SPEAKER_00: hey everybody it's wednesday and we have a whole i love a day like today because we have a an arc a bit of a story arc if you will it's a real social media heavy show multiple takes on influencer culture yeah there's a lot of hot takes going on these days

SPEAKER_03: but first we're going to break down a message we got from the senior director at the bnpl platform

SPEAKER_06: a firm because we talked about a firm with regards to walmart offering buy now pay later you can do

SPEAKER_08: a layaway plan for your milk so we're gonna uh give equal time if you will to that feedback yep

SPEAKER_00: then uh after that we're gonna talk about senator marco rubio announcing bipartisan legislation to

SPEAKER_15: ban tick tock your moment has arrived jacal finally uh some bipartisan action on this very important issue and this is where the story arc part comes in it just so happens that our next unicorn interview

SPEAKER_00: today because wednesday when we run an x unicorn is with pear pop ceo and founder cole mason talking about how that team is making the social media space more lucrative for creators and wanting to

Jason Calacanis: turn us all into creators using this uh simple platform that is going to make them a ton of money

SPEAKER_19: all right it's gonna be a great show stick with us this week in startups is brought to you by open phone as a startup founder a lot of mistakes are easy to roll back on but using your personal cell phone number as your company number isn't one of them open phone makes it easy to get business phone numbers for you and your team right on top of your existing devices visit openphone.com twist to get 25 off your first six months and fitbot tired of doing the same workouts at the gym fitbot will build you personalized workouts that help you progress with every set get 25 off your subscription or try

SPEAKER_03: off the app for free when you sign up now at fitbot.me twist yesterday molly we received no yesterday we

SPEAKER_26: covered buy now pay later this morning i received a spicy email um from the folks at a firm i told them okay i'm happy to uh discuss your email on air and they said okay great go ahead uh so this wasn't sent to

SPEAKER_06: us uh hey this is on background if they had said background not for publishing i would have been fine i would have said no but here's the email if you're watching on youtube but it's um you know four quick bullet points i guess about uh what they believe um we got wrong in the story about walmart offering buy now pay later to people buying like milk and eggs and socks which i found outrageous yeah we

SPEAKER_00: specifically uh took issue with the grocery part of it and in general i have been critical of buy now pay later and we talked about the concern of expanding like basically just expanding uh lay away to more and more and more people for inexpensive purchases at a time of economic downturn now i just point of uh

SPEAKER_03: clarity here clarification a firm the company that specializes in buy now pay later i think clarna was the first one and then a firm i think i came after them and a firm is not partners with walmart

SPEAKER_26: walmart's not their partner in this so they just sent this because they were offended by our general

SPEAKER_00: take on buy now pay later i think so yes a firm walmart has been using a firm oh like in a limited way and is now phasing them out and going their own way with buy now pay later so presumably yes what they a firm is of course the max levchin company um and presumably what happened is that they took issue with our characterization of the space as a whole is the way i read this email okay so uh we got this

SPEAKER_41: email from uh matt gross senior director uh over there what's what's the upset about so uh a couple

SPEAKER_00: points yeah a couple points uh wanted to kindly and respectfully request that you either please

Jason Calacanis: do the work that was in that was in italics in the original email neon sign behind me at my other studio do the work or reach out in the future should you ever be interested in engaging in a

SPEAKER_00: thoughtful dialogue about the credits and payment system few quick bullet points let's go straight to that i believe it is irresponsible and misleading to loop buy now pay later in the same category as mortgages student loans auto loans and even credit cards though this last one is justifiable i suspect you are aware of the major structural differences between these products i.e compounding interest late fees deferred interest versus seeing everything you owe up front by each individual transaction the conversation effectively contradicted itself in the segment by listing the major sources of household debt later in the segment mortgages student debt autos credit card debt and other

SPEAKER_51: that's okay that's bullet point one let's do one at a time so yeah let's take number one here yeah

SPEAKER_03: is there anybody listening to this program this week in startups i'm just asking you this molly because i i want to do the best job possible who doesn't understand the nuanced differences between a mortgage a student loan and credit card debt and pay la loans doesn't everybody

SPEAKER_53: understand that you listen to this week in startups and we've covered buy now pay later for a couple years here in detail for anybody listening who doesn't understand the nuanced

SPEAKER_00: difference between these things well i i think primarily too first of all i can't imagine that we have a very very smart audience many of whom are investors and founders so they definitely understand the difference between different kinds of debt yeah and i would say that what we were arguing is that piling even a new kind of debt yes on to that already giant pile of various other types of debt is the concern not that buy now pay later is somehow exactly the same as a mortgage

SPEAKER_03: how did matt miss that i don't i mean he's telling me to do the work i mean it's coming in spicy with jacal but okay i like it you want to come in swinging yeah i mean but you you're very

SPEAKER_00: he thinks we should have made it a different kind of debt but it's still debt it's debt on top of debt on top of like you just listed seven kinds of debt that every consumer has or most maybe not a mortgage but rent and that's the point so i guess that would be our rebuttal is we yes lumped it all together as

SPEAKER_03: monthly payments debt service you have to pay money back that you didn't have you took a loan and the loans have different textures to them but they're all loans and they all stack on top of each other as you are correctly pointing out so that is not contradicting our argument in any way that is it the

SPEAKER_51: essential that's essentially been your argument from the beginning right you already have a bunch

SPEAKER_69: of debt don't make more yes yeah okay so completely completely missed the point on number one let's see

SPEAKER_71: if he gets any uh something more insightful and number two go the overwhelming majority of american

SPEAKER_00: households revolve you were right credit card issuers don't like transactors like jason and molly i should say that revolve here is code for carry debt okay the majority of american households have some

Jason Calacanis: credit card debt that they are paying interest on every month i'm just translating that but the fact is matt writes that the average outstanding credit card debt per household is about six thousand dollars

SPEAKER_00: versus six hundred dollars outstanding balances for a firm users credit cards have compounding interest late fees and deferred interest while a firm does not and we have made zero dollars in late fees ever

SPEAKER_77: okay what's your rebuttal well you take this rebuttal yeah so in this one i think we should say

SPEAKER_00: one important note it's true that a firm does not charge late fees we okay we accept that we accept that congratulations i would say the fact that people currently have a six hundred dollar balance uh with a firm compared to six thousand dollars in credit card debt is is probably a function of availability like as the market for buy now pay later grows yeah maybe people will have larger balances right now they can't necessarily do that on every purchase they make right but it feels to me like the goal of buy now pay later is for everybody to get to the point where

Jason Calacanis: they have six thousand dollars in credit card now debt and six thousand dollars in bnpl debt

SPEAKER_03: the explicit point of a firm or any i'm gonna take a firm out of it so that we get this a little less personal and matt yes maybe that's a good idea matt's making kind of personal i'm gonna the brooklyn in me wants to make it very personal but um congratulations that you made a more competitive product sincerely as an entrepreneur like great that's what you're supposed to do like yeah a firm or any buy now pay later has to have a better model to compete against credit cards which are ubiquitous

SPEAKER_26: and um the model here is uh for people who don't have credit cards i guess or they supposedly have some algorithm that's better this is how it's always been pitched to me that they can assess credit worthiness better but all this says to me is that they're piling more debt on top of households it

SPEAKER_06: could be better debt but it's still debt back to point one and uh yeah late fees are lame sure congratulations on doing late fees and they're taking the money uh from my understanding is this their profits come out of the sellers so the sellers are in some way picking up what would have been the profit margin charged to customers so they may sellers are going to raise prices all right it's

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SPEAKER_15: no problem easy peasy lemon squeezy let's get back to the show i mean listen not having ways in which

SPEAKER_00: buy now pay later could be better than credit cards no compounding interest is a huge deal consumers do not understand how evil compounding interest really is and the interest rates on credit cards are shockingly high and and somehow never go down even when interest rates go to zero at the fed right you're still paying 16 17 18 so having a lower interest by now pay later loan is in that way better than credit card debt i will concede that point and not charging late fees sure is great considering the numbers that we looked up which is that two in five people have struggled to make their buy now payment later payments and a third of them have missed them complete completely and a quarter of customers who missed payments or made them late also failed to pay another bill because they took on too much debt okay i will i will definitely grant the point about this being less damaging to consumers in sense in the sense of interest and late fees

SPEAKER_03: fair point made the other information that's come out is that buy now pay later customers are you know uh experiencing a large number of defaults a large number of late payments a large

SPEAKER_26: number of missed payments so it's always been my position and i believe yours as well you'll correct

