plate and you know how much time it takes.

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That's LinkedIn.com slash twist to get $50 off your first job post terms and conditions, of course, apply because they're giving you a Fitty. All right. Let's get back to this amazing episode. All right. Josh Broder is with us. He is the CEO and founder of Do Not Pay. This is the greatest thing ever. do not pay.com $3 a month.

And they help people deal with, let's face it, corporate injustice. That's right. It's corporate injustice and sometimes government injustice. And these folks are not accountable to government because in some cases they are the government. And in other cases, the corporations own the government. Or they have such lobbying that people like the banks can open up, You know, multiple accounts for you and charged you for them, and you didn't even know you started those accounts. You remember that scandal?

Yeah, I was a victim, actually. Explain that scam and how they got caught and how that got stopped. So bank fees is about $50 to $100 billion a year. More money is spent on overdraft fees than election spending combined in this country. And so the more accounts you have open, the more fees they can charge you. And so when I was coming to the U.S. from the U.K., I went to the U.S. to a Wells Fargo branch and they said, oh, you need a savings account, you need a checking account, you need a brokerage account, all of these accounts. Every single one incurring fees,

I just want to buy coffee at Starbucks. I don't need three accounts. There's a checking account. That's it. Yeah. Just give me a goddamn checking account. And when you transfer between the checking and the savings and they have these automated transfers that supposedly protect you, they charge you fees. And so I probably racked up like $600 in fees just from my college life. Yeah. And they're doing this to the poorest, most unsophisticated people, that is the true injustice. Because once you get money, do you know what these banks do to you? Yeah. They lower your fees and they take them away. You know what happens when Jason Gallaghanes in 2019 calls a bank and says, fix this? You know what they do? They fix it. Yeah. And you know what happened when I was, you know, 29 years old and I called them? You

know what they did? They put me on hold. That's right. Yeah. That's what they did. So the more money and power you get, the more likely they are to treat you with respect. And it doesn't matter if I get hit with a banking fee. But it did matter to me when I was 19 or 29, like you were in college. And that's $600 was your vacation or tuition or books or tutoring. Yeah. It's bonkers. Yeah.

It's bonkers. Look at this. Traffic disputes. So let's hit the play button here. Describe what we're all seeing. So this is how it actually gets you out of your tickets. It's a robot that talks to you, asks you questions about your ticket, and then generates the latter. Got it.

So it asks you what questions? Were the signs hard to read was the parking bay too small? And it really goes in detail. It plays a game of 20 questions to find a specific statute that applies to your ticket. Got it. Now, when you create something like this and you save this amount of money, I'm going to guess that some bureaucrat is not pleased with you, or are they so incompetent that they don't even care yet?

Yes. Well, yes to both. Yes to both. So they all signed up for the service. We're tracking it. Got it. And some of them really hate us, but some of them actually, when it launched in LA, for example, NPRS, Los Angeles, like, parking ticket bureau, what they thought of Do Not Pay. And they said, we actually kind of like it because at least when the appeals come from Do Not Pay, it's in a standardized format. People write such gibberish on their parking ticket appeals that at least when it comes from them, like we can quickly determine whether it's a legitimate defense or not. Fantastic. Yeah. Do you have to upload a picture of the block ticket? Is that helpful?

Yes, and we have software that can find the jurisdiction from the ticket and save it from asking you lots of questions. Ah, so you know Santa Monica versus Santa Cruz. That's right, yeah. And they might be very different. Yes. So you're going in normalizing and creating the 20 questions chatbot intelligently. Yeah, and this is the perfect problem for software because all of this information is public. All previous cases, it's all Freedom of Information Act public.

All of the information about how this, how to get out of a ticket legally, not by committing fraud or lying, but to actually legitimate get out of it, all of that is available by FOA, the Freedom of Information Act here in the United States. Yeah, and in the UK. And activists have already made these requests so it's available online. Wow. Foa is a powerful thing. It really is. I mean, a lot of the information we're getting about Mueller and a lot of these things is because these journalists are filing FOA requests. Freedom of information.

The government's data is our data. And unless it's giving up some security concern methods or something, we deserve it. We should get it. All right, let's keep going through this little demo here. Again, remember, describe what we're seeing. So you mentioned waiting on hold when you were 29. So we have a product called Skip Waiting on Hold, the Waits on Hold for you.

