This Week in Startups - The inside story of Iger's Disney return, Epic Games record-breaking fines + ClimateCamp CEO | E1643

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

First up, J+M break down Disney's "Battle of the Bobs" (2:59), before covering two record-breaking fines against Epic Games, and explaining "dark patterns." (20:35) Molly wraps the show by interviewing ClimateCamp CEO Stijn Gysemans on Scope 3 emissions tracking! (44:26) (0:00) J+M tee up today's topics! (2:59) WSJ report on the rift between Iger and Chapek at Disney (13:36) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at https://Squarespace.com/TWIST (15:03) The role Christine McCarthy, Disney's CFO, played in bringing back Bob Iger (20:35) Epic Games receives two record-breaking fines from the FTC, understanding "dark patterns" and deceptive design (30:14) Blueground - Get up to $1000 off your booking at https://promos.theblueground.com/twist  (31:40) Tangent continued: calling out the worst "dark design" offenders (44:26) ClimateCamp CEO Stijn Gysemans joins Molly Wood to chat target markets, Scope 3 emissions, and more! (51:29) Understanding how emissions are calculated, EU rules and regulations FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood FOLLOW Stijn: https://twitter.com/sgysemans Subscribe to our YouTube to watch all full episodes: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkkhmBWfS7pILYIk0izkc3A?sub_confirmation=1

Hey, everybody, it's Tuesday, and we've got a big show for you today. There's a long read about the Battle of the Bob's, Iger and Cheapek, at Disney. And we have a new segment. Long reads made short. And in this, a 24-minute long read will be narrowed down to two minutes by professional broadcast for Molly Wood. It's incredible. And then we're going to gossip a little bit about it because it's just so fun.

We're also going to cover two record-breaking FTC fines against the same company. Epic games. Got dinged over some Fortnite behavior, collecting kids' information, some children's privacy violations, and these dark patterns, we will explain what those are.

And then it's possible that a tangent occurs. A big J-Cal tangent coming. These dark patterns where you cannot unsubscribe from the Wall Street Journal, Equinox, or the Economist, you know this collection of horrible, companies that make great products, but then ruin their reputations by not letting you unsubscribe. And they use these dark patterns. This is dark user interface, the worst human beings on the planet.

We are going to read recent complaints about Equinox, the economist, and Wall Street Journal, and shame these shameful companies and teach you how to get your revenge on them. It is a tangent and it is a J-Cal blowup. It's got to be top five in the history of the show. It's epic, if you will. Oh, hey. See what I do there? And then we go back to the light.

We have a startup founder interview with Stan Hoisman of Climate Camp, who is doing great things in the world, building wonderful things. Climate Camp has developed a greenhouse gas accounting platform to help decarbonize supply chains. This is the problem that every business has right now. Stan is on it. Namaste, Molly. Thank you for the pallet cleanser. It is going to be a great show.

And I didn't mention it during the opening here. But I mentioned the three, now four jobs that JCal believes you should never quit. That's embedded in the show somewhere. The four jobs, you should never quit. It's going to be a great show. Stick with us. This weekend startups is brought to you by Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website.

Go to Squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use Offer Code Twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. And Blue Ground is revolutionizing the rental game with its global network of designer furnished apartments that can be seamlessly booked for a month, a year, or longer. Get up to $10,000 off your booking with Blueground. Visit promos.com slash twist for more info. Feel at home, free to roam with Blueground. Blue ground. Molly, it's Tuesday. It's been a busy week. There's so much to catch up on. Oh my gosh, so much.

So much. And I love a good long read. A long read on the internet, for those of you who don't know, is like a classic magazine article in The New Yorker or Vanity Fair or once in a while in New York Times Magazine section of Wall Street Journal. And they tend to take more than 15 minutes to read. In other words, TLDR. It's just too long to read. So we're starting a new segment here. We're experimenting with it, which is T-L-D-R Long-R-R-R-R-Rids. We'll come up with a better name. You can help us workshop it. You know how I am about segments. But there was a great dishy, long-read, about our favorite CEO, Bob Eiger.

Yes. Maybe after this long read, people might think a little less of Bob Eager, not me. not me. I love Bob I agree. Even more after this. Tell us, Molly. It's a good one. Okay, so what we have done in the interest of this segment to try to make our, like, what is it, like, TLDR made short or something.

Yes. Or long reads made short. How about that? Long reads made short. There you go. We're making a long read made short. So we made a little bullet list of what happened. But so, of course, we've been talking nonstop about the two bobs at Disney.

We were on this story quite early, I think. Yes. And Bob Chepeck coming in, being handpicked by Eiger. So what we're going to do is we worked with the producers to make a series of bullet lists or bullet points about what was in this long read. Because I love to give and take credit. I made sure to note the parts that we had already noted. We called it. And then some new information about how this all unfolded.

This is basically the inside story of what happened from before Bob Eger left to him coming back. So this is going to take you 15, 20 minutes to read. I'm going to start a clock now. And Molly is going to make a long read short in three, two, go. Okay, here's the background. Bob Chepic was handpicked by Iger as his successor. Iger didn't want to leave and delayed his departure multiple times. And then all of a sudden, Iger scampered right out the door right before COVID hit.

Chapik took over and immediately stopped including Iger in key decisions. There was a rift. Chepic then started making some questionable decisions that were heavily scrutinized, such as jacking up the price of the parks passes, that whole Scarlett Johansson Black Widow lawsuit, a hugely unpopular reorg, and then of course getting in a big huge fight with Ronda Santis and progressive customers over the don't say gay bill. Okay. Then all of a sudden, on the other hand, we have Bob Eiger. He hates being retired. He's bored. He's lonely. He's sad. He's out on his 150 foot yacht and his wife wouldn't even come with him. It stinks. He is a about to take a new job as like a big hedge fund advisor. But meanwhile, inside Disney, not only is Bob Chaypec annoying all of his customers and the biggest stars in the world, he has failed to consider one key employee, one Christine McCarthy. That's right.

Christine McCarthy, Disney's chief financial officer, who is so devoted to Disney that she had cancer and she was showing up at work after her chemo treatments. She blindsides Bob Chepach in a board meeting with data and numbers that he claims he hadn't even seen where she had to give the board really bad news about how the company was doing under his leadership. He said he didn't see the numbers. The Wall Street Journal said they were totally sent out beforehand. Either he was totally unprepared or Christine pictured here totally knifed him. And then it's Christine who calls Bob. Iger personally and says, please come back. And Iger says, I would love to. And the board boots

Chepec brings back Iger. The story ends with Iger taking his victory lap around the park, back at Disneyland, elbow bumping customers looking, quote, ecstatic. Oh, chef's miss Molly. Molly, I love the last paragraph here in this. An exception. job, by the way, taking a long read from 24 minutes or so of reading to two. You save the audience 22 minutes. A long read made short and in our first half, you're very good. I give you an A. I give you a 9.5.