SPEAKER_03: me if i'm wrong that we're extending too much credit to people overall yep and the more ways you offer people to extend it the more overextended people are going to get and we're offended by the idea that companies are trying to get people to extend every payment they could possibly make what are people going to do they're going to go out to get a what next dominoes is going to offer buy now pay later i'm sure that by now pay later companies are trying to get dominoes to do buy now pay later like this is not how you should live your life folks you should live your life with a better balance sheet and you can i think these companies doing this i think it's immoral that's still my position

SPEAKER_35: you haven't convinced me otherwise sorry i would note that the other thing about not you know

Jason Calacanis: they don't charge late fees for example if you miss a payment but you can be reported to credit

SPEAKER_00: agencies okay so trans union already has said that they will include by now pay later debt on your credit report meaning you will get dinged uh if you miss a payment and these companies report

SPEAKER_106: you and the other two experian and the other one yep okay experience are going to uh are going to include that debt on your credit report so okay so on the one hand by now pay later it could cause

SPEAKER_00: just as much damage on the one hand it could help you build up your credit like let's say you are new to the country and you don't have a lot of credit right it could be like a store credit card which those are easier to get because they don't do such a deep credit check or it could be like revolving debt like there's an opportunity to use buy now pay later to build a positive credit score if you can afford it and again i look i'm aware that a lot of this comes down to consumer education and there are lots of you know people have made the same arguments we're making about robin hood or any thing that entices people to spend money that they don't have correct but i think that you

Jason Calacanis: start your argument from a disingenuous place the second you refuse to acknowledge that the second you refuse to acknowledge that there are people who will get out over their skis here people that american consumers are already living on unsustainable amounts of debt yes and then that is where we get

SPEAKER_10: to our third point okay yeah which is where we go crazy oh okay i know it's easy to say as one of the

SPEAKER_00: most successful angel investors ever that people should not use credit i'm sorry excuse me right i just want to point out how obnoxiously elitist of a comment it is where people should listen to jason and molly about when it is acceptable to utilize credit versus not okay guess the person that is buying those 36 eggs and gallons of milk for their family should get a payday loan or revolve on their

Jason Calacanis: credit card if they can qualify one or if they if they don't have all the money up front or just

SPEAKER_126: starve all right this is where matt's being an idiot yeah um you lost us number one i'll just point out

SPEAKER_26: i spent the majority of my life broke and in debt and poor which you don't know but when i was 30 some much years old i made my first hit up until that point i lived in with some amount of debt and i live

SPEAKER_03: month to month than my parents did so be careful if you want to take a swing at somebody because

SPEAKER_131: same buddy same which is why we pay our credit cards every month yes this is why yeah because we learned

SPEAKER_01: this the most painful way possible it took me a decade to rebuild my credit you've yeah exactly so

SPEAKER_26: anyway um and it makes me think less of the company i'll be honest i mean that's not like i don't know

SPEAKER_01: how you thought that was gonna go yeah not not cool but also i've been a journalist for 20 years so like i hope to be obnoxiously elitist someday exactly exactly uh so i mean if you call me working on it but

SPEAKER_138: elitist anyway guess that person buying 36 eggs i just literally last night i just bought 36 eggs it just coincidentally i bought three dozen eggs well this is what payday lenders say too

SPEAKER_141: the idea that they're that they can either that they either need to take a buy now pay later loan

SPEAKER_135: or starve is so utterly logically like it's just a fallacy it's utterly broken yes this is the most

SPEAKER_53: cynical stupid argument you could be offensive it's a it's an offensive uh ad hominem attack and it does no uh it doesn't help a company like a firm to say stupid stuff like this and make a bad argument because the choice is not uh starving or use buy now or use a firm that's not what consumers are doing consumers are not going waking up today and going oh my god will i starve today or will a firm save my life right by allowing me to do four easy payments for my eggs and milk

SPEAKER_00: call me when you're out here lobbying for like living wages call me when you're out here with a

SPEAKER_141: financial education product that helps consumers like you could easily easily if you are a firm tack on those aspects to your business without sounding just i mean i'm sorry there are like government

SPEAKER_00: there are government assistance programs there are a million things that you could actually be doing to make sure that people aren't in a position like you could literally become the leader in trying to educate consumers so that they are not in a position to be overwhelmed by their monthly debt you

SPEAKER_03: americans should not be living on credit it should be for emergency purposes only i believe this buy now pay later stuff is a terrible financial habit i believe everybody should be educated to never use it you should only use it as a last resort if you need to buy more eggs if you and you're short you need to maybe find some more work or cut some other expenses and try to balance your your your living expenses that's hard work i understand it i'm i have sympathy for people who've been in that position i have been in that position personally myself it is not hard it is it is hard work it is suffering but doing buy now pay later or credit cards or payday loans i put them all in the same bucket uh sure one could be better than the other uh obviously but i i do put it in the same bucket which is something you should not do it defers your something you should not do it defers your pain i did it i lived on

SPEAKER_00: a great i lived you know because i grew up absolutely flat busted broke like periodically food insecure broke yeah learned nothing about finance financial management right and attempted to live on a credit

SPEAKER_35: card for college yep big mistake and spent 15 years clawing out of that hole it's just like it's just

SPEAKER_01: this is not an argument that is ever going to work on the two of us it's actually the the literal wrong

SPEAKER_03: email for the literal wrong two people if you said you know hey listen you want to buy a laptop or a

SPEAKER_26: phone it's an expensive item but it does last many years so why not spread it out it makes financial sense

SPEAKER_06: to spread it out and apple has a ton of cash on their balance sheet so they want to beat android so they offer monthly just to get you to buy more okay it's a competitive thing they're offering it's it's in the best interest of consumers okay a home is a huge thing so pay it off for a number of years okay and education is a huge thing pay it off over a number of years because it's got some tremendous value great consumables do not fall into that your clothes don't fall into that your vacation shouldn't fall into that

SPEAKER_53: if you're paying for a vacation on buy now pay later that is a mistake it is a mistake to use buy now pay later for anything that is not a considered purchase i'm sorry that's my position and you know what you've all you've done here matt is confirmed to me that your company is on the wrong side of this i don't believe you're on the right side of this i think you should only use these molly for things that are thousands of dollars that provide massive value and that you need

SPEAKER_02: yeah i'm sorry i think we have a difference of opinion here understanding the smart use of debt

SPEAKER_00: is like financial that's like it's an important part of your financial education a financial education that again i want to stress is missing in the united states and a firm has a huge opportunity

Jason Calacanis: here to step in and be part of that because this is in many ways buy now pay later is better debt than credit card debt and if you are talking about one of those big purchases then this could be better debt because there are times when spreading a payment out over 12 months or 24

SPEAKER_00: months assuming that your other finances are in order and you can afford it with zero interest or two percent interest or three percent interest compared to 16 percent interest is great that's a great opportunity you can use this debt wisely but until you are pairing the expansion of your service with the education about that this to me feels this email feels so defensive and angry that what it tells me is we're not the only ones who are saying this about buy now pay later we hit the nail on the head

SPEAKER_02: we hit the nail on the head we hit the nail on the head and it hurts too much i think they're what

SPEAKER_26: they're concerned about which i get is they're concerned that buy now pay later um you know has gone

SPEAKER_163: too far and that now you know maybe they're that people are going to throw the the baby out with the

SPEAKER_26: bath water if you had a friend molly let's just say they're um i'll even not say middle class let's say

SPEAKER_53: you know listen they're they're in the lowest third of income owners they're living month to month and they said to you hey i'm living month to month here you know i don't have a lot of debt but um i

SPEAKER_06: don't know i just said i was gonna go on vacation and i saw some affirm thing and uh you know it said i could spread my payments out so i decided i'd go on a better vacation would you advise that person

SPEAKER_167: well i would say have you budgeted for that have you set aside the money that you're going to need to

Jason Calacanis: make that payment every month okay do you know you can do it like i would say first show me the spreadsheet where you taught it up your existing monthly payments okay do you know how much the

SPEAKER_00: monthly payment is going to be on the buy now pay later loan for your vacation and can you afford it and can you afford it if something goes wrong but no what i would tell my friend is don't do that stack cash because that is what the financial advisor who like saved my life and made me able to be an independent person yes said to me don't do anything until you have cash reserves it sucks to sacrifice it sucks it blows that we can't like but we have this whole culture that's like 80 of gdp is consumer

