This Week in Startups - Kevin Rose on his product philosophy, Reddit & Digg’s inverse journeys, Twitter’s recent innovations & more | E1185

Episode Date: March 16, 2021

Check out True Ventures: https://trueventures.com FOLLOW Kevin: https://twitter.com/kevinrose FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis

This week in startups is brought to you by Rippling. Rippling helps thousands of fast-growing startups automate their HR and IT, from their team's payroll and benefits to devices and apps. See how at rippling.com slash twist. Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website. Go to Squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, use offer code twist to see.

save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And Zendesk. Listen to Zendesk's new podcast, sit down, start up to hear conversations with Zendesk's leaders and the founders, CEOs, and makers on how to start up, even when the world goes topsy-turvy. Download and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of this week in startups. I am really excited for one of my oldest friends and one of the original OG, uh, web 2.0 gangsters, uh, and Silicon Valley notable individuals, whatever, creators. He's been on the pod. I think this will be the fourth appearance, Kevin, uh, 2011, episode 2018, 2018, and here we are four years later. Uh, welcome back to the program, Kevin Rose.

Thanks for having me. It's good to see you again. It's good to see you, brother. God, we haven't seen each other. It's got to be close to two years, right? Because you don't live in the bay. Yeah, it's been quite a while. I got out of the bay. You stayed. Your life. I basically came here. You know, I was living in L.A. all that time. I've only been in the bay for five years. Why did you leave exactly? We just burnt down on it? Well, there was a few reasons. One, we were having our first kid, and we just realized, like, San Francisco is not the place when you're raising a base. baby. Like it just, and we love Portland. We came up here during the summertime, multiple summers in a row, fell in love with the city, the farmer's markets, the food scene, great beers, the rivers here, wild salmon. Like, there's a lot to love. And no, no state, no sales tax. Like, it's just awesome. Yeah. And we love the outdoors and we love the hiking trails and all that good stuff. So, yeah,

I ended up just building a house here. And by the time it was done, we had like a three month fold and we moved up here to our home. Fantastic. And you started, I mean, I know that you became a partner at True Adventures. Is that a full-time gig for you? Or you like a venture part? It's a full-time gig. Yeah, I'm a full partner there. Oh, wow. I didn't realize that. And how long, you've been doing that since 2017? You probably, because I started off as a venture partner there. I didn't know if I wanted to go back and do, you know, more entrepreneurship. And it was just like, at some point, I was like, you know what? I'm just not going to build anymore. I'll just rather have other people go. I know you had Mike Mazur on the show a while back who's running zero and

you know, Mike's an old colleague and I love the fact that he's like operational and running things. I don't want to run things anymore, especially with a couple little girls. And so it's nice for me to be able to just have one hat and just have it be the investor hat, you know. What do you love about being an investor? What do you miss about being an entrepreneur, if anything? Well, I would say, I mean, there's that rush you get when you launch a new product. Yeah, I mean, you know how it is. Like you put something out there and you get, you know, all of a sudden, a thousand, 10,000, 100,000 people using something. And it's like super exciting.

Like, you know, we have, there's nothing beats that. That is like the ultimate peak as a founder is to have people using something that you created, you know, that you dreamt up. So that I do miss. I would say what I don't miss is managing people is making those initial hires that are really hard to make, you know, finding the right engineering team, fighting for talent. that stuff sucks. But, you know, on the investing side, it's also fun to identify stuff early on.

Like when you see something where you can close your eyes and say, if this works, you know, three, five years from now, this is going to be a multi-billion dollar business. Like, just feeling that in your gut, it just gets you all excited and it's, you know, hard to sleep and all the good stuff that comes along with that. It's so nice being able to make the bet. and be part of the team without having to do that heavy lifting you're talking about, which is, oh, my Lord, just filling one position can take 100 hours, 200 hours. The person then gets poached by somebody else six months later.

And it's just like getting punched in the face over and over and over again. It's being a boxer. And, you know, I think if you start as young as you did and I did, you know, after a while, your body just starts to hurt from being in the ring. And it's not even like you're getting knocked out. You're just getting a bloody nose every single time. And you're just like, you kind of like fixed up and you're like, okay, I'm good, I'm good.

Yeah, nose is still good. And then he go and it happens again and it happens again. And you're just like, after a while you're like, I'm done with this. So it's tough. Putting ice bags on. Yeah. Waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweat. Am I going to run out of money?

Yeah. That's another whole scary thing is that, round of financing. And then the amount of time that goes into fundraising is just like, ah, it's a lot. The other thing that's people I think don't understand is that it never ends. So you're like, oh, if only I could be like Zuck or, you know, Uber or if I got to like Tesla's level and it's like, no, it just becomes bigger problems and more at stake. And even those big companies, right? At any point in time, they can go off the rails. Yeah. Yeah, the question is like, is it in your DNA? Do you have that like mental and like

fortitude to go and be one of those very elite few? And I realize that for me, I'm like really good at the kind of early stage, like the genesis of the idea, iterating, brainstorming, wireframing, UI, Ux stuff, launching something, getting something off the ground with in just a couple of months. Like, that's what I love to do. I'm not so good, and I really don't enjoy the scaling piece of it. Like, after you get to 50 plus people, it's just like, it's a whole other risk of set.

Yeah. And the joy goes down because you didn't hire the 50th person. Right. And you meet them and you're kind of like, I might not even like this person. I wouldn't have hired this person. How this person wind up in my organization, right? I mean, everybody has that moment in their own company when they're like, Like, you go to work and you're like, I don't like coming to work anymore.

Did you have that at some point in your career? You don't have to say when or which company, but did you have that moment where you just dreaded having to go in and push the rock up the hill? Or did you get out before you got to that? No, I've had that moment a few times. And I think it's because just in full transparency, like I was just so immature and didn't really understand how to ask for help. and because of that, I just wasn't as well-rounded as I should have been

on whether it comes down to hiring or managing folks. And so I made a lot of bad decisions. When did you realize that? I'm curious. When did you come to that? And how did you? Because I think there's a lot of founders right now, and we work with them, who, you know, they probably have that voice in the back of their head.

Like, I don't know what to do here. But if I ask anybody or I tell anybody, I don't know what to do. They're going to fire me or I'm going to look stupid. when in fact it's the exact opposite, but we all as young entrepreneurs or nascent entrepreneurs have that moment. Yeah.

When did you unpack it? Do you remember the moment when you realized, I remember being, I just done this. Yeah, I remember honestly, it just has, it comes from watching other entrepreneurs

and how curious they are. Like, I remember there was a time when Zuckerberg came over to my office and he sat down. He's like, at the time Facebook was around the size of dig, like it wasn't,

they hadn't had its full blowup moment. yet. And, you know, so we were kind of peers and he sat down and he just asked so many questions. Like so many questions. Yep. And they were just like, and he was so curious. And some of them, I remember just being like kind of shocked that he was being that vulnerable and just be willing to be like a sponge and just ask like the silly question, you know? And I, and I realize like that is is one of the things I feared was, was letting, like, letting that side and opening up that side to my investors, to my board members, to others around me, that I didn't understand these pieces of the business. And I didn't know how to seek out the proper mentors, you know? And so that was,

that wasn't until much later. Even like the mighty Kevin Rose, right? It's so crazy. Because, you know, from the outside, everybody looks at you and says, well, he's a visionary. He sees things, a couple of years before everybody else and he executes, I mean, I've always told you this. I think, you know, pound for pound as a product person, there's, you're elite. Like there's 10 people, I would say yourself, Elon, Steve Jobs, Alex from Calm, you know, who just, when they make a product, it just comes out great. Like, I just think you're that elite. I appreciate you saying that. That's nice you to say.

No, I've always felt that. I mean, I mean, actually. But, you know, I realized it over time because when I first met you when you were doing dig, I I just saw the product and I was like, that thing's going to change everything. It was so clear to me and I think everybody. Let's face it, this new world of remote work is here to stay. We all know that. And so are all of the HR and IT headaches that come with it.

Like, how do you register your startup with dozens of state tax agencies, right? You had some employees, they were living right near your office. And then they decided, you know what? Yolo, I'm going to move somewhere else during the pandemic. Well, you are going to need to have your startup register. with dozens of state tax agencies now. Or you have to comply with a gazillion different local labor laws. Well, Rippling, which I use for my fully remote team over at inside, can answer those

questions for you. They make it super easy to manage all of your local and remote employees and contractors, whether they work from HQ or Timbuktu. When you hire people in new states, Rippling can automatically register your startup with each state tax agency and keep you complying with all the different local labor laws. You know, the stuff that no one likes to deal with, all that headache. They're there for you. Rippling also let you onboard your new hires in literally 90 seconds.

