Kevin Rose: His $100M/Year Watch Blog, Money From Digg.com, & Web3 Business

When I saw you went and did The watch site uh uh Hodenkey Uh First of all, Sean, have you ever read that? Like when I when I s heard I was like A blog? I I like watches, I have Rolexes as like a blog for luxury watches. What the hell is this guy thinking? Did you did you just say that it went from

Like a million or two in revenue and now it's Sam said it's over a hundred million. Yeah. Yeah, we're over a hundred million in revenue now. Man, that is wild. What's up? All right. In this episode, we are sitting down with Kevin Rose. Uh a lot of you know Kevin because he's an internet OG. He created Dig back in the day. He was a seed investor in Twitter and a bunch of other cool companies. He was been a he's been a VC, he's been a founder, he launched a recently launched an NFT project that's done hundreds of millions of dollars worth of NFT sales.

And so um Kevin's has been around for a while and The cool part of the interview, if you if you Listen to it, you're gonna see Very chill guy. Very um down to earth, very humble. And um

Not a kind of like Oh my God, I'm gonna go take over the world, you know, bubbling over with ambition and a big chip on his shoulder. Seemed like a happy dude. Who was enjoying himself. And had a ton of success in the process. And I like that. I like seeing different people who play the game with different in different ways. And he's definitely somebody who's interested. We talked about Um a bunch of his projects that you may not know about. So for example

is creating Watchville, this niche project for watches that grew from one million in revenue to now over a hundred million after it got acquired and merged with Hodinky. Um Then also we talked about how he hires writers. We talked about um You know, h how he got into Twitter as an early investor and what does he do with his money. So he's got a bunch of money. Uh, how does he invest it? Where does he put it? And uh it's the answer's not not what you may have expected. Um the last thing we did at the end is we did the crypto debate. So Sam is sort of a uh

A cryptoskeptic. Kevin is obviously a crypto believer and one of the kind of m most well known guys in the crypto scene. And uh we had a little debate where we talked about is it all bullshit or are there some use cases. So I hope you enjoy this episode with Kevin Rose.

I liked it. I think you will too. We should get like a Brief over you overview, but like Your resume we don't really talk too much about like resumes and stuff, but your resume is like crazy long, so Uh I've been following you forever, uh, so I've known about your work. So you started Dig, which was

When did you start that? Oh four? Two thousand four. That's right. Yeah. And so you were it was like one of the original like site like link aggregators and it was like a cultural phenomenon and that was crazy. And you were like Was it Time Magazine that you're on the cover of like Business Week? Business week. It was like here's this young kid taking over Silicon Valley. What's the internet and who's this kid controlling it, type of thing. Uh And like the it had all this hype, but like Dig didn't

turn out maybe as wonderful as like we we all thought maybe it could have done. But then you like had your Finger on the pulse of all these other things you've done, a dig. You don't. Is it I read it all the time, but is it pronounced Hodenkey?

Hodinki, yeah. Hodinky. Uh a watch blog that also like sells watches. You are a partner at Google Ventures. You have this app called Zero Fasting that I use. I love partner at True Ventures, which I still think you're at now. You've got the uh you've got the um The oak uh Uh meditation app and then I have a feeling there's like five or ten other things that you just have brewing.

that like I don't even know like most people probably don't even know about, but you' bas basically my point is is like you're kind of an internet OG. And you are incredibly prolific. I mean, does that kinda summarize it? Yeah, I mean the the most recent thing I started was proof, which is our our venture into the world of NFTs. And so that's that's the only thing uh missing from from that and that that's about um Ten months old now, so That's that' on the newer side.

So from the outside, if I look at this kind of like collection of or like the career path. It looks very random. It's like you know from uh you know from venture backed Angel Vesting to venture investing to Kind of

niche community is Uh you know. These like kind of apps that are like simple like uh like meditation or fasting. Um you get a podcast, you did a show, you know, you've done a bunch of content, you d you did a bunch of different things. Was there a method to the madness? Is this just do you just describe it as random, or is there kind of like some underlying

theme to this whole thing. Yeah, there's I would say that I've always been one ever since I was a little kid to just tinker and just to to play. And if there's any m method to the madness, it is this

common thread of exploration and just wanting to if I see something that doesn't exist that should exist, I want to go build it. And I've done that a handful of times. Um You know, probably At least ten to fifteen businesses, of which, you know, ninety percent of them go to zero. And then there's a few that pop and become, you know

Pretty big. So Um, it's just this idea that uh I don't want to sit on the sidelines if there's something that's exciting that needs to be built. I I'd I'd rather just spin up a team and and go after it. Of all those projects, I'm and I'm actually gonna exclude proof from that because uh Yeah.

