This Week in Startups - E1069: Alexis Ohanian on Reddit’s crypto origins, turning VC into a team sport at Initialized, improving as an investor, fatherhood & more

Episode Date: June 3, 2020

1:02 Jason welcomes Alexis Ohanian to the show and asks about the Reddit sale & re-joining for the turnaround 3:39 Why was Reddit "the last website standing" from all of the Web 2.0 sales in the early 2000s? 6:05 History of Reddit Gold, future of micropayments & what will Reddit's Blockchain venture entail? 14:59 Future of creators being able to monetize using micropayments, policing speech on Reddit 19:45 Fatherhood, being a Girl Dad, balancing personal life & work life 29:12 What is Alexis' role at Initialized? How Initialized is turning Venture Capital into a team sport 36:10 Dealing with celebrity as a partner at a VC firm, building talent when starting Initialized 42:44 Why Initialized's small ownership percentage was an issue early on, and how they think about it now 47:59 Jason calls Reddit's crypto project: "The most credible thing I've ever seen in crypto.", parsing through legitimate and non-legitimate crypto businesses 54:33 What investor skills has Alexis improved and what still needs work? 1:00:52 Dealing with icon-level celebrity in his personal life 1:04:30 Jason reveals the winner from their 2013 bet during Alexis' last appearance on This Week in Startups

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You guys have been talking about how great Gary Tan has been on the podcast. He's done two appearances in the last year. Well, I think that the bromance that I'm having with Gary Tan has made Alexis Ohanan a little bit jelly. Very jealous. A little jelly. You're a little jelly that Gary's been on the pod so much. And you finally came up for air.

I know you've been busy, but you're back on the pod. Last time we talked, New York City, October 2013. It's a minute ago. It was a minute. It's a minute. We're 700 episodes later and you're back. And now you're a venture capitalist. Everybody knows you were the co-founder along with Steve of Reddit, which you started back in 2005, took 12K from Mr. Paul Graham, who had a startup at the time.

YC. You sold it maybe 18 months after you started it for 10 million. which people thought was insane at the time. Quite a deal. Condé Nast bought it. They didn't destroy it, but you spun it back out and now you're back on the board.

They tried, maybe. I mean, I give them, I think it was benign neglect. And I was lucky in 2014, so just a year after we had met, met up in New York, to come back as executive chairman and help lead that turnaround.

And, you know, that was my life for about three or four years. And then, you know, geez, Reddit was like 40 employees, I think, when I came back and didn't even have a mobile app. And it was 2014. You did have a mobile app. You just hadn't built it yourself.

You had all these people who had built their own. All third party. Yeah. And so it was a lot. I never thought I'd ever be part of a turnaround, but I, let alone a company I had co-founded, but to get the chance was a privilege.

And the team worked their butts off. And obviously Reddit's in a much, much better place now with, I mean, hundreds of employees, multi-billion dollar valuation. And now I get to do some really just delightful work with Gary had initialized. So feeling very, very fortunate to have the job. People don't realize when they look at that sale or the sale of Delicious, Flickr, we sold Weblogs, Inc, 18 months after starting it, that time, Web 2.0, the idea that you could sell a website,

and that's what people refer to them as like, oh, you sold your website for $10 million, or I think Delicious went for 20, Flickr and Weblogs went for 20, Flickr and Weblogs went for 30. People said that Condon asked Yahoo, AOL, the people buying these things at the time were idiots. And it turned out like,

Reddit was the last website standing. What do you attribute that to? We got just enough things right. And we got a lot of things wrong. But in that little apartment in Medford, Massachusetts, in 2005,

some of the things that we drew up, whether it was threaded comments with voting on each comment, which is I think the only product claim to fame that I'll ever have in my life, but it's the one I'm very, very proud of because those ended up creating a template for a lot of the ways that conversation happened online. And that conversation, especially on Reddit, allowed people to feel a bond and a sense of community.

And this was the thing that I just kept waiting for Dig to do, but they never did, which was allowing users to create. create their own sort of dig communities within the platform. Instead, they took a very traditional where they had different sections and people could post, but they didn't feel any ownership over those sections. And the reason Reddit thrived even when, I mean, the company didn't evolve for years after the sale was because we got just enough things right where we created a great platform

for this conversation with the sort of arguably best things to bubble up and then gave users this sense of ownership over their communities where now there's tens of of thousands of active ones for every interest and every passion. And so even when the product wasn't changing for years, the site kept growing miraculously. Like no business should keep growing when the product hasn't improved for four or five years, especially in tech. But it did because of the community, because of those users. See, this is a very profound insight, I think, that I always think about people always refer to Reddit, eBay, and Craigslist as these sites that don't change. There is something about, yeah. No, I mean, do you know how much revenue

Craigslist has now. Somebody told me they have a billion in revenue. Not a billion dollar valuation, a billion in revenue. That's the whisper. The job listings? Isn't that? What do they take revenue on? They take revenue on job and real estate listings in like 5% of markets. Jeez. They just take a little, they just, it's like they are drilling, they're taking like maple syrup out, but only just a little bit. You know, just a little bit of syrup coming out of a couple of trees and it just is a flood of revenue, but not changing the site in a way led to, like this ground swell of people making subreds. And now you guys are doing, you had the original experiment in Reddit gold, like a virtual currency. And then the world caught up and made crypto now. I know. And I'm so,

this is a fun one. So I think we, we had gold on the product roadmap for a minute. And we finally shipped it, I think, in 12, maybe 2011. And this was not original. I mean, there was probably stuff already happening in China around virtual goods and this kind of thing anyway. But at least in the States, it was fairly novel.

But you know who I got the idea from? Drew Curtis of FARC. Yes. Because he created Total FARC subscriptions. And I remember we were talking one day over beers because it's true. And that's just I have a good time and talk shop. And he was like, look, man, advertising is stupid. We ran this, we created this program called Total FARC.

We could pay a monthly membership. and you'd get a badge next to your username. And it showed you were part of this group that helps support the site. And you'd get like a couple of extra small features that just kind of made you feel like you were special, not having a material impact on the site itself. And he said, that's the move. And he said, what really unlocked it for us was when we allowed people to gift total FARC subscriptions to other people. Because that unlocked the community nature and the giving and the sharing. And I'm sitting here and I'm like, yeah, yeah, that sounds like a good idea.

Like Reddit seems to already have these community dynamics. not. And so was Drew Curtis. It was Total Fark that absolutely inspired Reddit gold. And then that product, now, if you've been noticing the headlines, is getting some of that, you know, there's getting more attention right now because of some of the conversations that have been had around. Well, you guys launched a crypto wallet or something. And it's built into the Reddit app. And it's pretty obvious where you're going with this. Is it? Of course, it's obvious. Of course. I've known you for 20 years, close to 20 years. I know exactly what you're doing.

