This Week in Startups - NEWS: $BABA & $TCEHY layoffs, Google's AR purchase, $APE coin; OK Boomer: Smirk | E1412

Episode Date: March 20, 2022

First, Jason and Molly rip through the news (1:44). They cover looming layoffs at two Chinese tech giants (2:31), Google getting back into the AR glasses race with a new acquisition (7:27), chaos in the instant delivery space (13:15), and Yuga Labs launching $APE coin, a BAYC token. (24:58) Then, Producer Rachel interviews Smirk founder Preson Attebery on mobile gaming, the future of social gaming, and more! (33:00) 0:00 Jason and Molly tee up today's topics! 1:44 Rapid fire news! 2:31 Alibaba & Tencent brace for massive layoffs 7:27 Google re-enters the AR glasses race with its $1B acquisition of Micro LED startup Raxium 11:48 Dell For Startups - Visit http://dell.com/twist to apply for Dell for Startups and get up to 45% off select items! 13:15 Instant delivery madness: Getir raises at a $12B valuation, Russian-based Buyk declares bankruptcy due to inability to fundraise from Russian sanctions 23:20 LinkedIn Jobs - Post your first job for free at https://linkedIn.com/twist 24:58 Yuga Labs launches $APE coin 31:47 Intercom - Get access to Intercom's Early Stage Academy at a 95% discount at https://www.intercom.com/early-stage 33:00 Producer Rachel joins to tee up today's OK Boomer segment 34:42 OK Boomer: Smirk Founder Preston Attebery 1:06:02 Plugs! Check out Smirk: https://www.smirk.gg FOLLOW Preston: https://twitter.com/prestonattebery FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

All right, everybody, it is Friday. We have another lightning round of news mostly. We're going to talk about Alibaba and 10 cent having massive layoffs coming 10 to 15% according to sources. Yikes. We'll talk about Google acquiring an AR LED company and getting back into the AR Glasses race. This instant delivery race and crazy valuation, Brouhaha continues. Companies raising at $40 billion, $12 billion. We're going to dig into it.

Can this business ever be profitable? and who's going to win it. And we give some thoughts on a Russian startup filing for bankruptcy due to their inability to raise more money because of sanctions. I got a hot take on that one. And finally, we're going to talk about ape coin, the board eight yop club, has their own cryptocurrency and maybe what the end game is for these NFTs. And afterwards, producer Rachel has another great, okay boomer interview because she's

blowing up. It's going to be a great show. All right. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you. buy, Dell. Dell's XPS products were built with entrepreneurs in mind, with increased mobility and longer lasting battery life.

You can stay productive on the go. Sign up for a free IT consultation and 5% off coupon at launch.co slash Dell. LinkedIn jobs. A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters. Post your first job for free at LinkedIn.com slash twist. And intercom. If you're an early stage, high growth startup, you can get out. access to Intercom's Early Stage Academy today at a 95% discount.

Join the program today at Intercom.com slash early dash stage or email them at startups at intercom. All right, everybody, welcome to Five for Friday. This is where Molly and I challenge ourselves to do something we're terrible at, which is being brief and not going off on insane tangents, five topics, five minutes each. and if you're around on a Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific time, you can watch us live at YouTube.com slash this weekend. We're experimenting with live, having a good time doing it.

We got a bunch of Nodie Gang members, people who turn on notifications on YouTube, who join us and we chat with them, and they get to meet the producers, and it's been a lot of fun. So go to YouTube.com slash this weekend. You hit the subscribe button. There's a bell next to it. You get a little alert and get it on your phone. You'll listen in the background, you know?

Maybe you're supposed to be working and you listen into the show, getting smarter. So what's on the docket today for five for Fridays? We got to get this going. I know. Here we go. Okay, we can do it. Here's topic one. Start your timers.

Alibaba and Tencent reportedly will be laying off tens of thousands of employees combined this year. This is, of course, after the Chinese government has been cracking down on its tech industry saying, hmm, you guys seem to be controlling a lot of finance and access to customers. customers and information and data, and we do not care for that. This Reuters article notes that the recent policy changes have reduced profits and impacted these companies' ability to raise capital. Alibaba is considering cutting something like 40,000 employees, almost, 15%. Their stock, of course, down 68%, as you might imagine, from a peak of $309 a share in October

2020. The market cap is compressed from over $800 billion to $275 billion. and then 10 cent, its stock is down 50% from a peak of $99 a share in February 2021, market cap from just under a trillion to $556 billion. I think, Jason, you may have predicted all of this. Well, you know, certainly I predicted it was a possibility that the Chinese government would operate capitalism slightly differently than a democracy. So what we've seen over the last couple of years, or, actually,

should say decades, is this engagement between China and the West. We started building our phones there and we, you know, exports and imports, all this great stuff. Engagement seemed to be trending in a good direction. Maybe if we engage with authoritarian communist countries, the chances of going to war with them go down. And there was a famous Thomas Friedman quote, like, you know, two countries with McDonald's never go to war. Obviously, that's out the window now with Russia. and Ukraine, but there is something to engagement. So we'll put aside the political issues there. On a very practical and pragmatic view, investment in an authoritarian country has a level

of risk that a democracy does not. If you feel that you have been wronged in a democracy, you go to the court system. We can all complain the court system is expensive, it's slow, but it exists. And then, and it's generally trends towards fairness, and it's probably the best in the world, that humanity has created. In China, you have a dictator for life who decided, I don't want to compete with Jeff Bezos, you know, or the Mark Zuckerberg of this country. So therefore, I will neuter them. I'm going to cut them down, remove their power. And this is the downstream effect of it. If you invested in Alibaba 10 years ago, you made no money. And so this incredible

run up, and I tweeted the chart the other day, and I just called it Alibaba's last decade, this is their version of what we're going through in the hand-wringing that we talk about every week or every two weeks or so with our antitrust laws. So you get to see this, right, in stark comparison. Antitrust laws here in the United States, we debate them. It takes decades, a lot of hand-wringing, what's appropriate, what's best for society.

That's the great thing about a democracy, is we have this dialogue. And then you go to a country like this and they're like, Well, they have, I don't want them to have power. Therefore, Jack Ma is going to go paint oil paintings and his company is going to have to lay people off. And, you know, I'm sure there's people in the United States who wish we did this to big companies here. I think that's what, you know, some of the far Bernie, you know, the people who are left of Bernie, you know, who hate capitalism. There shouldn't be billionaires.

