This Week in Startups - $RIVN, Biden on TikTok & Crypto, $PTON + Countdown Capital’s Jai Malik + Josh from Party Round | E1406

Episode Date: March 12, 2022

It’s a variety show. First Jason and Molly do six rapid fire news topics (2:10) including: Rivian’s lowered guidance, Biden briefing TikTok influencers on Ukraine, declining NFT volume, creator economy wins, Biden’s Crypto executive order and Peloton’s new pricing pilot. Then, hard-tech investor Jai Malik of Countdown Capital joins (42:22) for Angel Season 6 “First Time Funds.” Finally, producer Rachel has another edition of OK Boomer, this time she talks viral marketing and new ways of fundraising with Josh from Party Round (1:18:42). (00:00) Jason and Molly intro the show: 5 rapid fire stories, Angel S6 interview with Jai Malik of Countdown, OK Boomer w/ Josh of Party Round (02:10) TikToker Part of Biden Ukraine Strat. (07:53) Rivian Earnings (14:42) Embroker - Get an extra 10% off insurance for your business at https://Embroker.com/twist (16:05) OpenSea Volume Down (21:25) Wins in the Creator Economy (26:42) LinkedIn Jobs - Go to https://linkedIn.com/angel and post your first job for free. (28:10) Biden Crypto Policy (34:04) Ourcrowd - Check out the deal of the week at https://ourcrowd.com/twist (35:22) Peloton New CEO Actions (42:22) Molly interviews Jai Malik of Countdown for Angel S6 (01:10:29) Jason, Molly, and Rachel toss to OKB (01:18:42) OKB w/ Producer Rachel and Josh of Party Round Check out Countdown: https://countdown.capital FOLLOW Jai: https://twitter.com/jai__malik Check out Party Round: https://www.partyround.com FOLLOW Josh: https://twitter.com/joshqharris FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Hey, everybody, it is Friday, and you know what that means. Settle in. Get yourself a happy hour cocktail because it's a variety show and it's a thick boy. First up, though, we are trying, because we have so much great content today, we're trying a new format. Let us know what you think, Rapid Fire News. Yes, it's five for five Fridays, everybody, five for five on a Friday. That's my Z-100 radio voice.

Molly and I are going to run through five awesome stories, five topics, and five minutes each. And we'll see. Five times five is 25. Can we do it? You'll find out next. We talk about Rivian, Nicola, Fisker, NFTs crashing, the creator economy surging, a little Taylor Lorenz dunking, Biden's crypto executive order, freedom, and Molly's favorite her crush on the new Peloton CEO.

I do. I love him. I got a man crush. It is Taylor Lorenz shout out day, not dunk day. Enough of that. Then I talked to. No, she's dunking on other people. Oh, yeah, yeah.

She's totally dunking with her awesomeness. Yes, there you go. Then I talked to Jay Malick of Countdown Capital for Angel Season 6, a guy right up my alley with his investment thesis. Absolutely. And finally, producer Rachel with another edition of OK Boomer. It's a long interview. She jumped the fence on this one.

She's going long. I think she's coming for us, Molly. I know. Look out, but I think it's worth it. And it's going to be a great show. Stick with us. Season 6 of Angel is brought to you by and broker. And broker's startup insurance.

program helps startup secure the most important types of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle. Save up to 20% off of traditional insurance today atembroker.com slash twist. While you're there, get an extra 10% off using offer code twist. 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 angel. And Our Crowd. Our Crowd helps you invest early in pre-IPO companies, alongside professional VCs. If you're interested in investing, you can join R-C-R-C-R-O-W-D.com

slash Angel. Hey, everybody. It's Friday. We've got too much show for you. We do news. We do interviews. And then we got Rachel reporting. She jumped the fence.

She decided, I'm going to start doing long-form interviews. Okay, I can't control the show anymore. I've totally lost the script. So we're getting into the two-hour shows. But we got so much news, Molly, heading into the weekend that you want to comment on. I want to comment on. This docket is insane. It's loaded. So we are, we're trying a new format,

aren't we? We're trying to do like a lightning round where we're putting producers in charge of shutting our faces after a certain amount of time. This is, this appeals to me in the radio way, which is like, we've got five minutes per segment tops. So here we go. Here we go. First, scoop. Taylor Lorenz has been at the Washington Post five minutes and already has this freaking fascinating scoop today about how on Thursday, we're recording this Friday, the 30 top TikTokers were hosted by press secretary Jen Saki on a Zoom call to receive information about the war in Ukraine. That is extraordinary.

Congrats to tell Lorenz. I know she's been getting in a lot of back and forth. There was some article in between her New York Times and then she took a book break, friend of the show, Taylor Rends, we'll have her on again. She did a great appearance. We had a great back and forth. And then she's at the Washington Post, but before she went there, it was, I don't know if you saw the whole brouhaha, where she's like, New York Times doesn't let you build a brand. True.

And not that you would have an experience in this. So that was kind of interesting. And then her Washington Post, future colleagues, then proceeded to have a dunk fest on her. What? Yeah, you didn't see this. I didn't see that part. It was pretty controversial. And then then that created a second.

media cycle of New York magazine and everybody else saying, here's all the best dunks on Taylor-Rence, because she said, listen, if you're a journalist now, you've got to build a brand. I'll tell you what, she's right.

She's 100% right. She's 100% right. But these old-school journalists are like, we're reporters. Well, she's also absolutely right about the New York Times, letting some people build brands and not everyone. And it's the picking and choosing a gatekeeping that is the mess. However,

here she is with the scoop about, because one of the things that she, I think, has struggled with is the New York Times respecting her actual beat, for one thing, right? And then this idea of like, is this beat important? Is the creator economy important? Does what these crazy kids are doing on TikTok really matter? Well, okay, it turns out that among other things, yes, we have all realized in the past five or six years that information warfare is a thing that the information people see and particularly young people see is incredibly important. And that in fact, TikTok is a

place that young people are going for information. And so I think it's actually very smart and progressive and they must have some people under 165 years old in the White House who were like, we need to talk to prominent TikTokers so that they can, you know, get our message out. Congratulations for Taylor for getting the story number one. Incredible scoop. So for all the, you know, okay boomers dunking on her, you didn't get this story and she did. So she just came in and literally hit a half-court shot or dunked on your all-asses. So I think you've got to bow down to the queen here. She came in there and set the tone.

The Zoom call covered the U.S.'s goals in the Ukraine and answer questions covering distributing aid, working with NATO, and how the United States would react to a Russian use of nuclear weapons. This is important work because young people are getting their information from TikTok, from podcasts. And this is what this administration and the Democratic Party and our government needs to do. There are a bunch of people out there talking and communicating. They become influencers. Dare I say, they should do this with podcasters.

We're informed. But I do think if, I don't know, two or three years ago, the Democratic Party had sat down with Joe Rogan, who is voting for Bernie Sanders and who thinks Michelle Obama should run for president. He is a lifelong Democrat who is the most left-leaning guy. They should have sat him down and said, here's what is happening. with COVID, can we give you the latest information? Can we give you inside information?

And do that with 20 podcasters, you know, the ones on the right, the left, you can bring Ben Shapiro into this, whoever. Like, and just say, if you want, we'll brief you and bring them into the tent so you're all on the same side. I give the Biden administration. Incredible credit. I give Taylor Lorenz, incredible credit for getting the story. A plus on both.

A plus on both. Completely agree. And to those wondering, you know, off the. off the top of their heads, if this is government-sponsored propaganda on TikTok, yep. And the reason it's there is to counter the spread of misinformation that's government-sponsored propaganda on TikTok. So, like, there's nothing wrong with having an honest conversation with people about what you

would like them to take away, right? We do that when we meet with companies, with founders, with PR people. Like, this is an incredible to engage Gen Z at this level and not act like this stuff doesn't matter is a super promo. But let's be clear. propaganda is when, you know, it's bias or misleading. Yes. So this is pure information.

So it's information so that hopefully you can un-propaganda the misinformation. I don't think we're trying to give them bad information, right, Molly? We're trying to win an information war against people with propaganda. Right. And look, we can't debate the semantics for one thing. We only have 20 seconds left of what is or is not propaganda. But if somebody's saying one thing, you should counter it with more information. That's just simple.

Bingo. All right, next story as we move along here. And if you're watching this on YouTube.com, says this weekend, you will see a nice infographic. Rivian stock is down 79% of its peak as of noon Easter on Friday and its valuation has compressed from a high of $150 billion down to $35 billion after cutting its 2222 production forecasts in half. Molly, you want to give us a couple more numbers here? Yeah, there are so many. Let's see, Q4 results.

You said $55 million in 2021 revenue, negative gross profit of $383 million from selling and delivering about 900 vehicles in 2021. They produced about 1,400 vehicles so far in 2022. That's as of March 8th. I can't imagine they produced many more since then. As we're recording this on the 11th. They produced about 1,000 cars in 2021, and they have, out, 83,000 pre-orders. So that's like if a restaurant's orders are real backed up. Yeah. They're in the weeds, as we say.

In the weeds. Yeah, exactly. The pre-orders, by the way, did include a fully refundable $1,000 deposit. So even if Rivian is treating that as a little bit of revenue, it's not very much. It's not a time. All right. You guys know my position on this nonsense. I called it out early on.

I said on episode 55 of All In, listen, Rivian's worth $20 billion. And I came to that calculation because it had $17 billion in cash. So I put the enterprise value at $3 billion. Three billion is amazing. That's a unicorn. If I invested at a company and it became worth $3 billion, I'd be stoked. $150 billion was a pipe dream. It was nonsense.

Right now, Rivin's trading at $35 billion. And they have about $18 billion in cash. And I'm sure how they get that little bit of extra cash. I will say $1,000 deposit to me is meaningful. I think anything over $500. Oh, for sure. Somebody's got to think about that. Put it on their credit card.

It's a big deal. Yeah. Yeah. So I give them a lot of credit for that. I give them a lot of credit for the product. I give them a lot of credit for making a product that I think is pretty compelling. You know, it's got a lot of cool features and obviously people really want it. Good looking truck.

Good looking truck. And, you know, $67,000 is not cheap, but, you know, those trucks, you know, the high-end trucks go for even more than that, like an F-150 if you're getting there. But reality-wise, if they're, you know, only producing 700 cars a month, like maybe we can give them credit for 10 or 15 this year. I would be shocked if they hit 25K. I will put their deliveries the over under at 17,000. This is a train wreck because of the valuation.

And it's a lesson to everybody when the market goes out, everything comes back down to performance, not promise. And you should not give this much credit to any company. You have to look at the fundamentals of public companies. If you're betting on momentum, you are going to lose all your money.

And there are bag holders here, which are the public, who bought some pipe dream, this company will not be worth $150 billion ever again is my prediction. If it does become worth $150, it would be between 10 and 15 years from now,

maybe 15 years from now. It's going to take a long time. The stock's going to go down to $20 billion, is my prediction. Maybe $25 billion in the coming months. It's a disaster. I'm looking up Amazon's investment because the other thing I wonder is,

you know, at what point, so Amazon has a 20% stake in Riving. hopefully Amazon is not sitting there waiting. This is a bit of a side note, but I hope that Amazon is not just sitting there waiting for Rivian to produce trucks so that it can convert its fleet.

Like, please go ahead and buy other electric vehicles in the interim. Or hybrids or high gas mileage, like whatever you got to do. Right. But I think... It's great that they have this investment, but you got to dovetel this with Trevor Milton's

episode 1090 appearance. That is going to zero. I think nickel is trading at $3 billion right now. That company is worth $100 million. That company's going to be sold for parts. Anybody who buys that stock is a moron. Sorry. And if you own that stock and you don't sell it, all money has value.

Losing 90% of the 10% you have left is just, you might as well take the 10% and put into something that could 10x and maybe you get even. Nicola only has $497 million in cash. They're going to run through that real quick. The whole thing just sort of feels like, I mean, it's just like American celebrity culture playing out in the stock market, right? It's like, oh, it's a big sexy launch. And then in Rivian's case, oh, they've got Amazon and Ford on board.

And they don't understand that like when an Amazon or a Ford or even GM, which I think GM may still be an investor in Nicola, because it's like a rounding error for them. Sure, they can place that bet. Like, they're like venture capitalist placing a bet. But it seems, but it gives the imprimatur of incredible legitimacy to a company like Rivian when it goes out to the stock market. And frankly, investors and or the computer algorithm. should be smarter. I encourage everybody who's new to the stock market to not get confused by

vanity announcements and metrics. Vanity announcements and metrics are ones that don't include a customer buying something or a product being delivered. So any announcement, Amazon put in orders, this stuff's not binding. When people get the product and they're delighted with the product, that's how you evaluate companies. If you're evaluating a company based on, you know, Nikola may be having a letter of intent, which means nothing. All of this stuff is designed to create substance where substance does not exist. If substance existed, like Ford or Tesla or Amazon or Uber or DoorDash, they would talk about the number of orders, the number of rides, the number of cars delivered, yada, yada.

It's a disaster. Nicola and Fisker, I believe, both go to zero because you would now have, I mean, how many of the established place. You just did the, was it the Audi you reviewed? That was excellent. And then you bought another EV from another company that I did. I bought a Polestar. And it's good or great. Great. Awesome. So here we go. Like, this is no longer Tesla versus hybrids. This is like Tesla figured it out and it's a juggernaut. And now you have the other juggernauts who are going to come in second, third, and fourth. There is no room for Fisker. There is no room for Nicola. And there's likely no room for Rivian, all due respect.

Fisker $1.2 billion in cash. They're going to run out of cash probably in the next two years. I don't think it's going to be able to raise money again. That company has been restarted. I think this is the third time. They shocked it with a defibrillator and brought Fisker back from the dead. The cars are terrible. I know somebody who bought one of the original ones.

