SPEAKER_01: okay everybody we have a great fun-filled action-packed friday show for you today SPEAKER_00: first of all we are developing a new narrative podcast story based on the true crime story of a 16 year old hacking phenom who allegedly just got caught and uh then we're going to talk about a SPEAKER_05: little podcasting history my first appearance uh on buzz out loud and this was 16 years ago when i SPEAKER_06: met molly wood and we'll talk about molly's incredible induction into lipsyn's podcasting SPEAKER_00: hall of fame and a little bit of history you're gonna get some good molly and j cal some j j mo history here yeah uh and then finally we have another great okay boomer segment from producer SPEAKER_02: rachel who had a live in-person interview in miami it's gonna be a great show stick with us this week SPEAKER_09: in startups is brought to you by bubble bubble empowers people to design and launch their own apps marketplaces or tools without needing coding skills or pricey engineers the first 500 listeners will get one month free on any of bubbles paid plans from 29 a month up to 529 a month at bubble.io twist coda is the all-in-one doc for teams if you've got a stack of niche workflow tools or if you're buried in docs and spreadsheets coda is the doc that brings it all together startups can get a one thousand dollar credit at coda.io twist and mercury question how much time have you wasted managing your company's money answer too much switch to mercury at mercury.com okay molly there was this SPEAKER_14: really crazy story about a 16 year old hacker teed up for us we pretty much just have this one news story Jason Calacanis: that we cannot ignore because uh if you're unfamiliar microsoft nvidia and okta okta were all hacked over the past few months full disclosure that earlier this week i was like i don't know if we need to talk about that okta hack it seems like kind of a small story but it turns out that the same hacking group lapsus SPEAKER_00: dollar sign so l-a-p-s-u-s dollar sign claimed to be responsible for all of these hacks which made it a bigger hacking story and then then the mastermind behind lapsus dollar sign i don't know how we're supposed to say okay russian chinese group what is it tell me yeah totally yeah super criminal um it's a 16 year old boy from the uk who goes by the moniker white like mr white he goes by either white or SPEAKER_02: breach base he is 16 i'm going to reiterate that again 60 years old evidently it's a sophomore high school skilled so fast at hacking his fingers are flying over the keyboard so much so that the SPEAKER_00: investigators looking into this thought it must be automated like they thought it was software Jason Calacanis: but instead it was this bananas kid whose sweet father evidently is like i don't know i mean we knew SPEAKER_02: he was into computers but i didn't know he was doing video games uh supposedly he amassed 14 million from SPEAKER_05: hacking and uh has been identified by other uh hackers i guess who have doxed him and revealed his age address all this kind of stuff and they operated a telegram group with 47 000 subscribers the last SPEAKER_25: message was sent last wednesday a few of our members has a vacation until 3 30 2022 i guess he's SPEAKER_26: got to get his uh he's got a test or something or whatever maybe he's got to get a paper in or SPEAKER_25: something he's a sophomore in high school we might be quiet for some times maybe mom punished him and took the laptop away thanks for understanding us we will try to leak stuff as soon as possible when we get back from spring break i guess dad's taking us somewhere skiing or something um and then it's so SPEAKER_00: he was hacked he was doxxed after falling out with these other hackers because he's 16 they probably had hella teenage drama and then they outed this guy who again had amassed 14 million dollars while his Jason Calacanis: dad was like i don't know we just thought he was really into video games i mean can you imagine SPEAKER_34: being 16 years old with 14 million dollars in what crypto money in a paypal account where was this money SPEAKER_36: what was he doing with the money what was he going to do with the money we need this show SPEAKER_32: we need this is the show 100 make this podcast and turn it into a show on hulu because it is the Jason Calacanis: most remarkable story it's also sort of the plot of one of my favorite movies hackers with johnny lee miller and angelina jolie this kid's gonna hack the gibson any day now uh you know you always SPEAKER_05: got to think what should happen and if i'm the uk government i am taking this kid to the mi6 building i'm assuming that exists not just in the james bond films and i'm going to show him his new desk and his new laboratory and be like okay we got these seven russian oligarchs we need their crypto money we need to find putin's crypto money at any assets get everything that these oligarchs have and uh can you just put it on a thumb drive for us or here's a juvenile detention center with really ice cold showers and bad food and no internet choose wisely and then i would give him a doordash and an uber eats account and an amazon account and say buy whatever you want you work for us now and i would tell his parents like yeah you don't need to send him to school anymore we're going to have a car pick them up and bring them over here and uh the end when you find hackers like this they obviously SPEAKER_43: have you know they're misguided uh they're typically you know playing and it's like a video SPEAKER_05: game for them a 16 year old's frontal lobes are not fully developed so don't do uh you know tragically what we've done here in the united states which is uh arrest these folks and uh prosecute them i know it's an easy thing to do to be vindictive about this uh and to think this person is a criminal obviously they are doing criminal behaviors uh but you this is a level of talent that if you could SPEAKER_04: channel it could be uh you know really great for you know the cia fbi mi6 or any other three letter acronym agency so do the right thing here like let's uh let's uh flip this person and get them working on you know china and russia and fight the real enemies 100 yeah all right we got to come up SPEAKER_43: with a name for this we're starting a new podcast about this kid uh we definitely are yeah you have SPEAKER_52: to buy our so hollywood you have to buy our version of the story yeah exactly producers at yeah this SPEAKER_00: weekend startups.com email us what do you think should be the title of our now in development yes podcast SPEAKER_55: narrative podcast any submissions we own blah blah blah about lapsus all right uh let's talk a little SPEAKER_14: bit about molly becoming a member of the podcasting hall of fame