There shouldn't be this companies with this much influence. And we'll see what's better for the economy and for people ultimately. I think for China, it's going to be more control, but less opportunity for people. people and people are going to want to work in the government. They're not going to want to work for startups. And their startups are not going to have global reach. And ultimately, that's good for democracy. This is an unforced era on China's part. It is interesting. And we actually can confirm producer Justin Fortier said he had an anecdote from a friend in China saying many peers in China just want to get a government job now because it's stabbler. And for the longest time, it was

this sort of interesting phenomenon where China was incubating giants, you know, the only giants that could have potentially competed with Alphabet and Facebook and, you know, these big, huge Amazon. And now the government has effectively said, no, thank you. We don't want that. And we're going to see how what that really abrupt change looks like. I think it's important to highlight, though, for very different reasons. Like, the reason that antitrust investigations happen here is around consumer harm and whether our economy can be vibrant without competition. But the effects might start to look similar. There goes our red box.

Look at that. Last thought, go, go, go. Nope, I think you summed it up perfectly. Next up on 5 for Friday, topic two, start your timers. Google acquires Raxium and appears to have reentered the AR glasses race. I mean, the 2022 bingo card just keeps adding topics at an alarming rate. Raxium designs and manufacturers pixels for LED displays. They have raised $85 million so far.

were acquired for a billion dollars, according to Pitchbook, telling you how hot this race really is. It's got super tiny pixels, blah, blah, blah. But the most interesting thing is what Google might be trying to accomplish here by going up against, you know, the rumored Apple headset, the HoloLens, whatever Leap might be doing. So, yeah, I mean, I said during that, I couldn't imagine Google not restarting or not doubling. down 10xing their AR aspirations thinking they did so well with Android. And so if they were able to run the table and have the majority of mobile users using Android, are they going to give up the next platform with all the cash they have, all the intelligence they have, the entire network effects, the data they have?

Would they just concede that they're not going to be a player in this? And Apple and Facebook and Microsoft get to duke it out? Of course not. I think they've been quiet about it. I think there's many cards to be turned over. And the trail of enabling technology acquisitions is just a great way to understand what big companies are working on. And this is just a great example of it. It really is.

I say blah, blah, blah, blah about the tiny pixels. But honestly, that really is the key to not getting that screen door effect to getting a realistic overlay, particularly in the real world. And Google, I think even more than that with glass, even though it became sort of a funny joke. Like, that's brand awareness. They have brand awareness for days if they get into the space. Yeah, and these micro LEDs will make the fidelity of the AR experience crisp enough that you'll probably reduce. It'll probably make it more accessible to people with different varying abilities to see. And that's going to be very interesting.

People start to lose their eyesight as they get older or people have different nearsightedness, four-sidedness. I think we're going to be able to solve a lot of that. And don't be surprised if you put on these AR glasses, and it learns what you think is blurry in the world and basically makes a custom lens for you in real time. So as your eyesight is degrading over age, or one eye is better than the other, it could actually be adjusting for that in a way that lenses will look positively barbaric.

And I guess this would work with, I think these are also used in smartphone, so this probably helps them with their pixel, which they're not giving up on. Clearly, the pixel is a great phone. So smart more for Google, and I will put them in the top three players,

if not the top two, because of their reach with the app store. Anything built on Android, to be able to just port it over to AR glasses is going to be amazing. And if they take the same approach they did, that means Google's AR efforts. They'll probably have their pixel version

of like pixel AR, and they'll probably name it like that. And that's probably why they're still keeping the headset manufacturing going, is they see that as learnings and a base to build on top of for the glasses that will eventually come out. But they'll support other people's. So they'll be the open standard for all App Store developers to make their own AR. And you know how we love an open standard. And shout out to Justin for pointing out that micropixels means they're more efficient.

They weigh less and use less battery. And that's what it's all about. I mean, when you think about putting these things on your glasses, you can think about, Molly, the metaphor we went through with laptops, two tablets, to phones, it was all about, can these screens be crisp enough? Can the batteries be small enough? Is the battery life acceptable? And the weight?

And the first phones were heavy, the first tablets were heavy. In fact, we had a joke that the first laptops were luggables. So here we are. And this is all I want. I only want them to be this big. I'm messing with my readers right now for those who are not watching us left. I'm good with ski goggles. That's all I want to ski goggles.

So when I'm skiing, I can see my speed and slow down. Listen, if you know anything about your boy, J-Cal here, you know I love my Dell monitors. I'm looking at them right now. I've got three of them set up here. Tons of real estate. Love my Dell laptop. And right now, Dell has a semi-annual sale going, where Twist listeners can save up to 45% on select items. Dell wants to help startup scale their technology because the company is rooted in startup culture.

In fact, I had Michael Dell in episode 1293 back in September of last year, and he told the origin story of Dell, and it was amazing go back and listen to that episode. And as part of a tribute to that, Michael Dell started Dell for startups, a program dedicated to equipping startups with the best tech in the world. And of course, I'm talking about monitors and laptops, but I'm also talking about cloud services and IT infrastructure. They do it all. And Dell will help your startup with a team of IT advisors, and they're going to help you acquire. capital for building out your tech stack. Plus, you're going to get all these amazing exclusive rewards. I love all my Dell products, particularly fond of these giant monitors.

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Huge savings. Again, go to Dell.com slash twist for up to 45% off. Topic three, this is fun, by the way. Like, I feel a little adrenaline rush. We're like, we're going to go, good. We've got a pace going here. Grocery delivery startup. This is a tale of two delivery startups.

One, grocery delivery startup, Geteer, get here, just raised a $770 million series E at a $12 billion valuation. These numbers are rough. but, you know, pretty close, as Russia-based bike files for bankruptcy due to sanctions. How do we feel, first of all, about a $12 billion, $11.8, to be precise, valuation for a speedy grocery delivery startup in today's environment. Well, Geteer, or however it's pronounced, G-E-T-I-R, obviously this is Europe. fast delivery version of postmates, Uber and GoPuff, et cetera.

And apparently, you know, when people report 40 million app downloads, to me, that's a fake number. You want to know how many people actually use it every month. And then they have 1,100 micro-fulfillment centers across nine countries. They're in 81 cities. So they have some amount to scale,

but those kind of numbers are the red flag numbers for me. I've had my red flag. Like the number of fulfillment centers can be game. and the number of app downloads can be gameed. I want to know how many deliveries they're doing. To me, that would be more important. Maybe some revenue numbers. I don't know.

I mean, I know they're still private, but like, just throw some out there. How many people are using it every month? You know, that would be you can kind of understand this. But this is going to be a space that I think Uber Eats, DoorDash, uh, lift potentially if they get bought or combined with another service and Amazon are going to own. And so I see these companies.

companies raising money at these large valuations as part of getting purchased. What do I mean by that? Well, if the investors put that money in and they have this many cities and this footprint, when Amazon wants to catch up or Uber Eats wants to catch up, or let's say Lyft wants to get in the game, which I think Lyft is about the same valuation, or maybe DoorDash wants to expand, whoever wants to expand into this space and have a bigger footprint, they could buy this company just like, you know, DoorDash bought one of the delivery companies, Uber bought one. So when they put that $770 million in at $11.8 billion, Molly, they get their money at first, probably with a guarantee of a 2x liquidation prep.

