This Week in Startups - E986: StockX Co-founder Josh Luber is building a stock market for things, shares insights on the two cultural shifts that brought sneaker culture mainstream, attracting Mark Wahlberg, Eminem & Steve Aoki to invest along with Google Ventures & Marc Benioff & growing a unicorn out of a sneaker-data si

Episode Date: October 11, 2019

1:00 Want to work at LAUNCH? gettheseat.com 2:28 Jason intros StockX's Josh Luber 3:14 When did the sneaker crazy start? 6:37 What is StockX? 9:19 What should Jason wear courtside? And why not Kawhi's? 14:13 Most $ Josh has spent on pair of sneakers? What were they? 18:15 What is StockX's take on a standard transaction? 18:44 Meeting Co-founder & Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert 19:58 Attracting Mark Wahlberg, Eminem, etc. as investors 22:55 Attracting SV firms vs. attracting famous investors? 29:39 What was Josh's background before StockX? 34:22 Finding investors who understood his space 36:36 How do IPO's (Initial Product Offerings) come into play on StockX? 41:35 StockX's future priorities 42:03 Value of authentication 48:37 Selling on StockX

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logins, payment information, and more, streamlining your web browsing experience while keeping your digital identity secure. Head to dashlane.com slash twist to get 10% off of a premium subscription. Apply for the next Launch Accelerator cohort. Applications are due October 14th. Learn more and apply at Launchaccelerator.com. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this week in startups. This is the program hosted by me, Jason Kalakanis, an angel investor, early stage investor here in Silicon Valley. My company invests in about, we'll do 80 investments this year and probably 60 unique names. That's about an investment every three or four days. It's a pretty big pace. And if you want to be part of that excitement, go to get the seat.com. What is get the seat.com? It's just a landing page with a type form where you fill out why you, You should become an associate or a principal or a managing director here at our firm, work alongside us as we put in our 50, 60, solid 60 hours a week,

busting our asses to try to find great companies to fund. It's the hardest job in the world. I'm lying. It's the easiest job on the world. Being an investor is the easiest and most delightful job in the world. You hang out with great founders who want to change history, and then they tell you their plans to change the world, and you put a little bit of money in, and most of the time you get nothing back,

and then sometimes you get back 100,000, 5,000 X what you put in, and you get to hang out with the smartest people in the world who want to change the world with their unique visions. It literally is the joy of my life to be an investor. If you want to work with me and learn how to do it, you can take 10 years out of your career path. All you have to do is work as hard as I do, which is basically like 60 hours a week.

If you're willing to work hard and you're smart and clever, go ahead and go to gettheseat.com. All right, enough housekeeping. Today on the program, Josh Luber, who is the co-founder of Stock X, it turns out sneakers are a thing. I just got my first pair of Yeezys. I'm the last guy to get it on the sneaker game. I'm not a sneaker head in any way, but I did watch Entourage where Turtle was buying sneakers and lining up for them. It turns out, Josh, that you've raised $100 million, $110 million in your Series C.

You've now got a unicorn company in Stock X. and my understanding is you sell sneakers. We actually don't sell sneakers. You don't sell sneakers. We're a marketplace. We don't sell anything. We just connect buyers and sellers, and our sellers sell a lot of sneakers. When did, I should want to just pause for a second.

When did sneakers become such a thing? Because I remember growing up in the 80s and 90s, like getting Jordans, every two years, they come out with a new pair of Jordans. I think there were $125 at the time, which we were buying $30 sneakers. So it was a big deal to get a pair of Jordans. It was. But at some point this thing flipped over, and I was like looking on the social media, and people were lining up for days in advance. And then I'm watching the show Entourage,

and he's buying the shoes and flipping him, and DJ Khalid has got a room where you played yourself, and there's like 80 pairs of sneakers to the roof. What the hell happened in sneakers? Yeah, so certainly 1985, the first Air Jordans, I mean, that is the beginning of the whole thing. It is, okay. It is. But, you know, even today, the whole thing, I mean, this is just supply and demand.

I mean, this is Econ 101 at its most basic, at its most pure. And Nike and the other sneaker brands, and particularly Jordan, are really good at playing the supply and demand game to put out less supply than there is demand for their shoes. And they're great at creating demand around whether it's Michael Jordan or LeBron James or Kanye West. and there's demand associated with different colors or different materials. And then the brands are just really good at figuring out how do we put out just not quite enough? And if that happens, if you have more demand and there's supply, well, that leads to people sleeping outside of sneaker stores. It leads to sellouts that happen immediately. And it leads to just a difference in value, right?

Therefore, that person can go and sell it to somebody else for more than what that retail price is. And as soon as you hit that tipping point, as soon as you're buying something, it's a pair of shoes and it costs 150 bucks, but it's worth $200, it's worth $500, it's worth $1,000, who wouldn't buy a widget for $150 that you can sell for $200? And that's the start of the whole thing. When did that aftermarket start? Because I never remember as a kid anybody lining up to get Jordans. You go to the store, there were plenty of Jordans. You just couldn't afford them.

Or you had to get over the psychological barrier of, am I willing to break $100 for Periscan? It was crazy. What were the original Jordans at? Yeah, well, the first ones were, in 85, they were less than 100. But it was, it was 1991, the Jordan Fives, that was the first time that they broke 100. It was like 125 from the Air Jordan Fives. And that was, that was, I remember that too. And that's how a lot of us, you know, I'm 41.

I have literally the exact same story as every other 41-year-old sneakerhead, which is I grew up playing basketball when Jordan played. I always wanted Air Jordans. My mom would never buy me Air Jordan. As soon as I got some money, I bought it. Like, we all have the exact same story, which is really funny. And Air Jordan for a bit of a liability growing up in Brooklyn because if you're wearing them, you could get jumped for them. Well, that actually is core to this whole thing.

So you asked about how it, like, exploded. For the longest time, it was this very, like, underground local thing. Well, first of all, we didn't have the internet. So this was happening at a very local, you know, thing. But what happened was essentially there's two major jumps in this market. One is just 99, 2,000, internet, eBay, for all the reasons, right? And then the second one was really 2011, 2012, Instagram, social media. and now you have all these other people

that are coming into the market. The whole time the brands have been playing this game led by Nike and Jordan but as more and more people have access and more and more people have that information of products that they might want

and now they have a place to be able to get them. Sure. Right? I don't have to explain. So here we go. Up on the screen at Stock X

is the Air Jordan AJ5 TR retro trophy room ice blue. Killing it with the ice blue. these are highest bid 1565 on your website lowest ask 1800 yeah these are for nine and a half's my size so what what's going on here so is this like ebay or is this an auction or is it a stock market what's going on well so so stock exit is an actual stock market in every way and look when i say a stock market immediately people think about investments but it's not about investments it's about the method

of how we connect buyers and sellers okay right all stock market is is a giant place where people want to sell stock, people want to buy stocks. They come together around bids and asks. You have a bidd ask, you can have a true market price. By the way, as a starting point, you notice there's one page for this particular shoe, right? You go to eBay, there's a thousand listings. Right.

