This Week in Startups - WallStreetBets founder on why he's suing Reddit; Andrew Hart of Hyper; and Ok Boomer | E1685

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

The Friday variety show is back! Jason kicks it off by interviewing WallStreetBets founder Jaime Rogozinski, who's currently suing Reddit (2:08). Then, Molly is joined by Hyper CEO Andrew Hart to discuss the augmented reality market and Hyper's store-mapping technology (30:16). Producer Rachel wraps the show with content creator Humphrey Yang breaking down his creative process, what he considers valuable metrics, and so much more (53:40). (0:00) Molly kicks off the show (2:08) WSB milestones and arbitrage (12:07) Contra - Get $500 off your first hire at https://contra.com/twist (13:36) How Reddit works + the WSB controversy (23:42) Embroker - Use code TWIST to get an extra 10% off insurance at https://Embroker.com/twist (24:45) Jaime’s ideal solution (30:16) Andrew Hart of Hyper (33:57) Creating the ultimate user experience (39:19) Retreat - head to http://planretreat.com/twistto help you plan the offsite your team deserves! (40:43) Mapping store and onboarding customers (45:55) Hyper’s development and future opportunities (53:40) Ok Boomer with Humphrey Yang FOLLOW Jaime: https://twitter.com/wallstreetbets FOLLOW Andrew: https://twitter.com/AndrewHartAR FOLLOW Humphrey: https://twitter.com/Humphreytalks FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis FOLLOW Molly: https://twitter.com/mollywood

Hey everybody, happy Friday. We have a Friday variety show for you. First up, Jason, this is a dishy one, is joined by the founder of the Wall Street Betz subreddit, Jamie Rogazinsky. Jamie is suing Reddit after being ousted from that subreddit, which he started in 2020. Now, that's the one, of course, that had all the meme stocks going. Jamie gives his take on the lawsuit and this kind of core issue around who owns a community. Then I'm joined by, by Andrew Hart, the founder of a company called Hyper-A-R, which is fascinating. Andrew breaks down his longtime passion for AR and how Hyper-A-R is creating the ultimate user experience indoor Google for retail. And finally, producer Rachel is back for another edition of OK Boomer. Rachel talks to Humphrey Yang, a content creator on YouTube and on TikTok, who makes videos about personal finance and self-improvement, probably the two most popular topics in the world.

On this segment, he talks about how he went from running a shipping company to making content, how he's been able to generate followers on YouTube by bringing them over from TikTok and what metrics he thinks are most important as a creator. This is a jam-packed show, people. It's going to be amazing. Stick with us. This week in startups is brought to you by Contra. Contra is a commission-free marketplace for freelancers and independent creators. Get $500 off your first hire at contra.com slash twist.

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That's a savings of $99 per person. Just head to planretreat.com slash twist. All right, everybody. Got a really interesting story to tell. You all know Reddit, the great online community that's been going for two decades, and which might go public any day now. They've been planning on going public.

And different subreddits, a.k.a. communities have gotten incredibly popular over the years. And there's, explained to me like I'm a five-year-old or something to that effect. And you have AMAs, etc. Well, it turns out, Reddit has been taking these community names, which are clever and iconic, and trademarking them. And this is unbeknownst, I think, to the founders of these, communities. One of the

breakout communities in the history of Reddit is Wall Street bets. I don't need to explain to what that is, but I will anyway. The tagline, like 4chan, found a Bloomberg terminal. 13 million subscribers. They call themselves degenerates. And you may remember the meme stock frenzy, GameStop, AMC, bedbath, and etc. It's a bunch of

really interesting, smart, and perhaps not so smart folks, debated. the virtues of investing. Well, it turns out the founder of Wall Street Betts who deserves credit for the name

is on the program today because he's in a lawsuit with Reddit over who actually owns the name. Jamie Rogazinsky. Did I get it right? You did.

Rogosinski, yep. Rogosinski is on the program. He's the founder and creator of Wall Street, the Wall Street Betts subreddit. He started in 2012. you got kicked out as a mod in 2020. And now you're suing Reddit.

At the time you created Wall Street Betts. Did you have an expectation this was going to be like a big business or something? Why'd you create it? No, I did not expect it was going to be a big business. I've spoken about my incentives or at least my motivation around the time when I created it. This was around the time that the financial crisis was. was over with. I had lost my job directly because of the financial crisis and I was working in Washington, D.C., at a big bank, and I was walking past like this Occupy Wall Street movement

every day and I'd see like these tents or whatever and people were occupying. They're like proxy, obviously, there's no Wall Street in D.C. But I do remember that the wounds were still fresh from having been unemployed for a while and feeling. that helplessness of, yeah, of just not being able to be in control of the system, right? Like of being helpless in the sense that you have these institutional, I mean, I'm not going to have rehash the story. People know it, right? And I was just upset about it.

And so I'm like, look, everyone's talking about how Wall Street, they're insulting these banks because they're treating Wall Street like a casino. There's no rule that says individuals, retail participants can't treat Wall Street like a casino. So I said, all right. Well, if you can't beat them, join them. Let's go ahead and start using Wall Street. Like, you know, high risk, high return.

I'm going to start using some of my disposable income. At this point, I have a really well-paying job. I'm single at the time. I'm able to take on a lot of risk, and I decide to figure out how the stock market works so I can accept that risk, hopefully make a lot of money, being irresponsible with it, just the way the banks were because they were able to make. a lot of money with it and stash away some money so that that doesn't have to happen to me again if they are irresponsible and crash the system. And so in doing that, I figured, hey, let's

bring on some like-minded individuals that have gone through something similar and we can all go through this together. Have fun, learn, you know, enjoy the ride. And it turns out that there was a lot of like-minded individuals. And so it took on a life of its own. So spent the next almost decade building this community on Reddit. That's right. Becomes iconic and important in the world. When did you first realize this was an important place? What are the milestones of the wall, or WSB, I guess people refer to it as?

What are the major milestones here? We all know GameStop and AMC, but were there other milestones where you saw WSB having real world impact on equities and stocks and how the markets operate? operated. There were. And for a lot of people, when they hear Wall Street bets, they obviously think GameStop. It was a big, for most people, it's the first time and probably only time they've heard about Wall Street bets.

And it makes sense, right? Because it's a very niche community. It's very finance-centric. You know, the only time that CNN covered Wall Street bets was during GameStop. It's the only reason why they ever would cover something like Wall Street bets. Outside of that, they go back to covering their normal stuff. But Wall Street Betts was never about moving stock prices around. There was a lot of milestones throughout the way, right?

So this is a community of people that are, once again, the incentives are, let's try and make money. Let's try and take on risk. Let's try and find advantages, inefficiencies, competitive advantages where we can exploit for our own benefit, right? There's lingo that gets used on Wall Street best. It's funny. It's easy to understand. Sometimes you see Bloomberg actually trying to like decipher it. But the concepts are finance concepts.

It's known as arbitrage. When you find an inefficiency in the system, you say, hey, looks like there's an error, but maybe it be a pricing error or maybe it'd be like some type of an asymmetry. You can say, we can actually take advantage of the way that this thing, this mechanism and works out and we can profit from it, right? There's been a lot of examples. This sounds abstract, and I apologize. I can break it down in many examples that are simple, right?

GameStop is one such example of that. How does that look like an arbitrage opportunity? Well, if you have a lot of people that buy a thing, the price goes off at supply and demand. And so the arbitrage comes in in many forms, right? Like, that's a lot of us and it's few of them. So even if we don't have a lot of money, if we purchase the thing, then it goes, up and then, you know, then we can start doing it. But it's a lot more sophisticated than that because then they go, well, we're still

not enough to be able to purchase, you know, we don't have enough money to actually push the stock high enough. So we'll wait for it to be shorted a lot. Like, you need a height short flow. So that has a higher propensity to magnifies the effect, right? Once again, I'm not sure how technically your audience is, but it's one of those properties that makes it exacerbates the price moves, right? And they said, well, we want it to even be worse.