In other words, they're guaranteed to make double their money. So whatever this company sells, if it sells for $2 billion, whoever put the $770 in is going to get double that. They're going to get like $1.5 billion first, and then everybody else gets paid. So even though the valuation is high, it seems crazy, they have a backstop those investors. And so that's the valuation game that occurs in Silicon Valley. Yeah. And we should point out, GoPuff's last round, by the way, was one and a half billion dollars raised at a $40 billion valuation.

So even in the space, that's not outlandish. Now, you have a bite. Well, that's a stupid valuation, though, 40 billion? I mean, that seems insane for grocery delivery. That's the same size as DoorDash. Isn't it? I believe DoorDash is in that valuation range. And GoPuff is nowhere near the scale of DoorDash yet.

So that's crazy. But again, there's downside protection. So if we put that money in, the founders get to have this crazy valuation, but the investors get the downside protection of getting a minimum of two times their money out and all likelihood. And then we are seeing, you know, much like we just talked briefly about China's startup economy, Russia's startup economy be hit by sanctions and Putin's aggression. Bike is Russian-based instant grocery delivery. They had raised about $60 million from investors in June 2021 and are now,

filing for bankruptcy saying sanctions make it impossible to raise more money from non-Russian entities. Let's go. I have a hot take. Let's go. You don't get to be invading other countries and get to participate in the global capitalistic society. If you want to be part of capitalism, if you want access to international markets, stop invading other countries. Period. Full stop. And I know the founders of this company are not the ones who are doing it. Maybe they don't support this. But I am 100% going to be unrelenting on this. Sanctions are absolutely the best possible solution of all the bad solutions to stopping people from participating in murdering their neighbors. So stop murdering invading your neighbors and your people will stop suffering financial

penalties. And that is the best thing the West could do. Why should you be allowed to participate if you're a communist country that murders people, has a dictator? Why should you be allowed to participate and have the bounty for the bounty of democracy it's bull's I don't care I don't care that the companies are going out of business I don't care that you know I mean I don't want to go on too much of a rant here I don't I care about people's individual suffering but I care a lot more about other countries losing their sovereignty period and I know that sounds callous but this idea that we can let why would it sound callous when Russian forces bombed an apartment building where women and children were hiding,

where they had written children on the ground in letters that could be seen from the sky. Let's be as callous as we want. Yeah, I mean, it's like... My God. People are like, oh, these, the YouTubers are suffering or the Twitch people are suffering, you know, I understand that there is suffering

involved with sanctions. That's the point of them. And, you know, these people voted Putin in. Some people support him. If your country supports Putin, you know, according to the, and who knows, like we don't have perfect data.

So our opinions are based on imperfect data like everybody's. But just from where I sit, honestly, like, I think these sanctions are, I think they're beautiful. I think it is absolutely a beautiful thing that's happened in the world that people are deciding

to vote with their dollar, not under duress of, the government, they're doing it on their own. McDonald's, and I'm proud that I shamed we work early on. I'm proud of that work. I'm proud that, you know, people take a stand. You have to have some level of principle in this world. And I think it's a very easy principle that we can all agree on that there's no reason

for a murdering dictator to get to leverage the global economy when they are murdering people. I don't know. I just have some people in my life. for like, you don't get it, J-Cal. And I'm like, really? Do I not get it? I feel like I get it. Yeah.

It's very hard to ignore what's happening. Like, it's very hard to like ugly cry about it all night long and then come to a show and talk about tech. So we are allowed our like little wrens. I mean, and I think, and I'm totally fine with people having a different opinion than me. I think we will all do a post-mortem on what happened here. and look at it. And in the case that Ukraine wins,

in the case that Putin leaves or there's peace, I think we're going to look at this and say, hey, sanction is a pretty good idea. Maybe we should double down on those. Which dictator can we stop from doing crazy stuff by using the might of the global economy? I mean, North Korea is a non-existent participant, and maybe some other people should become

non-existent participants, and isolation and containment is a better strategy than wars. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy. No, I really, I mean, I think we're on the precipice of an entirely, of a massive change in how we approach warfare. And, you know, everybody thought that cyber warfare was going to be the next front, but it turns out that economic warfare actually is.

And that it has been deployed so brutally and effectively. in a way that has not escalated the bombing conflict. And I think it's really profound to see. I'm totally fine to skip our next topics if this is, you know, the real conversation that we need to have because, frankly, like,

it's hard not to talk about it. And here's the thing with the sanctions. Well, I hit the overtime button for this story. Yeah, five for Friday is now going to be four for Friday. It's okay. I'd rather talk about this than ape coin,

if I'm being honest. Like, I don't give it about ape coin, but I do get a shit about this. I kind of want to dunk on Aimcoin, but we're going to go five. That can be our chaser. Give us our five minutes that we would have talked about Amazon and the MGM, and then we'll. So here's the thing.

It is going, we're going to look back on this and say, globalization created this incredible opportunity for humans to work together. And then a certain group of humans decided they still wanted to act like savages and murderers. and participate in, you know, humanities, the best of humanities, you know, which is democracy and freedom. I think it's a pretty great idea that we decide that the cost of participating in the global economy and being part of the, we'll call it the West, but let's just call it the free world. If you want to be part of the free world and you want to get the benefit, your people need to be free and stop murdering your neighbors. Full stop.

I think it's a very reasonable price to pay for a dictator. You want to sell your oil to the rest of the people. You want to sell wheat. You want to participate. You want to have investment from outside. For the love of God, just stop killing people. And let people practice whatever religion they want and let them read books. I don't know, crazy ideas.

Maybe they could read a newspaper or have an opinion. You know, that's not the same as the dear, leader. It's enough with these dictators. Listen, there's been a great reshuffling. Everybody is doing the great resignation. People are moving jobs. The pandemic has changed. People's goals in life. Maybe they want to work from home. They're being forced to come into an office. Everything's on the table. Well, you need to go recruit those people. You need to get them on your team. Maybe you've lost some people on your team and you've got to refill positions because of the great resignation,

because people are checking out their options. Well, it's time for you to go on offense and it's time for you to use my secret weapon, which is LinkedIn jobs. LinkedIn. Jobs is here to help you connect with the best candidates faster and your first one's always free. We just hired another video editor to help get this week and startups out. You know, we're doing six episodes a week and we needed more video editing help. Boom. We found somebody amazing and we found them in under two weeks. You can create a free job post in minutes. And you'll reach the world's largest professional network with over 770 million people. Now you might have noticed this. It's very subtle. But when you go to somebody's LinkedIn profile page, you notice that purple hiring frame

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That's LinkedIn.com slash T-W-I-S-T. Again, first job is free. LinkedIn does that to support startups who listen to this week in startups. and conditions do apply because they're giving you something for free. All right, let's move on to board apes. The board eight yacht club. I want to read one. You're really doing it.