So you have a difference between a listing model and a product page model. Got it. Right? In the same way that there's one ticker symbol for Nike stock. Exactly. These are all brand new. Yep. These are all verified to be real, legit.

The retail price is two hundy. these came out well wait these were released in 2019 yeah this is May of this past year so this is a retro okay well so the the Jordan 5 model first came out in 1990 1991 and they've re-released

many many many colors of this particular model and so that's why it's called a retro and so this colorway though has never been released before and what's really interesting about this particular one it's called the Jordan 5 trophy room ice blue trophy room is the sneaker store

owned and run by Marcus Jordan, Michael Jordan's son, in Orlando, Florida. And so they created this particular shoe, which was very limited. And by the way, there was a blue and a red pair. The red pair sells for about 5x this. And it's just pure supply and demand. There were not a lot of them made. It was a very special thing just made for Marcus's store. Is anybody able to buy these at cost?

The short answer is no. Sure, you could get super lucky and you could win a raffle, right? But the number of people participating in that raffle is so high, the chances of winning are effectively zero. In some places, you can sleep outside of a sneaker store for three days. Not a lot still do first come, first serve. Got it. But some do. And if you want to wait in line for three days, you can do that.

The other way is that Nike will have essentially an online raffle. Right. So you put it a bit in order. Yeah. But the thing is, is this particular one, right? I mean, the red one's selling for $6,000. dollars so everybody wants it. And so what happens is the chance of winning that

raffle is effectively zero. If I wore these, because I can buy this, listen, I'm not going to. It's $6,000, but I could afford that. I could buy that. If I wore these court side for the finals game,

you know, it's courtside finals, as one does. Would anybody notice would like, would Kauai Leonard come up to be like, yeah, Jay Cowell, what's up? And he would know? I don't know if Kauai would have noticed. Because Kauai's a bit of, he's corny, right?

He's kind of a square, right? He went and signed a New Balance. Talk about, like, the biggest thing. He had his own, he had his own shoe with Jordan Brand. They made him, they went to New Balance? They called it, they called it the claw. And they, the, and then he literally went in sign with New Balance. I mean, he did a lot of crazy things in the last two years, right?

But it's worked out pretty well for him. New Balance has never had a shoe resell. Oh, yeah. New Balance has never had a shoe resell like this ever. Whoa, whoa, whoa, what's going to? Those look terrible. Wait. What's New Balance?

It's just, you know, you're looking at Jordan versus New Balance. That is as corny as... And this isn't even the basketball one. A Kauai Press conference. That is as weird as a Kauai press conference. This is weird as a Kauai laugh. That's not bad. I'm a fun guy.

What'd it do, baby? What'd it do, baby? Yeah, you already know. What's going on with these sneakers? These look like something your grandpa would wear to walk in the mall in Florida and then he put his comb in the side with that blue highlight.

Look at the one all the left there. There's one that's $300, right? So, like, this is, I think, the one that maybe he was wearing. Wait, Kauai is the champion? Oh, no, he getting $1,200 for this one. Like, this is an ugly shoe. Like, this is just objectively ugly. And, you know, but just there was so much demand around Kauai.

But look at that. There's last sale, it was $1099. There's a big swing there. The highest bid is $2.35. So there's not demand. No, not anymore. Right, not for this one. But if you, I mean, look at, you know, if you just like click the size button, you can see all

the asks real quick, right? And so, yeah, there's just not a lot of supply of what's going on here. And so the people that have them are saying, you know what? The supply is so small. We're just going to sit on it at 1,400 or 1,200. But, yeah, there's a lot of variability because it's just not a highly desirable shoe. It's just the supply is so limited. All right.

When we get back from this quick break, I want to know what is the highest amount ever paid or listed for a shoe on this site. And I also want to know how you got Eminem, Mark Wahlberg, my boy, Steve Aoki, shout out, Steve Aoki, Scooter Braun and all these famous people to invest in your company, as well as

Google Ventures, Jonathan Trees, my boy. Shout out, Detroit, New Roy. We get back on this week's startups. The world's changed. There used to be just a handful of vendors, but now with new technologies, Vendors are developing and delivering products fast. We call a product velocity in the business.

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Okay, let's get back to this amazing episode. All right, I'm getting an education in sneakers. Josh Hoover is here. Your sneaker hat, is that what they call you guys? I've clicked the sneakers probably since I was eight years old, ten years old. What's the most you spent on a person? Me personally? Personally.

Me personally, the most I ever spent is only about 900, 950. 950. But it was the shoe. It was the first Air Presto off white. So Virger Ablo was the designer from Off White and very sort of big in sneaker and streetwear world. Is created these shoes. And so not this one. This is the white one.

So if you go back, there's actually three different ones. There's one that's black and white. Air Presto, Off Whites. So if you go to the Presto and then go to the third one down Yep So this one was the first

The first of these three released And click on like 10 and a half Which I'm click on our 11 Because it's only full sizes So my Lord 2200 So this shoe came out

It was 250 or something like that I wasn't able to get them at retail And it was immediately selling for $7, 8, 900 And there was just no way This thing wasn't going to keep going up And so it was 160

Do you wear it? them? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So I paid 950, something like that, which is most I've ever paid by far, but like I knew this was going to happen and I knew if I ever wanted them, I needed to buy them now because now they're $2,200 and $2.2. This is a dumb question, but man, you buy $900 a pair of sneakers and you drop like

an hors d'oeuvre on them. Yeah. What happens? Yeah. Then, you know, you have a ketchup shoe, I guess. I mean, you can clean shoes. It's just, there's shoes, you got to wear them. You got to wear them. I'll tell you what, is, you know, bring up the Air Jordan for Carhart right? Which is, this is the

shoe. This is a collaboration between Air Jordan and Eminem. Okay. So this carhart, isn't that the people who make work clothes? Exactly. So, and their Detroit brand and Emma supported Carhart for a long time. And so, you know, these shoes... I like Carhart stuff, yeah. So this was a collaboration with Carhart, Eminem, and Air Jordan. It came out a little before Stock X launch. Oh my lord. $20,000? So these sold for an average of $23,000 apiece when it first came out. Well, who gets that money? So they were 10 pairs that were sold. All the money went to M.C., charity. Okay. And they sold it on eBay. This is before Stock X had launched. After we launched,

Paul and M gave me a pair. So I own a pair of these. I did not pay $20,000. It was a gift, but I've won these. And I mainly wear these on stage because it's a great prop to be able to talk about that you're wearing a $20,000 shoe. But this is a great example of, you know, and by the way, a $20,000 shoe wears just like a $200 shoe. Like it's still a $200 shoe, right? It's the only reason it sells for $20,000 is just supply and demand. Like that's it. The product itself is the same. It's not made with diamonds. It's not made with gold. What I would like to know is, so this is the most expensive ever? No. So the most expensive that we've actually sold, we were looking at it earlier, the Nike mag, the auto lacing shoe from

back to the future. Wait, this is the one from back to the future? That exists in the world. Yeah, yeah. So we sold a pair for 40,000. There was, I think, one that was sold at auction for as much as 100,000. But we sold one. And is it legitimately self-laced? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You put your foot in it and then, you know, it just around it. I mean, obviously it was a marketing thing. They were only 87 made between Nike and Universal. I think they did together. But when Nike sold it, they did it as a charity raffle.