Oh, it's going, okay. It's obvious. How is it not obvious? It's obvious what you're doing. Advertising sucks. We're competing with Google and Facebook sucks, correct? That's correct. You guys have been in a dogfight to make advertising work, I know, because I know people who worked on it, Reddit.

It's hard. Believe me, I had the privilege of leading that team in 14 after the turnaround when advertisers did not want to talk to Reddit about putting ads on the site. And every one of them fought their asses off. to get the revenue growth that it's gotten now, and it's great. But yeah, at the end of the day, if you can make money in a way that makes your users happy, much better. Way better.

Well, I mean, yeah. And you guys, I know you guys blew past 40, 50 million in revenue like two or three years ago because I was talking to somebody on the inside. So this is like a real big number, but it's not, people really had a hard time advertising on Reddit because it's user generated content, right? And you guys had. It was spicy at times. I mean, you guys actually did a really great job, I think,

shutting, I guess Steve was, or I don't know if you were doing this or Elizabeth, but, or I'm sorry, Alan, um, Powell when she was there for a minute, the, the turning off of all the subredits that were just out of control, like the trolling ones, the four chan-ish ones. I mean, it's been a process. It, uh, it definitely started back in 14 and it's been continuing even to this day. I think, I're definitely, there are definitely subredits that I pushed for us to move faster on that I wish we had that we didn't. Um, there are others were probably, I should have moved faster and I didn't. But at the end of the day, the creating that environment, while yes, like it is good for advertisers,

for sure. It's also just better for engagement. It's also just better for the product you're trying to build. And, but if I think for any of these sites, if you're beholden to advertisers, it just, it limits you so much with with actually what you can build. And we're now seeing as clear as day, so many platforms emerge that show. show if you can have a place where people feel a sense of purpose and their tribe, like these substack newsletters, like I'm not an investor in substack.

Neither am I. But I'm in awe of the fact that I think this will be a key part of the infrastructure to rebuild, like everything from local news. Yeah. Think about it. Like if you get 250 people to pay $100 a year, it's $25 grand. That's enough to pay a writer part-time their salary. Writers get paid $50,000 to work at some local newspaper.

Yeah. And people are willing to pay that money directly into a medium media or news that historically has always been advertiser based. But if you can, thanks to the software infrastructure, you can actually just connect the dots and say, all right, you've got money. You need that money to do your job and I'll pay you directly. And it's, this is the internet. Here's where you're going with it. This is what I figured out. I know where you're going with it. Okay. Because I know you for a long time. What's going to happen is you just gave us the clue. You said, what made, what we got right was we gave people a sense of ownership. The people who run these subreddits spend, in some cases, hours a day. In fact, some of them might spend so many hours a day that they spend 2,000 hours a year, which is called a job. So what you're going to do with the cryptocurrency is the cryptocurrency is going to be shared with the leads, the mods of the subreddits. And being a mod on a subreddit is going to become like being a Patreon artist, a YouTuber, and you will pay the top Reddit users a sustainable salary to run their subreddits. Yes or no? I cannot comment. That's yes. Say there you go. I love how excited you are about this. I think it's,

it is important to consider that you brought up Patreon, which we are investors in. There are things that did not exist as jobs 10 years ago, right? If you had gone to, if you've been at a party and someone was like, oh, I'm a musician or like I, you know, I make YouTube videos of acapella renditions of video game theme songs, they'd be like, oh, I'm so sorry. Like, I hope you can find a way to make that work, right? Starving artist is a meme because the market was historically so inefficient for this stuff. And there is literally a guy named Smooth McGruth on Patreon who makes those video game theme

song movies. That's awesome. He's doing a cappella renditions of video game songs, but he makes a living doing this. And that is a new reality that I think we're still adapting to broadly, but it's here. It is actually happening. And so there's an entire class of workers that we've never even really conceived of as a culture. And I know kids are already saying in the U.S. disproportionately that they want to grow up and be YouTubers. Which is apparently real statistic.

No, my daughter's into it. Yeah. She wants a YouTube studio. She's like, I want to be a YouTuber. I want to be famous like you, Dad. I'm like, I'm not famous. She's like, you have a podcast. All right, I'm really excited to welcome Twilio back to being a partner here at This Week

and startups. If you don't know them, they're obviously the cloud communication platform that's used by people like Uber or Airbnb, Shopify, I use it at Inside. And they're joining with us here at This Week in startups to bring their Twilio and SendGrid startup programs to our listeners. Twilio provides you the building blocks for messaging, voice, and video in your web and mobile applications. They are rooted in startup culture and they are here to help you on your journey. In fact, Twilio's first product roadmap was written on the back of a pizza box back in 2007.

And I've had Jeff on the podcast a couple of times. I've had the founder and the CEO of Sengrit on the podcast a couple of times. You've seen them on here. So if you want to engage and delight your users while scaling globally, all from one API power platform, from SMS to voice, you can even go into WhatsApp now. I didn't know that actually. That's pretty cool. And of course, you can do email now that they've acquired SendGrid, you're going to want to use Twilio. I use it. It works great for me at Inside. We do instant alerts and updates.

So if you get Inside.com slash business, we'll send the top two or three stories to our users by SMS. And now that's becoming one of our main features to get people to pay. And this is where it gets great. And I'm really excited to have Twilio make this offer to you, our listeners here at this week in startups. They have an amazing startup program. You know what? Everybody's got a startup program. But you're not going to believe this.

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Go to Twilio startups.com slash twist. Twilio, T-W-I-O-Sartups.com slash twist. You have to go there and grab these credits. It's $3,500 waiting there for your start-ups. up, and they're doing this because they love the podcast, and they want to support it, and they want to support startups because they're big fans of startups, and they're big fans of this week in startups, which I appreciate. So get the $3,500 now, Twilio startups.com slash twist. But there is a, there is a truth to that, which there are going to be ways to

make a real living doing this, talking about just what you're passionate about, because there's now an audience to reach it that can compensate you. And I'm excited for that, and it's going to open up a bunch of things that are going to confuse the heck out of a lot of people who are going to be very skeptical that it's a way to make a living. But even during COVID, we're seeing a huge spike in creators. We're seeing more money even during a recession going into these things. And I think it's because we've never, even the last recession, Kickstarter came out of the last recession. And we've never seen what happens when, you know, disposable income shrinks and people decide very carefully where their money goes. And what it means to say,

say, I support you on Patreon because I love what you do and I want you to be able to do it. And I know this money goes to you. And I actually think it's going to be, it's going to prove to continue to be fairly recession proof, knock on wood, because I think the reason we support that artist directly is a much more intimate relationship than like buying a Beyonce CD. No disrespect to Beyonce, but it's like, well, you know, there's like 20 people have their hands in that pie and you're like, yeah, maybe a dollar gets back to her. Yes, exactly. Exactly. And that's, that is just such a bummer of a feeling to know it goes like 80, 90 cents on the dollar goes to the creator. It feels good. It

feels good to give that. You know what I was going to say about the moderation. And I know you were torn about, hey, we should have shut some of these things down before and after. It is a very hard thing to police speech because you want to, you're American. You want to believe in freedom of speech. You're Armenian, right? You came from. Yeah. No, my father's side, well, so it's fun. My father's fled the Armenian genocide. That was a few generations ago. My mother immigrated from Germany, like, 30 years ago. Yeah.

