This Week in Startups - Katie Haun's $1.5B web3 fund, Yuga Labs worth $4B, Apple's BNPL play + ChroniFI's Ben Miller | E1416

Episode Date: March 24, 2022

Jason and Molly take on another Five in Five! Five stories in (a little over) five minutes each: Katie Haun's record-breaking $1.5B debut web3 fund (2:50), Yuga Labs raising $450M at a $4B valuation (12:42), Apple's potential BNPL play (25:23), Worldcoin's $100M raise and privacy concerns (29:59) and Nothing's new iPhone competitor (40:13). Then, Molly talks to ChroniFI Founder & CEO Ben Miller on building a consumer software product that helps people plan for financial independence. (48:59)

Hey, everybody, hey everybody. We have a huge show for you today. We do. First up, we're doing a slightly failed attempt at a five for five. Like a five for eight. It's more like a five for like 10 to 12 minutes per because it's so interesting. First up, we're talking about Katie Hahn's new record breaking crypto fund that she just raised. Board Apes Mass Evaluation.

Apple's possible neobank play? World coin and your eyeballs and a potential. new iPhone competitor. And it is a rapid fire breakdown. Rapid fire only. We tried to do in five minutes. We got to eight. We're trying to be disciplined here.

But these stories were just too chunky. There were too many second and third order impacts of these stories. So we went eight minutes each. Apologies for that. But we have also at the end of our five, four, eight news breakdown, Molly is going to sit down with one of our launch founders. These are the people we've invested in. If we invested in them and we have skin in the game, that means they're doing something special.

Yeah. And that means they get on this show, which is, you know, not for nothing. A little value add there, right? I mean, if we invest in you, you may get on one of the top seven tech shows in the world. Okay, great. Just saying. No big, no big. No big.

I'm talking to launch cohort number 24. That is our current cohort, a founder, Ben Miller of Chronify, who's building consumer software to help people figure out how to become financial. independent and also when they will be financially independent. I'm not going to lie, I downloaded it. I love this idea. Obviously, we've placed a bet on it. It's a very early stage startup. But we've had great success with Robin Hood and other financial apps. And we think people really, this next generation wants to become literate and even proficient and maybe, you know, top 10% of how to financially plan. And this is really an app that is built for people

who want to plan for their financial future. And I think that's like really cool to have somebody in your corner. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This weekend startups is brought to you by Rocket. To hire in today's competitive market, you need outstanding recruiting. Rocket's expert recruiting paired with ML candidate matching, set them apart from the rest. Get 20% off your first placement at getrocket.com slash twist.

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All right, everybody, we have got five for five today. we're going to get through five stories in five minutes each, five by five, radio or whatever, military talk for everything is okay. Five by five is I'm hearing you crystal clear, loud and clear. Three by five is I can hear you, but it's a little bit breaking up. One by five is I can't hear you at all. Oh, my God, look at you. I totally know. Ambulances, etc.

It's how good the radio communication is. So we're going to do a five by five. It's going to come in crystal clear. but I do want to add something here, which is we each get a one minute overtime. So we get a one minute overtime, we can pull at any point in time. Jason playing his favorite game, Calvin Ball. So we, everybody, you give one. Or how about we can give one minute?

We can take one minute. So I could give you a minute and ask you to keep going and you could ask me to keep going on something, or you can take it for yourself. So it goes either way. Everybody give a thumbs up for your squad, subscribe. We're on the March to 200,000 subscribers on the YouTube.com this weekend channel. Here we go. All right.

First up today on the news docket, a record-breaking raise by former A16Z partner Katie Hahn, who left, it seems like, somewhat abruptly or somewhat quickly, left A16Z, and has now raised a one and a half billion dollar debut fund for Han Ventures, which will focus on Web3 companies in case you are wondering, yes, this is the largest debut fund by a solo female founding partner to date. The prior record was $1.3 billion raised by a name you might know, Mary Meeker for Bond Capital in April 2019. Katie Hahn, killing it.

I might say this is the largest raise for any debut fund. I would have been at too. I was like, do we need all these qualifiers? Because that sounds like this is the moment in time, dare I say, that we can stop pointing. out the gender of the founder of the fund. Because now, you know, that two women have raised over a billion dollars and women are starting funds all the time. Like, when we did our first fund managers, the diversity in that group of people was extraordinary. So I don't know. I feel like we could give

the industry some credit here that we like, really? Oh, do we ever get to take a win? No, we should definitely take a win. This does appear according to. According to Axios, this appears to be the largest fund ever raised by a solo venture capitalist, let alone by a solo female VC. I mean, listen, like, female VCs still are only, I think, about 11%, so we're not ready for a victory lap yet. However, if we can get to the point where it's just like, yep, you raise the largest one, great job. You and we don't have to talk about it because I'm with you. I always say that I don't want to win the, like, journalism awards that they only give to women. I want to beat everyone.

I don't want to only get the deals that women again. I want to beat everyone. Katie, just beat everyone. Yeah, it's incredible. Let's give it to her. Unbelievable, and she's brilliant. It's also, you think about LPs.

I think LPs at this point don't see gender. I think they see dollars. And I think when they see her, they see dollar signs. They look at the track record. I don't think they particularly care about gender. I think they care about her track record and her ability to find deals in the Web3 crypto space.

That will, you know, five to 10 X their money. That's what they're seeing. They're seeing dollar signs. The same thing for Mary Meeker. So as terrible as the track record was, I'm just delighted to see it moving forward. And yesterday we had the story of Sequoia launching a new accelerator arc and the two people running it are women. So I think this is becoming like a really great tipping point, dare I say, for the industry.

She is a former federal prosecutor, which is pretty amazing. I had a great conversation. with her. We were on the same flight one time and talked for two hours. She's super brilliant. She joined Andresen in 2018 as their first female GP. I mean, Andreessen has a horrible track record with diversity. I'm not saying that just to dunk on them. It's just it is what it is. If you look at their first five, six, seven partners, eight partners, nine partners. I don't know what it was. Somebody can look it up. Every partner was just a rich white guy who previously ran a SaaS company. In fact, I was told that was their strategy, hire people who were already rich so they didn't want to take the

management fees so you could have the management fees go towards the services. But why did she leave after just two years? Is the question I have. I've never gotten an answer for that. Did she not feel welcome there? Did she not feel like she was getting credit? I would like to know the background on why she left. I think that is interesting because it seems like it's pretty unusual. Was she a partner? She was a partner. Yes, she was their first female. Not a partner, a GP, a general partner, equal to others. Right. Equal to Christics.