Jason Calacanis: spending you have to keep up with the joneses you need this new thing and there's always some new thing coming out that you need and it's all part of the lie that is like burning the planet ruining your finances and there's no universe in which you can tell me that even if this is a better version of that it's still not a version of that it's a version of that it is we're trying to incentivize

SPEAKER_03: people to consume more and to consume things they can't afford that's what these services do they entice you to get ahead of your skis they're trying to frame it in this horrific argument that they're better than payday loaners that's like payday loaner saying well we're better than loan sharks right loan sharks break your legs we just charge 30 interest payday loaners and credit card companies like well we're better than payday loaners who are better than loan sharks and then a firm is saying well we're better than loan sharks and credit cards credit cards and payday loans right and it's like you know what you're all a bad habit for anybody to start here's an idea do the vacation you can afford

SPEAKER_53: to pay for and then save up some cash have six weeks and then eventually six months of dry powder and sleep well at night you don't need to upgrade your laptop you don't need to instead of going to san diego and staying at you know a comfort in which is what i did with my wife we you know we did vacations where we could drive there yes i was gonna say we drove to grandma's house yeah we drove places and we had the best time of our lives and you know what you go to italy you extend yourself to hawaii whatever it is you're not going to have any it's going to be an incrementally better time and the stress of having spread it out on a firm or another buy now pay later is not going to be good for you you're going to then live with stress you'll forget the vacation and you're going to be living in a life of stress and to do it for your eggs and bacon here's an idea if you're that short you got to do what you got to do you got to work another shift you got to work another couple of hours or you got to cut some expenses other places and just try to balance your your your your budget balance your budget don't engage in buy now pay later don't run up your credit cards obviously don't do payday loans it's all

SPEAKER_06: the same bucket they're all the same thing they're all a bad idea that's my position you've now

SPEAKER_51: because of you hardened it you actually hardened the position you literally just hardened my position

SPEAKER_53: with this horrific stupid argument matt it's a dumb argument and i want to know personal

SPEAKER_01: which is really dumb i know like you took basically two blue collar kids and accused them of being elitist and now we're pissed is what's happening here like now we're pissed literally

SPEAKER_187: every to my audience please send me every piece of data on buy now pay later uh being bad for

SPEAKER_03: consumers oh no i want every i don't want anecdotes i mean but fine you can send me well and here's what i want the actual data on it is it worse than credit cards or not right well and it's not the only

SPEAKER_00: reason it's not worse than credit cards it's not because of the interest that does matter right sure compounding interest is a huge deal congratulations on being better than credit cards it's also not as widespread not by a mile and to the to the point that we just made about the defensiveness in that email i want to point to you a report in september okay in which the u.s consumer financial protection bureau okay suggested that companies like clarna and afterpay which allow customers to pay for products and services and installments must be subjected to stricter oversight oh in the course of its investigation the cfpb found that buy now pay later vendors are approving more customers for loans yeah year after year 73 percent in 2021 compared to the 69 percent in 2020 which means 73 percent of people who are applying for buy now pay later are getting approved and that delinquencies on these services are rising sharply okay and the buy now pay later industries charge off rate the rate of uncollectible loans which live on your credit report for seven years uh was 2.39 percent in 2021

Jason Calacanis: up from 1.83 percent in 2020 of course that's the data economy so you want to know about the data that's

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SPEAKER_26: 25 off well done here's the thing this is probably coming from a place of you know they feel like they're in the um they feel like they're in the the the crosshairs of this regulation but i just want to point out my editor my intellectual consistency on this issue i have been incredibly intellectually

SPEAKER_53: honest and consistent and when i'm not intellectually consistent please tell me the audience you molly anybody but i just did a tweet storm about venture debt and i was like listen don't get venture debt build a profitable business get to break even don't start paying for your burn rate on debt because it will explode in your lap my message to founders and cap and capital allocators venture capitalists if the true elites in our society right or amongst the true elites people you know running these companies and investing in them i'm telling them to not live on credit i'm telling the elites to not run on credit i'm telling my position on college has been incredibly consistent it's not worth it to go 250k in debt for any of these degrees take that money and start your own companies angel invest it and get skills spread it out over take the 250k you're going to go in debt spread it out over 10 years put 25k into it i am editor i'm intellectually consistent on this it is not personal to our friends over at a firm who have made it personal right this is about consumers this is about consumers making

SPEAKER_00: smarter financial decisions and the idea of enticing them to make poor financial decisions yeah is unpalatable and i would say the only hole in your consistency is robin hood although i bet you would never well robin hood certainly has enticed people retail investors to gamble more than they maybe should and then the other key and i bet you

SPEAKER_24: would tell people don't play on margin oh i've been very consistent about margin and so if if there's

SPEAKER_03: two pieces to the robin hood story on margin i've said that yeah and they tightened up their margin right quick um because they realized hey you know getting people i don't mind people trading on margin who can afford it if you're like a super sophisticated investor if you're chamath or you know i don't know you're a hedge fund private equity i don't care if you do margin i mean you're you're rich you're

SPEAKER_26: a true elite now if you're just starting to invest yeah i don't i don't like the idea of margin yeah or perhaps a margin that liquidates you very quickly and that is half the amount of your equities right

SPEAKER_06: so with all the equities i have i have margin of course i have it why wouldn't i it's it's a de

SPEAKER_26: minimum amount of my net worth and it's just a simple tool and yes it's a sophisticated tool and it should only be a small percentage and we we went over this with crypto and we all we all editorially and intellectually consistent now the the robinhood gambling piece you know um robin hood incenting people to gamble is like a very broad statement i always like to bring it down to like can you please give me the specific and people are like they do confetti when you confirm a trade and i'm like okay

SPEAKER_56: i mean there have been lots there have been lots of i'm not trying to pick a fight about robin hood

SPEAKER_00: but i'm fine though but anything but there are but gamifying you know i mean there have been lots of like they stopped the loot boxes thing and video games like gamifying gambling

SPEAKER_15: is a great it can be great but can be great investing is gambling has investing is built in retail investing stock by stock picking is a gambling it's gambling i agree yeah i i i literally say when

SPEAKER_187: i'm j trading yeah i'm placing a bet it's gambling this is my bet here is the bet i'm making i'm

SPEAKER_212: taking a gamble i'm risking so anyway you know but don't do it on margin do it with money you can

SPEAKER_62: afford to lose it's all like it's all of a piece and that piece is freaking like why do we why is my

SPEAKER_00: kid learning stuff that chat gpt is going to be able to write for him and not learning how to manage his money like i don't understand why basic financial education is not a required part of school

SPEAKER_03: curriculum it makes me crazy here's your financial education for the day from molly wood who worked at marketplace this week in startups and is now a venture capitalist and who grew up poor and who

SPEAKER_219: effed her own credit there is nobody more credible her advice to you is just don't don't get over your skis no and any of these tools are going to get you over your skis yes yeah molly uses well i don't

SPEAKER_53: want to get i'll give a free ad here she you rent the runway what is yours rent the runway i love it

SPEAKER_221: molly uses rent the runway molly's rich come on and she's using rent the runway i'm like molly really

SPEAKER_224: she's like i prefer it it's better my clothes i look great i you know i change my clothes every month

SPEAKER_24: i'm like okay molly molly lives below her means i live below my means i do live below my means that

SPEAKER_226: is really it's the greatest feeling you know why because when you don't it all falls apart

SPEAKER_53: i do because i'm a prepper yes me too isn't it nice to hit your pillow at night knowing during this financial crisis that you're covered and you're in a secure place yeah fantastic you could weather the storm you use buy now pay later you're you're ahead of your skis what if there's a bump in the road you lose your job you get sick god forbid you have some family member has an emergency you know any any number of unexpected things can happen god forbid there but for the grace so be prepared don't use credit build savings that's what we're telling you and uh to matt thank you for

SPEAKER_233: your email 26 minutes of great content oh man max lepchin max come on the show go on the pot again i

SPEAKER_10: like mad i emailed i actually emailed i not emailed i interviewed max about a firm when it launched and

Jason Calacanis: i was like are you worried i'm gonna go find that marketplace interview because i was like are you worried that people are going to take on more debt than they can afford and of course he was like

SPEAKER_237: what no no okay yeah um sure you know whatever things are you scale rooms only came up this only

SPEAKER_243: came up because you called us too far you went too far you took it too far if you did it for a laptop

SPEAKER_53: i'd be okay if you did it you know for vacations and cars i was like but you start doing it for milk and

SPEAKER_24: eggs sorry i'm gonna just call it what it is yeah it's predatory affirm or starve is not that's not