And then I saw, like, there's all this nepotism going on. I don't want to get into it, but stay away from these stocks and buy the companies that actually deliver cars if you really want to. This is a good startup investor lesson also. I'm going to quickly explain one crucial type of insurance that all startups need. It's called E&O, errors and omissions insurance. And it's going to really help you scale because any major customer is going to ask you for your E&O insurance to close your deals with them. So if you don't have business insurance, you're going to have failed one of the first steps of being a great founder.

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And while you're there, you're going to get an extra 10% off by using the promo code. Everybody loves most. TWIST, Twist, this week at startups. Get that 10% off at Embroker.com slash twist. All right. All right. Next, we are overtime already. We're only on our second story.

Are you biffing it? All right. It's okay. A little over time. We're not definite. We're doing all right. We're going to get it back. According to a Financial Times report,

daily trading volume on OpenC is down about 80% month over month in March, 80%. Dropping from mom's talking about going to zero. Dropping from almost $250 million a day to $50 million a day. This also, at least according to Morning Brew, is the one year anniversary of that people. Amazing. The Beeple NFTs. selling for $69 million. Yep.

And let's see. What's his name? COVID? No, not COVID. Covan. I think so. So you see this trading volume declining. The numbers are fascinating, right?

The selling price has dropped 48% since November. It's selling price of an average NFT, I mean. The average price of a board ape has dropped about 44% over the past two weeks since the Russia-Ukraine conflict began. The number of weekly active accounts, buying and selling NFTs fell like 49%. from $380,000 in November to about $194,000. And then another Financial Times piece noted that if you measure the NFT industry by total active accounts, rather than dollar amount, then the industry does seem pretty small,

although pretty small is evidently something like $17.7 billion in 2021. I guess the really fundamental question here for Jason is like, where are we on the bubble meter? Yeah, okay. So a couple of things. in the, I mean, we should just pull up the tulip mania chart at some point here. This is tulip mania all over again. You guys can look it up.

But there was a mani here around NFTs. They have no intrinsic value. The only value they have is in scarcity, which is built into, you know, blockchain and NFTs, and they're one of one, except there's an unlimited number of them that are created. So they're one of one in billions. So you know how they say, like, each snowflake is unique? Yes, but there's a billion of them every time you have a snowstorms. And then there's like a million snowstorms.

So we're talking about quadrillions of, you know, these things. So really good point. That's a really good analogy. Yes. They're all unique. Like, this is what I tell young people. Like, yes, you were a unique snowflake. I know your parents told you.

But you're one of like a billion in like the next hour of snow dumping on Tahoe. So the other thing is that NFTs were a total grift and a totally manipulated market. That doesn't mean the art that was created was not gorgeous and a value. in many cases. That doesn't mean the underlying technology is not brilliant. That doesn't mean the people that open sea are not brilliant.

All of that can be true. And also, the playbook for NFTs was built on a scam. So here's here's tulip mania. Imagine you bought on the way up here and then it flatlines and then nobody needs any tulips. Bottom line, I would say

90% of the traffic was painting the tape and false trades. That's my estimate. I would not be surprised again, if 90% of the trades were insider trading, in fact, was it OpenC that had an insider trading instance? One of the two platforms had an insider trading instance with one of their senior employees that they had to let go. Right.

If the senior employees, it was OpenC. It was OpenC had somebody internally front running. If the people inside of OpenC are front running, what are the people launching these projects do? I can tell you when you go on Signal or Telegram or Reddit or Discord, there are rooms filled with anonymous accounts painting the tape and they call the rooms like pump

and they come up with ways to pump the stuff. They created false trades. That's why the trades are collapsing. Maybe OpenC is starting

to police the false trades. Who knows? But that was never reality. People were trading between themselves and even Melania Trump reportedly bought her own

NFT. Yeah. So if Melania Trump OpenC employees or an employee singular, who knows, and then everybody else is manipulating this market

and you're buying these things in the last year. You're the bag holder. You lost all your money. Period. That's what I wonder about the people who are left in our last minute, I believe. Who is, who's left? Like when you look at the trading volume declining, are the people left, are they bagholders?

Or are they like the remaining savvy investors who are scooping up deals? Because, right, when a thing is like super hyper hyper like this, it can go through a hype cycle, then a crash. And then after the crash is when it finds an actual landing sometimes. I mean, it's not like tulips are. incredibly valuable. Any babies? Yeah, fair enough.

So bag holders then. Yeah. I mean, I think if you look at Fisker, Nicola, NFTs, ICOs, and we saw a dot-com company is like, what are the shares of the globe.com worth? They're still worth zero. They became worth, you know,

a company was worth billions, and now it's worth zero. Things go to zero. This is the hard lesson people are going to learn. This is why, when you invest in something, if it's an investment, you're looking at the intrinsic value of its ability to generate future cash flow, which means there's a product and a service and a customer and all those dynamics. And here, you didn't have any of those dynamics. So you're

just buying stuff because you think it's pretty or you're gambling. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Amazing. We're back on track. There was some very interesting news in addition to the White House meeting with TikTokers coming out of the creator and influencer economy over the past couple days. And by interesting news, I just mean so much freaking money. Yum. Friday beers, which I had never even heard of, right, started as a comedy Instagram account two years ago, just raised $6 million and rebranded as almost Friday media, which is funny. The Friday beers Instagram now has 1.6 million followers and they've created some other accounts.

They've got a little over 2 million followers on all Instagram accounts. 700,000 plus followers on all TikTok accounts. They make money by selling merch, staging live events, and working with sponsors. It's basically a community building company that just raised $6 million. Speaking of product and future revenue, where do you see this following? I mean, creators are the new distribution. That's how I look at it. So Mr. Beast is like, in a way, Disney or Walmart.

So like Disneyland, if you have a store there or have a store, if you had a store in the mall, if you had a store on Main Street, or you had shelf space in Walmart or Target, that's distribution. The new distribution is Cardi B, Rihanna, Mr. Beast, all of these influencers that have millions, tens of millions of followers on social media. When they talk about a product, it grows. And so the Kardashians fall into this as well. I saw that Kim Kardashian, I think, raised that $3 billion. And so if you combined any kind of product alignment or a brilliant product.

that gets product market fit with a Mr. Beast and I think Mr. Beast has tried a couple of things. I don't think Mr. Beast burger stuck or it was very good, but that's probably a lesson for him. So if let's say there was a Mr. Beast Burger 2.0 or chicken wings or he's doing a chocolate bar now,

if that product was truly exceptional and transcend it, then you could have a supernova-like event. Free distribution, right? Free distribution, digital free distribution. So I think one of the Kardashian sisters makes lip gloss. Is it Kylie, the one who makes the lip product? I think Kylie makes, I think Kylie makes a little bit of product?

I think it's Kylie, yes. Producer Rachel says yes. Producer Rachel says yes. Thank you, Gen Z, producer, Rachel. So what that means is, like, it's on brand. She wears it. She's an Instagram model, right? A notable model, I believe, is her skill set.

And it's on brand. And it has product market fit. And from what I understand, it's pretty fantastic. So that thing supposedly with the drops, I was talking to somebody, they said, like, you don't understand. This thing is selling out. Every time she does a drop, it sells out. It's got incredible margins. No distribution cost.

Sell direct. They don't need to be on Amazon. They create a landing page, Instagram, YouTube, landing page, done. So this is the future. And it's pretty amazing. They just need to make better products. They do. Also, I wonder if a pink flag for this future is the plight.

platform-based distribution. Because you do still see these creators, it's free distribution, but on someone else's platform. Like, it sort of, it harkens back a little bit to the question, the conversation we had about Facebook taking, you know, who's that guy, Joe Spicer? The $100 million dollar business. The $100 million business to zero. Now, this is different in some ways, except that it still is totally dependent on being able to get traffic through these platforms and then sell products. And I feel like if there's a risk factor for the creator economy, the only thing I see there

is the platforms. Immediately what I thought of with this Friday Beers thing was what if that account gets turned off on Instagram. So what they need to do is collect emails, collect phone numbers,

SMS so they can send messages, get those. Each one of those is worth 10 or 100 of the followers on TikTok, etc. So that's what any creator has to do. I talked to Mr. Beast about this. He didn't have a lot of emails.

I said, you need to take, your team's mission should be to convert 2% of subscribers on YouTube to emails every month and just compound that over time. And maybe in three years, you'll have this incredible base of emails. So you can just email people in their phone numbers. And don't be dependent on anyone platform. So if you look at the Kardashians, they have a TV show or had a TV show.

They have Twitter. They're incredible on. Instagram, they're incredible on. TikTok, I don't know if they engage. YouTube. You've really got to be multi-platform. You really do. See also, Taylor-Lorenz, you need to own your own brand,

independent of the big name that is distributing you because they are not, your friend. Tell of the rents stories. You are your only friend. So well said to dovetel the two stories and do a callback because people want to read a tale of Lorenz story now. Yeah. And it doesn't matter if it's in the Atlantic New York Times or at Washington Post.

And, you know, at this point, substacks probably thinking let's send her 500K. And the same thing with Carras Swisher was a brand unto himself or you and I. Yeah. Carer Swisher was on recode in Vox. And then New York Times was like, oh, Jim Bankoff did all this work at Vox, making Ezra Klein and Kara Swisher into brands. New York Times like, we'll take. Those two. We'll take them. And they just took them.

Yep. So, as reclines out, and so now it's like New York Times, like you said, is the Amazon of content. Boom. They're just going to run the deck. But those, hopefully those creators are also smart enough to understand that the platform doesn't love you back. So it's all about owning your own brand. That's it. It's a new year. But for some businesses, it's harder than ever to find and hire the qualified people they need. This is especially true for small businesses. And that's where LinkedIn jobs comes in. They make it easier to find the people you want to talk to. Faster. and for free. We love it. We've used it many times here. In fact, we just hired an awesome video editor just last week. LinkedIn jobs is the best. You're looking for talent. That's the place to go. Because when you create a free job posting in just minutes, you're going to reach the world's largest professional network of over 770 million people. Wow. Use screening questions to filter out all the non-serious candidates, right? Hey, if you're going to hire somebody to be a video editor,

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Wednesday. We didn't get a chance. This is how bonkers this week has been. There was like an executive order on crypto and we were like, we can't, we don't even have time for this. But this is Very interesting. This is a moment, I think, in the crypto economy. So the order mentions the following. It tasked the Department of Commerce with establishing a framework to allow the U.S. to dominate in crypto, mentioned exploring a state-backed CBDC, a central bank digital currency or Fed coin, as it's been called. This is this sort of like spin-off idea where we've got a stable coin, but it is in fact backed by federal reserve dollars. And then asked federal agencies to up their action on illicit activity in crypto and its potential national security risks.

Yeah, I mean, this is big news because it's an executive order and they want to engage and win. I will say, and I've said this for a long time, these CBDCs, Central Bank, digital currencies are the future and no country is ever going to allow. the control and power that comes from running money to be handed over to an anonymous manipulated tech stack. It's just not going to happen. Yep. And I know that that's the dream for everybody that like you can't stop BitTorrent.

You can't stop Napster. But we're all subscribed to Disney Plus and Hulu and Netflix. It did get stopped. And I too. Sorry if I'm Spotify. No, it's true. We've seen this cycle. We've seen this before.

And we've seen this with stuff that was relatively trivial compared to the world's reserve currency. Correct. So what's going to happen here is? And I predicted this forever. And everybody was like, you don't get it, Jake. I'll have fun being poor. The U.S. government is going to have.

Thanks. A little chance of that with the number of startups running. I know. I'm like, I'm always in the inside. She's like, we're putting somebody. I'm not that worried. I'm not that word. I'm not worried now.

C.B. D.C. It's kind of funny that it's CBD, right? It totally is. The Fed coin will allow the government to do all kinds of interesting things, get rid of fraud, get rid of illegal transactions, and a tax evasion. So if people are gambling or they're handing envelopes to each other or, you know, sending $5,000 of things, you know, like 1099s and W-4s and all this reporting that happens in accounting is all going to be built in to a private blockchain called the U.S. government. You're not going to be able to cheat on your taxes. You're not going to be able to hide revenue.

You're not going to be able to give inheritance on the slide and pretend it's something it's not. This is going to be a tax bananza for the IRS. And if somebody does something illegal, it's going to be instant seizure. So somebody does something illegal or they don't pay their taxes. I guarantee you in 10 years, the government, if you didn't pay your taxes, we'll just boop, take your dollars off the blockchain. So this is about control.

It's going to be more control for the government, less fraud, which, is good for the people who are good actors. And then anything that's Bitcoin or USDC or Tether, God forbid, or any of these other projects are going to be taxed. They're going to tax them and they're going to say you can be this big. So they're going to say, if you're this big, you need to have this set of regulations as I predicted. And then if you're this big, you're going to get this set and you're going to get taxed at these rates. In other words, they're going to make it impossible to compete against Fedcoin. Yep, exactly. Fat coin wins. That's what this is about. Let's be 100% clear. The United States has been way behind the ball here. And the moment of freak

out for them was when China announced that it was about to introduce a digital currency. Because that digital currency, should it get to be traded on the margins between countries that we now realize might not have the best of intense toward the world order, if you will, could upset the dollar as the world's reserve currency, could also start to be a preferred option. option for countries and companies. And all of a sudden, and I mean, listen, I interviewed the head of the incoming head of the FDIC in 2019 and was like, what is the United States government doing about Bitcoin and cryptocurrency?

And she was like, I don't know, we're kind of looking at it. And it was not six months later that China was like, we're doing a digital currency that is 100% government controlled and back. And now you see this move. That is not a coincidence. Yeah. I mean, the ECNY, which is the digital one. Some people call it the digital rem and B.

