SPEAKER_00: Okay, today, I am really excited to have Justin Kahn on the program. You know, Justin, an amazing, amazing founder, and investor thinker, he's got a great YouTube channel. What we did on today's show is we did a live restream with my YouTube channel, which is youtube.com slash this weekend and Justin's which is youtube.com slash Justin Kahn TV, which is you go subscribe to and restream let us publish to both. We had both of our audiences asking us interesting questions. And we just riff just two entrepreneurs, two startup thinkers, two podcasters and two investors, riffing for about an hour, I think went over an hour. And it was just great to catch up with Justin. And then both of our YouTube audiences got to see it. So I want to do these like once a month, I think we'll have Gary Tan do one. If you know of anybody else, I think downtown Josh Brown would be cool. Maybe doing pomp would be cool. Anybody who's doing streaming on YouTube on a regular basis and understands how to do a live stream would qualify for this. So if you have an idea for somebody who would be a good collab collaboration, just email producers at this week in startups.com or go to all three producers and me. But before we get to that, we have to talk about Miramax suing Quentin Tarantino over his NFT project. And my idea for the most brilliant

SPEAKER_01: Dow of all time, the QT, the Quentin Dow coming soon, I hope. Stick with us. It's gonna be a great episode.

SPEAKER_04: This week in startups is brought to you by Fiverr business is a modern workplace for the digital world. Their team of dedicated business success managers help match you with the best freelancers for your team. Right now, you can sign up for Fiverr business free for the first year and save 10% on your purchase with promo code Jason. That's F I V E R R.com slash business and use promo code Jason. Embroker startup insurance program helps startups secure the most important types of insurance at a lower cost and with less hassle. Save up to 20% off traditional insurance today at Embroker.com slash twist. While you're there, get an extra 10% off using offer code twist and micro acquire the startup acquisition marketplace. Start the right acquisition conversations at your own pace. Get free and instant access to over 100,000 trusted buyers with total anonymity. Say goodbye to brokers and meet your ideal buyer today. Go to try micro acquire.com slash twist. Quentin Tarantino

SPEAKER_08: is being sued by the production company Miramax over his pulp

SPEAKER_00: fiction NFT plans. Yes, basically, so you understand Quentin Tarantino decided to make some NFTs. He's been getting pitched on this for some amount of time. I saw online in an interview, somebody was explaining NFTs to him, and he kind of thought it was interesting. So he took seven pages of the pulp fiction

SPEAKER_12: script, and was going to make an NFT out of seven pages that were left out scenes that are not in the movie. What a clever, great idea. Now the only problem is Miramax owns pulp fiction and the

SPEAKER_00: way these contracts tend to work, having seen them up close when I worked at Sony Music, or other media companies, you buy a piece of IP intellectual property like a movie, or a song, or an album, or a piece of art, or a comic book character or a comic book, or a book. And in that contract, it says, we have the right to develop this in the future in perpetuity in all mediums known and unknown. In the future. In other words, if new mediums come out, we get to exploit this IP and that's included in the price we paid you for it. So I'm assuming I don't know this, that his contract when they bought pulp fiction, they bought all rights to it, including sequels and this other stuff, which is why sometimes you'll see a director say I have nothing to do with the exorcist sequel, I have nothing to do with the jaws, sequels beyond number two, whatever, I don't even know, Spielberg probably wasn't involved into even number two. So the sequel rights is obviously a big thing. And then there's what's called derivative rights, you know, things made like merchandise, and they're outlined in contracts, and you can negotiate that I get to keep the merchandise. In fact, George Lucas did that famously with star wars. That's why he became so rich, was because he used his money to pay for the creation of the Star Wars movies, but kept the merchandise rights, etc, etc. He wound up obviously selling all of that IP to Disney and now Disney, if they want to sell nfts, I don't think Lucas gets to sell his nfts. However, this is untested law because there are a couple of issues here. Well, these

SPEAKER_12: are things Quentin Tarantino wrote, but did not sell, right, these were not sold. As part of Pulp Fiction, they didn't buy the original script. If they did buy the original ship, they certainly didn't buy the notes or pages around it. But they do own the title Pulp Fiction. So then you would make the argument, well, you're trafficking in our IP and using our IP to sell these things that are adjacent to it. Now, if he just took the seven pages from the script, he sold them at an auction. I don't think that Miramax would care. But I think Miramax is owned by Disney, I

SPEAKER_00: believe somebody can fact check me on that. Therefore, Disney probably wants to put their foot down on this and say, wait, we got to stop this before, you know, Stan Lee's estate or, you know, somebody who drew Iron Man starts going in their draws and says, Listen, I got 100 copies of sketches I did of Iron Man, I'm going to start selling them. Okay, so the Walt Disney company owned Miramax from 93 to 2010, got sold to a couple different holding companies. And now it's owned by Viacom CBS, according to Disney dot fandom.com. Now, if you owned a copy of a comic book, if I owned a comic book, and I cut each of the pages, and I made, you know, 60 pages of this graphic novel, and I framed them and I sold them page by page. Am I allowed to do that? Yes, I am. I bought that comic book, I chopped it up. But now if I make another work out of like a digital work, am I allowed to make a new story of it? Am I allowed to cut them up and make a montage and then play that into a film? Of course not. Right. So these laws, when they hit new technologies, always get tested. It's not really a big deal. This happened with DVDs and CDs and streaming famously. And generally, there's a negotiation if people feel like they get in the raw end of the stick, because you want somebody to maybe participate. So the right way to do this, and what you'll eventually see here is the director Quentin Tarantino will then go on to Miramax. And they would cut a deal where Quentin would say, Listen, I have this archive of all of this interesting stuff. I want to NFT. Do you have an preferred NFT platform? Like, yeah, we do it with this company or we started our own NFT platform. Great. So Quentin Tarantino's collection, Ridley Scott's collection of Blade Runner and gladiator stuff in partnership with Disney would then sell them right. So that that's how this stuff tends to work out. And so

SPEAKER_12: according to the Wall Street Journal, Bart Williams, who is a partner at the law firm of Prosper Rose, I think it's how you pronounce it on behalf of Miramax stated quote, it was profoundly disappointing to learn of this deliberate premeditated short term money grab by the Tarantino team to unilaterally circumvent

SPEAKER_00: Miramax's rights to Pulp Fiction through the illicit development promotion distribution of NFTs. So that's a pretty over the top statement. I don't know why they would be so aggressive about this.

SPEAKER_12: They, I'm assuming went to Quentin Tarantino and said like, Hey,

SPEAKER_00: let's, let's work something out first. But Tarantino probably told him to pound salt because maybe he doesn't agree with them or maybe he's got some past friction with them. And this is part of an overall negotiation. Remember, we saw something similar with none other than Dave Chappelle and the Chappelle show. And he was like, Hey, don't watch the Chappelle show. They're screwing me out of money. And then I guess Comedy Central and Chappelle figured out a way to bury their beef, which is good, because then Chappelle gets to work on this IP and support in the future. In fact, when Howard Stern left terrestrial radio, part of him leaving, and I think staying for an extra year or something was when he negotiated his further contracts, he said, I want to own my tapes, I want all of my tapes for history to be owned by me, my masters, basically not these other Westwood one or whoever you worked for previously, I'm not sure. And he actually owns his archive now. And I think with his deal with Sirius, he owns a company that then gives them the show, but he still retains his IP on all that. So as you move up the stack, you can then reacquire your IP and use your current partnership as bait for that. So what Tarantino should do here is, you should go to Miramax and say, Listen, I want to have some ownership in my archive or something like that. Is there some deal we could cut here? But you know, there's really no reason for the movie studios to do that. So you know, he's only gonna do one more of these. You know, I don't see it as a money grab. I see it as an experiment and maybe they should

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SPEAKER_00: announced his plans earlier this month, a release through Tarantino NFTs.com promoting the auction says the artifacts will get a quote glimpse into the mind and creative process of Quentin Tarantino. The seven unused scenes from the movie will also contain audio commentary according to the race now audio commentary. He would be allowed to do so if he wrote a book about his experience, writing about the characters, that would be really hard for them to stop. So what he should do here is not called Pulp Fiction, it should be called the Tarantino sessions. And he should just sell the Tarantino sessions where he talks about every character he's created in every movie. And that would be just his commentary like a novel. And I think they would have no leg to stand on. It's just his commentary on my inspiration for creating a character. How do you I mean, if George Lucas made an NFT on where I came up with, you know, the character Boba Fett, and what was my thinking at that time? Well, he could do that on an interview show in a book in a blog post, he could monetize it, I don't see how that would be illegal. As long when you start using the name, Pulp Fiction, or you start using imagery from Pulp Fiction, which this does in a very clever way, they don't have the actors faces on the website, they just have the iconic suit, and a little bit