Oh, my Lord. And during the call, if they're treating you badly or, for example, they're being unfair, you can one tap, press record, and that notifies them that they're being recorded, and then you can share the recording with other Do Not Pay users. Oh, my Lord, can I hit pause on this podcast and sign up for this? I mean, literally, you've thought about everything. So you can record your call.

Yeah. You know, but isn't recording calls not legal in California or you do a little disclaimer? It's no secret. It's very clear. And it actually makes them more careful. Oh, you say at the call, I'm recording this call. A robot says it once you press the button. Which is what they do anyway.

Exactly. So it's giving the power back. You're giving the power back. Yeah. Look at you. Look what you're doing. This, you know what I, I mean, the term microaggression is silly. most of the time.

But these are systematic microaggressions by the world against the poorest people, the most vulnerable people, and you're undoing those. And you know what, these things kind of add up. I know the microaggression thing that's easy to make fun of. You know what I'm talking about? It's a social justice microaggressions. It's pretty easy to make fun of, like, when people, you know,

use a word and they say, oh, there's some microaggression in here. It actually turns out that if you put people under, like, hundreds of microaggressions, could actually build up to be anxiety producing for people. Yes. It's anxiety producing to wait on hold like this. And they do it on purpose, don't they? Yeah, and then they keep redirecting you, and then you wait on hold again in the same call.

You give up. Yeah. And eat the fee. And here you say, there's the Comcast, Ryan Block call where he asked like 20 times. Ryan Block is one of my dear friends. I'm on the board of his company. You know him? Yeah, we asked his permission to.

Of course, asked his permission to. And Ryan Block was trying to cancel Comcast. And he got on the phone with them and he recorded it. He told him he was recording it. And then he released it. He was the editor. I mean Gadgett with Peter Rojas. They were co-editors.

I hired him for that job, or Peter hired him. I gave him permission to hire him. And now he's in the board. And that phone call is bonkers. It's ridiculous. And it's true. It's not like a one case.

Everyone has these experiences. All right. Here we're going to call in Audible. Cut into this podcast. At the end of the podcast, we're going to play the Ryan Block call. We'll just put it at the end. Just for the sake of everybody listening.

You can listen to this call. Yeah. He basically just tries over and over. Can I ask you why? I want my account, canceled. I'm recording this call. Please cancel my account. And she refuses to do it.

Why would that frontline worker refuse to cancel an account like that in your mind? I think that it's a business strategy to get as much revenue as possible because they don't have a product that's valuable for people. Right. And I think my understanding is they give spiffs, little bonuses for the saves. Yeah. So they're probably not policing. how people get the saves, but they're basically using

the save as a way to motivate those frontline employees. So if the frontline employee says, let me put you on hold and talk to a manager. They can look at the manager and say, don't pick up for two minutes. Let's see if they drop the call. If they drop the call, we get $20 each for saving.

Yeah, it's very terrible. They have teams of people brainstorming how to rip off the consumer and the average person has no one. All right. So you can skip waiting on hold. Now, what are we seeing here with documents? So this is actually a new product coming out. I know your life, so your live viewers can get a

sneak peek. But what this does is it shows you all of the warnings and loopholes with your consumer contracts. You're talking about the terms of service we all skip? That's the biggest lie on the internet that people read the terms of service, yes. Right. There was a South Park episode about skipping the terms of service. We'll put a link in the show notes to that. Yes. Where basically... And yeah, one of the kids doesn't do the terms of service and it allows Apple to do something horrible to them that I cannot say on the podcast because it would get us banned. So here we go. Two warnings, 23 loopholes.

Chase United Explorer. This card contains a forced arbitration clause which prohibits you from suing the company in federal state court. Do not pay will help you opt out. So you can actually opt out of that. By law, you have to and they can't discriminate just because you've opted. out. But I didn't know that. To opt out, you have to send a registered mail letter and you can do that straight from the app just by pressing results now. So if we all use Do NotPay.com, we can send such a united message to these scumbags who are trying, I said that, not you. I agree.

Okay, you can say it to these scumbags who are trying to screw us over every chance they get for no reason. Yeah. I'm very proud of the companies I invest in because they're so customer centric, this new generation of companies, that they don't want to play these games. If you're unhappy, you know what they think? That's a chance at a save. That's a chance at making you a believer in our product. So if you want to cancelcom.com or you have a problem with your Uber Eats, like I guarantee you, you tell Uber Eats you had a problem.