This was launched January 4th officially in 2022 before the Olympics, and you can get it on Android, you can get it on your iPhone. One billion users in WeChat have it. And games before the Olympic Games, they forced, they believe, McDonald's to take it. So, you know, the Chinese government, because it's a dictatorship and an authoritarian, they can just say this is how it is. And in an authoritarian country, let's say you say something against the government that they don't like where you buy a book.

that they don't like. They can just seize all your money. They can just turn it all off. So this is going to be something crazy to navigate. It's going to create more control, less fraud. You know, China, we have no choice. To your point, more surveillance. Like, don't kid yourself.

That is a part of this. It's about control. And so we do need to have a discussion about freedom and not getting rid of. We cannot get rid of print money. Just like you should still be able to drive a car that doesn't have a low jack in it. So we're going to need, there's going to be some freedom principles here. We embrace digital currency if people want it, but you still got to accept cash. The moment they say you can't accept cash in the United States, that's when we go into

authoritarian, like, danger zone. So be careful, folks. Call us White House. We'll help advise you. All around the world, tech companies are innovating and driving returns for investors. And our crowd is an investment platform that analyzes many of these companies across the global private market. Then they select startups with the greatest growth potential.

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if you're just starting your angel investing career. So now you can truly diversify your portfolio by investing early in innovative private market companies at Our Crowd. Join the fastest growing venture capital investment community. Head to Our Crowd.com slash Angel. That's O-U-R-O-W-D.com slash angel. Our favorite CEO, our other favorite CEO, not including Jason and Frank Sloopman. And Glenn from Redfin, crushed it this week. And Glenn from Redfin. He's so great. We had no all in this week. So I was like, sorry there's no all in this week, but here's a list of five

incredible interviews we've done that you can watch on this week at startups, folks. No big deal. Try to catch up. Anyway, our CEO that we are still hoping will come on the show, Barry McCarthy, new CEO. at Peloton reported, the Wall Street Journal reported that Peloton CEO, Barry McCarthy, said, it isn't clear yet the role that Peloton machines will play in the company's future. This is a big potentially big shift here. He said roughly 80% of capital spending goes toward equipment right now with the rest spent on software. And he thinks that number should be reversed. Peloton is experimenting with subscription models. And as you know, he had hinted at this idea that

Peloton would test new monthly subscription services where customers pay a single bike and connected fitness subscription, 60 to 100 bucks a month, with the option to cancel any time. Right now, of course, the company offers a bike purchase at $1,745 or $1,500 plus $249. And then the bike plus is $2,500 with free delivery. And then the subscription is separate at like $40 a month. So I guess he's, so he's basically saying, how can we combine the hardware and the software, but maybe even in the future,

phase out hardware? I don't think so. I think the hardware's Apple level in this. So I think this is an end, not an or. I think what he's saying is, you know, in terms of dollars deployed, we need to greatly increase our investment in software. As a Peloton user, I will say the product is perfect,

but you don't see updates. If I looked at my treadmill from three years ago, I can't tell you anything in the software that's updated. I literally can't. I'm really thinking off the top of head. Oh, no, I do know. After they had this series of tragic accidents, which I don't believe of their fault, they're just the nature of treadmills.

They put a pincode on it. Literally nothing has changed in the interface or software. It's perfect. They left it, but it would be like if you got your iPhone and you had it for three years and they never updated the OS or you had a Tesla and three years later, nothing had changed, they should be adding Spotify, SiriusXM, Netflix, Disney. Every month, new features should come on your Peloton, period, full stop.

And I should be able to pick my playlist to go with a class. I should be able to watch window in a window. I should be able to have CNBC in the corner while taking a Peloton class, pull a podcast while I'm listening. Why is there not a podcast player? If I'm on my treadmill, I listen to podcast. So I got to bring my, where I watch Netflix or Disney. Like, I got to bring my iPad and I have a plastic thing that they sell on Amazon for 15 bucks to cradle your goddamn iPad on your Peloton.

It's so dumb. I'm just making like, amen hands because yes to all of that. And the idea of flipping this on its head and not making everything. And frankly, this will undo the iPhoneification of the concept of hardware, right? Which is that it has planned obsolescence. And I bought, on the other hand, as you know, like the half price peloton. I bought the mix bike. Yep.

Great bike. Yes. Good subscription. And then they introduced a new bike and it has all these new software features. So I'm like watching workouts now paying my 40 bucks a month and I'm on my old bike. So the stuff they're talking about like the RPMs or this and that tracking or whatever doesn't exist because they didn't update my old bike. So like once you get off of the treadmill, no pun intended, of selling people new hardware because the new software only supports new hardware. then you can actually delight customers instead of pissing them off by essentially

bricking their old hardware that they paid a lot for and then now what are they supposed to do with it? So like I see this as nothing but more proof of Barry's continued genius. Also, literally the second I could buy a Peloton on a subscription model and have all the content included, done, done and done. Yeah, I mean, they have access to capital. They should press that advantage and they should, let people buy these things for $99 a month, and after 24 months your subscription, after you pay it off, after 24 months,

you drop down to 30 bucks a month. There are so many, the number of people who would be onboarded, and listen, the stock has crashed already, so let's go for scale. Let's set a goal of 10 million subscribers by any means necessary. And if the bike costs them $1,200,

if the hardware costs them $1,000 to make, and they sell it for $2,000, but the love of God, just like, Make it $99 a month. Anybody can afford $99 a month. That is literally for an Uber driver or a door dash driver, I think like eight runs or something. If you make $10 on average, $15 on average,

it would be you could do it in a day. We'll be careful with that anybody can afford, but it's a choice that you would be willing to make. I'd say 75% of Americans can afford. Versus $2,500 out front and outlay in a country where like most Americans can't come up with $400 in an emergency. So yes, like it's a much more. It means if the average rent in America is $1,000 or average mortgage payment is $1,000,

there's obviously a widespread here. You're asking people to come out of pocket for two months rent? No. Or three months rent? Heck no. $99 a month is a tenth of your rent. It's easy. It's easy.

And then benefit from ongoing software updates and feel valued as a consumer, not like a sucker who invest in hardware that's now. I will say there hasn't been, they haven't obsoleted the Peloton hardware. Right. And because it's Android, I do think they could very easily send somebody to your home for 500 bucks every five years to upgrade. Yeah. Hey, Molly, tell us about your amazing interview today for Angel Season 6. Yeah.

Speaking of hardware, our interview today is Jay Malik from Countdown Capital, who is not afraid of hardware. Countdown Capital's thesis is to invest strictly in hardware products and American manufacturing and defense. Let me tell you something. Hardware is hard. Cannot wait. Has he figured it out? I mean, I guess we'll find out. It's super interesting. He is a first time fund manager. I talked to him for an interview on Angel Season 6. It's a good one. Check it out. Absolutely. And if you want to, you can search for Angel podcast, maybe Angel, Jason Calacanis, and you'll find it in your player. We have a separate subscription just for all. all six seasons, if you want to just have a nice, easy play through all six of them, and you'll get 60 interviews with amazing investors, masterclasses across the board. Let's get to the Molly's amazing interview. Jay Malick of Countdown Capital. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me, Molly. How's your day going? So great. Such a great day. It's like almost Friday. It's all coming together.

How are you? Love it. Yeah, same here. I am perpetually excited that I get to do this job. So I'm just, I'm happy, very, very happy. Right. It is a super cool. Let's like just take a step back and say, this is a super cool job. It is. I mean, specifically with what I'm doing, investing in hard tech companies, you know, probably the most futuristic stuff.

It just gets me so hyped about the future, honestly. Totally. Well, we're jumping all the way ahead to the middle. But so you are here as part of our Angels season six episode eight, where we're focusing on first time funds. how first time is countdown capital? Well, we've been around now for around 18 months. We have raised one fund to date.

And so I guess we are very much a first time fund. Yeah. But we've made now, what, nine portfolio investments. So been around the block a little bit over the last year and we've learned a lot. So it's been a fun journey so far, but we've got another 10 years. So I'm buckling up. Give us the, if you would, the basics of the fund. It looks like you raise $3 million with a 506C.

That's correct. Yeah. So it was a $3 million fund one. We did a 506C designation, which allows us to raise in public and to advertise about ourselves, which was unique. I think at the time when we had done it, the only other fund manager that had done it was Mac. And so Mac and I had spent a lot of time together figuring out. out the best ways to do this, which is fun.

You know, that's the story to date. Mack, I think actually was our very first guest on this season of Angel. Wow. Yeah. So, and we've sort of been, it seems to be not only is there the theme of first time fund managers, but this theme running through of the different ways that people are now approaching raising funds and how many options there actually are. So tell us about the process.

I know Mack, I think, you know, his deal was just calling. a thousand people a day or something along those lines. Like, how did you, how do you hustle up a fund in public? Yeah, I mean, honestly, it was a similar process. Lots of tweeting. I think I, you know, at the peak of when we were raising, I was probably tweeting every day, if not more than every day, which is a lot for me.

We got flooded with both interests from founders to want us to invest in them as well as LPs. Like, for example, we, you know, I had a couple of family offices, message me on Twitter, and they were all on stealth mode. I would have never known that they were following me. But it was interesting to see people come reach out to us and then also us getting to have them sign up to a list and then set up meeting after meeting after meeting. So in total, our process took roughly three or four months.

We probably did five or six meetings on average day, which is a lot. And we try to cut to the nose as quickly as possible and focus on the yeses. So that was our process. So what, I mean, you just raised $3 million on Twitter. Like, what's your background? How do you think what was it about these tweets that were landing so well? Yeah. So, I mean, it was definitely not just the tweets.

My background is specifically having helped build a couple of startups now in the intersection of machine learning and national security. So the interest set that I have in hard tech and specific. typically how it relates to the strength of the United States is very tangential to my experience set. That definitely helped. But I think, you know, in general, people have been feeling a lot of energy around hard tech and wanting to build really ambitious products to help solve things for our climate, for our country, as we're now seeing obviously what's happening in Russian Ukraine. And I think COVID really ignited the flame. And so we were right.

a lot of that energy. And to this day, I think we are one of the only funds that has been raising in deep tech publicly. And that energy that people had, I think came to us as we were racing. So that was, we were lucky definitely to be raising the time that we did. That's definitely part of the reason why we've been able to raise this fund. I definitely want to dig in more on the thesis, but a little bit more about you and your background in hard tech.

Let's see. I think I saw that you had two, or you said you had two startups in this field? I was the first hire. Two national security machine learning startups. Tell me about those. Can you tell us about those or will you have to kill us? No,

they're totally fine. I just wanted to make that joke one time and I will not do that again. So the first startup is a company called a Crete and they were essentially using, they are, they're still alive today, using machine learning to essentially process on structure data and working with different government agencies like the DOD on special projects for that, right? The second startup got acquired startup called Forge AI, and they were using graph machine learning

similarly to analyze unstructured data, but specifically working with the intelligence community and the CIA. So we got invested from Incutel and a couple of other great Boston-based firms. So yeah, I really learned how good products are built and how bad products are built from our mistakes. And that is definitely informed the way I look at investing today in HardTech. And so then at 26, you're like, I'm ready. But what made you decide that venture capital was the way to go?

Like it seems like you could have gone to another startup potentially or built, but were you like, I want to build a lot more things and not just one at a time? Yeah, that's right. I think I realized early on in my career that my superpower was supporting people who were building things. So for example, as a product manager helping the CEO

work on certain projects, and that really helped me clarify that I thought that VC was the right role for me because so much of this role is just helping founders, supporting them, and being their right-hand person for whatever they need,

especially at the early stage where we are. So I think having realized that, I thought, okay, VC is a way to scalably support many people, who are building the future. And I'm kind of sick and tired of putting my eggs in one basket. I want to support as many people as possible. You're describing enthusiasm for hard tech as a pretty new climate tech investor,

but somebody who's covered this industry for quite a long time, I can say there's also a lot of fear and hesitation about hard tech. So do you think that you struck a nerve with a, you know, particularly adventurous set of LPs who said, like, let's be risky? Definitely. Yeah. So my LPs are very, very mission aligned. They're not your garden sort of regular family offices or even just individuals looking to park their own money. They're all a mission driven set of people, people who have invested or built deep tech companies before. And that was strategic also to help us obviously grow our presence. But certainly we're very opinionated and our LPs are also very opinionated as a result. Is that a good thing? I think so. Because opinionated people, including myself, I think,

we tend to hold strong opinions loosely. And when we do learn and when we do get ourselves burned, we're pretty flexible and understand that we did mess up and we learn from it and we try to win again. So I think it's good for us. When you say, though, that your LPs are opinionated, do you mean that they are pretty active, maybe even in comparison to other funds?

Yes, and we try to stimulate that activity. So we have a Slack channel. We try to promote a lot of conversation about different topics and issues, not necessarily about our portfolio companies, but really more about broader industry themes. And we learn a lot from our LPs. You know, one of my LPs is building a company right now. Not even sure I can talk with the details,

but it's definitely, it's longevity focus, and it's like a 30 or 40 year timeline. And I've learned so much just from hearing about his experience building a deep tech company. So, yeah, we just were constantly learning from all of our LPs. Let's talk a little bit more about the 506C designation and what that did for you. Because, again, there is a lot of, you know, there can be reluctance around deep tech and hard tech because of those long timelines or because of the pipeline from research to commercialization. It sounds like there was something special about being able to make this pitch in public.

public that got you over the finish line quickly. How long did it take you to raise this fund? Yeah. So it took roughly four to five months. And I think the, yeah, the beauty of five and bananas, by the way, people are going to be listening to this going, what am I doing? I think the beauty of it was that we were truly one of the first ones like Mac. And so we just got a lot of eyeballs, right? And as a result, just the pure scale of the impressions we got and what we were doing, it was it was natural that at least one or two percent of those people had the capital and were interested in what we were doing. And so, you know, I think what's unique about the 506C is that it just shortened the timeline to getting eyeballs on what you're doing. And we were

able to jumpstart the process as a result in race quickly. So were you full time during those months? I was part time. I was part time raising, but also part time finishing up my gig at a different fund that I was on the investment team of. And so I got to spend all of the time that I wanted to doing fundraising and helping moving that through the pipeline and at the same time finishing up my gig where I was getting paid a little bit to help that fund. So I did manage to keep my pocketbook afloat,

which is really important for me. I'm young. I don't have a lot of wealth, but I wanted to make sure that I gave this the best shot I could. So I was happy to get that balance. And then the digital tools, it seems like, were also pretty useful for you because you're not in the valley or in a tech club, right? You're in Missouri. That's right.