Dang, thanks. It could be a little bit. I'll give you a nine. It could be a little better. If you do a little practice on it, I think you could even go faster. And you could, you could kind of add a little, you know. We want people to keep up. We want them to keep up.

People might have this already. But there could be more drama. It's true. It could be more drama. Here's the last paragraph. And I want to just give the flowers now. I give a little flowers to the writer. This is good writing. A long read is good writing. That's another aspect of a long read is you got a little more prose in there. Listen to this end. On a Saturday afternoon in December, Mr. Iger walked Main Street in Southern California's Disneyland, flanked by executives, his wife, and security guards wearing earpieces. And so this is good because it takes you to that moment. Descriptiveness, right, giving you. a little color. Oh, right, his wife who didn't come on the boat with him, walking down Main Street. We've all seen the Main Street in Disneyland. And then the security guards with the air pieces,

right? He really paints a picture. That's what a great long read does is paint a picture. I love you, passing fans yelled, plural, multiple fans. Some stop for selfies and autographs. Those are very tight sentences, right? You see the writing style there is short. Right. So they went from a long first sentence with a lot of commas in it, what they call a compound sentence. sentence and then to short, punchy ones. Now, that is a gear shift for a writer, for those of you who don't know. They gave you the long sentence, now they give them the short ones. Mr. Iger look ecstatic, leaving associates to wonder if he ever plans to leave. Chef's kiss to the writers. My God, writing is so terrible in the world and content farms.

Everybody's under complete pressure. Joe Flint, Robbie Whelan, Eric, Schwarzel, Emily Glazer, and Jessica Tunkil. Tunckel? Tuncle. Tunkul. Anyway, T-O-O-N-K-L. Those are the writers on this. I don't know who wrote the end,

but that is a classic long read, great wrap-up. That's fine writing at its best. It's a kicker. It's a kicker. As we say, leaving, because that thing,

associates to wonder if he ever plans to leave, puts us right back at the top where he undermined Chepec from the very beginning by not really wanting to leave. It's beautiful. It's beautiful.

Just beautifully done. Now, listen, this leads me to my hot take. I have talked about this before many times. There are four things you never leave in life. It used to be three, but today I edit a fourth. You never leave a winning TV show. You remember David Caruso, NYPD Blue? Remember him?

Yeah, I'm going to be a big movie star. Only because I remember him leaving the show. That's literally all I remember about him is that he left the show and then, that was it. Biggest mistake of his life. NYPD Blue is the best show on television. Everybody knew it. And this dummy, David Caruso.

Sorry, David. I don't mean to twist the knife. He got CSI Miami eventually or whatever. Whatever. He did then find more seasons of NYPD Blue. His ego got in the way. Number two, you never leave a winning movie franchise. Robert Downey Jr.

did the right thing. He started the franchise. They said, can you do a cameo here, cameo there, be in this one, be the lead, be second. He's like, I'm here. I'll do it forever. Now, spoiler alert, obviously, you know, he goes away in the last film after, I don't know, was that the 20 or 25th movie. He never left that franchise. He'll be back anytime they want him.

Yeah, they have a multiverse. Yeah. Other people have left winning franchises. I don't want to be typecast Right There's many people Who were supposed to play Superman They were supposed to play Batman

They didn't want to take on the franchise You never leave a franchise And you never leave a rock band Roger Waters Who wrote I think dark side of the moon Wish You Were Here and the Wall I think all three of those were

You know obviously the rest of the band Participated but I think he left after those And then Roger Waters I just saw him in concert I had the first row Incredible Incredible I believe those were the best albums,

Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here And The Wall, I think, are like one, two, and three for me of all the, and then I guess some people like animals. You can have this debate all day long, but Roger Waters left the band. And he's got a great, he never had a solo career, but he does play those songs at his concerts,

and if he didn't, nobody would go. I'm adding to my list a fourth. You know, I have my lists, like things I'll never do, a cruise, all you can eat buffet, all you can eat sushi and buffets. Like there's a list of things I don't do. This is a list of links, a list of things you should never do in your career.

And the last thing in your career is you never leave the CEO job at Disney. It's the best gig in the world. Yeah. You go to Disneyland. Yeah, you got Marvel, you got Star Wars, you got Pixar. You can get your friends into Disneyland. You can throw a birthday party at Disneyland for any of your friends. You can have any one of the Marvel superheroes,

except maybe Scarlett Johansson, who's got to do a little bit of extra work to get her back in the fold, Black Widow, shout out. You know what he needs to do? He needs to tell Scarlett Johansson. We're going to have Black Widow Day at the parks, and we're going to make a Black Widow experience ride,

and we're going to make a Black Widow TV series, and whatever you want is now on the plate, because you've got to do what's right for the artists, right? You've got to shake hands. You've got to love the fans. You've got to love the job. best job in the business. You're right.

CEO of Twitter. Best job in the business? CEO of Disney. Exactly. If those two things are on option, it's a pretty easy one. Pick Disney. The pretty easy one. Pretty easy one.

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We love you, Squarespace. Thanks so much for being the longest running partner here at this week in startups. That means a lot to me. So there you go. That's the inside story of the breakdown with the bobs. I think we can all agree that the takeaway here is never underestimate, Christine. Well, I mean, she is literally like the- She knipped him all the way through.

She did. You know who she reminds me of? You remember secession? Yes, exactly. Uh-huh. And is she the CFO? She's the CFO. Don't you think she had a lot of this thing?

Wait a second. Now, I will take credit for zooming in. I zoomed in on Christine here. Yeah. Is that Jerry? That's Jerry. She's Jerry. Chepeg messed with Jerry.

You don't mess with a Jerry. You don't mess with Jerry. With a G. By the way, if somebody spells, Jerry with the G and an eye, you don't mess with him. No. Can we get a side-by-side of Jerry and Christine?

We can do the Zoom now. This is the same person. They're both CFOs. They both would work through chemo. They're both dedicated to their boss, even when their boss retires. Yep. And they both will knife you.