SPEAKER_14: of blood. And the font style evokes Pulp Fiction. And so I think that's probably what they are objecting to. Miramax alleges that

SPEAKER_21: Mr. Tarantino reserve rights were limited to the film soundtrack, music publishing, live performance, print publication, comic books, and

SPEAKER_00: theatrical and television sequel and spinoff rights. So that's super fascinating that he owns the the rights to theatrical and television sequel and spinoff rights. So an even easier thing for Tarantino to do here would be the further adventures of, you know, name a Pulp Fiction character, super easy, any that would be worth more, or what happened to this person, you know, so you do some sequel or whatever, quote, Tarantino's limited, reserved rights under the operative agreements are far too narrow for him to unilaterally produce market and sell Pulp Fiction NFTs, the suit says, I don't know if I agree with him, given that he owns the spinoff rights, because he seven pages contributed to the original Pulp Fiction, I think that's where he's getting himself in trouble. So he should just burn those NFTs. And he should just stick it to them by doing all of the spinoff rights. And then he could say, you know, I had an original idea. But I changed it. And here's my new idea, right? Boom. So how are they going to stop them there? Miramax parted with Mr. Tarantino on many of his movies. But none of the recent ones, I

SPEAKER_14: guess, Jackie Brown and Killville volumes one and two Miramax was run up famously by the Weinstein brothers. Here's the thing, there's a certain subset of rights, as I talked about, you can negotiate all kinds of things. But forward looking stuff, it's very hard for people to control what you do in the future. If really, Tarantino

SPEAKER_00: wants to get in on this crypto griff, there is a much easier way. And I had written about this with crowdfunding 20 years ago, I may even talked about it on this podcast, I had the idea that if

SPEAKER_21: Quentin Tarantino, I think I wrote this in Silicon Valley reporter at some point in a blog post, or maybe I wrote on my own

SPEAKER_00: personal blog, Quentin Tarantino were to say, I'm going to write I'm going to write 10 more movies, I'm going to write, produce or make 10 more movies, because he said he was going to do 10. And he's working on the last one now. And he wants it to be a slam dunk. And then he I've heard him in these interviews he did

SPEAKER_14: recently, shout out to Brian Koppelman's The Moment, Joe Rogan, and also, Freddie Cinellis. They did three really great, very long interviews with Tarantino. And it was fascinating. I would watch all three of those. Freddie Cinellis is buying a paywall, very much worth paying for his podcast on

SPEAKER_00: Patreon. If you were to go out and say, I'm going to create a Dow. And the Dow is for me to make 10 more movies. I'm x years old. Now, I'm going to do 10 more. I said I was going to do 10. But then you 10 more and I'm either going to produce them, write them, or direct them some combination of those. So no promises here. But I might hire a co writer, write it with them and let them direct it, I might, you know, let her have a story idea, whatever. And if you buy into these, I'll make them. And we will put them into the public archives, or you will have some

SPEAKER_12: governance or voting in this, but he would have $100 million show up immediately. Because he's got that large of a fan base that

SPEAKER_00: wants to see him do this work. And if they had some upside in it, where they got to be a producer, let's say anybody who did that got to have a frame in the movie at the end, with, you know, over $10,000, they get their own title card, if it's

SPEAKER_12: fire, if they're $1,000, they share it with five people, you can actually do a formula for that, right, like 10,000 above, you get your own title card, which, you know, calls you something. If you're $1,000, you share it with five, if you're $100, you share it with 10, 100 people, whatever it is, would be kind of cool. And then at the end, it might be 20 minutes of producer credit, how funny would that be for 20 minutes of producer credits that they had to run at the end of every film. And you could sit there and know when yours was going to come up. We kind of fun. And he can do something like that. I think he would raise 100 million. I don't what do you think? Alright,

SPEAKER_14: congratulations to Quentin Tarantino on getting in on the

SPEAKER_44: amazing crypto grift right now. Sell those NFTS as quick as you can. Because who knows how long there will be a line of bag holders out there who want to own jpegs that have no function in

SPEAKER_00: the real world. I you know, I'm joking here. But if these NFTS actually had some IP associated with them, that would be cool. So they do think the board API club allows you to have IP in your monkey, your ape. And so if the board Apes keep going at this pace, I could see somebody doing a cartoon or something of board Apes or somebody making a board Apes. I don't know, DJ or T shirts or merch. And maybe who knows you if you bought it for $10,000. And you sold 10,000 T shirts and made $1 on each you could actually be profitable. So if the board Apes look at themselves like Marvel, who knows, maybe there's like a some crazy comic book world, where 10 of the board Apes will get together and develop a series. Would you be allowed to do that? I think you own the IP. So could you take the 10 people who own board Apes like Jimmy Fallon owns one Alexis O'Hanino and Steph Curry owns one if you have 10 of those people together, somebody email producers at this weekend startups.com or just that mentioned me. Here's an idea. If you do in fact own the IP 10 of you get together and make the board Apes super friends, you can call it that or Dave's super monkeys, could you then sell that to, you know, I don't know, the Cartoon Network and write your own scripts and make them have superpowers. And then somebody

SPEAKER_12: else could take 20 monkeys and do a comic book and call it something else and give them different superpowers on a different storyline. I think you own the IP. So I think you could do that. That's where I think some of these things get interesting is with the IP included. So NFTs are garbage.

SPEAKER_00: They're a total grip. It's a total scam. You're gonna lose all your money in 99 out of 100 of these. But if there's IP associated with them, and that IP becomes valuable, then I think there's something there. If you don't have business

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SPEAKER_51: slash twist. Alright, thanks for supporting the show on broker.

SPEAKER_00: Love you guys. Okay, everybody, welcome to our first collab. Collaboration. My man Justin Khan is with me. He's got a YouTube channel. He's an investor. He's an entrepreneur. And he's got opinions. In other words, I think we do the same thing for a living. We talk we invest and we make stuff.

SPEAKER_60: I'm just copying you Jake Allen. I'm just trying to everything you're doing. I'm trying to I'm trying to be doing.

SPEAKER_61: You know, I think live streaming wise, I'm now copying you. It's really interesting. This company restream that we're using is

SPEAKER_63: like your vision from Justin TV, which is now 14 or 15 years

SPEAKER_65: ago. When did you start Justin TV? 2007. So yeah, 14 years ago,

SPEAKER_69: 14 years ago, you Yeah, well, I mean, I remember using Justin TV.

SPEAKER_70: Was it the Nokia N95? Was that like one of the first streaming

SPEAKER_73: phones? That's just in TV. I forgot about that. Yeah. Because

SPEAKER_70: there was no iPhone. I think there was no iPhone when Justin TV came out. There was no apps. So there was a Nokia N95 was just like flip up phone. And I remember Robert Scoble running around like taking jerky videos. I remember seeing you. I think

SPEAKER_75: Leo Laporte at South by Southwest live streaming with backpacks. Is that right?

SPEAKER_77: I think that's right. Yeah, we had backpack. There's like a

SPEAKER_80: backpack with a computer in it. And a whole like camera webcam set up. And then that was that was how we made our content.

SPEAKER_34: And then eventually, obviously, Twitch came out of Justin TV. Yeah.

SPEAKER_80: Twitch exactly. So we had Justin TV sort of as us trying to make our

SPEAKER_78: own show. The show was not good, to put it kindly. And then, luckily, we opened up as a platform, anyone can broadcast and eventually, people were like, hey, we want to broadcast games, and it became Twitch. And the rest is history.

SPEAKER_61: It does say something about when you're an entrepreneur, the ability to pivot, or just as you're building stuff, and you're

SPEAKER_70: being of action, and listening to customers that sometimes some you'll just fall into a gold mine or a diamond mine. I mean, it's basically what happened. You had no idea that video games would be

SPEAKER_63: the concept here, you were making a modern day Truman Show.

SPEAKER_60: Yeah, we drove drove the clown car into the diamond mine. As the saying goes,

SPEAKER_87: As the famous for people who don't know that reference, Zuckerberg once said Twitter was like a clown car that drove into

SPEAKER_88: a gold mine or something. It was so cruel, but in some ways so

SPEAKER_92: accurate. And so on brand for Zuckerberg. Because it is true, they started people forget.

SPEAKER_70: Audio was the original idea that Evan Williams was working on. And

SPEAKER_63: he wanted to build a platform for podcasting. In the earliest days of podcasting, like, again, 14 years ago,

SPEAKER_95: Before anyone knew what podcasting was.

SPEAKER_70: Nobody knew what podcasting was. And nobody wanted to do it.

SPEAKER_11: Basically, people thought it was stupid. It was like, you want to do a radio show? Why don't you just like, what's the point of that? Just do a radio show. And then famously,

SPEAKER_70: I think Evan said, we need to come up with something here. And I guess jack was working on just updating your status. Just what are

SPEAKER_00: you doing right now? So the idea was, I believe inspired by the yacht member Yahoo Messenger had like you could pick your status.

