This Week in Startups - Howard Lindzon reviews Jason's portfolio & breaks down public/private investing + OK Boomer | E1533

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hey, everybody, hey everybody, it's Friday, and I can't believe how good this episode is. We're finishing the week strong. We're not actually over. We got Sunday coming up too, and that's a strong episode. But my pal, Howard Linson, is with us. We talk about public markets, private markets, J-trading, Palaton, Web3. And he really got inside my head about what's going on with Kevin Rose's project and some of these awesome NFT projects and Dow's. It was really a great discussion of the crypto market and then private markets and public markets.

Starting point is 00:00:29 And the nature of those three things working together, we went through every single J-trade, and we vetted them. And he gave me some of the best advice I've gotten today to date. He gave me some of the best advice I've gotten to date about moving into this public market investing that I'm trying to do. And of course, it wouldn't be Friday without producer Rachel reporting on her OK Boomer segment. It's going to be a great episode. Please stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by user testing. With user testing, you'll understand.

Starting point is 00:00:59 it from your customer's perspective by seeing how they interact with your products, apps, or messaging. Get real-time feedback real fast. Put yourself in your customer's shoes and visit usertesting.com slash twist for a free trial. User testing. Real human insight. Liquid IV. Making hydration a priority will help you feel better on a day-to-day basis. Get 25% off at liquidiv.com by using promo code twist and Fandual Sportsbook. Use code twist during signup to get started with a no

Starting point is 00:01:35 sweat first bet up to $1,000. Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of this weekend starts. My guest today is Howard Linson. You follow him on Twitter. Howard L-I-N-D-Z-O-N. He's the founder and general partner of social leverage.

Starting point is 00:01:49 And he invest in seed stage startups, but also he's the co-founder and chairman of stock twits, which I think you guys pioneer the dollar sign with the ticker symbol on Twitter. You created that. 2008, we definitely did.

Starting point is 00:02:03 It was a way, the first dollar sign other than like that I know of in 07 or 06 was to Fred Wilson. I tweeted, I blackberryed him on Twitter dollar sign

Starting point is 00:02:16 RIM. I think the ticker symbol for BlackBerry at the time was RIM because there was no iPhone. There was no iPhone. If you can believe it. Remember Twitter was it was BlackBerry? It was on BlackBerry.

Starting point is 00:02:26 I mean, the first version of Twitter was also SMS. So you get an SMS message. And back then, it cost you money. That's why I didn't angel invest in it because I was like, this is stupid. Every time I get an update, it's going to cost me five cents. I burned through 200 of these and then I'm at five cents for each overage. This is dumb. I guess I'm not going to invest in the Twitter.

Starting point is 00:02:44 It's a murder reason. I did pass Fred showed it to me at 20 million Bell. And I'm like, how am I going to make money? How can I make money on it? That's true. You know, it's a funny story. It was 20 million in 06 valuation. Literally, usually the valuations were five to eight million at that time.

Starting point is 00:02:59 And I was talking to... They were one to two million, dude. Some cases, yeah. But this is Ev Williams, who had done blogger. And I was talking to Ev and he's like, hey, Sequoia, Fred Wilson, what do you think? And I was like, well, you know, Fred's King of New York. He's amazing. He's going to be super active.

Starting point is 00:03:14 Sequoia is Sequoia. I mean, you can't go wrong there. So that's like a pickum, you know, like you could just flip a coin there. You're winning either way. Why don't you get both of them? He's like, I just want to have one. And he famously went with Fred Wilson, which was. a crazy moment in time in venture because Fred was based in New York. And the idea that

Starting point is 00:03:31 a VC would get on a plane and go across the country for board meetings was nuts. Fred wasn't doing that back then either. That was like one of the first things he had done them. Yeah. Fred was, I'm only investing in my backyard. Right. He might do Boston. He might do DC. My God, how the world has changed in private markets. We're going to get into private markets. We need to public markets. Could use a little mentorship here because you've always done both. And I just want to start out with how is private market investing? and public market investing analogous, in other words, what are the things that never change about making a great investment,

Starting point is 00:04:03 but then what's different? And how do you switch your modalities and your strategies when you're going from private to public? Well, I mean, I appreciate you asking, this is a constant learning environment, right? We just went through a period where some of my favorite people, like that I was blown away by podcasts, you've had them on your podcast ultimatur,

Starting point is 00:04:24 like I think they're super, Some of the smartest people are down 50% in the last year. So before I say, I know what I'm doing, like, this is really hard to do, both private and public. But like when you combine the two, they really are different, right? So I started from the public market side. You know, when I started with an MBA and whatever, all the fancy degrees, it was like, you know, the world was, there was no internet.

Starting point is 00:04:49 So you could value companies based on, you know, a growth company was a store, like a gap, or a restaurant. And you could just figure out their growth by how many stores. That was a growth company before the Internet. So value in companies was a lot different. And the private markets hadn't developed that much. And VC in the 90s still wasn't a thing, right, until the Internet. So let's talk about it then post-2008, where it really started taking off, where angel investors started taking off,

Starting point is 00:05:18 even though it didn't become as big as it was. But, you know, post-angelist, post-GFC, where private investing and us investing across, what do you call it, when you hybrid across both private and public. The angel investing was very different. What I loved about angel investing, even though I was wrong a lot, was you were in it for 10 years. One of the hardest things about investing in stocks, and we're seeing this play out in crypto, is seeing the price. when you see the price of your thing every minute of the day, whether you love the company or not, and you're seeing this now as you trade, is seeing the price changes your mood, changes your behavior, changes, you know, you probably are better at it the most because you play poker and you can separate

Starting point is 00:06:05 what a chip is versus your money. But being a public market investor, I wasn't very good at, at least on the trading side, because you were always adding up your value, right? You could see what your portfolio is worth by the second. And for some people, that's great. They know how to separate their day-to-day P&L from their 10-year vision. For me, it was poison, right? For me, seeing what, you know, being judged every day versus the S&P was just not healthy for me.

Starting point is 00:06:35 An angel investment, you know, as risky as it sounds, just made more sense to me because I did the work. I was committed in this idea or trend or in this team. And you know, good luck getting out. So it was a portfolio approach where you really had to think through eight to 10 year exit strategies. And for my personality and for the way I saw the world, private investing just made much more sense. This crossover world that's become famous before 2021 crash here, 2020, has been around.

Starting point is 00:07:08 And it's a very special type of investors that can convince both their LPs to be liquid and public. It's very complicated if you're going to do it professionally to value portfolios and you've got to have all kinds of extra oversight and you have to have side pockets and side. It's very complicated to price your stuff. And they really are very different skills. The main difference being like you and I in private, it's much easier to sit and deal with the day-to-day fluctuations when you know you can't get out.

Starting point is 00:07:41 I mean, I think what we're seeing in crypto, sorry, what we're seeing in crypto is everybody, so excited, but you know what? The price is a curse. The price of your token can be a curse. It's creating all kinds of short-term behavior. And, you know, this whole idea that venture capital would now be public and you could price things early may turn out to be the biggest flaw of crypto. This is a really interesting that you bring this third discipline into a crypto because it combines the best and worst of both. If we look at private market investing, one of the great features is you talked about doing the work. Okay, we'll get into that in a minute.

Starting point is 00:08:16 But you get to understand the founder, the market, the product, the product velocity. Everybody's got different techniques here for making that early bet. And then you have no choice but to sit on your hands. Maybe a secondary opportunity happens, but it generally only happens in your winners. But in 06, there was no such thing of secondary. There was second market. There was second market, which then became, you know, didn't work in many ways. And then there's Angelus, which I was luckily an early investor in.

Starting point is 00:08:42 And now there's a pretty healthy. secondary market, but it's still very glitchy. It's not super fluid. And you know, you do have opportunities from time to time, but it's not like a public market where you buy something. And I had this happen just last week. I had my thesis. I'm really big on these streaming services.

Starting point is 00:09:04 And we might as well get right into it. I believe that somebody will get to a billion paid subscribers. This is my thesis. Correct. Somebody will get there. And Netflix is at 220, the Disney cohort of at ESPN, Hulu, and Disney Plus, they're at 221. Today, they just beat out Netflix by 500,000 subs. I buy this Warner Brothers discovery because I love Zazlov.

Starting point is 00:09:28 I think that guys are murdering, you know, assassin, like wartime, Sluptman-style CEO. And boom, I'm down 20% the day, you know, two days after I buy it. Which one? Which one? WBD. Oh, I saw that in your book. I didn't even, I only down. Okay.

Starting point is 00:09:45 But you're right. I just want to recognize your point of the psychological difference. I look and I see, okay, I make seven bets. I got six green. I got one red. All I can think about is the red one. All I can think about is why did I make such a stupid decision? It may force you, especially if you're reporting to other investors.

Starting point is 00:10:03 There's one thing if you keep it to yourself and you be, you know, people behave differently. And this is, we can get into the psychology and why products like Robin Hood or E. We're copy trading and all these things work. You know, everybody, everybody's an expert, you know, in Twitter and Stockwoods and Reddit. We get that. Like, no one shares their losers. But the whole point is, this is why I've always been bullish on the idea and you invested in Robin 2 and why I started stock tweets.

Starting point is 00:10:29 You've got to learn this language. And part of the language is your behavior, right? Like, it's the great, you know, we spent 50 years learning Spanish and China teaching this stuff in schools. And we should be teaching kids this language. Yes. Because it's universal. It's global.

Starting point is 00:10:44 You can do it yourself from anywhere. And we can argue whether it's addictive, some patterns of it are addictive. But let's be honest, this is a language that kids need to learn. Because the government printed money for 20 years globally. And kids are going to get this money from their hand down from their parents or they're going to earn it. So the best thing they can do is learn how to invest and, of course, even trade if they have to. But seeing one red, you're seeing your son. Like you start, you start judging yourself and go, what did I do wrong?

Starting point is 00:11:15 When sometimes the market is just very inefficient for six months, one year, even three years. And I can give a couple examples where it really affected me mentally in 99 and the internet craze because I wasn't an internet person. So, and I was running a hedge fund and the internet, I bought into the like the idea the internet was just going to crash too early because of eyeballs. there's no revenue. And so I was like, oh, the easiest thing to do is buy FedEx. At least they'll make money from everybody, you know, shipping products around the world. They're going to be the ones that make money off Amazon. From 1998 to 2000, when Internet stocks were going up, FedEx was going down every day.

Starting point is 00:11:56 So to me, there's like you. It's like I understood the Internet was going to be great, but I bet on the company that thought was a sure thing to make money off the Internet. And guess what? Yahoo and Amazon won up 1,000 or 10,000 percent. and FedEx went down. So what you're seeing is something that everybody should learn, right? Which is how you're going to react when you see red and you don't understand why it's red.

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Starting point is 00:13:38 Yes. And this is, we call it in poker tilt control, because you could have aces and somebody makes a terrible all in call with you. And you've got them dominated. You're 80%. You're 90% to win. And then as we learned in the Trump presidency, like he had a 20% chance, then a 25, then a 30, 35% chance. And people are all giving Nate Silver a hard time. And he's like, I told you he had a 35% chance.