So you had to buy a $5 raffle ticket in order. And they raised a lot of money for Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's Foundation. Okay, putting aside, 75 dime skis. Putting aside the auctions and charity, what's like a sneaker that regularly gets $5,000 that people buy? Is that exist? Sure. So, you know, the off-white presto that we looked at right there is super popular. But take a look at like the Air Jordan 1 off-white, right?

Air Jordan 1, off-white. And look at the black and red one there. So this was the first- Off-white's the design you said before? Yeah, yeah. This is Virgil Ablo. So here's a great example. We sell a ton of these.

This was the first Air Jordan designed by Virgil. I have to say it's kind of lit. I like that actual design. It's got a lot to it, right? if you do the 360 here and we look around it. But this is a shoe that's selling for four or five grand, and we probably sell a couple of these a day. I'm sorry, a day?

Yeah, yeah. What is your Vig? What do you get paid on all this? 5%, 10%,? It starts at 9.5%. Power sellers have a little bit lower, but 9.5%. So every time somebody buys a $5,000 sneaker, you're getting $500.

You sell a couple of those a day. It's a pretty good business. So, Dan Gilbert, from Cleveland Claveliers. Is your partner in this? Or you've co-founded it with you? Yep. How'd you mean him?

Are you from Detroit? No, I'd never been to Detroit. I never been to Cleveland. I never met Dan. The short version of a really long story is that Dan and I had the exact same idea independently, which was to create a stock market for sneakers. And, you know, Dan's got no ties to sneakers whatsoever. I mean, it's been four years and I literally can't get them to wear sneakers.

At least you got your first pair of Yeezys. But, you know, Dan had had this idea really coming from the marketplace side of saying, hey, why can't we buy and sell consumer goods the same way that the stock market works? And then he was exposed to sneakers through his 15-year-old son at the time who was buying and selling sneakers on eBay. This is like 2015. He says, you know, that's a pretty crappy market leader. And that'd be a perfect place to start a stock market. So Dan went out, unbeknownst to meet and put together a team to start working on a sneaker stock market.

And those guys got like a week, two weeks into it and realized, well, like, crap, we need a sneaker guy. Who's a sneaker guy? So they went out and they found this company that I was running. I was running the essentially the equivalent of the Kelly Blue Book for sneakers. It was a price guide for sneakers. The company was called Campless. That's a smart idea. It was literally just taking the way that Beckett and baseball card price guides used to work.

And we were scraping eBay data to build a price guide for sneakers. And so we were able to come together. I eventually sold Campless to Dan. And we became partners in turning that as the data layer into StockX as the marketplace. And then you get all of the – you started collecting the M&Ms of the world, Mark Wahlbergs. How did that happen? How did that go down? Well, you know, I mean, you're an investor.

And so you know the different dynamics that happens when you have a billionaire as a co-founder. So in the beginning, you don't need to be out there and raising money. But what happened was these relationships came super organically. And a lot of it was Dan, some of it was the NBA, some of it's Detroit. But literally the first one that happened was we were in a room and it randomly came up that Mark Wahlberg wears Jordans. And Dan's like, oh, I know Mark. Like an hour later, I'm on an email chain with Dan and Mark. Two days later, Mark's house in California going through a sneaker closet, like valuing a sneaker closet.

And so the greatest value we can give. mean, without giving up too much. His closet was worth about 100 gram. What? Right? Which is like, it's actually, think about it. Like, he had a pair of the car heart, so that alone is 20 grand, right? Wow.

And so Mark was helping us. Paul and M. just Detroit, there was a lot of mutual acquaintances to Detroit. It's a small place. Dan is a pretty prominent figure in Detroit. And so these guys were helping us anyway. And so the greatest value we could give was to create a round to let them invest. And so really started around Paul and Mark, and then we sort of asked some other people, some of Dan's relationships, Tellione's, Steve Case. And then we had the opportunity to just, you know, meet some of these people.

Scooter Braun, I went to college with, you know, Don C. is a guy in the sneaker world. So a lot, it became super organic and put together this first round all like, you know, big name, small checks for the exact reason that you would know why. When you have that level of celebrity involved in your startup, is there an expectation that they'll blow you up on social once in a while? Or is that like foreboding to ask them? Would you got to pay them again? How does that go down? I'm curious. How do you manage that?

Well, what happened was Dan, MBA, sneakers open up the conversation. Got it. But it was when we're talking about the bigger idea, this idea of genuinely creating a new form of commerce, of using stock market mechanics to create a new market plan. place. And that's really what the people that got it and got the bigger idea, they wanted to be involved. And so everybody put in cash, there was no equity for services. This was purely just like write a check if you want to be a part of it. And because of that, it was a very sort of just just organic relationship. Like there was no ask. Some people would help however they could. Yeah. But it was a, it was a very super just all of them were organic. Cash for shares.

And it was people that that wanted to be involved, right? It was like, if I had to go sell somebody and try to convince them, then that wasn't the right person for that time. It was that. And so then you went and got all of the Google Ventures and like legit investors in Silicon Valley. How did you convince them? How was it different? Because when you have the M&Ms and the Mark Wahlbergs, if they got $100,000 of sneakers or they're in the game, they're deep in the game, you don't have to explain it to them. When you start talking to Silicon Valley people, what was your approach?

Did you find there were sneakerheads in these venture firms? or did you have to explain to them like you're explaining to me this madness that I look at and I'm like, well, I wear Crockett and Jones, which is the oldest shoemaker in the world. I pay $8,900 for these shoes that James Bond wears and every prince in England has worn. And these are the greatest shoes in the world. They're $800. And you're buying off whites for $3,000. I got to tell you something like, I think my Crockett and Jones are going to hold up.