I love it. No, hit it. All right. So the board ape yacht maker, Ugo Labs has launched ape coin dollar sign APE. If you don't know the dollar sign, if you search on Twitter with dollar sign and the stock ticker or the ticker that a crypto project is using, you can find everybody talking about it. So go ahead and search for a dollar sign APE to see this, people talking about.

Last Friday, Yuga Labs had also acquired the IP rights to Cryptopunks. Those are those, you know, like digital pixelated NFTs that trade for tens of millions of dollars. And they bought that from Larvalab. So obviously, BordApe Yacht Club is growing. Cryptopunks IP will now go to the NFT owners. I've talked about this before on the show. This is really cool. You get to own the IP of the NFT, which means you can exploit it in the real world.

And that's how board apes work. Cryptopunks, you didn't have the right to do it. So if you buy a crypto punk for $10 million, you couldn't make t-shirts or a TV show based on it, now you can. Back to ape coin. The token will denominate the economy of Yuga Labs, multi-collection, metaverse, and support initiatives related to culture, gaming, and commerce. That's a lot of buzzwords. 62% of the total supply of ab coin is earmarked for the community with the rest going to the team. I assume the team at the board api yacht club.

So they air dropped, which means they just gave for free 15% of the supply yesterday. And this creates a lot of selling pressure on the token. Each board ape yacht club member got 10,000 of the tokens, which means they got 80,000 per ape at the current price of $8 a token. In other words, this is kind of like a multi-level marketing scam, where if you bought in originally, they just keep giving you more value. Maybe that would be the most cynical interpretation of that. There's a better interpretation of it.

For everyone else, you had to go buy it. The fully diluted market cap is already $8 billion. It was trading at like $40 and then came down to $8. I don't know where it wound up, but it had a big spike. What do you think of this entire metaverse that's being made, Molly? I mean, this is like one of those. Nope. I was actually just going to say, like, I'm kind of sorry that I didn't read it so that you could

because honestly, like, I listen to all of this. And it just as, as with all topics, it is a matter of time. I am not too stupid to understand this. And yet I am unwilling to invest my time in understanding it. And maybe that's why it's a good thing that I'm just sticking, staying over here in my little, like, climate land. Yeah. Because this makes no sense to me. I don't want to have to understand it.

I just don't, I literally don't want to. I'm like, you know what? I'm trying to get groceries in the house. Give it, let me do a shot. Let me take a shot at my interpretation of what's happening here. And the audience can correct me at producers at this week at startups.com where they can add at Jason and at my wood. But let me explain it this way.

So here is the like gobbly gock explanation. The token will denominate the economy of Yuga Lab's multi-collection metaverse. Okay. So this is going to be the currency of a game. Let's let's say it as a game. So instead of using. the word Metaverse, this is going to be the mana or the tokens in a game called BoardAib Yacht Club. So let's assume it's a game.

And your NFTs in Avatar. Got it. Right. So let's, we'll use this metaphor because I think it's a little easier for people to understand. So it's a game. You buy in by buying one of the NFTs. The NFTs are one of one. The NFTs keep getting gifted new objects.

So if you buy in, they keep giving those people more value, which then makes the price of these go up because people say, oh, it's a revenue. generating item. So imagine you bought into Minecraft in year one. Or like it's like a CSGO inventory. Like this makes perfect sense, right? In game assets that appreciate over time and you create an economy around it. Got it.

Now it's going to support initiatives in culture, gaming and commerce. What they're going to do, we had one of the game founders that has this like game with a lot of the tokenization and monetization and I forgot the name of it. But if you think about World of Warcraft, if the people who were in World of Warcraft, every time they leveled up, got more coins. You could kind of see this world emerging where you got paid to play a game. And so, yeah, I forgot the name of the game that was on the pop.

I listened to that guy. Axi infinity. Axi infinity. So this is actually, I think, what Borde A, Yacht Club is going to go after in Cryptopugs. I think they sold the NFTs. There was like a whole artistic buying them thing that occurred. And then they said, oh, we need to do something else,

because this isn't enough value to sustain this economy. So let's fill in. And the way we'll fill in, just like maybe, I don't know, people launch something like Instagram and they're like, how is this going to make money? It's got a lot of users. Okay, we'll add ads. This is them being Instagram adding ads eventually.

They're going to add games to it. And they're also adding these live events. So when these crypto events happen in New York or in Miami or wherever, people want to go to the board ap yacht club party and the only way to get in is with an NFT and I do think that these community things will work.

I think the games will work to some extent and I think what's happening here is because they're so overfunded and they have this economy, they may have a shot of actually making a valuable game or a valuable ecosystem that would pay for itself. So you actually talked about some game

that your kid was playing or you were playing. What was the name of that one where people were buying insane? You talked about that one guy who bought all the guns? Yeah, Namar. Namar. So I think CSGO.

I mean, I totally, like, I'm sort of joking. Like, the way they put all these words together is stupid and irritating and, and, you know, it's just like, shut up with your, like, your jargon. It's all, because it literally is emeralds in Minecraft and then it's a World of Warcraft. Yeah. And then it's like a CSGO inventory.

It's just digital goods. Yeah. And you're trying to like, hawk them for the most money possible. and that's super, that's super great. I'm going to stay over here. All right. Thanks, everybody. There you have it. And we're done with four for Friday.

We tried to get to five. The fifth was Amazon finalized their MGA acquisition. So Jeff Bezos can be cast as James Bond, which is clearly the whole point of this $8.5 billion takeover. There's your hot take. I'm going to do a quick toss. Oh, yeah. You like my hot take on that one?