Nive you. Hardcore. Mm-hmm. These are hardcore CFO ladies. Never. Guess to me, Christine. That was to me the only actual new information. Like, we had talked about or speculated about every other part of that.

The new information in there was that Chepec missed one opportunity to make a friend. And it cost him his hit. I'm in love with Christine. I'm going to pattern my entire life after Christine. I need to know everything about her. Look at this. You can zoom out too. I zoomed in on Christine because I wanted to really get her killer eyes.

It's in the eyes. Listen. It is. It's in the eyes. Also, by the way, great. hair. Great hair. If you want to be a CFO like this, there we go.

You need to have, you got to get your hair blown out. Dude, how did we not realize? Power suit. And you got to have eyes that are samurai sword eyes. Yeah. These are samurai. These are laser eyes. Like, these women will cut you.

And purse lips. Red lipstick. Red lipstick. And you know what? They don't have to say a lot. Mm-mm. just when they do say something, it's going to sting. I mean,

you can just tell. They're both looking at somebody explain. They're both looking at men explaining some bullshit. Exactly. They're like, I know this look. I've gotten this look as a CEO. They just look at you and they're like, really?

I literally, I'm not going to say anything. I'm just going to look at you. I told you 10 times already, Bob Chapic. Let everybody have their budgets. This is the look that. says, I will clean this shit up. Again, I will clean it up. No, I guarantee you what happened was,

Chapick came. This is what I'm going to just do with here. Chapic came and said, oh, you know what we'll do? We want a cost cut. So nobody has a budget. All the budgets go from one place. We got one P&L. And she's like, okay, I understand where you're coming from.

This conversation, I had it with Eisner. I had it with Eiger. I've had seven other people do it. Here's where we came to the nine times we have this conversation with the board. I've been here through three regimes, changes. It's a reasonable thing, Mr. Chapic. But, you know, the people who we hire, if you want to have exceptional talent, they need to feel some autonomy.

And so this is going to make people feel like you're the God King and they won't have autonomy. I really, in the strongest terms, I don't advise it. It'll blow back on you. We've tried it. and if there's any additional resources I can get or people you need to talk to to not make this great decision, you know, let me see if I can help. And you know what Bob Jabick said? I'm in charge. I'm in charge for your feedback.

Go execute it. And he diminished her in that moment. That's my belief of what happened. Yep. And then she went, oh, okay, Bob, whatever you say. And then you know what she said? Beep, beep. Mm-hmm.

To the board. Mr. Yeah. Please. Jerry, call me Bob. We've been working together for 20 years. Just call me Bob. Mr. Eager, I'm not comfortable calling you, Bob.

How's the retirement? Oh, you're alone on your boat. How about you bring the boat back to Doc and you come home? This is never going to work with Mr. Cheney. I'll do respect. Would you consider coming back? Do I have your support? I'm calling you because you have my support.

You know you always have my support, Mr. Eiger. That's how Jerry got you. Yeah. That's how you get jerryed. Yep. That's how you get jerryed. You don't. You do not play that one right.

You overlook Jerry at your own peril. You got jared. I'm about to become Christine stalker. I'm going to stalk her entire career and just find every move that she ever did and just mimic the whole thing. She's incredible. Don't make me for you, Jerry and Christine next to you, Jenner. And a side by side. I need you to pressure your life.

You don't do. And I need you to give me the, no. See, you're smiling. you don't have it yet. I don't get a little more. You're not, you're not, you have to become a little more

bitter and cynical. I'm too young. You're not bitter and cynical enough yet. I'm really not. Oh, sorry. I'll try. A couple years of being, you know, diminished by the patriarchy and you'll get there.

Exactly. So close. Creeping up, creeping up. All right. In other news, we had a couple of record breaking FTC fines. Tell me more. In the tech industry.

And they were levied on the same company. Same company got two record-breaking fines from the Federal Trade Commission, and it is Fortnite Maker Epic Games, which has... Really? Yeah. Uh-huh. I think they were the good guys. I know. Turns out, not so much.

They got a record-breaking fine for invading children's privacy, and then another record-breaking fine for tricking players of all ages into making unintended purchases. The two fines together add up to 520 million. $1. Well, that's quite a speeding ticket. Usually speeding tickets are a little bit less. That's real cash. Half a billion is for real. That's for real.

Yeah. It's the 200, the children's privacy fine is based on Copa, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act. That is $275 million. And then the second fine is $245 million for these illegal dark patterns, which are things like deceptive sign-up tactics, like saying, oh, you'll get a super cheap deal in the first month and then jacking up the price or encouraging you to keep subscribing or making it really hard to unsubscribe. In the case of actually, Fortnite, they said that

they used these tactics where they actually even sort of threatened people who were trying to cancel. Like, oh, you'll lose your access to the game forever. Oh. Yeah. They obscured cancel and refund features to make them more difficult to find. And then according to the FTC, when Epic agreed to unlock an account, so they were, would, if customers disputed these unauthorized charges with their credit card companies, allegedly, Epic would lock their accounts. And then even if they agreed to unlock the accounts, then they would say, you'll be banned for life if you dispute any future charges.

And then she said this led to hundreds of millions of dollars in unauthorized charges for consumers. And then in terms of the COPA violations, I think that was about collecting personal information from children. This is a neologism. Is that the fancy? Neologism, like a new word that was created. Neologism. Neologism.

How do we say that? It's hard to, I don't know the pronunciation. You know, this concept of, neologism. Deceptive design, dark patterns, as they are called in the industry, is a neologism. So this has existed in U.S. for a long time. It's deceptive design.

Some people call it. Some people call it a dark pattern, a dark design. dark pattern is the term. Now, it is a deceptive design pattern. It has got the goal of confusing the user and to make mistakes when they click on things. We've all experienced this. If you've gone for a gym membership or you've subscribed to the Wall Street Journal specifically, you've been in these dark patterns.

if you've used one of Mark Zuckerberg's pattern. I was trying to turn off notifications in Instagram because of that new feature we talked about yesterday, the notes. And it allows you to turn all notifications on at once, but you have to manually turn them off if you want to like granularly turn them off. Those are designed dark patterns.

They're things that are designed to either bait and switch you or to misdirect you or to shame you in some way. Right. Just make it harder. The rich motel is part of this where like to keep you inside of a particular product. And I just want to point out, you know, the cognitive dissonance for the journalism industry. I was like, when I heard y'all talking about this, I was like, wait a second. Put it aside kids, which you made that point in our private chat.