Yeah, you know, I don't know, but you're not going to get much street credit on Instagram. No, it's true. That's true. On Insta, they're going to be like Crocket and Jones. It's a 200-year-old maker. Pull up my Crocket and Joan James Bond's when you get a chance. If you're just going to go ahead to Eddie or you can look up Croqueton Jones, James Bond edition. We call that a collab in the Crocket and Jones shoe business.

It's a collab with a collab with Daniel Craig. Well, look, maybe the next virtual ablo Air Jordan is going to be Crocett and Jones, you know. I think a Crocad and Jones off-white could be legit. Is Off White played now? This is a controversial subject. I didn't mean to bring it up so early, but I just got, you know, there's the studio,

we got some people in the studio watching and they got some of the patrons in there. And somebody just said, like, I think Off White's played. It's a tough, I mean, I'll at least say what you're comfortable saying, Josh, I know it's sensitive.

I have no, no sensitivities or restrictions. It's a big generalization, right? Okay. Offway does the brand, the standalone brand, it hits a very specific, demographic.

The shoes and the collaborations that he's done with Nike and Jordan are just massive. And like there's no stopping them right now. They're transcendent. But yeah. But as the standalone fashion brand, it's just a, it's a small demographic, right? It is not, it is not necessarily the everyday person. I mean, first of all, you have a hoodie that'll cost $1,200, right? It's not the most successful product.

All right. Let me take you to legit, okay? Here's the Norwich. It's Black Calf. This is the mainline edition. You notice the rubber sole, which is something very unique for them. You see the detail work here. And the rubber sole is right outside of the leather there, the calf leather, so that if you scuff it, you know, you hit something on the subway.

You're walking down the street. The rubber hits it. And it is, of course, the Deante rubber sole. And, yeah, anyway. Good enough for James Bond. They're good enough for you. Anyway, that's what I wear, go out there and take a look at these stuff.

What does Spectre wear? Yeah, I don't know what Spectre wear. I think Spector wears. I think Spector wears wearing the off whites, actually. I think that's the thing is the villains wearing the off whites, which might explain it, but these are so buttery.

Do they have, like, knights in the toe that you can, like, kick people against them? Just continued, you can't get this. See, if you had the Randors from Crocod and Jones on Stock X, what's the bid and ask on that? Yeah, that might be. the only place that you can get it.

Like, this is, this is funny. Like, we joke, but, like, this is literally what happens. Because at the highest level, stock X, it's just about access, right? It's just about being able to be able to access products that you either don't, they don't make anymore, you don't know where to get, you don't know fair prices, you don't know what the, what's real. Also with these Crocker Jones, you may not realize this, but if you, if you flick your foot a certain way, Q set them up so a Chinese star comes flying out or hit your Specter guy,

right, corroded artery. So they do have dual function there. I better be careful what I say here. What angle you can kick a Chinese star at me. Exactly. One of them has a laser in the other one as well. Really, the only thing I see by your foot is a kind bar wrapper. Exactly.

That's the dexterous of if you go up and down the tenderloin here, you'll find kind wrappers and heroin needles. It's really, that's the state of Silicon Valley. It's a great combination. It's a pretty great. Where's your company base? Detroit, Michigan. In Detroit. Yeah, so I moved to Detroit to work with Dan and start stock actually.

And big art scene in Detroit is there not? Yeah, yeah. I heard a lot of artists are moving there and buying these giant mansions that you can buy if you're willing to pay the taxes on the house. Is that true? Well, it's less true than it was. But for the last 10, 15 years, there's been a lot of people coming in and buying a lot of property, including Dan, right? You know, 10 years ago, Dan. He bought downtown.

Yeah, basically. And has activated, and it's really just a fascinating place to be. I mean, I'd never been there before. And I moved there in 2015. even in the last four years, it's night and day. Every new building, new restaurant, new activation, new art. There's a 17-foot cause statue in front of our building. Like, it's a pretty cool place.

Neat. All right. When we get back, I want to hear how the Google Ventures meeting and getting these kind of big investors into the company went. Obviously, pretty easy to get people who are buying sneakers or ready and deep in the game. But how do you get these like industry titans involved in something they don't, they likely know nothing about when we get back on this week's service? Hiring is not as easy as just putting.

an ad on some message boards somewhere and hoping for the best. No, that's not how you do it. That's not how you do it right in 2019. No, you want to use LinkedIn. If you're growing your business, you need to reach the right candidates at the right time. And 600 million members visit LinkedIn to make those connections and learn and grow as professionals. You know that. They also go there. Sometimes they want to discover new job opportunities. In fact, a new hire is made every eight seconds on LinkedIn. Two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Somebody just got hired on LinkedIn. That's right.

And here is my CMO, Presh, who we just upgraded to an associate. He's in the game. And here he is, posting a job for us, a customer success person manager in Toronto. Here's the job function, a little business development, a little customer service. He takes our nice little job description, pops it in there. Look at that whizzywig editor. It looks great. Does a preview of the job, and he's ready to go.

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All right, senior management consultant from IBM. Josh Louber is with us. It's not the title that's often put in front of my name, but okay. So you were at IBM? Yeah, yeah.

I'm a startup guy, and I shut down my last startup in the crash of 0809. Oh. And I needed a job. And, you know, a classmate in mine from business school said, hey, I heard you shut down

your company, you should come worth me at IBM. And I was like, I don't think you get it. I was like, my company has four people. IBM has 400,000. Like, I'm good. Yeah. And he's like, no, no.

And, you know, one conversation leads to a next job market. Did you learn something there? Oh, what did you learn? Yeah. At IBM? Yeah. By the way, none of this would have happened without IBM. I go to IBM.

I'm a strategy consultant in their internal strategy group. What does that mean? And it's, it's Bain McKinsey type strategy work, right? It's same thing as if you were, you know, what does it mean? What does it mean, the most basic of all, right? This is solving business problems. You go in there and, and, and, you know, and, And you're doing work to create strategy for executives at big companies in terms of –

Some big company, I don't know, a non-tech company, most likely, needs to solve a problem. Yep. What's an example of a problem? Well, I'll tell you what. I'll tell you the very first thing that I worked on at IBM, which is what led to this. So we were in their internal strategy. So our client was IBM, right? So we would work on IBM projects.

And the very first project I ever worked on was a project for IBM's consulting organization, right? So they're, they're consult. How meta. Right. Yeah. And the question was, right, was about how do you staff the right number of people? Consulting projects come together. You have four or five people come together.