Starting point is 00:14:00 Have you not ever rolled a dice and seen a one third chance come up? Like a one third chance is not the majority, but it's significant. And I have this experience with private companies, but it happens only at the end when they shut down. You have liquidity choices, obviously. Should I have sold? I could have sold. And so those are the other difference in public and public markets. When you have a chance to sell, do you sell? And the public markets, the market opens every day. And in crypto market, it's open 20. We could argue, I've long thought that having markets open twice a week. I know that no one will ever vote for that because there's so many jobs at stake. But like, do we really need the markets open 20

Starting point is 00:14:37 47, 365, how productive is that? Like, seeing Apple's price every minute versus twice a week, does it really make a difference? And wouldn't it be better for a lot of these things if they weren't priced every minute? So those are going to debates that are going to now go on forever because of crypto. But like beating yourself up, the idea of the public markets is betting on the U.S. economy. And somehow we've lost sight of that and like the gambling and gamification of the market. It is what it is.

Starting point is 00:15:07 You and I can't change it. So all you can do is what you're doing is learning how to do it and then trying to control your emotion. And for me, the reason I've chosen Netflix out of those three you have and I've been wrong last six months is I prefer to bet on pure strategies. And so Disney has the advantage of being a conglomerate in that they can send people because of the Disney brand to the streaming server. But when you look at their financials, it's a conglomerate. So, whereas Netflix, if I want to bet on streaming, listen, you're going to go through periods where, you know, they've made strategy mistakes.

Starting point is 00:15:42 But I think long-term Netflix is in the best position to get to that number because I agree with you on there's going to be close to a trillion or close to whatever, a billion. A billion subs. A billion subs. And all right, this has been a horrific year because of certain things. But I think Netflix will go linear. Netflix will go ads. Netflix has international. And I think the other thing working for Netflix long term is TikTokification, meaning in a Web3 world, we all like to make, some people like to make fun of it.

Starting point is 00:16:12 I don't anymore. In a Web3 world, Netflix will be able to buy 30 communities that have and tie them in through Web3 and through wallets and NFTs to do better algorithms. So when I open up my Netflix account, I will be able to see stuff from around the web in my Netflix account. And so I do think that Netflix has that advantage of focus, but I agree also with why you like it. In investing, as you learn, once you get past owning 10 stocks, you should really start thinking, why do I own more than 10 things? Okay, this is great, because that was going to be one of my questions. I have said, I'm going to go, maybe try to build up 20 names, and learn and then pair it back down and double down on the winners. Because what I learned in private markets was when you have a winning company, you have to increase

Starting point is 00:17:01 your position, or at least defend your position, with pro rata and try to go super pro rata. And, you know, I had these early winners, whether it was Robin Hood or Uber, Thumbtack, and they did great for me, but I never even thought about pro rata. Now I have these great winners, and I see myself building my position up, going from 5% ownership to 10, because everything I've learned is if it's a winning company and you can put more money into it and you've already identified it, you've vetted the founders, you vetted the strategy, you vetted the team, you don't understand the consumers, keep building that position. So you think 10 is a number you can keep track of, and that is just a way to...

Starting point is 00:17:37 Honestly, you can't. And in a world of Cuban, Mark Cuban has talked about Americans, unfortunately, are fortunate. Well, I think it's all fortunate. I'm Canadian living in America. So when you walk into a Walgreens, there's just too many choices. Like, we're paralyzed, right? So you go find a bandit, should I get a Power Rangers bandit or a Super Bandit or a Big Bandit? This one.

Starting point is 00:17:58 Colors and ribbons. And that's the stock market. too, right? Like, so at the end of this long bull market that we've had, we can agree about a lot of things, but we had a really good bull market. And most people's portfolios by last year, we're just spread too thin. We had too many ideas. We had too many companies. We had too many stocks. We had too many stories. That's when bear markets get you. And it'll end up pruning you down anyways, because after six months of losing money, you go, why the fuck do I own this versus, you know, and so those few times during a bare market where markets truly get correlated and

Starting point is 00:18:33 everything goes down together, you realize that owning 50 things just didn't diversify you at all. So I think the best thing is, whether it's 30 stocks or 20 stocks, whatever your goal is, then, you know, once a month or once a quarter with your financial advisor or yourself, go through it and be honest with yourself. It's just the best use of these 10 or 15 or 20 names. And it's like gardening. If you don't garden, your weeds will take over and it's your portfolio.

Starting point is 00:18:58 It's really the same stuff. Yeah. This is what I'm starting to realize about these streaming services. So I do, and then we'll move on to some of the other names that I've been picking and some other parallels. With these streaming services,

Starting point is 00:19:09 it feels to me like we have never seen a billion subscription service. I was trying to figure out, what are the largest subscription services in the world, right? Spotify is more. I love Spotify. 500 million.

Starting point is 00:19:22 Yeah. And so you start thinking about how much, many people could subscribe to something. And the world really hasn't seen that. Even in the early days, people like HBO or Verizon or AOL, you were talking about tens of millions. Now we're in a world where hundreds of millions of people subscribe to something. Imagine if a billion people are, what kind of cash flow and what kind of moat does that build? It feels to me like the only thing I can think of is really what Facebook would accomplish with two or three billion people

Starting point is 00:19:49 using their platform, Google with their search dominance and Chrome dominance and YouTube dominance and Amazon. Those are the only corollaries, I think, in the world of products used by more than a billion people, let alone subscribe to by a billion people. And those things, they don't seem to die or get dislocated. I don't know. What do you think of this piece? We said that until TikTok, right? So I agree with you. And then TikTok comes a little. Everybody's trying to break up Facebook. Guess what broke up Facebook, TikTok. So competition. Yeah. So even when you're trying to not, so let's think about how the world works. in mysterious ways, right?

Starting point is 00:20:26 Like Jurassic Park. How many people have said break up Facebook over the years? Guess what broke up Facebook? TikTok. No anti-listen, should we have broken them up when we did? Yes. But talking about it now when TikTok's already done the work of the government is one thing. Now, the question I would have, the bigger question is, why the fuck is like of all the

Starting point is 00:20:43 things America needs? Should TikTok be one of them? No. Let America build it. If China does. So this is the only time I ever get political is around this type of question. If they have walls in China, a digital walls, we should have digital walls. Of course we should.

Starting point is 00:20:57 But then we don't need to be helping Facebook. So there's this question right now, but TikTok disrupted Facebook because TikTok created MTV for every single person. If TikTok created your stream based on whether we like the algorithm or not, they're the first company, it seems, to have created a different stream for everybody. Yes. Create a trending around everybody. That blows my mind. I wish I was a user and was young enough to appreciate it or use it or care about it. But that is just when you thought it couldn't happen, it happened.

Starting point is 00:21:28 And everybody's pretty amazing. And I think what TikTok's doing is really going to change the way Web2 companies work. So I have this thesis where Web2, the survivors, the Airbnb, the Spotify, the Netflix, the Googles, the Facebooks are only going to get stronger, right? This fair market really helps those incumbents, right? Why does it do that? I mean, it's pretty obvious. but explain it to people who might not understand that. Yeah, well, again, this is new, so this is my own thesis, right?

Starting point is 00:21:55 When 08 happened, the great financial crisis happened, the world was a different place, right? You know, the name of my firm is social leverage, but pre-2008, the world was driven by financial leverage, right? Where people stacked debt on top of debt, and they bought buildings, and they stacked their balance sheets. There was no such thing as a social network or this, what you could get from that social leverage, right? no one could start a podcast, even though lots of podcasts and companies had started, including audio, which became Twitter. Everybody was trying to create media, but there was no social network to spread. So what work was buying radio stations and like owning the stack and like owning the buildings

Starting point is 00:22:31 and using debt and using leverage. And then a way to happen. And now we have social leverage, which was like you could be one, like you and I. Like we could be a brand of one. And then you have Shopify and now all these tools to do it. Now you have TikTok or influencers. So we've gone completely to this. world of social leverage where your only risk is your time, right? You go down rabbit holes. You go

Starting point is 00:22:51 down the wrong rabbit hole. Three years go by in your life and it was just your time that went. But at least these companies don't have debt, right? These new companies are magical. Like, how do you kill Apple? Only Apple can kill Apple because they have 400 billion in cash, right? There is not yet. So all these companies have so much cash, which is different than the last crisis we had, which was 08, which was driven by financial leverage. And so this new era of a bear market that we're in, this kind of rotating bear market or this tech crash that we kind of just went through or in the middle of, I can't see how you disrupt Apple. Like, this only hurts the smaller companies because they just can't compete anymore.

Starting point is 00:23:36 Yeah. The big companies have the war chess. They have the network effects. As you're saying. We've never seen this. It's just bananas. Yeah. And they get to deploy capital for talent acquisition, for market.

Starting point is 00:23:46 marketing for R&D, you know, in a down market, you're probably getting two or three for one for each dollar you spend than in a peak market. So that just solidifies the winners. We saw it with Facebook and Uber and Airbnb during the down market. We saw it during these crises. They just were able to spend through the crises and grow. It's been hot as heck this summer and I've been working my tail off. You see me talking about it. You see my photos. I've been out there on the mountain bike. I've been doing hiking. And you know what? I've been at elevation. And so I have have needed to stay hydrated. Also with this crazy work schedule, if you want to up your hydration game, there's only one thing you need to do. You just need to get liquid IV. It tastes great. Reading this ad is the easiest thing in the world because I am addicted to liquid IV's hydration multiplier.

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Starting point is 00:25:23 all of these big companies saying hiring freeze. And Sundar saying, I don't know if my employees are that productive here at Google. Maybe everybody needs to work harder. And then Zuckerberg's like, hey, everybody, if you're not coming to the office or if you're not working hard, you know, this is not the company to be in.

Starting point is 00:25:38 And then somebody in the back of the room's like, hey, can I take my COVID days? Are we going to have COVID days? And he's like, what are you talking about? Like, COVID's, oh, You don't get emotional days anymore. You need to come to work. We need to perform.

Starting point is 00:25:52 Our stocks been crushed. What do you think of this work from home trend combined with this down market, specifically around talent and young people? Well, I own and operate two millennials, so I'll be clear up front that that is, you know, I see this firsthand, right? I've boomeranged. I've seen everything. I've seen all the terms because my daughter is downstairs right now.

Starting point is 00:26:14 but I have a 24 and a 23-year-old. So I have this privilege of kind of seeing, unfortunately, unfortunate this happened to. Millennial behavior. Yeah, maybe they're Gen Z, but I call them millennials. So I don't like anything that I've seen. No, that may not be their fault, right? Just like Elvis Presley, and there was always somebody to hate, right?

Starting point is 00:26:37 Like George Carlin. We hate Facebook and the smartphone, the old people, right? we hate Fox News and CNN and for good reason. But what are you going to do? Take the phone away from these kids. It's a magic wand. Like how do you take magic out of a kid's hand? So we're stuck with it.

Starting point is 00:26:55 And you and I grew up with the BlackBerry and we thought we would never give up our BlackBerry and along came to the smartphone. And then we thought, we'll never give up our smartphone. Then the notifications we've turned, I turned mine off and I turn my phone over. I'm not looking at my phone right now. I'm bothered that there's comments going on on the side. So I think we'd go back into this new world where people like this, this podcast generation is phenomenal.