SPEAKER_97: Yeah, I'm out.

SPEAKER_78: And AOL aim had that to status bar and then put a message on it.

SPEAKER_98: Right? You can be like sleeping or in a minute or whatever. And so

SPEAKER_35: it's just to update your thing. But they too stumbled into it. It says something about entrepreneurship. I'm trying to

SPEAKER_14: think of a company that didn't stumble into their eventual business model. Uber went from black town cars to ride sharing,

SPEAKER_102: and then food. Airbnb, they were doing something else too. What was their original business?

SPEAKER_78: They were trying to have another forgot what their original businesses, but they had a different business. And they were trying to make money to survive and work on their business. So they decided to rent out their apartment, like on the floor, the apartment for design conference, that was in SF, to like generate income, so they could pay the rent.

SPEAKER_00: Now just think about that. You're so desperate to make your rent, that you come up with a business idea, that then

SPEAKER_44: becomes arguably, one of the five best ideas of the last two decades in Silicon Valley. I think so.

SPEAKER_78: Yeah, that's, that is incredible. That's incredible. It just proves if you have the right people who are like, highly motivated, and relatively smart, and they're and think of

SPEAKER_109: desperation, then they're gonna figure it out. If they give them enough time, you're gonna figure something out.

SPEAKER_111: And there's like enough time. And then there's sometimes too much time, you have too much money, you've probably seen this

SPEAKER_112: company's got like infinite amounts of money, there's no pressure to make the diamond, right?

SPEAKER_78: Yeah, you got to exactly you have to, that's the problem with all the people who are successful and tried that like, you know, yours truly, where, where, you know, you have a little too much resources, and there's not enough desperation, you have to have like that ticking time bomb of like, how much money is in the bank. That's sub one year, you know, to keep you motivated.

SPEAKER_70: I think founders do their best work somewhere between 12 and 24 months. So I'm agreeing with you. If it's over 24 months, they're just like, they put the infinity symbol for their runway, we have infinite, I'm just like, Okay, there is something about that 12 to 18 month window, because fundraising

SPEAKER_11: is a in a normal market, what three to six months. So you have 12 months, that means you got to get some shit done for six

SPEAKER_34: months. And then you got to clear market with investors again, and they're gonna want to see some progress.

SPEAKER_78: Yeah, you have a clear window to figure it out. If you don't figure it out in this time, then you're clearly going to be dead. So you got it, you got to do something.

SPEAKER_70: And when you look at the companies you've invested in, what, what common traits do you see in the people who figure it

SPEAKER_44: out in a major way? Not like get to a couple million in revenue, but the ones who get to 10s to hundreds of millions of revenue,

SPEAKER_00: is there something you can think about with those founders? That was unique, in some way, because we get this all the time, right? Like, new investors ask us, like, how do you pick founders? And there's so many different types. Like, if you look at the Airbnb

SPEAKER_70: founders, they're designers, right? They were, you know, not developers. And then you have people who are hardcore developers, you got people who are hardcore business operations,

SPEAKER_14: people can be different archetypes. But do you see some trends or behavior patterns? I'm wondering, in the early days?

SPEAKER_78: Yeah, I think it's like, it's those people who you're, like you said, your technical background, or whatever, doesn't matter, it's people who are like, business people are successful. Engineers are successful. But the attitude that I look for that I think is like, it's the people who are both humble enough to know that they don't know most things, and they are always learning from people around them and always trying to iterate their process. But then they're also confident enough to keep going, or potentially ever. So it's kind of like that, right in the middle of like, there's, there's a humility, healthy dose of like low ego humility, and then there's a, but there's a deep well of confidence. It's like, I'm gonna figure it out. And they have, you know, you sometimes that comes from some chip on their shoulder or whatever. That's insane drive. But like, there's something there's, it's a combo of those two things. Like the best founders I know. Yeah, they're always like learning from people around like, I remember watching like Drew from Dropbox or Brian from Airbnb, and they would always have like new mentors or new people they were learning from who were like a couple steps ahead of them. You know,

SPEAKER_00: you do see that a lot. The people who seem to be incredibly successful are sponges for information, they seek out

SPEAKER_70: knowledge. They ask really great questions, they listen deeply, they take notes, they're just rabid about that. And but there's a

SPEAKER_00: humility to it, which is hey, there are people who figured this out before me, I'm not gonna ask him. And then there's this sort of resiliency. And you get the sense that somebody like Travis or Alex from calm, you know, they, they're just never going to give up, you know, Vlad from Robin Hood, you know, just starting from our portfolio, you just get this, like, it's like inevitable, they're going to be successful in their lives, they're just not going to give up. No matter what happens, no matter how hard it gets, even if they run out of money, they're still going to show up for work and figure it out, you know, as opposed to a lot of the people I thought were strong, I invested

SPEAKER_70: in and they're like, they hit a bump. And you're like, Well, if you

SPEAKER_11: just cut your 12 person team down to seven, you would add this much runway, you'd have more time to figure it out. And I literally had one of them say, I just don't want to do that. I'd

SPEAKER_131: rather just wrap it all up and close the company. And I was

SPEAKER_87: like, Okay, well, thanks, you just told me you're bluffing, you don't have it. I don't need to invest in your company ever

SPEAKER_01: again. Like, literally, you don't have the ability to just cut five people to keep the dream alive. Well, then this isn't a dream.

SPEAKER_109: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of people talking about, you know, when we started off, people weren't coming here necessarily to get super rich, it was like, they were coming

SPEAKER_78: because they were interested in technology, they want to try some try something new, they wanted to be an entrepreneur because they couldn't get a job anywhere else, you know, like, yes, it was. And then over the course of Silicon Valley, becoming very successful and very, very common job path. And last 15 years, you attract people who are like high functioning people who could be getting paid a lot and, you know, Wall Street or on Facebook, or maybe they came from those places, and then they want to start a startup, but they're not, they don't necessarily have the same tolerance for pain. That's some of the you know, that that that other people do when they like

SPEAKER_137: have no choice, or they're like a misfit. They're just like, this is like the only shot I have, you know, micro acquire is a startup

SPEAKER_00: acquisition marketplace that cuts out the middleman. Basically, that means they help startups get acquired efficiently. If you're a founder looking to sell micro acquire is free, private and involves no middlemen. You know how it is, you try to get a deal going, there's somebody in the middle, they don't care about the parties involved. In some cases, they just want to close a deal. And you really have to wonder, who are they working for? Right? You're always wondering about incentives there. Well, you don't have to worry about incentives at micro acquire to date, micro acquire has helped hundreds of startups get acquired. And they facilitated hundreds of millions in closed deal volume. Their platform includes over 100,000 buyers, including me, I'm paying for the service is pretty great. There are 1000s of startups currently listed for sale. And hundreds of successful acquisitions have occurred. So far, founders get free and instant access to over 100,000 trusted buyers, while staying totally anonymous. On the other side of the marketplace, buyers like me simply play $290 a year for access to deals on the platform, which means you're getting rid of the looky loose, right? Unless you're serious about this, you're not going to pay the 290. So micro acquire helps startups find buyers. It's as simple as that. They'll help you start conversations that can lead to an acquisition in just 30 days for free. Just go to try.microacquire.com slash twist. Once again, try.microacquire.com slash TWIST. I was about to say like, it used to be like a bunch of misfits, awkward people, president included. Something to prove like we, we absolutely have to make our mark upon this earth. Somehow we have to get something done. And, you know, be successful in some way, building some product that matters to some group of people. Talk a little bit about the fear of failure, and how you've seen that drive people, because it can go one or two ways, right? I mean, it could make you a high performance, make paralyzed. How do you mentor this next generation as you invest in

SPEAKER_14: them and build companies with them to manage their own fear and anxiety?

