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SPEAKER_02: Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Startups.

SPEAKER_04: I am really excited for one of my oldest friends and one of the original OG, uh, Web 2.0 gangsters, uh, and Silicon Valley, notable individuals, whatever, creators. He's been on the pod. I think this will be the fourth appearance, Kevin, uh, 2011, episode 218, 2013, 2017. And here we are four years later.

SPEAKER_06: Uh, welcome back to the program, Kevin Rose. Thanks for having me. It's good to see you again.

SPEAKER_05: It's good to see you, brother.

SPEAKER_08: God, we haven't seen each other in a while. It's gotta be close to two years, right?

SPEAKER_12: Cause I mean, in person, yeah, it's been quite a while. I got out of the Bay, you, you stayed, you're a lifer.

SPEAKER_15: I basically came here. You know, I was living in LA all that time. I've only been in the Bay for five years. Why did you leave exactly? Were you just burnt out on it?

SPEAKER_17: Ah, well, there was a few reasons.

SPEAKER_19: One, we were having our first kid and we just realized like San Francisco is not the place when you're raising a baby.

SPEAKER_17: Like it just, and we, we love Portland. We came up here during the summertime, multiple summers in a row, fell in love with the city, the farmer's markets, the food scene, great beers, the rivers here, wild salmon, like there's a lot to love and no, no state yard, no sales tax. Like it's just awesome.

SPEAKER_22: Yeah.

SPEAKER_19: And we love the outdoors and we love the hiking trails and all that good stuff. So, uh, yeah, I ended up just, uh, building a house here.

SPEAKER_24: And by the time it was done, we had like a three month old and we moved, uh, up here to our home.

SPEAKER_08: Fantastic. And you started, I mean, I know that you became a partner at true adventures. Is that a full time gig for you? Or are you like a venture part? It's a full time gig.

SPEAKER_05: Yeah. I'm, I'm a full partner there.

SPEAKER_08: Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_05: I didn't realize that. And how long you been doing that since 2017?

SPEAKER_19: You probably, cause I started off as a venture partner there. I didn't know if I wanted to go back and do, you know, more entrepreneurship. And it was just like, at some point I was like, you know what, I'm just not going to build anymore. I'll just, I'd rather have other people go. I know you had Mike Mazur on the show a while back. Who's running zero. And, you know, Mike's an old colleague. And I love the fact that he's like operational and running things. I don't want to run things anymore, especially with a couple of little girls. And so it's nice for me to be able to just have one hat and just have it be

SPEAKER_04: the investor hat, you know, what do you love about being an investor? What do you miss about being an entrepreneur? If anything?

SPEAKER_17: Well, I would say, I mean, there's that rush you get when you launch a new product. Yeah. I mean, you know how it is. Like you put something out there and you get, you know, all of a sudden a hundred, a thousand, 10,000, a hundred thousand people using something. And it's like super exciting, like, you know, we have, there's nothing beats that. That is like the ultimate peak as a founder is to have people using something that you created, you know, that you dreamt up. So, um, that I do miss, I would say what I don't miss is managing people is making

SPEAKER_19: those initial hires that are really hard to make, you know, find, finding the right engineering team, fighting for talent, um, it's that stuff sucks.

SPEAKER_17: Uh, but you know, on the investing side, it's, it's also fun to identify stuff early on. Like when you see something where you can close your eyes and say, if this works, you know, three, five years from now, this is going to be a multi-billion dollar business. Like just feeling that in your gut, um, it, it, it just gets you all excited and it's,

SPEAKER_33: you know, hard to sleep and all the good stuff that comes along with that.

SPEAKER_04: It, it's so nice being able to make the bet and be part of the team without having to do that heavy lifting you're talking about, which is, oh my Lord, just filling one position can take a hundred hours, 200 hours. The person then gets poached by somebody else six months later.

SPEAKER_15: And it's, it's just like getting punched in the face over and over and over again. It's being a boxer. And, you know, I, I, I think if you start as young as you did.

SPEAKER_37: And I did, you know, after a while, your body just starts to hurt from being in the ring. Yeah.

SPEAKER_17: And it's not like, even like you're getting knocked out, you're just getting a bloody nose every single time. And you're just like, you kind of like fix it up and you're like, okay, I'm good. I'm good. I'm good.

SPEAKER_42: Nose is still good. Yeah. And then you go and it happens again and it happens again. And you're just like, after a while, you're like, I'm done with this.

SPEAKER_44: So putting ice packs on, waking up in the middle of the night in cold sweat. Am I going to run out of money? Yeah.

SPEAKER_33: Yeah. That, that, that's a, another whole scary thing is that next round of financing. And then the amount of time that goes into fundraising is just like, ah, it's a lot.

Chamath Palihapitiya: It, the, the other thing that's people I think don't understand is that it never ends.

SPEAKER_51: Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_08: So you're like, oh, if only I could be like Zuck or, you know, the, you know, Uber, or if I got to like Tesla's level and it's like, no, it, it just becomes bigger problems and more at stake. And even those big companies, right? Like at any point in time, they can go off the rails.

SPEAKER_37: Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. The question is like, is it in your DNA, do you have that like mental and like fortitude

SPEAKER_19: to go and be one of those very elite few? And I, I realized that for me, I'm like really good at the kind of early stage, like the Genesis of the idea, iterating, brainstorming, wireframing UI UX stuff, launching something, getting something

SPEAKER_17: off the ground within just a couple of months. Like that's what I love to do. I'm not so good. And I really don't enjoy the scaling piece of it. Like where, after you get to 50 plus people, it's just like, it there's, that's a whole

SPEAKER_04: nother skill set. The joy goes right down. Yeah. And the, and the joy goes down because you didn't hire the 50th person. Right.

SPEAKER_08: And you meet them and you're kind of like, I might not even like this person. I might, I wouldn't have hired this person. How did this person wind up in my organization? Right? And everybody has that moment in their own company.

SPEAKER_15: When they're like, you go to work and you're like, I don't like coming to work anymore. Did you, did you have that at some point in your career? You don't have to say when or which company, but did you have that moment where you just dreaded having to go in and push the rock up the hill? Or did you get out before you got to that?

SPEAKER_61: No, I've, I've had that moment a few times and I think it's because just, just in full

SPEAKER_17: transparency, like I was just so immature and didn't really understand, um, how to ask for help. And because of that, I just wasn't as well-rounded as I should have been on whether it comes down to hiring or managing folks. And so I made a lot of bad, bad decisions.

SPEAKER_64: When did you realize that I'm curious, when did you come to that and how did you, because I think there's a lot of founders right now and we work with them who, you know, they probably

SPEAKER_66: have that voice in the back of their head. Like, I don't know what to do here, but if I ask anybody or I tell anybody, I don't know what to do, they're going to fire me or I'm going to look stupid. When in fact, it's the exact opposite, but we all as young entrepreneurs or nascent entrepreneurs

SPEAKER_67: have that moment. Yeah. When did you unpack it? Do you remember the moment when you realized? I remember being. Yeah.

SPEAKER_61: I remember, honestly, it just has, it comes from watching other entrepreneurs and how

SPEAKER_17: curious they are. Like, I remember there was a, there was a time when, when Zuckerberg came over to my office

SPEAKER_19: and, um, he sat down and he, he's like, at the time Facebook was around the size of dig. Like it wasn't, they hadn't had its full blow up moment yet.

SPEAKER_17: And, you know, so we were kind of peers and he sat down and he just asked so many questions, like so many questions. Yep. And they were just like, and he was so curious and some of them, I remember just being like, kind of shocked that he was being that vulnerable and, and just be willing to be like a sponge and just ask like the silly question, you know? Yeah. Um, and I, and I realized like that is, is one of the things I feared was, was, was letting, like letting that side and opening up that side to my investors, to my board members, Yeah. To others around me that I didn't understand these pieces of the business. And, and I, I didn't know how to seek out the proper mentors, you know?

SPEAKER_75: And so that was, that wasn't until, until much later, Kevin Rose, right?

SPEAKER_02: It's so crazy. Cause you know, from the outside, everybody looks at you and says, well, he's a visionary.

SPEAKER_15: He sees things, you know, a couple of years before everybody else. And he executes, I mean, I've always told you this, I think, you know, pound for pound as a product person, there's your elite, like there's 10 people. I would say yourself, Elon, Steve jobs, Alex from calm, you know, who just, when they make

SPEAKER_04: a product, it just comes out great. Like, I just think you're that elite.

SPEAKER_77: I appreciate you saying that. That's nice of you to say. It means a lot coming from you actually.

SPEAKER_04: Well, you know what? I realized it over time because when I first met you, when you were doing dig, I just saw the product and I was like, that thing's going to change everything.

SPEAKER_66: It was so clear to me. And I think everybody let's face it.

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SPEAKER_04: And then, you know, I had that same moment when I looked at zero fasting, which your fingerprints are all over and watching that product come out, I was like, God, you know, the last time

SPEAKER_15: I opened an app and I saw something this good might have been like calm or maybe like Uber 2.0. Like when they, the first one was kind of janky, they really rushed it, but maybe the second version.

SPEAKER_66: And what do you think when you look at product, what is your product philosophy? Have you, have you thought about it? Cause this would be the book that if you wrote, I mean, this is the book you're born to write, like is just how to approach product.

SPEAKER_85: What's your philosophy?