So she was their first female GP and she was like, No, I'm out. That is very interesting. And hopefully we will someday hear that story because she is super interesting. Obviously, LPs were seeing dollar signs all over this because of the Web 3 and crypto and token focused investing. But also, I want to point out her interesting team. She has a nine person team.

Chris Lehane, a former Airbnb executive and Clinton administration official, Tamika Tillamon, a former Biden staffer, and Rachel Horowitz, who led the comms teams at Twitter, Google, Facebook, and Coinbase, as well as some former A16C colleagues. So I like the fact that she's not putting together a sort of usual suspects kind of team, like a lot of cognitive diversity, diversity of background and, you know, some women. Rachel also worked at Uber, I believe. Yeah, pretty great team. My guess is, Either she didn't feel welcome at Inreason. They didn't covet her enough.

Yeah. It was one possibility. And that doesn't necessarily mean gender. It just means, you know, maybe she was too big for the firm. In other words, like Mary Meeker, she was such a brand onto herself that having to, you know, be in the shadow of the two people whose names are on the front door made no sense for her. They'd be. Like Mary Meeker was at Kleiner Perkins for a little while, right? And I don't know how many years she lasted there before starting.

her own firm. But if you're a transcendent talent and your brand becomes bigger than the brand that you're working at, maybe you're just like, well, I want to call the shots. Yeah. The breakdown of the 1.5 is 500 million for early stage companies and protocols, a billion for growth stage companies and protocols. She announced the new fund on mirror. XYZ blog. I don't know what that is. But I do know XYZ is the domain extension that a lot of crypto people like to use. Pond spoke to CNBC about raising the largest fund.

It feels honestly like a lot of pressure. But I think that motivates everyone on the team. That is a great comment, right? She's like, with great power comes great responsibility. It's like her first part of the sentence. And then shout out to the team. We got to make this happen. I mean, my God, to return enough

to 5X a one and a half billion dollar fund. I mean, it's seed and growth. but to do that with a small team, having left the, you know, the big, big brand name of A16CZ, like, it is a lot of pressure. Well, she'll be getting two and a half percent in management fees. So she literally has 37, maybe, you know, 35 to 40 million a year in fees. So with, I mean, just imagine, I mean, if you're paying your, you know, half a million dollars salaries, million dollars salaries, I mean, she could build a very large team with that giant windfall. of management fees.

Those are the fees you get for managing the fund. They come out of the returns. You know, the early stage fund, you know, people want to see REX and the growth stage fund, something similar. I mean, in reality, they want to see her do four, five, six, seven X. They want to see her be an outlier.

That's the bet you're making is that you hit a fund that, you know, gets that five to 10x cash on cash return in a decade. Yeah. And that would put you in the, you know, the 1%, the 2% of venture returns. Most people are trying to hit that 15 to 25% IRR per year. But yeah, amazing.

And we are come on the show. Come on the show for sure. I not only, I emailed her yesterday, invited her on this show, and then I invited her to do a fireside or a keynote at the Allens Summit, May 15, 16, 17, 17 in Miami.

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I don't want to say grift, my lord, the amount of money getting thrown into projects that don't have any seeming purpose and or function in the world continues. Uga Labs, the maker of BoredApe NFTs, trading cards, and the dollar sign APE coin has raised 450 million from, wait, for it. Yes, of course. You know who likes to splash a cashy. Andresen Horowitz at a $4 billion

valuation. The startup is also planning to launch a decentralized NFT Metaverse, massively multiplayer online role-playing game called Other Side in April. So as we predicted and discussed, these NFTs have no meaning or purpose in the world. Trading cards are a minor part of the economy and they, I think people quickly get burned out on collecting stuff. So the NFT crowd, I think, has found their hell Mary to build value. And it is the Metaverse, specifically massively multiplayer online role playing games, which are the best example is Warcraft, I guess. No.

World Warcraft. World Warcraft, correct, thank you. Because people would pay $15 a month for it. So maybe all of these crazy valuations could get filled in. In order for it to get filled in, you would need to have four, $400 billion of revenue in my mind for that game.

$400 billion in revenue if people were paying but, I don't know, $15 a month would be $200 a month, about $200 a year, 200 a year, you need to have 2 million players. So this is the bet that Indreason Harwich is making. Is that Yuga Labs will have a million,

2 million, 3 million people paying for a massively multiplayer which I don't think there's been many of that have broken the million. So this is a crazy bet to be clear. Yeah. I mean, that would be like a Fortnite level success. I mean, Fortnite's probably way more than that. Fornights way bigger, but free users, right? Free users, right. So a million to two million paying users who then are also using this ape coin as the in-game currency. It's so interesting because it's like they

created a coin and a token and now they're just trying to find a home for it. It's like if you created a currency and then had to build a society around it, which is effective. Yeah, it kind of works the other way. So this is the great crazy experiment that people are making crazy bets on. This would be like somebody wrote an open source project like, I don't know, a web browser. And they were like, and we're going to deem this company worth $4 billion and raise $400 billion. And then we'll back that web browser or open protocol into a business. But I really think it's a terrible idea to give these huge valuations before the performance exists, where the value exists.

But we'll see. Maybe it will work. On that note, a leaked Yuga Labs pitch deck circulated last week indicating that in 2021, Yuga Labs had $137 million in revenue last year with 95% margins. We do not know if this is true. We have not verified the veracity of this leaked deck. But if that's true, and you're literally printing money at 95% margins, I guess you could understand why you might feel a little flexy with your valuation.

So if it had 95% margin, it's like, you know, whatever, $100,000. and change in profits. So this is 40 times that. The question is, is that replicable? Is the NFT moment where you sold people trading cards and you sold $100 million in trading cards? And essentially what is a multi-level marketing, you know, the most cynical would be a pump and dump scheme and the most charitable would be a club and a collection, is that

in any way sustainable in the future? Yeah. And can they print up 10,000 more apes for $10,000 each or whatever they can get for them? because this is, that 137 million must be the selling of the original apes, or maybe this transaction fees, do they get a piece of when they resell the apes? Maybe they get 10% of that. So maybe this is just the speculators paying that 10% fig. I was never clear on if the apes had that built into them.