Yeah, Twitter definitely compressed my network. Incredibly so. I have met so many incredible people through Twitter. My entire network is pretty much through Twitter at this point, which is incredible to say. And you just joined, can I go back and say you just joined Twitter in 2019? I did. Yes. you should probably take some time and write a manual about how to use Twitter unbelievably efficiently.

I wish there was some signs towards it. A lot of it is just shower thoughts, to be honest. So you join Twitter in 2019. You're raising from Missouri. You are known in a certain community, in a certain community right around machine learning and national security, raise this fund. Now is Twitter the primary way, like you just said, that you're keeping deal flow going? Yeah, it's definitely, I would say it's not just Twitter. It's generally using social media and spontaneity at the same time. So, for example, our investment in Hadrian came through me DMing Chris on Twitter and looking at his bio and saying, hey, that's a really cool thing that you're building with chat. And next thing you know, they raised a seed round from founders fund looks capital like three months later, right?

So that was fun. And then I also did investment into a company that didn't even exist until, I had found the guy on LinkedIn out of nowhere because he had an interesting background. So I just messaged him saying, hey, cool background. You're doing climate as well as deep tech. It's very rare to find that.

Let's chat. And five days later, we were leading the pre-seat round. So it was insane, just getting to see how social media helps our deal flow and how we use it. Yeah. Wow.

Tell us a little more about Hadrian. And I think that'll help some people, people who may not be familiar with what you even mean when you say you're investing in hard tech and deep tech? Yeah, so Hadrian's basically building factories of future. They're using software to power hardware to deliver aerospace parts to start with other industry parts as well in the future, but aerospace parts to start with to customers as

quickly as possible, beating out, you know, legacy mom and pop shops across the country. So they're vertically integrating, they're using software, they're leveraging hardware, but they're not building any unique hardware themselves, which is super cool. And, you know, they're working with some of the biggest space companies in the world. You know, Astra, ABL space, all the ones that you're probably seeing on the news, they're working with. So it's a lot of fun. I was a very small check. And Chris is definitely a lot bigger and building something way bigger than I, I think, even I could have imagined when I first invested.

But, you know, kudos to him. And I'm just really, really grateful to be a very small part of this. So let's use that as a jumping off point for the thesis. Your thesis, you write, it's time to rebuild the American industrial base, one rocket ship, literally at a time. Talk to me more about the thesis and how you deploy in that direction. Yeah, that's right. So I think there are three main components to our thesis. The first stage, precede.

The second is the focus on technology, which is hard tech. And the third is our opinion. and that is founders rebuilding the industrial base of America, right? The first two preceded hard tech really came out of my experience. I found that there's always room to be a first believer in technically difficult capital-intensive companies. It's risky, obviously. There's a lot of capital that needs to go to work to make these companies successful,

but where there is risk, there is usually a high reward and low competition. And so similar to how Peter Thiel looks at building a startup, I looked at it from building a funds perspective. And I said, hey, this is a really interesting opportunity. I think if we focus on this, we can actually generate a lot of alpha, right? So that was really the first building block of our thesis. The second, as I touched on earlier, this opinion around founders rebuilding the industrial base, I found that, honestly, back since like 2015, 2016, with Brexit, there was going to be a backlash to globalization. And there was a lot of money that could be made. by bringing manufacturing, supply chains, energy back home, but not necessarily relying on

traditional frameworks of labor, but using technology to automate a lot of that, right? And so what I believe very strongly was we can remain cost competitive with countries like China and Russia if we use technology to drive our manufacturing base and other industrial base activities. And so that's how we came to that part of the thesis, really. And like you said, doubling down on America, as you sort of implement this thesis, are you thinking about it in specific buckets? Are there directions that you want to go? Are there filters that you're applying as you sort of decide? Or are you opportunistic, you know, within the thesis? I would say that there are definitely themes that we like.

And one theme we really do like is vertical integration. So owning everything from the manufacturing point of view and supply chain point of view. all the way to selling to the end customer. That's very compelling to us as you can drive margins, high margin activity over time. Second, I think defense tech in particular is one sector that people really didn't think was going to be impactful, but I think we're seeing will be very, very formative this decade. And so we've been focusing on it honestly since day one, but even now more so, we're thinking about ways we can support defense innovation as a theme.

And then finally, I will say anything with anything relating to manufacturing, let's call components or materials that are very important for U.S. security like timber, for example, or semiconductor chips, we're always looking to find ways that we can invest in those sectors. So those are the themes that generally speaking we do like. Talk to me about checks. because you're describing expensive operations, potentially, and you're a $3 million fund. Do you have a big network of co-investors, or are you really trying to say, let's get these off

the ground and then find them a landing place? Yeah, I would say three things. One big network of co-investors. We usually co-invest with other angels who are value at with us or larger firms. So that's number one. Number two, being a first believer itself, again, is really important. So we find that just by saying that, hey, we will invest, that usually adds fuel to the fire for the rest of their fundraising around and we can help them do that. So again, just having the audacity to say yes to hard things is part of what differentiates us.

And then finally, honestly, with deep tech and hard tech companies, the biggest thing is finding talent to people and getting to join your team early on. Even with a small check size of like 100K, you can use that to hire people. And so honestly, the biggest reason why people take our check at the very early stage is just to have that initial form of capital to start hiring that engineer they really want to bring on board who's from SpaceX, for example, and can add a lot to the team. So that's the reason. And then how do you think about timescale, the other, you know, the other big panic point about hard tech is how long some of these projects can take. Are you concerned about that? I mean, I always feel like my counter argument to that, certainly on the climate side, is I'm pretty sure we want them to go quickly. Yeah.

I mean, kind of an urgent situation on all these friends. Yeah. I mean, I would say, so a couple of things. First, obviously, we want people to move as quickly as possible. And we invest in founders who move with a sense of urgency. So that's a given. But that being said, it is a reality that a lot of these technologies are not very mature right now. And so we have actually instituted a longer fun life than the average fund, venture capital fund today.

We have a 12-year fund life with an extension period of another two years. So that brings up to 14, which is pretty sizable. And we also have a slower deployment period. So I know a lot of people are thinking a lot about deploying in six months to a year. It's the new fashionable thing in venture capital. We are doing the opposite view. With hard tech, we want to space ourselves out. And so we're looking at deployment periods of at least three to four years.

So that's how we at least mitigate some of the risk on the front end with us because we truly believe there are only a handful of great deep tech companies a year. But at the same time, we're trying to give room for our fund to mature on the back end and going up to 14 years, for example, will help us. Right. That is so interesting. And I wonder how it changes your reporting relationship with your LPs. I mean, IRL as a metric is sort of fundamentally distorting, right?

If you're talking about how much money you return and how quickly, I would imagine you said to your LPs up front, we're going to have a different conversation. Yeah, I think everybody who's bought into the fund is more interested in multiples than IRR. Again, they're all deep tech tangential anyway, so they get that this is going to take a long time. That being said, there's no excuse for not having good returns, right? And we are definitely a financial driven firm. We are here to make money for our LPs. And if we have to sacrifice in the IRA by a couple of percentage points, we're going to aim to 5x to multiple.

So that's the way we look at it. Got it. One or the other, basically. Yeah. Or ideally both. Yes. This is the part where I would love for you to get us excited about the future. We were sort of chatting a little bit before we started recording about what a cool job this is

and what cool things we see. But I now sort of feel like you're seeing the really cool stuff. We see a lot of really interesting things. We see anything relating from nuclear fusion technology, obviously for climate purposes, all the way up to like hypersonic weapons factories and hypersonic jet factories. So we're seeing things that are literally 20 years out.

And it's sometimes is a little overwhelming to be sure because so many great people have great ideas and we want to fund all of them. We can't. We don't have all that capital. but at the same time, honestly, just having a call with somebody that's thinking on a 20-year time scale that feels so passionately about building something that nobody else will believe in besides themselves

is so, so invigorating. And truly, it is more than even software companies, you really have to believe in yourself if you're building something that's that ambitious. And so, yeah, that itself, the confidence, the spirit of the audacity to want to do something like that is infectious. And it really helps us as a firm stay on top of what's happening and to take big bets as well. Who is on your team to help you vet these ideas? You know, I would imagine sometimes I've already had this experience.

Sometimes things come along and you're like, if that's real, it's amazing. Who do I even ask whether it's real or not? Yes. So I do have now, actually, for the first time in the start of this fund, I do have a chief of staff, so she's helping me a lot, work through some of the opportunities. But our LP base, as I mentioned, is very, very strategic. We have PhDs in everything relating to aerospace all the way down to optics engineering. And so we rely a lot on their expertise and have one-on-one calls wherever we can with them. We also have advisors. We have a couple of advisors who are more

business focused, but we have one specific advisor who is, you know, for example, a PhD in mechanical engineering that can help us work through any diligence questions we have. That being said, I will say that the technical risk at the stage that we are operating in is very, very overstated. A lot of times for pre-seed companies in hard tech, it's a lot more important to understand that there's a market and there are customers that will pay for your ambitious technology as opposed to just building out technology that is, you know, questionably feasible. that's really the more important thing.

Validding that people will pay for, for example, your hypersonic weapons factory, not just whether you can build it. Right. Interesting. Do you also work alongside non-dilutive capital? I'm hearing a lot about companies who are raising some venture, but also doing what are some, you know, sort of new and pretty interesting grant programs and fellowship programs in some of these areas. Yeah, I would say not really, actually, at the early stages.

certainly as companies scale in hard tech they will need to raise debt financing and other ways of asset acquisition that are not just venture capital equity but at the stage that we're at these companies are super early and they're just trying to hire people and what we find is that non-dilutive funding has all these milestones and things that you need to get done especially in hard tech whereas venture capital where we're investing in we're just investing in great ideas and great people so and then how do you go about sourcing those or proving out those commercial opportunities on the back end. Like are you thinking, look, the government's a giant buyer.

Let's build that funnel. Well, yeah. So we have a lot of connections, both on the commercial and the defense side. We definitely run by the market opportunity with people in our network who are placed in those positions. The other really key tell is simply asking founders how much customer discovery they've done and to give us evidence that they've talked to 20 people, for example. and you would be surprised that most people have not done that. So that to us is a signal that they're looking at it as a science project.

And we're not investing in science projects. We're investing in businesses. And if you haven't thought about the customer, you haven't thought about yourself as a business. So that's the way we look at it. That is outstanding advice, by the way, for everyone here who is listening. And then finally, before I let you go, I want to ask you about how you're moving to Miami. Yeah, yeah, I'm so excited. You have this special thing being the guy.

in Missouri. But also, why Miami over, you know, any other tech hub? Yeah, so I think a couple of different things. First, it's great weather and I'm sick and tired of the Midwest. Second, yes. Second, lots of free thinkers, independent thinkers that are out there. I like how they kind of embrace creativity and contrarian thought. And that speaks to me on a cultural level.

And then finally, there's a growing number of hard tech builders in Miami. Hard Tech Miami, for example, is an organization that just got started that's working on providing some space and mentorship to people who are building companies in Hard Tech in Miami. And I want to be a big part of that when I move down. And so it's a combination of culture, weather, community. To me, that's a killer combination. Not the worst when you describe it that way. Not the worst. I'm going to grab a question real quick from one of our new Notties.

And by the way, our producer, Rachel, would like us to know via the Slack that she loves Hard Tech Miami. Oh, amazing. So from Nodie Bobji, what makes your fun different from competitors? You answered this a little bit because it sounds like there aren't many, but I wonder, are more coming into this space and how will you differentiate? Yeah. So I think, you know, still in terms of differentiation right now, it's being able to focus on pre-seed, being the first believer in a company that's again really, really hard to do

in deep tech where it's very capital intensive, you're relying basically just on a plan, there's literally nothing built. Right? And so I think that continues to be a way we differentiate ourselves by taking risk where other people won't. The other

is on probably the let's call it helping founder side of things. So we have started to build out a hiring funnel of deep tech engineers, folks that are anywhere from aerospace and mechanical all the way down to nuclear, for example. And these are all people who have been pre-vetted

or curated by us who are looking for a job at a startup. And so when we invest, we have three or four engineers right off the bat who they can talk to to to hire. And so that is a big part recently that's been helping us with founders who are looking for more than just a thought partner. They want some actual help.

And we're able to provide that with the hiring side, which is really the most important thing. when you're getting started in Hard Tech. I mean, what it sounds like is in addition to Hard Tech, like you're a sector specialist. Yes, correct. Were you maybe like a spy before? I'm just wondering, it just feels like you know a lot of people.

Not many 26-year-olds can come out of nowhere like that. I guess I work very hard, and that's all. Just putting the end of the hours, you know how it is. Yeah, yeah, I do. And you can tell, and you're crushing it. Jay Malick, founder and GP of Countdown Capital, which you can find on Twitter at Countdown VC. Where else can people find you?

LinkedIn email Jay at countdown.competal. I'm very, very responsive. So hit me up anytime. Jay, this is fantastic. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you, Molly. Appreciate it.