hey everybody i'm super excited to SPEAKER_05: announce that molly is being inducted into libsyn's podcasting hall of fame this weekend molly was of course the co-host of one of the first podcasts ever created it was called buzz out loud she did it when she was at cnet it also was live streamed and i was on the show back in october of 2005 16 years ago right after weblogs inc was acquired by aol and uh this was a very funny moment because we re-recorded the interview and this was the early days of podcasting molly i remember this moment now it's SPEAKER_04: coming back to me oh my god well they lost the audio file yes and so and as you may recall this was SPEAKER_61: our big peace summit oh right because i had gone after you for something i can't remember jason had SPEAKER_00: come after me because i referred to i in gadget i think is a rumor blog oh yeah right you had seen even 800 pound gorilla even now he's like a little mad about it i know i wrote i wrote this glancing aside in a column about apple and how apple treats the media and i talked about rumor blogs and jason was Jason Calacanis: like oh hell no and find me rumors about mollywood and it was a whole thing and you know i i emailed SPEAKER_00: we were like we put it back together and so then we were like we're gonna have jason on the show and SPEAKER_64: this is gonna be the big like it's gonna be okay i'm cringing already i don't even know what we're SPEAKER_65: gonna hit the play button what this is gonna be we record the whole thing and it's great it's like great it's a lovely conversation okay let's see let's see let's play because i did brigade you SPEAKER_68: i think you do oh yeah you did you definitely did i'm bringing my offering people money yeah he was SPEAKER_00: like i'll give you a thousand dollars if you can come up with a rumor about mollywood it was i did not SPEAKER_72: do that you did okay here we go it's fine we're fine now we're fine now the original apology SPEAKER_00: apology apology so then uh so the clips we have the first clip is this 43 second clip of you being introduced on buzz out loud 16 years ago and breaking the fourth wall a little bit all SPEAKER_81: right here we go let's go all right we have jason calcanus ceo of weblogs inc now an aol property SPEAKER_83: with us thanks for joining us jason thanks for thanks for having me and i guess i'm not supposed to mention that we had to re-record the entire podcast that is right absolutely do not mention that SPEAKER_84: this is our second take thanks this is live doesn't everyone know yeah it never happens SPEAKER_87: hey you know what live on our reader our users ipods that kind of stuff makes people feel better about SPEAKER_89: their own podcasts and their own technical problems because everybody has lost the entire SPEAKER_90: podcast we're doing it again yeah it happens to everybody so we we apologize to our listeners SPEAKER_92: because the first interview was awesome oh yeah my energy is much lower we got all the good dish yeah SPEAKER_05: oh my god it's hilarious this is now we know why we send a podcasting kit to everybody this is why Chamath Palihapitiya: podcasting didn't take off you couldn't do a remote sound even the mighty cnet sounded totally horrible SPEAKER_00: the mighty cnet but what was so amazing is that i mean i cannot tell you the the nausea that occurred when we realized we had lost the interview but jason despite you know i thought it was hilarious in SPEAKER_32: that clip was so nice he was like that's fine we'll just do it again yeah second take that is SPEAKER_103: amazing hey let me tell you about one of the original innovators in the no code space you know who i'm talking about bubble bubble empowers anyone to design and launch their own apps marketplaces tools without any coding skills or any pricey engineers bubble's got a digital editor and a cloud-based hosting platform that starts at just 29 a month you can go from an idea to launching a product in days or weeks not months quarters or years bubble utilizes really simple drag and drop elements in their visual editor what you see is what you get they handle all the boring stuff like deployment and hosting so you can focus on what matters the product and your customers and SPEAKER_14: actually set brown who went to our founder university program and graduated use bubble to build and launch his on-demand gift giving marketplace it's called gifting he told us that bubble helped him grow gifting's pre-launch community with no coding required bubble has over 1 million users and enables over 1 billion in business volume for a reason so here's a quick call to action bubble is offering you one month free on any of their paid plans ranges from 29 a month up to 529 a month but act fast because they're only offering this deal for the first 500 redemptions head to bubble.io SPEAKER_00: slash twist and snag one of those 500 coupons today yes that was the second take and then we actually have a 47 47 second clip of you talking about the aol acquisition yeah and then chiding our producer and this sets up even more lore so we're going to play the play the clip first and then tell the history SPEAKER_83: oh god here we go we weren't looking to do a deal we weren't looking to be acquired but uh you know we were in the process of raising money from uh you know some internet gurus you know people who had done incredibly well on the internet business and we already had one as our angel investor mark cuban of the dallas mavericks and hdnet and you know ice rocket and a bunch of other interesting sites and companies uh formerly at broadcast.com which is called yahoo so now aol has become the investor well aol is now the investor that's right and you know that joke is better the second time around SPEAKER_113: burn we could be like a reoccurring theme we just keep talking about how veronica lost the tape SPEAKER_115: anyway it's groundhog day watch it and watch it yeah veronica's in charge and she has an army of SPEAKER_117: fans on our podcast so you want to be careful veronica's great we love veronica anyway god i SPEAKER_30: sound like trump uh veronica's great okay we all love right you know i i was i was not gonna say it SPEAKER_00: but i was thinking it too i was like man when you're on the phone talking you really do sound a little like john it's so bad it's so bad but the the double lore there for people who are listening is that then jason went on to poach veronica yep for mahalo i didn't make her a star uh we did it always has SPEAKER_05: been and but we gave her a vehicle mahalo daily we just started a youtube channel and we did mahalo daily where she would just do funny bits with lon harrison was producing that it was very funny Jason Calacanis: yeah and it went viral so good she's hilarious i want