Unsubscribing should be as easy as subscribing. And I did a search for Wall Street Journal unsubscribe on Twitter. I'm the number one, two and three results. So go on your Twitter right now and just type in like Wall Street Journal unsubscribe or unsubscribe. Oh, that's hilarious. This is a Wall Street Journal story that we were talking about. And it is the worst unsubscribe in the world. And they make you call on the phone to unsubscribe.

and you can subscribe when you're online. And they do deceptive ones like the $1 introductory price and then it pops up to another price. So literally journalism, media is the worst offender in all of this. And it's really like, I think as journalists hate this because it makes journalists look really stupid when they have to admonish people for doing deceptive stuff and their publishers who they report, their editors report into, are doing the most deceptive stuff in the world on the other side.

I asked the woman on the phone, this is like, I'm trying to unsubscribe from once you're on the phone. I said, can I ask you a question? I subscribed online. Why can't I unsubscribe? And she's like, oh, that's for security reasons. I said, may I ask you another question? I understand you're just the operator.

But taking my money is where, like, their damage could be done in terms of fraud. If you're taking my money, that would be concerning to me. I'm asking you to not take my money. And you're saying you're not doing for security. You shouldn't you do it the other way. And she's like, it's a fair point. I was like, don't worry. I'm not recording this.

But let's pull up the first paragraph here. This first paragraph of the Wall Street Journal story is the most epic sub-tweet, as you pointed out in our private chat. I would like you to give a dramatic reading of this journalist. Can I get the journalist's name here? I scroll up a little bit. this is a journalist Katie Dayton Dayton sorry Katie Dayton yes I can see it there

from December 1st 2021 yes on dark patterns on dark patterns and I quote signing up for a membership has always been easier than canceling it while subscribing to an app newspaper Jim or other service and may now be as simple as pressing a button on a smartphone

many companies still push customers to dial a number and speak to an agent to cancel. This was written in the Wall Street Journal, the worst offender of said practice ever. And I love that Katie included the word newspaper. Like, I want to hear the conversation between her and the editor who were like, we have to put this in here. Yeah.

We have to because otherwise this guy, Jason Calicanis, is going to be a lot of us like, Why Don't Rice talking about how we do this? And she put newspaper between App and Jim. She's referring to the other worst company in the world, Equinox. I would like to take another moment to tell Equinox, how horrible they are. Is it an overpriced gym?

Where they abuse their customers massively. I can say this without them being able to sue me because I was on the other side of this abuse pattern where I signed up with my wife and they make you come in to cancel. They then talk to you about your health and fitness goals. You can't just sign up for Equinox. You have to go in and take a tour.

You have to sit there with a high pressure salesperson. Type in Equinox, a customer support, subscribing, canceling gym memberships. The person lied to me when I was talking to like, yeah, you can, you can cancel anytime. It's easy, breezy, don't worry about. You can also pause if you move, if you get injured, it's no problem. Then you try to unsubscribe. Equinox is the worst company in the world tied with Wall Street Journal for how they treat their customers.

Now, when you go in and you use the scented towels and the bathroom is perfectly clean, it's a nice experience. But when you try to cancel, that's when you know the true character of a company. and Equinox and Wall Street Journal, the business leaders there with these dark parrots, are the worst executives in the world. Horrible human beings, horrible executives, anybody who builds this kind of stuff is an incredibly evil human. I hate you all. I hope that you lose your jobs. I hate, hate, hate from the bottom of my heart, Equinox and Wall Street Journal executives who create these things. I wish nothing but bad luck

and I put a dark spell upon your dark patterns. May Lena Kahn come for you all. The only... Read this. I toured the further location in September 2020 and signed up for a one week free trial. The sales associate, Bleep, informed me that I could cancel after that week

without locking into their 12-month commitment. Following the one-week trial, I verbally told Bleep that I no longer wish to sign up for Equinox and to please cancel my membership. I believed my experience was over by then. However, I learned that Equinox decided to ignore my cancellation request and instead charged me for three months which exceeds $600. When I confronted Equinox staff about the issue, they made it seem like it was my fault for failing to vigorously cancel my membership when a simple statement should have satisfied. Afterwards, they have ignored my attempts to reach them,

regularly leaving the office for the day after they said they would call me back. This is a shameful way to run a business. Let's read the business response. That was on a better business review. If you are considering to use using Equinox, listen to J-Cal. Listen to J-Cal. Equinox is an evil company run by evil people. Do not subscribe. Do not fall for it.

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You've got to use this link. Promos. Dot the blueground. com slash twist. That's promos dot the blueground. dot com slash TWIST for up to $1,000 off. I'm looking at my freaking Amazon subscriptions because the other one that drives me crazy is Amazon.

Like everything I've ever subscribed to via Amazon because they make it so easy. I find out like a year later, I'm like, why am I still paying for this stupid thing? Like I could swear to. to you that I canceled Kindle Unlimited and now I'm on my Amazon subscription page and they're like, no, no, you're still going to renew on December 28th. I'm like, what? No, I'm not for that anymore. If you do cancel with them

and you write them an email, I guarantee you, they take care of it right quick. The apps used to have the cancel problem because it was hard to find in the interface. Apple fixed that because Apple is a customer-centric company. If you go into settings on your phone. California made a law. And that's also because

California made the law. California got winded this. And when I was on the phone with the Wall Street Journal purse trying to unsubscribe this time. I said to the woman, I said, I know the California law and I'm going to click record since you're recording.

And I want this unsubscribe right now. And I'm going to publish to my Twitter feed with 500,000 people, this audio, this is like another phone call I have with them. I said, and I know the California and your protection law means

that you need to do this right quick. And I'm going to get a huge reward if you don't. And she's like, your unsubscribe has been processed. So you have to literally tell them you understand the law and you have to be in a confrontation with people like Equinox and Wall Street Journal.

This is why people subscribe to the Wall Street Journal through the iPhone. You know, you can subscribe through and so Economist also falls into this bucket. Shame on the Economist. Shame on the Wall Street Journal and shame on Equinox. I think these are the three worst offenders. I mean, to be fair, Epic did get a half billion dollar fine or 275 million. So maybe they're up there. I'm just saying.

They might be up there. I put Epic up there now, too. Sure. I put Epic in there, yes. If you could please, everybody, if you could please tell anybody who will listen to you to never join Equinox, this is my revenge for all time because they did this to me. This is my revenge, uh, consumer revenge files. Do a search for Equinox. If you have a bad Equinox story, please tweet it, Facebook at LinkedIn it, and please write a review online.