So she was fresh off the boat. She was technically undocumented for a few years, and then my dad married her. But so I, like... So you have that, like, you want to believe in freedom of speech, but you also don't want people beating each other up and hate speech. It's got to be brutal to watch 4chan and A. Chan come out of that. Yeah. Yeah, I think...

Expulsion. And this is a day, this is quite a day to be talking on. about this because what yesterday I all my days are blurring but but President Trump is is I don't know if he's doing it today but this executive order about Jack flagging some yeah being conspiracy theories and I look I this is this is going to be a really really important debate that I wish I had more confidence in our society being able to have right now because it's been one that we've kind of had in little fits and start with like Facebook and the election, with Reddit, certainly back in the day.

I mean, we all the social media platforms have had some version of this at different points. And I do, I absolutely believe that a private company has every right to do whatever they want to do when it comes to not or when it comes to censoring, right? The government extends that right of freedom of speech, which is sort of our mental foundation for where the lines are. And it's up to, I mean, if a company wants to ban use of the color blue, like they can do that if they want to. Right. Private company. And but I think the decisions that we've not as a society been ready to talk about, which I think now really happening, are that these private companies have never had the amount of influence. Yeah, bizarre. They could swing elections, right? The idea that a Twitter or Facebook would swing an election was farcegoal and here we are. And the idea that a president.

If you created a farcical situation for us to discuss in the early days of Reddit, and I said, here's a crazy one. What if an insane narcissist spread rumors and conspiracy theorists and 50% of the country took it seriously? You'd be like, well, that's just a ridiculous, impossible example. And it's actually literally the reality is that the maniac racist president is tweeting insane stuff that somebody's got to correct. I mean, what do you do? I feel bad for Jack because it is the president of the United States, but he's saying such insane, racist, crazy conspiracy theories that it puts you in a really bad position.

Yeah. No, it is. And again, I just don't have faith right now and us being able to have this conversation well because the very people, hey, baby. Oh, special guest. She's coming over to say hi to dad. Oh, say this is, this is new.

This is it. This is what the new reality is. How old now, two? She's two and a half. You're a girl dad, like me. I got three. Isn't girls the best? The absolute best.

Did you grow up with sisters or brothers? No, I was. Can you hear this? I hear something. She's playing on my soundboard. Oh, cool. I hope all those soundboards are, yeah, appropriate. No part sounds on your soundboard.

All the pre-installed, there we go. There you go. Perfect. So wait, wait, did you grow up? You had siblings or no? I did not have siblings growing up. And I, when I got probably five, 10 years ago, wow, my father remarried and I have two younger sisters. But I got the best of both worlds. I got to have sisters when I was already grown. So we never had to fight over like the bathroom. Yeah, that's a good one. And so I just got all upside. And so they're awesome. And I, yeah, very, very proud. It changes a lot. You know, you come home. You click that door.

and you hear those footsteps running for you and you get that big daddy hug and knocks you over, that's the greatest. And then every now and then I don't get it and I'm just like, oh, what did I do wrong today? She's like, no, mommy hug, mommy hug. This is, it's such a great rush, man. And that's in so many ways,

planning to be and then becoming a father helped change a lot of my perspectives, at least broaden a lot of my perspectives on a lot of this stuff and really put in, I don't know, it put so much, it put my ego in check. It put so many things in check where I really thought I knew what I cared about and I really thought what mattered most to me were sort of the obvious things, right? Your career and your self-fulfillment and all those other things.

But then you have this little person who's like your heart outside of your body and it's like, yeah, well, all of my experiences now come down to her. So anyway, all of a sudden, your inbox. and your SMS messages and things you've got to get to are just like, yeah, that's, that's just noise. I got to take this girl for a swim in the pool or go have dinner with her. And I do think it helps, I think it helps, helps me be better at my job. I really do. That's, that was also the impetus for the business dad podcast because I, I started talking to more career dads, right, like yourself, who obviously are all in on career, want to be extremely

successful, hard charging, all of that, and also want to be, they want to be great at everything they do, including fatherhood. And I feel like popular media and the culture doesn't really do a great job highlighting that stuff. Because it's either, it's either like the ridiculous, like applauding a dad for doing nothing and just like showing up and being like, oh my God, amazing dad, which is like, is the bar that low? Or it's the like Homer Simpson-esque like incompetent dad caricature. Right. And I just, I found so many of my best conversations have come from other super career-oriented

like business dads who are just trying to be great at what they do and they struggle and we all F up and we're just trying our best. The one thing I learned just so quickly was kids spell love, T-I-M-E. And it really is a, it's just about. the time and then it's about how focused you are on that time. So what I do is, you know, that black mirror device that we all have in our pocket is so compelling. You got to just, what I do is I put it in my draw. I turn it off sometimes when I'm charging it and then I go just give them 100% of my attention. And then I'll watch somebody with their kids for five hours,

but they're on their phone the whole time. It might as well be zero. And I think actually it's damaging the kid. It's telling them the phone is more important than the kid. But man, half an hour when you're down on their level, swimming with them or doing an activity, man, that changes. What have you learned about being a great dad? Totally agree with this. And I'll tell you how, and I got called out for it because I remember we were playing soccer,

I mean, small scale soccer, we keep the ball around. And I had my phone out because I wanted to record a video to send her grandparents. I'm like, oh, look, he's kicking the ball. It's great. And she goes up, she's like, phone pocket. Nice.

Oh, baby. Oh, here's your dress. This is your dress, Alexis. This is for you to wear. dress oh what's your dress oh okay fine you can have it manifique yeah she's learning french english my french is my french is not great i'm sure that dress is going to look fantastic baby girl yeah we got the we got the room full of dresses like oh there's and it's just how did this happen there's there's a hundred of these now but i i really i really try my hardest and when she says

that i'm just like oh good punch like you're right like And in the moment, my initial reaction is like, Olympia, I'm taking this video so I can show grandma and grandpa, but I'm like, she doesn't care. No. That doesn't. That's, I'm just being defensive. Oh, I just came up with a great unlock. I was looking at that new GoPro Hero 8. That's waterproof and you can put it on a stick.