SPEAKER_71: a good argument hey max was on episode 794 four years ago four years ago he must have been on marketplace around the same time all right i'll find that interview we'll find it later all right

Jason Calacanis: let's do real quick another victory lap for j cal another god i'm just like it's trigger jason day

SPEAKER_10: no i like this i like a fun as we can say i know i know he loves a fight senator marco rupio

SPEAKER_251: if it's virtuous and sometimes even if it's not sometimes just fun to fight um senator marco rubio

SPEAKER_00: and congressman mike gallagher have introduced bipartisan legislation to ban tick tock in the united states this of course is not the first time that tick tock has been in the crosshires of the united states government uh donald trump's during donald trump's presidency there were attempts to force the sale of tick tock uh and then now this legislation is called the averting the national threat of internet surveillance oppressive censorship and influence and algorithmic learning by the chinese

Jason Calacanis: communist party act or anti-social ccp love it i always want to know like how many hours they spend on

SPEAKER_53: these on these names you know what i love a good branding i'm gonna give anti-social ccp i'm gonna give it a b plus i can do better i'll workshop it um ccp don't tread on me boom yeah but then you couldn't

SPEAKER_35: call it that's an a minus averting the national threat of internet surveillance oppressive censorship and influence and algorithmic learning by the chinese communist party act perfect it's gotta be

SPEAKER_10: it's gotta be a come on an anagram or whatever quote from register representative gallagher tick tock

SPEAKER_00: is digital fentanyl that's addicting americans collecting troves of their data and censoring their

Jason Calacanis: news digital fentanyl i literally use the same fentanyl on the streets i'm just saying anyway

SPEAKER_26: the point is that that's addicting it's a definitely is and uh it's going to be a bummer for the i don't

SPEAKER_06: know six weeks during which it goes away and then it's going to be built into every other product is going to be in twitter no i'm not making an official announcement i don't work there it's going to be built

SPEAKER_85: into it's already built into youtube it's built into instagram it's built into everything and um

SPEAKER_02: i so you're so you think it's going to get banned i am you're leaping ahead to it is going to happen it's going to be bad i think it's the 90 case i mean listen and i do not oh this is the literal

SPEAKER_107: opposite of buying boats this is flushing boats down the toilet there's no chance they ban tick tock

SPEAKER_69: uh oh okay um i under i appreciate that uh position here's what i'll say that it where we're here's the

SPEAKER_03: here's the stick we're banning it and then here's like the carrot or here's the exit ramp yeah as we talked about previously okay we're going to divest it's going to be in america it's going to be on american servers we'll cash in our chips and it's not going to use the algorithm in china and you know there's that's it but to the people who are working there honestly the people who are working at tick tock i really do think you're all traitors and i just want you all to quit all mass i know it's hard to do but get other jobs i really think it's treasonous to support this company um i have a

SPEAKER_275: friend you know check out uh there's a really great trend right now of sororities doing really cool dance moves so check it out on tick tock i mean it's addicting my brother my brother just had his um

Jason Calacanis: kia broken into because apparently a trend on tick tock is to show how there are certain models of kia that you can steal using a usb stick so some friends of his had their car stolen got it doing this and i mean you know whatever every social every social platform causes major issues at scale because scale can be uh very problematic i have one friend who i consider my bellwether of like okay

SPEAKER_00: things have things have now made it to the mainstream like she's kind of my darling friend who's like never really up on stuff um and she texted me two nights ago and was like dude i deleted tick tock from my phone i just felt like it was taking so much of my time and it was leading me to like a really dark place and it would be this weird she's like i just i started watching tick tocks about that murder in idaho and then that's really dark content but then i just felt like it was serving you know and like two hours would be gone and i mean i think people are legitimately starting to worry about tick tock i think this is like this is going to be an interest if this advances if this bill advances and i don't know if it will because there's going to be a lot of pressure of the kind

Jason Calacanis: that you've talked about from investors in tick tock from you know people who want kids to vote

SPEAKER_00: like there's gonna be a lot of pushback i think on this bill but it is a real game of chicken with the ccp to see to what extent they would be willing to give up control over the algorithm or move parts

SPEAKER_38: of it to the us i really think this should have been an executive order i think it's a national

SPEAKER_26: security issue that that's my personal belief i you know i because you know what i pay attention

SPEAKER_03: because i'm paying attention sometimes the biggest crimes and frauds and attack vectors are just obvious they've already targeted people they've already used it to manipulate just open your eyes people they look at the society they're living in look at how they track their own citizens where their adversary how dumb are you people who don't believe this is happening you have to be a complete and utter moron who's not paying attention to not think that the ccp would track their

SPEAKER_288: rivals us when they do it to their own citizens in the end you know every stupid social platform

SPEAKER_53: india banned this stuff immediately they're like oh yeah no you want to spy on us no sorry you don't

SPEAKER_70: get to spy on us it doesn't exist in china china doesn't let its own citizens use this because they

SPEAKER_00: know it's bad for them yeah i mean every social media platform at scale is a vector for disinformation and state-sponsored attack full stop and they're all being used in that way and tick tock is more

SPEAKER_42: vulnerable than most and i still don't think there's any universe so much it gets banned in the us no

SPEAKER_292: it's it's it's it's it's going to get divested or banned i believe it i believe it look at the tensions

SPEAKER_06: right now man we're we're apple is moving iphone iphone 14 production is happening in india for

SPEAKER_26: people in india where he he's moving uh tm uh tmsc is tsmc i'm sorry thank you tsmc is now uh doing uh chips uh what what what did tim cook say is going to do them in um arizona i believe yeah so you know

SPEAKER_03: the the what they call it uncoupling yeah decoupling is here this is going to be part of the overall uncoupling of our partnership with china it's going to be interesting times interesting times ahead

Jason Calacanis: it's you know this is a i will say this is one of those where like the messenger is tough for me to it's like if it weren't rubio here's the thing if it weren't rubio writing things in the watch washington post like i didn't want you to all use tick tock and move to china it's like however you

David Friedberg: know whatever this is this is a real conversation yeah but you're being intellectually honest here it

SPEAKER_309: is hard sometimes to see who the messenger is that's why it's important to remember it's bipartisan when you said that guy i don't know gallagher or something called the fentanyl i don't even remember

SPEAKER_03: his name i don't know if he's a republican or democrat i just know i happen to agree with his opinion so for americans we need to let this partisan stuff go away when we're talking about a rivalry with china this is a dangerous dicey situation i'm sorry rubio's triggering i'm sorry it's not

SPEAKER_80: even just that rubio's triggering it's that like it's it's all some version of propaganda there's

Jason Calacanis: always some prop there's propaganda on top of the propaganda and propaganda about the propaganda and

SPEAKER_185: did he bring up biden and biden's done a bad job or did he make it by the whole the whole washington

SPEAKER_00: well the bill they say is bipartisan because they got a democrat to sign on but his whole washington post like editorial about how we need to ban tick tock was like unlike biden who wants it to ruin our

SPEAKER_62: kids and blah blah blah and it's just like look at that point at that point it's like the email from matt right i'm like you know what you got you have a leg to stand on here yes don't shoot yourself in

SPEAKER_51: the foot like don't shoot yourself in the foot the win take the win it's bipartisan take the standing on the leg why would you shoot the foot you need the foot sometimes i have this in my you know

SPEAKER_26: um you know discussions with other friends besties in fact when i'm like this doesn't necessarily relate to any presidential administration right let's just talk about this from first principles do we want a communist country to have access to our kids location exactly and their photo albums

SPEAKER_317: no no we want them to have an algorithm just because they're communist but because they're like

SPEAKER_104: a declared a rival let's say at best to the united states that's a good word they're a rival

SPEAKER_318: they're our primary arrival in the world we can't give them this kind of advantage and they're known

SPEAKER_06: for behaving badly inside their own country with the same equivalent right so you just intellectual honesty is important here and the more we can make things not partisan you know i really like to make things i always ask people to switch the names of people in these arguments right uh with a republican or a democrat or your left right a b black white whatever whatever you're trying to get across just switch the genders switch the nationality switch the whatever and just say how would it feel and it

SPEAKER_03: it's often eye-opening right it's often eye-opening yeah definitely if it was russia or north korea and not china right what would we think about tick tock right no it was north korea people would be like get that out of here yes okay north korea is less of a threat to us than china so we're done yeah we're done here folks and if it was china and it was the united states you'd or you already have that question answered because they don't allow twitter facebook you know or tick tock or even