You can instantly set up their payroll benefits, and of course apps like Slack and GitHub. You can even ship them a work laptop with all the software and security they need all installed. We love Rippling because it takes a lot of complexity off our plate, so the team can focus on important stuff like creating great newsletters, which is what they do over there. And now, thanks to Rippling's new PEO option, your employees can likely access better Fortune 500 level benefits for less than other platforms. So if you're looking for an easier way to run your startup remotely or just a better way to manage your HR and IT, visit rippling.com slash twist. That's Rippling, R-I-P-P-L-I-N-G dot com slash twist. And then, you know, I had that same moment when I looked at zero fasting, um, which your fingerprints are all over and watching that product

come out, I was like, God, you know, the last time I opened an app and I saw something this good might have been like calm or maybe like Uber 2.0. Like when they, the first one was kind of janky, they really rushed it. But maybe the second version. What do you think when you look at product, what is your product philosophy? Have you thought about it? Because this would be the book that if you wrote, I mean, this is the book you're born to write.

Like, it's just how to approach product. What's your philosophy? Well, I mean, the one distraction that very creative people have, and I'm not saying that I'm this very creative person, but I have some creativity. The one problem that a lot of product people that I work with that are on the creative side tend to have is they're just filled with ideas. They have a lot of ideas. And because of that, they have a massive laundry list of things that they want to go build. And so, you know, for me, I'm kind of in that camp where I will say, wouldn't it be cool if these 30 things existed?

But the discipline you have to have is how can you boil it down to go build the two or three things and a product that just absolutely must exist for that. product to get off the ground. So rather than try and boil the ocean, you say, how can I do these core couple of things really, really, really well? And see if that works. And that'll shorten your development timeline down to just a couple of months versus six months, eight months, or however long it takes to launch something for most people. And so it allows me to test the water. So zero is a great example. You know, I was like, I was big into intermittent fasting. I loved the science that was coming out from Dr. Volter Longo at a USC. There was some great fantastic human placebo double-blinded like the gold standard for science data that was coming out around autophagy and improved glucose

levels and a whole slew of things around chemotherapy and helping people go through chemotherapy with a lot less side effects. And it was just promising all around. So did a little search in the app store. There was no, nothing dedicated to fasting. You know, this was five years ago, whatever, what is five, six years ago, maybe five years ago. And there was nothing out there. I was like, well, this is going to be something. This is going to be a trend. And it's going to blow up pretty quick. So why not just create, put your toe in the water, get an ink, get something out there. Right. That is very basic. So I'm like, okay, let's just make a timer. Well, why do you need a timer? My phone has a timer. Okay. But does it track historically how you've done on your fast? How many hours

you doing for each fast. And so it was a timer with a, with a, uh, basically a calendar. So you could see how have you done fast over time, your average fast, all that just stuff. Yeah. Your streaks. Yeah. Your streaks, things like that. Basically what you would have done in a Google sheet. Like when fasting started and I heard you and Kevin, I'm you and Tim Ferriss talking about it. I was like, oh, okay. And I just like, okay, let me just put my start and end time. And then I saw it. I got zero fasting. I pay for the subscription one. And my brother and my. And my. other friend, all of us were trying to lose weight. We all started doing it. We all lost 10 pounds. It was just like unbelievable. And now the product, it's so interesting. The dipping of your

toe or the building the, you know, the simplest version of your vision that solves that one acute problem leads to a bunch of other opportunities opening up. How do you know what's the next piece to do and how to have that restraint? Because I think what you're talking about here is restraint, right? In execution. And there's two, if I can repeat it back to you to make sure I understand, and for the audience, there are two components here. There's this essentialism, you know, in terms of the functionality, which makes it very clear the user proposition, I would assume, so people understand what you've built. But it also lets you get something into market quickly, correct? That's right. That's right. And then I think the next series of features, there's going to be

two pieces. One is the, go back to your laundry list of things that you haven't yet built that you want to build. And the second thing, and an even more important one, is that your community is going to be, like, if you have traction, your community is going to start telling you what they want. And so, and you can tease that out of them. So one of the things that Mike was really good at that we did is we like put together, uh, potential features that we could, um, introduce and then do surveys to one and one hundred users and just kind of like, see if you had to stack rank them, what were the next features that people wanted to see in the product itself. And we already knew that this was our, a list of stuff we want to build anyway, but let's let's let the community decide and sort

which features come next. And so, you know, that was, that's a great way to kind of like continue to introduce things that are going to be, uh, the communities get excited about. And then it just continued to snowball from there. And that's when I realized this needs a dedicated team. Mazur took the, the, the asset off of me. Um, you know, I kept some ownership just for, for being along with it, but let him, you know, go and run it day to day and, and, and, and go build it out. So, yeah, now that business has... So you got your rush of the launch without the scalp moment.

And it's doing fantastic because there is a very interesting feature, which has your fingerprints on it as well. And it is at the top, when I first got it, it said, like, there's 800 people fasting with zero. Yeah. And I just opened it up now and there's 570,000 people fasting with zero. Did you come up with that idea of actually putting in there, how many people are using it? Or where did you find that inspiration?

And what's the point of that sharing the consumption? Yeah, I mean, we've done that with all the stuff that I touch. You're right. That was good for you to point out because I thought it was really important to have a live number of how many people are using this. And then we did the same thing on the meditation app that I built, like the number of people that are meditating right now or the number of people that are doing breathing exercises right now. Just like you want to know that as a user coming into this, it's like how can you build the. How can you create this idea of I'm part of the community and I'm doing this somewhat difficult thing.

Like when you first start fasting for the first time, I mean, like anyone can do a 12-hour fast, 13 hours, like, it's actually tough for some people. And then you go to 16 hours and that, some people will, they just like can't even imagine. They'll lose their minds going 16 hours without food. But, you know, when you're in there and you can tap on that and you can see, oh, there's 20,000 or 100,000 other. people doing a 16-hour fast right now. I'm not alone. Like other people are doing this. You get some sense of other people are being successful, so can I. And so anytime you can reveal a little bit of

that and pepper that into a product, I think is a good thing. Yes. And for people who don't know, the first time on the web that the like button existed was on a site called dig.com to educate people. Because now you and I are so old, Kevin, that people don't know the first projects we work on. Like, they know you as a venture capitalist or maybe because of zero. They don't know dig. They don't know weblogs, Inc. Or Silicon Valley reporter. They're just like, oh, you're the Uber guy or you're the This Week and Startups

guy. It's kind of funny. It's so funny. I've had people, honestly, it was one time. I think it was, we had this like temp nanny come over and she's like, I looked up your name and I saw that you created zero. Oh my God. And I was like, holy shit.

Like, everybody's forgotten everything you've done except for your most recent thing, you know, and like that happened to be the thing that just like spoke to her, which is great. I think it's very important for creators to understand this. And, you know, it's actually a very interesting moment where you yourself still don't think that you're a lead creator or creative. You're like, I guess I'm sort of creative. I think you're at the height of product creativity. I don't think it gets any better, Kevin.

I think you can admit that you're a creative now. I appreciate that. I enjoy it. Is that you revere, you know, other creators so much that you don't want to put yourself in the group or? Well, you know, it's, it's like I'm trying to, um, I think that one of the things that I, I try to reinforce myself over and over again is that I, I don't want to get a big head about all this stuff, you know, whether it be on the investing side or on the, on the,

creation side. And like, I feel like, um, that, that's an important, that, that's a thing that you can let your ego get wrapped up on in a lot of this stuff. And I, I try, I try to like just tell myself like you're you're just like everyone else like don't don't don't don't um don't buy your own bullshit like don't don't try and you know so I don't know I've made a lot of mistakes too so I'm I'm I think that if you try and fail as many times I can you will get some home runs just be like this year number of times you've had the up at bat right so I think you're probably a little better than that but I do think there's something to that because you can get high on your own supply that's right very quickly

and it's so random in our industry, what clicks, what doesn't, there is so much luck involved, you know. That's right. I'm not sure what your top investment is, but what is your top investment and then how did it go down? Because I'm sure there is some randomness to it. Yeah. If I hadn't seen Travis coming out of a party on the Embarcadero and said, yeah, put me down for whatever in Uber, it wouldn't have happened, right? Like, it just happened to be out that night. The round could have closed.