I'm going to buy, I was thinking, you know the GoPro 8? Anyway, my friend had it and it's waterproof now. So like, you can actually take it right in the pool without a casing and everything. And he had it on a stick and he was taking all those pictures that way. And I just realized, oh, that's a way to do it without them thinking you're looking at a screen and checking your email. Oh, because it's participatory. Yeah, then they can pick it up themselves and they can use the camera. See, this is where a single function camera is better.

So helpful. Yeah. So I'm insane. I use a freelancer app called toggle, not an investor. Yeah. Full disclosure. But maybe I should have been. I use this every day.

Just like a freelancer would block time that they're working on clients work. Oh, you're doing, yes. You have your time management. I saw you were tweeting about this. How's it going? Every Monday. as like a sort of a check on myself since the start of this year. And also just in the spirit of transparency,

to be like, hey, look, here's how I'm trying to struggle between personal life and work life and all this stuff. And it's super helpful because it's very unromantic. But like I clock in for family time. And so when I, just by doing that,

I'm like, oh, okay, I'm in family time now. And it forces me to put the phone. And I swear, just being mindful of it like you're suggesting, I'm an only two,

a half years in the game, so I'm not an expert. But it definitely feels like it makes a difference. And I would rather, I would much rather spend an hour of very engaged, very direct, high quality time than the five of, you know, in front of them, but on a phone. The other big unlock I realized was I was looking at, I was trying to remember, like the times I had these great memories with my dad. And it was like just a couple of them. But they were when we did some crazy activity one on one together. and we got skiing or something in upstate New York, blah, blah, blah. So then I started optimizing around,

like every month or two, doing a one-on-one daddy-daughter thing. I have a 10-year-old, and then I have two identical, four-year-olds. And when they hit four or five, they kind of were able to do this. And I just take them on a daddy-daughter trip and do something epic just with them.

So I was taking the 10-year-old crabbing because she had gotten into crabs. And I just went to the pier in San Francisco, and we just put the cages out. We sat there with these old Chinese men, and we caught crabs. and then she didn't want to kill them, so she gave them to the Chinese men

who makes soup out of them, whatever, on the pier. They cook them on the pier. And it was like the greatest thing ever. And it's like, it's like, it costs $25 to buy a crab net. And now here we are. Crabbing. But those experiences that hopefully,

you know, she carries with her, man. Forever, right? They just carry those forever. And you're on the cusp, right, when they get to about four years old. When they're four years old, because when they're under four is really,

I find about mom. But then they get to like four and they're out of the diapers. And they can really start to, like, do an activity. and then I would just dedicate my Saturday to my 10-year-old when she was that age and I just said, what do you want to do today? And she said, I want to go to the movies. I want to go crabbing. I want to go for ice cream and I want to go for pizza. And I'd be like, you just described like my perfect Saturday. Let's go. Then you come home and it's like 7 8 o'clock and they are asleep

on your shoulder. And that, I'll say, that is the magic for me is taking them out of the car seat, putting them over your shoulder and laying them down to sleep. That's the moment. For me, that's always been the moment that when they're tuckered, they just want to sleep. Yeah, mission accomplished. I did it. I did it. An uncertain time supporting your community and growing relationships with your customers is a strategy that will be appreciated, remembered, and it'll be shared.

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Radical delegations the other thing. You seem to have really figured out what your role is as an investor. Yes. Describe for people what you think your role that initialized is. I have my own perception of it, but I'm curious how you see it. Sure. Well, I mean, so Gary and I co-founded the firm. He was, he was full time at the firm. So we basically launched modern initialized, 2013, 2014. So right around that time is when I went back to Reddit. And so I was then part-time and initialized up until probably two years ago when I went back to just on the board at Reddit after the turnaround. And so we're both managing partners of the firm. My sort of scope, is really obsessed with the kinds of services and ways that we can support our portfolio companies. And the big mantra, the message we have for the six other partners at the firm is,

because admittedly, we do things different. Like, we really want to have a system. Gary refers to it as the Avengers. But, like, we want to have a system where there's someone that you can tag in. And we have, we run the whole thing on software that we have built. I've heard about this software. It was folio or something you call it? Polio.

Yeah. I heard the legend of folio. Oh, good. And so they get tagged in. And so then it appears on their news feed and they're sort of primed to know the circumstances of the situation and where this company needs help. And I just, I really obsess with finding ways to make sure these Avengers we all function as well and efficiently as possible, both like as a hive mind for intelligence because so much this business is information asymmetry, right? We get to, this is all legal, right? We get to know things.

The rest of the market doesn't know because we're so early stage. These are private companies and make investment decisions based on them. We literally trade on inside information in private companies. Now, if you were to be on CNBC, which you and I do on a pretty regular basis, you would, if you, one time I was on CNBC and I said, how do you know this? I said, I have inside information. I'm like, boop, boop, booo, like all the alarms. But I did you say, you have inside information? I said, I have inside information about this private company, not that public one, just to be clear.

And I don't trade. but we do trade on private information. And I think it's a really great metaphor of the Avengers because sometimes you need Hulk to come in and smash. I'm not saying you're the Hulk. I put you in the Captain America category. I was hoping you're going to say Iron Man, but that's all right. No, I mean, actually, I could see that too. Actually, I see both of them because I think you have the charisma and, you know, you're a microcelebrity.

Yeah. In the, as I tell people, like, there's Internet famous, which is kind of the equivalent of not being famous. You know, like... Yes, because you can live most of your life, not as a famous person. Correct. Like, you and I walk out. If we're at an internet event, you and I would be mobbed for selfies. And then if we went to any other event, people would say,

excuse me, can you park my car? Or, like, can you get out of the way? Right? Like, people don't recognize you if you're not. Like, it's not, I mean, but now it's starting to happen more, I think, because you were... Obviously, because of my wife. It's changing... Maybe a little bit because of that.

But also, I think the thing for you is the... You're so good at the press. I've been watching you guys. You're great at it. I mean, being able to do media hits is a real skill. Doing it for your companies is a superpower. See, you're not doing it to build your brand. You're using your celebrity to build their brands.

And I saw that and I was like, wow. We watch who are accelerator companies ask for introductions to. And you guys went from like, you know, coming up once in a while to all of a sudden being in the top, like, 10 to 15. Right up there with Sequoia, right up there with Bill Groy a Benchmark. That's where we want to be. Well, that's the name of the game, right?

Is you want to be on the short list. And I was watching and I was like, oh, get Roman. Yeah, I know that startup. And then you're the spokesman for Get Roman now. I'm one of, yes. Apparently, apparently I do. But you've got a full head of hair.

You've got a full head of hair. I use Roman, bro. It's a preemptive strike. You sure that's what you're using Roman for? There's no other Roman products coming to the house. Just for the hair? But that's your business, Alexis.