So as of Wednesday morning, Apecoin was a 26th with popular token on Coinbase. There is a little bit of a brouhaha. When you air drop these or you create a new token, who gets them, right? Who gets it first, Molly? So tell us, how did this break down? Well, and this is what is so interesting about this process, especially when you consider that they've created a currency and now they're trying to create a society for it to have a home. Because when you look at who owns most of these tokens, it is not particularly decentralized.

47% went to, when the coins were initially issued, went to the ape coin Dow Treasury, 15% went to board ape owners, people already had the coins, 15% went to, went to Yuga Labs employees 1% to the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation, lovely, 8% to Yuga Labs founders, and 14% went to launch partners, aka investors like Andresen Horowitz, meaning early investors have a significant amount of control of not just the company, but also the decentralized autonomous organization, the doubt. I'm going to take my minute over, John, this one. And this is what crypto people were so upset about A16Z.

Remember, Jack was dunking on Chris Dixon. Yeah. Because they were like, these projects are saying they're decentralized. They're saying that this is going to disrupt venture capital and this is going to create a new world that has more equity in it. And meet the new boss, same as the old boss. It's all the insiders and getting rich. And then the public is the bagholders. Adreason Horowitz gets to buy on the floor.

Y'all suckers out there get to buy a 3x, 4x, and they liquidate and create bagholders potentially. I don't know if they're doing that or not. Nobody knows that's the problem with this and why the SEC needs to be on top of this is because this kind of market manipulation or insider trading, you could look at this as investing or insider trading, depending on the lens you go through.

And if this is getting pumped up and people are getting excited about it, you don't know. Maybe Entries and Hart says buying these things for a penny and selling them for 40 bucks and getting this quick hit. And maybe that's why crypto funds are raising all this money is because there's no rules

and all of this circumvents everything that the SEC set up to make a level playing field. And, you know, more often than not, it's not the, you know, Indrisen Horowitz's of the world who are going to get screwed. Yeah. Who's going to get screwed? The bagholders. Well, and Andreessen Horowitz now has effectively a controlling interest in this Dow and could potentially at any point be like, you know what, it's not making us the kind of money we thought

it was going to and we're going to vote to. I mean, we've seen it happen when one person was able to effectively shut down. on a Dow. And you've got... Dows are ripe for manipulation. And here you have, the collusion could happen because the founders own 8%, and Drace and Horowitz own 16%. That's what's known in the current. The airdrop was another 50%.

How many of the airdrop board ape owners are insiders? Right. Who knows Andreessen Horowitz doesn't own 10% of the board apes. They might. And that's where all this could get really highly manipulated. Yeah, that's a little ugly. We didn't mention the Jing Goodall thing. mentioned that, Molling. I did. Yeah.

That's lovely. I mean, they did, you know, because ape 1% went to this Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation. All I said was like, what do you think of that? That's great. An endowment to help protect wildlife and has humanitarian programs. I mean, that's great. But like, I hope that that showed up as some version of cash or was cashed out immediately. I hope it's not cash.

I hope it's like maybe they liquidate 10% of a year for 10 years. But I mean, what if this goes to? Like just I'd rather they got a million dollar donation than like some Alph Pogs. Well, no, wait. What happens if this goes? What is the market cap right now of the board apes? 3.7 billion of the coins that have been liquidated. Not all coins have been claimed yet.

So it's likely more. So that means they gave $40 million to the Jane Goodall Legacy Foundation. Yeah. I'm going to go ahead and guess that that's more money than they've ever received to date. Right. I just hope they cash it out. That's all I'm saying. Like put that in the bank.

But okay. I would say maybe cash that $25. percent and put it in the stock market and let's see how this goes. Really? What if this could all foundation and her legacy to be a bank holder? What it, well, what if it 10 X is though?

That's why I think, you know, like maybe take 25% of the chips off the table and then do 10% a year for the next 10 years depending on what direction it goes. I'm very glad that we're having this conversation so that you can see those, so that you can see that you think there is some potential here because I think everybody thinks we just bash on this all the time. So it's good to see that you're like,

well, whoa, I mean, if I actually had some. I would... Betting against... You know, like, I own Bitcoin and I'll never sell it. I mean, even if it went down to 5 or 10K, I'd probably buy more, depending on if people still believe in and are using it, because the upside...

You know the downside potential. The downside potential is Jane Godall leaves... Legacy Foundation leaves $40 million on the table. So if they swept 15 right now, now the down... They have $15 million they never would have had. The downside is now they could lose $25 million. But the upside is there's a chance, given the momentum of the number one NFT project. Then it could 10x.

And then $250 million is like, whoa, you could really do some. I mean, I think they could change the nature of primate supremacy forever. Well, and ecosystem preservation and primate supremacy are hilarious. And then Planet of the Apes, boom. I was about to say, I think the move here is to buy the rights to Planet of the Apes. I think Yuga Labs and the Dow should take all of this money and they should vote to try to acquire the rights. to Planet of the Apes. And I am not joking for a minute.

If you want to fill in a $4 billion valuation, Planet of the Apes is probably worth $2 billion. Like, what would Planet of the Apes be worth? Somebody to look up as a franchise. As a franchise. I'm guessing those movies have made a billion dollars in total, that franchise. Because that latest sequence of ones

probably made $2,300 billion each. That's a billy right there. So if Bond is worth $8 billion, the Planet of the Apes is worth $2 billion. God, they could afford to buy Planet of the Apes. and then make all the Yuga Labs and then do a backstory. You were exactly right. The films have grossed about $2 billion total.

How does he do it? I read constantly, I remember numbers, is why I'm good at gambling. When are you people going to know this? It's very simple. All you have to do is look at what did Marvel sell for? What did Pixar sell for? What did Disney sell for?

I mean, not Disney. I'm Star Wars. You just start to understand the franchise value. And the franchise value in that space is about double whatever the revenue was. when I looked at it last time. So the Bond films were doing like 500 million each, 700 million each. So, you know, I just think you get up five. The five next ones put together would be $2 billion, $3 billion.