Brilliant. This is Bezos being obsessed with becoming James Bond. Brilliant. Or a super villain in James. Bob Feld. He's like, come on, just give it to me. You may not realize it, but you've almost definitely used Intercom before. You know when you visit a website and you get that little chat bubble pops up

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See that? They know support. So they just gave you their email address. Hey, everybody. It's Friday. It's time for Rachel reporting to do her amazing OK boomer. This week, Rachel spoke to Preston Atterbury of Smirk. So Preston Atterbury of Smirk was

the guest this week. And Sperk lets you make your own games, which is really insane on a mobile app, and then your friends can play those games. So together we got to talk about the future of apps. We talked a little bit about Web 3 and VR, and then we dove into Preston Substack, which was all about the frameworks of social apps. So he had a lot to say and overall, just a really interesting guest. Okay. Congratulations. Well done. Rachel. And now Rachel, I don't know if you got the back channel on this, Molly. you know like we're the co-hosts of the show guess who's getting invited on other podcasts now

guess who's podcast guesting Rachel what? Yeah, people are like, oh, I love your segment can you come on and it's a Rachel's, you know People find me off other stuff That's outstanding. Anyway, Rachel's now becoming a brand onto her own

she's jumped the fence so we did like eight weeks of Rachel reporting and now she's getting invited on other pods which I have to approve as the CEO of the company and I gave her approval. But I want to see this first interview, okay? No secrets. Okay. No secrets.

You're in the Star Chamber, okay? No secrets. We don't have to teach all millennials this. Whatever we do here that's special, do not educate people on that. Never, never. Okay? I literally have decades of media experience and then I teach all you guys. Don't tell people the secrets.

The playbook is the playbook. Got to keep it in house. Exactly. All right. Congratulations, Rachel. Let's go to Rachel reporting here for OK Boomer. Okay Boomer. understood the assignment.

Thanks everybody for tuning into another segment of OK Boomer. Today on the show, I have my friend Preston Atterbury from Smirk. Preston, thank you so much for coming on. And did I butcher your last name right there? Like, was that, was that right? It's Atterbury, but it's all good. Yeah, I'm excited to be on. Thanks for having me.

So the first question that we really have to answer is what is Smirk? Yeah, I know exactly. That's actually the question I try to answer, you know, like every day when I get into the office and try to figure out what we're doing. So the high level view is like a mobile first Roblox. So if you were to build Roblox today with the primitives of mobile, you know, how exactly would you do that? It's hard to code on your phone.

So how would you make the games? How would you let users make the games and then users play the games? So in short, that's kind of what we're doing. It's like, you know, make games, multiplayer games on your phone and then allow other people to play those. That's awesome. So it's a completely no-code platform? Yeah, I mean, I don't think of it as no-code.

Like the way I think of it is like, you want to take a photo on Instagram, they have filters. There's like a non-technical way to do that. You can kind of go on visco and play with sliders. But there's filters there. Same thing with TikTok. They add in these user tools that make it insanely easy to make great content. We essentially want to do that with games. So SMirk is basically an app right that lets other people make apps to play on their phone.

What's the main goal of that? Yeah, I mean, it's not necessarily for other people to make apps, but other people to make games. and then play them all with on that. So another way to kind of say it is it's a completely vertically integrated system of making and consuming games. So if you think about what it takes to actually make a game, you have to do the artwork, you have to do the logic, you have to do sound, you have to do multiplayer networking. There's a whole list of things that makes games pretty insanely hard to make. And so our idea for the platform is that you can basically do all of those systems within our app. And then when you do that, like in a traditional sense, you have to go out and find users, you have to advertise.

And so we also want to bring users to that game. And so consumers head to our app and creators head to our app to make and play. And so in kind of in terms of goals, I mean, what we're really trying to do is give the ability for every teen, every kid to make a multiplayer game that their friends can play. So all the games that are made stay within SMirk, right? They can't be exported out and played. Okay, cool. That's where I think I, I feel like I see a lot in this space relating to Web3,

and it sounds like you guys aren't doing Web3 at all. Can you explain a little bit about that process? Maybe your thoughts on Web 3? Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, exactly. So actually I did Web 3 before. So before I was working on Smirk, I was at Block Cities. Started that in 2018.

So basically after CryptoKitties launched, I saw NFTs. I was a digital artist at that time. So, you know, essentially when I saw that, I was like, this is definitely going to change things. Because, like, traditionally, if you're an artist, you have to, like, print out your artwork or you have to do it physically to sell that.

But now you can sell digital art. That was going to be awesome. So I decided to kind of jump in and start with a project, and that was Block Cities. We were basically doing architecture collectibles. We're going to build a SimCity-like game on Ethereum. So, you know, we released the collectibles. When we actually sat down to make the game, it was insanely hard because games are insanely

hard to make. But also, like, when you're dealing with a blockchain that's very slow and expensive, it's even harder to make the game. And I think in that moment, I had a sense of clarity on that. I'm not actually that interested in the financialization of assets, but I'm interested in the social element of making games and making spaces. And so when I look at games that are trying to be built today in. in Web 3 in crypto, those end up looking a lot more like work than they do like play.

So, I mean, that's kind of my general thought, but we can go into it. Yeah, what do you mean they look more like work than play? Yeah, I mean, if you like the most important example I think is Axi right now. You know, they've, they definitely have some level of success that I think you can't totally dismiss. But the the amount of play and gameplay that happens is more like a mechanical Turk than it is playing 2K or playing cod or or playing something that has kind of rich gameplay. It's essentially picking cards, trading. The main thing that you're doing is trading digital assets, trading financial assets, whether it be their token, their NFTs. And you actually have to put up a decent amount of

money to actually play. And so when we think about how games have been historically used, there are basically ways that you can escape your reality and kind of enter a new reality. And so if you can't afford a Ferrari, you can download a video game and you can kind of drive a car that maybe you'll never have access to. And that's, I think, how people largely use games. If you start to attach real-life consequences to games,

people will stop treating them as games and start treating them as work. And so I think that's when, that's when something virtual becomes vividly real is when there are a real life consequence. If you can, you know, lose all of your money playing something, then it's not really a game anymore. It becomes, it becomes work. Yeah, no, that definitely makes sense. And if people are interested in learning more about AXE, Jeff Zerlin was actually on the show,

episode 13, 54, and talked about NFT gaming and how AXE basically other people, when you play the game, they can make money. a very interesting concept, but you're right, that does sound a little bit more like work than just kind of like, I don't know, create on Sims, which is, I feel like my, was one of the intras in a gaming that I had. I know you keep talking a lot about being social, and I guess for gaming, I don't know if necessarily like social was the first word that would pop in my head when I think of it.