It's your business. I wish I could. I wish I, well, I don't wish that I needed it, but I wish I could talk about it because that is exactly what Roe wants to solve. So the CEO Z was like had ED for years because of another medical condition. Yeah. And like it's nothing of, you know, and otherwise sort of young and healthy looking male wants to talk about. No.

But it's real. I do not have it, thankfully. But I am a customer when it comes to the hair loss. Propetia. A little propitia goes a long way. It works. And I see you doing these hits. Over your week, when you do your little time tracker and you do your report for the end of the month.

Yes. How much of your life is spent doing media hits, would you say? Out of 100 hours, 10? I can actually get you the exact number of that. But it's not that much. I spend more than anything else of my like work time, non-personal time, is actually on initialized things. And so that's internal. So that's everything from like one-on-ones with partners to sort of higher strategic meetings, to software that we're building internally in product stuff. And then

the next biggest chunks are always like specific portfolio companies. And so that's time we spend in office hours or like, I'll just get on the phone and be like, hey, let's talk for 15 minutes because you've got this thing you're worried about and we need to talk through it. So for, I mean, marketing slash PR ends up being, I don't know, a couple hours, maybe a few hours a week, literally, like three, four. I mean, this is the only, I think this is the,

I might be doing CNBC tomorrow. So like maybe two hours this week. And it's so much better now with Zoom. I know. I didn't have to go to like the CNBC office and drag my ass in there at 8 a.m. Oh, it's so good. I'm not even working hands right now, Jason. I mean, it's just so easy. Don't stand up. Don't stand up. I know you're wearing shorts and you're, you got, you got the nice life in Florida. Florida now. So I definitely have sure. You are the Florida man, literally. How do you deal with as a partner at the firm being high profile? Everybody wants to talk to you. But you've got partners and you have to, you have partners who have expertise. You got a crypto partner. You know, you got partners in different areas. I don't know if Kim, my Cutler is a partner or she is. Yeah. I wasn't sure what her.

role was, but she does cities, I guess, right? That's kind of her speciality, cities. Future cities, future housing, anything around policy. Yeah, she's so smart. She's been on the pod a half dozen times. She's great. Yeah. Now you're just rubbing it in.

Look, she's brilliant. And I think there is, you know, actually, it's kind of a good check. If some founder really wants initialized money just because I'm an investor there, because of the weird, like, celebrity association with it, then they're probably not the right founder anyway. Right. And because we just, we really, I mean, all the people here are the, they're the partners, they're the advisors we wish we had had when we were starting our companies.

Like I wish I had someone who I could talk to to to be like, yeah, that deal with Conn asked, not a great deal. And like, even though he may be struggling, like, if you're growing every week and don't know why, that's a good thing. Like, most companies never get to that kind of product market fit, especially in 2005, 2006. But no, we, I think, I think it helps screen. And at the end of the day, I know that I still, as like, I'm a human with 24 hours in the day, I want to win. And I know that I can be at, like there's a, there's a limit to the amount of Alexis that can help a company win. And to

scale, not just me, but to benefit from the scale of all the other people on the team is actually how I selfishly win more. And it's fun. Venture's not a team sport traditionally. And you know this. I mean, you're a lone wolf, man. You like, and I think there's, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of missed opportunity by not forming an org that's built to play like a team sport. And it's, it's definitely not easy. It's definitely not normal. But I think credit to Gary's vision, it's such a different way to do it. And I think it is going to produce outsized returns as a result. Because I just, I think when coordinated well and software helps a lot, culture helps a lot, I think the aggregate of different viewpoints and perspectives of partners as well as their support and alignment is really powerful. Like the sum is greater than those parts. I mean, and built into it is you're all in a fund and you all have economics. So built into the model is this, you know, like everybody is making the company. If Coinbase wins bigger, everybody wins at the end of the day.

The other thing I thought was interesting that you did in building initialized is you didn't go after a bunch of VCs and try to recruit them. You decided you were going to build talent, right? Like Kim was not a venture capitalist before you, right? She was a journalist, if I remember correctly. So explain that strategy. Is that because you were a new firm and you couldn't recruit like somebody who had worked at another venture firm or you just preferred to, you know, like in other words, you weren't like a big market team with a big, you weren't the, you weren't the, you weren't the, you. Yankees so you had to go another route, right? Yeah.

We definitely had talent. I mean, we had talented folks telling us they were excited to come join us and pitching us on the prospect, which was good signal because that's like, okay, we're doing something right. But I think very deliberately wanted to find people who were first operators or founders, folks who had had experience in the trenches who could, from the day they joined, be genuinely helpful to our founders. in a way that I would have wanted when I was the CEO of a fledgling Reddit.

Like that's because like the math was basically like and the message to the partnership is like, look, we only invest in, you know, call it 15 to 20 companies a year. And so two or three each. Yeah, across eight partners. And so we have a pretty good hit rate of billion dollar companies so far. And if you assume that we continue to be good at investing. then as long as you're working with each of those companies every year, every year we should have at least one company where you're meeting a founder on day one and she's just getting

started. And if you can be there at those key moments when she needs Captain America to show up or Hawkeye to show up. Yeah. Although no one really. Yeah. When they need a hug to show up and you show up and you're the Hulk and they're grateful, like statistically some, at least one of them is going to end up being the CEO of a multi-billion

company in the next four, five, six years. And they're going to always remember that. Yes. And that is how you, that's how we want people to level up in their reputation and their careers. It's for being the one who is there, who was able to help, who was able to Hulk smash when it mattered. Because founders don't forget this.

No, of course not. Like when you, you always have a special place in your heart for the fact that Paul Graham gave you that 12 grand. Yes. And even, and even when I say things like, oh my gosh, Paul, like, why did, like, why did those words just come out of your mouth? like that was, I totally disagree with that thing you said or did, right? No matter what, I will always be indebted and grateful to what Paul and Jessica did when they took that chance on us.

And I mean, you get that intrinsically because that's, I mean, it's implicit in the angel of angel investment. And I think that's the magic that we can tap into at early stage that can hopefully as it continues to pay dividends in the long term, grows and grows and grows and value in a way that VC firms just haven't been built before. And that's the play. But you've got to check back with me in like five to ten years. Okay, now more than ever, we need people with the right skills to support our communities, especially the frontline workers who provide resources and care for those most in need. And to help, LinkedIn is offering free job posts for health care and essential service organizations that need to quickly fill critical roles with the people who will help all of us.