Starting point is 00:27:18 Who cares how many people are listening to us. In fact, you and I can have an hour conversation that people may get something out of it and you and I get smarter from it is the power of the internet. So going back to these kids and what this is, I tapped out in like, oh, 2014, because whenever Slack came out, blew my mind, hated it, hated the whole idea that someone would, an employee would ping stockwood saying, oh, the trains down, I'm not coming into work today. I'll just be on Slack. That was like when I was like, what? That's not acceptable. When I had my first job, I had to show up. Yeah, figure it out. It was just straight ahead. Trane's down. Take the bus.

Starting point is 00:27:55 So WFH, work from home. The first time I saw that, I go, I think I'm too old to be an operator because I wanted to kill the first time person that I heard say that. So I was already out of the game in 2014. And that's when I quit basically and said someone come run this because I don't know how to talk to these people. I don't know how to mentor someone over Slack. I don't know how to do any of these things. So I'm not going to be the right answer here. But what I would say is, you know, Fred wrote about it recently too, some form of hybrid. Any motivated person that's a climber should want to be in the office because that is where you see the boss. You should want to be around the boss. Yeah, the nexus of power.

Starting point is 00:28:40 Not just political. It's like, how do you learn? Right. Mentorship. Yeah. And I'm not saying ahead of sales can't be over Zoom because there are going to be new types of successful salespeople, no doubt. But you got to have both.

Starting point is 00:28:55 And I think both skills matter. So I think we're heading to a point where in-person skills will matter. You'll be able to get really far ahead with interpersonal skills and showing up and just getting done. But so I kind of lie in the middle. I think it's very hard to operate a business in 2022. So I actually don't begrudge all the confusion going on because how do you respond? You know, we've called it fun ployment.

Starting point is 00:29:21 People are overpaid in my opinion. Not an over over, but in the engineering slash design slash space, let's say, I just have to say that people, companies can't as much cash as out there. You can't afford to pay engineers 300 grand a year. And that's where Web3 comes in and offloading stuff to the blockchain. It's not perfect yet. But there's going to be this hybrid company, just like there's going to be a hybrid workforce, that you can offload a lot of the stuff to blockchains and your community build stuff.

Starting point is 00:29:49 And you don't have to have them on your payroll. So everybody making fun of Web 3, it's just because Web 3 is way ahead of the hype's too far ahead of the Internet. 100%. And if you look at what's happening with Dolly, I don't know if you watch this thing, we could say, hey, give me a picture. I heard it's amazing. Reed Hoffman was talking about.

Starting point is 00:30:06 it. Yeah, it's basically like, I don't know if you remember the first thing that came out from the Open AI program, but you could just say, write me some text, you know, in the voice of Jake Al or Howard or Fred Wilson. And it would like, you know, be able to do that. And it could finish sentences based on this corpus of, you know, all the written words on Wikipedia, etc. Well, now you could say, hey, give me a painting of, you know, this person in Monet style and boom, all of a sudden you got it. Yeah. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that that's already starting to happen. There are developer kits where, you know, AI is finishing code for developers as they write. It's predicting what they're going to write. Just like your Gmail is predicting

Starting point is 00:30:46 your next three or four words. It's going to predict your next two sentences. So people are chiming in and we're wrong about scale. People aren't listening. The Web 3 or into blockchain is great for tasks, not at scales, where you can offload things like payment. If you're a company of one and half your customers want to pay in crypto and not pay square, you know, not pay those fees, great. And they want to pay gas fees, great. This is just another choice. This is another button on the web.

Starting point is 00:31:14 Call it Web 3. Oman, I call it more internet. It's just more internet. There's been three points. I'm an old loser. I'm an old man. But there's three points in my life where I've had an aha moment. The first was YouTube.

Starting point is 00:31:28 And I called Fred Wilson. I said, Fred, I'm going to build CNBC. on YouTube. And Fred said, genius, go do it, and gave me money. And we started Wallstrip. YouTube changed the world.

Starting point is 00:31:38 That was the beginning of Web 2. And everybody thought it was stupid, and everybody thought Google was stupid for paying $1.6 billion. One of the great investments of all time. Greatest, I think it's top three acquisition of all time. It is. And the way Facebook's destroyed Instagram at many levels,

Starting point is 00:31:53 Google is growing, YouTube is getting better at many levels, the best acquisition of all time. Maybe Maps and Android, like Google's. Android is up there, for sure. Yeah. MAPs, keyhole that they bought out of Arizona. So in a world that YouTube came along, okay, so that was the big bang moment for Web. The moment for me in Web 3 is, even though a top shot, I thought it was a joke, the top shot and the flow and the NBA top shot, I really feel like NFTs in what they mean for a small community that could be big one day. I think everybody's overusing it. But I think the ability for someone like Gary V or Kevin Rose, or you eventually or me to or anybody to take this community that they've built and offload a lot of the work to the blockchain and I have to give it to Facebook, you know, use it like a decentralized type of Discord product that all eventually exist.

Starting point is 00:32:46 Again, I haven't seen it yet, but we're so close. Oh, you can feel it. They're triangulating around something very special. And so there was a lot of hype. I kind of got lucky in some of it by instead of them participating personally in crypto, I invested in funds and I got lucky. Like, I'm not smart. I just diversify it.

Starting point is 00:33:04 Well, you went to where the energy and the intelligent people were. But I didn't understand it. So I just let other people play. You know what? It's a super valid way to do it. Yeah, it's going to work. And then it's interesting you bring up NFTs. I literally have been a crypto cynic because of all the griffs and et cetera.

Starting point is 00:33:21 It should be a crypto synch. Crypto is not the right word. Crypto is bullshit. Like what matters is the blockchain and what matters is the ability to offload work to machines for a small company. So I don't have to pay 10 engineers 300 grand a year to start stock twits. Right. The problem with, and again, this is learn by doing it.

Starting point is 00:33:41 The problem with Wallstrip and why I sold Wallstrip is I had no revenue. Like YouTube was just coming out. So what am I going to do? 20,000 people watched a good show. You're not going to build a business on that. So we sold to CBS. When I started stock twits, the big mistake was, and no one knew at the time, it seemed like a great idea and VCs love the idea.

Starting point is 00:34:01 But if ads are going to be your ultimate model, we've learned that that's a bad business, even for Twitter, because they're undervalued because Google and Facebook took all the, and now TikTok will take all the ads. And we're seeing that with Snapchat's price and Pinterest. Scale business. Those players have sucked up.

Starting point is 00:34:16 So people that wanted a bit subscale, people had the talent like me to just build a subscale business, but had like passion and creativity or fucked by Web 2 because it was all AWS. and Facebook and the social networks and the logins, they owned you, right? And so you're kind of puttering along.

Starting point is 00:34:37 And Web3 promises to offload a lot of that that you would spend at AWS and through the payment networks. And that's what people should be excited about, is taking those expensive parts of Web 2.0 and kind of defraying those costs so you can build a leaner web company. That's what Web 3 is about. So that's very interesting.

Starting point is 00:34:57 I haven't heard people have that take, but it does resonate with them because it's not in their interest because they have 600 million to deploy and they're over-investing at overvaluations in hype, whereas Web3 should mean how do the people that lost in Web 2 that had the passion and idea that were powered by Web 2 and once you start seeing those builders of Web 2 that kind of got run over, whether it's dig by Reddit or, you know, once you start seeing those people reinvent themselves, even 20 years later, you realize those same entrepreneurs that I'm understood the web and the community are coming back and doing it a second time,

Starting point is 00:35:34 even in their older age, is very exciting to me. And I'm, but I don't think I want to build the next Facebook. I don't dilute myself that we're going to invest in the next Facebook. I just think it's a different, more fun web. And so when the car, when the automobile first came out, if you, if, if you had to drive it in the dark or it was raining, it didn't work. There were no windshield wipers. There were no lights.

Starting point is 00:35:57 right you were just happy that the car wet and that was the internet web three is just fog lights it's it's windshield wipers it's all those things that made the car the great thing that it is today all right the second half of the baseball season has started and it's time to turn big hits into big wins with fan duel sportsbook and listen to this offer right now new customers can get a no sweat first bet up to one thousand dollars that's right all you have to do use the promo code twist when you sign up, you place your first bet, and Fandul will give you up to a thousand back in free bets if you don't win. I'm looking at the Knicks here. I'm looking at the Golden State worst. I think maybe I'm going Golden State to win the Western Conference. Maybe I'm going

Starting point is 00:36:44 with my Greek brother, Janus, and the Bucks to win the Eastern Conference. That seems like good odds to me, but you know, you got to make your own decision. I love placing a nice bet, so I have a little passion coming into this season. And here's why Fandul is the best place for you to follow your passion. You can place one of those bets that re-engages you in the season. Well, they have great promotions every day. And the app is safe and secure, and you're going to get paid fast. You can trust Fandul. The best place to bet on America's pastime is on America's number one sportsbook. Download the Fandul Sportsbook app and sign up with the Code Twist to get started with your no sweat, first bet, up to $1,000. Yeah, I think these NFTs, when they have rights associated

Starting point is 00:37:23 with them, smart contracts associated with them, decentralized, you know, management of them, Dow's. And that's really when I find it fascinating. Imagine somebody had a golf club or you and I want to start a poker club or a golf club. And we say, yeah, we're going to email our thousand closest friends, get 200 of them to put up 25k each. All of a sudden, we've got this cash sitting around and we then go build this club. And now your membership is your membership. You decide what you want to do with it. But hey, there's a smart contract. That gives right a first refusal to another member to buy it at the same price within seven days of somebody else putting a bid in. And you're like, okay, how do I build down?

Starting point is 00:37:59 It's like, well, the infrastructure is here. Okay, whose infrastructure is? Where do I put my credit card? It's like, oh, no, you just pay a fee and it's all done. And it's nobody's infrastructure. What do you mean it's nobody's infrastructure? Well, it's not nobody's. It's everybody's.

Starting point is 00:38:11 It's like a Laurel and Hardy routine. Like, it's everybody's infrastructure. It's like, yeah, there's just some servers up there and some people run those service and we don't know who they are. And I think a lot of people are mixed. A lot of small companies will have centralized databases for your email and phone number, and then they'll have a blockchain database where people people tell you private stuff that they don't want you selling and you don't know that part of

Starting point is 00:38:31 their world. So I see all kinds of communities where that's possible. I think two Big Bang moments in crypto for me were, even though I'm not participating in board apes, the idea of collectibles is cool. And what board apes did was like being, I think they may, I hate what they did later by raising outside capital because the whole point of what made, board apes was genius because they were collecting a royalty every time I traded. That was a genius. They didn't need outside money. But they also made it, but I'm not going to judge them for taking it. I'm just saying once they took it, it was not interesting to me because the whole genius of that was the system. We can collect 20%.

Starting point is 00:39:08 So that was a big bang moment. I hated where they went with it. God bless them. The second big bang moment was when my friend Mike and Serge sent me Lynx Dow or Adam Bed-Sibnick sent me Linkstow. And I loved, I don't like Dow's, but I love the idea. Explain the idea. The linkst I was, it's, I didn't, when they pitch me on it, I'm like, guys, I don't want to be paid $2,000 in Ethereum for golf. I loved everything about the golf community idea of being a member of something.