It is Friday. Every Friday we end with an amazing segment called OK Boomer. This is where Rachel reporting meets a millennial, a Gen Z person, and she expands This is the consciousness of old people so we can deepen our understanding of these new generations. Rachel, who do you got from Molly and I and the audience this week? So this week, I got to talk to Josh from Party Round. He was definitely the most entertaining person we've had, I think, on the podcast so far. So really excited for you guys to check him out.

What is, so is Party Round like it sounds, I assume, fundraising? Yeah, so Party Round is a fundraising. Did you kill him after you talk to you? him? Is he a competition? No, no, no. He's cool. Don't worry. So party round is a fundraising tool for founders. And basically, they're just gamified the party round fundraising process, hence the name. Founders can create a round, set terms and invite investors to participate. And then party round handles the required document signatures, all the other stuff like that to make the process go smoothly. So it's sort of like a sure fund management, which were investors in and that powered angelist

and us. Or I guess more of a competitor to angelist because there's no syndicate there's no fund. You go find your investors. Does it do an LLC and wrap them all into one item on the cap table? Or does it just manage the process and let them be direct investors on the cap table? I believe it just manages the process, but that is something I'd have to go look into because I don't know too much. I know their big thing is being founder focused rather than investor focused because a lot of the platforms out there tend to be geared toward investors rather than the founders. And Josh's role there is doing things like marketing, community, growth, things like that.

So most of what we talked about was in that space, I think founders and anybody working in that area could take a lot from him. He's very good at what he does. He's 19, didn't go to college, went straight from high school in Canada to working out of startup and SF and is just killing it. He's 19. Yeah, he's 19. So that makes him in Gen Z.

And so, you know, there is a handshake protocol that why comedy created, so you go to Demo Day, if somebody wants to meet you, they send this very short email. They kind of copied the format that Angel listed in the early days, which is you say you want to invest. It automatically forwards you an email from the person, the document. You put in how much you want to invest and you're making a handshake, hey, pending diligence, I want to invest 25K. So what they're doing is like starting you, Molly on like second base.

Like, okay, you saw the presentation. You want to make a bet. What's the bet size? Go review the paperwork. we're going to, you know, the three or four things you're going to ask for will just set up right now. And so it's a little bit forward as an investor when you do it. Like I did it a couple times, but I wanted to just meet the founders. And it was like kind of assuming that either you want to invest or you don't.

And there's my maybe like, I want to meet you. So it kind of skips that step. It's kind of like going right to consummating the deal. And, you know, I think tools like this that at least, help people walk through the process. Forget about gamification, and that's fun and clever. But just creating structure for the process,

for people who don't create their own structure, this could be done with a Google sheet, like putting your targets in, sending specific emails, having templates. But to put it all in one place, sure, it seems like a reasonable idea. I'm hoping someone of our founders uses it

and gives us some feedback on it. I haven't heard of any founder using it yet, but I think it's new. An interesting part, this isn't about party around, but about Josh's platform is they do a bunch of drops. think like mischief, things like that.

So they didn't NFT drop and you were a part of it. There was a Jason NFT. Really? Yeah, we talk about in the podcast. Oh, I think I told him what the fuck are you doing with my likeness promoting yourself? Take this down. Is Jason cool with that? Yeah, you probably did.

No, I was not cool with it. I was like, hey, dude, like you're using me to market a startup product. They get paid for that. Like, don't do that. And I think he took it down. Or then they said they would use it for charity. And I was like, yeah, I'm like, yeah, I'm like, please don't do this kind of stuff. I mean, I'm flattered, but if you're, if an artist painted a picture of me and made an

NFT, like, I'm not going to stop that. But if you do it to grow your business, that's using me in an advertisement. That would be like me taking, I don't know, I don't know, shark tank and taking the shark tank people and being like, join the syndicate. And they'll be like, wait a second, I'm getting paid to do that for, you know, another syndication platform. I'm like, that's, there's a concept of using celebrities likenesses in the real world. And so I thought that was kind of lame.

That is so interesting that we have totally talked more than once about that exact generational difference. Like this question, this I, this total concept that there just is not ownership. There is not, you know, the law doesn't exist. The law doesn't exist. Right. Exactly. You don't have to run anything by an attorney. It's super.

Yeah. It's, it is, I mean, it's actually kind of appropriate that we're having this okay boomer conversation because literally boomers are like, I'm sorry, stuff can be owned. And it sort of now feels like with the youngs, it's like, no, it can. I've literally had somebody, uh, use me in their marketing video on like one of these like, you know, there's, there's like really cool crowdfunding platforms for public seed invest, our crowd, masterworks. You know, like these are like really on the up and up. But like there's like this whole underbelly of these ones. And one of these underbelly ones, the founder put me in there in there.

their marketing video because he had asked a question on Ask Jason. I won't say which company. And then they made me the focal point of the video. And then all these people invested. And then people in the threaded comments were like, oh, Jason Calacanis is investing. He's the Uber guy. And I like was like, hey, guys, take me out of your video. And they're like, well, we were on your show. And I'm like, the key word in that sentence is my show. you're on my show and this is you're using my content for the

I said well you didn't get permission from us I was like I implicitly got permission from you when you asked me a question at a public forum like you opted into that I did not opt into this and I had to like explain to this idiot multiple times and then he got really offended

and he was like you are anti-startup I'm like okay don't pull the anti-startup card you're using me to market this and you're confusing angel investors who are influenced by this and I talked to the platform

and the platform was like yo we don't want to be in a battle with Jason Gallagana it's like we so like can we be on your show and I was like listen I just don't want people to be confused how many people have done this equity crowd fund and like there's like 200 investors

I was like well you just make sure because you have now misled them that's securities fraud you sold them a security thinking that I am the investor and that I'm the proponent of this because at some point I said, oh, what a great idea.

And they're like using, oh, what a great idea in the video. Like, I'm endorsing the fundraising. Like they, you know, did the crazy edit. Long story short, they emailed everybody. Just to be clear, Jason isn't in it and they finally removed me from it. And then the guy emails me a year later

after I have this battle with him over it. And it's like, hey, are you sure we can't use you in our video? I'm like, yes, I'm sure. So, you know, some people might say, hey, what about writing a review of your book or doing that? you can review anything you want. It's when you use somebody's likeness

to mislead the public that that person is associated with your product and then to sell a product. So when you do commerce, which is what they were doing, so if somebody did an NFT project, my favorite entrepreneurs and I made a painting and they're an artist that's different. Anyway, there you have it. Well, I can't wait to listen to that section.

Anyway, RIP Josh. RIP Josh. Sorry, Josh. In many other ways. He probably did that when he was 17 years old. He had no idea about, you know, using cultural differences on display. Yes. Yeah.

Well, this was definitely one of my favorite episodes. So I'm excited for everybody to check. All right. Everybody, here we go. A little controversy. We found a fight. Let's go. All right.

Let's hear Rachel reporting. Okay, Boomer. I understood the assignment. Hello, everybody. And welcome to another segment of OK Boomer. Today, I have with me, Josh from Party Round. I would say his last name. However, everybody knows him as Josh from Party Round.

Josh. I'm also anon. Thanks so much. And Anon, yeah. Do you want to drop your last name in here or no? No, no, no. I'm good. I'm good.

I think I'll keep that one in the bag for now. Awesome. So Josh from Party Round, can you explain what a party round is and what Party Round the company is? Yeah, yeah. So Party Rounds are when founders are raising, fundraising for their startup, and they have a round with a ton of investors. And it's also we named our company.

So Party Round is a FinTech startup that we started about nine months ago, founded by Jordy and Sarah Chase Hayes are lovely founders. And it's basically a tool for founders to fundraise on. So it takes all the pains of fundraising, like your legal docs, spreadsheets, tracking down investors. Raising around as a founder is a very painful process. And so we took all that,

we automated it and we turned it into a beautiful app that feels like cash app to raise on. It's not a crowdfunding platform. It's just a tool, but it lets you handle your fundraise effortlessly. you can we automate your legal docs, we track your funds, we transfer your funds, and so you just have to, you know,

start around on our app and then handle it as an OS from there. That's awesome. So do you have to be an accredited investor to use the app? So accreditation is, we're not really focused on investors. It's really a founder-focused tool. We're trying to build the best experience for founders to fundraise on. And in that process, we make a really good tool for investors. But when we're talking about like using the app,

you use the app if you're a founder. We're building for founders. But that being said, all that type of investors that a founder wants to let in is up to the founder's responsibility. So that is totally their jurisdiction. But yeah, our users are founders. But we do think it makes a great investing experience

better than I think a lot of the tools that people use nowadays to invest money in. I definitely agree on having it be a beautiful app. I was invited to my first party round on the app. Oh, were you? Yeah, I didn't end up. You didn't end up investing, brutal. I did not end up investing in it.

I mean, like, maybe, maybe, who knows? But no, I didn't end up investing in it yet. Maybe that'll be a future Rachel thing. Are you a jurisdiction to say which rich round is, or do you want to keep that private? I'll let you know off there. You know the person who it is really, really, really well, the girl who is company it is. But I was invited to the app, so I got to see the app firsthand.

And what made me really scared about it actually was. how easy it is for your friends and family now to basically give away $1,000 because you're right, it was incredibly seamless, like the entire apps process, which I think is really cool. A lot less steps, I'm sure, than the normal investing process. Well, this is actually sort of what the crux we're trying to get at, because nowadays, in like modern society, you can, you can buy, like, stocks, stocks have been gamified, like crypto, which is, I'm like, I'm pro crypto, but it's incredibly gamified. can like blow like thousands of dollars on NFTs with the click of a button. You can do sports

betting. There's like sports betting apps that I can sign up for like 10 seconds and I'm well underage. But you can't invest in like startups, which have been this like dominant force for good and like one of the few ways for like people to actually gain value and like all of that is closed off to retail investors. So like the average person has the only options for them are basically like pseudo gambling, you know, like trading crypto or trading stocks or trading NFTs. are literally just sports betting. Like all of those things you've been done with a click of a button. But investing in your friend's company or like investing in your team, the people around you, you actually can't do.

And that's the problem. So yeah, I don't think that's scary. I think that's one of the things we're trying to fix. I think people should be investing in startups. I think like, I think NFTs are super fun. But if people could invest that money into their friends company,

they would and they should. That's better for society. That's what people should be able to do. So, sorry, I was a little bit of a rant there. No, I think that's smart. This is what we're trying to get at. It is.

And that's awesome. I also think it's scary that I can throw away $1,000 doing things like sports betting. I don't know how much of a fan I am with apps that makes sports betting incredibly easy and other things like that. But I guess that's a different. I guess that's a different story. We actually talked about that as producers, how easy it is to kind of get in the cycle once you start using these tools. But honestly, like you said, investing in your friend's company, investing in especially companies that you believe in should be. an easier process because it's incredibly difficult.

I think investing is an incredibly serious decision for most people. I think everyone contemplates it. I don't think people take it lightly. But what is a pain is when you've gone through all the work of deciding that you're going to invest and then actually sending money is like a huge waste of time. So it's like really hard to keep track of. So that's what we're trying to fix. I think everyone should, you know, invest in their startups around them very, with a lot

of like, you know, consideration. But when you're ready to invest, we want to make sure that process is accessible and quick for people. So you guys don't do anything right to help with like the due diligence process beforehand. It's simply just the investing portion. We're not for, we're not for investors. It's, I mean, we are, we are investors. But we're building for founders.

So every project decision we make is like, how can we make this an incredible experience for founders to raise a round on? And in doing so, we make it really easy for investors. But it isn't, it isn't really about you guys. There's lots of platforms that are designed for investors. But part of your own is built to make it easy for founders to raise, raise their round. What makes it different between? an app that's geared for founders versus a platform that would be geared towards investors.

Like what specific features make it a founder focused app? Yeah, I think a lot of like the tools you'll see around like, you know, I don't want to spend this whole time shitting on a lot of like really cool platforms out there. But they're designed with like, you know, they're not designed with ease of use in mind for founders in managing your round and like setting everything up. and they're also often times built for a different

type of legal structures so right now we're building for safes and and priced rounds for founders to raise on and I think a lot of these tools are just like

there, there's different types like there's crowdfunding tools out there which is like you know you stick a company up and anyone can put money into and I think a lot of startups like don't really want to use that

there's things like angel list where there's like roll up vehicles but a lot of those aren't like founders don't have a say in them they like give away part of their company just gets like out to random investors.

And even just simple stuff, like the UI, the like setting up the structure, managing the money as it comes in, they're not really designed with ease of use for a founder in mind. So I think it's a, like, using the app is one of those experiences that, like, really has blown a lot of founders' minds

because it's, it's, so many things just make a ton of sense. Like, you can upload your docs and start a kick off around super quickly, like just a few tip taps. And then you're given this screen where you can manage all your invites that you're sending to your investors and friends and community members.

And then you're just chilling there watching, you know, watching the invites, seeing money comes in, when money comes in, getting notified, and tracking everything from your phone. So, yeah, I think over the last decade, we've seen a transition from, like, web to mobile. And I think part of the around is built with, like, web tooling in line. You can raise around on a web browser. But the future of all these things is mobile down the line,

and we're really excited about that. So yeah, I, uh, I, uh, I, uh, I think it's, I think there's not really other tools that are designed for, for people building startups. So I think that's awesome. And I completely agree about, uh, putting importance about putting importance into UX and U.I. I feel like finance and fintech in general, it's a total overlooked space, especially in design. Obviously, there are a few apps like here and there, like Robin Hood, wealth front that look really nice. But for example, like fideck. which is just something I used for like my Roth IRA is quite literally the ugliest and hardest use app.