You know, double triple that. That's kind of, if you netted out with the MGM purchase, what it would be worth, in my mind. And, you know, with Planet of the Apes, you have toys, you have comic books. I mean, you've got a lot of IP there. Probably an undervalued IP. But not now that I said they should buy it. Now it's probably over five. When you're scaling your startup quickly, hiring engineers can slow you down like nothing else.

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And if it doesn't work out, they're going to replace the developer. right away. So there is no risk for you the founder of a startup. And they test and interview every developer to eliminate the risk of a failed project. So we got a testimonial from launch portfolio founder Drew Fabricant and he told us that Lemon was a game changer for his startup scout, which is a lead gen platform. They do great stuff. They were under the gun. They needed to hire a developer with a very specific skills that as soon as possible. And Lemon delivered. And they were a pleasure to work with according to my pal Drew. So not only did they find exactly what they were looking for, but Lemon also delivered them a second engineer really fast. What a great story.

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Margin, mortgages with a $7,000 max a studio machine with 128 gigs. Maybe they're going to need loans for consumers via Apple pay. Apple already is doing that 0%, you know, month, by now, pay later, basically for holders of Apple card. Like if you have the Apple card, whatever Apple device you buy, you can buy it on, you know, zero percent, monthly interest, monthly payments, and then you still get all of the Apple cash up front. This is the only time I ever use my Apple card. And everything I buy from Apple, I'm like, yeah, totally. I'm just going to buy now, pay later. Nothing else. I will not do that with anything else. So you do it, even though you don't have to, you just take advantage of the

fact that they'll float it for 0%. Yeah. Why wouldn't I? And I get the Apple cash up front. And then I just like, I just pay my credit card bill every month. And it's like sort of. I should do that too. I mean, actually, it's so, that is so interesting on an inflation base that I feel like I should now buy the $7,000 studio Mac that I don't need. Yeah. On your Apple card. They're so smart. I love the Apple card. I love Apple pay.

It is just such a great product. And I think Apple will, I'm going to make the prediction right now. I think you will have a banking, a full on banking stack from them from auto pay checking. Like, there'll be a NeoBank, essentially. That's what I'm wondering too. I think they'll do mortgages. Well, think about this. They have such a cash reserve.

Imagine if they took their $200 billion in cash. And they just said, hey, we know if you can afford an iPhone, you're a good customer. We're watching your spending. We know you spend $7,000 a month on your card, $4,000 a month on your car, whatever a high-end person is spending on that card. And they say, would you like us to do your mortgage? And you'll have an Apple mortgage directly from their treasury to you. Think about it. Think about how much sense that makes for them to disrupt everybody in between.

They literally could become a finance company overnight. They could be giving margin loans. They could acquire Robin Hood or a coinbase or anything in between and just have a full financial stack. You want a margin loan. You want to buy now, pay later. You want a checking account. You want a student loan. Any of that stuff, they could originate and use their corporate treasury.

and they would get all that interest, which might be more money than they're making on it right now. Right. Apple should totally do this. It would actually, they have the brand recognition, they have the ease of use, but they could become their own credit card processor and they wouldn't have to share any fees

like they are now with the Apple card. That all makes perfect sense. And it gets back to my primary question when it comes to Apple, does it sell iPhones? Because if it doesn't, they're probably not going to do it. It certainly locks you into your iPhone.

If you had your mortgage, if you had your buy now, pay later, if you had your checking, attached to your phone, you're not getting out of the iOS. It would be more sticky than I message. But if you could. There is no way that the SEC would say you could have hardware locked finance. No, it wouldn't be hardware locked. You could go through the web. I can use ICloud through the web, right? Well, like, I can't get access to my neobank on my Android phone.

Jesus. Well, I mean, they would probably take an iTunes. There are a number of Apple products that they do allow you to use on Android. You just have to use the web. So they would just say, listen, you can use it just use the web. We just don't want to build an Android app

and maintain it. But I mean, at some point, somebody's going to buy, why not buy Visa? You know, why not buy MasterCard or something? I don't know if the antitrust would be a big deal. But I do think if you start looking at Square,

you know, MasterCard is worth $335 billion. Like, why wouldn't Apple buy that? Yeah. That makes total sense. And then it's, you know, this is why Apple needs to get more aggressive. This is kind of their playbook by the $100 to $250 million, tiny, tiny tuck-in acquisitions, we call them in the industry, get rid of the brand, and then somehow deploy that technology

inside the existing Apple suite of products. I mean, I will be disappointed. I will say, like, your vision makes so much sense. I will be disappointed if the only thing they end up doing with this is just sort of enabling you to buy Apple devices in more clever ways. All right. Next up, according to a report in the excellent information, that is a, I think, $30 a month, you know, old school paid journalistic tech publication. I highly recommend it.

It's really, really good. Sam Altman's Whirlcoin is raising $100 million from wait for it, injuries in Horowitz, of course, and Kostla Ventures via a token sale. This will value the total supply of the tokens at $3 billion. So once again, the VCs get in first and the public gets to be the bagholders or the winners. We'll see. Time will tell. I think it's actually a pretty brilliant idea. Remember, WorldCoin is going to give free tokens to individuals who get their irises scanned with a special spherical device.

Of course, this has privacy people losing their minds. You're basically paying people to give up all of their privacy and the most protected or I think the most efficient. and hard to build database in the world for a biometric, which is your iris. Altman previously said he has no day-to-day operations role, and he serves as an advisor, quote from our pal Sam. I've been very interested in things like universal basic income and what's going to happen to global wealth redistribution and how we can do that better. Altman said, that's true when he was at YC, he was the president of YC for a couple

years. He did a UBI experiment, I think, in Oakland. I never got the outcome of that, which means it maybe it's still going on or maybe it was deprecated. If anybody knows, let us know. Producers at This Week in Startups.com. Is there a way we can use technology to do that at global scale, quote from Sam Altman. They previously raised $25 million from Wadeford, and Dracen Horowitz, Coin basis venture arm, and Reid Hoffman. World coins price is at one cent today. last week Bloomberg reported that WorldCom was halting operations in seven countries due to fraud attempts and other logistical barriers. That's what happens when you give away something for free. And the WorldCom device is a hardware device that looks like a droid that is going to conduct scientific experiments on you in a dystopian science fiction film.