to shout out too by the way this is like the power of podcasting community we have this audio thanks to a group of buzz out loud fans who SPEAKER_00: over the last year like now all these years later have recreated what they're calling the buzz town archive which you can find a buzz town archive.com they like combed the internet they have a whole community on discord they went to cnet and were like do you still have links to these and they are Jason Calacanis: recreating all amazing six years of this daily podcast that started in 2005 and and reposting them online and that's how i was able to find this episode but it was phenomenal what it is phenomenal SPEAKER_00: it's amazing the fandom that podcasting community i mean the nodies know it perfectly well like it's not just the show it's the fact that they planned an entire party during you know in the chat SPEAKER_43: during our episode it's incredible and you just think about those early days of podcasting SPEAKER_05: streaming blogging you know and what it's become now uh back then we were just trying to get the tools right we were trying to get the audio file uploaded to not lose the audio file you know like that moment i'm joking about it but the reason i didn't make it such a big deal yeah was because it Jason Calacanis: happened all the time we would lose shows that's totally not true it never happened to us and yeah SPEAKER_05: i don't know if it ever happened again like well it was pirate radio days the early days it was like we were doing something that was underground it was kind of like the zine movement the blog movement this podcasting movement and you know now it's become a huge business and it's a lesson for everybody you know molly and i give you a lot of credit here you deserve to be in the hall of fame uh whichever versions of it there are and will be in the future because you took uh a sincere chance with your career to go all in on a nascent medium and this is great advice for anybody who wants to do great things in their life you find a nascent medium nobody's doing it and you just double down and double down and you make it your craft and you become the best at it and molly you are uh you know in the top you know five to ten people to ever do this and you deserve to be in uh the hall of fame obviously and a lot of people are standing on your shoulders because you were figuring all this out in the early days including me i came right after you guys i think you guys were doing this actually before it was called podcasting um i think you were just streaming i think so they Jason Calacanis: were well they were starting to call it podcasts i mean i remember when we got the the the pitch at cnet like there was you know some forward-thinking executive was like i'm hearing about this thing called podcasts yeah and i think you should do one like you know she said that to tom and i because tom and i just like to have funny conversations at lunch yeah which is how you know podcasts shout out tom merritt yeah shout out tom merritt is the other voice you heard there but it was i mean that's how early it was it literally had just become a technology it had just become a rapper the you know the rss feed the idea that you could embed audio and that is you know thanks to dave weiner and adam curry and it was sort of this parallel development and we developed what was i think arguably the first commercially successful podcast um and then but ironically and i was just saying this you're the guy who kept it going then cnet gave up on the media right everybody gave up on the medium which i i still think is one of the biggest crimes that company has ever committed and all that David Friedberg: time jason by god was still doing it like still podcasting i think you know that's the other big SPEAKER_43: lesson i learned that from peter rojas um who was the founder gizmodo and then i poached him to doing gadget and that was one of the great poachings i ever did and i think you'll be on that list as well molly you know just me finding great talent and saying let me let me bring these people in and help them uh and build a platform around them is don't stop don't stop you know i asked peter what's the secret to blogging he said showing up every day and i think other people have used that quote for acting SPEAKER_05: basketball you know in any number of pursuits but just keep going don't stop because if you don't stop then eventually uh luck happens you know and you know that that's basically the story of my career which is opportunities just emerged because i hadn't stopped doing stuff i just kept doing stuff in the world and when people see you consistently do something over a decade over two decades it's undeniable and people will not can't ignore you and so congratulations it's a it's an incredible uh thing to be inducted or to be thought of uh in this way and uh we're still here in the early days so i think you know we're in the second decade of podcasting i think it's still very early days and if you look at these podcasts the fact that this one is six days a week that you know i've got you as the co-host that we have 10 people working on it you're starting to think of the scale of this and we were having a chat today and uh we were not joking about well maybe we should do some you know documentary style spin-offs of this show or you know by the team that produced this show we could do our own documentary we could do a netflix show we could do a scripted show we could do a reality show we we know how to do it uh because we're here every day on air and we can make other projects right so i think this is becoming the foundation of media i think podcasting is becoming where great ideas start so the dropout which we talked about on the show is a podcast it's built off a podcast and so podcasts are where intelligent people um you know have important discussions and i Jason Calacanis: think that is uh you know quite a legacy we crashed also like there was the john carrie a book or i'm SPEAKER_00: sorry there was a the book about we work but this is based on the abc podcast the show that we talked about with lon so it's yeah i mean it it it is really there's an interesting moment where podcasting is has been like talk radio for a long time that's what buzz out loud was that's kind of what this show SPEAKER_02: is yeah then it started to become narrative and now it's like feedstock it's ip it's it's like the SPEAKER_43: plays that become the movie unbelievable yeah well enjoy your time uh getting inducted and uh hopefully Jason Calacanis: they have a clip we can play next week yep it's live streamed so we'll be able to we can record it SPEAKER_14: well let's retweet it okay efficiency is one of the main components in startup success everybody SPEAKER_103: knows this and