Like, we want, we want the price to even be more exaggerated. So then they take on these, these things that are called gamma delta scud. They use stock options to make it even more exaggerated. So that's how you take a price to go from $20 to $500. They do a lot of little things and they do it because they can get away with it. And they understand the market well. But they've done other stuff. So I know it's a long way in answer, but I've covered a lot of different things as far as the mentality is concerned, as far as what the incentives are concerned, as far as how the

These are people looking. You're talking about it as a casino, right? That was the origin story. They want to have fun. They use jiffs. They use memes. They use like, you know, they make fun of each other. In a way, would I be correct in saying, they look at this in a way like somebody

might look like going to Vegas and playing in a poker tournament or blackjack or betting on sports. In other words, it's partially entertainment and it's partially a pastime and it's partially to make money. It is. That's exactly right. Yeah. And it's going to be a little bit like going to Vegas and then you'll have the group that sits down and actually knows how to count cards.

You know, they'll sit down like the blackjack table. Or you'll have the ones that actually know a lot about sports. You can play sports and say, hey, look, I'll just bet on, you know, whatever, like the sports team that you want and the number of touchdowns with the spread. Like, you know, you have individuals that know a lot about the statistics of the sport and baseball. I know that has a gazillion things that you can go off of it. And there's people that just say, I'll enjoy the ride. 50 bucks on the team over there, right? Or you could, or you have a lot of the thing, you have the social component of it where it's like, well, I don't know anything, but those people are

doing that. So I will do what they're doing, right? I'll have what they're having. There's that component as well. That's like the craps component. And there are some really smart people that you've met as part of this community. There are people who are quants. There are people who are just master strategists and everything in between. It's, they're extremely sophisticated. Um, They mask it. That's one of the ironies behind Wall Street bets. You know, you have, Wall Street is always hidden behind a veil of sophistication. Like, oh, no, no, no.

You don't know what you're doing, son. This is complicated stuff. These derivatives and these, you know, you just give me your money and I'll handle it for you. And they're right. I don't mean to fully make fun of it. It is complicated stuff, but it's not, right? If you want to get your CFA, your certification, it's mostly jargon. And it's just words with lots of syllables in it, right?

The concepts behind them, they're not that tricky. So Wall Street Betts says, like, you know what I'm going to do. And I'm going to say what you said, but I'm going to say the word yolo, right? Diamond hands, all time high, due diligence. Diamond hands. That's what, or Buffett is Diamond Hands, right? That's the same thing. It's just more, it's more palatable when it's like fun with a picture.

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And it turns out that over time, Reddit, unbeknownst, I believe, to community members has been trademarking the names that the community or community members came up. with, whether it's no sleep or explain like I'm five. Today I learned TIL, the, am I the A-Hole? All of these things originated, not from this, I believe, in these cases, or many things, did not originate with the employees of Reddit, but rather the community. And at some point, they got upset at you because you wanted to take Wall Street bets and you wanted to monetize it as the creator of it. And then they said, you are no longer a mod, a moderate.

They basically took away your authority over this community as the moderator and the creator of the name. They basically knew you, nuked you, kicked you out of the community, correct? Well, let's be clear. You just said all those things, not me. I'm in a lawsuit right now, so I have to be really careful since you used a lot of words there. So I can't just blink and say yes to all of those things you just said. All right. So let's do a piece by piece here.

Tell me what happened. I'll explain what, like, Reddit is a place where people come with their ideas, right? You go to Reddit and you say, I would like to participate here. And Reddit says, okay, not a problem. You can participate any number of ways. You can read, right? And you can just click on stuff. You don't need an account for that.

And so you consume information. And that's that. So it's hardly interactive. And you just, you're able to. stuff. So that's that and there's not very much to it. If you actually want to participate, that's where it gets more interactive. You have to create an account and there's only one way to use an account. You sign up and you click, you pick a name, pick a password, you agree the terms of service,

and then you get to go. Those terms of service then define say, okay, you now get to, you have to abide by all these different rules and then you click yes and you're good to go. then you start contributing, right, in many of which ways. You can contribute by creating a comment, right? If somebody says, here's a picture of my dog and you say, here, this is what I think of your dog, it looks like, whatever, right? And you create a joke out of that. Or you can create a post, right?

Because you go to a community about where people talk about dog pictures. And then you create a post and you say, this is a picture of my dog. What do you think of it? or you can create a community of people that talk about your dog, right? So it's just, you know, it's all within that same scope. And that's kind of how it works out. This is a typical social media place where they're like, here's my servers, here's my formula, you can use all these things.

And that's the typical Reddit framework. And they're subdivided into these little categories. And it's entirely run by, sorry, it's entirely. the content is entirely generated by the community. Right? So from the comment, and then once you, once people submit their, their content, then the community can then decide to, you know, they have the, they call the up votes and down votes.

It's the same thing as saying like or dislike, right? Like Twitter has similar things, Facebook has, you know, like every social media platform has some kind of a ranking scoring type thing where if something is extremely popular, it gets more visibility. and therefore when people come to consume the information, the stuff that people tend to agree with gets the most visibility. That's the general formula for it. That's how it's set off, right?

I go to Reddit with my idea. I come up with the idea of Wall Street Best, along with the name, along with the, you know, with the original framework with it, with the original, what do you call it, with the original post and try to get everybody to come on board, and I grow it, and I nurture it for many years. and I'm involved with it for however long it is.

And yeah, and then eventually it get kicked out. And then eventually I am prevented from taking that idea with me. So there's a lot of things here that are at play. And this is kind of the crux of the lawsuit. And this is the part that has, you know, it's easy for armchair spectators from home to narrow down to different components of it. But the part that I like to point out is I came to Reddit with an idea. I create my content on Reddit.

I get removed from Reddit. And I am prevented now from taking my ideas with me. And I am not alone with this, right? I've been accused of writing a book and breaking the rules because of those, you know, selling my book on Reddit or promoting it or whatever and doing a stock trading competition. there are many other people who have also been kicked out of Reddit, all of which have different circumstances. I believe I'm the only one that wrote the book, and I believe on the other one with a trading competition. But I do believe that Reddit has trademarked and prevented these people from taking their stuff with them as well.

I know for the fact that there is at least one other individual who got kicked out after he trademarked his particular community. and he didn't write any book. But, you know, it's a weird situation that I don't understand because social media companies rely on content creators. There's this symbiotic relationship between, hey, here's my platform. I'll give you traffic, right? I will pay for the servers and I will pay for people to come here. Right. I'm going to give you lots of neighborhoods and it does work.

I recognize that symbiotic relationship. Wall Street bets grew because of Reddit. Reddit grew because of Wall Street bets. It makes sense. YouTube grows because of, you know, Logan Paul or whatever, and Logan Paul grows because of YouTube, right? But at no point, you know, like if YouTube kicks out Logan Paul, they don't keep his brand and his followers.

Yeah, that's the thing that's a little confounding to me. As about one example, I would bring up, the Joe Rogan experience podcast obviously has a sub-braddit, probably has a couple. they don't get to own Joe Rogan's IP because they created that. And it would be kind of strange if the Joe Rogan team could not participate in that. So it seems like because there wasn't a previous website, I guess, I'm interpreting Reddit. They have an identity crisis, right?

They have an identity crisis because I don't know what they would say. I'm left with that question. I'm speculating, right? but I would be tempted to guess. It's speculating that they would say, well, that was a brand that existed before. If it existed before, then it's fair game, you know, we don't have. It's common. But it's weird because it's not part of their framework.

So if that were the case, then it's still kind of a weird situation because then you've got a business where you're harvesting intellectual property only when it's not protected. And so you're setting that expectation where people have to go to their, they have to lawyer up before they actually create their content, which is prohibitively impossible. Nobody's going to do anything. I mean, there's also a concept of fairness here. I mean, if I created the Goldman Sachs elevator or, you know, some other iconic Twitter handle, history and pictures, I don't know what, you know, or some Instagram handle,

would Instagram want that handle, which a subred is kind of like a handle? It's different, but it is a similar thing. It's the name of the community. there be an expectation that Twitter could take Goldman Sachs Elevator's handle and say, you know what, this is our IP now. We're going to make the Goldman Sachs elevator. But Reddit has said they don't want moderators to go monetized. And when I looked at the complaint, they told you they were kicking you out as a mod

because you were trying to make money off being a moderator. Yeah, but that's like a weird thing, right? I don't understand that because in the complaint, it also states that everybody else makes money being moderated. And there's a screenshot in the complaint where they say, here's the, here's the link to the book that I was monetizing. And in that save screenshot, there's the t-shirts that the other moderators were selling T-shirts with. And those T-shirts were being sold for years prior to my book and for years post my removal, right? Like, in other words, monetizing the community seems to be like this really strange selective thing. And it appears to be

that you could, you know, it appears to be the fact that I was behaving as if that brand belonged to me that was the actual infraction, right? Because those other moderators that were monetizing that subreddit forever before, during after my removal, never tried to possess that brand and actually try and own it and trying to take control over it. And so they never posed a threat. So that's the common denominator because I've seen an infinite number of brands in subreddits and moderate, but I don't even try and stray away from it because it's enough to say it's within my same subreddit. It's within Wall Street bets that the same moderators were monetizing it. So I don't even have to use, you know, like examples of saying, well, the thing is that that was

fidelity investments. There are. What is your goal? No, not. Wall Street bets. Yeah. I've been dealing with business insurance for three decades. I am on the board of a bunch of companies. I watch people who don't have insurance get themselves into trouble all the time. Switching providers has always been a nightmare. It's too expensive. It takes too much time. And often, it doesn't even guarantee better coverage. But now you can make switching radically simple with imbroker.