SPEAKER_78: Well, do ask me that a lot, right? Like, because, you know, I've been through this whole personal journey along those lines, and come to a place where I'm in a much healthier mental state. And a lot of times you ask, like, Hey, would you ever have started a company? Or could you be successful? And with that, your present mental state, right, where I'm like a lot more accepting of whatever the universe delivers, and I'm not happier with myself, like except self accepting. And I think there's something, you know, what I love about startups is the journey, right? A lot of people come in when they're in their early 20s, maybe early 30s. And they're super twisted. They're like, I have to be successful, I'm gonna die. Like, it's like, it's like get rich or die, trying like, whatever, right. And they're like, I have this huge shit. That was me, like a huge chip on my shoulder was like, I never accepted when I was a kid by my peers. And now the only way I'm going to do it is like, I'm going to be super successful. And I'm going to prove something to the world, right? Obviously, it's not a very healthy mental state. Because anytime we hit a speed bump on the journey of entrepreneurship, which for a guy starting a company with a camera on his head was like, every day, you know, I'd be I'd feel horrible. I'd be like, this is the worst. I'm like, you know, my life is over. Like, you know, rooted. I'm like, everyone else is ahead of me. I'm, I suck at this had huge imposter syndrome. And what I've found is like, the people who I know, that are the most successful, they start somewhere there, they start with that chip, they start with the drive. But over the course of like, you could start a billion dollar company, you know, 10 years ago, I always said 100 million, but now it's a billion dollar company. And like, pretty much anyone in industry can make their company worth a billion dollars, probably. But it's the ones who go the real distance, the big guys who I know, my friends who are CEOs of 10, you know, Decacorn companies or more, they always transition to like, instead of doing it from a place of fear, which is where they would start off doing it, finding their true purpose in there inside of there. And they don't have that like scarcity mindset or fear based, you know, decision making anymore. You know, and so there's, it's a journey that goes through that. And, you know, that that that like, um, that initial like scarcity mindset, like need to prove something that's like the rocket fuel that gets you launched, but it doesn't keep you in orbit. You know,

SPEAKER_21: it's very interesting that you bring up motivation like this. And you think about the hero's journey, I immediately thought

SPEAKER_00: of like Star Wars, and Joseph Campbell, and some of the stuff and you know, you're called into this life to build something, you have this fear, you have this, you know, preternatural desire to be successful to be somebody to put a camera in your face to be the editor of a publication for people to know your name, to maybe put some numbers on the board. But those motivations, the fear motivation, the competitive motivation, the self doubt, self loathing, all that stuff. It's great short term, but like you're saying, once you've made a little bit of money, and all of a sudden, you sit there and you have some success, and you bought your house, or you have

SPEAKER_70: money in the bank. Now you're sat there and you go, Okay, wait a second, what's the next level here? And that's where you have to become a Jedi, and maybe be the elder statesperson statesman and find another level, and become a missionary, you know, and like, have some higher calling. And I think if you do you watch by chance, the Michael Jordan documentary,

SPEAKER_78: I did, but I heard a lot about it. It seemed like it's really

SPEAKER_70: required for anybody who's a founder, because he's the highest performer in the history of sports in all likelihood, in terms of competitiveness and drive, he clearly is. So you know, there's obviously people Serena or, you know, in baseball, other folks, you know, but in terms of like drive, he's got like a sickness in him, like a deep sickness where he cannot enjoy the winning, nor can he enjoy the journey, nor can he enjoy the people who went on the journey with him. And he hasn't, you know, played basketball for decades. And he is loved by everybody. And he's still bitter towards his teammates and the people who got him there. And you come away with it with this

SPEAKER_12: profound sense of sadness that he never got to evolve into that next person, as we're discussing here that we see in other leaders.

SPEAKER_80: Yeah, and that's a tragedy, right? Like that is, that's like, you don't want to be there. You don't want to be there. You want

SPEAKER_78: no, like, to me, in my journey, like going through and starting twitch and being successful, becoming successful. And, you know, that was actually only a vehicle to like, learn about myself, all the things that talked about were like, oh, I was like, super twisted. And I did have all these hanging ups, and then just like, have a, be in a position where I can release them. You know, and that's what I see that true value is, like, I like all the things I thought I wanted, like, that way, I would be delivered by being successful, like, you know, being popular, or like, having people accept me, whatever, it's like,

SPEAKER_127: that turned out, none of those things really made a difference in my life. It was really about the lessons that I learned from once I got there, and seen that it wasn't that important. You know, it's nice, for sure. But it wasn't that the most important thing. Then I could like, move on to other, you know,

SPEAKER_35: a very common experience. I had a similar one after we sold our first company. I watched I don't know if you had the same experience when you do your first sale. And all of a sudden, you go from this fear of never having money, and being broke

SPEAKER_70: all the time. And then all of a sudden, the wire transfer comes in, and I was sitting there refreshing Bank of America. And the wire came in, you know, I'm sitting there for an hour, like an idiot, refreshing my Bank of America account, and we sell weblogs into AOL, and boom, this big wire comes in. And my wife goes by the room, which is why are you crying? I said, What? And I didn't notice it, but I had a couple of tears had come down. And I said, I didn't realize I cried. And she's crying because you got the money. I said, No, I'm crying because I never have to worry about not having money. And I just realized, like, I spent the first whatever 10 years as an adult and 20 years on the planet, just constantly having this strange fear of never

SPEAKER_11: having money. And to have all that money, then it was like, Oh, well, I've checked that box. And then it was like, Okay, well,

SPEAKER_109: what now? Right? What now? Yeah. Yeah, it was like, you're happy for a week, or whatever. And then? Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_61: But it is freeing and that you then feel if you can find

SPEAKER_00: something else you love to do, you're free now. To not have you can start to think in a decade, you know, I started thinking I started thinking like 510 years, I don't know how you think now about your career and the time you have left. I'm 50. Now, how old are you now? That's 38, 38. Right. So yeah, do you now start thinking like, And what do I where I want to be when I'm 50? Where do I want to be when I'm 60? Do you start thinking like in decades? Or just think, what do I want to do this year? In terms of a

SPEAKER_35: project? How do you manage your own psychology on your own

SPEAKER_174: time?

SPEAKER_104: I think it's, it's still, you know, I never was a long term

SPEAKER_78: planner, to be honest, when I was, you know, younger and startups do and then now it's the same. I just think about like, what do I love to do? And who do I love to spend time with? And I have a rule that I only want to work on things that where when I see the people I'm working with, it puts a smile on my face. You know, like, yeah, like, because it's like, like short, like, you got to spend time with certain people, like, I want to spend time with people where I enjoy their company. And, and then that's it. Like, I just work on things that are interesting to me. And hopefully they intersect with things that I think are good to put out in the world. And, you know,

SPEAKER_21: all right, to everybody who's listening, this is a collaboration. First time we're trying it, we're streaming to both of our channels on YouTube. If you're a part of the This Week in Startups audience, you can go to youtube.com slash

SPEAKER_00: Justin Kahn TV, Justin Kahn TV, and subscribe to his channel. And there's a little bell next to subscribe button, you click that bell, you'll get notified whenever Justin goes live or post a video, you do the same at youtube.com slash this weekend if

SPEAKER_14: you're so inclined. Tell everybody about what you're doing on YouTube now and how, what the response has been from young founders who obviously look up to you in a tremendous way.

SPEAKER_59: Yeah, well, so on YouTube, I started thinking about YouTube about a year ago, and I had was making this podcast. I am still

SPEAKER_78: called the quest, which was kind of like, inspired by my own story of like, trying to go through being successful, and then finding it a little bit hollow. And then, you know, find some other things that were more meaningful to me, you know, I noticed all these people had similar stories, like entrepreneurship, or like, in all these different categories, sports or entertainment. So I started doing this podcast, and then I was trying to hire someone to like, help me promote the podcast. And I ended up posting in this Gen Z server, like a

SPEAKER_127: discord server, to try to find someone young to like, help me out with it. And that's a response by this woman, Jen, who's like, you know, very young product manager in tech, and she was

SPEAKER_78: like, you should have a YouTube channel. And I was kind of like, I don't know, I don't know if I want to do the work. Sounds like a lot of work.

SPEAKER_109: It is a lot of work. And so she was like, Look, look, I'll help you make it I'll do all the editing, all you have to do is buy camera, put it yourself and tell a story. And so it's like, okay, I'm someone who's like, I'm, I'm often very much like a yes

SPEAKER_78: and person. I'm like, Hey, let's just try it out. See what happens. So I said, Okay, I'll try it. So bought a camera record a few stories. And she edited them. And they turned out really a lot better than I ever thought they would. And so we threw them up on YouTube, and they got a pretty good response. And then I just had a lot of fun with it. So I've been making videos ever since for the last almost a year now. And it's got a pretty good response from the tech community. I think I you know, I'm very vulnerable and open about like, the things that happen and the weather was shutting down atrium and, you know, laying off 180 people or the winds as well and things I learned things I'm not good at. And so you know, it's kind of an experiment. But yeah, it's pretty cool. Because people, people like it, you know, I get a lot of positive feedback. I got texted this morning from a friend I had on the podcast, a Harry Shuck is the founder of a fuck up, like on the name $30 billion enterprise SaaS company. And

Chamath Palihapitiya: he was one of his employees he was in Israel, Israel office. And

SPEAKER_78: his one of his employees was like, a huge fan and like, said, you know, I inspire her thing. He was just like, if Justin could do it, I can do it. I was like, that's so meaningful to me, you know, like to get that feedback from people around the world for

SPEAKER_109: the content I've created. So really happy to be doing that. And then I've also been making a YouTube podcast. I basically copied, like I watch all in, by the way, I'm like my biggest all in fan. So yeah, you're you're you figured out you're great. By the way, you're a great host. And sometimes your co hosts don't give you enough credit for they started to more recently, but like for a long time, they give you the credit for it. So I want to call that out.