I mean, there's, my life is filled with these stories. Like, this is, this is the story of investors. Like, I feel like there's the, the stuff that I really, really sought out, which I would say, like, I would put that in the, like, like, I did a good job at, like, getting this deal done. Like, I, I, I went and tracked down Jack. I had them on my podcast. I convinced him to be an angel and square. Like, that was a massive, like, congratulations. Wow.

But, but, you know, it's like, I think that that I'm proud of. The stuff that is the crazy stuff is that I've had. had cryptocurrency investments outpaced that return just because somebody was like, hey, do you want to throw in some cash on this crazy new up-and-coming project? And you put a little bit of money in and all of a sudden it turns into a boatload and you're like, holy crap. Like that's, that's insane. This is a weird world that we live in. You know, it's just. Yeah. So it's a little bit of everything. It's a little bit of luck. It's a little bit of you get excited about a project. And then there's a lot of stuff that goes to zero as well. Like, you know, Kevin from ship, who I thought was a

fantastic entrepreneur. I mean, he, I was just chatting with him the other day and he's like, oh, it's crazy. Like, shit, everyone thought that was going to be the next Uber. Like, that thought was going to be massive. It felt like it. Yeah, he had a 40 million. I remember he had like a 40 million dollar valuation. I was like, I'm, I'm really sorry. He wanted me as an investor. I was like, I can't justify this. I invested at Uber at 5 million. Like, this makes no sense to me. Like, $40 million? You're further behind than when I invested in Uber. And that was like a weakness on my part is that I was actually thinking that that first 8x made a, difference, right?

When it's the last 8X that actually makes the difference on these investments. As we see over and over again, from websites and online stores to marketing tools and analytic Squarespace is the all-in-one platform to build a beautiful online presence and run your business. With Squarespace, you can blog or publish content easily, promote your business, announce upcoming events or special projects, sell products and services of all kind, and more. No matter the problem, Squarespace is the answer because they have beautiful templates by world-class designers, powerful e-commerce functionality built right in, and everything is optimized

for mobile right out of the box. You have built-in SEO, free and secure hosting, and of course, 24-7 award-winning customer support. And back in 2020, when we were in the middle of the pandemic, we decided to create Remote Demo Day.com for founders to pitch thousands of angel investors, And I said, hey, let's get a beautiful site up immediately. My team immediately went to work with Squarespace. And it's been a huge success for us. We found a number of amazing investments. And really just planting a flag and building a beautiful website and tweeting it and sharing it.

That's what makes the magic happen. People come, they go, wow, this looks credible. This is beautiful. You know what? It was just an idea 15 minutes ago, and now it's a beautiful presence online. So go to Squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. Squarespace.com slash twist. Squarespace.com slash twist.

and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code Twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Go to Squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. I want to go back to creativity for a second. I've known you since you were on GTV, what was that called, G4 TV? G4 TV, yeah, after Tech TV merged with G4. That was 2002 or three? That would have been 2000. Well, we met in 2004 because that's when I launched Dig.

And so we met in L.A. at a sushi restaurant. Yep. Shortly after maybe like just a couple months. I mean, you saw a dig really early, man. We were like maybe three months out or something. You had spent $3,000 on a developer or $2,000 on a developer to build it. And I was just watching the, I was like inside of Google Analytics or the server logs. And Brian Alvey was, I would have him run the server logs through some script.

And then he'd send them to me. And I'm just like studying it like a maniac. Like, where did the traffic come from? And how do we get more? And I was like, what the fuck is this big thing? How is this thing go from nothing to every one of our stories? It's a number one source of traffic. I was like, this thing's going to be bigger than us.

We have to buy it quick. It's like, Homemark Cuban. And I was like, can I have a million dollars? He's like, for what? I was like, to buy dig. He's like, okay. I was like, great, I'll be right back. You, you have the hottest properties on the internet.

Those were the hottest sites. Yeah, you had the mall joystick, everything in. Well, you know, I got very lucky, you know, when you were talking about talent, the first thing that came to my. was Peter Rojas because I, you know, I'm a promoter and a marketer more than a product builder. I mean, I'll give myself some modest credit as like an okay builder of product. I think you're elite. I'm okay.

Mahalo is great, by the way. Which one? Mahalo. I know. I mean, I look back on it. I was like, oh my God, I should have stayed focused because I got so many things right. I knew that search would change from 10 blue links to what it is now, comprehensive search. Right.

I came up with that name, comprehensive search. What if the images and the video and content were mixed with the search results? So I had the right idea. Oh, you had the perfect. I mean, you were just like 10 years too soon. Yeah. That is, that is so much PTSD to be that close, you know? It was a beautiful design, too.

Everything about it was great. I thought that was a fantastic product. Well, I appreciate that. You know, the way I got that was I said to myself, what is the most beautiful, now that I've been anointed by Sequoia and they've given me money and other investors have come in, I'm going to buy the best logo ever. And I said, I love the Firefox and the Mozilla logos. And the, what was their email called, Thunderbird?

Yeah, Thunderbird with like the bird on top of the. Yes. Yeah. And so I was like, who designed the Firefox logo and hold on, I got to look it up. I forgot the guy's name, John Hicks. And so, because I had seen you do this with Dig. You had a fucking great logo. and the Dignation logo was great.

You understood that piece too. And I found John Hicks, who was living in Europe, and I said, I want you to do the logo from a hollow. I got this name. And he's like, you know, it's a six-month-way, whatever. I said, well, how much do you charge? He said, I charge $1,500. I said, I'll give you $3,000 if you do it for me first.

And he said, I'm sorry, I can't do it. I said, five. Such a Jason thing to do. Dead silence. Dead silence. And he goes, Okay. And I said 5,000. I'll send it to you in advance. No kill fear or anything. I'll send you $5,000 today if you do it. And he said, okay. That's amazing. I don't know. Thank you, John Hicks, because once I had that logo and I put it on everything, people were like, that's a beautiful logo.

It was beautiful. Yeah. He put the pulmonary from Hawaii, and I saw it, Kevin, you ever get that tingly feeling when you get something right? Oh, for sure. That was my tingly feeling. I was like, holy fuck. And then I built the end. answers product that had done a Q&A product. As part of it, I was like, okay, if we don't have the search result, let them ask a question, and then we'll let people answer. I built Quora into it. And then I said, build Mahalo dollars, because

I had heard about the money being made in China and virtual games, I was like, just let people get a dollar of Mahalo dollars and then cash them in for logo-based shirts and hats. And it was all working. And then I, it just got taken away from me by that goddamn search engine panda update

that Google did. Oh, interesting. because they... Yeah, they took away all our traffic. Crazy. 90% overnight. E-HOW, myself, WikiHOW. Google was like, you know what?

No more SEO. We're cutting off all the sites and we're going to just redistribute wealth. And they just... We went from a $10 million run rate on EdSense. We're literally making, you know, a couple thousand dollars a day on it. And then they just took it all away.

Wow. Overnight. I was like... And I'm like, I'm calling Sergei. I'm calling Sergey. Megan Smith, I'm calling everybody I know, Marissa. I'm like, please give me my traffic back. They're like, yeah, you know, that's a decision made by the search team.

I'm like, who? And they're like, you know, we don't know. And I was like, you don't know. They're like, yeah, that's a block box. We can't help you. Oh, geez. It was just such a, what, PTSD? You had the same thing with the dig 3.0?

What was it called? Yeah, it was our big redesign. Yeah. I was about to say that was your Vietnam, but I don't think I can make those kind of analogies anymore without being canceled. But that was your unwinnable war. Let me say it that way. Yeah, that was a shift of all of our resources to become more commercial. And it really was against everything the community stood for. And so it was, it was not the, it was in the best interest of the folks that wanted an outcome, meaning like if you're, uh, if you want us to prep for a sale or, you know,

there was a lot of forces that play around that redesign. Yeah, you were, how old were you at that time? You were late 20s? Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, see, this was, I think, the unraveling for you, from my perception. You tell me if I'm anywhere near close. The pressure to build the next Facebook, the next Google, from venture capitalists, the world, whatever, was pushing you to do things that were unnatural,

unobtainable, unsustainable, and then Reddit was, because it had been sold and it was just like left alone and neglected, neglecting meant staying the course. Right. And change meant not staying the course. No, you're exactly right. Like when we looked at Reddit, we thought, okay, here's a community that had, I mean, I think they sold for $10 million or something like that for the first round of Condon Nass. Yeah. And when that happened, you know, we looked at that and we were like, well, that was a failure in that, you know, it wasn't a fantastic outcome for pretty much anyone involved. And we thought, well, in order to get a larger outcome, and, you know, when we met at board meetings and things like that, it was like, well, we need to clean up our act. We need

to not get all these stories that the community loves on the homepage, but we need to get more traditional news on the homepage. We need to put that at the forefront. So we need to get publishers more tools to get their content elevated above whatever the community was servicing. So and, and to your point, Reddit was like, let's just stay the course, be true to who we are, and then open up subreddits, which allows the insanely long tail of content to flourish. And that just, that was the unlock for them. But you know what? We take all of these mistakes forward with us.