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I found them when I was in Australia. and they were looking to hire last year an AI engineering lead, which was really difficult because, well, it's a pretty unique skill set, right? You're an engineer and you know AI. So they used LinkedIn jobs, and they found the perfect candidate with a PhD in computer vision, and this employee has been with them for over a year and has rolled out several major projects,

and it's been a real game changer for that startup. So here is your call to action to post a healthcare or essential services job for free. Go to LinkedIn.com slash twist. Okay, let's get back to the same. amazing episode. Well, I mean, the great thing about this business is you really only need to be right once per fund. It's literally literally be right once. And if you're an angel, it's be right once. If you're a fund, it's be right once. Pregnant pause per fund. You know, like that's all you have to do. Gary said you guys had a leak in your game early on. You were not taking a large

enough percentage in the deals you were doing. Unpack why that's important for you as a fund. And I understand why it was a leak in your game because we all started as Angels writing small checks from our own pockets or small funds. So you've changed your approach. How did you change it? Why did you change it? Unpack it. I mean, it was, in hindsight, it's laughable. But we just weren't, you know, like you said, we were basically just angels.

We were investing our own money with a little, with some extra money from LPs from our investors. But really selling for small ownership percentages. And when we launched what I call like modern initialized, which was that was like 2013, 2014, we set out to actually start getting material ownership amounts. That was like probably around four or five percent, which compared to the poultry like less than one percent we were doing. Yeah, 10 basis points, 50 bips. Yeah.

Like a huge step up. But even over the life of that fund, we kept getting more and more aggressive with ownership because founders were excited to give it to us. With the next fund, then we were targeting like 10 percent ownership because we thought okay, all right, this is, it's working and that ownership helps the math. And now, I mean, we really, and we target 15 with first check and founders are very happy about it because it makes their process easier. They don't have to go talk to multiple people and we can still get some strategics in there. And then the math basically just works for returning the fund, where we know

because of that ownership percentage and assuming that we can at least maintain it, like get our pro rata with a number of future rounds, then by the time, there's a liquidity event, an IPO or an acquisition, or they're doing, you know, kinds of revenue numbers that we need, we'll be able to return that fund entirely with that one investment. And that is the goal. And so at a minimum, we know we need to be, that's like our, that's almost our, that's our worst case scenario. We obviously want to have multiple fund returners in every fund, but we, we have to be mindful of that ownership. We just weren't early on because we didn't, frankly, we didn't know any better.

Neither did I. When I started, it was like, what's pro rata, right? Like, you don't even know what that is. Like, what is pro rata? How does that work? And then you quickly learn the lesson that, oh my God, if you had made the second bet or the third, you guys made a famously a second bet on Coinbase. And that the second bet is better than the first, correct? In terms of the cash on cash. And that was an opportunistic. That was Gary just having breakfast with the founder of Brian and Brian being like, hey, I'm out of working capital every morning by like 9 a.m. And Gary's like, that's a lot. That's a great problem to have. And he just frantically sent off an email. And we were just like, yeah, of course. Like, let's give him as much as a dollar. But like, what was that? Another million bucks? Another two million bucks? It wasn't even that much. And it was the biggest thing we could have ever done. And and so that's just, I mean, that was a $7 million fund. We just weren't, we were in a different mindset. And that fund still performed well. But like, we'd look at this and think, okay, there's a lot to learn. And, and it's actually kind of liberating to be. And, be able to get that higher ownership because I think it also then it focuses us to make sure we're

really we're picking companies we're genuinely all very excited about. And it just puts more pressure on us to do the work and support them. More skin in the game, right? More skin in the game. You got to take it more seriously. You were shots on goal, I guess, is the metaphor. Well, yeah, it's more wood behind fewer arrows, whatever. But I mean, if you have a great deal and they say we only have 5% of you, 5% available. Because you see this happen now with what I dubbed the Pegasus movement, people skipping rounds of funding and just building off revenue like we saw Com do, Notion did. We have a couple of companies doing it FitBod where they just, they're making so much money.

They're just like, screw it, we're going to skip our series A or B. We just want a million dollars. How do you deal with that? And have you had that sort of phenomenon come where people are like, you know what, I only want to give up 10% of my company? I only want to give up 5% of my company. I don't need the money. Will you do it or not do it?

We won't. The other, I mean, okay, there's because we really live, I mean, we live at like pre-seed seed, we live at such an early stage. It hasn't happened. I'm trying to think. We've had, there have been deals that have come across, though, of like the ludicrous seed round where they're just asking for, yeah, basically it's just so overcompeted on. There's so many term sheets.

The valuation's so high that, you know, it would mean us taking an absurdly low percentage ownership. And in that case, you know, we just, we're comfortable walking math. It just doesn't work and no hard feelings. Yeah, I say, I think this is what people don't understand. They're like, why would you do that? We just said, you only have to hit one. So in order to be a successful investor, you don't have to hit Uber.

You could hit Lyft. You don't have to hit Lyft. You could hit DoorDash. Like, you don't have to hit DoorDash. You could hit Postmates. All of these were home runs. One's a grand slam. One's a, you know, two run homer.

One's a home run. You know, they could all be just different outliers. You guys were early in crypto. Obviously, you got the grand plan for Reddit. I thought the Reddit announcement, to be totally honest, was the credible thing I've ever seen in crypto. But let's face it, 100%. One hundred percent.

It's super credible, though, Jason. No, no, no. It's just, you know why? I'll tell you why. It's more credible to me is because Coinbase is about speculation. People buy crypto, they want to have exposure. Congratulations, you've got exposure. That to me is kind of the most boring aspect of crypto.

But when somebody says, I'm going to use crypto to have a free-flowing micro-transaction that rewards people to become sustainable jobs, which you haven't said, you're you're doing. I'm saying you're doing, but I will be right. I'm guaranteeing I'm going to be right about this one. When subreddit, the first, there's going to be, I'll put, we're going to make another bet now. Somebody will make one million dollars a year or a team of two people, whatever it is. Somebody's going to make a million dollars a year running a subreddit on Reddit within the next five years. And not by like selling links or doing something gray hat or bullshit. Like in crypto. There is absolutely that much, like, there is absolutely that much momentum in the world right now on platforms that are still smaller and have less vibrant communities.

Of course. Right. There is, look at that. The fact is happening in other places that are smaller and have less vibrant communities is a good indication. Right. Well, I saw somebody actually pitched me on the Reddit of Crypto. I forgot the name of it. You must have seen it.

Oh, yeah. Snagget, snippet. It was in that vein. but it just was too, too, it felt too underground, too, yeah, too like, I mean, it wasn't a dark web website, but it kind of felt like it looked in, darky, dark web, yeah, felt kind of dark web to me too. What, what crypto was a steaming pile of ICO scams, you must have seen that happening. At the same time, you're investing in Coinbase and Reddit is making a wallet. These things don't go on to notice.

How do you separate in your mind the absolute, just ginormous scam that occurs, in parallel to a real fascinating technology platform that could change the world. How do you parse that as an investor? And credit to Brett Gibson, who's one of our partners, who's really taking a lead on a lot of these deals. We evaluated them like any other startup. And so we didn't do any ICOs. We only invested in just boring Delaware C-C-Corp.