Starting point is 00:39:36 I hated the idea that they were going to go buy a golf club. I've been in the golf business a long time. I was an investor in golf now. I know the tea time business. I know how hard that business is. The last thing I want to do is trust some people to build a golf course for me because I don't think it'll get built. I think it's hard to run a golf course. It's not just a bar and food.

Starting point is 00:39:54 you've got grass, greenskeeper weather, location. So when they pitched it to me, I said, I love everything about this, but don't build a golf course. Just build like a community. And maybe one day you'll buy a golf course, but you don't have to promise that up front. So I didn't buy a membership. But I think what combining what NBA Topshot is with a public blockchain, with board apes, with what Linkstow is doing, the triangulation that you mentioned, the triangulation that you mentioned, If you can really look at the kernels of things that are happening around Web3, I think the great

Starting point is 00:40:32 entrepreneurs are about to attack in a way that creates these hugely profitable, quick businesses that don't need a lot of capital, and then they can iterate on their businesses as they grow. And that's what's exciting about Web3 or more Web to me. Okay. So now one of the key issues here, of course, is are these securities? We have had a, I would say, laissez-faire, a regulatory environment where there's just been no clarity. And then all of a sudden, you have this XRP lawsuit because XRP is obviously centrally controlled and they own the bulk of it. They control it, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:41:10 It's obviously doesn't pass, you know, mustard. Like Bitcoin and Ethereum where nobody is in charge, it's, you know, not a, it doesn't feel like a security. But Coinbase has people front running the market. OpenC had some people. doing insider trading. And now the Justice Department, the SEC, and everybody's like, you know what, this has gone on long enough. People have lost 90% of their money. There are actual victims. Now we're here. And by the way, these eight- They're not really here. They're lazy, they're understaffed. And he's not a lawyer. Gensler's not a lawyer, which is a big mistake to not have somebody who truly is a

Starting point is 00:41:45 security lawyer running the SEC. The amount of fraud and shenanigans is endless, right? As a founder of stock twits and someone who spends all day on thin twit and denounces Reddit and all this stuff, even though Reddit has done some amazing things. You know, we've gotten what we've asked for, which is just, that's what crypto was. You want 24-7 bulletin board markets? I could have told you where that was going to head. That's going to head up with like scams galore. Of course. You want endless supply. Guess what happens with endless supply? Zero pricing. And all your anonymity or quasi-anonymity. So this was a disaster. That's why I avoided it. And, you know, I'm still very skeptical of it, but the next iteration will be less securities, right?

Starting point is 00:42:27 Like, I'm hiring lawyers to make sure my NFT isn't a security, meaning I'm hiring a lawyer to bless this as a non-security, meaning I don't want this trading, but trading is part of what a good NFT is. If you add endless value, so you think about American Express, in a world where everybody can create a platinum community and offload a lot of that to the blockchain, including you or me or Kevin Rose or anybody can create the, what is Amex's great tagline that stood the test of time? Membership has its benefits. And who own that tagline?

Starting point is 00:43:00 Amex. Okay. In Web 3, everybody can create communities where membership has its benefits. The job of the community or the person running the community or whatever you want to call this is continue to add benefits to that community. And if you add enough benefits and you create true scarcity, guess what happens to the price? It goes up. Yes.

Starting point is 00:43:23 So. As it should because there's actual real world value. Correct. And so utility is what Web3 should be about. The VCs have made it about this newfangled thing. And I've avoided the hype because I don't want to pay over. I don't want overpay for things that I don't believe have the market size. But utility is undervalue.

Starting point is 00:43:43 And I think where Web3 goes is to people that say, that's what. I'm only going to have 2,000 of these members. I'm going to create so much benefit that if someone moves or just doesn't want to be part of the community, there's a market for it because there'd be happily someone that steps in. And those trade. They don't trade every day, but then you have a happy community. And so I think that's where we go. It's not going to be, I think you're going to do your own. You're going to do your own like Kevin Rose's moon.

Starting point is 00:44:08 Yeah, I think what I'm seeing him do don't do with proof, what I've seen Linkstow do, what I've seen Gary Vee do, what I've seen myself and what I wish I could do. at StockTwits in Wallstrip and my blog at Twitter and what I've seen board apes do and when I've seen Flow do at blockchain, I think if you take the pieces of this and really have a community and explain to them why you're doing something and be upfront with them about the steps that you're going to take, which I've done at Stocktwits, which I've done on my own blog, but now I can possibly do at scale using Web3. Why not? Like I'm actually excited about starting something.

Starting point is 00:44:48 Yeah, it's fascinating to me to think about when the membership is in control of the experience, the product, and then they have some liquidity. Hey, if this isn't working for you, you could sell it. Or if this becomes too valuable and you need to sell it, you could sell it, or you could fractionalize it. So many really interesting ideas. Yeah. What happens is, of course, people will speculate. The engineers know how to buy these things, and I can't help that. Like, I don't know.

Starting point is 00:45:13 Like, we don't have all the answers. But what I can tell my community is, don't speculate. Like, I don't know. Like, I'm only making 2,000 of these. I hope I'll try and give them to the people that really want them. And hopefully you don't speculate. So, but you can't control speculation. Who are you going after with this?

Starting point is 00:45:30 It's just going to be Howard coins. I don't know. I'm thinking about a comedy angle and a cycling. And I've invested in so many, like, e-commerce ideas. And I've, you know, stuck with it. You can't. So it's a work in progress, but I've never had more fun. I love the idea of the comedy one because you have this great comedy festivals, right?

Starting point is 00:45:47 And that could be truly amazing if you got to have access to comedians. Well, not just so imagine a world, and I'm probably not going to do this, but someone's going to do this in common. Imagine a world. Imagine a world where I just did stand-up comedy to a club. Yeah, so I rented a club in New York called The Stand. And I just made it for friends. And we had eight real professional stand-ups. And I got to do three minutes.

Starting point is 00:46:13 Okay, because I owned the night. How'd you do? How'd you do? I didn't bomb. That counts. It's a friendly crowd. And people know me. Yeah, people know me.

Starting point is 00:46:22 Okay. So it worked. And it was thrilled to like do it and then be roasted by other comedians who didn't know me and they were making fun of NF2. The comics were happy. They got to do it on a professional stage. No one was hurt. Everybody had a good time.

Starting point is 00:46:37 Okay. So imagine if I were to build the community that I want to build, it would start with a newsletter. It could be on substack. It could be on B-Hive. It could be on whatever program. And now I send out an email. I say, listen, we're going to have a thousand members.

Starting point is 00:46:53 And anybody who's a member, I'm going to create this class pass for comedy that allows you discounts at all these comedy clubs around the country. Meaning at the beginning, there may not be any benefits, but this is my goal. We're going to build a club one day or we're going to get you discounts. It's like AAA of comedy. Oh, and by the way, the next level, once we get, you know, once everybody's happy, we're going to create a second level NFT that might cost 30 grand. But guess what that? Now that we have partnerships with 30 clubs, for those holders of 30 grand, it's like a black card. And when you want to go on stage, right, you can go on stage. So imagine I'm a comedy black card three years from now that you've earned and you're a standup comic and you never could break on stage. And you know you're funny. And you see that at the stand that Dave Chappelle showing up at 930. And you have a black cart and you can do three minutes before Dave Chappelle. Would you do that? Of course you would do that. And guess you would invite. you invite all your friends. That would be your Instagram moment

Starting point is 00:47:49 and you've paid for it and you could get discovered and it's a way to hack the system. And so I think those type of things, the gaming mechanics, yeah, the gaming mechanics of it, this is all going to happen

Starting point is 00:48:01 and people are going to create these incredible communities and moments around this stuff. It's really fascinating. I think, you know, once we get through, it's one of the nice things about the holding crashing

Starting point is 00:48:11 is that I think the incentive resets. I can get involved. It resets it. Now you're back to builders and what's actually legal. and you got a little bit of a regulatory framework emerging.

Starting point is 00:48:19 And so, you know, when people are new entrants, they're like, okay, hey, I don't want to get in the crosshairs of anybody. Make sure that this is clean to everybody. All right, let's go through my portfolio really quick here. Okay. I'll give you my thesis. You tell me if you think good thesis or not. We did Disney already.

Starting point is 00:48:35 I bought 250 shares. I'm up like 13%. A nice little modest game. A lot of it is you bought it in June when everybody was selling. July August, yeah. So the first lesson I would say, and I told my kids this, is don't think about each stock. Think about red green.

Starting point is 00:48:51 If you see the market red for a month in a row, two months in a row, right? Train yourself to just do the opposite. And when you see green endlessly for months and months on it, forgetting chat rooms, forgetting anything, take a little bit off the table. So train yourself to do the opposite. So the fact that you started in June

Starting point is 00:49:09 proves that you have good instincts, right? You may not be good at stocks. None of us are that great at stocks. That's why the indexes exist. But you do have instincts. You do have a network that gives you insight. And you were attuned to the fact how negative you were and the people around you were. And you were seeing prices that you hadn't seen in years.

Starting point is 00:49:28 And you did the opposite. So part of it is Cusanza. I said this feels to me like a B constanza. So part of good investing is to be Custanza and do the opposite. So just when you feel like puking, eat another sandwich. Meaning, and especially if you own good companies and they're going to be around. in 10 years. Okay.

Starting point is 00:49:47 If you've done your gardening. So the first thing you did right was start in June. So kudos for that. Okay. Now, I gave you my Disney premise. And my goal was in 10 years, I want to 5x my money, beat the indexes, et cetera. So 5x cash on cash is hard. That's what the top venture firms do.

Starting point is 00:50:05 But I also want to learn and just understand these because I want to know when I should liquidate my private market companies when they go public as well. As we saw both of us early shareholders of Robin Hood, there were opportunities. maybe to, you know, sell at $20 or $30 a share in the private markets, and now here we are, whatever we're trading at 10 or 12. I saw Amazon, and I thought to myself, this one medical, really great acquisition, and this guy, Jassy seems to be firing on all cylinders. But the thing that I thought was a great moment in time was when I saw that they were going to get rid of Amazon basics, I said to myself, they're watching Lena Con. They know the vector

Starting point is 00:50:43 of attack. If they get rid of Amazon basics and then they let everybody else fight it out, all those idiots who got to fight it out to sell a goddamn USB cable are now going to buy ads. So they win either way, but they remove the attack vector because they don't have a house brand. I thought, somebody's thinking over there in a way that maybe Zuckerberg or Google aren't thinking about avoiding regulatory. So I make a bet there. And I just think, my God, they got like, and then you see the cloud computing stuff and how that's growing. They just see. to be firing on all cylinders at excellence. That's why I bought Amazon.

Starting point is 00:51:17 Yeah. I'm up 6.7%. I own Amazon. Part of why your timing was good. When you're buying companies like that, you have to buy them when no one likes them because there's no alpha when everybody likes them. They're incredibly fully valued. They can't afford to make mistakes.

Starting point is 00:51:32 They are getting smarter. So I do agree with what you're saying. One, medical's tiny in terms of what it can mean. And we all, I've made some healthcare investments. It's a brutal space. Horrible space. Yeah. But I do own Amazon, so no argument there.