You know, I'm sure Alexis and his partner. Steve Huffman. They sold too soon. The classic mistake, selling too soon. Yours was bowing to the pressure of venture capitals. They put a professional CEO in charge of your company, right? Or you did. When, in fact, you know, the right move is to let the Kevin Rose, the Elon Musk run the company.

The Zuckerberg, let them run the company. Don't replace it. But people forget that. At that moment in time, the entire concept was to replace the founder as quick as possible with professional management. It's such a disaster, you know? Yeah, total disaster. It just like, it completely changes the culture,

changes the product decisions. It's just like, it was a mess. And so, you know, after that all unraveled, I peeled off and I tried to buy it back actually like a month ago. Well, the guy from buy sell ads, Todd owns it. Yeah, he won't sell to me. He won't? I'm friendly with Todd.

I'll talk to him. That's so dumb. I mean, owning 10% of a Kevin Rose own dig, will be worth more than buy sell ads owned dig ever. Yeah, he has some plans. I don't know what the deal is. He had some plans where he wanted to to kind of reintroduce some dig-like features in some way. And he showed me a page and I looked at and I was like, I mean, it seems like a nice enough guy,

but it just wasn't like what I would build. I would totally go back to the original vibe. I like that you have unfinished business with it and you've been thinking about it. I would say I have unfinished business in the sense that I would have a lot of fun with it. and I would restore it to a better version and a more pure version of what it used to be. And not with the, with the, ever, the hope that I'd ever overtake Reddit. It would be just out of the pure, like, let's get it back to an amazing fun site and project again. Yes, easy to do, Kevin.

We just get d2.com. And you just build it. I'm not kidding. Trust me, I know how to do these negotiations. It's very simple. I'll go talk to Todd. I'll say, listen, Kevin's building this D2. it's going to come out anyway.

You're focused on your business. You're putting 5% of your energy into dig. And he's going to do D2. You're going to miss out on the opportunity to own 10% of what Kevin can build as opposed to 100% of what you're spending 5% of your time on. It's a no-brainer. Once you build D2, then what's the point of even owning dig? It's going to be worthless.

It's just a domain name. It's definitely, there's a lot of new tech that is really exciting. in the space and on the machine learning side and like the new story aggregation and also the cryptocurrency piece of it as well allowing for micro transactions and empowering community to do the right thing for pieces of the actual entity itself.

It's interesting stuff. It's a lot of work though, man. To be honest, like, it's a ton of work. Like, we can also just chill and invest. It's a ton of work, but I can see it in your eyes right now. Like, it's the work you want to do. And just thinking about it, like, so much has been built

on your original vision. And also, I guess, slash dot was part of that, right? And FARC, those were the two that came before. Yeah. Those exist before. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Farrag and, yeah, those were, they didn't have voting in any way.

Or did FARC have voting? I don't know if it did. I don't think it had voting. I think it just ranked it based on comments or something. I can't remember. Yeah, it was, I don't know how FARC did it. It drew by day. It was just a collection of links in the beginning.

Yeah. It was like, here's today's 10 links for 20 links. And there were some concepts on there. that you wouldn't be able to do today. It was like a category called like some anatomical part of a person's body that you wouldn't. Oh, that's right. Do you remember that? Like, yeah.

Yeah. You're getting a lot of trouble. I wonder if it's still, are they still doing that? They can't be. They can't possibly be. I mean. I haven't looked up FARC. Drew Curtis.

That's right. I haven't been on FARC and forever. Oh my God. It's the same design. It's the same design. That's incredible. Logo of the company, the category, interesting groups, face palm. And then there used to be an animated gif of breasts.

And it would literally be like every 10th story with these 12-year-old boys posting stuff would be about a woman's breasts. But I don't think they have that on there anymore. I think they cleaned it up. They cleaned it up. Yeah. I think that would get them canceled pretty immediately these days. But yeah, that's a really interesting idea.

If you could create a cryptocurrency, because there is that steam it. Is that the name of it? Yeah, steam it. Yeah. So steam it is basically like a dig or rift. Reddit clone with a cryptocurrency built in, but the owning of the coins and having the D-2 coins or the K-Roe coins, oh, my Lord, oh, you should totally do it. And the machine learning exists too, right?

Then you could show people what they want to see plus what's trending, some amalgamation of that, right? Yeah, I mean, also you could do really fun things around a prediction market, right? You could say, I believe this story will eventually have more sway and value. in the ecosystem, so I'm going to place an early vote on it and kind of like bet some of my currency in a way. Oh, like betting on a stock. Yeah, it's great.

Yeah, but on an individual story level. So you can kind of say, like, I believe this has enough, this should deserves more prominence. And so I'm going to place like my little wager here. And then if it becomes more popular within the ecosystem, it gets rewarded more. So I put a K-row. I'm going to call the coins K-Rows for Kevin Rose. Appreciate that. I put one K row on the story.

I'm the original poster. I'm the O.P. And then you vote on it next. You put in two K rows. And then it hits the homepage. We get paid off the other K rows that were voting it up or something. Right. Exactly.

So, and this was one of the ideas I always had was, I wonder if curation could be a paid thing. Like, if people curating stuff could be an actual job. It's turned out maybe everybody knows that Zendesk is the go-to tool for customer support. It's the gold standard, but what you may not know is Zendesk also offers a suite of sales tools designed to remove the difficulties of sales software so sales teams like yours can go spend more time on what really matters to their business, which of course is having better customer conversations. Even better, Zendesk is offering this suite of sales tools, plus their

industry leading support software for free for six months as part of the Zendesk for startups program. Think about that. Along with the free access to all of Zendesk, as part of the program, you'll also get access to Zendesk's community of startup founders and partners who will teach you all the best practices to better serve your customers. And they'll even offer dedicated onboarding guidance and support to get you up and running in no time. Steezy, one of our great investments here at launch. They teach people how to dance. It's a subscription service.

Think comm meditation. Steezy for dance. They rely on Zendesk and they love it. They use the combination of Zendesx Explore and their ticket tagging system so that they can track which features their users want and that they're most excited about. And then they take all of that information from the customer support channel and they give it to the product team, right? Get six months of Zendesk for free at Zendesk.com slash Twist. And to qualify for this program, because they're giving it to you for free, they just ask that you have under 50 employees and you've raised a series A or below, right?

So if you're a series B and you got 100 employees, why don't you go ahead and pay for the product, okay? But this is Zendesk for startups. It's free. Zendesd.com slash twist. What do you think of the Twitter vision of, you know, talking about product? And there's another product that I think has done well because the critique of Twitter is they don't evolve it, which then also becomes a secret strength, right? That's what we've learned is not changing the design and that restraint is a way of succeeding. So what do you think of their new vision? You're going to be able to subscribe to people's profiles?

You're going to be able to charge you for seeing their tweets? Honestly, and I may get a lot of flag for this, but I think it's great. I think there's two pieces. I like that they're trying to introduce new ways for people to monetize their content and keep it all directly on Twitter. And I also really like, I don't know if you've seen, but they have a clubhouse competitor now. Yeah, oh, I'm on it. I was the first, like, big account. I begged them to be on it.

And it's brilliant. It's brilliant. It's brilliant. And it's right there where everyone already is, right? Yeah. And the number one thing is when I, when I sit out of the clubhouse, people are like, I don't have it yet. We had to go to another app. Like people right there on Twitter.

Rebuild your graph. Yeah. That is the smartest product move from Jack and team to go and tackle that market right away. Just take on Clubhouse right now. Now is the time. You got to roll that out as fast as possible. I think they got their Android out already. And when you look at it, I think they're going to have more minutes listened because

I watched a couple of like key accounts, like blue checkmarked style accounts. And when they started rooms, Kara Swisher, I opened up her room. It was 40 blue check marks. And I was like, oh, my lord, she's had a thousand people on her podcast or on her state or maybe 10,000 over the decades. She's going to be able to pull in all these top people without them installing a new app. Right. And then, did you see the thing where you can share, if you're a speaker, you can share a tweet?

And the tweet becomes an object on the stage? No, I didn't see that. Okay. So this is the sick feature. That's amazing. we're all talking. You, if you're a speaker, you can pick any tweet. So we're talking and you're like, oh, yeah, yeah.