I told them my ice cream was melted. It was. Yeah. They just gave me $10. They don't want to deal with arguing with you over this. They want you happy. They don't want you going to Postmates. and Postmates doesn't want you going to Grubhub.

And Grubhub probably doesn't care about you. But that's because of the old school. No offense to the Grubhub people, but that app is terrible. I've had a horrible experience as a Grubbub. What do you think about the modern crop of companies? I hate this company called Facebook. This company's terrible. Horrible.

I think so, too. For humanity. When we get back from this quick break, how do we deal with the horrible, horrible company that has infected democracy and humanity in the United States Facebook? What are your ideas for taming that beast, that horrible actor, the bad actor in America when we get back on this weekend startups. Let's workshop it. If you're a small business owner, you wear a lot of hats. You got to do your taxes. You got to set up computers. You got to do your payroll. There's so much on your plate.

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You might prefer the phone. I don't know. That may be an old K-Boomer thing, but I think I'm part of the millennials who likes doing the chat. And you get everything in one place. If you want to do the 529 for people's college or HSA, 401K, dental vision, health, all that stuff, even the commuter. We do the commuter because people love that. So it's the best time right now to get set up in 2020. Don't wait.

Start your next decade with Gusto and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's right. Three months free when you run your first payroll. That's a great deal. So try a free demo and see for yourself at gusto gushto.com slash twist. That's gusto.com. slash twist. Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. All right, my new bestie, Josh Broder is here. He's Jay Broder 1 on the Twitter.

CEO and founder of do not pay.com. I am commanding you. If you're on my audience to download the app right now. If you hear my voice, you download the app, do not pay. Stop what you're doing, pause the podcast, go to the app store, type in Do Not Pay. Together, we can stop these scumbags from stealing our money and screwing us. Thank you for doing this. I think it's a huge opportunity. Yeah, see, this is the thing. You're an entrepreneur and you're doing the right thing. They're not need to be mutually exclusive.

I completely agree. I feel like I have the best job in the world. Think about this. People complain about capitalism. Oh, capitalism. It's off the rails. Oh, people get too rich. For every moment where capitalism gets too overreaching,

there becomes an opportunity to rein it back in. Yes. So if Verizon, my Verizon bill is 200 a month, they're making me bonkers. I can't figure out my bill. I try to change my bill at Verizon. They give me a hard time. I try to go to the store. Nobody can help me.

And then Google Fi comes out. Have you seen Google Fi? Yeah, I have. You have it or you seen it? No, I've seen it, yeah. They let you go to a website and pause your service with one click. Stop paying me. They tell you every time you're over on the data.

They take you international. No surprises. No nonsense. Yeah. And then I want new data. Sims on GoogleFi. I hate to do a Google Fi commercial here, but it's an example of Verizon abuses their customers. So Google Fi realizes there's an opportunity. And don't email me Verizon executives about this. I got their receipts, okay? Guys have been killing me on these bills.

And it's unnecessary. I love Verizon, but I'm leaving Verizon because they've treated me so poorly. Yeah. You can order an extra data sim from Google Fi, put it into any device, and it goes on your master data plan. So I, ordered two or three of these, I put them on my daughter's iPads, I put them on my iPads, whatever, and everybody's on my data plan. So if we happen to be out of range and they want to watch

some YouTube video, YouTube kids or something, their iPads work online. Now, if I did that with Verizon, they'd murder me. I don't trust Verizon. Yeah. There's nothing they can do, because if they change their ways, they'll have half the revenue and then everyone will get fired.

What they could do is they could start listening to the customers and build additional services and provide additional value that lets them compress the price a little bit. But this is the perfection of capitalism. For every time a company gets fat and has too much margin, your margin is the other entrepreneur's opportunity. Yeah.

What about Facebook? This company is horrible. I try to delete stuff off Facebook it takes forever. How do we stop Facebook? Do you have any product ideas or anything in the market yet? What are you brainstorming about Facebook? Facebook. So one tap, you can change all of your privacy settings and delete all the data that Facebook

has about you because they let you do it, but it takes 30 minutes. If the bot just does it, it can take two seconds. Literally, I could take off a 767 Dreamliner with that stupid software that crashes the plane. I could take off one of those planes successfully quicker than deleting my data on Facebook. Yes. Command Center looks like a cockpit, and you figured out how to do it in one click. Yeah, it's a great tool for bots.