Starting point is 00:51:46 And the reason I thought the healthcare thing was good was because I think the Amazon Prime franchise, people are paying like $150 a year for Amazon Prime now. It started at $40, $50, $60,000, depending on when you got in. They keep boiling that frog. If they made Amazon Prime 250 right now, nobody's canceling. If they made it $2,000 and called a platinum prime for people that want a one-plus, a one medical same-day appointment, wealthy people would pay that. So there should be tears. This goes to the Netflix. You know, we can argue at Reed for changing his mind.

Starting point is 00:52:17 Guess what? Steve Job chains his mind eventually. Sure he did. You have to change your mind. And sometimes you're wrong. And so with new information, that's what you do. Reed stepped in. He's changing the model.

Starting point is 00:52:31 What Amazon's doing. By adding advertising, you're saying. By adding advertising. Some people should pay nothing and some people will pay. I'll pay Amazon. I'll pay Netflix $300 a month. If they make my. algorithm better and give me more content. Like I trust them. You know, so there should be tears.

Starting point is 00:52:49 Absolutely. There's going to be an Amazon Prime Platinum. There's no doubt in my mind. And I think you, one now is that there'll be Amazon Platinum. And I'm happy to pay that price. Are we talked a little bit about Warner Brothers Discovery? I just don't know the name. So I don't So here's the thing. You got Zazlov who ran discovery. I saw him at a couple of like those private conferences you're not supposed to say you got invited to. Guys are killer. HBO killing on their originals. And I said, you know what? Look at how good Marvel's done.

Starting point is 00:53:17 Look how bad DC is. Zazov's going to come in there, and he's going to Marvel DC. And that's an opportunity. Trade. Is that like a trend that you could ride for? Again, when I'm only, I've changed my philosophy over the years,

Starting point is 00:53:30 and again, I'm changing again after this bear market. Equities to me at 56 years old means a lot less to me than equities at 30 years old. So to me indexing, you know, I don't know how old you are. You're probably in your late 40s or early 50s. 51.

Starting point is 00:53:43 Yeah. Okay. So you'll see as I do more private investing and as I've become luckily wealthier, T-bills and cash and indexing is just easier for that part of my life than picking stock. So I'm avoiding things that I don't have complete faith in. So I don't know that story. So here's the thing. They got 92 million paid subs.

Starting point is 00:54:06 I think they're going to be like the number three player behind Netflix and Disney. I think that whole space is going to be great. TSM Nancy Pelosi goes, causes chaos in Taiwan. Everybody's like, oh my God, find a risk. I said to myself, you know what? I think there's mutually assured destruction here. I don't think there's going to be a war with China. There's just too much to lose.

Starting point is 00:54:27 And I think Taiwan, it's going to be this nebulous situation. And people don't, didn't like TSM. So I decided this would be a good time for me to buy it since everybody's down on it. Yeah. Same thing. I've been burned so many times in chips. And I've missed this. Chips, when you're bending on something that goes inside something else, the person with the power, like Apple, has all the power.

Starting point is 00:54:48 So if you want to own chips, own Apple, because they own the whole system. Interesting. I'm going to keep that in mind. So I just, chips is complicated, so I just don't want exposure to semiconductors. And then I went with Shopify, because Shopify is getting murdered, but I saw Toby, who I really respect, saying, listen, I made a mistake. You know, this pandemic bump in e-commerce has gone back down. to the mean, it's now the normal trajectory. So I'm getting rid of, you know, this many employees, like really serious riff.

Starting point is 00:55:16 I don't know if it's a thousand people or something. Yeah. And he takes the medicine. And I think Shopify is the best platform for all these retailers. And I said, you know what? This seems like great management, great product. And everybody's down on it post-pandemic. And I'm, I said I made that trade.

Starting point is 00:55:34 Any thoughts on that? Very long, Shopify. I've been wrong. I was right on the way I've sold some. I think what bugs me about Toby, even though he's probably a mad genius. I've never met him, is that all these guys, all these Web 2 people, we're not around in 08. This is our first bear market. And I remember him screaming about like how the market's wrong.

Starting point is 00:55:58 The market's not wrong. The market wasn't wrong when your stock was going up 1,200%. You weren't a genius then and you're not an idiot now. It's just the market. So I definitely, these were bull market companies. and they were poorly governed in many ways because they got so big and he's got the voting power. So he can say what he wants now because he has full control of this company. But is the product great?

Starting point is 00:56:20 Do I love the product? Yes. Is buying it in June a great idea? I think it's a great idea. For the people that own it at 1,200, it may take a long time to get back there. You know, 100 or 100. So it's just where you buy these great products and brands matter. June was a great buy for Shopify.

Starting point is 00:56:38 I own it. All right. Now, one, I'm looking forward to hearing. August 25th, Peloton's going to give their results. Yeah. I am in love with the Peloton product. The community, you got 2 million people. The subscription price is absurd. They just raise their subscription price in a down market to 42 or 44 bucks a month.

Starting point is 00:56:53 I didn't cancel. I think this is a great company. They got new leadership in. They're cleaning it up. But they got a little bit of the risk or ruin. They don't got a lot of cash on hand. Any thoughts on Palaton? Well, I loved it all the way out.

Starting point is 00:57:05 Yeah. Yeah, it was one of my 8 to 80 kind of ideas. I think they had a chance. to beat Lulu and to really put the pressure on Nike. And it goes to one of those companies that started believing their own bullshit. You know, they bad government. I don't know what it was. But when that stock is at 120, 130, 140,

Starting point is 00:57:24 for them not to recognize that they should diversify their business then. So I don't trust a company that just makes that big a blunder, right? They had everything going for them. They had passed the market cap of Lulu. They could have done a merger of equals. They could have been creative and tried things. So I think I get worried about companies that implode because now it's going to take so much for them to get their momentum back. And I'm a Peloton user and now it's become furniture because I don't want to pay 50 bucks a month.

Starting point is 00:57:56 It's not worth it to pay 50 bucks a month because I'm not in it for the community. I was in it for the worker. The fact that I can't listen to Spotify or watch Netflix is ridiculous. That is a fatal. That is so infuriating. You spend all this money on I have to tread. Why can't I log into my Netflix or my YouTube? How funny it would it be if I was doing a stock market?

Starting point is 00:58:17 Why can't I do? Why can't I put my community on Peloton and people can watch me lead a class at 7 a.m. for the first half hour of the market? Absolutely. Wouldn't that help Peloton? Of course. Make it a platform. Make it a platform.

Starting point is 00:58:33 I'm a YouTuber. I'm Mr. Beast. Jimmy's trying to lose a little weight. Mr. Bees goes on there and says, hey, you know what? I'm going to do 10 days in a row on my Peloton or my tread, and I'm just going to take questions from the audience. Put a camera on it. Bang, we're done.

Starting point is 00:58:48 Easy, breezy. I said I got to listen to someone yelling at me with a playlist that I don't like. Yeah, no. And they got some impossible body that nobody's ever going to have. It was insulting. And as someone who loved Peloton, I'm infuriated, not at the stock. I'm infuriated at the management and governance for not. And this is what happened with even Robin Hood and a lot of companies.

Starting point is 00:59:08 There's just a lack of understanding of how capital markets work and this belief that they were invincible. And there are some invincible companies. Apple's invincible. It didn't happen overnight. It's a process. You got to make good trades, though. As you're saying, Robin Hood did the right thing. They raised $5 billion when the market was hot.

Starting point is 00:59:27 That was a great trade. Where was Peloton? Did they do a secondary and put $5 billion in their coffers? No. Why didn't they buy tonal? Why didn't they buy hydro? Why didn't they have a series? into the fashion business.

Starting point is 00:59:38 Yeah, buy a brand. Yeah, buy a brand. So it was secondary, you know? Like, I mean, Tesla bought, did so many secondaries on the way up. Their stock kept going up. They kept, issues demand. Sell stock.

Starting point is 00:59:50 Improve your balance. Lesson number one. Lesson number one. This has been an hour with Howard. Linson, Howard. Thank you so much for coming on the pod. Always great, as usual. No insults.

Starting point is 01:00:00 You didn't call me Hitler Youth, no Nazi. Your hair looks a little better. Maybe because it's receding. that's part of it. Yes, it's shorter and receding. After you told me about the comb over issues, I tightened it up a little bit. I tightened it up.

Starting point is 01:00:13 It looks less Third Reich. Yes. And I like the grade. That's what I went for when I told me. I will say this to a few haters that have come on here is like, people who are mad about whether we call this Web 3 or crypto, they are the problem. Okay. This is just the internet.

Starting point is 01:00:32 Because this is just the internet. It's the internet with a new. You want to call a crypto, call it crypto, call it crypto. Okay. If you're fighting me about what we call it, I don't trust you. Okay, this is just more internet. Okay, like if you want to fight with me over what we call it, I never want to follow you. I don't want to hear your opinion because you're lost in the, you're the problem, not the solution.

Starting point is 01:00:54 This is interesting. You say this. I just did a tweet about this. We are, you know people have lost the script when all they want to do is argue semantics. Was Trump, was Trump, they were having this whole semantic thing? were they searching Moralago or was it a raid? These words mean the same thing. They showed up, they took what they needed, the judge told them to do it.

Starting point is 01:01:13 Is it a recession or is it a downturn? Is it too sequential? Okay, listen, we all know it's a downturn. It's the same thing. We'll get the definition in three to six months. This is why people should learn to invest. Who cares what the term is? What's your portfolio doing?

Starting point is 01:01:27 That is the true chest. What is the value of your portfolio? There is a recession. If your portfolio is down 40%, you're in a recession. You're not going to spend what you did. Who cares what the media calls it? The home you wanted to buy is no longer you're buying it.

Starting point is 01:01:42 The furniture you were going to buy at restoration hardware. You're no longer buying it. You're not going to Italy. You're going to that data. The government does not know that data. You know that data. We've been in a recession for a year. Open your eyes.

Starting point is 01:01:55 You just look in front of you. Live. Look at your spending. You're in a recession. This is the problem. And then people are like, oh, my God. Biden said we had zero percent inflation. and we add 8.5%.

Starting point is 01:02:05 Okay, we're talking about two different numbers. Month over month, year, over year. Both are valid numbers. Just say both numbers. We don't have to sit here and argue over semantics constantly. Face reality. And you guys do it on your show. It's brilliant.

Starting point is 01:02:17 Marketing. You guys are good media people. Good media people argue over semantics because they grow their audience. The reason I started Wallstrip and thought YouTube was going to destroy the world and why Twitter should have destroyed the world or taken over the world in Bloomberg, is you had a chance to get rid of media. The media was the people. Instead, it just got taken over by the media, and that was because of an ad-based world.