You know, that reminds me of, you know, the time Mark Cuban said X. And then all of a sudden, boop, we're all sitting in a theater. And the PowerPoint presentation is Mark Cuban's tweet. We're talking about it. Then when somebody else puts one up, it stacks them and then puts the little dots on the bottom, like a coverflow or a gallery. And you can swipe through the gallery. Wow. Brilliant.

the tweets. So when I started talking, somebody who was a speaker was listening to what I was saying and was popping up the tweets that were related to it. So people could then go down the rabbit hole on Twitter to understand the topic more so they could make a more informed comment or contribution on the audio. It's crazy. It's really cool to see that Twitter, I mean, there's a thousand things they could have built. They took their time. They waited. And these, these feel very core and native to Twitter. versus something forced. Would you agree with that? This is completely native to Twitter, is what you're saying. Yeah, meaning that it feels like it's a nice product extension to what they already have. It's perfect. Versus it being like some kind of weird.

I have my thoughts, but I'm curious of why you think this is the ultimate natural extension for them. And it feels so organic. What do you think the reason is? Well, I feel like that we are, as a ecosystem, when you think about Twitter, one of the things that, was a big pain point over all of this stuff, whether it be all the election drama or even before that with Trump and all the chaos around all the politics on there, has been that it's very easy to say something that's really harsh and just walk away and just let things explode and not really have a conversation around things. And so I love that this is actually

forcing people into a real dialogue and real audio, real conversation. I think there's power in that to get people talking versus just like blurting out a tweet and walking away. And so that was the one thing that I saw from Clubhouse from the very early days is it is it felt so much more intimate to have a real-time conversation than just like a static tweet, right? This is exactly what you literally if I was going to say it, you, our answers are perfect a line, which is Twitter and social media is a misunderstanding and a dunk fest. And the, the greatest weakness of Twitter is that people talk through and over and under each other, they dunk on each other, it turns into a flame war. It is the problem with text is there's no tone. And then you add this

sophisticated tone to a platform that is already a cacophony of every argument and discussion going on in the world. And then you can use that as a funnel to an actually consider discussion. Right. it's a funnel it's like chaos and then understanding right and so i've seen this multiple times where people were talking through each other and then they said let's start a clubhouse room so i think that you'll use text until such time as you feel misunderstood or the conversations devolves significantly to which somebody says you know what you guys should just talk it out in a in a twitter space right that's it.

It takes Twitter's sweetness and makes it a strength. Yeah, I would, that's exactly it. And I would love that to be the case. Let's hope it goes there. I feel like it is. I feel like it is. Did you get caught up in all that like Trump derangement syndrome and all the toxicity of the last four years? Did it, did it hurt you?

You're such a, I wouldn't say you're sensitive, but I think you're considered. I wouldn't say, I certainly wouldn't, I think you're sensitive, I don't think you're overly, I don't see as an overly sensitive person, but I do see you as a very considered person. Has this like made you sad? Well, for me, I just, you know, I certainly see the impact of social media gone wrong. And it's a, it's a really, it's a really sad thing. And I think that, you know, we all know that the creators of all this stuff, right? And that wasn't the intention when they set out to create this stuff.

Right the opposite. It was quite the opposite. And so when you see that happen and you believe in the potential, you know, I'm just really excited to see some potential solutions to those issues, at least on the roadmap. So that's good. In terms of politics, my wife is insanely politically driven and I get enough of it from her at the dinner table. Contact high. That I tend to like not, like for me, I can't read political news every day. I'll just go crazy. It's just too stressful for me. Like I'm like, I'd almost rather have it in newspaper format as old school as that sounds. Like, give it to me after it's been considered.

Give me like a day or two later. The real-time stuff of what was going on with Twitter and everything else, it was just, it was, if I allowed myself, it would really, really be too much, you know, too distracting. It is so distracting. I feel like I, as a person who believes deeply in freedom of speech, I am pragmatically delighted that Trump is no longer in the town square because just for the silence and the space. for other people to have a moment to contribute, right?

Like, he was taking up so much of the dialogue with nonsense that I just felt like it was, it just got very boring to me to, like, hear him say something outrageous, for the left to fall for it, for the right to then troll the left. It was like, this is just such a disgusting distraction. I don't want any part of it anymore. Yeah, that would, you, we're on the same page. Like, for me, it was, I'm fine with, debating and discussing.

And like a lot of my family, the way I grew up was Republican. That was like my, I come from a, my, my father, mother and everybody, they're all Republicans. I kind of, I, yeah, conservative. And I moved to San Francisco. And after a couple of years, I started kind of leaning a little bit more left. And then I became a Democrat. And now, you know, I still share a dinner table with these people. And I'm fine with entertaining those values because there's something.

some fantastic values mixed in there, but I just can't take the lies. Like, let's have an honest conversation about things. Like, let's make up things. It's pretty crazy. Like, just the level of derangement that's occurred on all sides. And there's so many big problems for society that I feel like we don't have time for this. You know, you look at global warming, you look at poverty, you look at education, you look at China and the relationship there.

There's so many big picture things we need to solve. like we really don't have time to be at each other's throats about this. When you were at or at True Ventures, were you involved in the Peloton investment at all or just got to watch that? Yeah, I watched it. So I, you know, the Tru's backed a couple of my companies previously. So I've known those folks for a long time. And they invested in Peloton very early on.

You know, it was just a fantastic story. It continues to be a fantastic story to watch that all unfold. We still have a board seat there. John Callahan's on the board. And so, yeah, it's... What's John like? Oh, he's brilliant. What's his superpower?

Because, you know, I invited him on the pot a couple of times, but he is kind of doesn't do a lot of press, huh? He doesn't do a ton of press. Yeah. He's just just insanely thoughtful and someone that... He spends a ton of time working on EQ. Like, he's very much an EQ. too driven person and is very good at reading the room and just bringing out the best in people

and kind of like focusing the conversation towards that. So a fantastic leader in a very measured and thoughtful way. Um, so there's not a lot of drama. True is like one of the lowest drama firms I've ever been involved with. It's like, it's like, it's the fantastic place for me because I don't, I am also someone that that aspires to be like that. So I think that, yeah, he's just, very early at spotting these big trends and taking and placing bets on companies that most people at the time would have said no to. That's such an easy one to pass on Peloton because you're like, oh, hardware? Yeah, no.

Right. Oh, expensive hardware and a subscription. People will never pay for that. I mean, hardware's too hard. Consumer subscription too hard. This will never work. And then you look at it and I put my Peloton treadmill. I don't like bike riding because it hurts my knees after doing.

so many marathons. But I do like, you know, just walking on my treadmill and watching a nice TV show or listening to a podcast and playing chess. And I am just so in love with that product. I get on that product, it feels like, you know, sliding into my Tesla Model Y. Yes. Or, you know, unpacking a new iPhone. Where do you get your design inspiration from? I'm curious, like when you are looking to sort of fill your bucket with ideas and, you know, I'm looking at your microphone and your headphones now. And obviously you designed your own house. And you have watched you on your journey become more and more.

I mean, let's face it, you're obsessed with design, I think, and culture. When did that start? And where is it now? That's a question. It's a question. Design. Well, I would say that it's something where I've always been, ever since I was younger,

first starting to build products, I've always been, like you, when you were seeking out the best designer for the Mahalo logo, I've always been like someone that would browse, dribble and some of the other design sites

and just look at the best design work out there, lose hours. So I was, you know, whenever there's mock-ups for stuff, I just love to think through that stuff and just when I see something creative that hasn't been done before,

whether it be mostly on the kind of like UX side where someone figures out a clever way to hide data that is still discoverable or just some kind of just new thinking there, it's always got me excited. So I became fans of these best, of the top designers out there, you know, the Daniel Bergers of the world and just like a whole He was your Johnny Ive, right? He was my Johnny Ive for sure. Yeah, like he was. What's that cat up to now? Is he got a job or is he just counting his money? He must have done fabulous, right? I hope. So yeah, he's done. I mean, he was he was with, uh, Stuart, um, before Slack was Slack was the game never ending. So he was, he joined, uh, Stuart Butterfield over there, was their first

founding designer. Um, so had just a ton of ownership in Slack. And yeah, he's, um, he's in the UK now, living with his, his girlfriend and, uh, working on bigger health problems. So he's, he's working at this massive, um, uh, company that is trying to tackle health care and third world countries. So, For him, he's going and designing, you know, mostly Android applications to enable doctors on the ground in third world countries to be able to diagnose and get compliance around medication use and just some really unsexy things. But it has to be so dead simple for people that don't understand technology that he wants to go in and contribute that way.