No tokens? No. And I think there were probably. some, there could have been some, okay, there were definitely some non-scam investments there, but few and far between, for sure, the vast majority were. And to hell with all them, those people are scumbags. Like, I, they're just, the worst. The worst, the worst entrepreneurs are the ones who are that just criminal in their

activities of fraud in the name of like entrepreneurship. So, okay. Yeah. We evaluated based on really the same criteria any software company. So like, what, like, let's see what you've built. Like, let's talk about your engineering capabilities. Let's talk about your product capabilities. Let's talk about your design abilities.

So it was all the same criteria. And we still managed, you know, we managed to find companies, Bison Trails is another one that's providing the infrastructure for a lot of these coins, including Libra. That was a startup based out of New York. A couple of really brilliant founders who had had an exit, I think, to Etsy. great at product, like great taste, great engineering, like gotten obsessed with crypto. And they were building a business for the right reasons. And they explained like very soberly like how this was going to be a real company. And so it was it was more like a great startup that happened to be doing crypto and not like,

oh, it's a crypto startup. Here's our money. And I think that's where people got it wrong. There's another one, Horizon, which powers a game called Skyweaver, which is like these non-fungible assets. So like if you played Magic the Gathering like I did growing up, you collected baseball cards. You couldn't like you could actually trade them and they had value. But you have billions of dollars being spent on digital goods like a sword in a video game. Yeah. I mean, I was like I think Brock Pierce, who is a big crypto guy living in Puerto Rico.

His business before that, which he was doing with Steve Bannon was this Chinese-based World of Warcraft coins, gold. It was a gold farming. Gold farming thing. Yes. People forget that. You'd get people mining under really bad conditions in order to take this digital good of gold in wow. And then they'd sell it on eBay in order to like and then meet up with you in game.

Go for the drop. You got to go get the drop. Yeah. But like when you see these black markets that exist when there's so much friction, it's a really good sign that if you just brought it into the sunlight and built good. for it, that people will do it. And that's the premise for Horizon and Skyweaver. And I think those are uses for a blockchain where it actually makes sense and where it's still a great product team and still great engineering behind it. And to hell with all the scammers, because they, it was just sickening to see what was on display. And the people who are getting fleeced,

it's just, yeah, they were going after what it, what it showed me was just how much enthusiasm than there is for entrepreneurship. And people, you know, in Florida, some grandma or some retire in Arizona is like, I want to be part of the next Uber, the next whatever, Coinbase. And then somebody's like, yeah, I'm building something that's going to change the world. Go buy these tokens. And then they disappear and abscond with the money. And they've just been slowly unraveling this.

What are we? Five years after these ICOs. And now finally people are going to go to jail, you know. Thankfully. And I'm glad the SEC has, I think it's the SEC has been pushing. Yeah, big time. Every company agency. Like it's, yeah.

Well, think about what you and I have to go through to, to run funds. Like the amount of care we have to have with our LPs, making sure everybody is accredited. And then these clowns come out and they just start selling tokens to wallets and nobody knows who they are. It could be terrorists. It could be the mafia. I mean, who the hell knows what's going on? It was just a disaster. What have you gotten better at now as an investor that you sucked at when you started?

leaks in your game, things that you look back on now and go. I mean, we got the one of like percentage ownership. Let's put that one aside. That might be the number one one actually in terms of changing return profile. But what as we get towards the hour and we wrap up, what have you gotten better at? What do you need to get better at? You know, I did not trust my instincts enough with founders. And so we have the advantage.

of so all of our every meeting with everyone like we write our own notes it goes in software it's in it's structured data and so it's really valuable even it's like the pre votes we do in companies the actual votes we do in companies are both quantitative and qualitative and so we get to look back on the tape on the game film on monday from sunday and often that's like weeks or months or years later and it's super helpful now just two or three years in to be able to look back on the game tape for companies where like i wrote in the notes that I could tell there was a clear palpable tension between the founders. And what had tipped me off in the notes was I had asked who the CEO was and they both stumbled over each other.

Co-CEOs. And they both got to the same place, kind of, but it was a tell. And then throughout the rest of the pitch meeting, they would kind of talk over each other and the other, just the body language didn't. It didn't feel right, right? And so my spidey sense was tingling. Love to the market. Love the the proof of concept product and the initial traction, the early traction that they had. And so I was like, and even my notes, I'm like, I'm worried about this, but everything else feels so right. And I think it's overcomeable. And it's just going to take some coaching and blah, blah, blah, blah. But like looking back on it, once we did the post-mortem on that company, which did ultimately, you know, shut down. I'm reading this. And I'm just like, I felt like,

wow, I was like my own Cassandra. Because like I saw what was happening. I interpreted it. I noted it, but I didn't listen to it. And for early stage investing, so much of it really comes down to the founders you're investing in. Yep. And part of it is their relationship with each other, a big part of it. And I didn't trust those instincts well enough. And so it's hard because I now think about how do I, like I want to be a good mentor

to our other partners. I want to be helpful here. But when the answer is like trust your intuition, it does it like, it's kind of a bad answer because it's like, well, you developed that intuition after like, of years and lots of reps of like getting it right and getting it wrong and learn. Do 2,000 in person meetings and then look at which ones you passed on that succeeded. Look at which ones you invested in that field and you start to reflect, right? And even fake invest in it, right?

Like in those meeting notes. Exactly. And so I think those are good ways for aspiring investors or whatnot to sort of exercise those muscles and get good at that reflection. And noticing those founder dynamics early is something I will not let myself screw up again because that was just, it was so frustrating. And, you know, if you look, there have been examples of cantankerous founder relationships that did result in big outcomes, too. So I actually almost don't fault you too much.

It usually results in a founder being expelled from the company, however. Correct. Yeah. This one was a little trickier too. I don't want to go into too much. But it was a little trickier. But I hear you. It can still absolutely work.

And then it's right. Like we don't have to, it's crazy because we have such long time horizons because we could think like how we have to basically think over the next 10 years, how will this company do? And you really can't, you obviously can't predict everything. No. And you really need a couple of really important things to go right. It's just so hard for those key things to happen. It's the game is humbling, right? This game is humbling.

Because you don't know how you did until you're five or six. The things that you think we're going to work don't and the things that you were unsure of do. And you're just like, if you're top, what are your top two investments now just objectively in terms of evaluation return? Well, so Coinbase Instacart of the two. Okay. So your top two investments are Webvan 3.0 and people trading virtual currencies. Good luck. Good luck, Alexis.