that's what coda is all about coda is the all-in-one document for teams your text and tables live together in the same document which helps any team member collaborate more efficiently they've got thousands of templates to work with or you can take one of the playbooks published by some of the best innovators out there and use them for yourself coda works out of the box and it's totally customizable so you can create a wiki or a knowledge hub for your team you can onboard new hires quickly and you can adapt fast to any major or minor changes in your business yeah special projects SPEAKER_14: that kind of stuff and here is how we use coda at this week in startups my guy presh made us an upvoting system on coda for questions and topics for this very podcast this week in startups so you can go to this week in startups.com slash questions and submit questions and topics that our producers SPEAKER_103: will read and they might include in the show how awesome is that so here's an easy call to action coda has an amazing program for startups to help optimize and support your documents just go to coda.io twist and you're going to get a thousand dollars in credits once again coda.io twist to get a SPEAKER_04: thousand dollars in credits all right we uh are back with everybody's favorite segment producer rachel Jason Calacanis: doing okay boomer this week she's talking with jadon johnson who is the creator of miami half week basically she's just living the dream in miami and talking to all the interesting people who are we're building that tech scene let's not it's a real sugarcoat it it's a real thing and she is she is just hustling her butt off finding all of them and putting them on the show well done rachel SPEAKER_165: reporting okay boomer up next okay boomer i understood the assignment hello everybody welcome SPEAKER_171: back to another in-person recording of okay boomer this is only my second one so hopefully this one turns out even better than the last my first in-person recording was actually also in miami during miami hack week i'm in miami again doing some other work for jason and i decided that i would love to have on the creator of miami hack week because my first time here was so great so with me today i have jadon johnson the founder of miami hack week hello welcome back to miami glad to have you here thank you thank you so for everything yeah i love the t-shirt i'm roughing a tank top it is freaking hot out here so i guess for everybody listening can you just describe SPEAKER_177: what miami hack week is before we dive into that yeah i think miami hack week is unlike any other SPEAKER_179: hackathon anywhere else in the world um you know we we like started off like trying to figure out like a dope way to bring engineers to miami and we're like how do we make miami attractive so we took all the best things of miami beyond our dope ecosystem which is like the parties the mansions um and kind of like that that lifestyle everybody has of just like you know work hard play hard uh and we morphed it into a hackathon so what i guess in essence miami hack week is all which is a one week hackathon where uh basically companies run hacker houses um all across the entire city um and then we just like show like fill the calendar with a bunch of events that's an amazing time we bring we brought SPEAKER_182: over like 2 000 engineers from across the world to miami so far and we're less than a year old so it's SPEAKER_171: pretty dope that's awesome and this last one that i attended was the second miami hack week SPEAKER_182: it was the second station of miami hack week so the first one was august 2021 second one was january SPEAKER_184: 2022 quick turnaround and then we're doing that next one in august again of this year so are you SPEAKER_178: going to try to have one like each season or each quarter or something like that um you know like SPEAKER_188: honestly we're just like riding the momentum for now uh there's an appetite for it miami's ecosystem SPEAKER_179: is definitely like like like growing and and um and we want talent here yeah uh so miami hack week is just like you know like we don't have a formula for for when we're throwing it like if if if the vibe SPEAKER_178: feels right we're throwing the next time yeah no that totally makes sense i think what was so SPEAKER_168: interesting to me about miami as a whole and being a gen z in miami is i've noticed that there's been a lot of events not just miami hack week um that have really called towards young people flocking to the city so there was art basel there was miami hack week i know tech week or tech month miami's uh coming SPEAKER_192: up soon why do you think so many gen z's in particular are heading down to miami yeah you know honestly i SPEAKER_179: i feel like one of the the the cool things about miami is that they're like the the the rank order of like you know where you fall within like the ladder of your career um like it doesn't really stand here uh so like even if you're like just entering the the startup world for the first time um you could just like tweet or through like your mutual connection go like connect with somebody who is you know seen as like the top of the the ladder or more established in their in their career um unlike a lot of other ecosystems where it's just like yeah you know i'm i'm a senior at some company SPEAKER_182: or whatever like don't don't don't bother me yeah that's actually great advice like going to a city SPEAKER_178: that's not necessarily as saturated in the tech ecosystem early on in your career so you have SPEAKER_168: access to people that are higher up and getting first-hand experience so that's a really good idea especially coming from you who lives in miami i live in new york i haven't i guess necessarily reached out to anybody like super high up at any companies but i wonder if i was based in miami if i'd have more access to people that are more um more established in their careers yeah honestly i you SPEAKER_188: know i remember one of my my first experiences like right before i decided to move to miami last year SPEAKER_179: a friend just invited me to a bike ride uh it was like about like december um and it like basically on um saturday mornings they they do like there's like a miami tech cycling group um and i like pull up and there was like john are there who's like the ceo of shutterstock who had just like moved to miami wow um and i've just had like so many like random runnings with with uh people that you probably just like see on twitter um or you just like hear about in in in the in the in the um in the ether and the twitterverse uh and you just like run into them here in miami and it's just like so random like you i think like andrew chen came to miami oh what the heck this is like who should i