Here it is if you're watching the video. Maybe suck your soul out of your eyeball. I think it's literally going to take your soul out of your eyeball or in some way implant a special code for Order 66 when all of us will be forced to kill the Jedi and the Emperor Palpatine tells us to. It's a crazy idea. What do you think, Molly?

I like it. I want to back up to the... So what we're saying here is that the vision is to redistribute global wealth by bribing people to give up their biometric data. That would be a... Isn't like, is this a

little biological... The word bribs a little loaded, but pay... Fudalism, like a little bit of indentured biometric servitude. We will pay you. Depends on what they do with it. Like, if you said to me, I'll scan your iris and put it into a database for a thousand dollars, I'd be like, go fuck yourself, right? Like, no, what are you going to do with it, right?

What's the contract say? So we don't have the terms of service. I need to see the terms of service. So can somebody find World Coins terms of service and the contract when you give your iris? Now, if they're saying, you're going to give your iris, we're going to put it in a hash. You'll have the other side of the hash, and you're the only person who can unencrypt it. But when you go to a store, if you want to pay with your iris, you can look down into this thing, blink three times, and then it will send a note to your phone. Do you want to pay this amount?

And you press on your phone in the app, yes, it's you. Then I would know that my credit card is for all time. My digital currency for all time is protected because there's no way to fake an iris scan from what I understand. It's the hardest to be biometric. What they're saying is that they want the iris scan to verify your identity to minimize fraud so that you don't sign up more than once. But literally, unless there is, unless there is a terms of service that says this data will never be shared. It will be deleted like after two weeks. All right.

Well, let's read the privacy statement. never be shared in perpetuity. I'm just saying that when you have those two concepts together, you get a token in order to scan your iris and the goal is like wealth redistribution, then that just sounds to me like you're trying to create an entire world of people who no longer own the rights to their own irises, but they did get that token, so they're stoked about it. Here we go. To gain access.

I read too many sci-fi books. Yeah. So there is a, I mean, I don't want to be too critical here because it's a new idea, but I do think they have done a bad job. communicating the privacy implications here. So let's just read from the terms of service. To gain access to our services, we'll ask you to provide us with some information about you.

Please note that we may not be able to serve you as effectively of offer your services if you choose not to share certain information with us. We may collect the following types of data from you. So this is very much in the May. First name, last name, email address, feedback, and correspondence from you, such as emails, chat messages, and other communications. So that's like their CRM system. If you ask for information, we're going to put it into our database.

So if you ask a question to the helpline, and then third-party social media websites data. So that means if they get your LinkedIn, they could scrape that and put it into your profile. That's pretty standard. And I don't think anybody considers that a leak or anything because you put that stuff out publicly. And that's your choice.

Although it's important to let people know that. To the extent permitted under applicable law, well, there's a disclaimer. We may collect certain types of data automatically, such as whether you interact with or use our services. So that means if you're on our website and you click on a link, we can note that you clicked on the link terms of service.

And you would be in the bucket of people who read the terms of service or went to it. It could be like the troublemaker bucket or the smart bucket. This information helps us address customer support issues, yada yada, online identities.

Here we go. Geolocation and tracking details, computer or mobile phone operating system, web browser name and version and your personal IP address. That's standard in the web day and age. That's nothing new. Every website does that.

Usage data. Authentication data, security questions. That's like you're logging in, you know, where did you go to school? What was the name of your first pop, be public social networking posts and other data collective via cookies and similar technology. That's like the Palantir kind of stuff or the

what's the name of the AI company that does facial recognition. That's clear view kind of disclaimer. This is all very standard. That's a clear view. Hey, you put your photos on your Instagram account. We have your photo in our database. Anonymized data.

And I don't see anything here in this data. I don't see anything about deletion. There's nothing about the biometric. So this is all standard template stuff. So this is a standard template. When you make these terms of services, your attorney has all the stuff, and they just cut and paste it. So where is the actual biometric stuff? So I think what they're doing is they're letting people sign up.

They give them a little some coins. When this biometric comes out, you're going to be able to go to it, scan your iris, and then maybe that turns your tokens on? I mean, yeah, the Nodies are saying that at the biometric data, the iris scan data is stored on chain. So not deletable. Not deletable, but is it in a hash? In other words, like, is it's in a hash? It's got to be in some hash or something that is.

So it can be unlocked only by them and you or both them and you have to turn the keys at the same time to turn it on. We're going to look into it. All I'm saying is any company that is coming along, like, because I read too many sci-fi books, but they all come true, if a company is coming along and offering you money for your IRIS scan and you don't have like a lot of assurances and a very specific understanding about what's going to happen. Yeah. I don't know how I feel about that. This is why I trust Apple in this regard and not Google necessarily. So Apple, when they took my fingerprint, or if they didn't, when they do their facial recognition, I'm like, Apple stores it on my phone. They encrypt it.

It's not in the cloud anywhere so that it can't be compromised. It would be really hard to compromise it. And actually, I think that they put it on their chip in the last presentation. I think they had a... I think so. It's like locally processed. Locally processed and somehow stored on your chip. encrypted in your chip. It's all about trust. Exactly. It's all about trust. I'm just like, you know what?

It sounds good to me. I trust you Apple. But with Google, I'm like, okay, I don't think Google's going to leak it, but how are they going to use it? And then with Facebook, I'd never do it. Right. Because Facebook's model is advertising. Google's model, you know, with Android is to get more people in their ecosystem, but I don't think they're trying to take the biometric data and use it to make advertising. So I think this world coin, I actually kind of believe in. I think there's something to if everybody gave some currency or got some currency for buying into this biometric and it became like square and they were super well trusted and that would be in their terms of service and who they are and how they make money. So how are they going to make money? Do they own

25% of the coins? And if the coins go up, they just have a permanent way to make money. That would be cool with me. So let's see. Microacquire is a startup acquisition marketplace that cuts out everyone in the middle. They help startups get acquired super efficiently. And if you're a founder looking to sell, well, MicroAquire is free, private, and involves nobody in the middle. To date, Micro Acquire has helped hundreds of startups get acquired. They're working for you to facilitate these hundreds of millions of dollars in closed deal volume. Their platform includes over 100,000 buyers who pay for access to the deal database, and thousands of startups are currently listed for sale. Hundreds of successful acquisitions have

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Coming up next, no one can stop trying to make hardware, even though it is the hardest thing in the world to do. The latest is a company called Nothing. Very cool company. Which is making a new smartphone. A super cool looking a smartphone actually from the One Plus co-founder, Carl Pay. And, you know, if you know One Plus, I mean, those were very cool phones. Still are, I think, very cool phones.

made smartphones based out of China. Nothing has now raised a $70 million series B from undisclosed investors earlier this month. Its first product was a 99 pair of Bluetooth earbuds, which look, you know, AirPod-esque, but black and kind of like a lot more matrixy. And the next product was announced today, and that is going to be a smartphone.