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So try Embroker today with code Twist and get 10% off their startup package at Inbroker.com slash twist. That's EMBR-O-K-E-R.com slash T-W-I-S-T and use the code twist so you get that 10% off. It's meaningful. Every dollar counts right now. We love you, in Broker. Thank you so much for supporting this podcast for so many years. But what is your goal going for? Do you want them to concede and give you the name? Do you want a million dollars? Do you want to be moderator again? What would make you happy? What would be success for you after taking this action? There's lots of things that I consider success. Reddit knows the things that I consider success. There's a lot of things that are factually incorrect, some of which you just cited. I don't know where some of the news. It's interesting thing about the news that like you have you have some sort of, versus I've always been aware that sometimes like the news gets something wrong and then everybody just kind of takes it.

And it's like, and it's weird because I can't like go out there and correct it because by correcting it, then I'm actually making statements that I then have to stick to. So, you know, it's Reddit knows. We've been in talks for years. Here's another thing that's kind of tricky. Reddit comes out of the flying gates and says, look at this guy lining his pockets, waiting for the IPO, three. Three years he's been waiting in silence, right? Like, how convenient. It's so funny to me because it's like, dude, you really want to play this card?

Reddit, like, you know, the moment that Reddit could oppose my trademark application, the instant they could oppose it, they started opposing it. So I've been, I've been in court battles with them for years and years and years. And I've just been moving about my life, building my career, doing, you know, all sorts of different things and projects and just trying to, to move. move on and racket up my lawyer fees. And out of nowhere last September, something changed with them. They're like, yeah, we're just kind of tired of this anymore. And for some strange reason, they're the ones that got in a hurry. They're like, we'd like to just kind of speed things up over here.

We're just trying to tie up loose ends. And so they're the ones that decided to take me to the trademark court. So I said, hold on, hold on. Okay, now you're in a hurry. Now, you know, I've been trying to say this for years. This is mine. And, you know, and this is a. cool, right? Anyways, and so, you know, so then I ended up reaching out to them and I said,

I still have a lot of issues and a lot, you know, I suffered a lot of damages, a lot of grievances. We need to figure this out, people. You guys never reached out to me for clarification or comment or anything. Like, you ghosted me entirely, never gave me a valid reason for my removal. Like, it's just, and, and they just, you know, anyways. So I said, all right. Well, if you really want to do this, if you really want to go to court, we can play this game. But I'm going to give you another chance. Let's go mediate this thing. I don't want to do this.

And I swear, I look forward to the day that we go to court because then I can actually show everybody how much goodwill I've had throughout the use. So you tried to settle this with them amicably. You want to know how good I was behaving? Reddit has this rule that said you're not allowed to use alt accounts, right? You know, alt account is like where you can do, you know, you have two accounts. Yeah, sure. Yeah, okay, everyone has.

I refused to use an alt account on Reddit, right? Not that I had much interest in going there in the first place, but I'm banned from Wall Street bets because the moderators banned me. So I can't really do anything there anyways. But I was like, you know what? I'm going to play nice because I'm hoping that at some point I can show Reddit I was behaving nicely and they'll understand. Like, I was on my best possible behavior.

I have access to the media. I have access to like podcasts. I have access. I've had an opportunity to really air my grievances publicly, and I chose not to. And so what, so I think there would be really easy solution here might be, hey, we both contributed in some way. We were the platform. You were the content.

Hey, let's come to some sort of arrangement. Here's some equity, but I guess I would open them up to a large number of people doing this. It's a fascinating case. When does it go to trial? Is there a trial date? What I would love to understand is at what point. point is it not beneficial to have our interests align?

Like, I don't, there's, there's so many things that are just counterintuitive that just don't make any sense. Well, they're trying to make a business, right? So they started doing, explained to me like, I'm five years old. Now, I don't know if there's an equivalent of you. But now they have me pissed off, right? Now they have me fighting them. And now I'm actually, when do you think this goes to trial?

I have no idea. Like, but you're willing to go all the way? Are you willing to go all the way? I'm willing to go. all the way absolutely. Look, I'll put it to you this way. You know, like, let me just finish that previous. That way said when Redd, it's like, I'm just trying to do a cash break. I'm willing to wait until after their IPO.

I'm not sure that they are willing. But like when it comes down to this, I've waited three years patiently. I will wait another 30 years patiently for this because what I'm doing is like what I'm doing is right. Like for what it's right, I've moved on with my career. This is my baby that I care about, right? And so I will go all the way 100%. And I am nowhere near done with regards to this fight, right?

Well, this is going to open up a large number of other cases. So they would behoove them to settle this and make it clear on the website. Who owns what? To say the least, yes, that is correct. All right, Jamie, we're going to monitor this. Thank you so much for coming on the program. And we'll see you all next time. Bye-bye.

True heart is co-founder and CEO of Hyper, which was formerly known as Dent Reality, and it's an augmented reality platform intended to introduce indoor navigation in retail stores to save shoppers time. Welcome. And did I get that right? Yeah. Yeah. Perfect.

Amazing. Okay. Well, so first off, I guess in your own words, tell me how this works. This is like the holy grail of efficient shopping right here. Right. Yeah. I mean, like maybe I should start with a bit about my background and how I like got into the space in the first place.

Please. The technology itself is really interesting. So I got into augmented reality, which is kind of the thing that powers it under the hood. I got into that in the very early days. Do you remember when people were doing those kind of novelty experiences where you would hold up your phone and there'd be like a giant shark or whatever? I did them all.

Totally. Exactly, yeah. That's the time when I got into it and people were doing that kind of thing. And I think that was kind of like the GeoCities version of, You remember like GeoCities when people would do fancy homepages. And that's fine to start there. I was always like really interested in the potential of augmented reality as a technology. Looking like 10 years in the future where you've got virtual screens, virtual,

if you can take technology beyond the screen and you can do virtual overlays of information on all aspects of daily life, imagine like virtual screens with context on the real world, sort of like an upgrade for the real world experience. And that's kind of what I've always been super interested in, is that feature and how we get there. And so I started in AR and I basically pioneered Aeronavigation. And I did that for the first time and I started putting videos out, which a lot of people have seen and created the largest open source project for Apple's AR kit. And that technology is used by Google Maps, Apple, Uber, and a handful of others. And so what we're doing at Hyper is really like a 10x version of that, right? So if we're looking towards that big feature of virtual

overlays on the real world, and we want to take a big piece of that pie, we want to build the infrastructure to enable all of that interaction to happen. And so we're thinking about today, and we're thinking about, okay, how do we get started today on mobile? How do we bring this to businesses, like retailers, officers, airports, conferences, there's so many different applications. And it turns out there's some core technology challenges there. First of all, how do you map all of this information? But actually, one of the more interesting ones is our key innovation that we've made is

how do you get hyper-accurate indoor location? And that's something we've went super deep on. It's incredibly important to enabling all of this stuff. And so that's what we've done. We've built that technology. We're building it as a mobile first experience. I think when a lot of people think about AR on mobile, they imagine stuff which is kind of designed to simulate a headset or wearable.