connect with yeah and somebody tagged me and he like sent me a dm and we like had lunch with a couple of people like the next day so i mean like there's also sort of like very random and fun stuff happening in miami and i think that access is very critical especially if you're just like starting uh in your career and it's one of the reasons miami hack week has been like so incredibly successful is because that standing order doesn't exist in our event and we bring people across all different levels of seniority um and they're spending the same um the same week in like a very similar SPEAKER_207: environment uh everybody's just like having a great time do you have recommendations for people SPEAKER_168: that are really early on in their careers that don't necessarily know where to settle down is miami like just a place that you think you can come to during these events or do you think miami's like a permanent spot i for example work remotely i chose new york because it was a cool city to live in not necessarily because my job was located there a ton of other technical people especially in the startup world are facing that do you think that they should be coming to miami for the events or do you think this is a place that people should be living yeah i mean def miami is definitely a SPEAKER_179: place to be living and it's it's always it's always hard to it's always hard to talk about miami as a place to live especially i know like rent is like shooting uh through the roof uh but there is like a quality of life that can be enjoyed here uh you know if you have access to that type of um opportunities i i've personally like really enjoyed living here i i ultimately made the decision to move from um up north uh a year ago and i've just been like loving this the city and i've made so many friends um i just like i'm always having like a fun time and then you know even with what's happening with the tech ecosystem we have like uh mayors between mayor daniela levine calva who's the mayor of the county um mayor soares you know everybody knows um there's just like a refreshed commitment to actually helping to build and scale the tech ecosystem so if you're like very fresh in your tech career there are like startups for you to join um there are companies who are deciding to build here there's an abundance of capital in in like just like all over the the ecosystem with all the big firms who are who have decided to move to move here um and then or the movements like miami hack week are like breeding you know like a new class of of talent of entrepreneurs who are building companies here who are hiring locally um so yeah i think it's it's almost a a no-brainer if if you're if you're SPEAKER_211: considering a place to go i love that and why like what's the main purpose of miami hack week why would SPEAKER_179: people go well so i mean miami hack week's true purpose is actually like convincing engineers to explore miami as an ecosystem um you know if you're a software engineer you're probably like living somewhere like california um or some of the other like major tech hubs um miami has probably never been on your radar because probably the only thing you've heard about is just like the the beaches and the parties here um so we wanted to provide a place where they could access community and they could like work with actually like incredible local companies um so as a as an engineer it's almost like a no-brainer like you know come for a week explore what the city has to offer um and then you just might decide to stay so far we've had a bunch of people who have decided to stay um and that's like you know very early and then on the second part is um we're waiting for the local ecosystem to catch up in terms of the supply of talent um there's there's been some investment by local institutions into colleges into local universities uh but the results of that will probably take like four to five years okay uh before it gets to like a meaningful point so this is almost like a stop gap um in terms of getting talent into the ecosystem so that companies can actually flourish and they don't need to look outside miami or um at least they can look here SPEAKER_178: first um when they decide to hire gotcha and you're one of the first hires at a company can you talk to us a little bit about what you do outside of miami hack week yes i mean i was i was super lucky to be a SPEAKER_179: part of the i was like employee number six at an organization called upstream um so we're basically building uh infrastructure for communities or groups of people to have a shared wallet on the blockchain uh for a lot of people they all did hear this referred to as like dows um so if you're wondering what the dow is uh it's a decentralized autonomous organization and you know what upstream has done is just like make it super easy uh for the average person to start to though um to have access to the tools they need to successfully run those dows um yeah and you know like being a part of that journey was incredible uh joining uh michael and alex uh right after they like sold a company and like and started a new company in like the the social networking space to us now eventually um you know we just like raised our cv's a at 12.5 a couple a couple like two weeks ago um and now we're like growing pretty quickly as a company so being part a part of that journey has been like super incredible and my job is i'm the head of business development and partnerships so i'm like working very closely with all the the doubts that are being sprung up and as somebody who's like very passionate about community uh you know i love my job because it it's like really it forces me to think about what the what's SPEAKER_209: the future what does the future of community look like um and what's the role upstream is going to be playing in helping us to build that like future community how much time have you wasted SPEAKER_14: managing your company's money i'm guessing way too much well mercury lets you manage your money the same way you manage your startup which is really well so with mercury startups can get fdic insured bank accounts and here's why customers love it so much the ux is beautiful and easy to use and your onboarding is super fast you get started in just a few business days not weeks and you can issue physical and virtual debit cards in just a few clicks and you can exchange currency right from your mercury dashboard so sending domestic and international wires is so easy joshay ordonez is a launch portfolio founder and a mercury customer she's the ceo of airpal's aquaria service marketplace and mercury save airpal's employees 10 hours per month on average with their expenses because of the really elegant software and sorting features this made managing expenses fast and easy for