Amazing. And those ear pieces had, if I remember correctly, a little LED on the side. so I think it showed you like what song was playing which I don't know if that makes any sense right because you can't see it but other people could see it

for my dog walk I want it to be like don't talk to me don't listen to a podcast I don't mean to be I'm talking to the police right now I'm calling the police right now but if somebody confirmed for me that the thing on the side was actually an LED readout

because I thought that would be cool like these little LEDs I saw somebody had a USB cable now that told you in a little tiny LED on the side of it what the charging speed was, you know, 60 watts, I guess, or what is it, kilowatts or watts, it's watts. And it just said like, you know, 60 or 40.

Because you know when you plug in your phone, you're like, am I getting high speed charging, you don't know, and you're like, I assume I am, I don't know. I thought that was kind of cool. So I like these idea of the LED on every device. Like, why doesn't the back of my iPhone or my iPad have like an LED that just gives me, like little updates, like messages or whatever.

So when my phone is upside down, I can see the battery percentage, right? Totally. Wouldn't that be cool if you said the battery percentage? We've been goofing off with the Samsung flip, not the fold, but the one that actually flips clothes, like a good old-fashioned flip phone.

Well, I love that. And it is absolutely delightful, and it folds up into a little wallet-sized square, and then the outside has a little teeny. It's an LCD. No, I bought it for my son, and then he decided he didn't like it, and he went back to an iPhone,

but I kept it because I was like, this thing is awesome, and I'm going to maybe have to use it as a freaking Bluetooth device. It's my Apple devices. We're not connected to my car. Oh, I have a tip for you. If you use Google Fi, you can get like a free data sim. And it will just charge you like 10 bucks for your data. So that's so funny, that's exactly what I did for this flip, the Samsung flip, to basically use it as like a Bluetooth burner phone.

It's good to have the interview. It doesn't look like there's an LED on it, though. It's like got a little LCD on the outside. It does not have an LED, the flip, but it does have a little LCD. on the outside so that I don't have to pick the phone up to see what's happening on. It's just like a little bo bo bo. But the earpiece does have the LCD on it, right?

The earpiece, oh, sorry, that was about that name. It does not have an LED. It does not look like I just watch your view. I'm looking at it. It says nothing ear. Is that just branding? It's just branding on the side of it? That's made to look like it?

It's too bad. It looks like it should be a light. You sure? I see what you're saying. Yeah. It says nothing on it, but I don't know. Maybe that's just meant to look like that. meant to look like it actually is an LCD and they're goofing on you.

Anyway, I'm excited. I like the idea of- If you could watch the video on here. You could like- Oh, this is the phone. Okay. No, no, no, this is the software for the, uh, ear pods. What is it the software do?

Um, you could essentially assign the tax, the settings for how much treble, how much base you want. Oh, okay. That's cool. It's got a little bit of those. Yeah. which is, I think, more than the AirPods have,

because of course, Apple's like, we want you to also buy the AirPods Max. And if you want to equal it, well, they have an equalizer in iTunes music. I'm all over the place now in the brain. Nick, do you know if these Sennheisers that I use as my ear monitors have a version with a microphone?

Because I'm thinking, I'm getting so used to having these in my ear and they're so good that I would love to have these for phone calls, but I don't know where the microphone would come from. I don't, but I can, I know I can use them as a dongle, you know, like with a dongle, on my phone, I could listen and have these directly into my ear. Because having the sound very subtly deep in your ear canal, to me, is the most delightful,

you know? I don't know. Do you like these flush with your ear? I actually find these slightly painful. Really? Well, maybe you need to change the size of them. I did. I have the tiniest ones.

I have a little baby head. Baby, baby ear head. I'm like beetle juice when he has the little tiny head. So after a couple hours of wearing these. Two hours you can last or something? Yeah. If we like, when we do a full two eyes, our thing, then I have to, I'm like, ow.

But let's talk about the phone. Okay. It has a transparent design, Snapdragon Power. This was all just announced today. They did their, Carl Pay did the firm's first major keynote where they sort of announced it, but like didn't really.

It was mostly just sort of an extended teaser. But they say that it's coming out in summer 2020. Presumably it's going to run Android because they all do, yes. but it will feature a light interface overlay dubbed nothing OS. It's supposed to look a little bit different. I'll probably have a lot of this sort of like similar typeface that looks like LEDs but isn't supposed to be, quote, fast and smooth. Are we ready for a new phone maker? I mean, it does sort of feel.

Sure, why not? It's not about hardware for me. Like we have a operating system duopoly. So for me, like new hardware is not exciting because I'm ready for the chip in my brain. Well, you're on the iOS ecosystem. And it's impossible to get out to. You don't experience like all the Verizon, I'm sorry, all the Android goodies,

except I guess on your burner phone. I went to the Galaxy with the crazy camera. I don't know, with like the 13 or something, I guess they're using the same numbering system as iPhone to keep pace with them. And I have to say, it's an extraordinary phone. Oh, yeah. And Android is so much better at like email

and the apps seem faster and the photos are better. And the thing that sucks is iMessage and the browser is faster. Producers, how mad are you going to be if I go and get the Samsung S-22 plus because it is pretty hot? And then I introduce a green bubble in our I message. Like, you can't do that.

I know. That is the only thing holding us on right now. It is. Slack group. We can go to Signal. Oh, that's true. We can go to Signal. Which isn't the worst idea.

All my poker groups and guy groups are going to Signal now. So I'm kind of in Signal. I would move our group to Signal. All right. it. Rachel, see, the Gen Z is understand. She's like, no, the group chat would be ugly. The green bubble is like the kiss of death, but we could

move to Signal. I just, Signal to me, I think like, I message, you build up this you know, legal and hackable, you know, debt. Whereas on Signal, I think it all deletes after a certain period of time and is encrypted.