So he's like assault of the earth type, dude, like Canadian, like the nicest guy in the world. Oh, my God. I'm on his web page right now. Simple. dot org, I think is the name of it according to his Wikipedia page. And I guess Tom Frieden created this. And he's the CEO of Resolve to Save Lives, a $225 million, five-earned epidemics and cardiovascular disease. Yeah, he's working with the on hypertension right now. Amazing. And you can see how simple the app is. A simple dashboard. It's super basic, but it has to be.

It's back to what we said originally is to take out the ideas and then start with the one basic idea. Yeah, I mean, he spent a bunch of months in India in the middle of nowhere, and he said that he was talking to me about the issues with getting people to just know when to show up for an appointment, how you can train someone to enter the right data, meaning like when you're entering blood pressure information, fasting sugar levels. Like, you have to make it just for someone that is new to technology and using Android phone for the first time, they're not going to screw it up. And so that's what he's focused on. It's just like a fantastic mission. Tell me the designers, cultures, moments of, you know, elite design and product and services that inspire you or have inspired you. And we were talking about Japan before we got on here.

And, you know, I watch you, Tony, O'Mallick, Matt Mullenweg, all of our circle become obsessed with Japan right after we go. Why do people who do what we do immediately appreciate that culture and then just feel like that is the, I almost feel like that's the society I want to aspire towards. Well, I think when I went to Japan for the first time, well, not the first time, but in more recent trips, I remember seeing someone, I was winning for an Uber, I was standing outside on the street. first of all, just the respect for the environment and the country and how clean everything is, is just, like, unbelievable.

But aside from that, I was sitting across the street from, and I watched this old man come out, this old Japanese man came out of his house, and he had a cloth in his hand. And he started polishing his own mailbox, like, literally, like, doing small, little, like, polishing the mailbox. And I just remember the respect for your own things and just the simplicity of, like, that attention to detail and focus. And when you go to Japan and you meet these people that are building or have created anything for that matter, if you're an artisan and you've created something in Japan and you're the best at what you do, you get a ton of local respect and honor.

And it doesn't matter what your position is, meaning like, you don't have to be a Fortune 500 CEO. You can just be the best brista in the world. And like we were talking about this before the show started. Like, there are coffee masters out there that age coffee beans for 30 or 40 years. And it's one guy and you walk in and there's seats six people. And, you know, they are a rock star in that world because they have decided to hone their craft to that one very specific thing. And that's what their life's work is. So just the fact that they can go and find their life's work and be at the best of that, like I have a lot of respect for that. It's a beautiful thing. And it's a sad thing that we don't have that level of appreciation for craft here in the United States. I guess in some

cases we do, but not as widespread as it is in Japan. Yeah, not at all. I mean, I knew that there was something special going on there on my first trip when I first went on the subway. I was looking at the sign trying to figure out how to get from Rupungi to wherever I was going. And, oh, I know what it was. I was going to go to the ski fish market the next day. I was just trying to figure out the map and what time. And I'm standing there looking up at the map. and the time schedule, and then there's somebody next to me, and then another person next to me, and then a third person.

And they all started speaking English, very basically, and trying to figure out what I was trying to accomplish. And then one of them walked me to my train and waited for me with the train. This is on the subway. And they're all wearing white gloves and the place was spotless, and they just wanted to make sure

that somebody who was visiting the country, clearly, was not going to get lost or get off of the wrong station. Right. Yep, I've had that happen to me. I've had the exact same story happened to me where someone walked up to me and tried to help me find my way. Like, would that ever happen in the United States? Pro-acted.

Un-slisted? Yeah, exactly. I mean, you would be very nervous that that happened. Right. You'd be like, you would assume you're about to be murdered. Yeah, exactly. Tell me about your friendship with Tim Ferriss.

You guys will do a random show once in a while. And I DM, I texted you both. I try not to blow up Tim's text because he is, you know, he's protective of his mind space, I guess, is a way to say it. It's the best way to say it. Yeah. Because one time on a podcast, he said, you know, there's so many people always trying to get

stuff for me. I don't know if he was talking to you or something. And he kind of got, you know, he sometimes he gets honest. And sometimes he's not happy about certain things. And, you know, you tend to, I find he's very honest with you. You're so good at getting him to talk about stuff that he doesn't want to talk about. Yeah. That he subsequently has to re-edit the podcast and take stuff out.

Oh, for sure. He takes stuff out. Yeah. He takes stuff out because you always get it out of him. I know. I love it. I need the unedited tapes. I need the basement tapes of those, like, original discussions.

But he said at some point, like, you know, and then people are just texting me and they want stuff. And, you know, and I just, I texted him at some point, I said, if I've ever done that, I'm sorry, you know, like I only try to introduce you to people or tell you about things. He goes, oh, anytime you text me or email me, it's like great joy for me. You know, our friendship means a lot to me.

And that's not you. It's just other people. And he really doesn't like to have, I think, people constantly asking him for stuff because he likes to think about stuff. But you two just do this great random show randomly. You talk about life and it's just such a great friendship. I just thought what's special about Tim Ferriss to you? Oh man. So many things. I think that Tim is just, once you, once you can get in that inner circle of Tim, like you can break down that wall and you can get to know him on a personal level, he'll be like the best possible friend you could have.

like always there for you anytime you you need him. But he is very guarded. And I think, you know, honestly, I think it's just like I met him before the four hour work week launched or just as it was launching. And so he didn't have a lot of fame. And we became, you know, friends just from, I just like appreciated his curiosity around so many different topics. Like he is just a lifelong learner to his core and is always trying to.

out something new. I remember the first time we went to the movies together and this was like went back in the day, like before this was even a thing, but he had a continuous glucose monitor in his side. And it was like, it was like hardcore machinery back then. This was before it was like a thing that even people would have. And he had to check this like big needle. Yeah, they're super, yeah, they're super simple now. But like back in the day, like it was a hardcore procedure to even get one done. And I remember just being like, this guy is nuts. Like the fact that he does these self experiments. He was doing some crazy stuff back then. So, you know, I've always been a kind of someone that likes to dabble and experiment and try new things and also love learning new things. So we kind of

hit it off on that front. But honestly, I think Tim is just, you know, he has been so successful in the last few years with his podcast, just blowing up the way that it has. That everybody wants to get in front of Tim. I can only imagine, you know, Jason, like you and I, we have like small to medium-sized shows and we get enough inbound as it is. Imagine that by like 10x, like, everybody wants a line to him. And so I think that he is, his guard has gone up quite a bit around that type of stuff, which, which I can totally understand because who knows what, what people want and why, you know? Yeah. He's just always been searching. And I got to spend time with him with our mutual friends and we got to go on a vacation or two together, like a group trip kind of thing,

and just really learn to love everything about Tim Ferriss. And then, you know, his recently talking about the trauma in his life is so brave and just so inspiring to see him be vulnerable like that. And I always thought to myself, like, there's something about Tim, you know, like, you know, I wish the best for him, you know, and I can tell he's searching. And I would always say to him, like, what is Tim Ferriss searching for? And who is Tim Ferriss searching for? And who is Tim Ferriss? It was like our internal joke. I was like, who is Tim Ferriss? He's like, that's how I'm trying to figure out.

And he's been so brave about sharing, you know, the great things that have happened his life, but also the challenges he's had and the pain and suffering. And I just, I told him, I was like, I'm so inspired by your braveness, you know, to talk about the things he's talked about. People can go listen to his podcast, but, you know, his childhood was not ideal, to say the least. And it's just amazing. I don't know if you knew that stuff before he talked about and shared it publicly. Yeah, he had mentioned a couple.

of things to me in the past about some of the abuse stuff when I was at his house in New York one time. He mentioned something along those lines. But I think he was still unpacking a bunch of it because he didn't discover this stuff until later in life, you know, when he kind of like had these memories of these events that happened. But yeah, I mean, the thing that I think is just so that most people, most guys, especially guys that have testosterone level that Tim, does. You don't show your vulnerable side. Like you just like that that is especially around our age. Like I, I think that, you know, it was, it's a, he's inspired so many people by doing that, by coming out and saying it's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to talk about our weaknesses because that's,

that's how we get over these things. That's how we grow stronger, you know. What I told him, you know, privately, I just said, listen, I think everything you've done up into your career right now is the, is the lead into this moment where you're going to. to reduce suffering in the world more than, you know, a billion other people have tried. Just your work on psychedelics alone and helping people consider that possibility for their PTSD, for their trauma, which is wildly effective according to all research that we've seen. And for him to take a significant amount of his net worth and what he's earned and his living and just pour it into research on psychedelics and reducing people's suffering.

through the Maps program and then... Yeah. It's... The thing is with Tim is it's not bullshit either. Like the... I don't know if he'd get mad that I'd say this, but like, so I'm the, I'm the secretary to his nonprofit. Oh, cool.