You must do your duty. It's your civic duty to make Equinox pay. for what they did to me over 10 years ago. Thank you. This is the end of the message. Jase. Vindictive, Jason. I'm so vindictive.

I hate these people. They waste so much of my freaking time. It's the time thing. It really is the time thing. It's not a money thing. It's a time thing. And I will say, you cancel your credit cards every year.

Did I mention that on yesterday? Just yesterday. Yeah. Have a 22 card with, you know, one, you know, uh, Miles program, bomboy.

The next year have one with United. Cancel it every year. Here is my new This is my new credit card. Why? Because I just canceled my last year's card. I'm opening it up on the air. I'm opening up my new card.

Here it is. You think I'm joking? I'm not joking. There's a new card. Molly. I believe you. It's awesome, actually. I don't play these games anymore because of Equinox.

Well, I was one of the parents who got like a $250 portnight charge. So, yes. I'm familiar. my new united business card i love you united you always giving me upgrades i love united i get my points i cancel my card all of you trying to play games with me equinox wall street journal economists ha ha ha ha ha chton i love where this started and how none of it is related to this enough mishugida all right we uh have i think that's enough news for today actually we have a cool interview. Startup interview coming up.

Can we read one more review of Equinox, please? Can I get one more? There was it you had one of, but you had an economist one. Can you read an economist one? Oh yeah, I want to read the economist one. I want to give me one or two more moments of joy. It's its own thing, I think. The economist is a nightmare.

I spent two years trying to try to cancel the economist and it is so expensive. So expensive. And you would have to call them. Now they actually have a chat. Like here's this is over there was a tweet that we found from from November 29th, 2022, and I would have been thrilled to have a chat. Wait a second. This is last month.

This is last month. And the Equinox one was from five or ten years ago? No, two weeks ago. Okay. They're still doing it. I just want to point out. This is still happening. Equinox, economist.

Shame, shame, shame. Give me the, please, Molly. The economist has improved. It actually will force you into a live chat now instead of a phone call. You have to call them. Okay, so the tweet says, I know this is a first world problem, but I got to say unsubscribing from the economist was such a bizarre experience. Like, who does this in the 21st century?

After we are sorry to see you go and let us know what we can do better pages, they want me to go to a live chat. And then you have to either chat with them or call. Now, I'm here to tell you that that's an actual improvement because the two years I spent trying to remember because I would like try and then it would be like you have to call and you have to call

and it would be like one to an hour or only East Coast hours like 8 to 5 East Coast and I'm like oh okay that's part of the dark patterns don't pick up the phone or wait times right

and so then now they have a chat and then the other dark pattern is to explain to you why you shouldn't I hate these people oh I don't think it's better let me see pull it up let's go i want please we're going this is a new cause celeb we're all in think i'm using that right don't waste my freaking unobtainium i should get to charge companies who waste my time like this i should get to send them a bill okay

this is going to become a reoccurring theme i just want to keep reading these because it's so much pleasure for me because i have power now because i'm an influential podcaster the pleasure I get from reading complaints about Equinox and you get from economist and I get from Wall Street Journal, let's just do this on a regular basis. Let's shame these three shameful companies. Go ahead, Molly. All right. Then can we do health? I want to do the whole entire health industry, which owes me thousands of dollars in wasted time. Let's go. We're going to call it, you owe me. All right. Initial complaint, 413, 2020, about the economist. I have been trying to cancel my online subscription to The Economist since January 2020.

I see you, friend. I only intended to have one month of the subscription and have tried to cancel multiple times in every month since the initial subscription month. However, the Economist will not allow me to cancel. Their website directs you through a maze of buttons where you are then bombarded with upsells and finally told to contact the Economist to cancel the subscription. Their website advertises that cancellation is possible using the quote, 24-7 available live chat. The first issue is that the live chat is not available 24-7.

The next problem is that the actual experience and process of canceling, if you are lucky enough to connect to live chat, I have gone through this process and tried to cancel approximately a dozen times since January 2022 to no avail, reminder that this was written in April. Under the guise of processing your cancellation, the live chat attendant tries to upsell. then I've been purposely disconnected by the economist live chat employee every time I have tried to cancel.

The live chat attendant will ask for information. Then after 30 seconds, while I'm ready, the response, the live chat attendant asks, are we still connected? Following by me being disconnected from the live chat, unable to cancel my order. I am completely flabbergasted. Yeah, this is insane. This is insane. Okay. This is insane.

They just hearing up. I want everybody to have this URL ready to go. We can fix this ourselves. Okay? There is a very simple URL. And this is a live free ad read. FTC.gov slash complaint. FTC.gov slash complaint.

And I think there's a California one as well. We are going to put in the show notes. And every time we talk about this issue, we're not just going to talk about this in the abstract. We're going to tell you how to take action. Yes. I want you to go to FTC.gov slash complaint. If this has ever happened to you, is happening to you.

And then there's a California one as well. Look in California Protection Act or California Better Business, whatever, complaints. Let's all work on this together. And then I want you also to use the hashtag Equinox sucks. Pound Economist sucks and pound Wall Street Journal sucks on your Twitter. handle until such time as this stops. So feel free to bond with each other

with the hashtag sucks. This is been a message from Jason and Molly. We have had enough of nonsense. And I think right now the This Week in Startups account has just tweeted

Equinox sucks at Jason at Mollywood. I hate you, Equinox. People are just going to be like, what? If that's not clear. on that show. You're still doing it years later. And anybody doing this kind of stuff,

get your head examined. The end. And there's many other companies. Everybody do a better job. If somebody doesn't want your service, take that as a learning. The only thing that should happen when you click the unsubscribe button is

you have been unsubscribe. If you made a mistake, click here. And we would appreciate feedback of why you unsubscribe so we can make a better product. you don't use it, whatever, and then a little box that says any other feedback. That's it.