They can just do all the clicking for you. And we've already built these bots for other things. Is it a Chrome extension that does it or an app? In the app. In the app. So Apple have a technology called WebKit View, and you can just... Oh, you fire up the browser. The app does it for you.

But you don't even see the browser. You don't even see it. It just does it in the background. So genius. And it's secure because it's all on your device. Amazing. Yeah. All right.

So you got the free trial credit card. Yeah. So I can't get screwed. I have to opt in. I'm using that. Customer service disputes. I don't have too many, but yeah. Yeah.

You know, getting tickets. I get some, usually for speeding. But I speed regulated all my Teslas so that I don't get these anymore. You can't help me with speeding tickets because I'm dead to rights on those. That's true. But I'm a white guy, so I kind of get out of half of them by default. It's pretty crazy. I'm British.

They let me off. They let you off. I said I'm visiting Golden Gate Bridge. You were speeding on the Golden Gate Bridge? No, I just say, where's the Golden Gate Bridge? I'm visiting from the UK. Oh, because they don't bother writing because they know you don't have to pay it. Yeah.

A genius. That's a great hack. Well, I do have to pay it, but they let me off. I'm going to start that. Yeah. I've literally been trying to find the Golden Gate Bridge. That's exactly right. Can you point me to the, is this the Golden Gate Bridge?

No, no, sir, this is the Bay Bridge? I was wondering because in the photo the Golden Gate Bridge was red. This bridge is gray. I thought maybe the paint has faded. How is that? Yeah, and then they're like, I'm done. They're like enough of that accent. Enough of go get yourself some mushy peas and get on your way.

Yeah. Enough nonsense. I like the mushy peas. It's delicious. Do you ever have them with a little mint in them? That's the best. How come we don't have this here? The mushy peas.

Now, that's like mashed potatoes, but delicious. And healthier. And healthier than mashed potatoes. And you put a little mint in there. You got a mushy pea place in San Francisco Bay. What's the best place for me to get some bangers in mesh? So mushy peas, Nandoes is opening up in the U.S. And that's South African restaurant, but it's U.K. South African.

Nandoes? Yeah, it's delicious. Fried chicken, but mushy peas as well. Oh, I love those mushy peas. Yeah. I like that. I like the bangers. It's just like sausages

With the mash Oh Delicious So delicious Now I'm starting to think about it Okay hidden money discovery Take me through this What is this?

Hidden money So lots of our users Come to Do Not Pay with a problem But what we say is There are some Fees that you don't even know about So it analyzes your accounts And says you can get these bank fees back

Even if you didn't know they existed So I can authenticate With Bank of America Wells Fargo Whoever Yes And then you take tell me that they're overcharging and write a letter? Yes.

And do you send a postal letter? We do, yeah. Or sometimes via a secure message center with these bots. And if you send the print letter, doesn't that cost you a buck to do that? Yeah, but it's a $3 subscription. So we're not making a lot of money. We just want to have an amazing product. Okay.

Now, I had read that you were doing something for immigration, which is an acute problem. Yeah. Because if you're an immigrant, these poor immigrants, sometimes they don't know the native language. They're super vulnerable. And they're coming from countries where if they get sent back, they might be destined to die. We turned back Holocaust survivors to their certain death in America and Canada, to our great shame. Yeah. And we're doing it now.

We're sending people back to certain death or torture. You're actually going to try to solve this problem? So this was actually before I started, Do Not Pay. I'm a big legal technology nerd. So anything that can help legal tech, I'm really interested in. Take me through this part because this to me seems like for you could be your legacy. If you could save just one immigrant from going back to certain death in these horrible dictatorships, my goodness, just because they can't fill out the paperwork. Yeah, it costs hundreds or thousands of dollars to fill out to apply for asylum aid, which is like aid that you get with getting asylum.

and so we had automated that paperwork. So same thing with the chat bot that you do for a parking ticket. Like is the tree blocked? You say, are you in danger of being harmed? Are you in danger? That's simple. Yeah. On the form it doesn't say that.