Starting point is 01:02:40 The next generation of the Internet allows people to back away from their computers, listen to smart people, get out of the rabbit holes, and really engage with people that can make them smarter the way you and I got mentored by people in Web 1 and Web 2 and are mentoring people now. What an opportunity. This is the key. if you're watching like the mainstream media, whether it's Fox or MSNBC or anything in between, they're just trying to keep you engaged to sell more eyeballs to get more ads

Starting point is 01:03:08 and it's all nonsense. Nonsense. When you look at podcasting and you and I have a conversation for an hour or Joe Rogan has a three hour or one or Lex Friedman or all in or your podcast, you start to see here people having thoughtful discussions about real things and going deeper

Starting point is 01:03:24 and guess what? This is how you have a great life is that you come closer to the truth by having considered discussions, not being the product. You know, the media is just trying to link base. We could argue everything we want about Trump. The data shows he's a criminal.

Starting point is 01:03:42 How they end up getting them is not my problem, and it's his problem. I don't know if we'll get him. But the point is, he's been a lifelong criminal. He's been above the law for a very long time. That is a problem in America. It's not just Trump. It could be Clinton.

Starting point is 01:03:55 It could be Pelosi. It could be Soros. Hunter Biden. Yeah. Could be all. All these people, Hunter Biden, get it, he's an idiot. Don't have to convince me. It doesn't mean that Trump's not a criminal.

Starting point is 01:04:05 Yes. Okay? It doesn't mean that Elon's not crazy for promoting doge coin on Saturday Live. It doesn't mean that it takes away. No, but it doesn't take away that he's a great entrepreneur, but I also disagree that he's talking about dogey coin because he has a responsibility. So I'm saying you can separate the two. You can have Republican thoughts and Democratic thoughts.

Starting point is 01:04:24 You can agree with Fox. You can agree with CNN. The idea is to not yell. every, every, if you're in a point where you're yelling at people on the internet, you are the problem. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and that's why, you know, I love the internet. I know how to separate me being the problem from other people being the problem. And, you know, people need to be able to, you, this ain't going away. No. This is going going away. No, I mean, we've, we've, we've passed the Rubicon here. We're going to

Starting point is 01:04:53 to have to adapt to what's happening in the media, what's happening on social media, fake news. And then these two polar extremes, this crazy magorite, crazy, woke, insane, historical left. Yeah. Most people are right in the middle. And that's what I'm hoping, like, this whole system breaking, I think that it gets rebuilt through podcasting, through NFTs, DAWS, people starting to self-organize and find their own version of truth. Trust yourself is my overriding message.

Starting point is 01:05:19 No, we live in this great air of mobility for most, not all, but for most, especially within the United States. What a miracle. So, I mean, that's, I go to the mobility and say, we're mobile. You don't need a car. You can vote where you live. You can help. You can run for mayorship.

Starting point is 01:05:40 You can do all these incredible things. And people would still rather yell on the internet, which is, you know, I refuse to engage in. You know, it's some of the stuff that I'm seeing is really unbelievable. I'm really excited about some of the stuff that I'm starting to see. They went through a two, three year period. I was really hating on, you know, the way the market was. was behaving and the way the government was behaving. Now we're getting some chaos. And from this chaos, there's a lot of good. Sometimes things have to have a boom-bust cycle for there to be

Starting point is 01:06:09 regrowth and some personal development, some corporate development, societal development. And it does feel like we're getting there because the toxicity in politics, media, and crypto, and even markets was getting to a point of acuteness where I was just like, you know what, I'm tapping out. I just don't want to participate. And then as part of it breaks down. You have to tap out. The Fed politicize the Fed, which is probably the worst thing we've ever done, even though most people don't understand. Why?

Starting point is 01:06:35 Explain that to people. Because the Fed, we became numb to volatility, right? Everybody got used to the fact that the Fed will protect us and the market will go up 10% a year. And, you know, then we had the great financial crisis and Obama, you know, and then you had QE1 and QE2. And then Trump, who was a master at this, you know, and it was a master at this, you know, and a master of many things media, but a master at just making you school, making the pain have, I believe he probably had the greatest group of insider traders working for him.

Starting point is 01:07:07 Again, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but like, it was too obvious. To create that much pain and then relieve the pain knowing what was going to be the end result was just, if he wasn't making money off this stuff, he's crazy, he's dumb. It was so, I believe this, this lack of volatility that we had inspired in the public markets was not good. Yeah, people started to. People who are entitled to 12% a year or 15% a year. Or, you know, my salary is going to go up 25K a year or, you know, I am entitled to work from home in every possible, the level of entitlement across the world, VC is entitled, I can

Starting point is 01:07:43 always raise another fund. Founders, I can always do a bridge round. There was no acceptance of the reality of how hard capitalism is. And when capitalism becomes that easy, I had founders who, you know, they would come to me and be like, this is the third bridge. Why are we not getting a Series A? And it's like, well, you know, we pivoted. Okay, fine.

Starting point is 01:08:00 Okay, we pivot again. Okay, fine. That happens sometimes. Well, who's our customer? Yeah, you know, we're going to speak at this TED conference and then I got this thing. I'm like, who's our customer? What problem were we solving for them? How are we delining a customer?

Starting point is 01:08:12 And, you know, now I'm seeing it come home to Roost. These same people who race three bridge rounds in a row, oh, my free Series A, my Series A extension, my Series A2, they can't raise the bridge. And they're like, okay, we're shutting down and I'm like, okay, that's fine. You know, we're going to get some losers and we're going to have things that fail. I can accept that. But it went on for five years, four years of, you probably must have seen this in your portfolio.

Starting point is 01:08:37 We're like, how do they do it? How do they keep raising a bridge? Yeah, I mean, we're starting to really see what failure looks like again. And it's fine. Like, it's not fun. We're not rooting for failure. But that is unfortunately how you get growth is by having failure. and the public markets have been too easy.

Starting point is 01:09:00 I benefited from it. I loved it. The trick is not to think you're a genius from it. And this is where we were talking about Pelotod. I think they woke up, saw their stock price. And they're like, leave me alone. We know what we're doing. Yeah, we know what we're doing.

Starting point is 01:09:12 Let's build more hardware. Everybody else is wrong. We shouldn't open our system. Why would we have Netflix? And they started believing it because the stock price made them believe it. And that's the difference between public and private. is seeing the price affects behavior. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:09:27 And the behavior there should have been, hey, we're up so much. Like, this isn't reality. Let's take advantage of this moment. How can we capture this moment? We're,

Starting point is 01:09:37 you know, hey, listen, we're getting too much credit, right? And they had a $160 currency to go do that. And they did nothing. Nothing.

Starting point is 01:09:46 They sat on their hands. And we've seen Croxoo. We've seen a million companies do this when their stock goes up for no reason. It read it. And so the companies had, that are smart use the stock price. What did Zuck do?

Starting point is 01:09:58 What did Zuck do? Right. He paid, he used his current. WhatsApp. We also used cash. You did both. Yes. And he still does it.

Starting point is 01:10:06 We've been lucky a few times with Facebook buying. Oculus. I mean, what did Google do? Android, YouTube. Man, they just went. I mean, God. So there is this corp dev. I think what I love about Twitter is acting like

Starting point is 01:10:18 corp dev for all these companies and no one's listening to me. I'd like to, that's the best thing about learning on the internet. It's like you get in hindsight to look and go, man, like stock prices, what the great thing is you'll get addicted about stock prices, you'll really start to see how the companies made mistakes. And you really start to see how patterns start looking the same. Yes. And if you look at Nike versus Peloton, Nike is a great company because they've had their Peloton moments and come through them. And I just don't think Peloton, they just, they miss the boat. Rulov has a good name for this.

Starting point is 01:10:53 Crucible moments, right? And there are crucible moments. And sometimes, you know, people don't pass those moments. All right, listen, Howard, thank you so much for the time. Bye, bye. All right, everybody, it's time for producer Rachel and OK Boomer. Is your internet connection bad? My God.

Starting point is 01:11:07 I know. And the lighting's terrible. What's going on? Oh, your backup mom and dad's house? Yep. All right, I have an idea for you. How about getting mom and dad a starling for Christmas? I saw that the husband commented.

Starting point is 01:11:21 before. It's looking like, it's looking like the, the best option. Okay. All right, listen, everybody's going crazy for your okay boomer segments. They love that you were taking chances interviewing all these young, energetic, Gen Zs, uh, yeah, it's once in a while a millennial, but yeah, they're kind of annoying, I guess. What do you got for us this week? This week, I have a Gen Z. Don't worry. His name is Ben, and he runs a co-living space in New York City. It's called Goal House. And together we talk about, why so many young people are gravitating towards co-living. He also has a really interesting background. He actually grew up in New York with two dads, but he talks more about that over on his

Starting point is 01:12:01 TikTok. He most people probably know him from over there. He is at Becoming Ben, and he has over 85,000 followers. Wow. You know, that TikTok thing's getting big, and it does seem to be driving awareness in business. So, you know, more and more I see Gen Z investors or CEOs. taking to it, and I, you know, I look at it as an OK boomer over here, Gen X, of course, but kind of get lumped into the OK Boomer category. I look at it and I'm like, I don't know if I could be that silly on air, you know, dancing and doing silliness, but I do look at it and go, it's effective, but I just don't think a 51-year-old Gen Xer should be doing these dances.

Starting point is 01:12:42 What do you think? Should I embrace this fully, Rachel? Should I be doing silly stuff and doing like the Lizzo? It's about damn time? And if I did a version of that, how ridiculous. That's what I look. So I don't know necessarily if you have to embrace the silliness because the previous founder we had on. So I've had quite the past few followers have had pretty big internet presences. But one of them in particular named Marcus, who is giant on TikTok now, doesn't post silly content. He posts even stuff just as simple as like how his stuff is manufactured and how they package it before sending it off. So I think the content that is the most evergreen is actually not the silly content. I think. think the silly content is, though, what makes people blow up first. So I guess it just depends on what approach you want to do. Yeah. So if you want to get caught up in the mix, you got to kind of get

Starting point is 01:13:30 one of those sound loops. Interesting. I like chef reactions. That's why I'm on TikTok. Oh, I love that. I comment on every one of his reactions because he's just such a crazy, like, New Yorker, cynical chef who's just like, I'd smash this, 12 out of 10. And he, or he, or, he, or, he's just like, this is absolutely gross and he just, people's technique for cooking. He's just like, oh, yeah, you could have done that in a mixing bowl. Oh, great. You're using a fork with a nonstick pen. Great. You know, like, he's just watching. Oh, great knife technique. And it's actually really educational as to like what's important, right? And this person's putting like nutmeg on pasta. And he's like, oh, nutmeg on pasta. Yeah, that makes a lot of sad. You're just like,

Starting point is 01:14:11 oh, interesting. I, you know, as much as I want to see TikTok band and have it moved to other platforms for having the CCP monitoring all of this, I do appreciate that new content formats are coming. out from here. So I wonder, how do young people think about this story that keeps coming up about the CCP and TikTok and perhaps it eventually getting banned? Do they even think about it? Do they care? Or they're like, ah, if it goes away, I'll just move all my followers over to another platform. Because the chef's reaction guy was saying, my videos are getting banned for no reason. Everybody follow me over at Instagram. I'm going to be over there when they finally kill my account. So how do young people look at this CCP issue? I definitely don't think as many young people.