The annoying thing about Signal, like the thing, the killer app that is IMessage is the cross platform. the ability to text on your computer. And Signal, I think, doesn't have that. No, no, Signal does have desktop apps. And so that's the other thing is when I go on my Windows computer, with my Windows computer, I cannot do I message.

So sometimes I'm like, you'll see me doing a flurry on Slack because I'm on my Windows computer. Then you see me doing a flurry of I message because I'm on my Mac. Oh, let's switch to Signal. Well, let's just try it for a week. We'll switch it for a week. And then I'll know if I should switch all the way to Android because I've been trying to get them to fix this Bluetooth thing for like months now.

And they just don't believe me. The number one thing that the government could do in terms of taking action against Apple is the App Store and opening that up the pricing and the payments, which I believe they should. You should be able to use any payment system and you should be able to not go through the App Store. So I hope that the government cracks the App Store monopoly and allows any App Store. In other words, Amazon could have that app store that charges 5%. And you could use your Amazon Prime to buy stuff. and if I choose to download that on my iPhone, it will install apps from the Amazon App Store.

Like, they should force that. The second thing they should force is interoperability of iMessage. And if they don't make it iMessage interoperable at a desktop app for other apps, they should then just put the screws to Apple. And Apple should do it as an opportunity. It's stupid on Apple's part to not just make iMessage a juggerna. I message would be the number one messaging app in the world.

Yeah. Full stop. All right. That's enough news for today. Maybe it's too much news for today. It might be, but you know what? We're not sorry. Sorry, not sorry.

Sorry, not sorry. And taking a break from the news, next up, let's get to my interview with Ben Miller's founder and CEO of Chronify. We have an investment in that. Yum, yum, yum. So the launch accelerator is in its 24th cohort. I've been sitting down with some founders once a week to dig into their businesses. So far, I've talked with Craig Zingerline from Growth University.

That was episode 1387, Hosea O'Dornias, from Air Pals on 1392. Today, I have Ben Miller of Chronify. And I've actually been waiting for this one. No reason because Chronifies consumer software focused on personal finances. Hey, Ben. Hi, nice to see you. I'm not saying we all need all the help we can get. I'm just saying that we do.

See above. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about Chronify, the F is capitalized. Yeah. So right at the end there, you got FI, which is kind of an abbreviation, you know, an acronym, an acronym for financial independence. And so basically that's what it's all about. It's personal finance software that's geared towards helping people simplify their finances

by understanding them in terms of time instead of money. And so how we weave in financial independence is it's all about, you know, here's how long it'll be until I'm financial. financially independent. Here's how long I can afford to be financially independent right now, et cetera. Got it. So the Krona is time. Time. The FI is financial independence. How do you have a thesis? I mean, is this sort of related? I hear so much about the fire movement, you know, the financial independence retire early. Like, is that baked into this or is it about setting your own goals and then tracking your progress? Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I kind of came

into the fire community, so to speak, a few years ago, you know, first started with bloggers and folks like that and then just went deep down the rabbit hole. And so that's, that's initially who I thought I was building this for, you know, just a way for people to optimize that process. I mean, it's, it essentially grew out of the, the tool that I built for myself, um, to convince myself I wasn't crazy to, uh, leave a high paid job and go do something more fulfilling. Yeah. And then have you found though, you said you initially built it with that in mind. I would imagine they're into it, but are you finding a broader audience? Yeah, I am.

It's, it's, it's been, it's been great to see the, you know, the most, the part that I'm most excited about is that it's, it's functioning more as like a tent broadener than like an optimizer for people who are already in the movement. And so to be clear, it's not just about, you know, people who eat, sleep and breathe the fire movement. It's, I'm finding more resonance than I would have expected with, uh, with just the general personal finance community. Because exactly like you said at the, at the top of our chat here, it's, it's just people

don't know how to handle personal finance. You know, like even people who went to fancy universities and have, you know, high power jobs are just clueless because it just keeps getting more complex every year. And, uh, and yeah, unless you're, and we just, we just don't educate on it. I guess that's the root of the problem. Yeah. So there are tools like this that already exist in some way, right? There's like mint and various personal finance trackers. And tell us how this one's different. Yeah. It's, um, the things that we see in the, market already, you mentioned Mint, you know, other examples would be like Wynab or Monarch or folks like that. I think they do a great job of what they're designed for, which is looking at,

in many cases, the past, you know, here's what I spent last month, their budgeting apps, that type of thing. Then there are other companies that do a great job of looking at the future. So investing, you know, so that be your personal capital, wealth front, et cetera. Where we're trying to slide in is in the present. And so by that, I mean, we're trying to help people answer that question of how does what I'm doing right now impact my overall financial health. Basically, I used to be the weirdo who was like sitting there in my bed for the first five minutes of every day on Mint, trying to convince myself everything was okay. And it always kind of left me empty handed on that front because there was no what does it all mean element. And so that's

what I'm trying to supply to the market. Got it. So since we can't watch a demo, obviously, you know, everybody will have the chance to go and see your pitch in your demo. But since we can't watch that. Give me an example of what that, what might my five minutes in bed look like? Yeah, on chronify. On chronify. Basically, you know, we try to make it really, really simple so that it's not just about like, hey, here's what you spent last month and it's not just about here's how much money you've got in the tank, but it's about getting the context of your entire financial situation boiled down to simplicity. So you can see not only where those things are, but how they relate to one another. And then most importantly, boiling it down to something that's intuitive and real, that is time rather than something that's abstract,

And hard to understand. You know, everybody's probably seen those illustrations in like the Wall Street Journal of like, here's how many pallets of $100 bills, a trillion dollars is or that type of thing. The point is it's just like a million dollars, you know, for personal finance examples, means something totally different to different people. But time is something everybody can understand. Once you see, oh, yeah, this coffee habit is delaying my retirement by three months. How do I feel about that?