It says, does the convention apply to you or some legal Latin term? And you just make it simplified. Yeah. Are you in danger if you go back home? And it's like, yeah, I'm going back to a dictatorship that I just escaped from illegally, they're going to put me in jail. So you just say the word yes. Yeah.

Fills out the form. And it's in Arabic as well. So the bot was actually in Arabic and it filled out the form in English. See, this is a great crime. Yeah. You know, you talk about people fleeing some of those states that may in fact have state sponsored terrorism. Yeah.

The people fleeing, genius, like, are the people who are likely not supporting that. They're leaving because they don't want to be in a place. that is a dictatorship with state-sponsored terrorism. So every person who leaves those places who's good is one less person in that place who could be indoctrinated to something horrible. That's right. This is the stupidity of our immigration process.

We say, oh, this is an asshole country, Trump says. We can't take people from there. Well, what if that person's the next Sergey Brin? What if that person's Elon Musk? What if that person's the next Satya Nadal, you know, pick somebody who left a country that maybe isn't a great country to be born in, but who really actually wants to do something great for this country.

Yeah. I mean, it's crazy, this policy. I mean, it doesn't mean you can have open borders because that would lead to chaos as well. What's your stance on that? How do you, what's the proper immigration methodology in your mind, having studied this? Quotas, point systems.

I think that there's laws and laws are good sometimes, but there's so much artificial complexity. There's no reason anyone should be filling in Latin forms. So I think the whole system should just be made simpler so that the laws can take place. You shouldn't have to spend thousands of dollars to exercise your rights. That's the problem.

It's like, why would a lawyer be necessary to fill out a form? Isn't the idea of a form? Is that we created a form so you don't need a barrister to do this? Yeah. Like, yeah, if you're suing somebody for stealing from you, maybe you need to hire a lawyer.

But for anything else, like a parking ticket or you're a refugee, just like, there's a forum, and the forum is meant for you to fill out. Yeah. This is too hard. All right, when we get back from this break, the last break, we go into, we're coming around third base, and we have real talk. Okay. I found out, at the beginning of this podcast, I recognized your last name.

I said, Browder, have you ever read the book? Red Notice is one of my favorite books, probably, top three books the last decade is this incredible book about the guy who created the McNisky Act to protect people from these incredible oligarchs, horrible oligarchs, whose behavior is insufferable, where they torture people and they commit crimes globally. And it turns out the author of this book is Bill Broder, and Bill Broder is, Oh, that's my father. is your father.

I didn't know that when we booked you as a guest, we just had read about you. Your dad's actually Bill Broder, one of my heroes. Mine too. When we get back, I want to talk about how great your dad is and what that experience is if you're open to talking about it because this is a podcast about you, but are you open to talking about it?

Sure. When we get back, let's talk about your dad, who's a hero of mine. All right, we're back at it with our zap of the week. Here's Associate Press, Prash, building an automation for our open office hours events. Pressure automates all registrations from our type form into our autopilot account, which sends an automated text message saying we've received their application.

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Zapier makes you happier. Let's get back to this amazing podcast. All right. Josh Broder is on the program. my genius producers didn't put in the notes that your dad is Bill Broder. They do a great job. I'm breaking chops. But I write your dad's book because my friend Chris Saka, I was railing about how horrible Putin is

and how the fact that our country is cozying up to this person is one of the most dangerous things we could do getting in a snake pit with that individual. And my friend Chris Saka said, you don't know the half of what's going on in Russia. red notice. And a red notice is when somebody is internationally on the lamb, a criminal has escaped, they release a red notice and Interpol says arrest this person. And Putin has the ability to do this. And he's done it, I think, dozens of times with your father. Yeah, that's right. Your father was, correct me if I'm wrong, a private equity hedge fund guy investor like me. He invested. He was one of the first people to go to Russia in investing companies. His lawyer, Magnitsky, was a Russian lawyer who was murdered in prison as part of a corruption scandal where your dad was

investing over there. That's right. And your dad's been, had a red notice sent on him. How many times? I think 12 times now. 12 times. And the most recent was in Spain, I believe, last year. It's still happening. Yeah, I was a student at Stanford and I got a call saying he's been arrested in Spain. In Spain? Yeah. For nothing. Yeah. And your dad had bought these incredible assets and done this incredible investing in Russia,