SPEAKER_17: Well, I mean, the, the one distraction that very creative people have, um, and I'm, I'm not saying that I'm this very creative person, but I have some creativity. Uh, the one problem that a lot of product people that I work with that are on the creative side tend to have is they're just filled with ideas. They have a lot of ideas. And because of that, they have a massive laundry list of things that they want to go build. And so, uh, you know, for me, I'm kind of in that camp where I will say, wouldn't it be cool if these 30 things existed, but the discipline you have to have is how can you boil it down to go build the two or three things and a product that just absolutely must exist for that product to get off the ground. So rather than try and boil the ocean, you say, how can I do these core couple of things really, really, really well and see if that works. And that'll shorten your development timeline down to just a couple of months versus six months, eight months, or however long it takes to launch something for most people. And so it allows me to test the water. So zero is a great example. You know, I was like, I was big into intermittent fasting. I loved, um, the science that was coming out from Dr. Walter Longo at a USC. There was some great, fantastic human placebo, double blinded, like the gold standard for, for science, um, data that was coming out around autophagy and, uh, glue, uh, improved glucose levels and a whole slew of things around the chemotherapy and helping people go through, um, uh, chemotherapy with a lot less side effects. And it was just, it was promising all around. So did a little search in the app store. There was no, nothing dedicated to fasting. You know, this was five years ago, whatever, what is five, six years ago, maybe five years ago. And, um, there was nothing out there. And I was like, well, this is going to be something, this is going to be a trend and it's going to blow up pretty quick. So why not just create, put your toe in the water, get an ink, get something out there. Right. That is very basic. So I'm like, okay, let's just make a timer. Well, why do you need a timer? My phone has a timer. Okay. But does it track historically how you've done on your fast? How many hours are you doing for each fast? And so it was a timer with a, with a, uh, basically a calendar. So you could see how you've done fast over time, your average fast, all that good stuff.

SPEAKER_88: Yeah.

SPEAKER_17: Your streaks, things like that. Exactly.

SPEAKER_67: Basically what you would have done in a Google sheet, like when fasting started and I heard you and Kevin, um, you and Tim Ferriss talking about it. I was like, oh, okay.

SPEAKER_64: And I just like opened up a Google sheet. I was like, okay, let me just put my start and end time. And then I saw it, I got zero fasting. I paid for the subscription one and my brother and my other friend, all of us were trying to lose weight. We all started doing it. We all lost 10 pounds. It was just like unbelievable. And now the product it's such, it's so interesting that the dipping of your toe or the building the, you know, the simplest version of your vision that solves that one acute problem

SPEAKER_66: leads to a bunch of other opportunities, uh, opening up. How do you know what's the next piece to do and how to have that restraint?

SPEAKER_64: Cause I think what you're talking about here is restraint, right? Right. In execution. And there was two, if I, if I can repeat it back to you to make sure I understand. And for the audience, there are two components here. There's this essentialism, you know, in terms of the functionality, which makes it very clear

SPEAKER_66: the user proposition, I would assume. So people understand what you've built, but it also lets you get something into market

SPEAKER_06: quickly. Correct.

SPEAKER_17: That's right. That's right. And then I think the next series of features, there's going to be two pieces. One is the lawn to go back to your laundry list of things that you haven't yet built that you want to build. And the second thing, and I'm even more important one is that your community is going to be like, if you have traction, your community is going to start telling you what they want. And so, and you can tease that out of them. So one of the things that Mike was really good at that we did is we like put together potential features that we could introduce and then do surveys to one in 100 users and just kind of like, see if you had to stack rank them, what were the next features that people wanted to see in the product itself? And we already knew that this was a list of stuff we want to build anyway, but let's let's let the community decide and sort which features come next. And so, you know, that was, uh, that's a great way to kind of like continue to, um, introduce things that are going to be, uh, excited, the communities get excited about, and then it just continued to snowball from there. And that's when I realized this needs a dedicated team. Mazer took the, the, the asset off of me. Um, you know, I kept some ownership just for, for being along with it, but let him, you

SPEAKER_75: know, go and run it day to day and, and, and go build it out. So, um, yeah, now that you got your rush.

SPEAKER_15: Yeah, I got my rush without the scalp moment. And it's doing fantastic because there was a very interesting feature, which has your fingerprints on it as well. And it is at the top. When I first got it, it said like, there's 800 people fasting with zero. Yeah. And I just opened it up now and there's 570,000 people fasting with zero.

SPEAKER_04: Did you come up with that idea of actually putting in there, how many people are using it or where did you find that inspiration? And what, what's the point of that sharing, uh, the consumption?

SPEAKER_103: Yeah. I mean, we've done that with all the stuff that I, I touch you. You're right. That was good for you to point out.

SPEAKER_17: Cause like, I, I, I thought it was really important to have a live number of who, how many people are using this.

SPEAKER_19: Um, and then we did the same thing on the meditation app that I built, like the number of people that are meditating right now, or the number of people that are doing breathing exercises right now, just like you want to know that as a user coming into this, it's

SPEAKER_17: like, how can you build the, how can you create this idea of I'm part of the community and I'm doing this, this somewhat difficult thing. Like when you first start fasting for the first time, I mean, like anyone can do a 12 hour fast, 13 hours, like it's, it's actually tough for some people. And then you go to 16 hours and that some people will, they just imagine they'll lose their minds going 16 hours without food. Um, but you know, you, you, when you're in there and you can tap on that and you can see, Oh, there's 20,000 or a hundred thousand other people doing a 16 hour fast right now. I'm not alone. Like other people are doing this. You give some, get some sense of other people are being successful. So can I. And so anytime you can reveal a little bit of that and pepper that into a product, I think it's a good thing.

SPEAKER_70: Yes.

SPEAKER_04: And for people who don't know the first time on the web, that the like button existed was on a site called dig.com to educate people. Cause now you and I are so old, Kevin, that people don't know the first projects we work on. Like they know you as a venture capitalist, or maybe because of zero, they don't know dig, they don't know weblogs, Inc or Silicon Alley reporter.

SPEAKER_15: They're just like, Oh, you're the Uber guy, or you're the, this week in startups guy. It's kind of funny. Um, you live long enough.

SPEAKER_17: I've, I've had people, honestly, it was one time, I think it was, we had this like temp nanny come over and she's like, I looked up your name and I saw that you created zero. Oh my God. Like, and I was like, holy shit. Like, like, no, everybody's forgotten everything you've done except for your most recent thing,

SPEAKER_111: you know? And like that happened to be the thing that just like spoke to her, which is great.

SPEAKER_15: I think it's very important for creators, um, to understand this. And you know, it was actually a very interesting moment where you yourself still don't think that you're an elite creator or creative.

SPEAKER_95: You're like, I guess I'm sort of creative. I think you're at the height of product creativity. I don't think it gets any better. Kevin, you, I think you can admit that you're a creative now. I appreciate that.

SPEAKER_113: I enjoy it.

SPEAKER_95: You revere, you know, other creators so much that you don't want to put yourself in the group or.

SPEAKER_61: Well, you know, it's, it's like, I'm trying to, um, I think that one of the things that

SPEAKER_17: I, I, I try to reinforce in myself over and over again is that I don't want to get a big head about all this stuff, you know, whether it be on the investing side or on the, on the creation side. And like, I feel like, um, that that's an important, that that's a thing that you can let your ego get wrapped up on in a lot of this stuff. And I, I try, I try, I try to like, just tell myself, like, you're, you're just like everyone else. Like, don't, don't, don't, don't, um, don't buy your own bullshit. Like, don't, don't try and, you know, so I don't know. I've made a lot of mistakes too. So I, I'm, I'm, I think that if you try and fail as many times as I can, you will get some home runs just be like this year number of times you've had the up at bat. Right.

SPEAKER_04: So I think you're probably a little better than that, but I do think there's something to that because you can get high on your own supply. That's right. Very quickly. And it's so random in our industry. What clicks, what doesn't, there is so much luck involved, you know, that's right. I'm not sure what your top investment is, but I'm, what is your top investment? And then how did it go down? Because I'm sure there are some randomness to it. Yeah. I mean, if I hadn't seen Travis coming out of a party on the Embarcadero and said, yeah,

SPEAKER_37: put me down for whatever an Uber, it wouldn't have happened. Right. Like I just happened to be out that night. The round could have closed.

SPEAKER_103: I mean, there's, my life is filled with these stories. Like this is, this is the story of investors. Like I feel like there's the, the stuff that I really, really sought out, which I would say,

SPEAKER_17: like, I would put that in the, like, like I did a good job at like getting this deal done. Like I, I, I went and tracked down Jack. I had him on my podcast. I convinced him to be an angel in square. Like that was a massive, like, congratulations.

SPEAKER_126: Wow.

SPEAKER_61: But, but, you know, it's like, I think that, that, that I'm, I'm proud of the stuff that

SPEAKER_17: is the crazy stuff is that I've had cryptocurrency investments outpace that return just because somebody was like, Hey, do you want to throw in some cash on this crazy new up and coming project? And you put a little bit of money in and all of a sudden it turns into a boatload and you're like, Holy crap. Like that's, that's insane. This is a weird world that we live on live in, you know, it's just, yeah. So it's a little bit of everything. It's a little bit of luck. It's a little bit of, you get excited about a project and then there's a lot of stuff that goes to zero as well. Like, you know, Kevin, uh, from ship who I thought was a fantastic, uh, I mean, he, he, I was just chatting with him the other day and he's like, Oh, it's crazy. Like ship everyone thought that was going to be the next Uber, like that was going to be massive.

SPEAKER_129: It felt like it. Yeah. He had a 40 million. I remember he had like a $40 million valuation. I was like, I'm, I'm really sorry.

SPEAKER_66: I, he wanted me as an investor. I was like, I can't justify this. I invested at Uber at 5 million. Like this makes no sense to me. Like $40 million, you're further behind than when I invested in Uber. And that was like a weakness on my part is that I was actually thinking that that first eight X made a difference, right?