You know my two? A cab company and a meditation app. Uber and Com, right? Yeah. The people made fun of Uber. This is so stupid. VC product. It's just for people taking Link in Town Cars. And then Calm, they were just like, you're an idiot. Like meditation. Like nobody does that. And you have to do it in person.

Yeah. Yeah. It's I and that is the, believe me, it's the, the drug for me about this gig. Is it so validating or so vindicating, I think is the word when you get it right. Yes. And I know. It's a half court shot. You're definitely not, you're not shy about proclaiming that, Jason. And it's like, it's real though. It's, I know like, I know like, I actually find it quite endearing because I'm just like, Jason says a lot of the things that I feel when it's like you have this thing that you believed in when no one else did. You should have more swag. I think putting the swag out there a little bit, as long as you're humble about the losses. Like I tell people, I got lucky 12 times.

People are like, you're a bullshit ours. You got lucky. You just said Uber. I'm like, yep, Uber and 11 others. We can just leave it at that. And then look at you. You as a kid, you created Reddit, which is still one of the, you're a kid. of the top, what is it, 30 sites in the United States, 20?

It might be five. You created that. Yeah, and turned around. We'll help turn around. And help turn around. I mean, that swag deserves a little bit of swag. And I think letting people know that. There's already too much swag in the household.

There's, I'm obnoxious already. And so I'm going to take your feedback, but politely. Well, I'm not saying you want to. take the world's greatest athlete or modern day athlete. Yeah, I can't. I don't think you're in a position to do that at home. Gotta keep it all in check. And it's, it's wonderful, though, to be in a job that is humbling and be in a relationship that is humbling. Because I do. I mean, the, the ego is real. And I was about to say, like, just think about like you and I being microcelebrities and we get mobbed when you go to an inter-event. And then your wife shows up and it's just like,

that's just a whole different level. I mean, that's his icon level. It's totally different. And I, it's, it's bizarre, right? I mean, having somebody in your life that's that big of a celebrity, I have one person in my life who's that big of a celebrity who wasn't. And it's just bizarre to go out with them now. It's actually uncomfortable and problematic to just go places. Like when, it's Elon. When I, when I, Elon and I became friends before SpaceX and Tesla, I would introduce them to people like, hey, Sam Harris. Here's my friend Elon.

And they wouldn't even, they were like, oh, what do you do? And he's like, well, I'm doing this robotic company. I'm doing like a electric car company and I'm doing rockets. I'm like, oh, that's interesting. Now, you can't even go out with Elon. I mean, it's just having dinner is, you know, crazy. I mean, with Serena, it's got to be the same thing, right? It is.

I definitely, I mean, I don't, I don't know the details of your relationship with Elon, but I suspect it's not romantic. No, no, no, no, definitely not. But it's also, it's this, yes, which and romances are beautiful things. Like the, the dynamic definitely shifts too because it is, I still find myself getting in these situations where I'm like, I'm also trying to create some space and let my wife have some privacy and be able to say,

say the things that she really can't say in those situations. And so it like there is, there's definitely weird tension because, I mean, I saw total obscurity, which is my entire life until like starting Reddit and there was like a little bit of internet awareness and like every now and then someone see me and take a photo and little things.

but then I like I've watched and I it's interesting because like seeing it now day to day you really see the different ways of of sort of going through the world based on that. And there are believe me, there's a lot, there are a lot of perks to fame. But there are a lot of it. There's a lot of it. And and it's like, I don't know, it's like I feel like I have a lucky avenue or view into it because I mean, Serena's been this icon since she was basically a teenager. She's really known that for her entire life. And whereas I've seen, I've gone from obscurity to like semi obscurity and to now

being married to a global icon. And it's a trip. It's a really unique environment. And then, okay, here's what's really intense, though, is because I talk to like Casey, Casey Nystad, right? Yeah. here's a guy who by traditional measurements wouldn't necessarily be considered like an A-list celebrity because he is not in a Hollywood film or not in a TV show. But the level of intimacy and the level of fame for this generation of vloggers and creators, it'd be bigger.

No, I had him on my podcast and it was like the podcast went supernova. Oh, the new dress. It looks amazing. Manifique. Jason likes your dress. Claibald. And so I think there's a whole other generation too who are experiencing. There's a home of the generation two of creators who are experiencing because they have such an intimate relationship with literally millions of fans that even makes. Hold on, baby.

That even makes Serena's relationship with her fans feel like just a different level. And that's what the internet has now created in terms of the relationship and the closeness that people feel. It's great as a tool. You know, that's what I always tell people. Like, it's great as a tool. Like if I can go on CNBC and I can, you know, fight for a cause or I can get a point across, like I'm very passionate about entrepreneurship, whatever.

If I can help inspire people, like, that's great in that little micro thing. And, you know, all right, listen, we'll wrap up here. I know you got a lot to do on your plate. I appreciate taking the time. But we do have the bet. We have the bet. October 2013 was our bet. And the bet was how many years before the majority of rides are done without a human

driver. Whoever loses takes the entire audience, what? To dinner at Dim Sum at Golden Palace. Okay, we have that list of who was at that event. I think we have that in a survey monkey somewhere. One of us said it will take over 12 years. One of us took seven years. Do you know who took seven and who took 12? Wait, and this is for self-driving. I probably took seven. You did. You were the optimist. You took seven years. I took, it will take more like 12. I took the over. So, in fact, you are buying those 150 people who came to that event.

Hey, let's do it. We're doing it. I'm going to put my word, though, because I remember to jump. I was like, I remember this interview and I remember ending with this. So I will man up to that for sure. I don't know, maybe we'll have to, I don't know how soon we could do it in a socially distant way, but it'll happen. And she, Serena and I are both investors in the same company, nude bar. I don't know if you know that one, but they make.

Right on. Yeah. No. They make intimates. Like the woman who started Aaron was a Nick City dancer. And she needed to get, you know, like stockings and bras and all that kind of stuff. But she's African American and they all come in white or pal. And so she came up with a line that's for every skin tone.

And Serena is an investor. I'm an investor. Love it. Yeah, it's pretty great. And that always goes over well when she's pitching folks. I bet. Listen, great having you back on the podcast. Stay safe. Everybody's safe. Yeah. In Florida is everybody's going. Nobody's listening to anything about the pandemic in Florida.

I, we are. We are. Nobody else's. No masks. No distancing, nothing. I've got my Adams mask in the car. Those are tight. I got to get one of those. Beautiful. I will send some to your squad. Thank you. We donate one to New York City Housing Authority for everyone that's sold to the Tom's style model. But yeah, a lot. We've moved a lot of those basks and folks seem to love them. Yeah. We'll get you.

All right, man. Stay safe. Appreciate doing the pod and let's do it again in less than seven years next time. Seven years. Less than seven. That's the deal. All right. Take care.

Be safe. We'll see you all next time on this week. We'll start. Bye-bye.