So we don't, I don't know, we haven't talked about that ever before, but I see what he does. And he contributes massive amounts of money. No, I know how much he has. I mean, he basically was like, hey, do you want to do this? I was like, I'm not quite at that point yet. I got three kids, but I might. But it's a very significant amount of his net worth.

It's not like, oh, I have a lot of money, which obviously he does, but it's not like, oh, let me just do 50K over here or something like that. We're talking millions of dollars. Like millions of dollars to help other people suffering get reduced. It's amazing. It's real. It's all real. It's all very real.

And you know what? I kind of, when I first met him, I goofed on him, I was like, four hour work week. That's ridiculous. You got to work like 80 hours a week if you're going to make it. He's like, I don't think you understand what I wrote in the book. I was like, get the fuck out of here. You know, this guy.

That's amazing. I got, I just missed him. And I was like, oh, I read it. I was like, oh, this is, he's talking about being efficient. Right. He's not talking about being a, a lamo, but I got it dismissed it out of hand when I first met him. But shout out Tim Ferriss, just great human. And, yeah, somebody's like, he, what is it going to have you on his show?

And I was like, he doesn't need to have him on a show. We're friends. He's had 20 investors on the show. like I'm the he doesn't need to have the 25th investor on the pod like totally unnecessary like unless you have some kind of story you want to come out and tell us that it could be a oh yeah of course if I did yes I I just did five MEO and I've touched the void and I would like to talk about touching the wall I haven't done five MEO but man that's becoming a thing in Silicon Valley of the toad venom and just yeah I've read a lot about that. I'm intrigued

Have you ever done high-dose mushrooms? I haven't done high-dose mushrooms, but I've obviously, yeah, I had mushrooms before in my life. But I haven't done like the mega, what are they called, heroic dose? Yeah, you haven't done the guided tour type stuff, like the way you sit down with a mask on. Yeah, so I did that one time.

It was a fantastic experience. That's like 2,000 milligrams or something, I guess. It's five grams of mushrooms. Five grams of mushrooms, which I don't know what that is of silica. I don't know what psilocybin it is, but it's enough to send you the law. It's a lot. It's a lot. You put a mask on. You sob for about five hours. You see like my father had passed away after I did it and I was able to resolve a lot of the unsaid things and emotions that I had

wrapped up in that. That's great. You know, and it was just, it was fantastic. It was like, oh my God. It was so many years of therapy packed into that, that, you know, six, seven hour session. Fantastic. Highly, highly recommend it. Yeah, the, I passed on investing in that. I passed on investing in a company that was doing the synthetic psilocybin with an IV drip that Peter Thiel invested in. Because, you know, it's like five years ago or something that I met them. And I was like, I don't know if I can publicly endorse this kind of stuff that's not quite legal yet. And I just don't want to cause any problems for, you know, businesses I'm associated with or whatever. But it's nice to see this stigma starting to move from, hey, plant medicine versus, you know,

people taking opioids and these crazy pharmaceuticals. Like, this is a whole different class of you know, compounds and what they do enlightens people and what the other thing does is destroy somebody's soul. Right. So we need to kind of classify these differently. Right. Like fentanyl and oxycodone or whatever the fuck people are taking Viking. I don't know what oxies, I guess, is the one that people

were taking a whole bunch of, like, or heroin itself. Like, these are totally different substances. Like, can't put them in the same category. Yeah. I mean, there's nothing, I tell you, you, you, you go through a five hour or six hour journey of high-dose mushrooms, nothing about you wants to do that the next day. You're like emotionally drained, you know, for a while. And there's like, you know, you've worked through a lot.

So there's a lot of reintegration and processing that you need to do when you do it like that. Because it is very focused. This is not let's giggle and watch a movie mushrooms. This is, let's do work with a psychiatrist or a psychologist or whoever's administering this stuff. And the cool thing is we have that being legal now in Oregon. Oh, is it legal in Oregon?

Okay, so you can't do it there. At the state level, they're making it legal. So it's pretty exciting times. I think it's going to help a lot of people. I mean, just PTSD and I had PTSD after 9-11 because I was in New York when it happened. And I didn't realize they had untreated PTSD. But I just kept having what would I realize in hindsight were panic attacks when I would hear an ambulance or I would, or somebody would bring up 9-11. My entire body would physiologically change.

Wow. You know, like if I would hear an ambulance and I would think about 9-11, start crying. And I didn't know I was crying. Jay would say, like, are you crying? And I'm like, oh, God, I'm crying. And I was just overwhelmed by any image of 9-11. And I actually went to therapy doing something called EMDR. I don't know if you've heard of that, but you hold these paddles and you put goggles on.

And it puts you like in a theta wave kind of situation and you just talk about the entire, I've never talked about this, but since we're going there, I did like five sessions of this where I just talked about my experience on 9-11 over and over again. And the anxiety went from, you know, if we had 100 units of anxiety, every time I talked about it, each time it went down 20 percent, to which point I could say, you know, I saw 9-11, I saw people die, I saw the buildings come down. And I don't physiologically, I feel sad, but I don't physiologically feel like I'm in that moment anymore.

Yeah. Let alone if you were in a Humvee that gets blown up and you watch one of your brothers in arms get, you know, murdered or get cut in half. Or you have to take other people's lives. You know, like, what a horrible thing. Can you imagine having to reconcile that? I mean, this is why soldiers are jumping off bridges. I mean, this is somewhere where when you think about the impact that you can have later in life

when you get into that third act and you deploy whatever capital you made in the first two acts, I'm just so inspired by watching what, you know, Bezos and McKenzie Bezos have done? Have you tracked that? No, I haven't. he gave $10 billion to climate change. She gave billions of dollars. I mean, they are giving away so much money.

It is bonkers. Like a level of philanthropy that has just, I mean, we have in one case a level of wealth accumulation that's never existed because of a global market and products really because, I mean, if it wasn't for billions of iPhones, you couldn't have hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap,

I don't think, right? Like, it required that global audience. But now people can, write a $10 billion check for global warming. You know, that's never existed in the history of humanity that a billion dollars or $10 billion could be put towards something. I mean, I think what we saw with the pandemic is really eye-opening in terms of solving problems.

Do you, what do you think of, you know, sort of post-pandemic and what has pandemic been with you? And then I'll wrap this up because I've been nice enough to give us over an hour. Yeah, no problem. Well, I would say pandemic life for me has been, um, challenging like it's been for everyone else. I mean, I miss a lot of friends. I miss seeing that, having that real interaction with humans, giving people hugs, like things like that. Like you all have faced those types of challenges. So what I did early on, like, like anybody that that tries to

like figure out the best optimal way to move forward is I made a list of things that I wanted to try and tried them to see what would improve my mood, what would put me in a better state to get through this thing. So, you know, for me, that was walking outdoors. It was high intensity interval training. It was sauna usage. It was cold plunge. It was meditation.

And there was one other thing. I can't remember what it was. But I did a bunch of these things. Expensive sushi. That's on the top of my list. Really expensive sushi. Like great wine. Craft beers.

You know, but it was like, okay, I can't do all these every day. But which are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact on my mood and get me kind of through this? And there were two that ended up sticking sauna usage is massive. Do you have that red light sauna thing that people are doing? I went the traditional sauna route. And a lot of the research around everything on terms of lowering all-cause mortality to improving cardiovascular disease and helping reduce the dementia rates.

It's all at 174 degrees Fahrenheit for about 20 minutes a day. That's what the studies are at. So I put mine to 180 and I do 20 minutes at least probably six days a week as well. And it improves your mood. It makes you feel better. And you know, there's like some days I'm, I've got a lot of stuff going on. So it's the I do it in the evening. And other days I can break away at around, you know, lunchtime or after lunch and go sit for 20 minutes. You get a shower afterwards, obviously. But yeah, that one has been huge. And then taking meditation seriously is, is a big one. Like really, really. Where are you out with that? What is your practice, if I may ask?

My practice is I try to do 55 minutes a day, which is broken into two 25-minute sessions with a five-minute walking meditation in between. But I'm practicing a very specific non-app meditation. It's a lineage of Zen called Sambo Zen, which is, so I actually have worked with, there's a great Zen center in Santa Fe, New Mexico. called Mountain Cloud. S-A-B-I or S-A-B-O? S-A-N-B-O. S-A-N-B-O.