SPEAKER_15: When it's the last eight X that actually makes the difference on these investments.

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SPEAKER_131: And when you're ready to launch, use the offer code twist to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Go to squarespace.com slash twist for a free trial. I want to go back to creativity for a second.

SPEAKER_15: I've known you since you were on GTV. What was that called?

SPEAKER_05: G4 tech TV.

SPEAKER_125: Yeah. After tech TV even merged with G4.

SPEAKER_05: That was 2002 or three.

SPEAKER_17: That would have been 2000. Well, we met in 2004 because that's when I launched Dig. And so we met in LA at a sushi restaurant. Yep.

SPEAKER_136: Shortly after, maybe like just a couple months. I mean, you saw Dig really early, man. We were like maybe three months out or something.

SPEAKER_15: You had spent $3,000 on a developer or $2,000 on a developer to build it. And I was just watching the, I was like inside of Google Analytics or the server logs. And Brian Alvey was, I would have him run the server logs through some script.

SPEAKER_04: And then he'd send them to me. And I'm just like studying it like a maniac.

SPEAKER_08: Like where did the traffic come from and how do we get more? And I was like, what the fuck is this Dig thing? And how does this thing go from nothing to every one of our stories? It's a number one source of traffic. I was like, this thing's going to be bigger than us. We have to buy it quick. And so I called Mark Cuban and I was like, can I have a million dollars? He's like, for what? I was like, to buy Dig. He's like, okay. I was like, great. I'll be right back.

SPEAKER_61: You, you, um, you had the hottest, uh, properties on the internet.

SPEAKER_142: Those were the hottest sites. Yeah. Autoblog, joystick, everything.

SPEAKER_04: Well, you know, I got very lucky. You know, when you were talking about talent, the first thing that came to mind was Peter Rojas because I, you know, I'm a promoter and a marketer more than a product builder.

SPEAKER_15: I mean, I'll give myself some modest credit as like an okay builder of product. I think you're elite. I'm okay.

SPEAKER_147: Mahalo is great by the way.

SPEAKER_15: Which one?

SPEAKER_02: Mahalo. I know. I mean, I look back on it. I was like, oh my God, I should have stayed focused because I got so many things right.

SPEAKER_04: I knew that search would change from 10 blue links to what it is now comprehensive search. And I came up with that name comprehensive search. What if the images and the video and content were mixed with the search results? So I had the right idea.

SPEAKER_148: Oh, you had the, the perfect, I mean, you were just like 10 years too, too soon.

SPEAKER_149: Yeah. I mean, that is, that is so much PTSD to be that close, you know,

SPEAKER_102: it was a beautiful design too. Everything about it was great. I thought that was a fantastic product.

SPEAKER_67: Well, I appreciate that. You know, the way I got that was I, I said to myself, what is the most beautiful now that

SPEAKER_66: I've been anointed by Sequoia and they've given me money and other investors have come in. And I'm going to buy the best logo ever. And I said, I love the Firefox and the Mozilla logos. And the, what was the, what was their email called? Thunderbird?

SPEAKER_151: Yeah. Thunderbird with the, with the, like the bird on top of the. Yes. Yeah.

SPEAKER_66: And so I was like, who designed the Firefox logo and hold on, I got to look it up.

SPEAKER_04: I forgot the guy's name, John Hicks. And so, cause I had seen you do this with dig. You had a fucking great logo and you, the dignation logo was great. You're, you understood that piece too. And I found John Hicks who was living in Europe.

SPEAKER_67: And, um, I said, I want you to do the logo from a hollow. I got this name and he's like, you know, it's a six month away, whatever.

SPEAKER_15: I said, well, how much do you charge? He said, I charged 1500. I said, I'll give you 3000 if you do it for me first. And he said, I'm sorry, I can't do it. I said five.

SPEAKER_155: Such a Jason thing to do. Dead silence.

SPEAKER_15: Dead silence. And he goes, okay. And I, I said, 5,000, I'll send it to you in advance. No kill fear or anything. I'll send you $5,000 today if you do it. And he said, okay. That's amazing. Thank you, John Hicks.

SPEAKER_95: Because once I had that logo and I put it on everything, people were like, that's a beautiful logo.

SPEAKER_163: It was beautiful. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04: He, he put the pulmera from Hawaii and I saw it, Kevin, you ever get that tingly feeling when you get something right? Oh, for sure.

SPEAKER_66: That was my tingly feeling. I was like, holy fuck. Yeah. And then I built the answers product. I had done a Q and a product. As part of it, I was like, okay, if we don't have the search result, let them ask a question and then we'll let people answer. I built Quora into it. And then I said, build Mahalo dollars. Because I had heard about the money being made in China and virtual games. I was like, just let people get a dollar of Mahalo dollars. And then cash them in for logo base shirts and hats. And it was all working. And then I, it just got, got taken away from me by that goddamn search engine panda update that Google did.

SPEAKER_09: Oh, interesting. Because they, yeah. They took back your search traffic. Crazy.

SPEAKER_15: 90% overnight. Wow. Wow. Myself, wiki. How Google was like, you know what? No more SEO. We're cutting off all the sites and we're going to just redistribute wealth. And they just, we went from a $10 million run rate on AdSense. We're literally making, you know, a couple of thousand dollars a day on it. And then they just took it all away. Wow. Overnight. I was like, and I, I'm like, I'm calling Sergei. I'm calling Megan, uh, Smith. I'm calling everybody I know, Marissa. I'm like, please give me my traffic back. They're like, yeah, you know, that's, that's a decision made by the search team. I'm like, who? And they're like, oh, you know, we don't know. And I was like, you don't know. They're like, yeah, that's a black box. We can't help you. Oh, geez. It was just such a, what PTSD. You had the same thing with the dig 3.0. What was it called?

SPEAKER_103: Yeah, it was our, it was our, uh, our big redesign. Yeah.

SPEAKER_121: I was about to say that was your Vietnam, but I don't think I can make those kinds of analogies

SPEAKER_171: anymore without being canceled. But that was your unwinnable war. Let me say it that way.

SPEAKER_19: Yeah, that was, um, that was a, uh, a shift of all of our resources to become more commercial. And it really was against everything that community stood for. And so it was, it was not the, it was in the best interest of the folks that wanted an outcome, meaning like if you're, uh, if you want us to prep for a sale or, you know, there was, there was a, there was a lot of, a lot of forces at play around that redesign, but.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, you would get, you were, how old were you at that time? You were late twenties?

SPEAKER_174: Yeah, that sounds right.

SPEAKER_15: Yeah. See, this was, I think the unraveling for you from my perception. You tell me if I'm anywhere near close, the pressure to build the next Facebook, the next

SPEAKER_04: Google from venture capitalists, the world, whatever was pushing you to do things that were unnatural, unobtainable, unsustainable. And then Reddit was because it had been sold and it was just like left alone and neglected.

SPEAKER_66: Neglecting meant staying the course.

SPEAKER_125: Right.

SPEAKER_66: And change meant not staying the course.

SPEAKER_17: No, you're exactly right. Like when we looked at Reddit, we thought, okay, here's a community that had, I mean, I think they sold for $10 million or something like that for the first round. And when that happened, you know, we looked at that and we were like, well, that was, that was a failure, um, in that, you know, it wasn't a fantastic outcome for pretty much anyone involved. And, um, we thought, well, in order to get a larger outcome and, you know, when we met at board meetings and things like that, it was like, well, we need to clean up our act.

SPEAKER_19: We need to not get all these stories that the community loves on the homepage, but we need to get more traditional news on the homepage. We need to put, um, that at the forefront. So we need to get publishers more tools to get their content elevated above whatever the community was servicing.

SPEAKER_17: So, and, and to your point, Reddit was like, let's just stay the course, be true to who we are, and then open up subreddits, which allows the insanely long tail of content to

SPEAKER_12: flourish. And, um, that just, that was the unlock for them.

SPEAKER_157: But you know what? We take all of these mistakes forward with us.

SPEAKER_179: You know, I'm sure Alexis and, um, his partner, um, uh, Steve Huffman, um, they sold too soon.

SPEAKER_04: The classic mistake selling too soon. Yours was bowing to the pressure of venture capitals. They put a professional CEO in charge of your company, right? Or you did when in fact, you know, the right move is to let the Kevin Rose, the, the Elon Musk run the company, the Zuckerberg, let them run the company. Don't replace him. But people forget that at that moment in time, the entire concept was to replace the founder as quick as possible with professional management. Right.

SPEAKER_180: It's such a disaster, you know?

SPEAKER_125: Yeah, total disaster.

SPEAKER_17: It just like, it completely changes the culture, changes the product decisions. It's just like, it was, it was a mess.

SPEAKER_19: And so, you know, after that all unraveled, I peeled off and, and I tried to buy it back actually like a month ago.

SPEAKER_181: Well, the guy from buy, sell ads, Todd owns it.

SPEAKER_12: Yeah. He won't sell to me. He won't.

SPEAKER_04: I am family with Todd. I'll talk to him. That's so dumb. He should, I mean, owning 10% of a Kevin Rose owned dig will be worth more than buy, sell

SPEAKER_131: ads owned dig ever.

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. He has some plans. I don't know what the deal is. He had some plans where he wanted to, to kind of re reintroduce some dig like features in some way. And he showed me a page and I looked at it and I was like, I mean, it seems like a nice enough guy, but it just wasn't like what I would build.

SPEAKER_19: I would, I would totally go back to, to the original vibe.

SPEAKER_185: So I like that you have unfinished business with it. And you're thinking about it.