Enough of the dark, what are these things called? Dark designs. No more dark patterns. Enough with the dark patterns. Everyone's just trying to scam us all the time. We're just trying to live. This is just bait and switch,

misdirection, Roach Motel stuff, Zuckerberg stuff. You know, we sit here and complain about Zuckerberg. And the complaints are valid. But Wall Street Journal and economist. Yeah, like, come on. And if you're a journalist and you work for these things, like, have some, if you work

at the Wall Street Journal, if you work at the Economist and this is happening, and you're complaining about everything else on the web and I, you know, I don't want to have you lose your job, but you should just say, this is lame. I don't even, I wonder if they even know. Anyway, all right. I like this new segment. I think we should adapt, you know, that movie Bob Roberts. There's that funny, like, a little folks on.

that they do. It's like Tim Robinson and he's a candidate, Bob Roberts. And then there's just an amazing little folk song where it's like, and they complain and complain and complain and complain and complain. And it's amazing. And I think that we should borrow it for this segment as it goes on. Absolutely. Back to the positive. You know, we've been talking to people who are actually building cool things, building the future. And so we have another fantastic startup interview with Stan Hoizum. He's a man. I love this guy. He's Dutch and he is in Brussels and he has got a startup called Climate Camp where they are doing

scope three like supply chains emissions tracking starting specifically with breweries. And they have signed up. They've existed for like one minute and they've signed up 15% of all the breweries and Brussels to really figure out where all the carbon emissions are coming from in the entire supply chain. Love it. They hope to expand out. And he's just like so method. so thoughtful. It's a great interview. You know what's great about that interview? You're taking

a smart person. You're using their cognitive ability and their skills to make the world better, as opposed to Equinox, which is making the world worse. They're literally smart people at Equinox using their powers to do dark pattern stuff. If you're one of those people doing dark patterns, listen to this interview and then think about what a horrible choice you've made in your life to work on dark patterns as opposed to going to the light. You are Sith Lords and Sith Lords lose eventually. Thank you for doing this interview, Molly. I really appreciate you. It's great. Now, on to the light. Stan Hesemunds is a co-founder and chief executive officer of Climate Camp. How did I do? Yeah. Hi, everyone. Hi, good evening. Thanks,

Good morning for you, actually. Let's see, mid-afternoon, although I've sort of lost track of time here. Yeah. Stan, where are you located? Belgium, based in Belgium. So are you happy about France advancing? Or do you have that Belgium, I mean, you're not French, clearly, but is Belgium excited?

Yeah, so still disappointed Belgium didn't make true. We were actually supporting Morocco right now. So as kind of an outsider, I think everybody wants to have the outsider going ahead. I had that feeling also. I had that feeling also. All right. Well, let's talk about work for a minute. You are the, as I mentioned, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Climate Camp.

Tell me what Climate Camp does. So we provide insights in supply chain emissions of companies by collaborating actually with the suppliers together so that you can act together with your services. suppliers collaborating to reduce the emissions in your whole supply chain. And we do that by bringing an ease of you solution, which is integrated with your suppliers and which also drives based upon actual data, not benchmarks, but to really get the real insights from your suppliers. So give me an example of who the customer would be and what kind of suppliers they're

trying to track. Yeah. So currently, as a startup, you need to pick your battles, right? So we currently go to market in food and beverages. And the customer here is really that organization that says, look, I want to get my carbon accounting in order, which means I need to have a good view on my own emissions, but also my emissions in my supply chain.

And once that customer becomes to a certain level of maturity, where they say, look, I want to go beyond my own emissions. I want to look at. at my total impact on my value chain, that's when we start talking to them. So our customers really are those that want to track that emissions in the supply chain, and the suppliers, so to speak,

are our collaborators, active collaborators in the climate ecosystem. And so this is tracking what we sometimes call scope three emissions. It's the ones that are not, you know, it's not a result of the thing that you're actually making where you're making it. It's all of the kind of the halo.

Correct. Right. Yeah. And this is really hard. really hard to track from what I hear. So what are the tools you've created to make this possible? Yeah. The metaphor I think I want to use is it's a bit like VAT. So if you share VAT, which is 100 euros or dollars on your invoice,

you put in on top $19 or $21 of VAT and you pass it to your customers, you can look at it. Value added tax VAT. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. In every transaction that you do with your suppliers and your customer, there is this VAT. Everybody knows this. It's very common sense. Now, in every transaction that in the future we will do with our partners, either with our suppliers or with our customers, we will also share the carbon tax, so to speak.

So it's important that we trade transparency. So that's a bit the high level purpose and how do we do that is we are building a carbon graph, which is basically an important. infrastructure layer to connect the dots with your suppliers upstream, but also with your customers downstream so that they can easily share the data across using this connected layers, so to speak. And then, okay, there's a lot in there that I want to break down. What goes into the climate graph and what do each part of the supply chain contribute? Like, are people volunteering this data about their business operations? Yeah. Yeah. So let me give one concrete example.

we are working with quite a local brewery, strong brand in Belgium, Trappisten, Westmala, and they have around 3040 suppliers with whom they want to engage on their scope tree data. And what happens is, first of all, there is a request sent, obviously, for the supplier to participate in the platform. And they have three options.

And we see, depending on the maturity of the supplier, either, they have their ducks in a row, and they already know their carbon footprint. And that way, they can create an account, log in, share their data, their carbon emissions through the platform. We see also that certain suppliers don't have any clue. And they can use our platform to just have an eye-level calculation or perhaps they want to have a more in-depth calculation.

And then we refer to partners, Microsoft SAP as well. Lots of emerging startups have great carbon accounting platforms. That's not the area where we compete. So the supplier can still choose their own or use climate cam. And then we see suppliers that have already very mature. They don't not only have calculated it, but they also have, for instance, implemented already their own platform or using one of the big techs. And we integrate with that.

So some of the suppliers of our customers use already carbon accounting platforms. We're creating APIs to make sure that the necessary data gets transferred. And then once you've gathered that data on behalf of your original customer, the person who's trying to track their supply chain, that's where this kind of VAT concept comes in. You will essentially assign a score of some sort. The metaphor that we use from a VAT perspective is that every supplier will need to share their carbon amount for the product that has been bought by the customer through, true.

And that's kind of this VAT concept. So let me give a very concrete example. As in food and beverages, you need to often buy raw materials, right? Your ingredients. And for our customer in beer, malt is an important ingredient. So the request goes out to the supplier that provides the malt. In this case, it might be they've already calculated. They enter the necessary data at the level of the organization.

And for instance, total emissions of that organization that is shared with the customer. Now, obviously, you need to still do some calculations to make sure that it's at product level, because you as a customer, as a brewery, you're not responsible for the full emissions of your supplier, only for that fraction for which you buy the product. And obviously, that's where also our logic comes in, need to allocate it at a necessary level. And very happy to be located in the EU, because the EU is also forcing some standards in the European Union to make sure that we have the necessary, for instance, rules. on what needs to be included in exchanging that data.