which was supposed to be moving towards democracy. And these crazy oligarchs went to the corrupt judges and the corporate offices, the government and changed the ownership of companies out of your dad. name into other people's names and there was no recourse and your dad himself got held in Moscow for a couple of days pretty scary for your dad. Do you remember that time? I don't know how old you are but that was in the 90s I think. Yeah, I remember it all and it was just very stressful time. What was it like hearing that your dad was in jail in Moscow and you're in London and you may never see him again? Well he wasn't held for that long. I think they put

him on the next flight out they deported him rather than holding him yeah yeah that was this part of the book that was a little dicey when they put him in a room and took all his stuff away from him yeah and then he's had to live live with this low grade fear that the russians could come and kill him at any time yeah because they're crazy yeah what's that like to live with as a child that's got to be were you fully aware of that at the age of 10 or 12 or 15 yeah he was very good at explaining everything to me and And I think for me, it just puts everything in perspective. There are lots of times in life when people are out to get you or whatever, but nothing compares to having the Russian mafia out for your family.

And so I'm not really faced by anything anymore. It's, yeah. Yeah. It's in a way, it's a gift for you to understand how fragile life is. And to understand how, yeah, things can go very bad in the world. So you appreciate life, I think, to a level that most people your age. I don't know how old are you. 22.

As a 22-year-old, I don't think most people appreciate life to the level you do because you understand how fragile it is. Yes. And you understand how vulnerable we all are, but you also understand that democracy works. Yeah. What do you and your father think when you see our president cozy up to the most sinister person on the planet, second perhaps only to Kim Jong-un, in terms of danger to the planet? it's supposed to be mind-blowing for you and your dad. Yeah, I mean, the most scary time was when they, Trump and Putin had the Helsinki Summit. And Putin said, sorry, Trump said, Mueller needs these Russian GRU agents.

And Putin said, okay, well, in exchange for these agents, we want 12 U.S. citizens, including Bill Browder. And Trump said, that's a great idea. And so a president that says those sort of things is very worrying. literally if your dad was here he would turn him over in a heartbeat just to appease Putin yeah well luckily we have rule of law so it's not up to even the president to do that yeah and in his warped mind he thinks that he should have the right to take american citizens or american um nationals or people living here with proper visas he didn't he didn't Trump had no problem with Khashoggi being murdered by the Saudis apparently yeah He didn't even believe the CIA or any of our intelligence services that Khashoggi was brutally murdered for the most banal of light criticisms of MBS. And this is the guy he's dancing with swords in Saudi Arabia and planning for the future with Jared Kushner. I mean, we have crossed the Rubicon. I mean, we have lost the script if the greatest democracy in the world is appeasing.

the worst human beings on the planet. I mean, it's insane. Hopefully it will only get better. I'm hoping. You watch this Ukraine scandal that's going on, and you look at what is the motivation here? The motivation all seems to go back to Putin and the Russians. And Putin is the richest man on the planet, apparently.

That's right, yeah. Could be worth $250 billion. Like, Bezos plus Bill Gates. does not even equal in Putin's wealth. And we don't even know where that money is. Nobody knows where it is. And what people don't realize about that country and how dangerous this is,

is they don't actually have, they actually are struggling economically. With all of those nuclear weapons and the army and everything, and they're struggling, this is a very bad place to be. It's bonkers. Yeah.

Well, listen, your dad's a hero to me, and I guess he's a hero to you too, clearly. And so it to me is no surprise that you are so focused on justice. And it might seem trivial at times like to get out of, you know, a ticket. But that's not all you're doing here. You're actually on a mission to do something super important. And you're charging such a small amount of money. I think you need to really reconsider this and let us pay you to do this.

And here's a tweet from you. companies aren't equipped to deal with a flood of requests once the CCPA comes into effect. What is the CCPA? This is tweet up, Nick. This is the California Consumer Privacy Act going into effect January 1st, 2020. And it basically allows consumers to ask companies to delete all their data, to ask what data they're holding on a person. And so some of these companies don't even know how much data.

they're holding on people. And so when they get these requests, and if they don't comply, they're subject to fines and all of this, they're going to be inundated. And so we're actually working to send a lot of these requests come next year. I would like to be the first for Facebook. May I be the first?