If anybody out there wanted to design like a new app just for funsies for their portfolio, I highly recommend like doing Project Fidelity because it sucks. So it's good that you guys are focusing on the ease of use because I think like the barrier for that is becoming increasingly important. Like personally I won't, this sounds bad, but like for a lot of apps, like if the app looks bad, the chances of me using it are very slim. even if it's like an incredibly useful app. Totally. Yeah, I mean, it isn't, I think our amazing UI, thanks to our head of product

and design, Brandon, Brandon Jacoby, that's just the cherry on top of like an agreed experience. I think there's a lot of tools that you like can raise on, if that makes sense. Like you, it's possible to, but it requires a ton of work for founders. Like you got to upload all your docs. You got to talk to a lawyer. You got to get your legal docs organized. And then you like technically can track your fundraise, but you know, you've got to do all the wiring and it's a bad experience. for both founders or investors. And we compartmentalize that all on the app.

So like we automate your legal docs. You literally just click, start around. And you can handle all the valuations of terms in app with just a few clicks. And we like all the flow of funds, all the transfers are done super easily on the app. And you don't have to do extra work. So yeah, I think it all comes together. It's like it's building a great experience across the board. So anyway, sorry.

I'm not like I'm shilling our startup, but it's an amazing startup. No. The podcast is called This Weekend Startup. So I mean, you're at the right place to be doing that. We're out here. I can talk for years about how awesome party around is. Yeah. Anyway.

Yeah, we can keep going. No, we can keep going talking about how awesome party around is. And like you said, there's just like so many portions of party round that make it awesome. One of which is its marketing strategy, which I know you do a lot with. Can you talk to me about your roll out party round to marketing strategy behind it? Yeah. I think a lot of people sort of treat us like this startup that's like, oh, they have like a, a hypey Twitter about them.

We're a really product-focused startup. We just are also good at marketing. I think people are saying that now, like when they use the app, they're like, oh, holy shit, this is an entirely engineering and product-focused startup. But yeah, we're good at marketing on the side, too. And I think it's not because we're good marketers. We're just like making cool shit,

making stuff that we, can I swear on this podcast? Yeah. Okay, cool. Fud, I'm shit. Yeah, we're just like making, like, our strategy for marketing is pretty simple. It's like, we want to make stuff that's funny and we want to make stuff that's cool.

want to make stuff that's useful for founders. And if we like it, I think other people will like it. And we've proven that. So we were just like, we're going to go out there and we're going to have fun. I think a lot of startups underestimate, like, that building a brand is really important. There's like a trend in the last, I think, five-eo-Silcon Valley that's like, you shouldn't worry at all about marketing. You should just like ship and do engineering and like build out a really functional product.

And that's actually true. It is totally true. And we do that. It's just like, I'm not an engineer. I can't sit there and like code. We have a fantastic engineering team led by our dear Brian Armstrong. He's an amazing, not the Coinbase one, the better one, head of engineering a partner round. We have an amazing engineering team, and they're fantastic, and we have an amazing product team.

But me and my boss, Dylan Aberscato on the side, we're having fun. We're just like showcasing our love for, you know, founders and the startup world and, like, building awesome things. So, yeah, we have a couple strategies. We have a very pop-in Twitter, I'd say. a lot of founders use Twitter and we were like, hey, at the start of this all, we were like, we want to reach founders, we are our founders.

And I think like tech Twitter and crypto Twitter are like this really rare high density conglomeration of people building stuff. So we immediately like, let's just channel all our energy into it. And Twitter's great. It's amazing. It's a really meritocratic platform in the sense of like good stuff comes the top.

So we just make good stuff. We make stuff we find funny and we interact with our followers heavily. And it's been great. We've had endless amounts of founders come through our Twitter. We have a wait list. It's like 40,000 strong right now, and we are onboarding founders as fast as we can.

But Twitter was incredible for us. And then we also do drops, which are just like launches of like little mini products that are kind of unrelated. Sometimes they're fun, sometimes they're useful. Sometimes they're like just fucking insane. And those have done really well and gone viral and brought more founders on board. So yeah, I can dive into that's sort of what I do at Party Round. I'm like a growth hacker.

So I do a lot of our Twitter community, and I also build these products on the side to go viral. But yeah, can I jump into some of the drops? I think you should jump into some of the drops, and I also think you should rebrand yourself as like a professional shit poster. I don't think I'm funny on Twitter, but it's not really what I want to be eventually. I'm more excited by, like, building great tools, and I have fun posting, but, like, one of the things we're talking about right now

is, like, party around is this super functional product. want to make sure we don't we don't get carried away with that there's like yeah i think it's like a skill you can be funny on twitter it doesn't mean to be your whole you know your whole lifestyle identity um so there's stuff for you down the line outside of marketing i mean there's stuff yeah i i don't i think even our drops and our twitter and the last and really really functional like we had we have had some pretty uh some pretty cool tools like uh like big tech fellowship was this was this um it was this drop that we made that we paid someone 50,000 dollars to quit their big check job uh and go make a startup.

And, I mean, it's totally fun and, like, mischief-esque and very exciting. And it got a ton of viral hype around it. But it is, that's, like, a really cool thing. Like, we totally transform someone's life. And they're building an awesome startup right now. But, yeah, I mean, I think I want to make stuff that helps the, like, I just want to make cool and I think some of those drops already have been highly functional. So, yeah, we have fun on Twitter.

But I think it comes from a place of, like, what do we find funny? What do we find cool? And what do we find useful? And we hope that founders agree. So. Do you have like any advice on Twitter and on branding in general that you think could be used by a multitude of startups? Like is there any one point in people's, yeah, by founders. Do you see any branding that you're just like this sucks so hard that people can change?

I'm like to roast Twitter brands. I'm not going to do that. Yeah. No, go for it. Because I feel like there's some stuff that's being reused on Twitter over and over and again. Twitter is a really hard platform and I think people don't get used to that. So like Instagram and stuff are they very like repetitive. platform. So you win by posting a ton, basically, like, just getting very consistent with posts.

And Twitter is not like that at all. It's highly exponential. So, like, a viral tweet will get exponentially more than, like, a hundred normal tweets. So you really just, you should really just focus on, like, hitting home runs, if that makes sense. Like, I can do 100% tweet a day, and, you know, they'll get, like, I don't know, like, a thousand views each. But if I do one viral tweet in that same time frame, it will get millions of impressions. So I think the problem is people take that strategy. A lot of brands are constantly trying to retweet and post stuff and constantly have a really good calendar schedule for content.

And that's bad actually. Like, like, face it, you're a brand. Like, we're highly cognizant of the fact we're a brand. Our followers don't want their timeline crowded up with fucking brand stuff. Like, we, they don't want the founders are busy people. And Twitter is a really useful tool, man. They got to be like checking out hiring. They got to be checking out other stuff.

So the only time we're on a founder's timeline is like if we have something that we find really funny or really cool. And that's the only time that we're interrupting you. So yeah, I think that's probably the main problem with brands. It's like stop posting so much. You're a brand. So that's what I'd say. But I think it's a great platform to get the hand of it as a company. I would say this though.

Twitter's really useful, but it's only useful for certain types of things. So it's like I don't think every brand should go on Twitter. I think some should. And if you have the assets to, like, do it. Like, we have a lot of flexibility because we have two really fantastic marketers in the team. And we can go wherever we want. But like, you need to, as a founder, invest in specific avenues. So Twitter was our first one because it was like, this is where 90% of our customer base is always on.

And now we're sort of reaching out to other sectors and sections. But yeah, just make a strategic decision. Like, all our drops and our Twitter strategy and everything was a highly strategic decision that we made that was like, here's where founders are the densest. So you need to look at that yourself. Like, I don't think that people should just do drops as a strategy. Like, we love mischief and we had a really good game plan around how we did our drops. But the truth is marketing is like it's about making something fresh. And if everyone's making drops, which they are now, it's like it loses the excitement. So people who copy our strategy, they, it's like trying to copy like a high frequency hedge fund. trader a week after they've made their trades. Like it just doesn't make sense. Like we're already, we're still doing drops of course, but we're already working on other things. Like we're really excited about, you know,

dinners for founders and just like, um, creating like, new types of really interesting content for people in the tech world. Um, and we're excited by like longer term structures. Like, like, I think we want to productize things like the big tech fellowship or like founder houses or just as a ton of other things. Like it's, you got to find, what's next. And you've got to find a fits for your brand. We were in a situation where we

didn't want to talk about our product publicly for seven months. And I think a lot of startups will just not market at all. But we were like, we're going to still have fun. So we were the class clowns of the tech world. We were interacting with founders. We built this like founder brand. And then we launched our product. And we told that from what we were. But you got to strategize for yourself. So I think it's fine to not do marketing if you don't have the resources for it. It's not always the best investment. We could. And we did it really well. And so it was an amazing investment. It got us a lot of hires. It got us connected with, you know, amazing investors. And it put us in touch mainly, most importantly with like a bunch of founders. But yeah, I think it comes

from a strategic place. Figure out who you're trying to reach and then figure out a fresh and exciting way to reach them. And don't just copy what people tell you on marketing. So. Yeah. It super frustrates me whenever I see, and most of the time I see these on TikToks, but people that do like social media marketing managers or whoever they are. And they just like tell you trends. They're like, this sound is trending right now. And I'm like, oh, my God, that's going to create like such bad content. If you just regurgitate what's trending right now rather than putting like a critical

thought or try to incorporate like your brand's voice rather than just speaking out and copying what everybody else is doing. Marketing is kind of like, it's like Buddhist in a way where it's like you have to give up the pursuit of what you're trying to do to reach it. So if I go into marketing and I'm like, oh, fuck, I need like a million impressions this week. I'm not going to hit that. But if I go in from a perspective of like, I'm going to make something really beautiful and share with the world, I'm going to make something that like is good and is helpful. That will do, that is like something that's a value out of the world. And I think a lot of marketers approach it from like, oh, I need to like, run you to whip up my, I need to get more reach. I got to get these numbers up, you know. We were just talking about this. That's like a value extraction way of looking in marketing. And marketing is really just like make beautiful things. So.

Yeah, well, you and I were just talking about this yesterday, how I was like, I just want to create really good content. And I think that. It's so easy to stray away from that, though. And I'm definitely at fall of that. Like, what can I post right now that I know will get like the most hype? Even on like my own personal accounts. Like what? Trying to think of everything strategically rather than just trying to create content because I like creating content at the end of the day.

That's who you're, I think people and brands should want their marketing professionals to be. We have a drop coming in the next like a couple days that is like so useful for founders. It's, uh, I can't really talk about it because it's good to be out in like a week. By the time people here, it will probably be. out, but it is like such a highly functional tool for founders. I'm really excited. So we try and mix it up. We've done like co-labs. We've done like mischief style drops that makes you like scratch, that makes you like crack up. And we've done like just funny stuff. And we've done like things that are like actually changed the role. And now we're like, let's just make a really useful tool for founders and drop

that. So I'm excited. But yeah, yeah, it's a great team. And we're having a ton of fun of the marketing. And we're also, yeah, we're also having fun building a great product. So I just want to talk about how you got this job because I know you're 19 years old. I know that you also hate that I mentioned that you're 19 years old. But I think it's absolutely freaking incredible because you're obviously very well very good at your job. I'm like, I'm not though. I'm five years older than you.

Yeah. Five years old. I'm barely. I'm barely a gen. Now, just kidding. You're like full, full Gen Z. But how did you get this job? Were you in high school or were you like directly out of high school first off?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's jump real quick to party on stuff. And then I can talk more about my life, like, my life path. So, uh, I, I was pretty much like messing around a little bit online and I was making kind of like fun little products that went viral. And Jordi just picked me up off Twitter and DMN was like, um, I want you to join my new startup. Uh, this was right after. What do you mean like little products that went viral? Um, maybe we should just actually start from like, sorry, I guess we should bring it back because it makes sense of the picture. I'm sorry. I'm fucking up your. You're, podcast. No, you're not at all. Don't worry about it. Yes, I was in high school. I wanted to get into the tech world. And I was, I'd like fall in love with startups like HQ, trivia and like citizen from a young age. And when you're in high school, there's like four jobs you know about.

It's like investment banker, doctor, or lawyer. So I was like, okay, before I make a startup, I got to go like work at Bain for like four years. So I went to a good college for finance. And I was like, I'm going to go like do like, I'm going to go like, do like, I'm going to go like, you know, my classic gunner route and, like, go work at, like, Deloitte or something. Anyway, it's super lame stuff. This is just, like, you just don't know this stuff when you're young. I'm 19, so my first year of high school, my senior year of high school, like, COVID was already starting then.

So my first year of college, like, I couldn't be on campus or anything. So I ended up just, like, dropping out. I started messing around a little bit in, like, the venture world, and I quickly realized that, like, the parts I like about finance were venture capital, and the parts that I like about venture capital were startups. and so pretty quickly I was like, okay, I want to go make a leap into a good startup as fast as I can. It took me a long time to find a really great startup.

I worked for a Justin Con for a little bit as a, I like basically helped run his fund, go capital for a while. And then at the same time I was just getting into like, I was just like sort of playing around on the internet. So I would like skip my finals, my midterms and stuff and skip my classes

and I would just like, for the like for the two months I was in college, I would just like spend it all in clubhouse and I would just talk to people. But yeah, I spent a lot of time venture and then I was like, okay, this sucks. Venture as a student as a young person is a total scam. I don't have any decision making here.

I want to go build something that I can take ownership of. So I pretty quickly was like, I want to go join a startup. I, Jory just picked me up. He messaged me off Twitter because he saw some of the stuff I was doing and was like, I want to talk to you by my new startup. We got on a call and pretty quickly we were like just, it was electric. Like we were both like, oh, I'm really inspired by mischief. I just want to make really cool stuff.