Right. It's like in the US, if you use your, like if I use this room, for example, for my office, I can write some of that off on my taxes, but I have to calculate it based on the specific square foot. I can't just say I use all of this. Right. So it's, so first you do the tracking and then you say, this is the portion that is applicable to this beer beer maker.

Yeah. And that you has, has like spreadsheets for that. Like they have made it easy to calculate that. You mean the allocation? The allocation. Yeah. Yeah.

So. Cool. We need that. Well, the easy, the first and easy way is it's obviously a certain unit, right? You buy 50 tons of raw materials. You buy 30,000 glasses from your supplier. And then on the unit, for instance, how much? CO2 in kilograms per unit that I bought, that's the information that I'm really looking for.

So if it's about one ton of malt, again, making it concrete, one ton of malt average, it's around 900 kilograms of CO2 to produce one ton of malt. Now, it might be that you ask this to your supplier and the supplier already invested in hydrogen installations to make sure that their process is more efficient, which means that he can share for one ton of malt, I can do it for 650 kilograms, which means I get that data from that supplier and the handshake that you make is really at the unit level, which might be one ton, one unit, bought, etc. Right. And what are the regulations in the EU that make this possible? Is it scope three reporting regulation requirements specifically? Yeah. So there is a couple

of drivers what we see. For sure, there is the EU regulation on, there is this famous regulation CSRD corporate sustainability reporting directive which indeed requires, it's just been passed now through the European Parliament

requires as well to report on scope three. But that's not the only driver. I think another driver is, for instance, science-based targets initiative at a United Nations level together with W worldwide fund as well, WDUF,

there is an incentive as well to set targets and if you want to reduce your emissions and want to be aligned to the science-based targets initiative, you need to also look at your scope tree. So that's definitely a second driver that we see. I think there is another driver which is transparency for consumers. There is consumer law also coming where every product in the shelf needs to be traceable.

you need to have the footprint of the product which is put in the shelf. So I think the European Green Deal has put so much in motion, and we are very happy that there is a kind of a level playing field here. Yeah. Where we connect. It's, well, it's so interesting too because there is the VAT concept, you know, that metaphor is so powerful because so many consumers genuinely don't know what I have been calling the true cost. Exactly.

The true, and I think there's some opportunity to build pricing, almost like you could have a website that just puts all these products together and says this is what they actually cost. But you can't do that without this initial measurement. No, no. And I think obviously consumers decisions are based upon cost. True pricing is a strong, let's say, leverage that we have to drive consumer decision-making. And what legislative is.

has been seeing as a main driver is that it's not only I need to reduce my own emissions, but it's this kind of cascading effect. Me asking my suppliers to drive the emissions down as well, create cascade effect down totally upstream, which is an effect we need, because in 2030 we need to reduce our emissions already by 55, 60%, which means it needs to go fast. And if we continue to report every year,

like a good house father, this is our mining emissions. We're not going to get there. That's not going to work. So we need to have this kind of acceleration effects. And scope tree allows to do that. Could this business exist without these regulations? It sounds like you're describing some accounting practices

that maybe wouldn't be possible. Like I'm thinking about, could this happen in the US right now, where we don't have the same? There is, in the US, lots is moving as well. There is, for instance, I'm actually wondering, IFRS standards are still international financial accounting standards. And they have a sustainability board as well,

which is reinforcing scope three. So it's coming to the US as well. However, it's not only a regulation that's driving force, right? So we see also from a consumer perspective, the ask the demand for more transparency. And this is cascaded trance. true as well towards the companies. And we see that, for instance, science-based targets is a global initiative,

not only a European Union, right, which also look at Fortune 500. And you can clearly do an analysis. If it starts in Fortune 500 companies, it triples down, right? So they do their, they need to do it for their shareholders. So it's not only a regulation. It's also consumer demand. It's shareholders. So I still stay positive.

So towards that extent. I must, yeah. Yep, we all must. Well, on that note, what made you want to do this? What is your background and how did it lead you here? So I've been working in consulting in the last 10 plus years and working for Fortune 500 companies amongst those as well. And one of my last assignments was on global insurers that needed to calculate their global carbon emissions from Japan to Europe, to Asia Pacific and to Brazil and everything in between.

Now, they wanted to know as well their own scope tree emissions. As a good house father, they were listed on stock exchange, so they were obliged to get more transparency in that. And they started to ask hundreds of suppliers with Excel sheets, hey, what's your footprint? What's your footprint? Totally not scalable. And that's where also me having a background more in data and analytics, seeing, hey, we can do this much, much, much better.

Yeah. How does the product part work? Who pays you in this process? It sounds like the initial supplier does. So it's the initial customer. I'm sorry, the customer. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the initial customer that wants to have transparency in a supply chain,

we do as a supplier, you can collaborate for free, right? So collaborating with your customer that's demanding the data should, I think, always be for free. However, when that supplier doesn't have any insights on his own and he still needs to ask his own suppliers for his own input, that's when we also upgrade him to kind of a paid tier. And for the rest, it's a paid tier according to how many suppliers you can award. And there is some limitations as well. And then obviously if you go beyond a couple of thresholds, you'll fall in a high pricing tiers.

I see. But so there is a, so it's a freemium model. There's a free tier where like, and it's free initially for the brewery and there's some point at which, depending on how much they need to know, they would have to pay.

So what we do is, the young startup, we are obviously always experimenting with some of the pricing models that truly resonates. Today, how we go to market is, you can create a free account. However, we want to position that as a kind of free trial for the kind of breweries or other food and beverage companies.

So we believe there is value for that service and we believe that it's okay to charge for that service because you will be able to get insights from the suppliers. From a supplier perspective, however, that's where we really believe in a free model first to collaborate and then upgrade to a more paid tier in a second step. I'm sorry, I'm not following who. This is my fault.

No, no, it's, it's so. Who pays, who has to pay always? It's the customer. The customer. So the brewery in this case. Exactly. And then the suppliers can pay depending on how much data they need to process, basically.

Yeah. Got it. Yeah. Okay. I got it. Or whether they need to as well go to their own supply chain because they don't have it yet. So then it starts over again,

Because for us, suppliers are also hot leads, so to speak, because if they don't get their own ducks in a row, for us, they become for us also a business opportunity. Right, because you can sort of help them to create this larger tracking. Right. Okay. So the more suppliers you onboard, the more customers you have, really. Exactly.