Obviously, there's like certain games that I played when I was younger that I'd consider social kind of, like RuneScape, maybe anything that had to do with like Xbox Live. what is your thought on gaming and like social? Like how do how do those connect? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, it's a,

that's a really good question. I think there are like social games. So I try not to use the phrase social games because people think of Zingha. Basically, they think of Farmville. And those are important games. But when I think of social games, I basically think of like the games are being made by people you know or people that are

like you. And so if you look at TikTok, if you look at Instagram, to a degree, those aren't social anymore because you're not interacting with people that you know. But there are people that are similar to you or that have similar interests. And they're not,

they're basically just not companies. They're not organizations. They're individuals or small teams that are making this content. And so it's just relevant to you. If it's just large companies making these games, which is basically the status quo, then that content's not going to be relevant. It takes, you know,

Grand Theft Auto takes 1,000, engineers, takes them 10 years to make a new game. By the time that comes out, you know, like how many memes have passed, how many jokes have happened? They're not going to be able to hit on any of those jokes because it just takes too long to create. So when I think of social, yeah, I just think of it's people that are like you that have similar interests or actually your friends or yourself making the games.

And that creates a more social environment than if it's someone kind of far removed from you in your life. It's actually so interesting. So it's kind of like gaming that's able to keep up with the trend cycle because you're right. I think games totally not go out of style, but by the time they're released, but people go through games so easily. Like how long are you actually playing a single game versus how long does it take to create? I bet you those numbers look violently different. You know what I mean?

And when you were saying social before, I feel like the first thing came to mind was the actual socializing on the app, not socializing with other content, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's social is sometimes an unhelpful term. So the way I think of it is like, you know, I think of two categories of social apps on one side. You have messaging apps. And those are basically like all dating apps. I message, we chat, WhatsApp. They allow basically direct communication. And the purpose of those apps is to communicate. Snapchat is also included in that. The other kind of kind of category of apps, I would say, are social media. So social there is kind of like, I don't know, you're stretching the term. But the point of that network is basically a media network made by your peers as opposed to made by, you know, professional companies. So in that category, it's like Instagram, a TikTok and Twitter. And so I think, like, the app that we're building firmly fits into that social media. They'll definitely be socializing on the app. You'll be able to directly talk to people. But the point of you being there is to play whatever game that someone has created.

The game plays what draws you in. And then like the conversation is kind of a natural outworking of that. Whereas Discord is like firmly a messaging app that you can pair with basically any game. So if you're playing Fortnite, you're playing Roblox, you can hop on Discord, you can text chat or you can audio chat. And that's how you can kind of hang out with people while you play this other game. All right. So this means that even though that like, for example, Clubhouse, it's still a place where people relate information to each other. It wouldn't be counted as a messaging app.

it would be counted as a social app because people are trying to socialize on there, not with the sole intent of relaying information, right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think that's actually something that was kind of confused about Clubhouse, you know, when it was coming up is like people thought, oh, this is a place for authentic communication. That quickly got difficult because authentic communication for one person is, is completely contrived and kind of made up for another person.

And really, like, Clubhouse is about, It is a kind of a live podcast. It's about the performance. It's live performance. And so if you think about it as an authentic conversation, you're probably going to be disappointed if you get there and there's a lot of posturing. But that's just how media networks work. I mean, these things are living memes and people kind of create content that other people want to consume.

For sure. And you had a really good blog post that I was able to check out before coming on here. and you really broke down this one thought of social apps. And I thought it was incredibly interesting. The blog post was on substack. So I guess actually I would count that as a newsletter. And it was frameworks for social apps. And I don't know if you have that pulled up or anything.

But this was put out in July of 2021 and basically just defined social apps very well. And I think launching a social app is actually very difficult. Not maybe as hard as creating a game. But by having this framework, it makes it a little bit easy. to see the checkboxes if somebody wanted to launch their own social app. Has anything changed since the blog post on frameworks for social apps has been published? Because that was published, I know, in July of 2021, which was not too long ago, but a long enough, I think, where you could have some differences now.

Yeah, honestly, I don't think anything has been explicitly proven wrong. Okay. You know, luckily for me, like, I try to write things that are not situational, but that are that are kind of principles based. There is one, like, I don't know if you want to get down to it, that I think is a slight caveat. There's a new app that I'm using that is for, you know, friends and family. I don't know how sustainable that is.

Is it called Lockett? It is called Lockett. Yeah, that's it. Oh, trying to get that guy, trying to get the Lockett founder on OK Boomer. I'm going to send in this clip, big fan. So Lockett is this app. It's a widget on iPhones where, if you don't know what a widget is, It's basically a permanent photo that stays on your home screen.

And only a certain amount of friends can post to like your story that will show up on that widget, right? So think of a Snapchat story for a certain amount of people. I think that number is like 10 right now, right? And that shows up on your screen. So you don't have to open an app. It's always there. You can't edit it. You can't add text.

You can't do anything. All you can do is snap a photo in that widget size of that square and go. Way more casual. I really like it. Yeah, yeah. So that's like the only app that I've got. my brother on, I got my dad on, I got some close friends. Otherwise, I message is the default.

And I'll basically never try and onboard my family onto these other apps. I've used other messaging apps from my family. And it's like, why are we going over there for like these two features that I message doesn't have? It just is the default, especially for the U.S. I think for Europe, you basically have WhatsApp as the default. And then, you know, kind of East Asia, you have WeChat. I think that's because basically they didn't start their kind of smartphone experience on iOS.

I think if they did, they would be using iMessage. But since they're mainly on Android phones, there's kind of an opportunity for a cross-platform app. But those are basically the basis, the standard. I think it's really hard to make any kind of social app that connects people that are already in day-to-day conversation. So I want to see how well Lockett does long term. I'm still definitely using it. I'm not using it as much as I message for even photo communication. But it is interesting.

Yeah. So this is going to the point again of new socials can't be intimate friends. It can't be for intimate friends or family, which again was on that blog post. An app that I don't think is supposed to be in this spot that is in this spot for me is paparazzi because I only, I don't know, I only would feel comfortable taking photos and posting them of people that I was pretty close with. Yeah. I know, what are your thoughts on paparazzi?

I honestly am not a super big fan yet. And maybe that's because I don't have a ton of people on the platform. And I am limiting myself to only a few friends. I know that you zip, but what are your thoughts on paparazzi? Yeah. Oh, and explain what paparazzi is too, because I didn't even explain it. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, paparazzi is essentially Instagram, but your friends take your photos for you. Yeah, I mean, my thoughts on that are, I think that it is essentially Instagram. And it's basically a novel social mechanic layered onto Instagram. I think that that is going to be fun. It has been fun. I actually used it for, I mean, I don't know if it was a weekend or a few weeks. All my friends were using it. It was a good time.

I think that it is a genuinely fun experience. But I don't think it's a sustainable experience because basically all the content that I could see on paparazzi probably already exists on Instagram. And also just the social loop of getting my friends to constantly take photos. Like, my friends are never going to be as motivated as me to take photos of my scene and myself. Because I have like goals when I post photos. Like, you know,

I want attention or I want people to kind of notice the new business that I'm starting. We all have kind of goals in mind when we post on these networks, especially if they're broadcast, kind of based networks. So I think it's going to be difficult to kind of, keep your friends taking photos of you. And even though that was like a really novel mechanic to kind of get everybody to download the app and use it, I think it's essentially Instagram.