SPEAKER_17: I would say I have unfinished business in the sense that I would have a lot of fun with it and I would restore it to a better version, uh, and a more pure version of what it used to be. And not with the, with the ever, the hope that I'd ever overtake Reddit. It would be just out of the pure, like, let's get it back to an amazing fun site and

SPEAKER_81: project again, easy to do Kevin.

SPEAKER_02: We just get D2.com and he just, I'm not kidding. Trust me. I know how to do these negotiations. It's very simple. I'll go talk to Todd. I'll say, listen, Kevin's building this D2.

SPEAKER_04: It's going to come out anyway. You're focused on your business. You're putting 5% of your energy into dig and he's going to do D2. You're going to miss out on the opportunity to own 10% of. What Kevin can build as opposed to 500% of what you're spending 5% of your time on. It's a no, it's a no brainer.

SPEAKER_66: Once you build D2, then what's the point of even owning dig? It's going to be worthless.

SPEAKER_188: Yeah.

SPEAKER_66: It's just a domain name.

SPEAKER_19: It's definitely, um, there's a lot of new, new tech that is really exciting in this space and on the machine learning side and like the, the new story aggregation and, and also the cryptocurrency piece of it as well. Like allowing for microtransactions and empowering community to do the right thing for, um, pieces of the actual entity itself. It's, it's interesting stuff. It's a lot of work though, man, to be honest, like it's a ton of work.

SPEAKER_136: Like we can also just chill and invest.

SPEAKER_192: It's a ton of work, but I could see it in your eyes right now. Like it's the work you want to do.

SPEAKER_66: And just thinking about it, like so much has been built on your original vision. And, and also, I guess, slash dot was part of that, right? That, and FARC would, those were the two that came before. Yeah. Those exist before.

SPEAKER_85: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_170: Yeah. Those were, they didn't have voting in any way, or did FARC have voting? I don't know if it did. I don't think it had voting.

SPEAKER_196: I think it just ranked it based on comments or something. I can't remember.

SPEAKER_61: Yeah, it was, it was, I don't know how FARC did it, um, drew, right? It was just a collection of links in the beginning.

SPEAKER_15: Yeah. It was like, here's today's 10 links or 20 links. Yeah. And there were some concepts on there that you wouldn't be able to do today.

SPEAKER_199: Yes.

SPEAKER_171: It was like a category called like some anatomical part of a person's body that you wouldn't.

SPEAKER_17: Oh, that's right. Yeah. Do you remember that? Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_171: Yeah.

SPEAKER_17: You're getting in a lot of trouble. I wonder if it's still, are they still doing that? They can't be.

SPEAKER_201: They can't possibly be. I mean.

SPEAKER_110: I haven't looked up FARC. You drew Curtis. That's right. I haven't been on FARC in forever. Oh my God. It's the same design.

SPEAKER_04: It's the same design. That's incredible logo of the company, the category, interesting groups, facepalm.

SPEAKER_15: And then there used to be an animated gif of, uh, breasts and it would literally be like every 10th story with these 12 year old boys posting stuff would be about a woman's breasts, but I don't think they have that on there anymore.

SPEAKER_205: I think they cleaned it up.

SPEAKER_08: They cleaned it up. Yeah, I think that would get them canceled pretty immediately these days.

SPEAKER_37: But yeah, that's a really interesting idea. If you could create a cryptocurrency, cause there is that Steemit, is that the name of it or? Yeah. Steemit.

SPEAKER_64: Yeah. So Steemit is basically like a dig dig or Reddit clone with a cryptocurrency built in, but the owning of the coins and having the D, the D coins or the D two coins or the K row

SPEAKER_70: coins. Oh my Lord. Oh, you should totally do it.

SPEAKER_64: And the machine learning exists too, right? Oh, then you could show people what they want to see plus what's trending some amalgamation of that. Right?

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. I mean, I also, you could do a really fun things around a prediction market, right?

SPEAKER_19: You could say, I believe this story will eventually have more sway and value in the ecosystem. So I'm going to place an early vote on it and kind of like bet some of my currency in a way.

SPEAKER_211: Oh, like betting on a stock.

SPEAKER_19: Yeah, it's great. Yeah. But on an individual story level, so you can kind of say like, I believe this has enough that this should deserves more prominence. And so I'm going to place like my little wager here. And then if it becomes more popular within the ecosystem, it gets rewarded more.

SPEAKER_213: So I put a K row, I'm going to call the coins K rows for Kevin Rose. Appreciate that.

SPEAKER_15: I put one K row on the story. I'm the original poster. I'm the OP.

SPEAKER_04: And then you vote on it next. You put in two K rows and then it hits the homepage. We get paid off the other K rows that were voting it up or something.

SPEAKER_175: Right. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04: So, and this was one of the ideas I always had was like, I wonder if you if curation could be a paid thing, like if people curating stuff could be an actual job. It's turned out maybe everybody knows that Zendesk is the go to tool for customer support. It's the gold standard. But what you may not know is Zendesk also offers a suite of sales tools designed to remove the difficulties of sales software. So sales teams like yours can go spend more time on what really matters to their business, which of course is having better customer conversations. Even better. Zendesk is offering this suite of sales tools, plus their industry leading support software for free for six months as part of the Zendesk for startups program. Think about that. Along with the free access to all of Zendesk as part of the program, you'll also get access to Zendesk's community of startup founders and partners who will teach you all the best practices to better serve your customers. And they'll even offer dedicated onboarding guidance and support to get you up and running in no time. Steezy, one of our great investments here at launch, they teach people how to dance. It's a subscription service. Think comms meditation, Steezy for dance. They rely on Zendesk and they love it. They use the combination of Zendesk Explorer and their ticket tagging system so that they can want and that they're most excited about. And then they take all of that information from the customer support channel and they give it to the product team, right? Get six months of Zendesk for free at zendesk.com slash twist. And to qualify for this program, because they're giving it to you for free, they just ask that you have under 50 employees and you've raised a series A or below, right? So if you're a series B and you've got 100 employees, why don't you go ahead and pay for the product, okay? But this is Zendesk for startups. It's free. Zendesk.com slash twist.

SPEAKER_15: What do you think of the Twitter vision of, you know, talking about product and there's

SPEAKER_04: another product that I think has done well because the critique of Twitter is they don't evolve it, which then also becomes a secret strength, right?

SPEAKER_15: That's what we've learned is don't not change in the design and that restraint is a way of succeeding. So what do you think of their new vision? You're going to be able to subscribe to people's profiles.

SPEAKER_220: You're going to be able to charge you for seeing their tweets.

SPEAKER_61: Honestly, I may get a lot of flack for this, but I think it's great. I think there's two pieces.

SPEAKER_17: I like that they're trying to introduce new ways for people to monetize their content and

SPEAKER_19: keep it all directly on Twitter. And I also really like, I don't know if you've seen, but they have a Clubhouse competitor now.

SPEAKER_222: Yeah. Oh, I'm on it. I was the first like big account. I begged them to be on it and it's brilliant.

SPEAKER_19: It's brilliant. It's brilliant. And it's right there where everyone already is, right?

SPEAKER_17: The number one thing is when I, when I sit out at a Clubhouse, people are like, ah, I don't have it yet. And I may have to go to another app.

SPEAKER_19: Like people are right there on Twitter.

SPEAKER_226: Rebuild your graph. Yeah.

SPEAKER_19: That is, that is the smartest, uh, product move from, from, from Jack and team to go and tackle that market right away. Just take on Clubhouse right now. Now's the time. You got to roll that out as fast as possible.

SPEAKER_04: I think they got their Android out already. Cause I watched a couple of like key accounts, um, like blue check mark style accounts. And when they started rooms, uh, Kara Swisher, I opened up her room. It was 40 blue check marks. And I was like, oh my Lord, she's had a thousand people on her podcast or on her state or maybe 10,000 over the decades. She's going to be able to pull in all these top people without them installing a new app. Right. And then did you see the thing where you can share, if you're a speaker, you can share a tweet and the tweet becomes an object on the stage.

SPEAKER_230: No, I didn't see that.

SPEAKER_04: Okay.

SPEAKER_66: So this is the sick feature. We're in this chat. That's amazing. We're all talking. You, if you're a speaker, you can pick any tweet. So we're talking and you're like, oh yeah, yeah. And you know, that reminds me of, you know, the time, uh, Mark Cuban said X. And then all of a sudden, boop, we're all sitting in a theater and the PowerPoint presentation is Mark Cuban's tweet. We're talking about it. Then when somebody else puts one up, it stacks them and then puts the little dots on the bottom, like a, um, cover flow or a, a gallery. And you can swipe through the gallery. Wow. Brilliant. The tweets. So when I was started talking, somebody who was a speaker was listening to what I was saying and was popping up the tweets that were related to it. So people could then go down the rabbit hole on Twitter to understand the topic more so they could make a more informed comment or contribution on the audio.

SPEAKER_17: It's crazy. It's, it's really cool to see that Twitter, I mean, there's a thousand things they could have built. They took their time. They waited. And these, these feel very core and native to Twitter versus something forced.

SPEAKER_19: Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_35: This is completely native to Twitter is what you're saying.

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. Meaning that it feels like it's a nice product extension to what they already have. It's perfect.

SPEAKER_103: Versus it being like some kind of weird.

SPEAKER_04: I have my thoughts, but I'm curious of why you think this is the ultimate natural extension for them. And it feels so organic. What do you think the reason is?