They handle a project and then they disperse and they go off and they do their own. And so you have different people with different skill sets, but you haven't have to have enough people so you can sell work and fulfill that project at the same time. But if you've too many people sitting around, that's not good because you're paying them. If you have too few people sitting around, then you don't have people to sell a project in. Right. And then everybody has different. skill sets and everyone's different geographies and everyone has different things. Yeah. And so like basically build a model to figure out how to efficiently staff projects, right? How many people should we have

on the bench at any given time? What, what skills, what geographies, what groups and all that. And so I very quickly went from, I thought I knew a lot about data work to, well, now I know a lot about data work because you get thrown in the deep end and I had to build this model from scratch. I had never done this level of work. And what happened was that first year at IBM, I'm, like knee deep in Excel work and data work. And, you know, by the way, if you're a startup guy and you go to IBM, the first thing you do is you start working on shit on the side, right? And so I needed a side hustle. I'm doing all this data work.

And so I was like, man, I wonder if I get a whole of some sneaker data just to play with my own amusement. I was doing all of it at IBM work. I've collected sneakers all my life. I needed some sort of side hustle while I was there. And so I was like, man, I wonder if I get all of some sneaker data just to see what I could do with it. We figured out how to collect eBay data. We figured I how to clean it. And that was the price guide.

So none of this doesn't happen unless I go to IBM and pick up a little bit of data skills and that turns into the side project that becomes a sneaker price guide that then becomes stock act. So you did the fix 40 for IBM, but then you did the solid twin, the hard 20 on the side hustle. So you're putting in the solid 60. That was more like 50, 40, but yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. This is what I was just wrap. I was contextualizing for the social media, the Twitter.

I don't know if you're on it. Yeah, sure. I was contextualizing because it's a very polarizing top. of how many hours you should work per week. I believe you should work the number of hours. You want to work per week, not what I tell you, or Alexis O'Hannon tells you, or whoever tells you the number of hours you should work. Sure. But a fixed 40 is fine if that's what you're going for, but I like a solid 60.

I think you are called. Some people do a focused 50. I think it's all of them. You could do an insane 80. Yeah, I mean. You've done the insane 80? I don't know if you need a, you know, a descriptor for it. But I work all the time, but I love it.

Like, this is the fun point. Yeah. Sneakers, which is your passion. So it doesn't even. Part of it is that. What do you do when you go home? You surf the web for sneakers. You know, it's like, so now I have two kids.

So my daughter's seven, my son's four. And that's been, you know. It's either. Yeah, yeah. But other than that, you know, it's not stopped. But you can put 40 hours, 50 hours a weekend and have kids. It's possible. Yeah.

Here's the decision. Look at this. if you love your work you want to do six days a week 10 to do blah blah blah blah 13% of my followers do a fix 40 26 do the firm 50

solid 60 coming in at 34% and I don't know who these insane 80 hour people are I guess that's Nick Charles and I are at the firm 50 your firm 50 Charles feels like a firm 50 yeah I think that's fine

you pick what you want to do respect so how did you get just the cliffhanger that never gets answered here. But you walked into Google Ventures in these other places. I'm sure my friend Jonathan Trees may have helped you out a little bit, getting some meetings. He's pretty legit on the investing front.

He's love low ventures. Jonathan's been helping us since day zero, since before day zero. He's so legit. Yeah, yeah, he's great. I love that guy. You know, what was interesting is you start a company with Dan and you never think that you will ever take venture funding. Or you never, like it's just, it's far away. You've got to get through so many other hurdles in the beginning.

For sure. And you get to a certain point. and I don't have to explain this to you or your listeners is, you're like, well, Dan could put in more money or, right, we can go out and bring other people, you know, around the table. We were fortunate to have enough success quick enough that we had a lot of inbound interest. Nice. And so we started taking meetings really for the, I guess, I guess the network in the beginning because we didn't even know if Dan was going to be interested in having outside people coming about. And honestly, it was kind of the inverse of what you're saying. Most of the people really didn't understand the space, didn't understand it, but there were two people that really did.

And the two of them were David Crane at Google Ventures. Oh, I know, David. David, I see at all the Warriors games. David has seats at the Warriors games. And if you look at his feet, he's probably wearing some easies or some Jordans. David got it. And then Roger Lee at Battery had been exposed to this through his son. And you get that a lot as well and had been just really involved.

And his son, by the way, not only just buying and selling or, not only buying, but selling. Oh, so he was running a business on the side and like, hey, dad, can I borrow your checking account because I need to cash some checks. That's right. And then at Google, you know, David at the time, David is now on our board at the time was, was not. You had David Crane on your board?

Yeah. Well, so what happened was Joe Krause was originally on the board. And Joe also was buying and selling with his son. And so both Joe and David got the business and part of it and Joe was on the board. And when Joe left to go to Lyme, David is now on the board. But those guys got it and like, you know, partly from their kids but partly from helping their kids run businesses

and understood it. But even then at the time, I don't think they fully understood the big idea. They saw the sneaker business and the sneaker business is really big. Like there's no question about that, right? But this idea that the evolution of what happens here is today we're a better secondary market.

We're an evolution to eBay. But the really interesting thing becomes we become an alternate retail channel. When you start to release products directly onto the market, to literally IPO products into existence. Oh my God, I just figured out your business. Yeah. That's the real business.

Oh. Right. So hold up. Wait a second. I'm Kanye. And I guess he's partnered with Nike on those UZIs. Adidas. Adidas.

And they say, you know what? We could do an initial product offering. Exactly. Not an initial public offering, but an initial product offering. Exactly. We got these new Yeasies. We're not going to set the price. Exactly.

We're putting the price out there. there. Boom. Blind Dutch auction. Blind Dutch auction. You let the markets at the price. So I don't know if we can bring it up on the screen, right? But if you...

Have you done a Dutch auction? Yeah. So if you click... If you search Ben Baller, did the chain stock X, Ben Baller Stock X? Wait, wait, it's not Big Baller brand, is it? No, no, no, no. That's a much different thing.

So click on a blog, just Google search, Ben Baller. There it is. Ben Baller. Are these called slides? Yeah, these are slides. So... See, look at that. Now I'm getting...

Thank you. But, yeah, if we go to Google and find... the blog post on this. I know about slides. So we created these slides. So Ben Baller is a celebrity jeweler, by the way. Right? You know who he is?

Because he's around in this part of the world. So we made these slides with Ben. It literally says on it, it says Ben Ballard did the chain, which is a rap lyric. But we put 800 pairs of these into the world, red and black. And it was a blind Dutch auction by size and color. And so if you scroll down, this thing literally is going to start looking like a math textbook. Blind, but by color and size. This is all the math that came off of this.