Sand-B-W-W-W. Yeah, so it's a, it's kind of based on the Rensai sect of Zen, which is more on Kohan training, which is, you've heard of Kow-Ns before. Like, they're basically these insolvable puzzles, like the sound of one-hand clapping, or, you know, that's probably the most famous one. Or, you know, there's a bunch of them.

But they actually, they actually have real meaning in Zen. They're actually something that can be used as checking questions to figure out how deep your practice is. How many companies do you invest in a year? I'd say probably at True, we've been doing a ton. So the cryptocurrency stuff has just been insane lately. You know, we probably do one a week, I would say, or two a week.

It's been crazy. All in crypto, really. Which crypto company? did you invest in or become inspired by? Can you share one? It's a good question. A lot of these are pre-launch, so I wouldn't want to. Well, I'll take this.

NFT? Is that like a, do you believe that's a big thing? I've, I've been tracking the NFT stuff for a long time. I believe there's going to be a lot of garbage in the space when every artist with Photoshop can become an NFT master. Like it's going to be a lot of garbage. Yeah. But there's a lot of really credible, like very cool projects.

reimagining of rights and distribution and ownership, like just the idea of tokenized ownership where a creator of an object can see long-term wealth and hold that object as it gets resold is fascinating. I mean, just the idea that an artist can have rights to the second, third, fourth, fifth sale of something and get a piece of it is beautiful. And then, yeah, that makes just, I could go really deep. imagine in music, you know, you have all these stories of artists being taken advantage of in music. But if they said, listen, the cattle, you always are going to own 20% of your catalog,

come hell or high water. If they screwed you and bought, you know, the, the Beatles catalog, and then Michael Jackson bought it and Sony bought it and they flipped it and they flipped it. Every time they flip it, you get that 20%. It can't change hands without you getting that 20%. And it's built into the smart contract. You know, amazing. Have you seen Yuler B? Do you know that at all? No. Oh, so let me, let me tell you about this one. So this is a new project that they came out a couple weeks back.

It's Ethereum blockchain based. It's basically what they did is they said, okay, what if we make a piece of math, an algorithm that will create these little mini songs, okay? So they're going to be dynamically generated miniature songs that are pressed the entire code and how to recreate these songs are pressed into the blockchain and saved as an NFT. Okay, so that's one piece. They went and they generated, I don't know what is 19 or 21 of them, different beats out there. Now, if you buy the very first one, then basically what happens is you get the rights to every other copy that is ever generated.

So if someone wants to print another addition of that beat, so let's just say you own a copy number one. If I want to print the next version, I have to pay a price that is higher than the last, person paid. It's based on a bonding curve. And then you get paid 8% anytime someone buys or sells cashes out one of the copies. So let's say I buy the 15th copy and it's 20th for one copy. I can then instantly go and sell it and recoup 90% of what the last price sold was because it's all locked, the values all locked into the blockchain. And you'll get paid 8% as the original rights holder every time a copy is made or sold. But without, you're actually getting some value.

Right. Yeah. But it's not MLM and that. It's not LM. Yeah, you're not haranguing people to buy soap. But people are buying them because there's only 121 copies of each one or something like that. And so they believe that there will be value in the very first. And don't get me wrong.

I'm not saying this is like the perfect, amazing idea and everyone should go out and buy one. I'm saying that it's an interesting use of blockchain technology. Yes. And it's like a better one would be, um, Unisox. Have you heard of Unisox at all? No. I haven't gone down the rabbit hole. Okay, so let me give you one more.

I think you'll like this one. See, Unisox is essentially what they said is we are going to create a token called Sox. Okay. So you can buy one of these tokens called Sox. Got it. They're going to make only so many of them. So let's just say, I don't know the exact number, but let's just say 50 for the sake of this argument. It's also based on a bonding curve.

So the further you get into the maximum number. So the first pair of socks may cost $5. By the time you get to pair number 45, it's in the $100,000 for a pair, right? They're very expensive. Like if you went on unisox right now, you can tell me what the most recent cost for a pair of unsox is. I think there's still a few available here. I'll tell you right now.

I see 500 initial socks, 185. Is it unisox dot exchange? Yeah, it's unisox dot exchange, yeah. Yeah, so slash stats has the stats. So what's the current price for a pair of socks there? the current price it should tell you for one is $112,000 for one pair of socks. Okay. Pretty good socks.

So hold on. So if you hold this token, the socks token and you buy one of these right now, Jason, for $112,000. Yes. You can burn that token. So you can see the upper right, it says 185 redeemed. If you burn the token, it destroys the socks token, but they ship you a physical pair of socks. And they ship you an NFT showing. that you actually owned a pair of these unisox.

Or you can keep and resell the token at any point in time. So you can go in and resell it for right now, for $112,000 and you get that money back out of the smart contract. But now imagine this is silly because it's socks. Who cares? But imagine this is applied to the next pair of Yeezys. So you could go on here. The market can determine what the price of Yeezies is.

And so as it goes up, as more people buy them, the price increases. No longer do I have to have a pair of Yeezys shipped to me, stored in a closet, ship it out to someone else. They can stay in the original location. Exactly. And I can sell the Yeezys token. Yes.

Yes. I could sell the Yeezys token to the next person. They can choose whether they want to hold it for speculation purposes or they want to just sell it and claim their Yeezies right then and there. What I'm interested in is a digital asset that generates some amount of money from existing in the world, i.e. in the music example, if I created or if I bought, you're a DJ, you make some song, you have no money. I'm some guy who appreciates your music. I have this, like, there's some artist on Spotify. I found Clem Leak, C-L-E-M-L-A-E-K. I have one of these

like playlist called brain food or something where it's just all good music to listen to while you're working. So I found this guy, Clemleek, and it puts my mind in like a great focus. So let's say he was starting his career. I say, I buy that track, I'll buy the track. I want 50% of the residuals from it, and you keep 50%. But I'll give you $1,000 for it, even though you took an hour to make it. So you're just made $1,000 in an hour, and you get half the residual. So every time it makes money on Spotify, you get half, I get half.

This is coming. 100%. That's got to be the big unlock. 100%. But imagine this. It's like the Indici family on like some global exponential basis. We could just back any artists and then have participation in it, but not destroy their careers by owning everything and being predatory. But also think about this.

Imagine you, there is a platform for this in the future because there will be. You go, you log on, you say, I'm Sprite. I'm a brand manager for Sprite. I want to use this in a commercial. Yes. Click, one click commercial rights, buy. Now you get paid and the artist gets paid instantly via cryptocurrency. And that person has the rights to go and use it in that commercial project.

It's just going to happen. What if it happened with where is this? I should build it. This is your next startup. I have no time. I have no time. But if there's somebody, whoever wants to do a

version of this, Kevin and I will give you 100 grand right now. There you go. I mean, this eventually is going to be startups, right? We're going to be selling tokens and all this stuff for our startups.

Like, this is going to be the cap table of companies in 10 years. Jason, your idea about the f*** is a brilliant one. Should we cut it out of this and just cut it out of the pod? We could beep and we could just put beeps in Yeah, exactly. And then I'll make it Mahalo. I still have the domain.

Well, we'll make it a Mahalo to just be a project, Kevin Rose and I do. We just need to get a crypto developer. Are there crypto developers out there? They're expensive as hell, man. They're in high demand. Wow. You just have to hire a bunch of developers and say, I'll give you six months to figure out crypto, go. I mean, talent is the limited thing, not ideas.

All right. There's been a great hour and a half of Kevin Rose. Just one of the great human beings in our industry. great human being to know. Can't wait to see you, brother. I got a great... Are you into the ramen? I do love ramen.

Really? Okay, there's a place called Tai Shokin in Japan. T-A-I-S-H-O-K-E-N and they do that Sukkiman, Raman, which is the buckwheat noodles that you dip in the really thick sauce. Yes, yes. And they opened the first U.S. version in San Mateo on the peninsula. So when you're up here, I'll take you. It is transcendent.

They boil the... the broth for like two days. And the guy who runs it, Yoshihiro, just happened to read my book. And I met him and he knew who I was and now we're friends. And he took me in the back. They make the noodles there. And then they boil, like, for two days, this broth.

And they reduce it down, like 80%. It's on. And I never was a ramen guy. I was a sushi guy and a tempura guy. Oh. I mean, you want to talk. You fast. Now I see what you do.

You got to fast. You can have that ramen. Yeah. that thick sauce and those carbs but it is damn good all right ma'am continued success good to know your brother and uh we'll see you all next time and this week start thank you so-bye