And I pitched him this thesis actually that I was working out for marketing. I ended up actually, I got another job offer. I got a job offer to do product to do not pay. And so I called up my mentor's and I was like, here's the situation. This is a company that I like that's giving me a good stable role in their big company. Not big, but they're an established

company at the time. They were worth $80 million. And there's other like new startup that literally is like, there was Jordan Sarah, the founders. They're married. It was their company. They just started it. They were in the process of hiring brand at the time. And it was like, it was like so new. And I was like, but I'm really excited about what they're doing. Like, I think it's world changing.

And my mentors are fantastic. I, uh, I, a lot of people like, my parents and, um, J.D. Moresco. David Giles. These are like, these people that have just taught me a ton. They were all like, that's great. But you, you should take the like stable, get your foot in the door career thing. Um, so I ended up, I ended up picking job. Hey.

Uh, but then they, I got like a bad reference check or something. It was like an awkward process. The founder of it told me I was interviewing for marketing, and then he put me on a call with the head of product, who I only found out like 45 minutes into the interview was actually interviewing me for a product role. So the whole time I was pitching marketing stuff,

I'm like, we can change marketing forever. And he was like, so do you want to do product here? And I was like, oh, wrong thing. Anyway, it fell through. So I was like stuck. I just got to place in SF so I could work down there for them. And I was like, oh my God, I don't have a job. I just dropped out of college for this.

I have, like, no credentials. I had, like, a thousand Twitter followers at the time. So I called up Jordy, and I'm like, I will, like, I, I, I'm sorry. Like, I was like, I basically just like, let's, I was pissed off at the time, too. I was like, super spiteful. I was like, I will mess. I will, I will, I will, I will, let me, put me in, coach. So Jordy was like, this is awesome.

We, I joined party around May 10th. it was like nine or ten months ago. Dang, so you sound like the most ideal candidate, by the way. Let me just say this now. You sound like the most ideal candidate for a startup. Because I think if you find somebody that is like young, super passionate and ready just to absolute. I always, I don't, I think you might have tweeted something similar to this, how like, how, I don't even know how to put it. But you tweeted something.

Yeah, what was it about like, I don't think it's bad to like be. spiteful. You know what I'm talking about that one? I was arguing some guy. Yeah, I mean, I think that's like one of the purposes of life is like getting back and like showing, maybe I'm just a spiteful motherfucker. So that could be like, like, I think it's a beautiful process. Like I think people are really scared of being like petty and revengeville. But these are like the stories and legends that make like life worth living. Like victory, achieving achieving victory, proving yourself, proving your worth. So I have no hard feelings against, like, like, nothing is, nothing is more motivating than hearing somebody else say no.

Nothing is more motivating than being told no. I feel that. I took all that strategy. I wrote for them and then I immediately put it to work for party around and I was like, I'm going to build this, this at. I had like no idea of what I was doing because I was just at a high school. So I'm like sitting there and Jordan's like, yo, like let's do marketing. I was like Googling like how to market a startup.

Anyway, we just quickly got a base on strategy. What is Figma? Yeah, literally. It was like I remember making the party around marketing notion. I was just sitting there staring at this new tab called marketing in our notion. I have no. I'm way over in my head right now. But, yeah, it was strategy as pretty quickly.

We're like, all right, founders are on Twitter. We want to reach founders, and we want to make cool stuff and cool content and have a ton of fun. And I would say we've crushed that over the past month. I don't know if people like know us. I don't want to be arrogant if, like, people on this podcast don't know party around. But check us out. We have a really sick, sick product. And we also have a ton of fun online.

So we have, we have done quite well for the few of our drops in terms of marketing. One of the ones we made was this NFT drop back when NFTs were cool. It was called Helpful VCs. Oh, it's bad. Dang. So, wait, Jason was, Jason, I think was one of them, right? And he was also like,

Jason got all whiny because he used his face. He was like, uh-oh. Oh, sorry. I might not have. I guess I can't get back Jason on this podcast. No, you got to do it.

You got to do it. And this one was like, wait, are you allowed to, like, you're using my face out of wine. And we're like, dude, dude,

it's all good. We're like, we're having fun. We're like, we donated all the proceeds from that to like, to other, to like, we gave it out in grants to founders.

But yeah, we made NFTs of VCs and their likeness in Cryptopunk style and we were like, if you want these, you have to retweet to claim. And just like, everyone went, they just lost it. It was like all these like... Did anybody get Jason? Did anyone get Jason? I think Jason retweeted it to get his own.

Jason got his. So every VC on the block was like, I need this. And it was amazing. We had a ton of reach. And then we took around and took all the money we made it to chairman and we gave it out to founders. But yeah, it was really fun. It was really fun. Anytime you can sort of play around with feces, egos, we have a lot of them. Yeah, mischief is one. So for those of you who don't know, because we've mentioned mischief a lot,

mischief is an art collective. I believe they're actually based in Brooklyn. Gabe, I believe, is like the founder. They're trying to be an art collective. They're a product studio. They do audacious stuff. They made Grimes at a sword on a red carpet event, and the sword was made by mischief,

and it was like a repurposed gun, which is kind of cool. They do a bunch of stuff. I'm going to hot take. this because I want to preface this by saying I'm a spiteful, like, sad, bitter person. Oh my God. I've always been slightly offended that mischief has never tried to hire me. Because when you're like a growth hacker, mischief is like the Harvard of the growth hacking world.

I think they've, I think it's like, they had a set an amazing standard and they totally changed the way people look at like products and marketing. But I think they've fallen off a tiny bit. Part because a lot of the really talented people there have like gone to go work and lead other startups. Yeah. It's like Andrew Watts, head of marketing at Simulate is. like an amazing example. He's like one of the most talented

funny people I know. I barely even know him, but he's close friends with my boss, still in Nebraska. But yeah, I think mischief is, they're struggling with like repetition and keeping it fresh. It's really hard to like over to productize that thing. Like there's a lot of pressure on them every week you have to have something cool. They had an SAT drop that was

pretty neat, but I think it's a little like I... I like their dead startup toys where they had like the actual desk toys but for like, it was like Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos, last. like desk toy. Like how investment bankers

have toys that sit on their desk, but these were like toys that were just of dead startups. I like that drop. Did you get any of the toy? I feel like I'm talking about this one. I don't want the Elizabeth. If anybody has one,

I want one, please, please, please. It was that they were like really cheap plastic toys. But anyway, I'm not. Mischiff changed my life in terms of inspiration. But yeah, no, we bought a bunch of those toys. We did. We have a bunch of our office.

We didn't have one. Oh my gosh. Look out. They're like, they like don't work. You're on my rob list. Okay. Yeah, we'll know, we'll give them to you for you. They don't work. That's what I'm saying.

The therials one dude is literally just a chunk of plastic with a stick around. I thought, is that what like investment banking toys are though? Like the literally like the deal. It's not called deal toys, right? And they just like sit on your desk. Yeah. Speaking of deal toys, um, we have NFT deal toys when you close around at party ground. Wow.

So is it like a deal? Wait, do you get a toy physical toy that looks like a boarding or do you get like a NFT? This is actually inspired by Jason. Jason, you know, is always being like I was one of their early check. an Uber, which he probably was. We don't want to leave that up to like, we think the blockchain is a great, like, a great use case.

So for like commemorating these things and tracking them and putting them on record. So when you invest in a company, it's on the blockchain and you can, you get, this is mostly just for a four fun thing. We're not an NFD startup, but we just, this is exactly how we approach products where it's like we want to build useful stuff for founders and we also just want to have fun. So yeah, when you raise around as a founder, your investors get NFTs to commemorate their investments. They can flex and show off and they're really pretty. So do you think it's more important to do things like these drops and have really thoughtful outside the box marketing?

Or do you think it's important for a brand to absolutely just double down on Twitter, like on one platform? Like, which one do you think? I mean, we're kind of, I think it's like a strategy thing. I would say we're doubling down on Twitter. Our drops are good on Twitter. We're only now getting into things like Instagram and other form content. but it's really just a strategy thing. Figure out where the people

you're trying to talk to are, go to them. So, I mean, if we were a CPG brand, I'd be on Instagram. Yeah. Yeah, that's something that really frustrates me sometimes when I see brands that are CPG,

a lot of brands I've noticed that are more geared towards fun food. I've noticed a lot lately. Are on Twitter. Go over to Instagram and blow up Instagram. I think Fun Food on Instagram, my mom, my mother will spend endless amounts of money

if you have a link to a fun food product, that woman is, and that woman is not on Twitter. Like, I can tell you that. I think it's really cool. It's all about like doing, like finding value in marketing. It's very similar to like,

I just like if everyone is on Instagram for something, you know, it's actually not, there's some really cool CBG things that have popped up on Twitter. So it's really just about strategy, but it's like everyone's on CPG, Instagram.

Sometimes you can actually get really good alpha on, on other platforms. So, but yeah, no, I agree with you. but I think it's always about like yeah, coming up with creative stuff. There's a few CBG brands I like on Twitter.

But anyway, we aren't a CBG company, unfortunately. We did do a CBG drop once, but really, yeah, it was Cometeer coffee. It was party grounds.

Yeah, we, party grounds, I just talked to somebody that works there. So Comitere coffee, they're like these little pods, but they're not K cups,

but it's basically just condensed coffee. So, you know, the shipping and supply chain is a lot better. So we actually, just had on the cana founder, which also has like a similar ideology where it just costs so much money to freaking ship like the supply chain of beverages is like psycho and comitare coffee is

similarly in that realm of like, you know, it's really expensive to ship liquids. Comitare coffee has like condensed coffee, I believe, and like little pods. And you guys did party ground like you just said. And the packaging looked really sick. Brandon followed at Brandon Jacoby on it on Twitter. He's amazing. was it Brandon Jacoby that did it? Brandon Jacoby. Well, I was a, yeah, he's like, I mean, all these things are a team effort. Like when we talk about product and marketing,

it's the whole team getting involved, but he's an incredible designer. Yeah, head of Mark. And PM. Oh, sorry, it's at Jacoby Brandon. I'm fucking with it up. Sorry, Brandon. It's at Jacobi Brandon. We have a challenge right now.

First of us to 10K followers gets to make the other person get a tattoo. So I really shouldn't be shouting him out. I'm pretty confident. I'm going to beat him to 10K. So. What are you going to get a tattoo? Or do you want to get a tattoo of like the party round circles, like your guys' logo? Yeah, I think I will get a tattoo.

I'm waiting until I get my equity just because, like, you know, I feel that's just like a more, what if I vest? I'm getting that tattoo. So you also have a tattoo of something else that has to do with NFTs, right, on your arm. Oh, God, don't expose me like this. Yeah, I have a ERC 721 tattoo. It's, it's, it's a down. And what is that?

I'm a loser. No, no. My thesis on tattoos is like You gotta explain what that is. You gotta explain what that is. It's a Dow. I got a tattoo to join a Dow. You got me.

I'm an idiot. But isn't that like the legal, the legal document, right? Like the actual tattoo you have is the name of the legal document for NFTs or something like that? Yeah, yeah. So ERC 721 is a type of token,

theorem token that lets NFTs, you know, work. But yeah, I just got a tattoo to join a little group chat. It's really fun. So you'll like meet other type people around world and we'll have the same tattoo and then we like gap each other up. That's pretty good for community building. It is. It is really fun.

60 seconds left, Rachel, what are the final questions here? Oh, man. We're going to have to go over because we haven't even talked about. That's good. I do want to pivot our conversation a little bit more to just young people living in New York City, especially young people living in cities that work in tech. Yep. Yeah.

Tell me your thoughts. Yeah, in general, I think like a good place. I think you should just get to a city if you're young and you're a technologist or you're building cool things. I think then first is just like where you want to go. SF, Miami, New York. I'm very biased. I lived in SF for about eight months.

It was great. But I, yeah, actually, I don't really have any hate to SF. I think SF is really cool when you're young. I know there's a lot of like people hyping up the crime in that stuff right now, but it's like, if you're young, you know, like just carry some pepper spray, hang out with a bunch of like find friends that can fight. No, I'm kidding. It's really not that bad.

But New York is my first love. So I love New York. I think a lot of people should come here. I think Miami's cool. No one gets work done in Miami. I also like every time I go to Miami, there's like a ton of drama and shit that goes down. So I just like don't want to work in Miami. I don't know.

New York's great. You guys should come to New York. But yeah, dropping out is like is a little bit of a unique situation because you do trade off a lot of like, I guess I would say like social life. And anytime you have to make a decision around college, it's like, it's like, okay, credentialing. credentials, connections for business, connections for friends, like your relationships, and then, like, how does this actually help you in your career? I think credentialing in general in college is stupid because college is like a fallback plan.

It's like basically like, oh, fuck if I don't have a job. I need a college degree to get a job. But like, that's a fallback plan. You're planning for like the worst case scenario where you can't get hired. And I just don't think many people, especially in tech, like a lot of people in tech are trying to do insane things with their life. Like, I'm risking my entire life on like the one in a zillion, that I can be someone who makes something absolutely great, which is, and I'd say that chance is

higher now that I work at party around. No, I'm not kidding. But like, yeah, like, don't live your life for fallback plans. That being said, it's great to, like, not have responsibility. Like, I'm 19 and I live like, I live like I'm just in my mid-20s. And that's some of the things I'm, like, I didn't really have an option because I wasn't going to have any community at college anyway, because it was in COVID. But I think people nowadays, it's like, do really consider this situation deeply. It's nice to not have a chance. under responsibility. It's nice to have a period in your life where you don't have to, like, just be an adult. And college is great for that. I personally hated college,

because I didn't like being just like a normal person. Like, I was just a guy there, you know? Like, I think it's partly because I'm very like, um, dude, maybe I'm just like a narcissist. No, I just like, I believe in myself a lot to a fault. And so it was like, having this sort of dissonance when you get to college and just being like another guy there was like, I was like, this sucks. I do not want to have just, I don't want to be normal. So I was like, I'm going to go and I'm going to go and gamble with my life and try and do something great. Um, but yeah, I think it's, I think it's, I'm community. How do you find community without? So like if you're, like, if you're, like, over than you're, if you're over 21, I, I guess

like, like, we met in a we work. So we works and co-working spots are like very cool places. Um, we also met. We actually met in a air for. I'd say the first thing you need if you're a college dropout. Get a fake ID. Um, yeah, I mean, New York is unique. Like, even if you go to college in New York. It's not like you're going to college. It's more like you're just like, like, going to NYU is the closest thing to dropping out. You can do without dropping out. Explain your thoughts on there. It's like a commuter college. You literally have so much NYU. You hate it. New, it is insane. I have a lot of friends at NYU. I think NYU is in great school. I would have loved to go to NYU. I couldn't have gotten in. So I'll, I'll say that.