Definitely. I would say you are. I would consider it an honor to be the first to send this request to Facebook. Because, you know, if you're able to build a service with billions of universe globally and you put 1.001% of your effort into letting your consumers leave, what more example do we need about a person's moral and ethical compass that Zuckerberg will do anything to get you on the service

and create even more roadblocks to let you off of it? And if you think about the easiest way Zuckerberg could get him out of the self out of the crosshairs of the government and regular. would be when you log into Facebook to say pay $5 a month, $10 a month, whatever he chooses, $13 a month, $12.95, to have none of your information track and see no advertising. They can launch that tomorrow, yet they don't, which tells you everything you need to know about Facebook. And that's exactly what we do at do not pay. You just charge people $3 a month.

Yeah, there's no data. We don't even know what your data is. You don't even keep it. You don't store it. Yeah, exactly. It's on your phone. Yeah. It's your choice.

Just like Apple. I mean, this is the tip of the spear. I think what you're doing and what Apple's doing are the tip of the spear to move the entire industry from collect everything and figure out how to leverage it later to collect nothing and let people just pay a modest fee. Yeah. Having a direct relationship. Yeah. What's the point of, and then I saw Google buy Fitbit, which is my favorite thing. in the world. I've had it for 10 years. I've got all my data in there. I mean, if Google buys Fitbit,

do they get all my data and do they track my weight and track my steps and start giving me advertising based on how much, how well I slept last night? That's something I don't want. Yeah. I don't want Fitbit giving my data to Google. You ever think about that with acquisitions? Yeah, no, it's terrible. And our document scanner, warn you about those sorts of things as well. Yeah. Do you keep track of all those terms of services indefinitely and how they change, like the Delta's on it?

Yeah. So this hasn't launched yet, but we're definitely going to do that. See, this to me seems like something that somebody needs to do to just keep these companies in check. I would like to pay you for this product independent of using it. You should give people the right to pay you on a yearly basis. Yeah. $30. bucks. Just let me pay you every year so that I can support the mission. So when you have that

subscribe and you only use it if you use it, just let me say I would like to survive. I would like to do it anyway or I'd like to donate to the cause because I would actually like to have you specifically out there. Yeah. Monitoring these just to keep them in check. And just to do a blog post, you should, this will be the power move, just do a blog post every month about what changed. Yes. Just what changed and why. That would scare the best. a Jesus out of them. Does anybody even do that now? That's all a great idea.

No, no one does that. This, I mean, yeah, nobody's, these companies have too much power and their behavior in many cases, not all, but in some cases, some of the most powerful,

are not even sharing what they're doing. And like, some companies are just so on it. Like, somebody tweeted at Elon, what's the camera inside the, what's the camera inside the, uh, cockpit of the model 3-4.

And he said, well, that's for when you're in dog mode and other things. And somebody tweeted it. And I sent it to Elon and I said, you should address this one. And he immediately replied about that camera that he was going to put into the settings that you could turn it off. And he actually did. Wow. And you can put a piece of tape on it if you want to.

But when you're in sentry mode, you want to know if somebody breaks into your car. Yeah. And that's the way CEO should be. think about when they get called out on something or a consumer has a question, they should just address it. If Elon can that quickly put a software update in and then Zuckerberg does the opposite, what does it tell you about the two individuals? One is operating at the highest ethical, moral status of listening to the customers and addressing it quickly. And the other one is going to testify before governments if they drag them in with a subpoena and then lie.

Yeah. Zuckerberg lies when he's there. I can't believe that people let him get away with lying to government agencies. He's like, you know, we don't really monitor ads. It's like, except for the dating companies that I've invested in that you block from advertising because you see them as a threat. Yeah. So you can block. Think about this as an injustice.

They'll block ads that have too much text on the image because they don't like the aesthetics of it. They'll block ads from potential competitors like dating sites. but they'll let Russians buy anti-Hillary racist ads with rubles. It's interesting while we live in. Bonkers. All right, listen. Josh, Browder. Browder is how you pronounce your name, right?

Yes. Browder, not Browder, Browder. As we wrap up here, what's the long-term vision? So right now, do not pay as a single-player experience. You can get all these useful tools. They save you money. They help you fight back. But what's interesting is when we have five minutes,

million, 10 million subscribers, that gives us leverage to actually negotiate with the corporations on your behalf, like a union, almost. Wow. So we can say to Comcast, treat our 5 million customers better, give them discounts, or we'll switch them to Verizon overnight or Google FI overnight, and spam you with legal requests. Amazing. Don't use the word spam, just flood. Flood.