Look at this. Hold up. Let's get the red slides. Wait, you got more on the black. Yeah, the black. There were more quantity of black than there were. So here we go. All winning bids sorted by largest or smallest amount. So people will put in a bid of how much. So we first, so we tell them how many pairs of variable. So let's say that there were black size eight. There were 65 pairs available, right? Right. Right hand side. Right. And so the top 65 bids win. And you see somebody bid a million dollars, right? Well, that was a joke, right? Well, yes, but no, but they understood that it goes down to the clearing price, right? So in Black size 8, it could. So whatever the clearing price is.

Right. The 65th highest bid, in this case, it was 175. So this person just doesn't want to get left out? Exactly. And they get it. Now, if 66 people bid a million dollars, then there's a problem. Yeah. But that didn't happen.

Thank you. That could have been problematic collecting. Yeah. So this one, right, because it was the first big one we did, the first true blind Dutch auction, We put all the math and everything so everyone can see how it played out. But you can see what happened is you've all these bids, right? The 65th highest was 175. And so those are the ones, those are the people that won.

That's a clearing price. Yeah. And then everybody pays 175. Which, by the way, this is what Google did with their IPO. They said, put it in what you want and people put in high prices. Other people didn't. And then it cleared. And this is how the stock market should work.

Yeah. This is how it should work. This is how you properly priced an asset. We didn't make this up. We didn't make this up. We're literally copying. You're the first person to do this. And for any consumer goods.

How many sneakers have you done this with? So this is the only one at this scale, but there's literally two big ones, one with a big sneaker brand. Okay. Right. And one with another brand in another category coming soon. It could be fashion maybe. Is there baseball hats got in this situation or no? Is this thing live?

Are we live? We're kind of semi-live, but whatever. It's only like 10 people watching. Don't worry about it. Yeah. Wait, wait. So it could be, what are the other categories that you could go into? Have you gone into any category?

Yeah. So, yeah. So, yeah. So we're in, we're in four different categories today. Sneakers, streetwear, which is clothing, watches, and handbags, right? Watches and handbags. Whoa. So you do a watch co-lab and you got the LeBron plus whoever watch. Well, it allows you to start creating products with people to put it into the market because... I need to get in on this. I do J-Cowl, Crockett Jones, limited edition. Yeah, hey, you know.

And at Crockett, somebody get me Crockett Jones on the phone. There's a guy over there who's 87 years all right now. And he's literally when you order Crockett and Jones, do you know how you order them? I have no idea. Email. At least it's not your time. It's like fax. Email that, your credit card number.

They don't have a checkout box or they didn't, you know. If you told me it was fax, that's a much better story. It is. Yeah, it is. They do take some facts. Actually, they literally do it by fax as well. So wait, what's up with watches? Yeah.

So for us, watches is a, I mean, sneakers and sneakers and, are so big. Watches and handbags are decent size, but they're just nowhere as big as sneakers in right now. So are you going out now and do you have aspirations to maybe put together a co-lab? So you could have the stock X bag. That's the Fendi plus. All of those things. All of those things happen. You know, look, the core business, there's just, there's massive growth in just the core business of selling more products. And, you know, right now Europe and China, really the highest priorities, you know, to be able to sell sneakers there. What do you have to do to sell into China?

Do you have to get a partner there? Well, you know, we're a website so anyone who can access it can buy or sell. Got it. But local payment methods, local language, local authentication. So, you know, we physically authenticate all the products that are sold on Stock X. How? So we have five authentication centers today. So after the sale happens, seller ships it to us.

We authenticate, make sure it's real, make sure it's the right size, right condition. It is what's supposed to be. You ever have somebody try to pass it and you catch them? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, every day. Really? Every day. So somebody puts up some Yeezys that are counterfeit.

How close are they to the real thing would you say? Some of them are so great. I couldn't tell the difference. I don't work day to day as a sneaker authenticator, but they're really good. But this is our job, right? Today there's about 900. I thought you had a master's in sneaker authentication. I don't know.

I'm not authenticator. How does one become a master sneaker authenticator? It didn't exist before this, but we literally created that career path. Like we have, I think there's probably over 100 sneaker authenticators to work at Stockex right now. There's about 9th. 900 people to work at StockX. About half of that is authentication stage centers. So it is possible to not see what's interesting about this point. This might be one of the most interesting parts of the conversation.

A lot of these, you know, folks are like, you know what, we are just a platform. We take no responsibility, common platform, you know, eBay, whatever. You actually said, you know what? We're going to take responsibility that IP's not being stolen. Yep. And eBay doesn't do that, do it? No, not at all. There's two really big parts of this.

One, if you're a 14-year-old kid and you've saved up a thousand hours to buy a pair of yeasies, you know you're never getting a fake pair of shoes. And there's massive value in the authentication, and a lot of places don't do it. But here's a thing. For us, that's literally just the ante to play. That facilitates a larger model, right? Think about if you were buying a share of Nike stock in the New York Stock Exchange and you thought you might get a fake share of stock.

It would change your perception of value. It would change just your whole interaction with that market. And so for us, that just helps facilitate the larger model. So it absolutely, there's value in authentication because most people don't do it, but it really is about it's the larger model. And so who's selling, what I want to know is who are, how do people become sellers on the platform when we get back on this week's story? The average adult has over 130 online accounts. That's 130 passwords. And no person in the world can memorize that many passwords.

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Thank you so much to Dashlane for supporting independent media like this week in startups. All right, everybody, welcome back to this week and start. It's my guest, Josh Louber. He is Josh Louber on the Twitter, L-U-B-E-R. You know him from his days at IBM doing management consulting, but I'd like to introduce you to his new company, Stockex, which has been doing since 2015. Hustle turned unicorn. Congratulations on that.

That's a little mind-blowing for you. Yeah. That's a little heady. It is, but, you know, it's just, it's one day at a time and, you know, it, yeah, it's crazy. It's crazy. It is crazy to think that you in four years build something that's worth a billion dollars. But, like, the crazier part is that, like, it still feels like it's day zero. Like, everyone's still doing seven jobs.

It feels like everything's still in front of us. And that, like, that's what's really exciting about it. Like, it literally is it's the same feeling we had when there were five of us sitting outside of Dan's office. like, you know. What's it like when that $110 million wire comes in? Because you see the bank statement. Somebody comes into the office. It's like, dude, there's $110 million in the bank account.

It's real. Yeah. What's it like to look at that number? You know, I wish I could say that it was like a big deal. It's got to be weird though, right? You've got to feel some weird like, whoa. You're just so far in it. It's like one of those things.

So about a year ago, I started a project internally to document everything. And I put together a team, like two people from the content team, one archivist and one video guide to document everything because it's this. Because in the moment, I didn't think anything of it. You know, Greg and I, who's the co-founder and COO and he and I have been running the company day to day. We were just like, all right, money's there. Like good, like, right checks. Like, you know, you're just so far in it. But like we started a project to document everything.