SPEAKER_327: china's like it's fentanyl they're like bingo china's like she's like heard that he's like go

SPEAKER_15: he's like yeah that's how we designed it nailed it you guys are not going to see the missiles coming because you're just going to be like look at the huskies by the way she's like by the way we also make

SPEAKER_331: your fentanyl we're sending that to america too like china's literally like you guys can't use

SPEAKER_51: social media exactly they can they let them play like one game they let them play games for like two hours on the weekends and then on their tick tock whatever the equipment is they're like here's

SPEAKER_03: some really great math problems hey folks wake up the two worst things for our populace right now are fentanyl and tick tock they're both come out of china i'm going to argue all social media but okay i mean i really argument like sincerely hours a day if you if you do if you do social media purposefully for one hour a day i think you're good when you get past the one hour mark i think

Jason Calacanis: it starts having a bad effect on you oh 100 and then some more than others i mean where where tick tock i would argue is a little worse than others is in the insight in the quit the speed at which you can lose that hour gone it's unbelievable and it's like just keep going just keep going just keep going

SPEAKER_212: just keep going just keep going i i had it the other night i'm watching white lotus in this

SPEAKER_03: i'm watching the end of white lotus and there's some like musical interlude thing and they're showing waves and i just reflexively you know open twitter and then i opened uh tick tock because i wanted to hear about the sam bankman fraud stuff because i was like well i wonder what the reaction is on the two social networks and i had to stop myself and i'm like wait a second i love this show

SPEAKER_53: the show is visually stunning what the f am i doing here i'm so addicted to twitter and fentanyl i'm

SPEAKER_220: sorry tick tock i had to just put the phone down equally fentanyl you gotta come on of course they are one's intellectual fentanyl one's visual fentanyl it's like in one hour a day that's my new rule

SPEAKER_53: one hour a day yeah boom i'm trying to hit that myself one hour a day listen it's and it's critical for our business i believe you know when you're a media person it is honestly like that's the dilemma

Jason Calacanis: like twitter makes me feel bad and also is necessary for the job that i do now which is an interesting actually which is a great segue into today's next unicorn interview which is you also

SPEAKER_317: launched a substack right and so you i did reclaim i'm trying to break social time yes 100 writing

SPEAKER_239: trying to break the cycle and create instead of consume rachel and i had this great conversation

Jason Calacanis: actually about how the the other decoupling that's happening right now is social from media tick tock is media yeah twitter is media mostly what i do a very small number of people contribute

SPEAKER_00: and create on twitter and the vast vast majority consume same with tick tock and substack to me

Jason Calacanis: that's that is actually active it's creating isn't it by the way great tip on the chat thing oh my god

SPEAKER_03: the chat is so fun i saw that yeah i just want to give a shout out to substack they've been working on that product for a while it's fantastic i signed up two years ago and it was like kind of clunky and yeah this is pretty base pretty pretty basic and then i checked on it like last year and i was like well this is mid and then i checked on it with the app and um i was like okay this is an excellent product now so i i fired up i moved my stuff off another mail service provider because it had like all the powerful features that i don't need for an occasional email and it was expensive and substack's free and i'm like well you can't beat the price of free and then i promote your substack and i don't know if you promote mine yet i do but we start oh thank you um so i saw when i looked in and i was like oh i got molly nine subscribers i felt great i was like oh so somebody signed up you know i had whatever 20 people sign up for mine when you sign up for mine it upsells you on molly so i was like well that's interesting good feature substack yeah what you're referring to and you can choose who you yes

SPEAKER_10: i don't know if this will show there but you can choose who you shout out like who you want to be

SPEAKER_03: on your yeah you pick but you are talking about this chat thing and there's a really cool chat feature where um if you sign up for mollywood.substack.com or calacanis.substack.com or twistartups.substack.com there's a chat room in the app and i saw you had 26 replies to your first uh you know mention there and then i got a bunch of replies i'm like okay well this is interesting it's like the point oh one percent of your email list can like chat to you about the last thing you wrote they can't start threads but they can reply to your thread which is a nice feature genuinely

SPEAKER_00: social like it feels fun it's not like people just yelling at you it's like you've started a conversation which is kind of what the best social media used to be it's really interesting like we're

Jason Calacanis: going back to we're going back to some basics however influencer culture and the creator economy

SPEAKER_00: okay not going anywhere at all and i had a very interesting i cannot wait for you to hear this because i'm really curious to hear what you're gonna gonna think about this interview with uh cole mason the founder and ceo of pear pop which is a marketplace for social collaborations so basically it's a self-serve this did not exist before and by the way the investors in this thing are like a-list can we drop some of those in it's like mark cuban and jake paul and amy schumer and i mean it's just sort of every alexis ohanian's firm led their big series a 300 million valuation wow and it's a marketplace where a brand can say okay i want to reach you know a hundred micro influencers to create this surround sound vibe that everybody's talking about my thing so they put up what is effectively like a project brief that's presented as a challenge like tick tock i mean it's all using

SPEAKER_10: the language of creators and then creators can be like i'll do the one for chipotle i'll do the one for nike i'll do the one for kleenex oh yeah i've seen this idea before somebody had created this

SPEAKER_353: previously didn't work though but i saw the startup idea before yeah so basically it's like it's like uber

SPEAKER_309: airbnb but to connect creators and brands yeah so that that has existed for a while and then

SPEAKER_185: here it's like a contest so is it whoever wins or a hundred percent of people it's not a contest it's just that the every 100 of people get paid and they get paid based on their performance perfect so

SPEAKER_309: it's like social creation with affiliate revenue and like a little payment yeah so if yeah so this

SPEAKER_53: takes the long tail of um influencers and gives them the ability to participate like kim kardashian

SPEAKER_314: when she's paying her million dollar fine for crypto scams right i'm joking exactly but you know

SPEAKER_00: a non-crypto scam but yeah i mean it says like you've got maybe a million followers and a brand hasn't found you yet and sent you an email but you go onto this platform and you can find campaigns that

SPEAKER_227: work for you and then their their next evolution is to create a scenario in which like i as a customer of let's say rent the runway rent would get could go on this platform and get paid almost like a loyalty

Jason Calacanis: program yes for reviewing the thing that i actually bought so everyone becomes a creator a bad review

SPEAKER_10: no yeah that's not no this is like this is not that this is like yeah this is being a spokesperson you get to secure the bag and it turns every single person on social media into a spokesperson which i have

David Friedberg: lots of have you guys to do that have you ever done a spokesperson thing i just got asked and i'm considering it really for a brand i've only gotten like kind of ones that i think are a little like

SPEAKER_00: air i get a lot of those like oh yeah this jewelry thing or the blah blah blah i've never i haven't

David Friedberg: gotten like a real one like i went for a product i love that i talk about all the time and they were

SPEAKER_69: like hey would could we use you in our ads and i was like i'm already doing free ads for you they're like yeah but if we took a clip of you saying something nice about us and then we used it as an ad and i was like huh yeah it's a bit sell outy but like isn't that what when a paltrow and george clooney and everybody else does like i guess that means i'm becoming a bit of a celebrity my my endorsement

SPEAKER_380: matters that this is what the influencer is like i know that's straight up influencer that's a hundred

SPEAKER_219: percent influencer influencers in your feed this is like they use me in an ad campaign hi i'm you know

SPEAKER_03: hassan minaj for hassan did something for like t-mobile or something and i saw it and i was like

SPEAKER_275: hassan congrats on getting paid i literally had that reaction i was like has hassan you're you're

SPEAKER_382: doing great for this yeah you're doing t-mobile whatever it was at a verizon i can't remember

SPEAKER_00: and i was like this is why i actually felt good for him and this is why and americans are not i think that's what's so provocative about this conversation is that they all want authenticity and they all want to pay you to be a spokesperson in some way that will be authentic and so at some point nothing is authentic anymore but this is why celebs make all the money doing this in tokyo and japan because or in japan and and china because like we have this sort of purity vibe about it but i think creator economy is making all that go away like now if i hear somebody talking about something they like i just assume they're getting paid and by the way no we're at the runway it's still not paying me

SPEAKER_24: uh no i mean we have a version of this there's a hybrid to this which is obviously um host red ads

SPEAKER_26: that we do here yeah but host red ads are not endorsements because it's very nuanced they've asked can i take the ad from this week in startups and then play it somewhere else is like no no no no you didn't pay for that no you paid for me to read you an ad here all good and you know we say no to a bunch of people it's fine like when i'm back in the day people wanted me to eat cigarettes um but uh yeah this is kind of an interesting one i'm i'm i might do it i might do it nothing matters as a