I want to talk all about that in in a little while, but of all those projects that I mentioned, which one has been the most financially successful for you personally? Mm. That's a good question. Um, certainly I would say When I was in the middle of web two point oh, which was the the when Dig was at its its peak. Which was um about a

Two thousand five. Early two thousand six. Um You know, we already hit around thirty eight million people a month using the site. It was you know, of the web two properties it was one of the largest. Um, it it led me to

sitting down and, you know, dinners and conversations and hangouts with the You know, Jack Dorsey's and Evan Williams and Zuckerbergs and all the household names that became these big products. And they were just friends. And so because of that Um It was more like, Hey, well, you know, do you want to invest in my new thing? And and so I would say the investment side

has definitely been the the best um financial returns I did start a media company Um That Uh

Well I would say there's there's two things that that well, three that are two are unrealized in a hodinky Um which is is is gonna be crazy. It'll you know, it's over a hundred million revenue a year now, which is nuts. Whoa. Really? Um And then we have um

You know, uh the stuff I'm doing at proof right now, which has just been another crazy rocket ship, but in terms of like true exits of businesses that I've started Um revision three, uh, where I was the co-founder of a media company that became um Discovery Channel's digital arm. And we sold that for thirty five million dollars back in uh Two thousand and eight or something like that. So that was probably the biggest company sale that I've had.

Um, but you know, the they're much larger on the more angel investment side. And maybe that sale gave you the the ammo to do the angel inv to do angel investing, or would you have been able to do it without it? A bit, but uh uh I was already starting to do small investments uh prior to that. So I I didn't have any money. I didn't come from money. Um, but when Dig really took off the and we were a couple of years in to dig investors and this is a very common practice. It doesn't get talked about a lot, but investors come around and they're like, hey

You know, you're doing this round of financing. Can we take a little pressure off of you as an entrepreneur and buy some of your stock personally, right? And so I sold a little bit of my dig stock enough to give me the ammo to go and do small seed checks, you know, and put, you know, twenty five K into you know Twitter's seed round and and put, you know, twenty five K in or it was more into Facebook, but Um they're a little bit later stage. And and so it was it was those little tiny checks that, you know, when they turn into multi billion dollar businesses uh were were pretty meaningful. How much does twenty five K into Twitter and Facebook early on actually turn into millions of dollars.

Uh I mean that that math is even hard to comprehend. In Twitter seed round, what was the valuation then? Well, it was difficult because they were a podcast company. uh doing podcast software and then they They did a new round. They they pivoted into Twitter. And so oh gosh, I'm drawing a blank on the name of the podcast. Uh

Odeo. That's right. They were Odeo. So Um Yeah, I didn't invest in Odeo. They had become Twitter. And I asked Ev

Who I was the tightest with at the time'cause I didn't really know Jack that well at that m uh yet. And I asked every he was a CEO and I was like, you know, can I can I invest and it there was no round available at that point. They But he's like I've got this engineer that Um Blake that was leaving

And w had some stock and was like, Do you just want to buy some of the stock? And I was like, Yeah, that's not that sounds great, I'll just buy some of the stock. I think Gary Vanderchuk said the same story and he bought it. Yeah, so really? Yeah. So here's the funny thing. So I bought in from Blake and then I I told Gary that Blake was selling some And um Then Twitter ended up actually they had a preemptive round come o along that really like

Like five or ten extra valuation. And then Blake was like, Oh, whoa, whoa no, there's a new valuation now. And he charged Gary the new price. So Gary's still pissed at me because I got this like really cheap price for Twitter stock. You know, and then uh and then Gary had to pay the more expensive price, but that was uh funny little. What do you think Blake's saying right now? I mean Blake probably just half or more and so, you know, he probably I don't know.

He if I had to guess he made fifty plus, seventy five plus million dollars or something on it, he I'm sure he's okay. Did uh at the time 'Cause like a There's like audio kinda failing, Twitter, who knows. Um and then there was like this like

Small community of people in Silicon Valley that were like using it back when it was like texting the the your update's out. Um Like when you're when you were writing that check, did you feel like This is the you know, the next big thing or was this kinda like, I don't know, my friends are smart, let's see, or wh where was it in that? I felt like it was the next big thing because there was I I loved so As someone that was building a social

graph of sorts uh at dig, you know, there was always this idea Back prior to um Excuse me, prior to Twitter That was um Bi directional friendships.