But actually, I think what you want to do is you want to build a really great experience for mobile first. And so we've got maps and AR and a bunch of things that work incredibly well together because we've done real research and development and how to build that into a great use of experience. And we found incredible demand from retailers who want to bring digital interaction experiences into their stores. And so right now we're working with some of the biggest retailers in the world, some of whom we can't talk about because some of these things haven't rolled out yet

and they like to save the surprise and stuff like that. But yeah, we're having a great time. All right, so I have a whole bunch of questions to drill down. The primary question being this indoor mapping and precise location indoors has always been the bugaboo, right? There have been attempts to do this before and it's always just like, you don't quite know where you are. Yeah, exactly.

How have you nailed that part of it? Because without it, it's like speech recognition that's 90% good, right? The 10% is what makes you sound a little crazy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, when you look at a lot of the history of the space, a lot of it has been stuff like beacons, like, you know, Estimote and a handful of other companies. And Google and Apple also have their indoor location or indoor technologies.

And those are about all of the, that entire area, what we found is everything is about five meters of accuracy. which is about the same as if you imagine GPS, right? If you walk out of the subway and you see yourself on the street and it's like, it doesn't even know which side of the street you're on. Right. So if you imagine applying that technology to a retail store, where you have to know which aisle you're in in order to serve up a relevant experience,

that it just doesn't, it just doesn't cut it. It's not accurate enough. I can't be five meters from the bread. Yeah, 100%. Right. And there's no way that you can serve up a useful user experience. And so that was really the first thing that we looked at. And what we've done is we've done years of research and development

on basically combining augmented reality and the high precision motion sensors that you get from AI with Wi-Fi. So we can use the Wi-Fi to triangulate, and then we can use the augmented reality to really hone in your location to get it hyper-accurate. And so that's what we've done. And so we've got location, which is five times more accurate than anything else out there. when we put it in people's hands, when you see the videos that we put out, you can tell we've also put a lot of work into our user experience

to make that a really smooth and elegant user experience. So when we actually try it with customers and we ask them at the end, okay, well, how accurate, if you had to say how accurate it was, people go, well, you know, it was effectively perfect, right? They don't notice any inaccuracy or any kind of jumpiness with the experience that you might get with GPS because we've put all of that effort into the user experience.

And so we're just so far ahead of other people in that space with that technology. One of the things that's remarkable, too, is that the experience on the phone transitions from a map to literally as you lift it. And there's some gyroscope magic happening in there. But as you lift the phone, it just seamlessly switches from map to AR and you just sort of follow this line exactly to your cup of soup. Yeah. So that was one of the UX things that we've invented. I actually think that as we see more of these experiences over time, that's going to be like pulled to refresh, right? Well, like, it seems so obvious when somebody does it.

And yeah, we've built this really awesome mechanism. You hold the phone upwards and the map drops down, you get the camera mode, you bring the phone back down again, and the map flips up to full screen. Yeah, if people haven't seen it, I'd highly recommend I always find these conversations are so much more effective when people have seen what we build. So if like going to our website, hyperar.com, I'm also on Twitter, Andrew Hart, AR. If you can spell my surname. But, but yeah, I'd highly recommend just looking at, you know, my PIN tweet, which has a video of the technology because that's where it really comes to life.

So who is the ideal customer here? Like, I'm an efficiency-minded single mom. I want to get my shopping done fast, but is it just me or do you imagine that this is something you could license to every Instacart shopper? Yeah, it's a great question. question. We, I mean, we think about it on the two ends of like the consumer side and on the retailer side. There's basically so much value that can be delivered to both at the same time. One thing is the most basic foundation is navigation. I want to find some item. I'm not sure where it is in the store. It could be a grocery store. It could be a much larger department

store, something like that. You can type in any item and you can be guided step by step Tim by turn to find that item. Okay, great. So then you take it a step further. Now can I put in my shopping list? Can I put in a recipe? And I can actually find all of the things that I need for that recipe. And it could make the most optimal route through the store

to pick up all the things you need for dinner. I'm dying. Exactly. I'm so excited about this. Yeah. That's the thing. Like when people try it, like the first mind-blown moment, because we give it to people to do user testing.

But we haven't told them anything about it. So the first moment that they're like, is, I'm doing like, for anyone on the podcast, I'm doing like a mind-blown kind of motion. The first moment is when they see the AR mode and that interface. The second moment is when they realize that it's organizing their entire list of shopping items to take them in the most efficient way. But then you think, okay, well, what if I then pull everything that from the online experience, everything from online shopping, like recommendations,

and promotions and everything else, right? A lot of people want to know about special offers and deals that they can get. So what if you can surface those things at the right moment as you're working your way through the store? And so there's so much opportunity to kind of start with navigation and then build loads of value on top of that. Right. Are you tired of organizing the same old boring off-sites with your team?

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and how do you make sure that they stay where they were when you mapped them? Yeah, well, first of all, like, mapping the layout of an overall store. Turns out that was quite a time-consuming process. People would spend months building a map and using complicated software. It would be really expensive for retailers. And so our goal, obviously, is to take this to every store in the world. And so we've built an automated mapping platform, where right now we can map,

have one person working on, per person working on it, they can map one store in half a day, so they could do two mega stores, basically, in the space of a day. We want to get that down to a few minutes. So, you know, we're continuously improving that.

And we've done that by automating away most of the steps. The second part of the problem is how do you locate which shelves the products are on? That's something that we do by integrating with the retailer. They typically know that information. they've got the kind of identifier of which shelf everything is on. And so as long as we can keep track of where those things are on the geographical map of the store, we can link up those two systems.

And then as they update things at head office and they send that detail down to the store so the staff can move things around. Similarly, they send it to us and we update the maps live so that the next person who walks in the store, they instantly get an updated map. So on some level, you are a little bit at the mercy of the inventory system. at the store that you're working with. Like, if they decide we're moving all of the peeps to the Easter display, and they don't sort of update that, you wouldn't know.

It's not like there's like RFID in a container. Yeah, like if the staff in the store went rogue and said, we're going to move everything. Actually, the way that it seems to happen in most retailers, certainly the ones that we've worked with, is they decide that at head office, they say, hi, we would like you to move this item or this display is going to be Easter theme. and we're going to send you all of these graphics and stuff to put up,

and we're going to ask you to move these items. So they send that down to the stores, and at the same time they bring it to our system as well. Got it. Okay. And then how does, is it a consumer app? How do people find out about it and become onboarded? What sort of status of rollout are you at right now? Right now we're working with a handful of really big retailers to roll it out at scale.

And these are like really big national or international retailers with really big stores. And so I think... And like none you can hint at. Any like big red dots? No hints. Pretty much. I feel like I get into...

One of the things you learn when you become a kind of... You know, I started out as a... I started out, you know, just as a founder, putting stuff out. And it's great to build new technology, which people find really awesome and just put it out there. And what you find is he start to build a business, which is sort of B2 or B2C, right? you're building a really great consumer interface, but it's ultimately B2B.

And suddenly you find yourself in a position where you kind of lose some of that control. You're not able to as much put stuff out there at free will. You have to kind of work with your retail partners to put things out when they're ready to put things out. And that's something that which is interesting because it gives you a huge opportunity to work with these really big names.

But at the same time, you're kind of limited in how you can share. So that's like a really interesting problem as a founder to, how do I keep putting the word out there about my business, whilst also working with these very brands who are very, you know, image conscious and you can't just turn up to the store of a code something and post it online. So yeah, on that note, I probably can't say the names of anybody that we're working with right now. I understand and I would never want to get you in trouble.

To be clear, yeah. But that is a, but I appreciate that. context because I think that really is interesting for founders, right? You just want to be like, I built this cool thing. I want to tell everybody about it. And yet to build a business at scale requires these partners. So what will happen? So you're working with these partners.

You will integrate this system and then will I get a notification when I walk into the store or will you then start advertising the app for people to download and have ahead of time? Yeah, exactly. So the market, the retail market, on this is super clear. What they're looking for is they're looking for an SDK that they can drop into their existing apps.

A lot of them have really high uptake on their apps. A lot of them are at more than 50% of the people walking in the store are using their app because it does different things as part of the in-store experience. And so, yeah, so we build an SDK. It integrates there the next time somebody walks into a store when that store goes live, they get the full shopping experience and they can now navigate to any of those items. So it's really cool on it when it, when it's really cool. becomes activated.

And, you know, they can always scan it. If they don't have the app on their phone, they can scan a QR code or an app clip code when they walk in the store. And so they can get it super easily. What you've raised money for this, right? Like, how do you look at the overall, how hard is it to build this technology? Because like you said, you're doing a degree of accuracy that, you know, we have not seen.