SPEAKER_103: Well, I feel like the, we are, as a ecosystem, when you think about Twitter, one of the things

SPEAKER_19: that was a big pain point over all of this stuff, whether it be all the election drama, or even before that with, with, with Trump and all the chaos around all the politics on there has been that

SPEAKER_17: it's, it's very easy to say something that's really harsh, um, and just walk away and just let things explode and not really have a conversation around things. And so I love that this is actually forcing people into a real dialogue and real audio, real conversation. I think there's power in that, um, to get people talking versus just like blurting out a tweet and walking away. And so that was the one thing that I saw from Clubhouse from the very early days is it, is it felt so much

SPEAKER_237: more intimate to have a, a real time conversation than just like a static tweet, right?

SPEAKER_66: This is exactly what you literally, if I was going to say it, you, you're, our answers are perfectly aligned, which is Twitter and social media is a misunderstanding and a dunk fest. And it, the, the greatest weakness of Twitter is that people talk through and over and under each other, they dunk on each other. They, it turns into a flame war. It is the problem with text is there's no tone. And then you add the sophisticated tone to a platform that is already a cacophony of every argument and discussion going on in the world. And then you can use that as a funnel to an actually considered discussion.

SPEAKER_246: Right.

SPEAKER_66: It's a funnel. It's like chaos and then understanding. Right. And so I've seen this multiple times where people were talking through each other and

SPEAKER_04: then they said, let's start a clubhouse room.

SPEAKER_247: Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_04: So I think that you'll use text until such time as you feel misunderstood or the conversations

SPEAKER_15: devolve significantly to which somebody says, you know what, you guys should just talk it out in a, in a Twitter space.

SPEAKER_103: Right.

SPEAKER_251: That's it.

SPEAKER_67: And I'm really, I'm really hopeful. Makes it a strength.

SPEAKER_237: Yeah, I would, that's exactly it. And I would love that to be the case. Let's hope it goes there.

SPEAKER_04: I feel like it is. I feel like it is. Did you get caught up in all that? Like Trump derangement syndrome and all the toxicity of the last four years? Did it, did it hurt you?

SPEAKER_64: You're such a, I wouldn't say you're sensitive, but I think you're considered. I wouldn't say, I certainly wouldn't, I think you're sensitive. I don't think you're overly, I don't see you as an overly sensitive person, but I do see you as a very considered person. Has this like made you sad?

SPEAKER_17: Well, for me, I, I just, you know, I, I certainly see the impact, uh, of social media gone wrong. And it's a, it's a really, it's a really sad thing. And I think that, you know, we all know that the creators of all this stuff, right. And, and that wasn't the intention when they set out to create this stuff. Quite the opposite. It was quite the opposite. And so when you see that happen, um, and you believe in the potential, um, you know, I'm, I'm just really excited to see some potential solutions to those issues, uh, at least on the roadmap. So that's good. In terms of politics, I, my wife is insanely, uh, politically driven and I get enough of it from her at the dinner table that I tend to, I tend to like, not like for me, I can't read political news every day. I'll just go crazy. It's just too, too stressful for me. Like, I'm like, I'd almost rather have it in a newspaper format as old school as that sounds like, give it to me after it's been considered. Give me like a day or two later, the real time stuff of what was going on with Twitter and everything else. It was just, it was, it was, if I, if I allowed myself, it would really, really be too much,

SPEAKER_237: you know, too, too distracting.

Chamath Palihapitiya: It is so distracting.

SPEAKER_04: I feel like I, as a person who believes deeply in freedom of speech, I am pragmatically delighted that Trump is no longer in the town square because just for the, the silence and the space for other people to have a moment to contribute, right?

SPEAKER_08: Like, he was taking up so much of the dialogue with nonsense that I just felt like it was, it just got very boring to me to like hear him say something outrageous for the left to fall for it, for the right to then troll the left. It was like, this is just such a disgusting distraction. I don't want any part of it anymore.

SPEAKER_103: Yeah. That would the, you were on the same page.

SPEAKER_19: Like I, for me, it was, um, I'm, I'm fine with debating and discussing and like a lot of my family, the way I grew up was Republican. That was like my, my, I come from a, my, my father and mother and everybody, they're all Republicans. I, I kind of, I, I, yeah, conservative. And I, I moved to San Francisco and after a couple of years, I, I started kind of leaning a little bit more left and, and then I became a Democrat.

SPEAKER_17: And, and now, you know, I still share a dinner table with these people and I'm, I'm fine with entertaining those values. Cause there's some fantastic values mixed in there, but I just can't take the lies. Like, let's have an honest conversation about things, make up things.

SPEAKER_64: It's pretty crazy. Like just the, the level of derangement that's occurred on, on all sides. And yes, there's so many big problems for society that I, I feel like we don't have time for this.

SPEAKER_15: You know, you look at global warming, you, you look at poverty, you look at education, you look at China and the relationship there.

SPEAKER_04: There's so many big picture things we need to solve. Like we really don't have time to be at each other's, uh, throats about this when you, when you were at, or at, uh, true ventures, were you involved in the Peloton investment at all, or just got to watch that?

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. I'm watching, I watched it.

SPEAKER_19: So I, you know, I've, the truth backed a couple of my companies previously. So I've known those folks for a long time and they invested in Peloton very early on. Um, you know, it was just a fantastic story continues to be a fantastic story to watch that all unfold. Um, we still have a board seat there, John Callahan's on the board. Um, and so, yeah, it's, uh, it's John like, oh, he's brilliant.

SPEAKER_211: What's his superpower? Cause you know, I, I invited him on the pod a couple of times, but he is kinda doesn't do a lot of press, huh?

SPEAKER_17: He doesn't do a ton of press. Yeah. He's just as insanely thoughtful and someone that, um, he spends a ton of time working on EQ, like he's a very much an EQ driven person and, and is very good at reading the room and just bringing out the best in people and kind of like focusing the conversation towards that. So fantastic leader in a very measured and thoughtful way. Um, so there's not a lot of drama. True is like one of the lowest drama firms I've ever been involved with. It's like, it's the fantastic place for me. Cause I don't, I am also someone that, that aspires to be like that. So I think that, yeah, he's just very early at spotting these big trends and taking and placing bets on companies that most people will at the time would have said no to.

SPEAKER_64: So that's such an easy one to pass on Peloton cause you're like, oh, hardware. Yeah, no. Right.

SPEAKER_04: Oh, expensive hardware and a subscription. People will never pay for that. I mean, hardware's too hard, consumer subscription too hard. This'll never work. And then you look at it and I put my Peloton treadmill.

SPEAKER_64: I don't like bike riding cause it hurts my knees if they're doing so many marathons, but I do like, you know, just walking on my treadmill and watching a nice TV show or

SPEAKER_67: listening to a podcast and playing chess and I am just so in love with that product. I get on that product. It feels like, you know, sliding into my Tesla model Y or, you know, unpacking a new iPhone. Where do you get your design inspiration from? I'm curious, like when you are looking to sort of fill your bucket with ideas and, you know, I'm looking at your microphone and your headphones now, and obviously you designed your own house and

SPEAKER_64: you have known you have watched you on your journey become more and more. I mean, let's just face it.

SPEAKER_86: You're obsessed with design, I think, and culture. When did that start? And where is it now? It's a discussion with design.

SPEAKER_103: Ah, well, I would say that, um,

SPEAKER_17: it's, it's something where I've always been, uh, ever since I was younger, like first starting to build products, I've always been like you, when you were seeking out the best designer for the Mahalo logo, I've always been like, uh, someone that would browse dribble and some of the design sites and just look at the best design work out there, lose hours. So I was, you know, whenever there's mockups for stuff, I just love to think through that stuff.

SPEAKER_103: And just when I'm, when I see something creative that hasn't been done before, whether it be mostly on the kind of like UX side, where someone figures out a clever way to

SPEAKER_17: hide data that is still discoverable or just some, some kind of just new thinking there. It's always, um, got me excited. So I, I, I became fans of these best of the top designers out there, you know, the Daniel Berkus of the world. And, um, just like, He was your Johnny Ive, right? He was my Johnny Ive for sure. Yeah. Like he was, what's that cat up to now?

SPEAKER_57: Is he got a job or is he just counting his money? He must have done fabulous, right? I hope so.

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. He's, he's done.

SPEAKER_19: I mean, he was, he was with, uh, Stuart, um, before Slack was Slack and they were the game never ending. So he was, he joined, uh, Stuart Butterfield over there was their first, uh, founding designer. Um, so had just a ton of ownership in Slack and yeah, he's, um, he's in the UK

SPEAKER_17: now living with his girlfriend and, uh, working on bigger health problems. So he's, he's working at this massive, um, uh, company that is trying to tackle healthcare and third world countries. So for him, he's going and designing, you know, mostly Android applications to enable doctors on the ground in third world countries to be able to diagnose and get compliance around medication use and just some really unsexy things. But it has to be so dead simple for people that don't understand technology that he wants to go in and contribute that way. So he's like a salt of the earth type dude, like Canadian, like the nicest guy in the world. Oh my God.

SPEAKER_67: I'm on his webpage right now. Simple.org. I think is the name of it according to his Wikipedia page. And I guess Tom Frieden created this and he's the CEO of resolve to save lives at $225 million

SPEAKER_70: epidemics and cardiovascular disease. Yeah.

SPEAKER_65: He's working with, uh, on hypertension right now.

Chamath Palihapitiya: Amazing. And you can see how simple the app is. Oh, it's super basic, but it has to be.

SPEAKER_157: It's back to what we said originally is to take out the ideas and then start with the one basic idea.

SPEAKER_61: Yeah. I mean, he, he spent a bunch of months in India in the middle of nowhere. And he said that he was talking to me about the issues with getting people

SPEAKER_17: to just know when to show up for an appointment, how you can train someone to enter the right data.