So, you know, on my space, you in Friendster and all the others that had come prior to Twitter, you had to actually know the person to see their content. So it was like I uh would you like to send a friend request? Yes. Do you accept this friend request? Yes, right. And it was like Same thing with Facebook. And when Twitter came out with that model of Just this idea of following.

And and And it allowed Like there was no celebrities on the platform. It was like me and Leo Laporte and a couple others that were the top followed people on the platform at the time. Um, but I I th I thought to myself, like Wow, if this catches on the with the celebrity crowd, it's just gonna be insane. It's gonna be because everyone will just wanna see and also the barrier to entry.

Yeah, a lot of back then it was it was um It was impossible to get uh, you know, celebrities to sit down and kind of um do technical things'cause they they we didn't really have smartphones, but the fact that you could text to that number, that short code. Just what you were up to. Anybody can do that. It doesn't require any special software, it doesn't require you sitting in front of a computer. And so it was just so dead simple to use.

It felt as though as I saw the tech crowd You know, um kind of catching on uh it it it I knew eventually it would spill outside of that that small vertical of users into the mainstream. And if that when that would happen, that was the bet. And when that would happen if and when that would happen, that would it would it would blow up and and it did. So that was that was awesome. And I'm not sure.

I've also seen uh you did a video back in the day when Square was like a prototype. It was like a YouTube video. I remember you s you're like, Hey, yeah, check this out. Like, you know, here's this little Square and you could plug it into your phone, you could take credit card payments, you're like And it was not even released yet, and you were like, you know, promoted I think you did you invest in that too?'Cause that would have been like another story. 'Cause I hit Jack up and I was like, Hey, I heard you're doing this new credit card thing. I'd like to be an angel investor and he's like, Oh dude, it's oversubscribed, I'm sorry, like we've closed the round, like blah blah And I was like, damn it. I'm like, Well let me see if I can help you in some way. And so he the he gave me a prototype and um

I just went and recorded a video and it got a lot of traction and it got a lot of people excited about this new product and it was like a early glimpse of what was to come. And it started getting, you know, tens of thousands of views on on YouTube. And he calls me back and he's like, I had an investor drop out. I've got some room. Do you wanna do you wanna put a check in? And so that's what got me into s um to the their seed round, which was which was awesome. What was it like, uh you know, I lived in San Francisco from two thousand twelve up until somewhat recently. Sean's still there. It's definitely a bit different now because like startups are are quite popular and And Jack's and Jack Dorsey's like a basically a celebrity. Mark Zuckerberg's obviously a celebrity.

What was it? D when back then in the the the you know oh four, oh five, oh six, uh you know, two thousand ten when these things were just getting going. Did you actually think that a guy like Jack Dorse was gonna be like this kind of like Titan of of industry, like he kind of is. Like what was it like being around some of these folks early on when they were just, you know, you guys were just messing around? Well it was

You met a lot of entrepreneurs back then and there was it was clear there was a few people that stood out as just being Um wildly creative and and just deep thinkers. And I was really drawn to those folks. I wanted to just like pick their brain more and get to know them better. And so, you know, um One of the things that struck me is just how mature Mark Zuckerberg was when he was younger. Like

It was you know, I'm I'm quite a bit older, excuse me, than he is. And um How old is he now? He's still only like thirty eight. He's younger than that. Oh my God. Yeah, so how old is Mark?

Uh Oh you're right. He is thirty eight. Yeah. That's pretty wild. Yeah, it it's it's it's crazy. Um He was he was really

Young Um So yeah, so when I met him was two thousand and five, I wanna say. So he was twenty one. Wow. So he was twenty one years old and I remember just Thinking about how put together he was and how well spoken and just what a deep thinker he was about the space, and he wasn't winging it, he was taking it very seriously.

And um That was That was a big big shock to me. Um, I remember just those conversations being like I was like, wow, you for twenty one, I was definitely not as bad as as he was at twenty one. Wha what's something he said that made you made you think that Well, you know, one of the things that I was always uh frightened by uh as an entrepreneur uh in my in my youth was just this idea of would people take me seriously um and could I admit when I didn't know something.