And how do you think about the potential market for this? well I think about the market in two ways so we raised yeah we raised a seed round in November 2021

um we think about yeah yeah we about 10 million dollars looks like we raised less than that you know I actually think

I don't know what the the rules are generally like how you work in VC circles and stuff like that I feel like I'm open enough to say that we're looking right now, actually, at raising like a C2, in actively, actively looking at that right now. And, you know, I'm pretty open as a founder.

If we're raising it super quickly, and if any VCs, any partners at VCs, just DM me. Like, we don't mess around. We move pretty quickly, and we're raising over the next few weeks. So if you want to get involved in that, we're happy to have you. We've got most of our existing VCs involved in that round as well. Okay, well, we're definitely going to talk after about that. Okay, perfect. Perfect.

Yes. Yeah. And we've got some really awesome VCs, and I love kind of what you get out of that. So, yeah, so I mean, the opportunity we look at it in two ways, right? We look at, first of all, when we do these videos, we get exceptional amounts of inbound. The reason why raising money is that we have retailers sitting in our inbox, who I won't name, but we can talk offline. We have retailers sitting in our inbox who we just, can't address because we need to boost up our sales. We need to increase our sales capacity

so that we can bring on new retailers into a funnel. And so that's why we're raising a bit more money so we can really bolster that effort. Those retailers all come in because they want to bring digital experience into their stores to enable all of this stuff. They're saying it work incredibly effectively on their online stores and they just want to bring the same level of customer experience, customer data and information and apply that in their stores. It's pretty simple is a thing that they want, and they just haven't found a technology before ours that actually works for that. Right.

And so that's the opportunity that we look at today. And then long term, we want to build this infrastructure that enables all of that, all of that interaction on the real world. Right. I mean, it's your vision, your personal vision, it sounds like from the way that you've described it in this kind of like a long obsession you've had with it is much more than shopping in retail stores, which is very valuable. and I cannot wait to do it.

But talk to me a little bit about that. Yeah, like you want the, I mean, I want it in the glasses. I want to everywhere I look. I want to see it all. 100%. You know, I'm a, I'd say I'm a pretty resilient founder. And I think a lot of people who've worked with me would say that everything that we do, there's a lot of really interesting opportunities, which are really great, but they're

distractions, right? They would send us off in a different direction. And every decision we make, every partner we work with, every new interface, every new technology or upgrade that we roll out is all pointed towards that big vision that we want to achieve. We want a big piece of that pie. We want to be the infrastructure to power that interaction across every location in the world. And so everything we do, everything we build is always with that in mind.

And so that's how we think about it. I'm really excited about where we are, though. I love the journey every day. I love that at a certain point, we were four or five people. We had one person on web, one person on mobile, one person on this. And now we've got teams of people on these things. I just love the entire growth and that entire journey is so great. Incredible.

And then finally, with this product today, what is the business model? How do you make money? Yeah, well, we charge, we've went with the pricing model that seemed a bit unusual to us, but is the industry standard for like Indomaps, which is that they charge on a square meter basis. So you've got a big stone, we can calculate square meters per year and they charge on that basis. So right now we've decided, okay, well, let's follow the same. Let's just give them an industry standard pricing for our customers. Sort of settles the debate easily, makes it really easy for them to go, great, this follows, you know, anything else that we could find out there.

It's a no-brainer. And then over time, I think what's really interesting is as we start to really demonstrate value and we start to show, you know, show how valuable it is, I think we can find a new pricing model that works best for us and for the retailers. And that makes a lot more logical sense of, great, we're charging you this because we are making you this. So that's how I think about it. Right. But it's pretty much like a SaaS business model. Right.

Great. So SaaS margins, roughly, I would imagine too. Yeah. And then finally, from the consumer perspective, I keep saying finally, but I have a million questions for you. From the consumer perspective, how do you think about what is the data play here? Can I opt out of letting you know that I bought the trashy junk food soup, for example? Or do you know at all?

I would imagine retailers want some insight into the data, or at least even just for the flow of the stores, what is the value that you can potentially bring in terms of those insights? Yeah, well, I guess first of all, the consumer gets to decide, right, if they're going to use it and which permissions they want to enable. and so they're always in full control. If they don't want to use it, they don't have to use it. If they don't want to enable the location part of it

or they just want the map of the store, they could do that as well, right? So it's entirely up to the customer and the user on what they want to share. And then I think further than that, because we provide an SDK, it's up to the retailer, how they want to capture data on their customers

and all of that kind of stuff. Thankfully for us right now, it is just left up to the retailer to sort through all of the privacy policies. and stuff. In our context, we're working with retailers and enabling them to do what's powerful for them.

So I find it really interesting to, one area that is really interesting is a lot of people would like, we've heard from a lot of customers who want heat maps as an example. And that's really interesting. And I think there's a huge amount of potential in getting heat maps,

definitely as they collect that data anyway in a formal kind of like manual way. But. Yeah, I could imagine individual brands wanting that even, you know, if they were, if there may be testing a label. Yeah, exactly. Right.

Yeah. So I find stuff like that super interesting, but it's also interesting and going, okay, now we've got the super advanced technology which knows where a customer is in the store. We know who that customer is and loads of background information about them or the retailer does in general. I'm more interested in what's the next generation of those heat maps, right? How can you really bring incredible value to those? Because you could just ship a standard heat map future,

or you could build one, which is really incredible. So I think there's a lot of opportunities like that to really bring value to the consumer and to the retailer. I respect your discipline so much because it is clear how easy it would be to get distracted by a million different options. Andrew Hart is co-founder and CEO of Hyper. You can find his tweets at at Andrew Hart, H-A-R-T. A-R.

Go watch the videos and get hyped up because I cannot wait for my shopping to change. Andrew, thanks. What a pleasure. Awesome. Thanks, Molly. Humphrey, thank you so much for joining me today on this segment of OK Boomer. So for those of you who don't know, Humphrey is pretty freaking big on the internet. You have almost like almost a million people subscribed. That is kind of insane. I found you through a friend of a friend, Humphrey.

I think Nate O'Brien was the first person to show me your videos. and Nate has actually been on the speaking startups before. So, again, thank you so much for coming on. No problem. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I definitely saw Nate's version of OK Boomer, as well as his brothers. Yeah. So you did both the O'Brien's. I did.

And then I had Nate staying with me here, I think, two weeks ago, and he was like, you should do it too or whenever I reached out to you. So I'm pretty happy you reached out because Nate actually told me about you beforehand. So it was perfect. Boom. I didn't even know Nate and his brother were related when I first started looking at their content because I actually saw his brother over on Twitter first, I think. Reviewing like tech.

Yeah, reviewing like, or rings or something like that. Like it was some like physical product might have been an Apple Watch. But so super happy to have, have them both join it again, pumped to have you here. I think my first question would be, but it has to cover honestly the space that you're in. So you are a formal financial advisor. You previously worked in gaming, but now you cover topics. personal finance, self-improvement, but those are huge genres, like giant. And you've somehow still managed to gain this many subscribers.

How did you kind of make a name for yourself in these fields that almost feel like hyper-saturated? Yeah, that's a good question. So I had my start on TikTok. I don't know if you knew that, but I originally wanted to make YouTube videos in 2019, actually way before then, but I was just still working in a corporate job. And so in 2019, I decided to try three YouTube videos in the summer of 2019 that went nowhere. You know, you get like five or 10 views max and they're all your friends that you send them to.

And I was definitely just trying to do like a Graham Stefan style. Like, that was the inspiration. And they went nowhere. So I kind of gave up for a bit, but I was watching TikTok in the fall of 2019 a lot just as a personal user. And I was just like I was addicted at night. And at this point, I think on TikTok, 2019, Mostly teens were on it and maybe younger, younger 20s. And I didn't really see anyone my age.

And then the moment that I had was I searched for the hashtag personal finance at some point. And as a, I was trying to do market research. And there were no videos of personal finance. And I knew that if I was first to market, you know, I said, oh, maybe if I just try TikTok, maybe I can be the, you know, I can be the big personal finance influencer on this, on this platform, especially because the market seemed to want that type of content. Like, I made one video in November of 2019 about what credit is.