SPEAKER_19: Meaning like when you're entering blood pressure information, um, fasting sugar levels, like you have to make it just for someone that is new to technology and using Android phone for the first time, they're not going to screw it up. And so that's, that's what he's focused on. It's just like a fantastic mission.

SPEAKER_67: Tell me the designers, cultures, moments of, you know, elite design, uh, and product and services that inspire you or have inspired you.

SPEAKER_15: And we were talking about Japan before we got on here. And you know, I, I, I watch you, Tony O'Malek, Matt Mullenweg, all of our circle become obsessed with Japan right after we go, why do people who do what we do immediately appreciate that culture?

SPEAKER_64: And then just feel like that is the, I almost feel like that's the society I want to aspire towards. Yeah.

SPEAKER_17: Well, I think of when I went to Japan for the first time, well, not the first time, but in more recent trips, I remember seeing someone, I was waiting for an Uber. I was standing outside on the street. First of all, just the respect for the environment and the country and how clean everything is, it's just like unbelievable. But aside from that, I was sitting across the street from, and I've watched this old man come out, this old Japanese man came out of his house and he had a cloth in his hand and he started polishing his own mailbox, like literally like doing small, little like polishing the mailbox. And I just remember the respect for your own things and just the simplicity of like that, that attention to detail and focus. And when you go to Japan and you meet these people that are building or have created anything for that matter, if you're an artisan and you've created something in Japan, and you're the best at what you do, you get a ton of local respect and honor for being, and it doesn't matter what your position is. Meaning like you don't have to be a fortune 500 CEO. You can just be the best barista in the world. And like, we were talking about this before the show started, like there are coffee masters out there that age coffee beans for 30 or 40 years. And it's one guy and you walk in and there seats, six people. And you know, they are a rock star in that world because they have decided to hone their craft to that one very specific thing. And that's what their life's work is. So just the fact that they can go and find their life's work and be at the best of that. Like I have a lot of respect for that. It's a beautiful thing. And it's a sad thing that we don't have that level of appreciation for craft here

SPEAKER_19: in the United States. I guess in some cases we do, but not as widespread as it is in Japan.

SPEAKER_04: Yeah, not at all. I mean, I knew that there was something special going on there on my first trip. When I first went on the subway, I was looking at the sign, trying to figure out where,

SPEAKER_15: how to get from Roppongi to wherever I was going. Um, and oh, I know what it was. I was going to go to the ski G fish market the next day. I was just trying to figure out the map and what time. And I'm standing there looking up at the map and the time schedule. And then there's somebody next to me and then another person next to me. And then a third person. And they all started speaking English very basically and trying to figure out what I was trying to accomplish. And then they, one of them walked me to my train and waited for me with the train.

SPEAKER_04: This is on the subway and they're all wearing white gloves and the place was spotless. And they just wanted to make sure that somebody who was visiting the country clearly

SPEAKER_64: was not going to get lost or get off at the wrong station.

SPEAKER_17: Right. Yep. I've had that happen to me. I've had the exact same story happened to me where someone walked up to me and tried to help me find my way. Like would that ever happen in the United States? Proactively. Unsolicited? Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_293: Unsolicited. You, I mean, you would be very nervous if that happened. Right. You'd be like, you would assume you're about to be murdered.

SPEAKER_295: Yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_131: Tell me about your friendship with Tim Ferriss. You guys will do a random show once in a while. And I DM, I texted you both.

SPEAKER_66: I try not to blow up Tim's text because he is, you know, he's protective of his mind space, I guess, is a way to say it. That's the best way to say it, yeah. Because one time on a podcast, he said, you know, there's so many people always trying to get stuff from me. I don't know if it was talking to you or something. And he kind of got, you know, he sometimes he gets honest. And sometimes he's not happy about certain things. And, you know, you tend to, I find he's very honest with you. You're so good at getting him to talk about stuff that he doesn't want to talk about.

SPEAKER_301: Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: That he subsequently has to re-edit the podcast and take stuff out.

SPEAKER_301: Oh, for sure. He takes stuff out. Yeah.

SPEAKER_08: He takes stuff out because you always get it out of him. I know. I love it. I need the unedited tapes. I need the basement tapes of those like original discussions.

SPEAKER_04: But he said at some point, like, you know, and then people are just texting me and they want stuff. And, you know, and I just, I texted him at some point.

SPEAKER_02: I said, if I, if I've ever done that, I'm sorry. You know, like I only try to introduce you to people or tell you about things.

SPEAKER_64: He goes, oh, anytime you text me or email me, it's like great joy for me. And, you know, our friendship means a lot to me. And that's not you. It's just other people.

SPEAKER_04: And he really doesn't like to have, I think, people constantly asking for stuff because he likes to think about stuff. But you two just do this great random show randomly. You talk about life and it's just such a great friendship. I just thought, what's special about Tim Ferriss to you?

SPEAKER_09: Oh, man. So many things.

SPEAKER_17: I think that Tim is just, once you, once you can get in that inner circle of Tim,

SPEAKER_19: like you can break down that wall and you can get to know him on a, on a personal level, he'll be like the best possible friend you could have. Like always there for you anytime you, you need him. But he is very guarded. And I think, you know, honestly, I think it's just like, I met him before the four hour work week launched or just as it was launching. And so he didn't have a lot of fame and we became, you know, friends just from, I just like appreciated his curiosity around so many different topics. Like he is just a lifelong learner to his core and is always trying out something new. I remember the first time we went to the movies together and this was like, went back in the day, like before this was even a thing, but he had a continuous glucose monitor in

SPEAKER_17: his side and it was like, it was like hardcore machinery back then. This was before it was like a, like a thing that even people would, would have. And he had to inject this like big needle. Yeah, they're super, yeah, they're super simple now, but like back in the day, like it was a hardcore procedure to even get one done. And I remember just being like, this guy is nuts. Like the fact that he does these, these self experiments, he was doing some crazy stuff back then. So, you know, I've always been a kind of someone that likes to dabble and experiment and try new things and also love learning new things. So we kind of hit it off on that front. But honestly, I think Tim is just, you know, he has been so successful in the last few years with his podcast, just blowing up the way that it has. It's crazy. Everybody wants to get in front of Tim. I can only imagine, you know, Jason, like you and I, we have like small to medium sized shows and we get enough inbound as it is. Imagine that like by like 10 X, like everybody wants a line to him. And so I think that he is, his guard has gone up quite a bit around that type of stuff,

SPEAKER_12: which, which I can totally understand. Cause who knows what, what people want and why, you know?

SPEAKER_04: Yeah. He's just always been searching and I got to spend time with him with our mutual friends

SPEAKER_15: and we got to go on a vacation or two together, like a group trip kind of thing. And just really learn to love everything about Tim Ferriss. And then, you know, him, his recently talking about the trauma in his life is so brave and just so inspiring to see him be vulnerable like that. And I always thought to myself, like, there's something about Tim, you know, like,

SPEAKER_95: you know, I wish the best for him, you know, and I can tell he's searching. And I would always say to him, like, what is Tim Ferriss searching for? And who is Tim Ferriss? It was like our internal joke. I was like, who is Tim Ferriss? He's like, that's what I'm trying to figure out.

SPEAKER_64: And he, he's been so brave about sharing, you know, the great things that have happened in his life, but also the challenges he's had and the pain and suffering. And I just, I told him, I was like, I'm so inspired by your braveness, you know, to talk about the things he's talked about. People can go listen to his podcast, but you know, his childhood was not ideal, uh, to say the least.

SPEAKER_131: And it's just amazing. I know you, I don't know if you knew that stuff before he talked about and shared it publicly.

SPEAKER_19: Yeah, he had, he had mentioned a couple of things to me in the past about some of the abuse stuff. Um, when I was at his house in New York one time, he mentioned something along those lines, but I don't, I think he was still unpacking a bunch of it because it wasn't, he didn't discover this stuff until later, uh, in life, you know, when he kind of like had these memories of these events that happened.

SPEAKER_17: Um, but yeah, I mean, the thing that I think is, is just so that most people, most guys,

SPEAKER_103: especially guys that have testosterone level that Tim does, like you don't, you don't show your vulnerable side. Like you just like that, that is especially around our age.

SPEAKER_17: Like I, I think that, you know, it was, it's a, he's inspired so many people by doing that, by coming out and saying, it's okay to be vulnerable. It's okay to talk about our weaknesses because that's, that's how we get over these things. That's how we grow stronger.

SPEAKER_15: You know, what I told him, you know, privately, I just said, listen, I think everything you've

SPEAKER_04: done up into your career right now is the, is the lead into this moment where you're going to reduce suffering in the world more than, you know, a billion other people have tried. Just your work on psychedelics alone and helping people consider that possibility for their PTSD,

SPEAKER_64: for their trauma, which is wildly effective according to all research that we've seen. And for him to take a significant amount of his net worth and, and what he's earned in his living and just pour it into research on psychedelics and, and reducing people suffering through the

SPEAKER_17: maps program. And then it's, it's the thing is with Tim is it's, it's not either. Like the, the, I don't know. I don't know if you'd get mad that I'd say this, but like, I, so I'm the, I'm the secretary to his, his nonprofit. Oh, cool. So, so we don't, I don't know. We haven't talked about that ever before, but, um, I see what he does and he, he contributes massive amounts of money.