SPEAKER_53: it's not montclair i wish it was no it's just you know and i uh if i had a positive outcome because of this yeah product and i'm already talking about it right if you're already doing

SPEAKER_62: it you might as well get paid i mean that's kind of where i landed at the end of this interview which you'll hear is like well i'm already doing it and they're always begging everybody every brand is now begging me to write a review yeah which is free labor on my part yeah no no so maybe be like pay

SPEAKER_26: me i have a strategy for um my yelp reviews now if i really like a restaurant yeah like and it's hard to get reservations i follow them on social and uh then i will uh take my yelp review i'll write a nice comment on their social from jason calican now you know on yelp it puts like your first name your last initial right so you'd be molly w but i use the same uh avatar now or i have to actually update it but i was using the same advert the same you know avatar image i guess i'm also going to have my same profile photo so because now all of these uh restaurants are looking at the comments and they're looking at the followers and the likes and i'm verified now on instagram somebody verified me because there's so much spam the verification then they know who i am at the restaurant

SPEAKER_53: this is very powerful on reservations then i write just a really dull if i like the place i write a really considered review just two sentences three sentences and i was like this was a shockingly well constructed menu and it happens to be the best uh italian in lake tahoe i was delighted to find this

SPEAKER_03: quality in my ski town um pay particular attention to the freshman process uh it literally took me you know like two minutes to write this because i'm a writer and i'm good at this and so i write that i follow the account and then in my phone book i write the name of the hostess and the owner who i'm at

SPEAKER_152: and i put it in my phone book every time i look at their names yeah i come in and i'm like juliana how are you doing we're back up for the season but i i saw the fresh made pasta you're making the cavatelli now in the back on instagram she's like yeah oh you follow the instagram i was like absolutely

SPEAKER_394: i mentioned it in my yelp review bang jacow see immediately unbelievable here's your complimentary

SPEAKER_396: dessert this is how you do it kids i'm just telling you this is this is how you do it you see

SPEAKER_397: you're all sitting there you're all sitting there irritating everybody all around you with your pictures and your influencer hat or whatever this is how you do it this is just a life hack and take a

David Friedberg: lesson but remember i told you my daughter was really upset about me bribing bribing i.e tipping the

SPEAKER_03: the hostess or the the maitre d uh this is now i don't have to tip or host the maitre d i just said

SPEAKER_309: do a little splashy cashy on the old yelp review i only do it for restaurants i like if i don't like a restaurant i'm not going back so i don't need social engineering a little let's just go with a

Jason Calacanis: high five it's like a high five you know like they probably prefer the 20 bucks but you know if

SPEAKER_03: that's the way you want them to do it kiddo i still give the 20 i'm being honest i just don't let my daughter see it i'm like oh london check that out and then i just whoop zip zip in the 20 before she sees it uh but you know when i mentioned miller and lux on this show i

SPEAKER_409: literally had somebody who's like i'm going to miller and lux tonight will you be there and i'm

SPEAKER_382: like i think i'm not there every night i don't work there i'm not there every night but the funny part about it was i was going there that night oh really you were like no definitely not reply to the guy sorry i forgot to reply back to them but i literally was going that night and he said hey i'm

SPEAKER_275: going to get a hamburger at the bar if they're if you're going to be there let me know i apologize to the fan who if i'm sure they're going to hear this i am sorry uh but yeah because he is there

SPEAKER_415: we're supposed to do 20 minutes we did an hour i know just love we're just having so much fun i love

SPEAKER_418: doing the show it's a damn delight it just is it is all right so enjoy this uh interview let's see

SPEAKER_397: it tomorrow and we'll see you tomorrow cole mason is founder and ceo of pear pop cole thanks so much for joining us on the next unicorn cole you're a next unicorn congratulations in advance

SPEAKER_423: and thanks for coming on the show thanks so much for having me molly i i've been a been a fan of the show for a while so i'm excited to be able to participate awesome well um let's start with the

SPEAKER_00: basics tell us about pear pop and what it does yeah so our mission at pear pop is to help creators

SPEAKER_427: earn a living doing what they love hair pop is the world's first self-service creator marketing

SPEAKER_423: platform so when you look at how influencer marketing has evolved over the years five years ago it just started becoming prominent where brands would primarily book mainstream celebrities as a brand awareness play but it continued to move further and further down funnel throughout the years where then brands were booking large youtube creators but with the rise of tick tock brands started focusing on booking micro creators but there wasn't a scalable way to do it influencer marketing was highly manual unpredictable and frankly just unaccountable so with pear pop we're creating the next evolution of how brands are doing influencer marketing so we start with the one so it's what do you want everyone in the world to be saying about your product and that's the video brief and then let's take chipotle so chipotle would go in and go through certain filters and they'll say i only want food creators within 15 miles of my chipotle with a primarily female audience between the ages of 18 to 24. when they put in their budget we can actually tell them how many views the campaign will get how many actions the campaign will drive and how many creators are going to participate because we actually pay the creators on a performance basis so we're solving two of the hardest problems one we're connecting the right creators to the right brand and then two we're aligning the incentives between the brand and the creator by paying the creators out on a performance basis so if the creator has an awesome video they're able to earn more and on the brand side they're incentivizing good content

SPEAKER_397: and how do you find creators to be on the platform like do creators just sort of sign up like what is

SPEAKER_433: the the acquisition strategy for both brands and creators so do you do any betting on the creator side

SPEAKER_436: yeah of course of course so we've been super for now we have over 200 000 creators that are using

SPEAKER_423: pair pop and we launched about two years ago a lot of it has been organic we we ate our own dog food to say we we did influencer marketing in the early days which actually spiked a lot of our creator growth where when you look at it on the creator side there wasn't a lot of earning opportunities for creators i mean there's a ton of creators with over 1 million followers on tick tock a ton of creators with over 1 million followers on instagram so there just isn't enough manpower to be able to go through and find the right creator for your brand so a lot of these creators weren't getting brand deals the the model before us was to just kind of hope and pray that you were going to get something in your inbox that month so you weren't able to say hey i'm going to make this x amount per month you just you had no clue so with pair pub just creating the solution alone where if you are a food creator and you're signing up and you can get opportunities that match you as a creator the service speaks for itself right especially when linktree did a survey where they found out that 88 of their creators make less than 50k a year so when you're going to these creators and you're off and you're offering them a value to allow them to earn a living doing what they love the product just kind of speaks for itself but we've done a few things throughout the journey we went through and sent our opportunities through the tick tock creator marketplace as well as doing influencer marketing as well as emailing different creators that fit specific briefs like if we have a music campaign that's from sean mendes we can we'll send it out to folks who have followed sean mendes um so we've we've done some kind of growth hacking things throughout the journey but a lot of it has

SPEAKER_227: been word of mouth and through our referral program well and it is interesting that this uh has not existed previously like it seems like the you're solving the problem of either there is zero solution except the the wait for the inbox you know the email and the wait to get discovered like i'm walking

SPEAKER_397: down the street in la and hopefully somebody will you know drive by in that limo

SPEAKER_433: or a much more traditional route of agency representation right it is pretty strange i

SPEAKER_427: remember so when i wanted to start pair pop my my backstory is when i was little i i played a

SPEAKER_423: ridiculous amount of hours of call of duty and i made call of duty montages my my goal as a kid was i wanted to be in phase clan so i would post my youtube videos and i got zero traction it was it was devastating uh wasn't able to get the viewership or the followers but i studied day and night on how to grow my social and uh when i was a senior in high school i got signed by ford model so i moved from texas to new york and again i i fell into the boat where i had to grow my instagram because brands were looking to book models as it's like a dual expense where you get some marketing from the model as well so i was trying to grow my my instagram and throughout just trying to be a creator myself i realized the pain point because at some point i i gathered enough of an audience i thought man if i if i posted about a company i would like to be paid for this i mean granted i didn't have a ton of followers um so i went through and when i had the idea for for pear pop i shared it with all of my friends my family i wanted to make sure it was worthwhile and everyone i i brought it up to immediately understood what i was building and i knew it was a good idea because it people didn't just say oh that's like a decent idea it built energy in people where they would come back and they were like hey i think that pear pop thing is actually really big and they would come back with like specific feedback but when i went to go release it i got the same feedback from from the market i mean when when we first launched gaio siri who is uh my co-founder cold emailed me and was like this is something that i've been wanting to build for years um i'm going to be your partner in this we'll we'll figure it out later uh in terms of like deal terms or or whatever and we've just been running at it since but it is pretty crazy that it did not exist before yeah i mean i'm looking at your investor list and