Because NYU is a commuter school. New York specifically is a unique scenario. But I think there's lots of ways. Like, tech is one of the most welcoming opening places for connections. I agree. I, like, even last week, I tweeted out, like, how do I meet people to go party with that aren't in tech? And, like, a billion really cool tech people are applied, and so I'm spending the next, like, four weeks just hanging out with more awesome tech people.

I, I would think it's important to be like, I, it's my tribe. Like, I love people that are trying to do great things with their life, and I, uh, I think I've made a ton of lifelong friends doing hacker houses and stuff. I, I would strategize, like, if you're a young person, you want to drop out, consider that deeply,

And then if you're ready to basically sacrifice your life to do something amazing or try and take that risk, drop out. Figure out a hacker house in a city somewhere if you're young. Go live there and meet a lot of really cool people in the city. Did you do a hacker house in a staff? Yeah, yeah. So me and my, I did Edify. Edify unfortunately just got, I don't actually know how much I would say. Edify no longer exists.

It was an amazing like nine-month project. It was a bunch of houses around the world. in SF, Kansas, houses in Seattle and in New York. And it was amazing. I think I'm sad

if I doesn't exist anymore, but the founders are my roommates and they're doing something really awesome. So, that's very true. I think hacker houses

are fantastic. But yeah, I would say, go down there, meet a bunch of people like you. It was really great. It was like, we had a house in SF

that was like, 10 of us in this, like, mansion that we all were like, I was like sharing a room with some guy. And you just meet a lot of like fantastic people. Like the difference

from college immediately apparent. These are people that were like doing absolutely insane stuff for their lives. But yeah, it's like tech versions of college. So I always think we should keep that open. I know Edify doesn't exist anymore, but there's new stuff already popping out in cities around 100%. Yeah, I saw our mutual friend, Ami, I believe, is in one. Yes. Yeah, he's great. I don't, I, um, he's letting tech people ball out. Yeah, he's a 19 year old. He's messing up the the balling economics. He literally is. So we have a friend that is also, I believe, leave of 19 and he has a Dow called Dropout Dow and is currently living, I believe, in a hackhouse

or something equivalent to a hacker house and he seems like he's absolutely killing it in SF. I agree. I think that it's very difficult though for people outside of the tech community to understand how welcoming the tech community is because when I tell my friends, yeah, we met on Twitter that doesn't necessarily like go over the conversations on different when you're talking to a non-tech person. I'm speaking to the quiet here because I think this podcast will mostly be shared on Twitter but getting on Twitter is so important.

It's an incredible platform. It's like, it's like a life-changing platform. I've done like almost all the good things in my life have come from Twitter to a point where like, I'm pretty sure I'll probably like get married to someone off Twitter. I'm kidding. I hope that doesn't happen. But like, it's just such a huge portion of the things in my life

that have been good to come out of Twitter. I got hired off Twitter. I found that I met my roommates off Twitter. Yeah, I got hired up Twitter. Ben hit me up and was like, I'm making this house an SF. I called Edify. Do you want to join? And I was like, yes.

That let me functionally drop. of school. So I think we should always keep that route open for technologists. I agree. And I think that it's, it's Twitter's one of those platforms too, where the chances of you've signed as someone's DMs that's doing something like you think is absolutely amazing and then responding are incredibly high. There's literally no other platform. When we're doing outbound and I have to get like a really cool founder on the show, my first place I go is Twitter. Because like, it's just amazing. Yeah, I, uh, you can just like tweet people too. I forget what I just did, but I, uh, oh yeah, I wanted to meet Jackson Dahl,

who's the guy who is a co-founder at 100 Thieves. He's like a huge, huge idol to me. And I was in East Denver, and I was like, I just tweeted out like, yo, I want to meet Jackson Dahl. And it turns out a few of my friends,

Michael Dessie. You're talking about 100 Thieves, like League of Legends? Oh, yeah. I'm a huge league nerd on the side. So I have an, I have an animal account where I actually just like write sports an,

like 538 style sports analytic blogs, but for, but for e-sports. That's awesome. Anyway, huge, yeah. I actually was talking about founder stuff and like his career and his visions and like how we make decisions.

So he's awesome. But anyway, Michael Dempsey is this amazing investor at Compound and a really good basketball player too. And he was like, oh yeah, I'm good friends of Jackson, so he just connected me and it was awesome.

So yeah, Twitter's life changing. You do need to build a, like, it's definitely getting more, like, powerful for me right now because I have like, I'm about a hit. It sounds like,

I'm not, I actually don't have that many followers, but as soon as you get like a good critical mass of followers, it becomes this incredible tool. So I wonder where like Mark Andrews and has thought of my tweets because like statistically he has probably seen them. Yeah, I mean, he retweeted one of my tweets once.

But like I don't think he, it didn't come from me, you know, it was like retweeting something that Turner Novak retweeted. That was from us. But, um, yeah, sometimes just wonder like when Paul Graham is scrolling Twitter and he sees like a,

like a party round like meme tweet. Like, I wonder what he thinks. So. Yeah. Well, I saw like Alexis O'Hare. Ryan responded. He's probably like an investor

viewer guys is, but like, does he follow you? Like, I feel like that's kind of cool. Seven, seven, seven, six is a, is an investor in party rounds. Very awesome. I think one of the good strategies founders can do to, like, boost their, like, stuff on Twitter is like, just go get your investors like, like and comment. They're amazing. Packy, Austin, um, Nick Sharma, Nick Milanovic.

Oh, Nick Sharma, another good person in the marketing and the marketing world. Pretty much all those guys, like, they are, and I'm sure I'm missing. I'm talking about people that help us, Alexis, too. they interact with their tweets. It's like a low lift for them, but it's still a really valuable value ad. Do you have any recommendations though on like building your personal brand as a founder

as like an individual, not a brand on Twitter? Yeah, yeah. Honestly, no. I don't know. Yeah. I haven't really thought about that. I see a lot of people tweet. Is it again though like quality over quantity?

Because I see a lot of people. that just spit out so much, so much content. I think if you're like trying to, I think like, obviously it's good to think about a personal brand, but like, my Twitter is very personal. I'm not trying to like make it go big. So I actually am going to probably be, I'm a little bit of a little sad if it gets any bigger.

But yeah, I don't know. I think your personal brand is, you know, like obviously the basics, like tell good stories. But otherwise I'd just be like, stop, stop caring so much, just be yourself. Yep. I was just going to say I actually hate the term personal brand because it makes me feel like a commodity.

Like somebody today, text me. Yeah, she was like, can I help you with your personal brand? I was like, I don't know. I don't know. Because like I don't want to not someone's on.

I don't see a help as a personal brand. I feel you have a pretty good one. Thank you. I don't know. I'm not out here almost at 5,000 followers, have to say. 5,000 people don't want to listen to what I have to say.

Twitter is the only platform where you can have like 5K followers and consistently reach like millions of people. That's true. Probably like 3 million people. I think TikTok. I think TikTok. I definitely think with TikTok. No, not with like 5K followers.

followers. I think so. I think you could have like, I've seen literally accounts with like 500 followers hit like a million views. I mean, yeah, I mean, I've seen, yeah, you can also like go viral with like nothing on TikTok, but it's very random where I can consistently with 5K followers like get an insane amount of impressions. But yeah, I mean, I think the value of like a Twitter impression is so much more. I feel than like a TikTok impression. And I don't think I think I'm actually think TikTok's heavily restrictive in like what type of content can do well there. So yeah, I mean, I'm like very. anti-Tick-Tac in terms of using it as your main marketing channel, unless you're like a brand that's like, just like selling until like kids. Just because it's like stuff won't go viral unless it's like funny.

Well, I can like make a product announcement and get like a zillion impressions. So I think it's not great for building a personal brand because you have to like bow to the algorithm. Twitter has no real algorithm. It's really mathematical. It's just like if people like and comment on stuff, it gets, it's like allows it to get more views.

So it's very much like a mathematical function versus like this. Yeah. this constantly changing tracking algorithm. So yeah, I think Twitter's more meritocratic in terms of content. I think you can do better things. I think one of these days, just to like prove myself,

if I am really good as good of a growth hacker and like viral, like memetic person as I think I am, then I should go and prove that by making myself an influencer. So I might spend like, I might start that in like a month or two. I spend six months becoming an influencer,

but like as a joke. Not as a joke. Just for like to prove it. I mean, it's like if I am really good at this stuff as I could, I should do that. Right now I'm working on writing a lot. I think that's probably going to be my next thing.

I want to like party rounds where I'm going to be for the next like X amount of years. I love the team. I love working for Jordy. I'm learning a ton there. But I also like probably want to start building like little mini side projects in the side, especially in like in like crypto or in like viral like memetic stuff.

And then I want to write more. So I'm starting a blog. Have you read wanting section? You keep saying memetic. Have you read the book wanting yet? No, no, no. I haven't. What is that?

Good one. It's all about memetics. Are you saying wanting as in like, so that's actually mimetic. You're saying M-I-M-E-T-I-C. I'm saying M-E-M-E-T-S. So mimetics with an I is sort of the theory of how things that are alike, like very similar, naturally come into conflict.

And memetics, which I'm talking about is basically the, memetics are like the traits that enable ideas to survive and spread. Got you. Mimetics actually is this like cultural, like, it was like his term created and then immediately like killed by its creators. Like it's,

it's not even considered true in like cultural idea theory. It's like not, it's like, it's like this term there was immediately left for dead and like thrown to the corners of the internet, but it survived. And so I find it incredibly fascinating.

It's basically how like, like, like even animals have like speed or like strength or intelligence and that helps them evolve and stay alive. But like being fast is in the point of being an animal just like, staying around kind of is the point of evolution. And so memetics are the traits that make ideas good at sticking around.

So, like, truth or, like, not true, or, like, virality. Those are all traits that ideas used to stick around. So, yeah, I think it's a relatively new idea. People talk a lot about memes, which are, like, I think less, they're, like, less important, actually, on the grand scheme of things than, like, understanding memetics. But, yeah, I think we're saying a lot of, like, that's going to be one of the trends it's probably going to come to, like, dominate society. Like right now with this Ukraine, Russia stuff,

like you're seeing a lot of, like, highly memetic, like M-E-M-E-T-I-C, like, like war going on. People are like making sure they're take spread. They're like trying to dominate newsfeeds on either side. So, yeah, I think just something people need to be cognizant enough. Like, we've reached this point in society. I think where virality is like almost too strong in the meta-game. Like, it's too strong.

What do you mean? And so, like, a lot of times there's, so medigames are like the natural state of things. And like, if, like, you play like, tick-tac-toe, there's like a metagame. There's, like, an optimal strategy. And optimal strategies aren't always balanced. They're often, like, deeply unbalanced. And I think in the spread of ideas and in sociology, virality has come to, like, dominate society. So, like, the internet is, like, most of the content you see is highly viral.

Truth gets destroyed by, like, false truths just because false truths can be more viral. Yeah. just like, basically, virality is almost too strong. So there's a lot of implications that has for society. That's some of the stuff I like I like to write about. Excited for the blog. It's like a relatively new,

new thing. It's like, no one really is talking about. I mean, there's like a lot of like stupid tech pros are like, oh, memetics and like how you can use it to like it, like 5% more growth metrics.

But this is like really like society defining stuff, like how we transfer ideas and how what ideas we prioritize. So anyway. And when will we be seeing some of your, blog posts come out or is this like a in the works process. In a week, I'm working on a piece called anti-mimetics. Cool, cool. And I'm not going to talk about it.

Because I think it's probably the most important idea I'll ever have in my life. So do check that out when it's out. Sorry, I'm shilling my blog. Now, a non-existent blog. No, and by the time this comes out, I actually think the blog will be out. Oh, I'm terrible writing. So we'll see. I'm sure it's phenomenal.

I'm sure it's great. Do you have any advice I'll let you pick between people that are young and want to work at a startup or growth hackers? For either of those groups. I think people with growth hacking abilities know their growth hackers, so I don't need to give them too much advice because I'm competing versus them. So in general, I think to kids like advice is just people trying to build great things for life. Yeah, I'd say the meta game for what startups are optimal to join. risk reward has changed. So find something with like 20 employees that's like raised around or something and

join that. So like before people told you to like join break out with startups that are like have a startup with product market fit with like 100 something employees like Airtable. Sorry, nothing wrong with air table. But like don't join that now if you're a young person. Like go and take a bet. There's a lot more upside on a small startup. And if you are a talented engineer or designer or growth hacker or God knows what,

talk to me. We are constantly hiring amazing people party around. So, yeah, my advice is join party around, guys. Awesome, awesome. Well, thank you so much for being on the show. I'm really excited to hear what Jason has to say. No problem. I hope Jason doesn't, you know.

I hope Jason tweets at you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I might be below his line. But one of these days I'll get above it. Yeah, let's hope. Let's hope. Yeah. Well, thank you for being on.

Thank you so much. 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, SAAAS to apply to raise from the Sass Syndicate. And you can join Jason Syndicate of over 9,000 accredited investors at the syndicate.com.

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