SPEAKER_121: I know how much he has. I mean, he basically was like, Hey, do you want to do this? I was like, I'm not quite at that point yet. I got three kids, but I might, but it's a very significant

SPEAKER_69: amount of his net worth. It's not like, oh, yes, I have a lot of money and which, which obviously he

SPEAKER_116: does, but it's not like, oh, let me just do 50 K over here or something like that. We're talking

SPEAKER_05: millions of dollars, like millions of dollars to help other people's suffering get reduced. It's amazing. It's real. It's all real. It's really real. And you know what? I kind of,

SPEAKER_04: when I first met him, I goofed on him. I was like four hour work week. That's ridiculous.

SPEAKER_183: You got to work like 80 hours a week if you're going to make it. He's like, I don't think you understand what I wrote in the book. I was like, get the fuck out of here.

SPEAKER_329: And I was like, oh, I read it. I was like, oh, this is, he's talking about being efficient, right? He's not talking about being a, a lame-o, but I kind of dismissed it out of hand

SPEAKER_04: when I first met him, but shout out Tim Ferriss, just great human. And, uh, yeah, somebody's like, he, when is he going to have you on his show? And I was like, he doesn't need to have him on a show. We're friends. He he's had 20 investors on the show. Like I I'm the, he doesn't need to have the

SPEAKER_66: 25th investor on the pod, like totally unnecessary. Like, unless you have some kind of story you want

SPEAKER_331: to come out and tell us that it could be a, Oh yeah, of course. If I did. Yes. I, I just did five. MEO. And I would like to talk about touching the, I haven't done five MEO, but man, that's becoming a thing in Silicon Valley of the toad venom and just getting that close to infinity. I'm intrigued. I wouldn't have done high dose mushrooms. I haven't done high dose mushrooms, but I've obviously, uh, yeah, I had mushrooms before in my life. It's, but I haven't done like the mega,

SPEAKER_05: uh, what do they call it? Heroic dose. Yeah. You haven't done the guided tour type stuff.

SPEAKER_17: Like the, where you sit down with a mask on. Yeah. So I did that one time. It was a fantastic

SPEAKER_05: experience. That's like 2000 milligrams or something. I guess it's five grams of mushrooms. Five grams of mushrooms, which I don't know what that is of psilocybin. I don't know what psilocybin it is, but it's enough to send you to La La Land. Five grams of mushrooms is a lot.

SPEAKER_17: It's a lot. It's a lot. You put a mask on, you sob for about five hours. You, you see,

SPEAKER_19: like my father had passed away after I did it and I was able to resolve a lot of the unsaid things and emotions that I had wrapped up in that, um, you know, and it was just, it was fantastic. It was like, oh my God, it was so many years of therapy packed into that, that, you know, six, seven hour

SPEAKER_64: session. Fantastic. Highly, highly recommend it. Yeah. The, I passed on investing in that company that was doing the synthetic psilocybin with an IV drip that Peter Thiel invested in. Cause you know, it's like five years ago or something that I met them and I was like, I don't know if I can publicly endorse this kind of stuff. That's not quite legal yet. And I just don't want to cause any problems

SPEAKER_04: for, you know, businesses I'm associated with or whatever, but it's nice to see this stigma starting to move from, Hey, plant medicine versus, you know, people taking opioids and these crazy

SPEAKER_15: pharmaceuticals. Like this is a whole different class of, you know, compounds and what they do enlightens people. And what the other thing does is destroy somebody's soul.

SPEAKER_04: Right. So we need to kind of classify these differently. Right. Like fentanyl and oxycodone or whatever the fuck people are taking. I don't know what oxys I guess is the one that people were taking a whole bunch of like, or heroin itself. Like these are totally different substances. Like can't put them in the same category.

SPEAKER_17: Yeah. I mean, there's nothing, I tell you, you, you go through a five hour or six hour journey of high dose mushrooms. Nothing about you wants to do that the next day. You're like emotionally drained, you know, for a while. And, and there's like, you know,

SPEAKER_19: you've worked through a lot. So there's a lot of reintegration and processing that you need to do

SPEAKER_17: when you do it like that. Cause it is very focused. This is not, let's giggle and watch a movie mushrooms. This is, let's do work with a psychiatrist or a psychologist or whoever's administering this stuff. And the cool thing is we have that being legal now in Oregon.

SPEAKER_19: Oh, is it legal in Oregon? Okay. Yeah. So at the state level they're, they're making it legal. So it's, um, it's pretty exciting times. I think it's gonna help a lot of people.

SPEAKER_64: I mean, just PTSD and I had PTSD after 9 11, cause I was in New York when it happened and I didn't realize they had untreated PTSD, but I just kept having, what would I realize in hindsight were panic attacks when I would hear an ambulance or I would, or somebody would bring up, 9 11, my entire body would physiologically change. Wow. You know, like if I would hear an ambulance

SPEAKER_66: and I would think about 9 11, start crying and I didn't know I was crying. Jay would say like, are you crying? And I'm like, oh God, I'm crying. And I was just overwhelmed by any image of 9 11.

SPEAKER_15: And I actually went to therapy doing something called EMDR. I don't know if you've heard of that, but you have these paddles and you put goggles on and it puts you like in a theta wave kind of situation. And you just talk about the, I've never talked about this business. We're going there. I

SPEAKER_04: did like five sessions of this where I just talked about my experience on 9 11 over and over again. And the anxiety went from, you know, if we had a hundred units of anxiety, every time I talked about

SPEAKER_15: it, each time it went down 20% to which point I could say, you know, I saw 9 11, I saw people die. I saw the buildings come down and I don't physiologically, I feel sad, but I don't physiologically feel like I'm in that moment anymore.

SPEAKER_355: Yeah.

SPEAKER_64: Let alone if you were in a Humvee that gets blown up and you watch one of your brothers in arms get,

SPEAKER_05: you know, murdered or get cut in half. I mean, or you have to take other people's lives, you know, like what a horrible thing.

SPEAKER_64: Can you imagine having to reconcile that? I mean, this is why soldiers are jumping off bridges. I mean, this is somewhere where, when you think about the impact that you can have later in life,

SPEAKER_15: when you get into that third act and you deploy whatever capital you made in the first two acts,

SPEAKER_04: I'm just so inspired by watching what, you know, Bezos and Mackenzie Bezos have done. Have you tracked that? Like, no, I haven't. He gave $10 billion to climate change. She gave billions of

SPEAKER_08: dollars. I mean, they are giving away so much money. It is bonkers, like a level of philanthropy that has

SPEAKER_66: just, I mean, we have in one case, a level of wealth accumulation that's never existed

SPEAKER_64: because of a global market and products really because, I mean, if it wasn't for billions of iPhones, you couldn't have hundreds of billions of dollars in market cap, I don't think, right?

SPEAKER_04: Like it required that global audience, but now people can write a $10 billion check for global warming. You know, that's never existed in the history of humanity that a billion dollars or $10 billion could be put towards something. I mean, I think what we saw with the pandemic is really

SPEAKER_15: eye-opening in terms of solving problems. What do you think of, you know, sort of post-pandemic and what has pandemic life been with you? And then I'll wrap this up because you've been nice enough to

SPEAKER_17: give us over an hour. Yeah, no problem. Well, I would say pandemic life for me has been challenging like it's been for everyone else. I mean, I miss a lot of friends. I miss seeing that,

SPEAKER_19: having that real interaction with humans, giving people hugs, like things like that. Like we all have faced those types of challenges. So what I did early on, like anybody that tries to like figure

SPEAKER_17: out the best optimal way to move forward is I made a list of things that I wanted to try and tried them to see what would improve my mood, what would put me in a better state to get through this thing. So,

SPEAKER_103: you know, for me, that was walking outdoors. It was high intensity interval training. It was sauna usage.

SPEAKER_61: It was cold plunge. It was meditation. And there was one other thing. I can't remember what it was, but I did a bunch of these things. Expensive sushi.

SPEAKER_366: That's on the top. Yeah, there you go.

SPEAKER_61: Really expensive sushi. Craft beer, like a great wine. Craft beers. You know, but it was, it was like, okay, how, I can't do all of these every day,

SPEAKER_17: but which are the ones that are going to have the biggest impact on my mood and, and get me kind of through this. And, and, um, there were two that, that ended up sticking, uh, sauna usage is massive. Do you have that like red light sauna thing that people are doing? I, I went the traditional sauna route. So, and a lot of the research around, um, everything on terms of losing, lowering all cause mortality to improving, uh, cardiovascular disease and helping with, um, reduce the, uh, dementia rates. Like it's all at 174 degrees Fahrenheit for

SPEAKER_19: about 20 minutes a day. That's where the studies are at. So I put mine to 180 and I do 20 minutes, at least probably six days a week as well. And it improves your mood. It makes you feel better.

SPEAKER_17: And you know, there's like some days I'm, I've got a lot of stuff going on. So it's a, I do it in the evening and other days I can break away at around, you know, lunchtime or after lunch and go sit for 20 minutes. You get a shower afterwards, obviously,

SPEAKER_19: but that one has been huge. And then, um, uh, taking meditation seriously is, is a big one.

SPEAKER_74: Like where are you at with that? What is your practice? If I may ask?

SPEAKER_103: Uh, my practice is, um, I try to do 55 minutes a day, which is broken into two 25 minutes sessions, uh, with a five minute walking meditation in between, but I I'm practicing a

SPEAKER_19: very specific non app meditation. It's, it's a, a lineage of Zen called Sambo Zen, um, which is, um, so I actually have, have, uh, worked with, um, uh, there's a, there's a, a great Zen center in

SPEAKER_371: Santa Fe, New Mexico, um, called Mountain Cloud. And S-A-B-I or S-A-B-O? S-A-N-B-O. S-A-N-B-O. S-A-N-B-O. Wow.