SPEAKER_44: I appreciate that. It's interesting because they the public has been saying like, why are they giving you a hard

SPEAKER_00: time about your moderation skills? Like, you literally keep the show moving. And right as I think somebody is getting boring or the things dragging, you ask a good question, you're pivoted or whatever. It just comes from having done 1200 podcast episodes, I kind of get a sense of when things are getting boring, and when to move on to the next subject. But so yeah, all in is some

SPEAKER_70: weird. It's weird how popular it's gotten so quickly. It's like

SPEAKER_35: creating a super team or something in the NBA. And it's become more than the sum of its parts, you know?

SPEAKER_80: Well, it's it's really good. It's funny, because I spent a lot of

SPEAKER_78: time thinking about it, because I'm a big fan. And I love the content. Like, I drive a lot between Northern California and LA, right. So all eight hours, and I'll listen to like a couple episodes on the drive. And, um, and then I saw I was like, he's having so much fun doing this, or like, these guys are so much fun. So I made a YouTube show, like, we'll do a show. I've got three of my other, like, kind of YC related. Yeah, yeah, kind of copy. I was shameless. I was like, Look, I'm just copying.

SPEAKER_111: Uh, people who have said the same thing to me, and they're kind of trying to figure out their quartet. And I'm like, that's great. Get your besties together and do it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_109: Because usually just I mean, it was primarily motivated because you guys seem like you're having so much fun.

SPEAKER_44: Oh, it's hilarious. Yeah.

SPEAKER_109: Yeah. But like, people don't know behind the scenes. It's so much work to like, if you like corral your rich friends to get in one place and have like sound, like, show up with like, equipment and like, no, I upload the videos. No, I have all the idea because I've done it with like, you know, yeah, the public doesn't know. Yeah, with like Seibel, Michael Seibel and Emmett, she is my co founder is a Twitch CEO and like, getting people to like, like upload a

SPEAKER_106: video on Google Drive, like to like have a headset. You know, like, like, it's crazy. It's it's it's surprising how the first 25

SPEAKER_03: episodes was me trying to get people to commit. And then sending

SPEAKER_21: them headsets. And I just said, you know, I'm going to commit to doing this. I have my own podcasting team. I got seven people on the podcasting team between ad sales and producers and editors and

SPEAKER_00: everything. And I said, like, Listen, just send them the equipment. And if they lose it, just send it to them again, go down to run to their place, you know, install the software, show them how to use it, walk them through it, do a tech check with them, get them to upload it, all this stuff. And something happened after the Robin Hood episodes and that whole thing, where we had this, that whole when Robin Hood shut down trading, yada, yada, and then Vlad came on the pod. The podcast went like, five or 10x that week. And then Friedberg and Sax and Chamath, I think for the first time got a taste of what it's like to, you know, something you have experienced when you get a lot of attention at once. And everybody starts talking to you about it. And that's when they kind of clicked into it. And I said, if you want to be successful this, we just have to do it every Friday, you have to mark off your calendar and tell your ears and your assistants and your spouses. That time is sacrosanct. You

SPEAKER_70: cannot change Fridays at 11. And I would say four out of five Fridays, they bought into that.

SPEAKER_35: Yeah, it's funny, but number 42. The episode hit number 42 on all podcast episodes in the world. Which is mind blowing after 55 episodes or 56 episodes.

SPEAKER_187: It's amazing, but it's great. Let's say you did a good job of I

SPEAKER_78: don't know if it's like, you picked your friends who you would balance each other, but you did a good job.

SPEAKER_00: The origin story is Chamath, Chamath pinged me and said, Hey, I want to do the podcast. And I was like, Yeah, you know, on this weekend, startups anytime has been on six or seven times. And he said, No, no, I want to do a podcast with just the two of us. So you interview me, I interviewed you, we talk, you talk about startups, I talk about late stage, we just chop it up. I was like, Great, you know, we're in the middle of a pandemic, I don't get to see enough. Great. So we start doing it. And then we're like, you know what? Sachs wrote something really good about masks. And then we're like, yeah, and Friedberg talked a little bit about, you know, his theories on this. And he's a science guy. Friedberg didn't have a Twitter handle at the time.

SPEAKER_70: And they both came on. And then I was like, wow, this is really working. And the only thing that is any debate now, I think, in

SPEAKER_35: the format is the amount of politics. I don't know how you feel about politics on the pod. But I'll just ask you, what do you think? And for people in the chat room, what do you think about when we cover politics? Because it's been polarizing, obviously politics is the most polarizing thing.

SPEAKER_109: No, I like it. I like it. I mean, because I'm somewhere. You

SPEAKER_78: know, the problem, though, with any sort of group of like, you know, your group, or like, my, my, my friends, it's like, all gotta be kind of like, libertarian ish purple in the middle, there's not enough, I think it's not actually divisive enough, like, there's not people are really taking far enough positions on opposite sides. I mean, sometimes you get to moth and and Sachs, you know, but like, really, people are for like, sensible policy, based on like, kind of some, you know, utility maximizing function, right, which is like, you know, radical for like, America, perhaps, but like, it's, you know, Silicon Valley is kind of like, just in the middle. And so I just don't feel like it's that extreme. And to me, it's a little bit like, predictable.

SPEAKER_12: Yeah, I agree that we're pretty, like, close to each other in this purple area, where we, you know, the two, which I think represents America, and certainly represents the tech industry, because we're used to not knowing the answer to a question, designing an experiment, aka product or service, deploying it in the real world, and looking at the metrics and the anecdotal feedback and just saying, Okay, let's iterate on that. Whereas in politics, you have to be like, I'm anti immigration, I'm pro immigration, no borders, all borders, you know, torture people in cages, or, you know, let people just steal all of our jobs. It's just like, is there no thoughtful idea here? Why don't we run a test for two years, examine the results of the test, and then iterate on the test. And nobody can have that conversation in politics, which is feels like it's the the end of

SPEAKER_21: the the, this grand experiment in democracy that you, you can't

SPEAKER_03: admit that you've changed your opinion about something.

SPEAKER_109: Yeah, it's like you, the definition of political, or like a an issue becoming political is that it is something that you

SPEAKER_78: like, have decided a priori before there is any sort of data, right, which is, you know, an insane way to really run anything.

SPEAKER_03: So look at immigration, you and I have seen over and over again, in our contemporaries, extraordinary people come to this

SPEAKER_00: country or their parents, and absolutely create massive, massive amounts of jobs, wealth, taxes, joy, and, you know, further support this great democratic experiment known as America

SPEAKER_01: against the Communists in the country, Communists in the world, and the authoritarians in the world. And you try to talk about something like immigration, and people are like, all or none. And it's like, how about point based system or, or now we don't have people don't want to go to work. So why not allow some people in who want the jobs? Like, is the post pandemic world? And what we do for immigration? Should that be the same as the pre pandemic world? I don't know, you know, like, we can't even

SPEAKER_14: have a reasonable discussion about how do you think about immigration in this country? Did your parents immigrate here?

SPEAKER_78: Or my dad was born here? And my grandma, my dad's side was was born here. So it's kind of like Chinese who came over and like,

SPEAKER_127: you know, 19, like, I don't know, like 19 early 1900s, right?

SPEAKER_78: Wow. But my immigrate to San Francisco? No, she was, my grandma was born in Ellensburg, Washington, which is like a small town in

SPEAKER_127: Washington State. But my mom immigrated here, part of like 10 siblings who immigrated here. So it would be called like a chain migration. Now.

SPEAKER_229: Yeah. Where did she immigrate from? Did she immigrate from China?

SPEAKER_78: She came from, she's Chinese, but she came from Malaysia. So she was Chinese in Malaysia. So, you know, there is, to me, we should be finding the most talented people in the world, and we're educating them. And then we should be stapling a visa with their diploma to stay here. Because yes, you know, we like that side, that's the Silicon Valley. That's a pretty common thought in Silicon Valley. And I think we need like, different, different quotas for different educational, like, I mean, it should be based on like, the capacity of the United States to generate jobs in that area. And I think we've had like, a huge capacity that we've like to generate technology, focused or into jobs. So like for engineering jobs, technology jobs, we want those people to stay and build wealth and create industries and companies, you know, for other types of jobs, like that might not be the case. I mean, for farm worker jobs, we have like this huge capacity, people don't want those jobs in

SPEAKER_127: America, we should, you know, maybe think about a different visa quota for that. And I mean, I think it should be job based.

SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I, that seems completely logical. Like, what can we how many people can we actually assimilate into this melting pot that is America, so that they have a great experience, and they become productive members of society, obviously, such a popular place to come, you can't have everybody in the world come here. But you have a lottery for people who could take

SPEAKER_70: entry level jobs or trucking jobs that nobody wants, because the ports are backed up, or, you know, jobs working, you know, in menial tasks that Americans don't seem to want to do what's your best advice to young people regarding what to do in the early parts of their career, I'm thinking like, you know, high, late high school, and then into college, to prepare

SPEAKER_11: themselves for the world in this 21st century, which is obviously a lot different than the world you and I came into

SPEAKER_233: where your degree was pretty important.

SPEAKER_78: Yeah, I think that the most important thing is to just optimize for learning. That's what I tell people. It's like, you want to take the job when you're younger, you know, take the job or the experience that's learning optimized. A lot of people have it backwards, where they're like, I want to, you know, make money first, and then I'm going to do whatever I want. And like, go into the industry I want. But I think it's someone once told me like, your 20s are for learning your 30s are for earning. Yeah, yeah, I really believe that I think like when you're young, you should optimize for learning as much as possible. And that could be a job choice. You know,

SPEAKER_127: it could be finding the right opportunity that exposes you to the most things it could be like what you're learning in school, technically or engineering wise. But you know, I think I would, I think optimizing for learning and breadth of learning is is very important.

SPEAKER_00: It does seem like coming to a startup, where the startup is by definition, resource constraint. If you come to a startup, typically, there's no amount of work that you can take on, because they're, they're short staffed. And when I went to work for big companies, you would get in trouble for doing things that weren't your job. It's Hey, do your job. Don't do that. That's this person's job. You had five people doing one job. And in a startup, you got one person doing five jobs, pretty much the best place you can wind up now.

SPEAKER_109: Yeah, exactly. Like startup, even if a startup doesn't work, you're going to learn a lot. And I know that sounds like something like the

SPEAKER_78: founder of a startup would say to try to convince like somebody to join. But like, one example is like, I just talked to, you know, a friend of mine, an employee who used to work for me is very nice. He joined Atrium, like he was, you know, just a couple years out of college, joined Atrium. And it didn't work, right? And he left after like a year or whatever, it was kind of a cluster, you know, all sorts of different reasons, but he left after a year. And obviously, the company didn't work. But now he's running like a business that does like $5 million, basically bootstrapped a business like doing $5 million of revenue a year. And we had to catch up, and he told me this. And I was like, wow, you know, like, and from Atrium, he'd probably just learned a bunch of things what not to do. To be honest, you know, instead of raising $75 million and turning into 25, or whatever, he raised no money and turned into five, you know, $5 million a year business. Great for him. And, you know, that's an example of, I think, you know, you can get something out of any experience and experiences, even the ones that don't make you super financially successful can prove to be really valuable to you later on.

SPEAKER_63: Yeah, 100%. Oh, you know, what I was gonna ask you to as a follow up, what skills are easy to

SPEAKER_00: acquire, or take the least amount of time to acquire, but have the biggest benefit out of startup,

SPEAKER_70: or in tech or in a desired skill. In other words, I want to get a job in a startup, but you know, in

SPEAKER_11: the next six months, what can I do every weekend, every night, instead of watching TV and playing

SPEAKER_246: video games? What can I learn? Developers, the obvious, learn how to program smart contracts.

SPEAKER_78: Learn how to your developer learn how to like, do make solidity, right? Yeah, or like, embed yourself in, let's say you don't want to be a programmer, you don't have programming skills, or it's not your proclivity, like, learn how to create a community. You know, because people are able to drive community online, especially are able to drive, you know, like all of these, you know, it's momentum around these PFP NFTs, right? These profile picture NFTs, like, it's like community driven people driving, you know, creating online movements. And I think that's

SPEAKER_00: like, right now, I think it's such a good one. I was trying to find a community manager, I realized, it doesn't exist. And I couldn't find any. And so I was like, I'm just gonna hire smart people and have them figure it out. And we'll do trial and error. We'll look at other communities. I mean, the people who run subreddits right now, or who are great on hacker news, or just awesome on core and answer people's questions, like, I don't think they understand exactly how valuable they are. Because if you can get 100 people to show up somewhere every day and talk about something, and then get it to 500 or 1000 or 2000. That's the start of a movement right there. Like I mean, you the first 100

SPEAKER_70: customers, the first 1000 customers are the hardest, if you can get them all to coalesce in a discord or

SPEAKER_108: slack or a subreddit. My Lord, that is like kerosene for startups, is it not?

SPEAKER_78: Yeah, absolutely. I mean, ultimately, make moving people are like getting people aligned and like move a certain direction or like gauge. That's like an invaluable leadership skill set.

SPEAKER_14: Super. The other one I love is, if you're not into programming, maybe community is not your bag.

SPEAKER_00: Being able to do mock ups like you act UI design, build a Figma or an envision that's clickable. And then you're sitting there next to the founder, or founders, and they're talking about an idea. And you whip it up in Figma, and then you send it to your boss. And you're like, Hey, I you were talking about this, like a little idea you had, I just made a couple of mock ups, all of a sudden, you've

SPEAKER_70: manifested the founders ideas into a reality that's tangible. And then you just took what was a discussion of an idea and then manifested it in a product in the real world. That is a superpower. That's like being a mutant in the X men. Like it's such a powerful thing. You've probably worked

SPEAKER_176: with a UX designer, who like grooves with you and you say something and they just make it.

SPEAKER_78: Yeah, yeah, we have I'm working on this one new startup project. And, you know, we haven't written a line of code, but we have this amazing designers really breed life into like what the applications built on top of this protocol look like it. It's like makes a huge amount of difference in inspiring people getting people to join the project.

SPEAKER_44: Funding. I mean, as I tell people, like a picture is worth 1000 words. A video is worth like a

SPEAKER_131: million and a prototype is worth like a trillion. Once they have the prototype, they don't need any

SPEAKER_33: words. They just they take the mouse out of your hand, they start clicking and they're like, I get it. No need to talk. You don't need to tell me the vision. I clicked on your clickable. And then how many times you get

SPEAKER_00: pitches for angel investing and you know, somebody and somebody sends you a figma design or an envision like that's one out of 100 pitches. That should be 100 out of 100 should come like, here's

David Friedberg: the figma. Here's the vision. Go click. Have fun. Here's a bubble, you know?

SPEAKER_78: Yeah. Yeah, it makes it so much like more real, right? Like, when someone could be human beings are visual animals. So like, it makes it much, much more real to be able to see the product.

SPEAKER_01: Yes. And when we see something visually, and then we can click it. Now, again, that

SPEAKER_70: credibility takes another leap up. It's like, just the act of being able to click it, even though that's just two images, basically, you know, loading one page is like hyperlinks from 1994.

SPEAKER_33: From the mosaic browser, it still releases something in a human like screens want to be touched, they want to move and they want to click. And when you put that together, man, credibility

SPEAKER_35: goes way, way up. Here's a question from Andy O. I'm not sure from which of our communities, it could be from Justin Khan TV or this weekend on YouTube. Biggest missed

SPEAKER_102: opportunity and why? Biggest missed opportunity and why? What do you think?

SPEAKER_109: I mean, like, I guess there's so many financially, you know, I have a long list. I'm sure you have the

SPEAKER_78: same like, yes, the anti portfolio. Yeah, Airbnb getting, you know, helping them get into YC. But like, my co founder, Emmett was going to invest like 25k at a $300,000 valuation or something like that. And he just never, he's never followed up. And we could have we could have invested in that one, you know, like my friend Ben showed me Pinterest before launch, and I just didn't get it. I was like, Oh, you know, I didn't get it. I mean, even more recently, I'll tell you one recently, like, a year ago, I almost invested or whatnot. I really liked the team. But then my my what it is, what not is like a digital like a live shopping for collectibles like a live shopping app. And they just raised money

SPEAKER_31: a $1.5 billion valuation. Wow. And you of course, because you're the king of streaming, yada, yada.

SPEAKER_21: Yeah, you didn't see that.

SPEAKER_109: Well, it was like, I actually was like, really excited about the team. And then the space itself was

SPEAKER_78: like, I was just kind of okay, whatever on the space. But then we had just invested in a bunch of companies and come burn out on investing at that moment that like one moment, like they got me the wrong like week, right. And so then I was just like, let it you know, let go of that. Obviously, you know, I mean, it's funny, I emailed the founder was like, Oh, well, you proved me wrong. Like, you know, it's amazing. Yes. Congratulations. There's just so many, so many.