So it's going to be a documentary film Sundance. I don't know. We're not, we haven't been filming. Sounds like a reality show, my friend. Let me clear. We haven't been following people with cameras, at least I hope not. because I don't know. Maybe there's a fourth camera in the room.

This sounds like most legit. What you're doing would be the greatest E entertainment. I kind of wish we had actually been filming stuff, but at least like to capture everything. If you had a, you should literally be doing a reality show. We get celebrities come by the office all the time.

We actually have like, I mean, it's a fun place to come visit. One, the authentication center in Detroit, which is down the street and then the office itself. What's good food in Detroit? It's good food there? Well, they'll tell you Detroit's thing is Conies, it's hot dogs. I don't really like hot dogs,

so that's not my thing. Yeah. Conies? Yeah. That's like their thing. I was like, when I came to visit and they were like wooing me, they took me to like a hot dog, but I'm like, really? I was like, you're in Philly. I'm from Philly. You come to Philly. I'll take you to a good cheesestick spot. Yeah.

Detroit's got to up the food game. Sorry Eminem, Marshall. Mr. Mathers. Nobody's rocking a hot dog. I think it's not working. All right. Here we go. How do I be?

become a seller on the platform? You just click sell. That's it. Yeah. So anybody can sell. Yeah. List your product for sale or sell immediately at the highest bid. Ship your item within two business days.

You authenticate it. Then they release the funds to you and you get to sip your dacquerie knowing you'll never get a charge back. You know, the everything about the stock market model. You made it pretty, sorry I interrupt, but you made it really fluid here because you got the whole database from your days doing the Blueboos. Yeah. But like if you choose any shoe, like go to any of the shoes, the whole thing, right, if you just bring up is, is being able to sell at the highest bid. Right. So if you click sell now, like there's a bid at 270 for this. This is tied to someone's PayPal or their credit card. Oh, so when you do next, bang, it's sold. Yeah. Now, obviously, if you haven't already set up your account, you'll have to set up an account from here. But once you set up account, like to sell something, you never have to list anything for sale ever. Right. Think about if you had to share a sell Nike stuff. stock that way. You don't you don't list your share of Nike stock and hope someone comes and buys it. No, you go to the market. Nike's trading it at 80 bucks and you can sell it. It's a market order, right? That's what they call it in the stock market. Of all this stuff here, like that bid on

stock X, like that is true consumer demand. Like that's the whole thing. That is core to this whole thing. Interesting. Are you going to be able to do on demand? So let's say you email your list and you're like, hey, almost like Kickstarter, but more like we, we, we, we will. We, we, we, want this Jordan to be re-released, we're willing to put up a Dutch auction and we'll put up the 500,000. And you'd say to Nike, hey, we got 500,000 in demand for this. Will you do it? Yeah, that is a natural evolution of the model.

Amazing. The only thing, it probably works better for some of the other categories. Production cycles for sneakers take, you know, a minimum six months, a lot of times closer or 12 to 18 months. But you could think about doing it for products that are T-shirts, right? Or, you know, things that you can- Yeah, T-Spring did that, right? Like you could-

Right. So there's a lot of these products that they go down on this. But it's all about like, and then everything that comes off of that, right? Fractional shares and indices and day trading. Yeah, you saw this rally road. Have you seen that company, rally road? Yeah, I had them on the pod. Yeah, that was pretty amazing.

Like, buy a share. I'm going to put on my, I have some old-school Teslas. And I'm thinking about putting the two of them on there. and then selling half my interest in them so that other people have a ride on the upside. A ride on the upside? That's actually a pretty good tagway for Raleigh Road. You're welcome.

A ride on the upside. But I'd like to give them a ride on the upside. Could somebody just get ride on the upside? com for me right now. Tell us right now, ride on the upside. That's going to, yeah, dot com, please. Somebody's got to have that taken. I think probably our Patreon.

The ride on the upside also might be a triple X. How do you like my get the seat.com for my job applicant. Get the seat. It's just presuming that you want it. That's right. And that you got to fight for it. Right?

As opposed to filling a seat. How about you get the seat? Yeah, yeah. Take the seat. I like it. A little bit better. All right. It's incredible what you've done.

That's only the beginning, man. Like, once, 18 months from now, 24 months when every Monday morning there's just 20 products IPOing. The secondary market continues to, to go, but it just, here's the products that are IPOing, and it's just, and that product then just rolls right into the secondary market, right? Product releases, and then it just continues to trade. So great.

You could do this for tickets to concerts, too. That would be kind of dope. Well, you know, a lot of the times we actually point to Stubb is a really great example of, you know, Stubb brought primary and secondary markets together. Did they get the primary market? Is that how it works? Not in all cases, but like, you know, the Sixers, the Yankees, a few other teams, they have primary ticket deals with some of these organizations.

And so it's blurred the line. Like, think about you buy tickets on StubHub. It could come from a team, a league, a guy down the street, a broker. You don't care. You don't care. You just, you don't care. Yeah. And that same thing in the stock market, right?

You buy a share in Nike stock. There's an actual seller on the other end of that trade selling you that share. And you don't care who that is. You just care when you pay for it. And you tap the Stubhubhubbub president to go work with you, right? Yeah. And so, by the way, you know, M, Mark, Scooter Braun, you know, Ted Leone says, Tim Armstrong, all these guys that invests in the first round. Ted bought my company.

All those guys in the first round, probably the most important was Scott. And so Scott Culler, who at the time was the CEO of Stubbub, was an investor in that first round because before Stubbub, he was at the New York Stock Exchange. There was probably no one that understood our model better than Scott on day one that we launched. And so he became one of our closest advisors of the past couple years, Greg and I, as we were running the company. And we were thought, you know, if we ever got big enough, man, he would be the perfect person to help us. And then we got big enough. And then he left eBay. And so, worked out perfectly. And so it's been about two months.

This is what capitalism is about. If you, the market corrects and is efficient. And what we're seeing is whether it's Uber or Airbnb or Stock X, the proper or Bill Gurley with the IPO, you know, Dutch auction and him trying to make IPOs, direct listings more efficient, when you make markets more efficient, consumers win. When the government, when monopolies get control over things and there's not a proper market, consumers lose. And now you can cherry pick examples of some sneaker going for a lot of money, but you can also cherry pick some kid who's good at this, predicting what the next ones are and making a business out of it and buying low and selling high. Which is what you want is you want that monetary velocity. You want a market to make prices

for things. Yeah. And that's what we did. There was no transparency in this market before Stock X. There was no transparency. Everybody thought they, you know, like, buy these yeasies. I'm the only one that has it. They're $1,000. Well, there were nine other people that had a pair of Yeasies over there. There was just no transparency around it. And you put that little, I have the yeasies I bought. It's got your little green thing on the side. Am I supposed to take that offer? Is it fly to walk around with it? What's the intent there? Some people absolutely walk around with it. I walked around with it yesterday and I kind of like it. No, we, that was not the intent. We created it. But people started doing it. And frankly, it's awesome. It's great. It's great for us. And by the way, where we see it a lot of times, is like we get pictures all the time from China. People like, hey, I saw this guy. Because there's that much more need to prove that your shoes are authentic and value in the authentication. Right. And so we start to see that.