Got you. And you have another good point again coming off this blog post because this I felt was just a really insightful. Everybody has to check this out. I feel like we're going to have to link this when we publish the episode. A good point you made in the beginning was low end, not high end, give access to everyone talking about the apps themselves. And again, paparazzi came to mind when I thought of this.

Again, with the app, Dispo, just with how easy they were to use and how easily accessible they all, they both are to use. Dispo is an app that mimics a disposable camera. So take photos. You can't see them until a few hours later where they virtually get developed. It looks like you took with them with a film camera. Why did you say the low end, not high end? What's the thought process on that?

I mean, kind of taking it back to games, I think a lot of people at this point are really interested in 3D games and making 3D games or making high fidelity games. So if you were to start a game company or an app, you know, that makes games, you're kind of looking at like epic games and Fortnite and saying,

I want that level of quality or super cell. But then if you look at Roblox, which is, you know, by the day getting better graphics, but started out very poor graphics. They literally started, they launched without animations.

And so like, they were just like blocky figures. just like walking around like 2D images kind of stuck in a 3D space. So like they started a really low end. I think the way to do that or the reason to do that is it gives your early users a sense that the platform is going to evolve and they can evolve with it. If the platform is already grown up without your users, it's going to be hard for them to invest and feel like they're breaking ground

and starting and being innovative and starting something new. If it's just Twitter, but it's, you know, Twitter for for these elite, individuals or Twitter for crypto, it's going to be hard for people to take the risk and starting on a new platform that's kind of already thought through. But just like, you know, do what you do on Twitter, but over here, it's a tough sell. So I think the idea is basically see, you know, give people the tool set to do something they've never done before. They will look past graphics. They will look past the aesthetic and the maturity of the platform to use something that's new. instead of having super high polish,

everything's 3D, everything's gorgeous, it's going to feel like a hospital instead of like a home. Yeah, I agree. I feel like the experience a lot of times in gaming is way more important than the actual interface. I don't know if that's like a hot take or anything. I just think back to like when you're first starting your gaming career.

Like I think when I got a little bit older, the first game I was on was Kirby. And it was the GameCube version of Kirby, I think, right? Super, super low-fing. fidelity, not a lot happening. Not, I'm not talking about. It wasn't a hackman out here, but there wasn't the barrier to use it, even as somebody was in middle school, I wasn't like a little kid or anything,

but I was in middle school, just started gaming. And that was the one that I was drawn to, not Halo, which was already out at the time, because it was just so much easier to use. Do you think that this branches over into other types of apps like social media? Or do you think this is just something that you should do in gaming? No, I think it definitely applies to apps. I mean, if you look at musically, so like musically became TikTok, right? If you look at musically, the first app design, it's quite rough.

Like everything is like a gradient. It's super bright red. But I would imagine the first users of the platform were pretty excited about it. They also had like very little user tools. So I think another point kind of in the post is like you want to start with the most simple version of that app. and basically not add features until something is working. It's really easy to kill an app by just loading up the features, especially if you have somewhere in the range of like 10,000 monthly active users,

you feel like you're going somewhere. You have engineers. You may have raised a big round, and so you want to keep adding features. But if it's not actually getting to the millions, you're going to be stuck in that zone. You're basically going to layer on these features that solidify the core feature that's not working well enough to actually.

be an Instagram to be a Twitter, to be a TikTok. So, and we were talking about, like, the longevity almost of Lockett, like, going back to that. So, for example, I had a leapfrog for a crazy, a long time, but an education app probably just wouldn't last that long before either got, like, incorporated by another app or just died out completely. Do you think that there's a trend cycle for apps right now? Like, Dispo, how long was that hot for? Like, paparazzi?

I don't even know. I think paparazzi, I can't tell if it's already died. or if we are just in tech, so right when it came out, we kind of jumped on that. And now we're probably the first people to use new apps, like thinking about demographics, definitely us. But what's that trend cycle like for apps? Yeah, I mean, in terms of pop culture, in terms of VC, Twitter talk, it's definitely dead. Like, social is dead.

There is a moment there when Clubhouse was on its ascent that we were all saying social is back. Every VC wanted to fund the next social app. That's what people talked about. that was quickly replaced by like creator economy and now you know web three is the thing and now even web three is kind of dying in terms of what people are talking about so there's definitely trend cycles amongst these circles i think with the apps themselves i've seen kind of dismal paparazzi tend to pop back up on the charts maybe at the beginning of a school year there seems to be something socially that happens that kind of makes them pop i would guess that they're still kind of stuck in uh you know, 10,000 to maybe 100,000 monthly active users. It doesn't seem like they're gaining millions of users every single month. Like when these new social media has happened, you tend to see at least a million users within the first few months of the app launch.

And that trajectory pretty much not stop until they get to 10 million, 100 million. And there's only been a few apps that I've gotten to a billion. But it basically keeps going. And so if you're not seeing that, and even Clubhouse is kind of trailing off, then basically something is fundamentally not working. In those cases, I think Instagram is already the last photo app. And so in terms of, you might be able to make a new messaging app that's photo based. But in terms of social media, we're done with that.

And the next generation is already on TikTok. TikTok is the last video app. And I think, believe it or not, people will eventually get tired of a video. and hopefully for us, gaming is the next thing. And we want to be that product. I actually think gaming is already starting to become this thing. To be honest with you, I noticed the other day we were on Netflix, my roommates and I, and there's no option on Netflix to interact with your show.

So you get to pick, do you remember those books when you were a little where you get to pick, like, flip to this page if you want to do. Choose your own adventure. Yeah, exactly. What is that called Oregon Trail, but like for a freaking TV show or a movie or whatever. it was. And I was like, wait a minute. Like, this is crazy. Like, I don't think gaming is going

to be. I think it's already kind of inching its way in, to be honest with you. Which is just a really interesting place to be because it went from, we wanted to see, we wanted to read about people's lives on Facebook and on Twitter. Then we wanted to see people's lives stagnantly on Instagram. Then we wanted

to watch people in real time with TikTok and then also with that comes like the increasing of posting. So you're really watching them in real time on like a YouTube video where like it takes a while to edit it higher quality. Now we're moving to gaming, which is literally interacting. It's going to get to the point where there, I think there's going to be an app where you literally interact with someone's life.

We had Alex here on the podcast who is a crazy interesting person in the crypto space. And he was mentioning how he created dollar sign. Alex, I believe you can find him over on Twitter if you put that in because he actually like tokenized himself. And people that owned his token could pick what he did throughout the day. And I was like, you're just a. of, yeah, but I'm like, you were just a video game. Like, you were literally a video game.