SPEAKER_227: it's it reads like you know it's straight out of us weekly which is a really old lady reference i know

SPEAKER_397: but it's scary vaynercheck mark cuban diddy snoop dog kevin durant kevin hart is it literally just the right idea at the right time or do you also have some magical rolodex to just call every a-lister

SPEAKER_423: and be like i'll take a check well so before i started pairpop i had a rolodex on the creator front so i knew a lot of the larger creators but i didn't know gary vaynerchuk or mark cuban it was a mix of of a few things one when guy came in as my co-founder he brought in a lot of these heavy hitters and it was the same conversation with them as as it was sorry to interrupt we should probably

Jason Calacanis: say that he was a promoter and a manager before right who managed madonna and youtube and manages

SPEAKER_449: amy schumer right who's an investor okay yes just so people are to level set how we have that yeah

SPEAKER_423: please continue guys guys so connected but it was the same conversation with everyone that we chatted with i mean gary vaynerchuk got it immediately everyone we spoke to understood it immediately and i mean they were like five minute calls 10 minute calls with um gary v and and all of these folks people just understood what we were building and they wanted to participate because we're also when you look at the on the creator side influencer marketing typically just went to creators with really large followings because it took a lot of manpower to to book influencers so it didn't make sense to go out and book a thousand mid-tier creators or long tail creators it needed to have a software solution so we're also spreading the money that would typically go to these large creators with really no performance side to it and we're kind of separating that money from just the

SPEAKER_456: large creators to then everyone with a with a social media account well it seems like the possibly

SPEAKER_397: among the unlocks here also is that brands want to work with these smaller creators which

Jason Calacanis: might not have i could imagine that not necessarily being obvious if you're from a really traditional agency background for example well yeah 100 because i think the world is still figuring out

SPEAKER_423: how to do social marketing and there's like this definition of an influencer or creator like when you think of what is a creator everyone has a different answer some people will say oh it's jake paul or oh it's this person with 50 000 followers but what the world is moving to is with authenticity and scale on mind in the future it's not going to influencer marketing isn't going to just be those what we're defining creators as today it's going to be everyone in the world our goal at pairpop is to unlock the value of every social media user on the planet because word of mouth is so powerful it's not just reserved for the people who've built up this large following it's it's for everyone like molly you you have people who trust you and that you've built a good rapport with and if you're talking about a taco shop that's down the street someone is going to listen and go to the taco shop um and that is worth

SPEAKER_462: something right you have so you're saying i should sign up i should get on the platform i think you should

SPEAKER_451: definitely sign up yes it's all about electric cars that's all i'm ever trying to sell i'm ever trying

SPEAKER_227: to sell so how how has the industry evolved even since you started pairpop like do you feel like you're a catalyst for the industry or you know are there evolutions that you're like oh we better get on

SPEAKER_423: that so i think when you're when you're building in social you have to build two to three steps ahead because if you're building for right now you're going to get left behind i think pairpop challenges was the first evolution in influencer marketing tell us how that works that's the that's the yeah exactly tell us how that works yeah so so pairpop challenges again is if you take the chipotle case where they're going in and again they're starting with the what so it's what do you want everyone in the world to be saying about chipotle we did a challenge for chipotle's watermelon limeade right so they put in their video brief about what they wanted creators to say about chipotle's new watermelon limeade and then they had a local community go into chipotle and then talk about their watermelon limeade but they were able to do it at scale and have a specific subset of creators go in that that we're going to match this um they were going to match who they wanted to get to talk about their watermelon limeade we we do stuff with music artists where post malone can go and when he has a new song releasing a lot of uh launch or releasing a new single is you need discovery is on tick tock now right so you have to get this surround sound effect around a song and you're not going to get that by paying one or two or five very large creators you need um the surround sound from all of the community to be talking about this new song so when post malone goes and puts in a challenge on pair pop and gets 980 creators to post about his new single it creates this sense that something is happening here right it doesn't look forced it looks more authentic i think one thing that i've been focusing on and i think is is the next evolution of where social marketing is is moving to is we have a new feature called ovation coming out one one of the the most common requests we've gotten from brands is they actually want their own customers to be their advocates so when we went to t-mobile or starbucks or proactive they all want their customers to be able to talk about them right which before us

SPEAKER_433: there wasn't a way to do that at scale and that's like whether or not those customers have a big

SPEAKER_423: audience or following correct okay so with ovation challenges they're targeting subsets of our creator community ovation they're going to be targeting subsets of their customer base right so like when you take nike right nike has different subsets of of their community where you have the folks that are buying running shoes you have different folks who are buying um skating shoes different different groups of people right an ovation is basically it's like a private challenge link that they're sending to the person who just bought this running shoe and they can talk about how it shaved off a few seconds off of their mile time or with starbucks they could send an ovation link to their customers who have over 150 stars and just got a custom free drink for using their stars and they can talk about how the stars made that possible but it's about the future of influencer marketing isn't going to be bucketed in what we define today as a professional creator or influencer you need to open it up where everyone is going to be able to post about you right and then you get that for us which makes a ton

Jason Calacanis: of sense because of what you just said about needing scale to give a sense of because attention is so divided that what you need is like a mass movement all the fish swimming in the same direction yeah i mean

SPEAKER_423: there's a few different benefits to it i mean one is the seo benefit if when when people search your brand and they're able to see everyone talking about this specific product and then two you're able to see because it is more authentic you're getting actual customers talking about using your product and shaving off few seconds from their mile time it has a different ring to it it just wasn't possible before so i'm really excited about ovation and bringing the next evolution but i do think challenges was a catalyst and just taking the space forward and then ovation is going to be the next step where we're just pushing the ball even further i like to dig a little more into that

SPEAKER_80: the kind of philosophical part of that the authenticity because i think there is

SPEAKER_00: there is a little bit of maybe influencer exhaustion out there in the market and so i could see why

Jason Calacanis: if you're looking at where the puck is going authenticity at scale feels like the right thing

SPEAKER_466: to sort of keep to reach audiences in a way that is more real yeah so i mean on the influencer exhaustion point it it's actually pretty funny it's uh a lot of brands work with the same influencers like the

SPEAKER_423: same influencers are doing every single brand right you open up so no wonder we're tired of them of course yeah and it's like if you if you open it up where everyone can make money from there i mean everyone has those four to five brands they really support right um i i like to buy my clothes from james pierce right i would love to talk about i love their clothes right and i would be willing to talk about that yeah but if you open it up and it does have a different ring of authenticity to it when you're not just looking at it as a brand awareness play of i want this creator um to talk about my brand they may not use me you want your actual customers to be talking about you it's it's so much more real and at scale if just if you ask yourself the simple question right which is do you see value and having your customers be advocates i mean this the answer is yes right but you would want if if only one brand in the world was allowed to have uh like imagine amazon was the only brand in the world that was able to have everyone in the world talking about how amazon has made their life better they would i mean it would be a huge uh they would have a lot of leverage over every other brand so i think opening the ability to where everyone could just talk about the brands and the companies that they support is is going to be big and allowing them to monetize i think it's almost like the brands are giving back to their community well that was my next question so creators get paid

Jason Calacanis: creators do not pay to be on the platform no so and then they get paid for whatever campaign they engage in it's performance based and then is it also a set take rate so on the on the creator side

SPEAKER_423: like let's say you sign up today and you're a food creator right when you when you sign in you would then see different opportunities that fit you as a creator so you would see a chipotle challenge a panera bread challenge maybe a song challenge that is just so easy plug and play that you can put into your into your daily content schedule and then you'll see you'll go through the different challenges then you can enter them and you'll see what you're going to get paid per view or per action like with panera bread they'll they pay creators per download they drive to their unlimited sip club or chipotle it could be they're getting paid per view talking about the watermelon limeade but for them they'll just go through the different opportunities see what the pay is for those challenges and they can enter as many as as they want um one one stat that i'm really proud of is so we're set to by the end of the year payout 10 million to creators and 71 of those payouts have gone to creators with with under 1 million followers so we are unlocking earning opportunities for a variety of creators who when i'm when i'm doing interviews with a lot of our creators a lot of them have not received any brand deals before getting on parapop which is pretty crazy yeah i mean we have people with 50 000 followers making 50 000 on parapop and they were not able to get any earning opportunities before so it's it's a that's amazing it's a crazy space i think it was just so underdeveloped so i mean we don't have a shortage of ideas over here there's so much to build in the space uh and we're just getting started so i'm excited to see um where where we