Because spam's got a different country. We'll flood you with these requests. Yeah. And they will listen and treat a lot of people better. it will be a force for good. I think it could be a force for good. And listen, $3 a month, $10 million people, you know, you'll have a unicorn on your hands, worth a couple billion.

You're only going to need 50 people to run this company. Yeah, it's all software. It's all software. Amazing. Thank you for coming on the podcast. If you hear my voice, it is your moral obligation to download Do Not Pay. I sincerely mean that. I wish you great success.

Thank you for what you're doing. Can't wait to have your dad on the podcast and ask him what he thinks of you, because I'm sure he's very proud. hopefully we'll have to say. I'm certain he is. We'll see you all next time on this weekend startups. Here is Ryan Block's call

with Comcast referenced earlier in the episode. Okay, we'd like to disconnect. We'd like to disconnect, please. Help me understand what you can't just disconnect us. I don't understand. Is this for, like, we're just asking for you to, we're actually going to just mail the cable card in,

but if you can just please cancel our service, that would be great. That is all we want. We're actually not able to. to return a cable card by mail? Then I will send someone like a TaskRabbit to go return the cable card for us. I don't personally intend to go return the cable card. That's why we're probably not going to be canceling in store.

So that's why I need you to cancel us by phone. So can you cancel us by phone? The answer is yes, correct? I mean, it sounds like you don't want to go over this information with me. That's the easiest way to get your account disconnected. I am declining to state why we are leaving Comcast because I don't owe you an explanation. So if you can please just go proceed to the next next. To proceed to the next question, if you have to fill out your form, that's fine.

Please proceed to the next question, and we'll attempt to answer that if possible. I'm declining to state, we're switching providers. Can you please go to the next question? Okay. I'm declining to state, can you please go to the next question so we can cancel our service? Why is it that you don't want to use that service? This phone call is a really actually amazing representative example of why I don't want to stay with Comcast. So can you please cancel our service.

Okay. Okay, the way that you can help me right now, by declining answers, by doing all this. The way that you can help me is by disconnecting our service. That's how you can help me. Because that's what I want. That's what I want. Because that's what I want.

Because that's what we want. Because that's what we want to do. That's none of your business. Your business is to disconnect us, please. That's a fantastic question and something that you can hire a firm and go figure out for right now. I'm just a customer calling in attempting to disconnect service. That is something that you can do, right?

You said that you can't disconnect service. Yes? Okay. Yes? Is that something you can do? Is that something you can do? Can you disconnect us by phone? Can you disconnect our service?

Yes or no? Yes or no, can you disconnect our service? Because I'm not interested in your services any longer. Okay. So you're not interested in the fast as then. in the country? Nope, not interested. Can you disconnect us by phone? Are you capable in your system of disconnecting our service? Yes or no? Please answer my question. Are you capable by phone of disconnecting our service? Okay. That's something you can do. I would appreciate you now doing that.

Okay. So, please proceed in disconnecting our service. I don't know. It's totally arbitrary decision. because we're not doing that. So please proceed in disconnecting our service. You don't want a good service? You don't want something that works? No, I don't. I guess I don't want something that works. I mean, is this like a joke?

Do we like, do we like call, is this like, are you punking us right now? I can guarantee you right now you are doing an incredibly good job at helping your company be worse. Okay. Fantastic. Thank you. Okay. Well, if that winds up being the case, then we will call you guys back up and we'll reconnect. I mean, are you, are you done?

Are you done? What makes you don't want that service? You literally, just a moment ago, said that you would go ahead and disconnect our service, and that's what we're going to, that's what we're going to need to do. So can you go ahead and do that now? I'm working on that process. Okay, great. How much longer is that process going to take?

Can you tell me how much longer? Can you tell me how much longer it's going to take? I understand. Can you tell me how much longer? Can you tell me how much longer? Can you take a couple more minutes here? Okay. Okay.

Okay. Thank you. I'm... I'm good. I'm just going to wait until you can confirm that we've canceled service, so I'm just going to hang out here. Can you give me a confirmation number for the cancellation of service? Well, how do I have confirmation that we've got service canceled? A final statement in three weeks.

Yes. Okay. And just so I can confirm, you said that your name is... Okay, cool. Thank you. Okay. You too.