And it was a really bad video. Like, I just, I'm literally like talking. I got a lot of ums. I'm just like, this is what credit is. And I got like 4,000, 5,000 views. That's a lot, though, still. Like, that's a ton. That's a lot.

And that's a ton. The quality of the content was bad. It was, you know, dimly lit. But what it showed me was like, okay, the algorithm is really good on TikTok. There's no one making these videos on TikTok, and I was getting genuine organic comment. So I was definitely getting more traction there than it was, obviously, on YouTube. And so my whole game plan was to make 30 straight TikToks at the end of 2019 as like a New Year's resolution. And I just started on Christmas.

I started the day after Christmas. I think by the like the 15th day, I had like 100,000 followers. So this was like January 10th, 2020. I had like 100,000 followers already. And at that point, it just becomes like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like, you're just going to keep making videos because that's what, I mean, you're getting so much exposure to so many views. Like, you feel like, oh, well, I'll just keep compounding this.

I've got to just keep doing it. And so 30 days became 60, which became 90. And then I was like, why might as well keep going for 100. And then after that, I think the streak ended at like 240 straight days of a TikTok. And by then I had like a million followers. And so I got a lot of my base from that, right? And then at the same time, I was creating YouTube video. probably in starting May 2020.

So I was like still bad at YouTube, but I was at least trying to get my TikTok audience to go convert to YouTube because I knew like that would be the future. And I think two years later, I mean, it's three years later now. And I definitely now the YouTube channel is growing quite nicely, but it was a struggle there for the first one or two years. Like, you know, you would get a disproportionate amount of views on TikTok. You get like a million views on TikTok and then you go make a YouTube video,

you get 500. And that feels really crappy as a creator. But then you kind of have to to realize like this will compound over time. So that's kind of how I did it. Or what is your experience in converting people over to another platform? I know that, like you just said, that's extremely difficult. Not only like morality-wise is it like really,

really hard. It kind of kicks you down when you see those numbers convert. Like I know we, for example, started a TikTok account and we had it like going for quite a while before it really picked up Steam and shout out John, who's our editor that makes our TikToks. But it took a while and it's hard when you see those numbers. on one platform not reciprocate over to the other. Like, how did you eventually make that work?

Oh, man. I think it's just like consistency of everything. Like, you know, throughout my time making TikToks, I was hoping that people would eventually find that I have a YouTube. And that would always be in my bio, like, hey, link to my YouTube channel or, hey, my link to longer form videos. So that's definitely number one. But early on, like, especially when I was getting a lot of views in 2020, I was definitely

calling out YouTube a lot more just at the, end of certain videos, not every video, but I would have a call to action. And I saw that when my subscriber count would actually go up, but no one would really watch the YouTube videos, if that makes sense, like from TikTok. And I think I had like 10,000 subs at the time and they were all from TikTok and no one was watching. And so I knew that like if I kept calling it out on TikTok, that's not exactly fruitful. What you really have to do is like you have to make good content.

Number one, it has to get surfaced to those people. and also like I just started making searchable content too. So like that way, as long as I did that, I would have a base of views at all times. And it was my hope that some of those subscribers that came from a short form platform might check me out one day. But I wasn't expecting it. But to answer your question,

just consistency or everything, constantly like beating that into like the short form content audience. Like, hey, I got a YouTube. Hey, I just did this on YouTube. Those strategies really helped. But I would say the conversion rate is very bad. It's very hard. You're right.

It is really, really hard. But I think you said two things in there that are pretty notable. I mean, everything you said is pretty notable, but two key aspects. I think you pointed out was that CTA, that call to action, kind of hear it. You've already said Graham. Graham is a great finance. Was it great Stephens? That it?

Phenomenal finance YouTuber. And he always said, smash the light button, smash the like button or smash the subscribe button, something like that. He always has a CTE. And I think he says it in a podcast, I believe, and he might also say in some of his YouTube videos that that is actually a key point in a lot of his content, like actually having a CTA.

And he also talked about making searchable content. SEO, I feel like it was every, everyone's hot word. Hot acronym, it feels like everyone's trying to create searchable content. How do you know what that searchable content is? Like, how do you pick the topics? How do you make a topic around something that's searchable? Because something that's searchable to me might not be searchable to the masses. Like something, a question that I want answered might not be a huge question of that many people.

Yeah, I think that's a tough question. I think that, you know, you can obviously look at tools like Google trends or you can look at, you know, TubeBuddy has an extension that shows you the search volume for every, you know, phrase that you type in. But sometimes you don't really know if it's actually going to actually be searched. like you just said, um, it's almost like kind of knowing what people are thinking ahead of them. And that's kind of hard to do unless you kind of have a good pulse on like the

internet and just like you're always watching YouTube. You're always on Twitter. You're always on TikTok. So like if you consume a lot of content, you kind of get a pulse for like, I don't know what, what people are probably looking for. Like right now,

you know, it's February 21st. I bet you can make some searchable content about the Ohio trade derailment. And it would, actually do pretty well right now. Like, I just saw a YouTube video that just came out where a YouTuber traveled to the Ohio train derailment. Very timely, by the way.

And was, like, just trying to be an investigative journalist and it's doing it pretty well. But, like, longer-term searches, like, I'm always just going for, like, really boring ideas. So, you know, one would be, like, top tax write-offs, you know. And if you think about like that, top five tax write-offs, like, every two, you know, every February, March, April, you're going to get some viewership. to that topic just because that's what people are thinking about during tax day, right? So, or even, you know, towards the end of the year when people are trying to take write-offs for that calendar year, like, you're going to get that traffic.

And so if you have a library of like a hundred of these, they just all of a sudden just kind of like start producing new views and that way you have a strong base layer of viewership. And Graham actually told me once, Graham Stephan, that most of his subscribers all come from evergreen content. They don't actually come from his like, his news and more timely things. too. Sounds like this might be.

Sounds like this might be a trend with you guys. It is, uh, I think it's, it was definitely under, like I definitely understood it as a small YouTuber. But as I get bigger and bigger, like the value of it is not,

like diminished. It's just increasing. So like, I feel like it's even way more important now than ever. Like, I completely agree with you. I mean, it's really difficult too to,

when you're a creator to really think of content. And like a, uh, it almost feels like a binary way where it's, like, okay, is this going to be evergreen or is this like content have, have a time limit? So, for example, at this, we can start-ups, what we tend to do is in the beginning is something that is like very timely, normally we're covering the news or a topic that recently happened, like the Super Bowl commercials.

And then we go into a really awesome interview. Very rarely is it only just an interview, we're only just a news topic that if it is a news topic, it's a news topic that you can go back and listen to. And it'll probably be something that is still relevant today. and we try to mash in both aspects of it, but that is creating content that is extremely long form. Like a lot of our episodes, we're talking about over an hour.

Like, these aren't necessarily episodes that people are normally making. How do you feel then about creating content as, or how do you feel about people that are creating content, I guess, just to have it become monetized or searchable, who aren't doing it for the love, I guess, of creating? Oh, yes, definitely. Okay, so on your first point, I've watched a lot of like the This Week in Startup episodes.

I think that like having the long form stuff at the end is very powerful so that people continue to come watch you. Because the name this week in startups is very, it lends itself to timely, right? Like this week. Kind of stuck in there with the name, right? Yeah. It's kind of stuck in there. So I like that strategy what you guys are doing there. To answer your question, yeah.

I mean, I know a lot of people, you know, personally that have channels that aren't really doing it for the love. They're just doing it for searchable content, getting a lot of views, getting a lot of referrals and stuff like that. And, you know, more power to them. It's just kind of like, how do you want to do YouTube? And YouTube offers you so many different avenues on how to pursue it. You can be like an Amber Chamberlain type where it's just like a vlog and people like, you want people to come just for you. Or you could do a news channel. Like I think Philip DeFranco used to do a news channel, right?

There's people that just make commentary videos. There's people that make reaction videos only. And then there's people just trying to hit the algorithm to get as many views as possible, like if you think Mr. Beast or Ryan Trehan or something like that. Or just like telling a good story and giving a gift to the audience. Like that's always so inspirational. But then there's just so many ways to do it. And I have no problem with people that want to do it just as business,

if that's what they like YouTube for. Because as long as they're serving people that need that content, that's good. I agree with you. And it was a realization that I didn't kind of come to until over the past, like, few years. Like, when I was younger, it used to really bug me when I saw, especially, I guess, when I was in, like, high school, when you see somebody's content, you're like, you, like, I'm like, why am I even watching this? Like, the person obviously doesn't even want to make this. It's such a cash grab.