And it was it was it okay to I I tried to hide my vulnerabilities as an entrepreneur. And He just came in and was asking pointed questions and Um You know I asked him about some of his hiring and firing practices and

um how he would edit his team, um, how he ensured that he made the right hires. uh on the engineering side because it was it was that was a very challenging thing to do back then the to scale websites you were like racking your own servers and you know the way that it wasn't the AWSs of the world and We were talking a lot about that. And um It was just it was one of those things where

He just told me that um He just You know, s it's the obvious stuff. You surround yourself with people smarter than you and then you ask a lot of questions and you're not afraid to ask those questions. So Um, you know, back then I had some great investors and and board members But at times I was a little hesitant to be like, Hey, I I don't quite understand how this works. Can you help educate me? And I think it was due to my lack of

Like for some reason I thought because I was a college dropout that I I I had to hide that and and they would be like if I asked a question that I should have learned in college that it would have looked uh had it would had egg on my face and So there was a lot of um of of nervousness around that and and just to see Mark Just be so open and just curious.

Um, and there was no it was clear that if he if he didn't know something he was gonna get to the bottom of it right away. Um, it was it was inspiring. I had a I I had an experience just like that when we were selling our our last company Um, I met with

All the big Companies Facebook, Google Amazon, whatever. We also mess met with Discord. And I go in, I meet Jason, who's the CEO of Discord, and I'm like pitching him on like you know. Basically.

If you bought our thing, like it would add this dimension to Discord, it would be awesome. And I what I was so used to was most founders. If you if you're just kind of saying how awesome they are and how they can take over all these different how there's so much more they can do, how this is just the beginning, and how there's all these different ways that they can expand normally they're like yes, yes, yeah, yeah, totally. We can do that too, we can do that too. It all sounds good. And he was just sort of like You know, I would acquire you guys because I like you and I like that you came in and you had this like whiteboard and you just like painted a picture for me. Um, but we won't do any of that.

And he's like, um, no, that's not what Discord should do. What we should do and he said no, and he was like We should just be this one horizontal utility that does this one thing. And um that's our that's that's the right strategy for us. And he was the first guy that said no when I was like kind of giving him some ice cream of like you can have this too. Right, right. And I just thought Oh, that's what like uh this is this is probably what Zuck was like. You know, this is probably what somebody who was focused was like,'Cause back when Zuck was building Facebook, it was like My space was adding music and then T V shows and doing these like brand deals and like He was just like nope, real names.

Simple profiles. We're just gonna let you like, you know, communicators and do the stuff. And like he said no to a bunch of different things, which is why Facebook was so much such a cleaner site than MySpace and all the other competitors that were out there. Yeah, I would argue they've lost a lot of that'cause they say yes to a lot of the clearing of features of other other competitors. But yeah, you're right that Relentless um focus is is so essential. And oftentimes it's it's more what you say no to than what you say yes to on the product side. You know, I I That totally

Agrees and vibes with me for sure. Do do you sort of uh w when you're doing all these projects Uh, back to the project d d do you have like a set of rules? Like, for example, I know a guy who uh incredibly successful. Um I talked to him one time his name's Kevin or c a couple of times his name's Kevin Ryan. He started like MongoDB, business insider, guild group, all these like amazing companies. And he was like, Well, I just do back of the envelope math and then I give each project six months and me and my partner typically fund it with three hundred thousand dollars. And We kinda like feel it out.

It's a little mathematical, but it's also like well just see what happens in six months and see if this is promising and we'll decide Uh And so he's like six months, three hundred K. Can we make something cool? And I talked to Atomic Labs the other day. You know Atomic Labs? They're like that incubator that's they're not really an incubator, they like start companies. And they said something like they're like, Yeah, well like sometimes we'll only spend fifty grand and like two months or something like that. Do you have uh like something like that when you're starting a bunch of your projects like the fasting app or the meditation app?

Where you're like I think he did another one. Milk? Or was that the name of the production? Yeah, that was the name of the the kinda incubator studio, yeah. Yeah, do you like have like rules for what you're looking for? Yeah, I mean it's

There is um I guess the qu the question really comes to when you decide to kill something or sell it off or get rid of it or move on to the next thing and and oftentimes it's Um, because your original kind of thesis around either the market size or just the concept behind it j didn't take hold. And so I don't have any like hard set. number of months. Sometimes you're early.

So, you know, uh the fasting app, for example Um, you know, when when when I launched Zero, it it sat at, you know, tens of thousands of users for the first eight months. And then fasting hit. And it became more of a household thing and people were talking about intermittent fasting. It was all over T V and different, you know, places are picking it up. And so people are just naturally searching for fasting in the app store because that's just what they do. And then that's when it exploded to, you know, uh hundreds of thousands and, you know, a million plus monthly active people doing fast. Um

Yeah, but it was it had I shut that down after the first six months, um You know it'd been too soon. So Something like that, if you if you just believe the market is not quite mature enough, I typically put it into a little bit more of a maintenance mode You know, I g I got it to that first version where I felt like this is a useful utility for people that are looking to learn more and get into fasting. Um now let's just uh let it kind of organically build from here.