Starting point is 01:14:51 are taking that much of the news into consideration. Next week's guest named Jules Turpac actually talks a lot about this over on her TikTok channel. She has a podcast with Andrew Yang and she's really up to date on everything happening in tech policy. So there are people like her, but that's pretty few and far between. And I think it's interesting, though, that I keep seeing a lot of people migrating over to Instagram because, in my opinion, Instagram is kind of like a newsletter where like you

Starting point is 01:15:18 don't blow up from just having a newsletter. and newsletter is kind of like your supporting thing. Like you have something big that happens first. Maybe it's a podcast, and then you have a newsletter, and you can announce it on the podcast, and then that's a great way to get emails. But having an Instagram account is kind of like, it kind of like the newsletter of today, where it's really difficult to blow up on there. And I don't know if that's necessarily the place that I would even switch over to.

Starting point is 01:15:41 I do see Instagram dumping me into the TikTok format every chance they get. It's super annoying. And then when they dump me over there, it's not people I follow. Yep, I agree. And I'm just like, oh, God, you know, and then you get sucked in. Now you've watched 20 of these things, and you don't remember any of them. And that's the thing that pisses me off about it is I would like to see my friends, because at least that would be like I would feel I'm catching up on my friends and what they're up to.

Starting point is 01:16:07 I don't know, you know, I think it's like a bad decision on their part. I know it might lead to better metrics, but I really feel like I want my friends first. And maybe if the percentage was like 10% other or 20% other, like one out of five was like, they do discover some interesting things. So they'll show me something like, oh, because you watch Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits, you might enjoy this. So they actually tell me in the made photo stream, which I do like that feature. I just don't like the other, like just ramming it down my throats. We've been making these on YouTube shorts and pressure on our team's been making them.

Starting point is 01:16:41 They're coming out pretty good. So next week, when we have our little time together, maybe you take a look at what we've done and maybe give us a couple pointers. of what we should do better. I also almost never on. I don't know about you where I'd love to hear if the Nodie gang goes over on YouTube shorts, but I'm a big, big consumer of YouTube content. I don't subscribe to any even streaming platform,

Starting point is 01:17:04 to be honest, other than the ones that I get to sneak on with my parents. I watch all my stuff on YouTube, but I don't watch any of their shorts. And I hate the reels. I think that might be because I don't spend that much time on Instagram, so the things that are recommended to me, they're mostly discovery, are so far off, or maybe it's what other followers, like, I get a lot of sports stuff.

Starting point is 01:17:25 And a ton of my friends are giant sports fans, but I'm not. So maybe it's that, but haven't found any short video platform that has really curated the best for you page except for TikTok. And with YouTube, when I open up the app, it's normally on a laptop or an iPad. And so my fresh thought isn't to go over to a short. Can we also make, just for our team, so Presh, if you could do this by the time this episode comes out today, this week in startups.com slash shorts, this week in startups.com slash TikTok, just so people can redirect to a playlist of our shorts and our TikTok channel, our official channel. And that would be great,

Starting point is 01:18:05 just so we can start experimenting with it. And people can go find our stuff and give us pointers on it. What I would like to do, producer Nick, if you can make a note next week, I would like on my personal one to do a video where I explain human rights abuses in China, and then have it be like a text over like a baking video. I notice when people want to tell stories that are like super controversial, they'll put it on a baking video, I guess, to get by the sensors. I don't know if you've ever seen that. Have you seen this concept where like they tell some story like that might be very provocative about their personal life?

Starting point is 01:18:40 But then why do they do that? What is that about? Honestly. This boomer, why they're doing that. I feel like they kind of actually started over on YouTube where you would hear this like Reddit robot voice read Reddit streams or Reddit like threads more so like over different videos and I kind of feel like I don't know if anybody else has ever seen those. I love that. Like I love listening to different things that people have posted on Reddit. There'll be like Reddit Q&A is read to you and there'll be a different video in in the background. And those like TikToks to me are kind of the same way. And I think it's just to get people staying on the video because you do need like a certain amount of seconds on TikTok. in order for it to be counted as a view. So you're using the video to capture people aesthetically and have the video hook.

Starting point is 01:19:20 So you just pick something like one of those baking videos where they're making a cake and spinning it and putting icing on it. But then you tell a story, but this creates massive cognitive dissonance for me because I'm watching them make a cake and it looks delicious, but I'm getting none of the recipe of the cake

Starting point is 01:19:33 and then I'm getting some story about this woman whose sister cheated on or husband cheated on with her sister. And I'm like, why am I even watching this? I don't want either of these things. It's almost like the infographic of TikTok. It's like the TikTok's version of just posting an infographic like on your Instagram story. It's really weird.

Starting point is 01:19:51 But I want to do on my personal account, actually here's what I want to do for next week. I want a script to explain all of the issues with TikTok in the United States and the reporting on TikTok and what they're doing in terms of tracking for the CCP. But I don't want to use the term TikTok. I want to say the app that you may or may not be using right now.

Starting point is 01:20:12 And so if we can create a little, a little script for me, that's like a 90 second one, but put it to it's about damn time or something and people like dancing to about damn time. And it's just me talking over. And see what I see if they ban my account. That would be cool. That would be cool. Do you have any other videos on, is this on your personal account or that this week is on my personal account? I made a personal account and now I'm getting a bunch of followers. Like post something else though before to see if like the streams or after to see if, excuse me, the views are like violently different. Yeah. I'll do that. I'll do that yeah so wonderful yeah let's see if we do that next time all right everybody enjoy the interview awesome

Starting point is 01:20:48 thanks guys okay boomer i understood the assignment thank you so much ben smith for joining me today on a segment of okay boomer i met you in a really cool way so i actually moderated my first event at a co-working space i'm a beautiful new co-working space in soho um with my friend ami and my friend amy just wonderful and you were there and we got talking and i realized that you were also a founder of a different co-working space, not a co-working space, excuse me, a co-living space, which is like next step, called Goal House. And with the rise in co-working, with the rise in co-living, especially as more Gen Z employees choose to work remotely and live with other people, I thought, who not, you know, I think you would be the best person to talk to as you, this isn't like

Starting point is 01:21:37 the first thing you're founding. I know you founded actually another co-living space, Thrive out in SF. So Subject Matter expert here. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk. Yeah. Well, thanks so much for having me, Rachel. You're a professional in what you do. So it's an honor to be here. Well, you are stellar. So the first thing I need to know is I actually just talked to Molly and Jason about this on a live stream. And if people want to tune into our live stream, we normally live stream every single day over on YouTube, this weekend startups. Just find us over there. But Jason kind of said it's a joke. Like, oh, like where do you, Gen Z? People, you. you know, like meet people on dates. And I'm like, honestly, like, I probably do most of my

Starting point is 01:22:16 socializing stuff if it's not like at a bar, at a co-working space. And then that got me thinking about co-living, which is something that I actually never even considered. And then when I moved to New York, I realized so many of my friends either previously did that or are currently on the hunt for it because they are remote employees. They can be a little bit more nomadic. And you just get to meet people. So why do you think Gen Z's in particular are so interested in this communal living. Yeah. So I think it's the confluence of a bunch of different factors.

Starting point is 01:22:46 Of course, the pandemic being a big one just in terms of recent times. But people are just searching for community in ways that previously weren't available. What I think is special about my house and other co-living spaces is the built-in network or the built-in community. We're a house of 20 people. There's four floors in a giant basement where we all hang out. And people will really move to New York searching for this type of space now, because they realize it's sort of hard to be, I mean, New York has a ton of opportunities,

Starting point is 01:23:16 but it's sort of hard to be here alone, not knowing that many people, or maybe you just are friends of friends with people. So having that built-in social fabric is something that I think Gen Z really values these days. In the house here, it makes it easy for us to connect with each other. We have a built-in Sunday dinner every single Sunday. People will, basically how works is there's a $75 house budget and people will volunteer to cook on sort of a rotation basis. And we have a bunch of different people coming from outside of the state, sometimes from outside of the country. So it's really cool.

Starting point is 01:23:53 Yeah, people will cook food from their cultures. People will cook all different types of things. At Penn State, we have something similar to this. And it is called a frat house. No, just kidding. But that's super awesome. And one thing that I found out about snooping a little bit into you guys is you receive a ton of applicants, like over a thousand applicants a year, but you spend zero dollars on marketing.

Starting point is 01:24:16 How are people finding you? Yeah. So this is the nature of just being a one-off house. I run the house independently where I previously ran tribe co-living. And it was, you know, the goal of tribe is we were supposed to be a growth startup. And for different reasons, we realize that growing a co-living company is just a hard thing to do. That being said, because we're a house of 20 people, we rely mostly on word of mouth. We post on Facebook and the housing groups.

Starting point is 01:24:43 And we find that we're pretty incomparable to the options that are out there. Yes, there's furnished housing. Yes, there's the Facebook sublet groups. But if someone is looking for an experience that is community driven, there's us. There's other companies that are more niched down. So, for example, there are vegan houses. There are houses that are specifically for tech or AI or whatever it may be. So yeah, we're really not competing against too many people in the world of housing in New York.

Starting point is 01:25:15 I guess the only other thing that I saw on housing websites, which I move into New York is an absolute nightmare. And honestly, it's only getting worse. I did not think it could get worse. I have the cheapest rent out of anybody I know, not going to lie. In my area, I know. But now I'm like kind of freaking out because I'm sure they're going to raise my rent. So I've been looking on those Facebook pages. And I've been seeing like alpaca, which is a pre-furnished, I know things show.

Starting point is 01:25:39 up. So what differentiates you guys from the rest of these other co-living spaces? And like you said, I don't think there are a ton in the city, but there must be something making you guys just like 10 times better than everybody else. Yeah. So for me, I always say that community is created through the balance of intentionality and serendipity. There are lots of other furnished housing companies like June homes, common, bungalow, to name a few. And these companies do furnish housing, and they do that very well. You know, for example, our furniture is just, it's not from West Elm. It's mostly from IKEA.

Starting point is 01:26:13 It's the highest quality stuff at IKEA, but it's not a West Elm. Yeah. That being said, what we care about really here is setting the intention and getting people that are here that really want to be here and really want to be involved in putting together community events, bringing people out to coffee. Some of us might go to Industry City for the salsa night that they have every Friday during the summers. So it's that intentionality that.

Starting point is 01:26:38 is the baseline, I'd say. And then it's the serendipitous moments that really create this sense of friendship with each other that allows us to bond. So for example, yesterday I came home after dinner and people were seeing karaoke in the basement. I didn't plan that. No one planned that. People were just sitting on the couch and we have mics there. And they just put on some YouTube karaoke and they start singing. So very cool. It's those moments. I love that. That's really awesome. So are you guys, it's like cheaper to do a communal living? that it would be, say, if somebody just went through a broker and did like traditional housing in New York City, or do you think it's pretty comparable because you guys do offer all

Starting point is 01:27:16 those amenities? It depends on how you're how you're measuring it, but basically our upfront costs are much, much, much cheaper. So because we furnish everything, you don't need to buy any furniture. And we just require one month's security deposit and the first month's rent. Gotcha. So, yeah, it's relatively affordable. And we are the most affordable co-living option in the city, which I'm really proud of. Oh, I love it. And I, Do you have to stay for a year or can you have people staying month to month? Yeah. The minimum stay is two or three months.