But as you get older, you realize everything is a job. Even if you, you can love your job and love what you do, or there are people that don't love their job or what they do and they're just really good at it. or there are people that don't like their job and they're not very good at it. And if you're on YouTube and you're in that section of, you don't necessarily love doing it, but you're good at it and you're making money, it's a job. And I think it was really hard for me to kind of separate that,

like, creating process from it being a job process because you see the first people in like those self, like those really big, like self-help videos. Like, um, like,

I want to say there's one. It's called Better Ideas that I've really, really like. I've seen that. He's huge. Yeah. He's great. Great, great content.

And it's just like really artistic, like great shots and everything like that. Or Matt DeVela's, like another example. And then you see other people in that same style of content. You're like, wait, like your heart's on it. Like I see the level that these people are putting out. You got to realize like some people are just there to answer the questions and go about their day. But your content does not feel like that to me because one of the things that I like about your TikToks is how much heart it feels like you have in them. I think the format is really interesting.

I don't know if you coined this format, but I, I think you might have been one of the critters I see it do the most or first, where you act like there's a issue, and you're still the one prompting the question, and you're the one prompting the answer, if that makes sense. Like the skit format? The skit format, exactly. I really like that.

But your content on TikTok and your content on YouTube feels kind of different. Yeah, very different. How were you able to bridge that? So first, let me respond to the skit thing. The skit thing was actually, I mean, A lot of comedy TikToks were doing skits in 2020. And so, like, you always saw, like, the comedy people doing it. And then the first person to do it with business was Edmani.

His name's like, Edmone explains, Zaid. And he was doing him for more like business news. And he still does them today and he's really good at them. But I remember asking him like, hey, can I just do a skid about an evergreen topic? Like, what's a dividend? And that was like July 2020. I remember I made it and it did like phenomenal. So I was like, oh, well, I'm just going to keep doing the same thing.

But it's funny because I made like maybe 90 of those in that fall, like July to fall of 2020. And then they all did great. But then I noticed like as more and more people did them, like the efficacy of my skits went down. And I think people just on TikTok, yeah, they just got, I think people on TikTok, they saw the format so many times and they get tired of it.

Right. Because like once you see it, you kind of know like, oh, this is a finance TikTok. He's going to tell me about he's going to have this problem. This person's going to answer it. This person's going to like, prompt them some more and then, you know, you get a resolution. It's a great way to teach concepts for sure, but I think in terms of performance,

it doesn't do get it anymore. Okay. For your second question, which was, yes, the content is very different. I definitely agree. I kind of view the short form platforms like TikTok, Instagram, as just like more entertainment-based, almost. Like, people want short hits, and yeah, there are some, you know, financial creators making like a two or three minute video about an evergreen long topic.

But I noticed like for me, at least, I still care about performance on those two, just because I'm so anchored to like what I, the views I used to get. And whenever I get lower views, I'm like so upset. I'm like, ah, like this video of like back in the day would have gotten me like two million views, but now it doesn't. So now I kind of like, I think my ego can't handle it. So I lean toward more entertainment on the short form. And then on YouTube, I basically focus.

on really long form evergreen videos, compelling pieces of information that help you with your personal finance. So that's kind of where you want to, like I want people to take more action with their financial literacy. Versus on TikTok and Instagram, it's going to be rare that someone takes

a lot of action through a TikTok. So I'm now am kind of leaning more heavily towards entertainment on TikTok and Instagram, excuse me. Got you. Like I said before, you sound extremely passionate about, on both sections of your social media, whether it be TikTok on YouTube,

about finance and personal finance, how did you really make that jump from your full-time job to being a content creator? Because you were working in finance before, but how did you even figure out that creating content was another part of, I guess, your journey as somebody

that really enjoys finance? Yeah, so I've always enjoyed money and finance and talking about how to best allocate your money. So that was never a problem for me. It's always been a big interest. And then you still had your cap on. And then I had a lot of friends that would ask me questions about personal finance. I love answering them.

I still love answering them till this day. But the transition was interesting. So I always thought, so, okay, so I worked at the gaming company, corporate gaming company. I always like gaming. I'm always like growing things too. Like, I'm always like, I love like seeing things grow. And after I left the gaming company, I had a startup, my own little like, e-commerce drop-shipping business.

It's not even a drop-shipping. It was like real shipping. Like, we had a fulfillment place in Dallas, Texas. That I went to go, yeah, we were printing posters online. That's like a shipping company. Yeah, I had a printing, like a poster printing business. Okay. And so I found the supplier in Dallas and, you know, we would get orders online for certain

types of posters and then they would get routed to him. And then that printer would print and ship them. So technically it's drop-shipping. but I was fulfilling it from the United States and I knew the person, it wasn't just like coming from China. The ship time was like three days. And at that time,

I was growing an Instagram meme page. Like, I was, I just had, I had like a high school friend of mine. He had his own meme page. It got like 160,000 followers on Instagram. This was in 2016,

2017. And this was like right when maybe, you know, fuck Jerry came about. Oh, yeah, right on then. And so I created my own meme page.

Yeah. Yeah, huge. I created my own meme. page and I wanted to grow it too and I was just making conversational memes, but I was able to get it to like 12 or 15,000 followers, which I thought was pretty good at the time. And it kind of taught me like how to grow social media, if that makes sense. Definitely. I was using that meme page to reach out to other memeers and we were doing Instagram ads

with influencers for my poster printing business. So immediately I saw like this like connection that, okay, I can use this as marketing. It's cheaper than Facebook ads. people than Google ads. I'm getting way a really good return on my ad spend here. So I learned how to grow social media through that. And then at the same time, I'm watching a lot of YouTube, and I love watching YouTube.

Like, I was watching Marquez Brownlee in 2014, 2015. Same with Casey Nistat. Like, that was like, I really just want to be a YouTuber. And I feel like, okay, now I know how to grow an Instagram page. It's probably really similar to growing YouTube or, you know, an Instagram for like a TikTok, I guess now. And that's how I kind of took those skills and started to grow the social media accounts.

And plus, I always like gamified things. So I've always liked video games. And so, like, for me, it's just, like, feels like a big video game. And I like, like, I like kind of see numbers go up. And that's trying to, like, figuring out, like, how to make a good video is, like, fun for me. Like, oh, like. What's that process like?

Are you batching content when you're doing this? Like, what's, how is this creation, I guess, process go through? Yeah. The creation process has changed a lot since I started. Like, initially it was just like, let's just create. ideas that have been made before and like try to do our own version of it and make them a little bit better. But now what I'm trying to do, which is very new, is I'm trying to attack broader financial topics and tell them in a really compelling way. So like, I'm trying to think of an example.

Like, have you ever watched like Veritasium ever? I have not. He's like the science YouTuber, but he'll take like a really boring topic and make it like super interesting. Okay. And or, you know, you watched Johnny Harris. Yep. Before. Yeah.

He kind of has like these long expose documentaries about a certain topic, like, you know, why the McDonald's ice cream machine is always out. And so I want to kind of do the same thing for finance because I feel like it hasn't been done yet. And so that's kind of like the transition now. So thinking about those ideas is very different than making like, let's say, a video about the top five credit cards of 2023. Yep. Much different.

And it's even more evergreen, one could say. And it appeals to even more people because there's those people that really enjoy those deep dives and there's people that are interested in finance. Yeah. So now I would say the strategy on YouTube is just to do everything finance-related. So it'll still have a mix of like top five credit cards and stuff like that. And then it'll have these deep dives on different types of topics. I also want to do some commentary on big news items or news pieces. So for example, if FTX crashed tomorrow for the first.

time I probably would have covered would cover that. And then I also want to do interviews. So like that's my last piece is I want to interview, like long form interview like big names in the tech and business and finance space. Okay. So there's like multiple different places that you want to try to take a job at. I really like that. I'm really bullish on long form content,

not that I don't really enjoy short form content. But I feel like it's a lot harder for me to create a connection with somebody. There's very few entertainers. in the short-form content space that I create a connection to compared to a long-form creator. So, for example, there's like a podcast I really like called Celebrity Memoir

Book Club. Trash. I don't know. I don't know if it's like... It's not trash. I like it. It's a good podcast, but it is not in tech. It's not in business. It's not something that I'm listening to it. And I'm like, wow, like, today I learn something new that's going to make me more successful or benefit my life necessarily in a huge way. It's just a funny podcast.