SPEAKER_03: It's so many, you don't have to hit everything. You know, for me, we're on

SPEAKER_00: restream right now. The software is incredible. They contacted me like three years ago, and I never responded. Because I used at some point, my inbound peak so much that I had to hire two researchers to associates and just a whole group of people just to respond to my emails coming in, to make sure I don't miss stuff. And you know, apologies to people over the last five years where

SPEAKER_44: I never got back to. But you know, it's, it's hard to hit super router status in the world, you've had to deal with this, where it's just, you

SPEAKER_70: literally could have 10 of you and not respond, even briefly to the people who

SPEAKER_00: are inbound. And so that was a tough one. And then of course, you know, before I was an angel investor, and really was thinking about that. One of my friends are starting a car company, another one was starting Twitter, and the third one was starting online poker Zynga. And I didn't even think of asking or

SPEAKER_44: saying yes, when they offered for me to invest. So, you know, you can have your regrets. But I mean, when you wind up doing so well, I don't even think about

SPEAKER_70: that now. Like, it's not even on my mind, like what I didn't hit. How do you deal with setbacks building a tech product? I realizing you have to change your tech stack, etc. Is a good technical blocking and tackling question, Justin, how do you deal with God, you know, you build something and you got the sunken cost. And now you

SPEAKER_131: have this emotional wreckage of having to throw it away.

SPEAKER_78: Um, generally, I question like, you know, a lot of people want to rewrite their product all the time. And like, I just nine times out of 10, or maybe like four times out of five, it's probably like, not necessary. I question whether that's truly necessary. I think for engineers, and I've been in that position as an engineer, it's like, it's easy to say, Oh, if we rewrite it, it's going to solve everything. And like, oftentimes, I did not. That wasn't the right move. You know, it was like an investment of resources that didn't really yield, like the result that we wanted, or like, create all different downstream mistakes. So I would challenge the assumption.

SPEAKER_70: Yeah, it's sometimes people don't want to take the hard medicine of Hey, we have a problem with product market fit, or we don't understand our customers. So what can we do that doesn't involve engaging the customer and figuring out

SPEAKER_12: this fundamental problem? I know what we can do, we can upgrade all the servers move to this new, rewrite the stack. And you will kick this problem, this can down the road of the problem of like, the consumers even want what we're building for six months. And it's better sometimes to just stay in the same code base, iterate and figure out what your customers want. And he has the

SPEAKER_155: genius of Eric Ries and Steve Blank with the lean startup is they were like, don't invest all this technical baggage, build an MVP. Now you have all the no

SPEAKER_35: code platforms, Webflow, Bubble, Notion, Squarespace, whatever, you know, if this than that, you can build all these really interesting MVPs, and just test it and see if people like it so much easier. Yeah, yeah. 100%. Okay, what's the most misunderstood business or crypto currently? That's a great question. What are people not understand in the crypto

SPEAKER_14: space that you think is brilliant and going to change everything? I'm building on the question, or in the regular world? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I've been pretty red

SPEAKER_289: pilled on crypto. Now, you know, I was always holding it. But now I'm really

SPEAKER_78: excited for the projects, like kind of, you know, I was never super interested in DeFi. Um, it like seemed like a lot of crypto was just speculation on things. But now I feel like there are actual applications that people are creating and and they're, you know, consumer applications. And so I'm pretty excited about what I think is the most interesting thing about crypto to me is it's a way to distribute incentives, right? It's a way to change incentives. So by a lot of

SPEAKER_127: people that have ownership for this token, they basically flip from, you know, someone who's just like a random person to somebody who's an event, like incentivized to evangelize this community. And, you know, I, one of my friends started this company called brain trust or project called brain trust, which is like, distributed up work, right? That's like a freelancing network. And he's making it

SPEAKER_78: they're making it on crypto, you know, it was a crypto project. I'm like, why should this be crypto? I just didn't get it for years. And finally, he explained it to me as like, well, if you think equity is a great way to incentivize employees in Silicon Valley to build something great. Imagine if you gave equity had a vehicle for giving equity to like 100,000 freelancers who make or market. And that's what they did. And you know, now they're, I think the

SPEAKER_127: protocols were $2 billion or something around there.

SPEAKER_70: ETRST. And so you are a freelancer, you get some brain trust coins as part of

SPEAKER_00: being a network, I guess, in addition to getting money, or maybe you substitute one or the other, it looks like usebraintrust.com is the website really interesting. The thing that's got me. So I really think that's interesting. In other words, the thing that I hated most all these ICOs and the scamming and this

SPEAKER_70: anonymous like, you know, grift and trying to find a new bag holder and

SPEAKER_00: pumping dumps and all that kind of stuff. That's the most negative framing of it and like a horrible behavior where people are going to lose their

SPEAKER_70: money. Then on the other side, wait a second, if properly deployed and people aren't speculating, but they're participating. Well, that's super

SPEAKER_12: inspiring. It's a way to give equity to everybody in a distributed way where there's no central authority to it. And so if the token grows like crazy, everybody wins. And everybody's incentivized to make it grow. The

SPEAKER_11: problem is like making it grow by, you know, being toxic and be like have fun being for poor, you don't own any Bitcoin. Haha, you're gonna be poor is like, gross. Yeah, yeah, it has to be considered.

SPEAKER_109: Exactly. And it's like equity, right? Like, you know, there's been examples of people who are, you know, starting immoral startup founders

SPEAKER_78: are like, hey, instead of taking a salary, you should get paid entirely in equity. And then they like, it's the whole thing is a fraud or whatever. And then people, you know, employees lose their shirts. And that's like, obviously, it's equity is a tool, right? To that can be used in a way that is great for your employee base, and it can be used in a way that's probably exploited on your employee base. Sure. The same thing is true of like creating a token system, like a crypto token, it can be used in a way that's like extremely exploitative, which is, you know, like some scam pump and dump. Or it

SPEAKER_127: can be used in a way that incentivizes a pool of people to create a shared outcome, right? Or, you know, to try to move towards a shared outcome, or to push them new vision of the world.

SPEAKER_00: Building infrastructure to do certain things in the world, whether it's file coin for file storage, or there's one for music now and distributing music files, or, you know, doing money transfer and running service is all interesting. The thing that's got

SPEAKER_70: me, that I, the bug I can't get rid of is the Dow's. I keep watching this and going, when do I jump in? Like, I have funds, I've got a syndicate, my syndicate is basically a Dow, except I make the decision, they decide what the I decide which company we're going to put forward, they decide how much they're going to put into it. If I could do that on a global basis and have an unlimited supply of pools of capital come in, they may not be best to decide which companies get funded, but maybe there is something to that, you know, so I've been looking at these Dow's, not for trading NFTs like Flamingo and other stuff. But I wonder if like venture capital or, you know, the syndicate or an accelerator could have a Dow, like if there was a YC Dow or a launch Dow or a Techstars Dow, how would that work? Have you thought about that?

SPEAKER_81: Have you had conversations about that? What do you think of Dow?

SPEAKER_78: There's some YC alumni who are creating a Dow to do like investments in YC companies and like build a community around, you know, doing the investments and I think it's interesting. I like the idea of like a Dow as an organization, a way that humans organize, right? Yeah, right now you have like corporations, you have nonprofits, but like a Dow is like something that's a little bit different. And we're still like figuring out how that works. Exactly. But I like the idea of it. And I, I'm what are the idea? Do you like of that? I like the idea of like, it's like, it's like, so with a with an employee, with like a company, right? You have people or employees, or you have do or, or not, right? Like, it's kind of binary, shareholders, employees. Yeah, yeah, shareholders, employees, and then, and then like, customers, that's it, right? Customers. With a Dow, you can, it's kind of like, you know, my interest is seeing how some of these like new Dow startups are going to be created, they have, you know, they're actually like allowing people to sit somewhere between, like full employee and like, you know, freelancer, and they have like, can make more, you know, they're basically, it's like the whole thing is like run by freelancers almost, right? And then how much they're getting paid is kind of voted on by like a community prioritization. And it's a, it's a very democratic way of running organization, which may be good for certain types of organizations, right? Like, I'm not convinced that like, every company should be a doubt because in some companies, it's better for it to be benevolent dictatorship, right? We want one person who's like, this is the direction. I'm the product genius, you do what I say, right?

SPEAKER_176: Yeah, SpaceX with Elon, right? You're building a spaceship, like, you can't be iterating on 17 different designs concurrently in voting, like you need to

SPEAKER_14: pick a design and iterate and get to Mars.

SPEAKER_78: Yeah. And exactly. You want Elon, who's, you know, gonna give his blood, sweat and tears to figure that out, right? Like he's in charge, you want that guy, right? And, but I think there's interesting, like, you know, I've always been interested, and it was just like every other tech techie, I

SPEAKER_127: want to, I've been interested in how do you create like a new city or town, you know? And, um, I think that would be a project that, you know, you could, you make a doubt from the beginning, because it's like very, it's, uh, inherently democratic, right? But like, and so you could, um, I think there's, there's, uh, the, the DAO has an opportunity to create like new forms of organization and self organization, I think is really fascinating to me. And I'm not even sure that we know what they're going to be good for yet.