Starting point is 01:27:45 Okay. That's pretty normal. Yeah, pretty normal. And people have stayed here for over two and a half years. Wow. Yeah. We had one guy. It is really awesome.

Starting point is 01:27:55 And I think it is a testament to people just enjoying their community experience. People will move in with the intention of just making new friends over a short three month period. And then they'll be like, this is kind of an awesome experience. Maybe it's not a 10 year experience. but it can certainly be a one, two, three-year experience. Yeah, that's so cool. And what do you see in people that are, like, gravitating toward this co-living? I even want to say co-working.

Starting point is 01:28:18 And I'm not talking about co-working as in WeWorks. I'm talking about co-working as like these all-co-working spaces that we're starting to see pop up. What do you see with people being drawn to these kinds of places? Like, is there, are they all young? Do they all work in tech? What similarities are there here? I think that the rise of, you know, and I'm not an expert, in these co-working spaces.

Starting point is 01:28:39 I specifically am the co-living guy. Yeah. Community spaces are crazy to me. Like, I think I'm so interested. So what's, I guess, yeah, do you see, I guess before you can even answer that question, do you see a big difference between people gravitated to just co-living than just co-working? I think co-living is a more challenging product to build well.

Starting point is 01:28:59 Okay. And that's why I currently run just one house as opposed to the time in, you know, from 2016 to 2019, where we had eight houses here in. in New York and one 80-person house building, really, in San Francisco. But because it's a more complicated product and because the type of person that is willing and wanting to live in a co-living space is different than the person that is wanting to sign up for a co-working space, it just takes more emotional and mental capacity to be the operator of this space.

Starting point is 01:29:31 Yeah. So I guess I say that to say, you know, I think the rise of the internet and all of these different things allows for more different types of communities to be experimented with, which is a really cool thing. Ami is doing a really cool co-working space right now. He's also thought about co-loving spaces as well. He is, Ami, we got to have that guy on, man. You two would be, I guess this is a question for the audience. I have two things. Number one, if anybody needs anybody to moderate an event, please ask me. I love moderating events. My siblings always said, I get in the middle of stuff, and I did not know that was a skill. So if ever need anybody

Starting point is 01:30:05 to get in the middle of things, I will do it. It's a very good skill. Oh, I loved it. It was so cool doing that at Ami's a co-working space. But another thing, would guests be interested in me having two people on at the same time on these segments? Because I think you have a lot to say about both spaces. And what do you think in co-living do people mostly get wrong?

Starting point is 01:30:28 Just that it's easy. Really? I think that what works really well about co-working and community spaces in general is people are there because they see the marketed interests or values and then they can just easily go there for the day. I think it's very easy to share space with each other, but to live in proximity to each other is a whole other another story just because then you are, yeah, you're considering people's dish habits. You're considering people's snoring habits. You're considering people in many different ways that are not necessarily related to their core

Starting point is 01:31:04 values or core interests. That being said, when it all does work really well, and I have some amazing roommates here that I would love to live with long into the future, when it all works really well, it's sort of like the perfect marriage. That being said, there's sort of like lots of trial and tribulations. Of course. Is there like a vetting process then for people that come into houses? Absolutely. So we try to be as transparent with everything as possible in our application process. People apply through our website. And then I'll just say, this is what the house is about. We're a house with 20 people. There are pros and cons with living with 20 people. One is that you're going to, one pro is that you're going to meet so many different people and share lots of different

Starting point is 01:31:43 experiences. But the con is we're not going to be the cleanest house. We're going to try our best, but the reality of it is people are going to be on different schedules and it's not going to be perfect. Yeah. And if you're if you're a person looking for a studio apartment or a luxury living situation, that's probably not the same person that's looking for a room with us. Totally. So, yeah, we wanted to work as much for the applicant. In that same way, we wanted to work for us in the community. How did you even think to start a co-living space?

Starting point is 01:32:16 So I know you graduated from BAPS and what year did you graduate college? 2016. So you're fairly new. I graduated high school in 2016. So you're about four years older than me. I think producer Nick is probably around your age of. as well, who works on our team. So this seems like something that not a lot of 20-somethings are doing, like starting homes

Starting point is 01:32:37 in New York. What really inspired this? Yeah, so many different things. My background is pretty unique. I'll do a 30-second TED Talk, but basically I was adopted from China by two dads. I grew up here in New York City. And I think because I grew up in a different family situation, I've always loved learning about people's backgrounds, mainly because.

Starting point is 01:32:59 Because in learning about people's backgrounds, I also had to hope that other people would accept me for who I was and my family for who we are. I think that this was made especially evident to me while I was studying abroad in Madrid for one semester. I said at a bunch of different hostels and sort of the hostel experiences, you knock on someone's bunk and you say, hey, I'm Ben. I'm from New York. And then you get talking. I love that. And then if it's a good hostel, and I don't know if you've stayed in any hostels, but if it's a good one. Okay.

Starting point is 01:33:27 Okay. Amazing. In Madrid, actually. I did a wonderful abroad program where this wasn't a hostile situation, but I did this amazing program. I got to plug them. C-I-E. Six weeks in new cities.

Starting point is 01:33:39 I did Berlin, Paris, Madrid, but I have stayed in a hostel in Madrid. It was two beds, two queen beds in one room. Phenomenal. That's amazing. And did you happen to go out with any strangers from your hostel? Of course. I'm actually a huge hostel junkie. I love them.

Starting point is 01:33:56 and I would highly recommend a bunch of people do them, especially if you're in your 20s, because a lot of them have caps on eages, especially if there are other female solo travelers. There's like all women, all women rooms and hostels, and I have made some just freaking amazing friends. I think that is actually probably the closest I've ever done

Starting point is 01:34:14 to communal living other than like a dorm in college, right? In the U.S., us Americans, we're taught that hostels are cheap and grungy places to live. Like, they are the, they're not the preferred method of living. But if you go to Europe, the hostile culture is that of community. It's meeting other travelers, learning about other people from different backgrounds. So I would become seemingly best friends with these people over a weekend.

Starting point is 01:34:36 And I thought, how can we replicate a similar experience back in the U.S. in New York, where there are so many people. But sometimes you'll see your neighbor twice a week for an entire year and you won't even say hi. Yeah. So it's sort of the confluence of those different things that made me want to come back to New York. co-living had just become a term in the world. You know, with WeWork launching, We Live and Common Launching, with a big funding round. And I thought, you know, how can we do this in a true community-driven way? That's why I started it.

Starting point is 01:35:08 That's actually your show right, too, about the thought about hostels in the States. Because I remember, like, searching on, like, hostelworld.com, I think is, like, the name of, like, the website where you can browse stuff. And there's some pretty insane ones in places like Switzerland. I think there's one. It's called like Bomber Hostel, B-A-L-M-E-R. And it's like very famous one. And hostels are crazy, crazy cool for people backpacking through Europe. Do you think like this communal living could get to the stage of popularity as hostels have in Europe?

Starting point is 01:35:41 I think it depends on the length of say. I think that people, so what's great about this idea of intentionality is I think it's great when people intentionally decide this is their communal living moment in their life for either three months, six months for one year or a little bit more. And their intention is to meet lots of different people and to see who they connect with. And they're not going to connect with everyone. And that's just the reality of it. But if someone can co-live for one year and if they can make two or three really good connections, lifelong friends out of that, which I think is totally possible, then it's completely worth it. Yeah. So yeah, I think hostels will always be around. I think co-living

Starting point is 01:36:20 spaces are still experimenting with what works and what doesn't. Yeah, I guess time will tell. Super excited to see, I hope they do, become a little bit more popular, number one, because just rents crazy, expensive. And it's hard to find roommates in New York. So I think they're just a really good option. But also, I grew up in like a really big family, speaking of families. And I love hearing about people's communal experience because it kind of reminds me of living back home with my parents. And you know, there's only like so much time, I feel like while you're young where you feel very comfortable sharing your own space. I think the older you get and the more you kind of like guard your space. the more you want it to stay like that. So the more open you are with living with other people, the easier it is. Like it's really difficult to go from like having a studio apartment, for example, to going back to like dorm life. So definitely would recommend checking out communal living for anybody listening or especially anybody interning. I did NYU dorms.

Starting point is 01:37:14 I went random, which is not the same, but NYU dorms. I lived with two other girls in one room. And it was random, like I said. And it was phenomenal. It was super cool. we end up going out together. Anyway, you had a bunch of like gyms and things like that that we could use while I interned here. But I really wish this was like more of an option because we definitely weren't doing karaoke in a basement.

Starting point is 01:37:34 And I do want to pivot for my last kind of topic with you. So you kind of touched on this already. You are an adoptee with two dads. You were raised in New York. And you are huge on TikTok because of that, not because of communal living. So most of your platform, you have like over like 85,000 followers on TikTok. 6.1 million likes, you're blowing up. You're doing great stuff. How has that impacted your business? And how do you expect to kind of like pivot or maybe bring in your business a little bit more

Starting point is 01:38:05 into your content? Yeah. So I think just thinking about this from a macro standpoint is lots of people, pretty much everyone in the world is on a journey of self-discovery. People are on their own path. And I think because of that, like I know I'm on my own path. And that makes me incredibly interested in your path, Rachel, or in other people's paths that I don't know. And I think that businesses are starting to see that, yes, you can sell a product in marketing and you can focus on what that product is about. But more so than that, people are also interested in what is the company history, what is the founder's story. And this is what I want to continue to increase, to increase my sharing about Goal House and why I actually am doing communal living. I'd love to tell the,

Starting point is 01:38:52 story behind that. And it's something that I've sort of strayed away from in the past. So, yeah, hope to do more of that. Yeah. That's awesome. Thank you so much, Ben, for coming on a segment of OK Boomer. If people want to find you or your company, where should they look? Yeah. So on my TikTok and Instagram, it's at Becoming Ben. And our website is goalhouse, nyc.com. Amazing. I hope to see you around, whether that's at a co-working or maybe I'll have to swing by and see what your co-loving space is like. Come by for a Sunday dinner. of course, of course.

Starting point is 01:39:23 Thanks, Ben. All right, thanks so much, Rachel. All right, everybody, thanks for listening.

Starting point is 01:39:28 Huge thanks to Howard Lindsay for joining the show. Huge thank you to producer Rachel for another great okay boomer segment. And Sunday,

Starting point is 01:39:35 Sunday, Sunday school is coming. You got to go to VC Sunday school and a great climate interview. That's going to blow your mind.

Starting point is 01:39:42 Another great week. Great job producer, Nick. And to the entire team, Matt and Janie and everybody working hard at this week in startups

Starting point is 01:39:50 and the launch team and the inside team. Couldn't do it without you. Shout out to all my teams working really hard this summer to hit the milestones that we've set. I know it's been a little rough sailing here with this crazy market, but we're doing a great job and it couldn't do it without you. So shout out to all my teams and team members who are really burning the midnight oil. And it's just great to see all of you learning and seeing your careers develop. It really makes it all worthwhile for me to come up and come to work every day. So I just

Starting point is 01:40:16 wanted to shout out my teams. All right. I'll see you on Sunday.

This Week in Startups - Howard Lindzon reviews Jason's portfolio & breaks down public/private investing + OK Boomer | E1533

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