But I really like the host. And I would totally consider going to like a meetup. But I was trying to think, like, if there's like a TikToker, there aren't really any short form creators that I would be like, you know what? This is like, this is an event or like a meetup I want to go to. So I think it's smart to be, I don't know,

taking a job at like a bunch of different spaces within YouTube in particular moving forward. And that's my, I'm putting it, whatever. What day is it? February 21st, 2023, bullish on YouTube. Multiple years late. But I think, I think you're right on the money there. Like, you know, Nate had a really good tweet yesterday or something like that or two days ago. It was like, you know, he went to VidCon last year.

And, you know, a TikToker with 20 million followers couldn't fill a room versus like somebody with someone on YouTube with like 100,000 followers, you know, was selling out the room. Right? Yeah. And so it kind of shows you the difference in deeper connection. He also had a hot take yesterday. Uh-oh. Like, he was like, I'd rather have 10,000 long-form views instead of 10 million short-form views.

I guess it depends what your angle is. I don't know. I disagree with them. I think 10 million of anything is going to be better than 10,000 long-form views. Wait a minute. Yeah. Bullish for not that bullish. No, I understand what he's saying, but, you know, I definitely would take 10 million views over 10,000 long forms.

But I just don't know where the break-even is. Like, is it 2 million? Is it 5 million? I don't know. it's really tough. I think of it as like kind of with short form and long form like the short form would almost be like

if you watched like a documentary about something versus if you got like if it became your major in college like I really like learning about like religions like theology is something that's super super duper interesting to me. There's an account on that's commentary that I actually found through I believe Celebrity Memoir Book Club because they had them on their Patreon called

Fundy Fridays. they explore the world that is like fundamental religions. I'm like, oh, this is really interesting. This isn't something I necessarily like learned about before. But if that, for example, was like my major in college, I probably would be even more like passionate and I'd want to go to like more events about it versus like this is somebody that I've heard at like one Patreon video. I don't know necessarily if I would, I don't know, go to a, go to a huge like speaker conference

with it. So if somebody's going to start like social media today, my advice. would be like, yes, have a TikTok, but almost use TikTok as like build up on TikTok, but keep them over on YouTube. But I feel like you're already doing that, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely already doing that. And to your point, which was,

sorry, not to your point. I have an elaboration on my first point for you. Oh, well, let's hear it. Which is, in terms of monetization on YouTube, what I found is that 250 short form views is worth one long form view for me in terms of ad sense. there you have, wait, that is a really good metric. Yeah, so for me, it's 250.

For someone who, you know, might have a lower RPM, it might be like 150 times or 100 times, but that kind of shows you. And explain what an RPM is, too, to people listening. Yeah, it's a metric that tells you how much you make per thousand views. So on a thousand views, a finance channel might make $15, monetized. And then on a more lifestyle video, it might be.

be five dollars per thousand views for tech or something. It might be $8 to $10. So, you know, if mine is $250x a, sorry, if one long form is worth 250 short forms for me, then for someone else with a lower RPM, it might be worth a little bit less. But still, it kind of shows you the magnitude. Yeah. And RPM is, um, is revenue per million mill, mill, right? Yeah. Yeah. Um, and I think that's like a really, really interesting metric to, go off of two because we're starting to see like I've noticed what metrics really matter because a lot of times when people are seeing like views on TikTok versus followers on TikTok versus like you see Twitter which has like an engagement of its own what number do you find to be

most important um on TikTok and on YouTube like what should we be paying attention to now because I feel like that number has changed or that metric has changed a lot over the years what do you pay attention to? Because I know my answer, but what do you guys pay attention to? Well, for podcasting, I guess it's a lot different. So we have streams. Yeah, so we can see that over on a different platform. More people listen to our podcast on, like, audio platforms than over on YouTube.

So we tend to focus over there, honestly. But we only have one metric. I think, so for me on YouTube, it's watch time. And that's all I care about, like total watch time. Because, you know, I don't. don't know what the study is, but there's definitely a study that says, you know, how much time you need to spend with someone before you develop some sort of parissocial relationship or some strong connection to them. I have that with, I don't know what the number is, but I bet you I have

that with that with that girl. I think it's like four videos, four or five videos. I've noticed that's low. You think four? Four full on, like, full-minute videos if I like the person. Yeah, I guess you're right, because that's like, that would be more than like 45 minutes to have like a 45-minute discussion with somebody. Okay, I take, I take that back. I think you're right. think it's like kind of just, it's interesting because like, I was going to say an hour, an hour conversation, but I guess that's six. Yeah, I mean, I was trying to think like, you know, if you're having a conversation in person with someone that you've never met, like we've never met today before today,

but like after today's conversation, if we talk for an hour, I might say, okay, I like, I like Rachel. I like kind of like her, I like her mannerisms. I kind of feel like I understand a little bit about her. I'm willing to like talk with Rachel again and saying if you met someone in person, right? Like, if you like, if you like their vibe, you kind of like, oh, like, I'd like to spend more time with that person. And online, it's kind of a little bit similar. I feel like you want to see someone's like a little bit of their personality and then you kind of want to see like a little bit about what they're about and some of their thoughts. And then you kind of like develop this kind of this like relationship with him. I know with me, when I watched

Casey Nice Dad, I watched like five or 10 of his videos. And then I was like, oh, wait a minute, I watch every every video whenever it pops up. So I must have subscribed to him, right? And then at that point, I'm like, okay, now I'm becoming a Casey Nicet said fan. same thing with Marquez. I remember watching like... Oh, Marquez probably senseless. Yeah. Yeah. I watched five Marquez's videos and I was like, okay, well, he seems reasonable.

So easy to like, yeah. He seems reasonable. He's not like crazy either way. He kind of just tells you how it is. It's very good. And he explains it very like in a way that anyone can understand. I like, okay. I like what this guy's about.

I like his vibe. And then, you know, you subscribe to him. then maybe you checked them on Instagram, and then all of a sudden, like, I'm Mark as his biggest fan now. So, you know what I mean? It's like the belts up over time. And I think. I do.

So, yeah, I think it's like watch time really matters because if you can get people watching you for a long time and your content is good, then that's all that. That's all it really matters. Yeah. Awesome. Well, I think that is a great number to be looking out for. The reason I asked is I just started a newsletter where I am looking at how many people subscribed to me, but I'm realizing I feel like the people that click

my links that I have or would be, if I was going to monetize it one day, that would be like a super interesting number to give people rather than the amount of people that are subscribed because how I post on Beehive and how that works so I can use it as a link, almost like a blog and people can read it without subscribing.

I'm like, huh, wait a minute, these link clicks. This might be another, but anyway, thank you so much for coming on the segment of OK Boomer. For sure. Last question I have for you, If you have any advice to give to content creators, aspiring content creators, what would it be? So I really like what you said earlier, which is like take a jab at everything.

So like if I was an aspiring content creator in any niche or maybe no niche, I would try like five to ten different videos and just see which one. One, you know, which one did I like and which one did I enjoy making the most like the process? Because you go on it, you're going to have to be able to do this for like years on end, right? So you want to be able to like make sure it's repeatable enough and like not so much. much friction where you're like, for example, I spent like two weeks researching a video before. That's just not sustainable before making the video. So you kind of want something in between. And then, uh, which one performed the best? So it's like, which one performed the best and which one did you enjoy making the most? And then you can take those two and maybe make more of those.

Awesome. Great advice. Love it. I love that. Great. So Humphrey, again, this is like a huge like learning episode for this weekend start. So I hope. If anybody's listening to this and wants to become a creator, you go check out Humphrey, go check out his pages over on TikTok, over on YouTube, subscribe over on YouTube, help him grow over there. But yeah, if you want to become a content creator, reach out to Humphrey and Humphrey, where can people find you?

Do you have an ad across all your socials? Yeah, it's usually Humphrey talks on the short form stuff and every social platform there is. And then on YouTube, it's just my name, Humphrey Yang. But if you just type in Humphrey, that's my username too. Oh, Humphrey, one name? You got the short one? It's also not that hard to get because there's not that many people named Humphrey.

Okay. Oh, okay. Awesome. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks, hungry. No problem.