Has anybody knocked off your tag? Oh, yeah. Yeah, you can search eBay and absolutely find fake stock X tags all over it. That's hilarious. You need to make a stock X tag with a QR code on it so I can QR code it. Yeah, yeah. So there is. There is.

There is. You can't hit it right now. We can hit it right when it comes back to us. But yeah, eventually there'll be more technology in that chip. But, you know, for now, you know, I remember the first time that somebody, you know, knocked it off and we saw it on eBay. You know, my immediate reaction was like, you know, I was pissed off for about 30 seconds. And I was like, oh, that's pretty cool. It's really cool because I have my now you know stock X receipt when I bought my Yeezys.

And you did confirm these are 100% new and they were authentic. Yep. And I paid $320 for sneakers. Well, you know, you got to start somewhere. We'll get you up to $900,000. I kind of feel like I'm in the game now. I'll be honest. I've been rocking the Crocket and Jones.

People are going to notice you're easy. I guarantee you wear them on the floor. I really liked them, but I'm going to be sitting courts. I'm going to be sitting courts. I'd four times this year, I think. And I'm going to need sneakers for those four times. I'm going to need some consultation here, Josh. I want I need something in the $1,500 range because I don't want to seem like I'm

Like, no offense to you, Josh. I don't want it to seem like I'm going 600, 900, which I know is your sweet spot. I want people to think that I'm just overdoing it a bit, but not the 5,000. Is that, am I doing it right? I'll tell you what, you know what's the perfect shoe? Where's my kill zone?

900 to 200 to 1,200? What do you think the kill zone is for not trying too hard? Go to the Jordan 1, off white, white. Jordan 1, off white. Do you like white sneakers? No, so one up, one up from that? That's that's the girls version Or the girls, girl's size

GS, it stands for G. Oh, girls. Yeah. So, all right, so this. All right. Never mind. The prices jumped a lot on these. But these are great.

People will notice that, right? They will notice it, but it's also subtle enough because it's all white. It's a little, it's subtle enough but the people that would know and know, you know. I got to know about the Knicks. What's going on by Patrick Ewing's? Can I get a Patrick Ewing search in here?

You don't want to wear a very, Uings, no? Uings, you can get at, at probably 25% of retail. Really? Yeah, this is going to be real. If it even exists. They don't even exist.

My God. I mean, that is a big, huge, ugly, chunky shoe for you to walk around. I know. That's my guy. That's my guy. Patrick Gill. Okay, well, I guess they really don't even have. Rebock pump, Omni-Lite.

What is that? That was the D. Brown shoe, right? Remember when he closed his eyes and pumped it up and then, you know, it went like this and dunked it? Oh, yes. That was a deep brown shirt. I mean, they re-released it. So you could go ironic.

And ironic does start a conversation. Where am I in the, what's on the ironic hipster? I guess if I go full Kauai purple, that's as ironic as it gets, right? Yeah, I mean, that's so bad. I mean, that is so whack. I mean, I don't mean to date myself, but that is whack. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Like that 990s?

By the way, 990s, I think are the, the. Or the brand that Steve Jobs wore, rest in peace. Shout out Steve Jobs. Did he was a 99. It was the model. I thought 1990s or something. 990 is pretty, they obviously, they did. So they basically took the Steve Jobs nerd buy the 90, because he used to buy them for 90 bucks or 95 bucks, and he'd buy 10 at a time, they said.

And he just rotate them and he wear with his jeans and his turtleneck. And then Kauai comes in and he makes them purple and red, the two worst colors you could ever imagine combined. It's the Raptors. I know. How about it? First, as I told, who's the kid on the Raptors who I was trolling? Kyle Lowry. Yeah, I told Kyle Lowry, enjoy this championship because you're never coming back.

Well, no. Why's not coming back and you're not coming back? By chance, if you beat the, you happen to beat the Warriors. That was a crazy run. I mean, they got so lucky with, I mean, not that you wish for injuries, right? But they got so lucky with the injuries for, if Duran Clay don't count right now. If, yeah, if we, if we just have. Yeah.

Yeah. How about Jordan 1 off white, Carolina? You want to really make a statement? Yeah, the, Eric, go back up top. It'll come up. There you, the blue one. Same shoe, different color. In your price range.

In my price range. Nine and a half, 1920. I can do that for you. If you think you can rock these, this is everybody will notice this one. Really? Oh, for sure. It's got the sky blue. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

With the orange, which is my favorite color. So this is, without all this extra stuff, this was like one of the original Jordan colorways, right? Carolina blue, Jordan won. But, you know, Virgil, all the off white stuff on there made it a $1,600 shoe. What's the, when you put that air on there and you put that text on the other side, that's something you add to it? All that design is done by the designer by Virgil Ablo. So he puts air in quotes? Yeah, yeah.

So it's air quotes? Yeah, that's what... Get it? But he literally puts on the... They put the model on the sneaker, they're turning around. Yeah, I mean, this just happens to be designed this shoe, right? That Nike let him took some liberties and have some fun with it and create a really, you know... I like how they put the description of it on the shoe.

That is inspired. I tell you, you wear this court side. Am I going to get... You're going to go watch the game. Everyone's just going to keep coming up to you talking about your shoes. Really? Oh, yeah. You're kidding me.

Well, this is my kind of... Just make sure you're wearing the stuff. stock X tag while you're doing it. Keep the tag on it. Listen, if you're going havesies with me on this, that's for sure. I mean, you're the one buying the tickets now. We started with. We're just the marketplace. We don't sell anything. I don't know any issues. Listen, continued success. Josh, this really proves that following your vision and your passion can result in you building a unicorn if you have a data science background and work for IBM. It's a key part of the story. Yeah. It's just an as a footnote. It's a footnote. I can just picture you like, did you ever

wear like sneakers? Were you allowed to wear them in the building? You know. I'm going to rethink my game here because I was getting a little upset about people wearing like ratty shoes to the office. If your shoes cost 400 or more on StockX, you can wear sneakers. Bring in your StockX. You have to have it authenticated. Okay. All right. Listen, continued success. Thank you so much. Everybody go to StockX right now and buy a pair. You won't regret it. It's a great experience. Congratulations. We'll see you all next time on this week in startups.