SPEAKER_397: continue to build into especially into next year tell me more about why you think it was underdeveloped like i'm i why wouldn't youtube do this like it seems actually i mean they've already got like a

SPEAKER_227: self-serve ad network it sort of feels like we could have taken two engineers and you know

SPEAKER_397: so some version of this do they just not understand i don't think it's that they don't understand it

SPEAKER_423: yeah i don't know if they're incentivized to do it they have an awesome way to make money which is you sell ads through the platform right which they their margins are a lot right if they then have to do our model and they're distributing uh majority to the creators that that definitely hits their margins a little bit so they're just not incentivized to do it um let's say i think we had we came in at the perfect timing i think we had a golden opportunity to come in and i think our biggest benefit is actually being omni platform where we're on tick tock we're on instagram we're on twitter we're going to be on youtube and twitch and in q1 um but i think being on omni platform because brands aren't just on tick tock and they're not just on youtube and same thing goes and the creator said creators aren't just on youtube and they're not just on twitch so allowing those opportunities where the brand it's a one-stop shop where they can come in go across all platforms the creators can see earning opportunities across all of their platforms i think is our biggest advantage

SPEAKER_497: but i think it's like tick tock does have a marketplace but it would only be for tick tock

Jason Calacanis: correct got it just from your vantage point like everybody knows tick tock is huge and all the discoveries on is on tick tock do you have any interesting insights about platforms that

SPEAKER_436: people would be surprised by tick tock is is definitely uh i mean tick tock is is hot right now

SPEAKER_423: um but tick tock took a different approach right tick tock is more of an entertainment app when you when you look at how users are using tick tock majority of the time they're on their for you page so it's not as much of a social aspect it's more on the entertainment aspect where they're there to get content which is very different than on instagram when you're on instagram you're there to see your friends posts uh stories it's a lot more social than what tick tock is and tick tock did hit the nail on the head where you see a lot of the other platforms are moving into short form content now and our creators are really excited about shorts uh that that's kind of like the insider info from us on the platform youtube shorts youtube shorts yes because of the um the revenue split that they're introducing so i think youtube shorts will will come up pretty heavy and in q1 but uh overall trend is just the new approach to being entertainment first on on social is really connecting with people so if

SPEAKER_277: you're an influencer who participates in a pair pop challenge and has monetization turned on via youtube

SPEAKER_456: shorts this is a situation where you could get paid twice yeah they're not exclusive to us and they're

SPEAKER_227: we don't want them to be exclusive to us yeah and then if i am a customer of let's say olive in june and i use ovation in the future to get paid from olive in june for talking about it like that feels like

SPEAKER_277: a great opportunity for me as a consumer influencer to arbitrage my purchases for sure i mean when you

SPEAKER_423: look at sephora right like sephora has a great loyalty program there's starbucks has a great loyalty program i really think in the future uh you're gonna see brands using ovation every brand in the world will then have all of their customers be able to in a sense like use it as a as a as a loyalty as a loyalty to be able to earn from their from their social content i think that's almost crazy that i think ovation challenges was crazy that that didn't exist i think ovation is almost equally as crazy um because we live in a social first world yeah you brands want people talking about them on social especially their customers that are having great experiences and they already have built-in loyalty programs they're coming back day and day again to buy their products have them say that right like you want them to talk they're having a positive experience with you put those things out

Jason Calacanis: in the world it's really true too and i like the idea of changing the economics around every brand begging me for some sort of a review because that is kind of free labor which is why i don't really do it so if there is a specific reward attached to that and i love a thing then there's every incentive for me to do it and it becomes like a win-win scenario correct fascinating and then talk to me about

SPEAKER_227: becoming how about being a creator who became who went to the business side like is it you know what have those challenges been like do you sort of feel like oh you know guys this is actually the route you should all take there's a kind of classic example that is somewhat out of favor now because les moonves from cbs turned out to be not a great dude but um famously had started as talent he was an actor and set woods and said i went to the business side specifically because like no one tells talent

SPEAKER_397: anything i wonder how you think about going from a creator to a business person but also how creators actually are much closer to the business than traditional talent ever used to be so first off

SPEAKER_423: i i will you know i was a very failed creator right so it's like i wasn't able to amass too too much of a falling so i wouldn't put me on too much of a creator pedestal there's a lot of careers are putting in more more time more effort they've put their their life behind it and have really done a great job i tried my hardest i just was not able to be successful i wish i was but you know i wasn't um i think i i've always had an entrepreneurial spirit since i was little when i was in elementary school i was going door to door selling handmade crosses that i made with my uh papa and i was always just looking for every opportunity available i came from a household that was not i mean i grew up in arlington texas which you know it wasn't it didn't come from a family that had a ton of money so i was always kind of like a chip on my shoulder i was working extremely hard and getting into the into the business side i mean that was that was my dream as a kid i i always wanted to own my own business build something i just i love building um so getting in i didn't have a ton of knowledge on the vc space or the startup space uh i did have to learn a lot as i went what helped me the most was i had such great mentors throughout the journey where when gaios here came in as my co-founder he really spent time with me and alexis ohanian who led our our series a um spent a ton of time with me and i got to just soak up information on uh multiple aspects of of running a business um but it's i i couldn't uh i couldn't ask for more i'm super grateful for everything and uh i'm loving loving what

SPEAKER_227: i'm doing amazing well as you look forward to your path to next unicorn we of course have identified you as a company we think that has potential to get to that milestone what what are the steps you think in the products that will take you there i mean it sounds like turning every customer into a

SPEAKER_439: creator is a pretty good pitch it is a good pitch i think so just off of challenges alone um we are our

SPEAKER_423: goal for next year is we want to do four to five x uh in revenue what what we did last year which will put us in a pretty good position ovation i think is also it just opens the market right so it's like total addressable people right now for challenges is what you would bucket as professional creators ovation your total addressable people's everyone in the world so i think ovation is is is the next step and we do have another feature that we're keeping super super super tight left right now that will be launching in q2 that i i'm really excited about as well there's not a shortage of of ideas uh at pair public one one thing that we've done super well at is we've attracted um like world-class talent across all aspects of the business from product to engineering to sales to partnerships uh to marketing so that has allowed us to build world-class products world-class design and we are bringing in uh world class brands i mean we're bringing in some of the best brands in the world very quickly um so i think continuing to hire amazing people is going to help us get there in itself um but i think i think challenges innovate right now we're just we're so we're hyper focused on building out challenges innovation and then as we build that out then we'll continue to focus on new features awesome cole mason founder

Jason Calacanis: and ceo of pear pop thanks so much for the time and congrats on all you've built thanks so much for

SPEAKER_275: having me molly hey great show a great show of a show but it's gonna be a long one who cares we had

SPEAKER_529: too much extra show today enjoy you did and another that's it for uh the next unicorns another great season

SPEAKER_530: of the next unicorns is in the book yes thank you thank you to all the the founders who joined us

SPEAKER_00: we will be watching to see if you're looking for those companies and get to that like nine figure

SPEAKER_317: valuation and we're going to evaluate you but we're also going to do uh seed stage so i just did an

SPEAKER_03: interview uh that will play later this week with a founder from india who's raised you know just a very small amount of money for a very clever idea and i learned so much about the startup ecosystem in india that it really um it really as my uh as my uh daughters would say it filled my bucket you know when they talk about emotions it makes you feel good i have my bucket filled you know how i love to talk to founders like i do when they're just like two people with an idea so coming either thursday or friday you're going to get a little micro interview 20 minutes uh like i told everybody we're going to do like two thirds news one third founder interview and we're um and we're going to

SPEAKER_10: watch one of the ao scott movies ahead of thursdays this weekend streaming with lon harris which one

SPEAKER_15: are we watching we're going to try the name at least it's neptune frost neptune frost right i watched

SPEAKER_51: the first 20 minutes let me get my envelope where i read all my notes neptune frost i watched the first 20 minutes uh i'm not going to say anything but i fell asleep it's not the fault of the movie he started

SPEAKER_03: at 10 like 10 40 or whatever i was like oh this looks actually really good and i'm going to be very honest with they oh scott if it's good i'm going to give him his flowers yes if it's mid and it's

SPEAKER_248: not you know i will be comparing we're restarting this we're restarting this fight all over again we're going to take our victory lap for going viral tomorrow too with be honest intellectually i'm trying

SPEAKER_536: to be intellectually intellectually consistent please all right see you tomorrow everybody