SPEAKER_19: Yeah. So it's a, it's a, it's kind of based on the, the Rinzai sect of Zen, which is more on Koen training. Um, which is the, uh, you've heard of Koens before, like they're, they're basically these, uh, insolvable puzzles, like, um, the, the sound of, uh, one hand clapping or, you know, that's probably the most famous one, or, you know, there's a bunch of them, but they actually, they actually have real meaning in Zen. They're actually something that, that can be used

SPEAKER_36: as, um, checking questions to figure out how deep your practice is. How many companies do you invest

SPEAKER_19: in a year? Uh, I'd say probably at true, we've been doing a ton. Um, so the cryptocurrency stuff has

SPEAKER_33: just been insane lately. Uh, you know, we, we probably do one a week, I would say, or two a

SPEAKER_70: week. It's been crazy. All in crypto, really? What, which crypto company did you last invest in or become inspired by? Can you share one? It's a good question. A lot of these are pre-launch,

SPEAKER_19: so I, I wouldn't want to. Okay, I won't say anything. Is it, well, what space? Well, I'll say this.

SPEAKER_17: NFT? Is that like a, do you believe that's a big thing? I've, I've, I've been tracking the NFT stuff for a long time. I believe a, there's going to be a lot of garbage in the space when, when every artist with Photoshop can become an NFT master, like it's going to be a lot of garbage, but there's a lot of really credible, like very cool projects and re-imagining of rights and

SPEAKER_19: distribution and ownership. Like just the idea of tokenized ownership where, uh, a creator of an

SPEAKER_17: object can see long-term wealth and hold that object as it gets resold is fascinating. I mean, just the idea that an artist can have rights to the second, third, fourth, fifth sale of something and get a piece of it is, is, is beautiful. And then the, yeah, that'd be just, I could go really

SPEAKER_04: deep. Just imagine in music, you know, you have all these stories of artists being taken advantage of in music. But if they said, listen, the cattle, you always are going to own 20% of your catalog, come hell or high water. If they screwed you and bought, you know, the, the Beatles catalog and then Michael Jackson bought it and Sony bought it and they flipped it and they flipped it. Every

SPEAKER_66: time they flip it, you get that 20%. It can't change hands without you getting that 20%. And it's

SPEAKER_17: built into the smart contract. You know, have you seen Euler beats? Do you know that at all? No. So let me, let me tell you about this one. So this is a new project that they came out a couple of weeks back. It's Ethereum blockchain based. It's a basically what they did is they said, okay, what if we make a piece of math and algorithm that will create these little mini songs? Okay. So they're going to be dynamically generated miniature songs that are pressed the entire code and how to recreate these songs are pressed into the blockchain and saved as an NFT. Okay. So that's one piece they went and they generated, I don't know what is 19 or 21 of them, different beats out there. Now, if you buy the very first one, then basically what happens is you get the rights to every other copy that is ever generated. So if someone wants to print another edition of that beat, so let's just say you own a copy number one. If I want to print the next version, I have to pay a price that is higher than the last person paid. It's based on a bonding curve. And then you get paid 8% anytime someone buys or sells, cashes out one of the copies. So let's say I buy the 15th copy and it's 20 ETH for one copy. I can then instantly go and sell it and recoup 90% of what the last price sold was because it's all locked, the value's all locked into the blockchain. And you will get paid 8% as the original rights holder every time a copy is made or sold. So it's like an MLM, but you're actually getting some value.

SPEAKER_386: Right. Yeah. But it's not MLM in that. It's not MLM. Yeah. You're not haranguing people to buy soap.

SPEAKER_17: But people are buying them because there's only 121 copies of each one or something like that. And so they believe that there will be value in the very first. And don't get me wrong. I'm not saying this is like the perfect, amazing idea and everyone should go out and buy one. I'm saying that it's an interesting use of blockchain technology. And it's like a better one would be Unisox. Have you heard of Unisox at all? No. So this is- I haven't gone down the rabbit hole. Okay. So let me give you one more. I think you'll think you'll like this one. See, Unisox is essentially what they said is we are going to create a token called Sox. Okay. So you can buy one of these tokens called Sox. Got it. They're going to make only so many of them. So let's just say, I don't know the exact number, but let's just say 50 for the sake of this argument. It's also based on a bonding curve. So the further you get into the maximum number. So the first pair of Sox may cost $5. By the time you get to pair number 45, it's in the $100,000 for a pair, right? They're very expensive. Like if you went on Unisox right now, you can tell me what the most

SPEAKER_19: recent cost for a pair of Unisox is. I think there's still a few available here. I'll tell you right now.

SPEAKER_02: I see 500 initial Sox, 185. Is it Unisox.exchange?

SPEAKER_06: Yeah. It's Unisox.exchange. Yeah. Yeah. So slash stats has the stats.

SPEAKER_17: So what's the current price for a pair of Sox there? The current price, it should tell you for one, it's $112,000 for one pair of Sox. Okay. Pretty good Sox. So hold on. So if you hold this token, the Sox token, and you buy one of these right now, Jason, for $112,000. Yes. You can burn that token. So you can see in the upper right, it says 185 redeemed. If you burn the token, it destroys the Sox token, but they ship you a physical pair of Sox, and they ship you an NFT showing that you actually owned a pair of these Unisox. Or you can keep and resell the token at any point in time. So you can go in and resell it for right now for $112,000, and you get that money back out of the smart contract. But now imagine, this is silly, because it's Sox, who cares. But imagine this is applied to the next pair of Yeezys. So you could go on here, the market can determine what the price of Yeezys is. And so as it goes up, as more people buy them, the price increases. No longer do I have to have a pair of Yeezys shipped to me, stored in a closet, ship it out to someone else. The original location. Exactly. And I can sell the Yeezys token. Yes. Yes. I could sell the Yeezys token to the next person. They can choose whether they want to hold it for speculation purposes, or they want to just sell it and get and claim their

SPEAKER_04: Yeezys right then and there. What I'm interested in is a digital asset that generates some amount of money from existing in the world, i.e. in the music example, if I created or if I bought, you're a DJ, you make some song, you have no money. I'm some guy who appreciates your music. I have this like, there's some artist on Spotify, I found Clem Leek, C L E M L A E K.

SPEAKER_66: I have one of these like playlist called brain food or something, where it's just all good music to listen to while you're working. So I found this guy, Clem Leek, and it puts my mind in like a great focus. So let's say he was starting his career. I say I buy that track, I'll buy the track. I want 50% of the residuals from it, and you keep 50%, but I'll give you $1,000 for it, even though you took an hour to make it. So you're just made $1,000 in an hour, and you get half the residuals. So every time it makes money on Spotify, you get half, I get half. This is coming 100%. That's gotta be the big

SPEAKER_263: unlock. A hundred percent. But imagine this. It's like the Indici family on like some global

SPEAKER_04: exponential basis. We could just back any artist and then have participation in it, but not destroy

SPEAKER_15: their careers by owning everything and being predatory. But also think about this. Imagine

SPEAKER_17: you, there is a platform for this in the future, because there will be. You go, you log on, you say, I'm Sprite. I'm a brand manager for Sprite. I want to use this in a commercial. Yes. Click, one click, commercial rights, buy. Now you get paid and the artist gets paid instantly via cryptocurrency. And I, and that person has the rights to go and use it in that commercial

SPEAKER_05: project. It's just going to happen. What if it happened with where is this version of this?

SPEAKER_04: You should build it. This is your next startup. I have no time. I have no time. But if there's somebody let's, whoever wants to do a version of this, Kevin and I will give you a hundred grand

SPEAKER_08: right now. Prototype it and let's go. I mean, this is eventually is going to be startups, right?

SPEAKER_66: We're going to be selling tokens and all this stuff for our startups. Like this is going to be the cap

SPEAKER_10: table of companies in 10 years. Jason, your idea about the is a brilliant one. Should we cut it out of this and just cut it out in the pod? We could just put beeps in.

SPEAKER_331: Yeah, exactly. And then I'll make it Mahalo. I still have the domain. Well,

SPEAKER_131: um, we'll make it Mahalo to just be a project. Kevin Rose and I do. We just need to get a crypto developer. Are there crypto developers out there? They're expensive as hell, man. They're in high

SPEAKER_412: demand. Wow. You just have to hire a bunch of developers and say, I'll give you six months to

SPEAKER_15: figure out crypto go. I mean, talent is the limited thing, not ideas. Uh, all right, this has been a great, uh, hour and a half with Kevin Rose. Uh, just one of the great human beings in our industry, great human being to know. Can't wait to see your brother. I got a great,

SPEAKER_04: are you into the ramen? Are you into the ramen? I do love ramen. Really? Okay. There's a place called Taishoken in Japan, T-A-I-S-H-O-K-E-N. And they do that sukeman ramen, which is the,

SPEAKER_08: the buckwheat noodles that you dip in the really thick sauce. Yes. Yes. And they opened

SPEAKER_15: the first U S version in San San Mateo on the peninsula. So when you're up here, I'll take you.

SPEAKER_04: It is transcendent. They boil the, uh, broth for like two days. And the, the guy who runs it,

SPEAKER_08: Yoshihiro, um, just happened to read my book and I, I met him and he knew who I was and now we're friends and he took me in the back. They make the noodles there and then they boil like for two days, this broth and they reduce it down like 80%. It's one. And I never was a ramen guy. I was a

SPEAKER_296: sushi guy and a tempura guy. Oh, I mean, you want to talk. Now I see why you fast. Now I see what you

SPEAKER_110: are you doing? That thick sauce and those carbs, but it is damn good. All right, ma'am. Uh,

SPEAKER_156: continued success. Good to know your brother. And, uh, we'll see you all next time in this week. Bye.