hochay's teammates so they can get back to work on the important stuff like their product and their customers so here's a call to action on top of making it easier to manage your money mercury also helps startups get more of it now mercury offers venture debt which provides founder-friendly loans right in your mercury bank account so head to mercury.com to get started in minutes all banking services provided by evolve bank and trust so i saw SPEAKER_178: upstream i really like their tagline saying dow in a box with no code i think that's really interesting SPEAKER_168: if you were going to have like the most perfect use case for a dow what would that be why should SPEAKER_209: people even consider yeah so i mean a a very i mean one of the reasons i like um dows is obviously SPEAKER_179: in like how communities getting to is like at a place where everybody wants like participate um and actually i think a very like useful example is that we're actually thinking of turning miami hack week into a dow um because there's a couple things we want to do is that we we believe that community should benefit in the the upside of their like participation right um so it like let's think of like miami hack week as being a part of a larger ecosystem um how do we ensure that like engineers engineers companies investors like all the people in our ecosystem um can actually be rewarded for participating at like the best level in that ecosystem um so i mean that's that's probably like a great use case for a dow is like where you have like a a very like mission driven organization trying to get to a specific outcome which is to get 5 000 engineers to miami um creating no incentive structures for all the different stakeholders in that ecosystem uh to participate uh that's that's one use case that i personally just like find like to be very enticing but through my job i've seen people like do things like start dows to buy plane tickets with plane tickets with their their friends you know like democratizing uh choosing the destination to go to and then they're they're crypto native people so they're like hey we're gonna be spending money spending this money um or this ease anyways uh so why not just like do it through uh um a method that's like very like friendly or SPEAKER_211: crypto native you know it's funny because the first time dows really really sprung up i think in SPEAKER_168: mainstream was probably the constitution dow i think that's probably when most people heard of it it's been thrown around on twitter a lot before then so we do have some podcast episodes if anybody was interesting on the constitution now if you want to go look but i've even noticed people that were at miami hack week um create their own dows the first one that comes to mind is dropout doubt that's one i know that um was started by people that attended miami hack week why do you think so many young people are choosing to create those rather than just kind of like facilitate their SPEAKER_222: communities on like discord or something yeah because it's it goes back to that that core essential SPEAKER_179: part of a dow which is the democratization of like the decision making and and being able to like gain upside in like in your participation um from the community so i mean i don't i don't want to like make it complex um but like you know when we talk about like tokenomics and being able to earn rewards are proportional to the level you participate um that just gives that that that equally incentivizes people across the board to participate and you know we've seen traditionally where communities tend to have like if we have a community of 100 persons they're usually like 10 core contributors in that in that community right um and what does do is that they create they now create like a way to wait like that kind of like participation so the more you the more you're in it the higher like people can actually like see people can actually see um that the outcomes are the rewards of of of that so i mean these these groups are just like mobilizing around um they're mobilizing around ideas around things that they're passionate about and you know we we can't like ignore that uh the blockchain is is is definitely going to be a a technology um of the future um and i i'm sure like these people are just like riding SPEAKER_168: that that wave yeah again another miami uh startup that i have to plug bit basel who you introduced me to i believe the founder of bit basel it is entire uh there's an education portion so if you don't know a ton about the blockchain i would highly recommend googling what bit basel is they break it down really well for you um so for a dow this is just coming from somebody i've never been in a doubt so is there a certain amount of people that you think would be ideal for one to start like this doesn't sound like something that if it was only like me and one other person we would create a doubt like what amount of people in a community do you think you need to start it i mean that that it completely SPEAKER_227: depends on what your dollar is going to be it's going to be doing maybe you and a you and a you and SPEAKER_179: just a next person might not be the ideal case so let's say like maybe three plus people right and it kind of like it depends on like what the goal is the level of trust that exists between those um those persons because the doubt helps to like re-establish the trust yeah trust there's like mutual agreement in like our order of operations and we we're all like figuring it out as a as a group um so you know like whether you're talking like i've seen their groups of just like five people who are trying to like move resources around to do specific things um this creates the accountability the transparency um and incentivizes the participation or we're talking about like a SPEAKER_182: hundred people uh 200 300 people trying to buy the constitution um you know it's it's all varied so SPEAKER_198: can upstream help facilitate investment daos as well or no yeah so i mean like does yeah we do have SPEAKER_168: investment dollars on upstream okay and why would somebody choose to do an investment dow over like a SPEAKER_209: syndicate then well i mean as i say it's because they have more say you have more say um your your SPEAKER_179: your access to the upside is also very different whereas a syndicate is just like hey like me and let's say i'm running a syndicate i'm like hey i'll i lead the syndicate i also get carry on all the capital that's contributed to that syndicate so so therefore like any persons whose participation in that like venture deal um their contribution has already been like you know watered down a bit um whereas with a dow if you decide to invest in a dollar unless like the terms is like hey somebody's getting carried