Then you're able to make decisions that are aligned with your long-term goals. And so step one, boiling it down to simplicity, being able to go, oh, I've got, you know, five years in the bank. So how do I feel about that? Do I feel strong enough to take a risk, et cetera? And then dynamically track it over time. You know, over the last month, I got six months closer to retirement. What's that coming from? How do I feel about that? You know, is there something else I want to be doing with my life. Got it. So time is the ultimate quantifying mechanism here. It's sort of like, I'm actually thinking of my fitness pal, which I used to track calories. And when I find that I'm getting close, I basically am like, oh, no, I have

to go to the workout store and buy some more calories. Yeah. It sounds like you're describing it almost that way. Like, if you see that a month get shaved off of, you know, now I have to work a month longer in my life. Like, that could be motivating at almost any age. Oh, absolutely. And you're totally right.

I mean, it's all about tradeoffs. It's not like a top down, thou shalt not ever go to Starbucks again sort of thing. It's more of a, hey, listen, here's where this fits into the context of the rest of your life. Now, you make your own educated decision. Does this align with your values or not? If you love your job and you live for Starbucks, then great, do it three times as much. But if those aren't the case, then, you know, give it some thought. Everyone always says Starbucks, but like, what's the real bad habit? Yeah. I mean, that's the, that's the tricky part is, like, sometimes your bad habits aren't actually all that bad, you know, like the one-two punch of this thing is like everybody understands

this whole like trim the fat side of things. Everybody should be getting rid of those. Like, Leave my Starbucks alone, man. Give me some like actionable intelligence. Right. Yeah, something you can actually operate on. The thing that I've found, you know, from using this type of approach for so long, has been actually, in some instances, it pushes me towards spending where I otherwise wouldn't, you know, for example, on the gym membership, you know, like right now I'm paying

for a jujitsu gym membership that costs like two grand a year. And so it's like, that's a lot of money. You know, I can feel my wallet getting lighter. But because it's worth it, because it's aligned with my long term health and well being, then it's just like, okay, well, if money is not for that, then what is it for? And so being able to not only evaluate where something is ruled out, but also where something is ruled in, where it's my responsibility to spend the cash. Gotcha. So like coffee fine, maybe beer and gambling. Gambling? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. But I like the longevity element built in here too, which is like,

you were going to want to retire and you're going to want to live longer. And is that the kind of context that does surface in the app, like, this is in the green because it's helping you not die. Yeah, it's, it's interesting because it's, it's like I started out in my job, for example, with like my old job. I was working at a big bank trading foreign exchange derivatives. And so I had this plan that was like, I'm going to get a giant pile of money and live off the interest. And then it was just like, okay, no, this is not. I have that plan too. Right. We all do to some extent. And so I basically, I realized about myself, like, this is not going to work for me. One, for those of you who are watching, not listening, like, I don't have any

hair. Like, that's, I left my hair on the trading floor at Goldman. So it's like, what else is it going to take for me? And then, so I wasn't going to be able to stomach it. And then, you know, the other side of that was just that, like, even at a job that I wasn't necessarily, you know, in love with going to be my always and forever type of thing, a week and a half into vacation, it's like, I get to a point where it's like, I'm itching to get back to work. And so whether it's a feature or a bug, like, no working forever. That's not my ideal form of life. And So I wound up realizing, like, I was pursuing financial independence ASAP and happiness eventually when I had it exactly backwards.

I should be pursuing happiness ASAP and financial independence eventually. Yeah. Well, I hate to transition from this really wonderful, like, philosophical examination of priorities to pricing. Yeah. But should someone want to examine their priorities in this way, how is the pricing? How's the business model work here? Yeah, it's just a straight subscription model.

So it's $10 a month after a 30-day free trial. I like that a lot from the standpoint that I think people are waking up to the fact that if they're not paying particularly in financial services, then they are what's being sold. And so this way, the only incentive that we have as a company is to provide the best possible product for our customers. And so with that in mind, you know, it's compared to its alternatives of going to, you know, hang out with an RIA or a CFP for an hour for, you know, 150 bucks plus, you know, like that type of thing. And it's pretty easy to access for the people who are willing to, willing to grip it, rim it and do it themselves. And then it seems like it's working month over month revenue growth is 22% and 22. Yeah, exactly.

I'm all about the two's here. Yeah, it's it's working. You know, people are jumping on. I think we're getting a lot of a tailwind from the great resignation. You know, like I sort of feel like I'm in the right place at the right. time and from the standpoint that like a couple years ago when I started building this, people weren't necessarily thinking about time, money, happiness, you know, how do they all play off of each other? And now suddenly great resignation, et cetera, people are. People are,

people are paying attention and trying to make those decisions. And so, uh, so yeah, it's, it seems to be finding a spot in the market. How big is your team? Is it, it sounds like it was just you in the beginning. Yeah, you're, uh, you're looking at it for now. I am, uh, you know, I've hired contractors and things along the way to handle the parts where I'm particularly, you know, out of my depth or need some help. But I'm currently in the process of hiring and, and hopefully going to be getting to a zone where it's no longer a one-man team for very long. I was going to say, that's probably not helping your happiness to work ratio right there. Yeah, I mean, not to mention, I've got three kids under six. And so the, my days are at max

strain right now. Okay, I'm going to let you get back to that then. Ben Miller, founder and CEO of Chronify. Thanks so much for the time. Good luck. Thanks a lot. Hey, everyone. Producer Nick here. I want to tell you about the SaaS. Syndicate. If you're a founder of a SaaS company with a product and market, our investment team wants to talk to you. Head over to the syndicate.com slash SaaS SAAS to apply to raise from the SaaS Syndicate. And you can join Jason Syndicate of over 9,000 accredited investors at the syndicate.com.

Producer Justin here, know a cool startup? Check out openscouting.com, where anyone can refer a startup to our investment team here at launch. Even if you don't know the founder, if you're the first to flag a company for us and we decide to invest, you'll get 5K in cash or 10% of our carry. Hey everybody, producer Rachel here. Are you an early stage startup that has product and market, some traction, and are looking to raise at least $500,000? Apply today to Remote Demo Day for your chance to pitch to over 9,000 investors in Jason's Syndicate.

Submit your application at Remote Demoday.com. Our next event is on April 27th. And if you want to learn how to invest in startups from the world's greatest angel investor, And no, we're not talking about Chris Saka, then head to Angel.com to apply. The four-hour workshop costs $300 and all proceeds are donated to charity. To date, we've donated over $175,000 to various charities, and you can see the full list at angel.com university slash charity.