Amazing. Brilliant. And what made you start? I mean, food and beverage is obviously a really big industry with a really big emissions and supply chain component, but I wonder what made you start there. Yeah. Well, as every startup, you're running around,

you're testing, you're pivoting, you're learning. And we actually started in financial services and manufacturing, so to other industries. And we saw that for us to get into a specific market, we really believe we needed to focus, because we had a couple of industries where we experimented, with, we really needed to pick our battle. And for instance, being in Belgium,

obviously you need to start somewhere and we believe food and beverage, and in particular, the brewing industry, they are very proud of their product. So it's not only regulation driven. These founders as well, even companies between 10 million revenue or 200 million revenue,

also these founders, their executives, they're proud of their product that they produce and they want to bring a good product to their customers. So that's for us an additional reason. And that's why we got so much traction in the beginning in the brewing sector. Yeah. Yeah. Did I read this correctly that you've got 15% of the breweries in Belgium as customers?

So 15% of the volume produced in Belgium of the beer production produced in Belgium flows through our platform. Flows through our platform. So it's a data. I got it. Sorry. That was a cheesy, but it's okay. I love a pun. I love a pun.

Yeah. How did you do that? Like, did you have connections in the brewing industry before? So we actually launched a campaign, which we called, in Dutch they say, Dursaan Brau, which translates a sustainable brewing. And we reached out, I think it was a half year ago through this campaign, hey, we can help you as a brewery to make your sustainable. We can come by and kind of Karelia tactic could come by and make a vlog about their brewery, how much they already do for the environment.

And afterwards we presented our project, which means we didn't do cold calls in the beginning. We really said, hey, we have a campaign. We want to help the brewing industry in Belgium first to become carbon neutral. Let's see what you already do. And afterwards, we presented our project. That's how we call it our project, which means it's a fair way to do your initial customers because it doesn't come across as too salesy per se,

because you give them a nice flog as well, afterwards that they can share with their customers. And it's a motivation for them to do more. So that was our first set of initial customers, but then we got traction with some of the top 10 breweries in Belgium, some of the larger ones. And what's really helping is this kind of network effect, Because once we have now the first suppliers on board, entering as a new brewery will provide enormous benefits because your scope three is basically there behind the button. We just need to unlock it.

Because we already have the data from most of your suppliers already in the platform. Amazing. And then tell me your seed stage. That's the name of our little mini series here. How much money have you raised so far house fundraising been? So we closed our first We called our pre-seat round 700K euro two months ago

So very happy About that We did learn a lot from our investors Because while talking to investors You need to say What's your focus And what's your differentiation Towards the competition

Obviously we are acting in this kind of Emerging field of Carbon Accounting And there is lots of players Also those get series A Series B kind of funding So A climate camp What do you do different?

What's your differentiator? And we initially started as a kind of yet another carbon accounting tool, but we really quickly pivoted towards the scope tree, which everybody believes is a too difficult problem to address. So lots of people are running away because of the complexity behind. But that reconfirms, reconfirmed as well for us the way to let's double down on this. So thanks to the feedback from the investor. Yes.

Congratulations on everything you've built so far. And I would imagine you're having a really fun time visiting breweries and having beer for work. Well, yes. And we can use this as some fun examples as well as a kind of asset during our presentations. Obviously, it doesn't stop with breweries, right? That's not a message necessary. I think you need to pick your battles, start somewhere. Build this atomic network.

I think there is a great book by one of the ex-founders from, ex-people working at Uber, basically saying how to build a network effect, you need to build this first atomic network in one city. It works kind of well. Then you deploy to the next one. For us, it's the same. We want to build a strong network of local breweries and their suppliers.

And then you can move to adjacent markets. So you really want to have that value set in that specific network up and running. Amazing. St. Jiazaman, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Climate Camp. Thank you so much for the time today. This is so interesting and cool.

Love hearing about it. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks. All right. Thanks for tuning in, everyone. I know that was an epic show and the week is not over. More yet to come. More epic shows.

Yes. Tomorrow I'm joined by my guy, Scott Orrin. He runs a company called Cruise Consulting. And, you know, one of the things we run into, You and I, Molly, with our startups is they make mistakes in the accounting and the finance side of the business. And a lot of times, these mistakes can be avoided.

So we started the startup basic series. And I found partners, one of our legal partners, Wilson Sincini, for accounting, crews, like these are the best of the best of the service providers, like, you know, top. And every year, I try to do five or ten episodes just so that I have a link to give to founders. And so we do this startup basic series this week in startups.com slash basics. And on tomorrow's show, we will talk about what to do with your idle cash. You know, sometimes these companies are lucky enough to raise 10 or 100 million. What do you do with that cash?

Do you buy equities? Do you put it in the S&P? Do you put it in bonds? Do you put it in a interest bearing account? What's the right thing to do with your treasury? And so it's a great conversation, very important. You know, and I hope you enjoy it. And we do them like, like I said, I do legal and we do accounting.

And I'm open to doing other startup basic series. So check it out. I think everybody's going to love it. If you haven't taken a moment to subscribe to Molly's amazing new substack, mollywood.substack.com or calicanis. That substack.com. And you will get an upsell on a couple of other lists. We have one for the launch fund.

We, you know, if you're interested in hearing what we're doing in terms of events for founders, I found a university one for the podcast and for the 12-week course, and I think we have one for this week in startups. So just subscribe to both of them. And there's a chat feature. And if you download the substack app, there's chat. And Molly and I are chatting with like, I don't know, dozens of people and getting, you know, dozens of responses.

It's quite fun to meet the fans. And it kind of takes the email list into a live thing. And then Molly's asking questions and she'll interact with like a smaller subset of people. So it's kind of a fun little. It's like a good community situation. We're having a good time. And it's got, like you keep saying,

it's got great network effects. It's like just all of it, all our universe is colliding. It's delightful. I've gotten Molly like, I don't know, a couple dozen free subscribers. She's got to me a dozen or so.

And it's like a nice little, we're not doing pay subsetex. It's just for us to share our thoughts once in a while. And I just like shout out to the substack team for making a great product. You know, it was kind of like a mid product. You know, and then I got the app and I'm just like,

you know what? Let's make a note of this. producer nick can i get the uh CEO of a substack back on the program and then let's do that's great because i had them on when it started and i was like yeah i don't know i still don't think it's a good business i'm not sure if it's a great business what they're in um making 10 percent but i'm kind of glad that somebody's making free software in the world that's kind of kick ass so i just want i'm back on and give them his flowers it's a great idea i love it all right anyway that's all coming up tomorrow see you then