like but more time than not um there's actually like equal access to participation got you okay in a in a in like in a stronger incentive structure you know okay that totally makes sense and also like you know a lot of times we we talk about like investment those it's not only related to like the investment in in venture yeah like we there are people who are just like pulling money together to to do things like buy nfts um or buy other assets on the blockchain um or like even buy buy a a sports team um so so you know they're i guess they're more like varied uses for a what dows can help to facilitate versus like a traditional syndicate i want to back up now SPEAKER_168: because you said you were one of the first hires at upstream how would you go about hiring somebody that's even younger than us so at my miami hack week i noticed that i was actually probably like on the older side there was people that as young as 19 there and i think the oldest person that i met was probably 30 they were few and far between 25 was probably like i'm 24 25 was another one few and far between people 25 a lot of 19 year olds because those kids either went to college or took a gap year and dropped out or i never went back and realized that you can make really good money in tech and how do you think would be the best way for startups to go hire those 19 year olds that SPEAKER_237: are insanely smart so i mean miami hack week is a great model right and i i think i think the future SPEAKER_179: of hiring is is changing as like if you're like a founder so i think you actually observed with miami hack week 2.0 um is a lot of those a lot of the companies that were running hacker houses were actually started by people who attended miami hack week uh the first version of miami hack week and then launched a company and then recognized like the value of just like hey like we should like create these like interesting experiences and have people come and like learn about our companies so i mean miami hack week gives us startups like a super unfair advantage yeah um basically if a startup is able to share their value proposition with uh with these like engineers with these uh young business dev professionals like all sorts of like talents yeah um if they're able to like communicate their valley proposition very well or they're able to show like the best event yeah then they immediately become like top of mind in terms of hey i'd love to work with this company so i mean i'd use one example right like um michael michael and matthew vega sands and lulo brothers uh they've been sponsors for the last two miami hack week um they're like 24 year old founders um it's called lulo uh so it's like a venture backed company i know they they were backed like like soft bank and a couple other like major vc firms um so they participated in the first one uh literally someone decided to join like this this one of their employees henry uh he's like yeah miami's not that great i'm definitely like moving back to new york he spent a week with them um literally the week after left new york and moved to just because he like really loved the company loved the team um so you know like like i guess i guess kind of answer your question if you're like a young founder looking thinking or if you're a founder thinking how to attract um some of like the this new generation of talent um who are just like very willing like definitely like setting themselves um a bar above the rest um it's just like thinking about what and what what unconventional untraditional way uh you can like get in front of them and and really it's it's a lot more than just the salary for for a lot of these like young people they're looking for uh mission mission or causes that that really aligns with their own like personal values and just like giving them giving and providing an environment where they can uh learn about some of those things is pretty dope so a lot a lot more companies are like participating in conferences um going to like hackathons like east denver miami hack week coming to things like yeah south by things like miami tech month um everybody's just trying to put their like best foot forward um and attract like the the really SPEAKER_168: attractive best i totally i see what you're saying too because the reason i said 19 in particular is because i don't think we have as a society as a society totally focused on that age group that age group being younger than like 23 18 23 into highly professional atmospheres because before these kids were in college or they were doing trade work or just not doing things like becoming software engineers at this rate at such a young age because i think the pandemic showed a lot of people that they didn't have to go to college um or that college wasn't the only option so a lot of people took time off a lot of people are noticing like the startup world a little more which is cool but now the people that are a little older than us the millennials that have these companies um or even other gen z's that are around our age are really struggling to cater to these people that are just a few years younger than us because it's such an unknown territory but i think you're right with capturing culture you can't have culture a lot of times just over zoom like that's incredibly difficult i think i think our podcast does a really good job at it we do a live stream every day we really try to like push culture in our company um with how much like we communicate but at most companies you're not talking to somebody you're not live streaming a podcast you're not talking to your boss or hearing your boss talk all day every day so by doing things like conferences and events you're giving these kids that are of college age that same like cultural socialization um feeling i think that they would SPEAKER_179: have gotten if they didn't jump right into the workforce yeah and you know like for for me personally at least it's it's like i started i i got into the space of business when i was pretty young like 15. um you know and i i i like like age age age has never been the defining factor for me in terms of just like my ability and i i it's it's easy like i i easily recognize and resonates so much um with some of these like upcoming talent yeah um and they're definitely like a huge value added in in in companies because we're first of all like a lot of us are like very like digital natives right so we've been like honing crafts or skills ever since you're like 16 15 um and work we're entering the workforce is a lot more like um professional like developed professional skills and maybe some of our peers who relied solely on like school to get access to that but with the internet like yeah then we're sad that's SPEAKER_168: so true i i i also see it when you were talking about before