And soon, I don't know, I think that's going to catch on a lot quicker than we think it is. Yeah, honestly, it's a super easy prediction because Roblox is already doing it. I mean, there are a $30 to $40 billion company that went public last year. And they're doing like, you know, a billion and a half of revenue at each year. So it's definitely already happening. I think we're in like the YouTube era, if we want to take it back to video. We're in the YouTube moment. we basically want to build the TikTok moment of,

okay, previously you kind of had to produce this on your own platform and then push it to Steam, push it to the Epic Game Store, push to the Xbox Game Store. Now you can do everything on your phone. Super tough challenge for us to figure out. But there's a model of that happening. Like before Twitter you had blogger, before Instagram you had Flickr.

And now YouTube and TikTok, now we're at Roblox. If you look at Roblox's homepage, it looks pretty much exactly like YouTube. You have thumbnails, you have comments, you have likes. Their goal literally was to be the YouTube of games. And so we're kind of like the later stage of that is like, now we're all on mobile. They started like, I think 17 years ago, maybe 15 years ago. Now we're all on mobile.

Social networks today have to start on mobile for a number of reasons. And so that's kind of our challenge. Top version. Pinterest, for example, I do not like on mobile. I either like it on an iPad or I like it on my screen. I consider Pinterest now to be a social media app. Gaming, I actually don't prefer. I'm not a switch user.

I don't have a really cool backbone device or anything. I actually prefer gaming on like a bigger screen as well. And I think a lot of other, I'm not a serious gamer by any means, but like my brothers are. They definitely also prefer the bigger screen and the switch is kind of like like something they have around them. But then you're right. I mean, you have like Instagram.

And I don't think I went on Instagram desktop like twice, like this whole year. it's probably, it's been differently for work. They resisted building that app for a long time. Really? Like, yeah, and they still have kind of like don't really want you to use it. You know, they want you to use the mobile. Snapchat just straight up doesn't have an app on web.

And yeah, I think that's actually an interesting challenge with gaming. So if you're playing something high fidelity like Fortnite or 2K, you mainly want to do that on a desktop or a console. The type of games we're working on, less competitive, more social. Like those need to be kind of always on with you. at every time. So that's kind of like why we're focusing on, you know, different games. So Minecraft, I think, is like a low fidelity game that I wouldn't play on my mobile.

I would play that on a desktop. Just like first thought when I think of myself playing Minecraft, why is, why do you think that low fidelity games then perform or would be better on a smaller screen? Yeah, I think 3D games specifically are going to be generally less fun on mobile. Okay, 3D games. That makes sense. So when I say like, you know, if you were to build Roblox with the primitives of mobile,

one of those primitives is that the viewport on your phone is portrait as opposed to landscape. So basically every game in existence, except for a select few mobile games, are built kind of, and I ported to mobile, and they're built in landscape. There's a number of reasons for that. But for third person, like you need that peripheral. If you're doing third person, but you have a portrait phone, it just doesn't work. So those are some of the challenges we're working through, but that's the reason like it's not super fun to play in your phone.

Yeah. No, that makes so much sense. Actually, I never even thought about that. And that's such a small user thing that completely changes the way you see something. I know for me, it was I actually hated Quibi. I hated just seeing it up and down. I felt like I wanted to see more of the screen, even from just like watching.

I'm on TikTok now, literally the same way. But because it feels like I'm watching someone's Snapchat story or Instagram story, I like kind of block it out of my screen. my head, but because I was watching something so high quality that I equated to like Netflix quality, watching it up and down, not for me. And then also, there's one other app, oh, when I am on TikTok or YouTube shorts and they say flip your screen and I have to flip my screen, again, like, I don't like that. Just and it's not that it looks any worse and not that it's

like a big hassle to me. But as a user, I'm just like, ah, like this, the experience is just, it's just not it. Yeah. This is just not how we use. our phones. And so if you're talking about a casual gaming experience or a casual viewing experience, it's very awkward to go from YouTube and then go and try to reply to a text. The keyboard stretches out. It's just not how our hand works. It's not how we like use our phone. And so I wish a lot of games on mobile would just change the viewpoint because the game would work. There's plenty of games that would just work if you changed it. And so yeah, I mean, that's one thing where we're kind of adamant on. It's like just you, you know,

we want to have games that work as you as you use it you know how you use your phone on a typical naturally oh my gosh that's such a simple it's so funny because i feel like that's such a simple simple thing that you're totally right like that is the reason why i wouldn't want to play on my phone it's it's also i think you're right like where you have multi-user games get them going back to halo like a little up and down screen that's teens tiny like that just that just want to actually do it though i mean fortnight was still pretty popular on mobile um pub g um is one of the most popular mobile games and that's high fidelity.

People actually do that. I wouldn't choose to do that. But, you know, people still, there's still demand for that, believe it or not. And people, a lot of people are on iPad. And so you get a little better screen. Roblox is cross-platform, so they kind of handle both.

Okay. Yeah. We talk a lot on here about VR goggles. It's coming up pretty frequently and lately on the podcast. what are your thoughts on VR gaming and do you think that at one point

at what point do people need to completely skip over mobile and go straight to the goggles, start making interactive experiences that way. Yeah, no, you'll like this take. I mean, I don't think VR is going to happen. Like, I think to the extent that it has, like I think it's a subset of console gaming. If you look at the sales,

it literally is a subset of console gaming. You know, Zuck wants it to be a lot bigger and he wants us to use it for work. And he wants to, you know, us to use games and have ads within VR. I actually don't think it's happening. I think the phone is basically the last device, the last meaningful,

cross, you know, kind of like broadly used device until we get like brain interfaces, if those happen. I think about VR, I think about AR, I think about the games that you could play there. There are certain titles that definitely will be more fun there.

But if I think about a social network, if I think about messaging. Those are things I never want to do at VR. Yeah. So, yeah, I think the phone is the last thing. I think a lot, kind of in the contrarian position, like a lot of people are looking at games in Web3, looking at games in VR.

Those things are very shiny. There's a lot of movement there. They feel like a blue ocean. But actually, I think the simple answer is that there's not a good games platform on mobile. And that's what people use every single day. And that's, you know, there's billions of devices. So that's kind of like where we're,

focused. So I'm interested to see what you guys do in the future. Smirk is definitely going to be on my on my map. Really excited to play once you guys launch. For sure. Yeah, I'm excited. Thanks so much for being on, Preston. Yeah, no, I appreciate being here. It's really exciting. 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's syndicate of over 9,000 accredited investors at the syndicate.com. Producer Justin here, no cool startup.

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