SPEAKER_70: They're programmable and they're votable and they're online and social. So

SPEAKER_00: there's like a very interesting, um, sort of comparative here, you know, they have LLC structures or partnerships in them. These are like programmable LLCs in a way. And they, you know, can share the decision making. And when the tools come out where you can go to a website, just

SPEAKER_12: like building a Squarespace website or whatever, or Twilio, and you just type in what you want your dad to do, you write the code, okay, here's how we do voting. Here's how, what happens if people want to sell their shares and get out of the DAO. And you think about burning man and like camps, people can build camps, they get a certain amount of space, they self organize and then the camps make up burning man. It's the city idea is really clever because it's like, okay, we're gonna put a bunch of money together, we're gonna buy a city, we're gonna put a bunch of money together, we're gonna buy three cities, and we're gonna develop them. And you can live in one or two or three of those cities, however many you want, and you get to vote on them. So do you want to have fiber as our first project to bring fiber into the community? Or do you want to bring satellite into the community? What do you want to? How are we going to bring internet to the community? How are we gonna do education in the community? Could be really interesting, right? And

SPEAKER_11: people have skin in the game, they own shares in the community. I find it super inspiring, like to really rethink all of that. So what is the

SPEAKER_00: highest leverage use of time? What is the highest leverage use of

SPEAKER_44: time? I guess I'll add to that your time. What is the highest use of

SPEAKER_80: just in time? I think for me, it's like to inspire other people. You

SPEAKER_78: know, that's, that's what I think my highest leverage use of time. It's like, I'm not gonna build be the programmer program something myself anymore. I'm not even gonna be the manager who like manages a project. I what I really love to do is like, I love to sell a vision and excite people like catalyze a group of people to do something. And so for me, I spend a lot of my time figuring out, how can I inspire people to like build things that I want to see in the world. So YouTube, my YouTube channels like that. It's like, hey, people want to build startups, I want to help them on their hero's journey. And so a lot of what I talk about is like just trying to, or my videos are about trying to help inspire people. And then the projects I work on, it's like, I'm not gonna be the CEO anymore. I don't, you don't even want me as a CEO. I'm like, like we talked about earlier, I'm

SPEAKER_313: for CEOs. Don't make me the CEO.

SPEAKER_78: Yeah, I'm too, I'm too rich now. I'm like not, you know, I'm not do or die anymore. You know, I'm the guy who's like, shutting down the startup instead of laying off, you know, seven people like, because I'm like, I don't, I don't need the pain anymore. But what I can do is help inspire a new CEO who is hungry and really wants to go to like, to do his best and to help him or her and get, you know, get off the ground and and get running. And so that's, that's

SPEAKER_127: that's, that's my, that's what I love to do. Now. And that's, I think that's the highest leverage use of my time.

SPEAKER_316: I think that's brilliant. I, you know, to answer it myself, I'd

SPEAKER_00: say, I am, I've turned out to be a really good friend to people.

SPEAKER_01: I don't know how that happened. That's like my great skill set. I like to think I'm good at communicating in media like to think I'm good at investing or, you know, building media brands, and I enjoy those things. The thing actually is being a bestie to people like being a good friend to people, whether it's somebody who I invest in their company, or just somebody in my personal life, being there to help people solve their problems and being of service them is, I think the highest order or the one where I feel the most joy, you know, and I'm lucky to have a

SPEAKER_14: lot of friends who are very successful. And, you know, it's, it's nice to be on the short list of people where they say, yeah, can you help me with something? Like, okay, sure, I'd love to help you with something. It feels great to be of service. And so you think we have some overlap there. This question is great. How

SPEAKER_70: do you go from working at a no name tech company, Google, I'm

SPEAKER_00: guessing the bigger players, let's say this is from a standpoint

SPEAKER_12: of a data scientist. So I'll expand that to, hey, maybe you could become a player yourself as a data scientist or find, like, you know, become a bigger player to bigger player. How do you level

SPEAKER_11: up? Either way, becoming indie or becoming bigger part of the machine? It was from the point of view of a data scientist, I'm sure you have some ideas. Yeah, I think, you know, I saw a lot of

SPEAKER_78: people do this, actually, in the early days of Justin TV or Twitch, they would like work, go from like, no, no name, or like, maybe a student to like working for us, and then they catch up like Facebook, like go over there. And, you know, I think that it's just about finding, you know, you're working at this company. And it's kind of like what I talked about earlier, where you're optimizing for learning, it's like, go do the projects that are going to challenge you through the projects that are, you know, they're, they're where you're going to learn a lot. And then figure out how you know, be good at articulating or learn how to articulate the things you learned and how you surmounted those challenges. And then go interview at a better company or better job and like be able to articulate what you learned. And that is the key. And you know, that's when you're interviewing someone like this is true for startups. I'm sure you feel the same way. But also for like employees, it's like, I want to hire people where I learned from them. And so generally, in an interview process setting, you know, yeah, you're looking for like, can this person do these jobs, you know, can they do this job those company or whatever, but then you're also like, oftentimes, I'm looking, what do I learn from this interaction? And the people I learned from that's what I want

SPEAKER_127: to hire.

SPEAKER_00: All right, everybody who's watching, give us smash the thumbs up button on both channels. Remember, you can subscribe to Justin's amazing channel at YouTube.com slash Justin Kahn TV, Justin Kahn TV. And you can subscribe to YouTube.com slash this weekend for this week in startups, go ahead and smash the thumbs up button on both channels that basically hacks the algorithm at YouTube, you smash the thumbs up, you hit the subscribe, more people find these videos, more people get advice from it. I think you know, becoming a media brand is something that people thinks takes will take a lot of work. It's really simple. If your name is Dina, and you're in data science, and you become data science, Dina, and you change her, you know, Twitter handle your Instagram handle to that. And but once or twice a week, you write a blog post or do a short video or interview somebody in audio only, or make an infographic or do a thread on Twitter, you would be surprised after 52 weeks of doing that, the consistency of publishing how

SPEAKER_70: much higher your profile will get. And then people will come find you. So instead of trying to convince people over the long emails or whatever, demonstrate it in the real world, when you demonstrate in the real world, that you're good at something, my God, the inbound goes crazy. Because we as leaders and Justin, I have to make a lot of hiring decisions, right or investment decisions. You're looking at a group of people, let's say there's 10 people, and two of them are out there in the world doing stuff that is related to the need you have as a leader, who gets to decide who gets the job who gets the gig who gets the financing, and the other eight people are telling you they

SPEAKER_11: can do it. And two people are showing you can do it. We're gonna go with Justin.

SPEAKER_80: Exactly, exactly. The person who's showing that's always a good look.

SPEAKER_11: Yeah, I mean, you might take a chance with somebody if there's

SPEAKER_70: not somebody out there showing it. But man, just thinking about like, what could a data scientist do? Just I mean, just talking

SPEAKER_12: about data science problems, just or becoming the number one or number two person answering data science questions on Quora. All of a sudden, you know, if somebody came to me and said, I've answered 1000 questions about startups and angel investing and

SPEAKER_11: podcasting, I'd love to come work for you on Quora. Here's my thing I got 10,000 followers, I'd be like, Okay, you're hired. You couldn't have done that. You answer 1000 questions, you know, like, you're good at it. Something happens after 1000 things, the 10,000 hours after 1000 podcasts or 1000 core questions, you're gonna be good. All right, listen, this has been great.

SPEAKER_12: Justin, you're right. It's great to know you. You're awesome.

SPEAKER_70: Well, honestly, like I feel like you and I never really got to be bros, but we see each other once in a while socially or otherwise, but I have always respected your absolute enthusiasm for what we do

SPEAKER_33: in our industry of creating the new and just being creative and relentlessly supportive of other people. You know, it's very easy to make the money kick the ladder out from behind you. And I've always just respected your, your enthusiasm for helping other people

SPEAKER_155: and building cool in the world. So I appreciate your time and just knowing you. It's good to know you. Thank you. Thank you. It's

SPEAKER_78: good to know you and thank you for the podcast. By the way, you provided me countless of hours of entertainment.

SPEAKER_44: I it really has been a pleasure. People always say like, like I went to a party this weekend, literally the first four people at the party said I love all in on the way into the party was an industry party. So you know, but I thought four out of four is pretty crazy. And they also the same thing. I just love it. I look forward to every week. And I said, I got a new response to be was like, Oh, that's so amazing. You love it half as much as we love making it. So for tuning in, you know, it's like, it's such a joy to make it every week and making it fun every week. And so I wish you luck with your all in with Michael and your other co founders. And we'll see you all next time on Justin con TV or this week at startups or wherever you're watching this.