like it's not just uh like a salary anymore that's driving these kids because we've learned so much on the internet we have these digital native skills i feel like they're so easily monetizable so becoming like a contractor a freelancer uh and independent is completely an option and you could make such so much money doing that so it's so difficult i find to like retain this young talent especially in the tech space because they're not like financially motivated from their company anymore like they have to have loyalty they have to have culture because if it's just like a check that they're trying to like run after you can really find that now not anywhere i don't want to say anywhere but if you're like a really really good software engineer or if you i actually noticed um people that are coding what are those called like these contracts smart contracts if you're a software engineer that understands smart contracts become a freelancer like that is the most crazy thing in order to have like somebody that programs and like knows the front and back of a smart contract and keep them in-house must be so freaking hard so SPEAKER_184: so so hard you know what i mean yeah and i mean if you hear that person come to next yeah yeah and and SPEAKER_179: you know like like one thing i was super proud of for the last miami hacker because we actually did something called hack at campus okay um and i was focused on getting uh more locals uh involved with miami hack week um so we partnered with two of the largest like institutions here which is my uh fiu um and miami dead college and we did a hackathon specifically for students um and had that track running all week so i mean the students got training uh which is the thing they needed um and then you know it got exposed to the tech world because they were able to come to any miami hack week event uh they were part of the miami hack week hack week experience and i just remember like on i think it was a friday last week i just saw like an article come out in one of our local publications about like a 19 year old who like literally like is now like starting his career in software engineering uh just from like being involved in in miami hack week and someone like the the programs being offered by the local institutions so yeah like definitely take a bet on the young talent that you're seeing that you're seeing out there like they're they're hungry for opportunities hungry for a chance to to put their skills to use um they're coming in with with with a lot of talent um you know we can we can put some respect on their on their names and really like give them a space um give them a space to actually shine but also to like be invested and committed in their success and acting as mentors and supporting their development and you know that like i've seen i've seen a lot of like like or miami hack week team i don't think there was anybody i think there were probably like just a few people on our team who are like a bit older than like 25. yeah so you know like even even a big a big project like miami hack week is being like led by a very similar odd demographic and we're working with all all sorts of of people so yeah pretty some pretty incredible stuff awesome so are you guys going to do anything then for miami what is that miami tech month well we're so we're kicking we're actually hosting a miami tech month kickoff party on on april 3rd um yeah so we like dropped some tickets for those and they all like sold out today wow um yeah we and then you know we're we're we've i mean just follow at miami hack week on on twitter because we will be sharing some of the stuff that we're working on um we have an exciting uh collaboration that we're going to be doing with three or five uh three or five ventures focused on supporting founders um obviously like you know emerge americas is going to be a pretty big deal so really really impressed with all that you know melissa medina and felice gordon the whole like emerges america america's team what they've been uh doing and they've been the biggest champions of like miami miami's tech ecosystem year after year after year and they've been doing this for many years um they're actually like the og like miami tech week was oh i love that what was was born through like emerge america so you know like super like that's definitely a can't miss event um and with some of like the fresh energy coming into miami you know our founders fund is also doing their um their miami tech week uh they have like a conference that's going on also that should be SPEAKER_195: pretty incredible uh but yeah like just follow miami hack week we'll kind of share anything we know SPEAKER_171: awesome and you're 24 too right yeah one more year until you're like one of the older people had SPEAKER_254: attended well where can people find you if you have any questions yeah i mean i'm at jdan johnson on on SPEAKER_184: on twitter um you know and honestly if you hit up miami hack week you'll probably find me anyways SPEAKER_171: well thank you so much for being on this was super exciting i hope i can make it down in the month of april because this city is just um i actually didn't know too much about miami SPEAKER_09: until miami hack week so your event did make me fall in love with the space everybody's been wonderful so thank you so much again and i hope to see you again soon thank you thank you for having SPEAKER_260: hey everyone producer nick here i want to tell you about the sas syndicate if you're a founder of a sas company with a product and market our investment team wants to talk to you head over to the syndicate dot com slash sas s-a-a-s to apply to raise from the sas syndicate and you can join jason's syndicate of over 9 000 accredited investors at the syndicate dot com producer justin here no cool startup SPEAKER_261: check out openscouting.com where anyone can refer a startup to our investment team here at launch even if you don't know the founder if you're the first to flag a company for us and we decide to invest you'll get 5k in cash or 10 of our carry hey everybody producer rachel here are you an early SPEAKER_192: stage startup that has product and market some traction and are looking to raise at least 500 000 apply today to remote demo day for your chance to pitch to over 9 000 investors in jason's syndicate submit your application at remote demo day dot com our next event is on april 27th and if you want SPEAKER_260: to learn how to invest in startups from the world's greatest angel investor and no we're not talking about chris sacca then head to angel dot university to apply the four-hour workshop costs 300 and all proceeds are donated to charity to date we've donated over 175 000 to various charities and you can see the full list at angel dot university slash charity