And we were seeing, you know, nice slow, consistent kind of week over week, month over month growth. But nothing explosive like you you're used to seeing in a in a high growth startup. So Um If that one that one in particular was just like let's just just wait around And then other times, you know, you create something and you've just clearly missed the mark. It's it's like we created this app called Tiny.

Which was a a fun little photo sharing app that was um Yeah, I used it about I liked it. Oh you did? Awesome. Yeah, it was these little the little small postage size size uh looping videos with no audio. And we thought it would just be like a little bit more quick, a little intimate way to show kind of how you're traversing throughout your days and weeks rather than having to take The time to set up to look all perfect in front of your perfect Instagram photo. There was less pressure literally because it was small. Right. Exactly. That part was actually kind of true. Yeah, and and he that was a crazy one because, you know, we launched and it just it caught fire immediately and we had, you know, hundreds of thousands of downloads in the first week and then it just died off completely. And everyone was like, ah, that was a fad. That was a that was a a fun little fad.

And that one we shut down pretty quickly after that'cause it was clear that it was a fun little thing, but but There was no depth to it. It was a it was a feature, uh not not a real product. So Um yeah, it it varies from product to product, I guess, is the best answer I can give you. Cool. Um okay, so Uh you talked a little bit about like, you know, which one was the most lucrative. Okay, yeah, obviously Angel you know, sort of Angel Investing in Twitter and then getting into, you know, Facebook and and others is is

It worked out well. Which one was the most fun? So which chapter uh was the most fun? And kind of with that is I'm on this mission. I just yeah, like after selling companies like I got time And so I was like, All right, well what's the party now? I was like, I wanna find out who's having the most fun in their career and like 'Cause that's what I want to do now. I just want to have the most fun type of crew. Who's having the most fun with their life right now? So I wanna know for you which of your projects was the most fun and then Who do you see, who could who's a blueprint I could look at where you're like

This per I've met this person, they're having a blast with what they do. Yeah. Well, I would say that The you know, there's the the nice thing about starting your own businesses is b you're you're doing it because there's a personal drive behind it. Like I've never created anything because I thought Here's an opportunity to make money.

It's never been that. It it's It we were talking about this as we were just, you know, prior to hitting record or whatever about the little podcast case holder on Amazon, right? And like there's There's there's sometimes there's these little businesses where you see a a broken piece of an industry and you're like, Well, gosh, if I went out and created this, I could sell X number of units per year and it'd be a great little profitable business and like

That's never really interesting me. It's more about the Just the creativity of it all and just the exploration of an idea that I'm drawn to. And so I I No startup is fun. They're they're all they're all roller coasters, loop de loops, like there's The chaos of all those things, right? Especially as you grow your team and there's HR issues and

People getting sick and products not getting shipped on time and customers being upset and You know, that there's there's it's never gonna be just like this perfect dream. But Um That said, as long as it's something that you're just naturally drawn to

I I'm always having a good time. And and I'd I'd say though That said, that's kind of a You know, a little bit of a dodging the question, but Um The more recently when I've got a gotten into the art and NFT side of

things. Uh that world in the world of cryptocurrency Is probably the most fun because It is so blue ocean, and there's just so much to be built there. It's not building yet another app and competing on on CAC in the app store. It's like It's it's really um there's there's s so many different directions you can go.

Um and and very If you Well there there there's there is a decent amount of of high quality entrepreneurs in the space, but not as as much as say, you know, building something for the app store. So Uh I enjoy kind of more the blue ocean aspect of of that world.

Man, I remember when so basically I I started this company called The Hustle. It was like a daily email and we sold it for we bootstrapped and sold it for tens of millions of dollars. It kinda it's so it's kinda sounds a little bit similar to what you were saying about your story. I lived in San Francisco and I started a media company because I was like I'm not capable of starting a tech company, but I wish I were. And also I'm good at writing. When I saw you went and did The watch site uh Hodenkee. Uh First of all, Sean, have you ever read that? Like when I when I s heard I was like

A blog. I I like watches. I have Rolexes as like a blog for luxury watches. What the hell is this guy thinking? Like he just like He he he like it started as something else, right? You started it as like Watchville or something was like a it was something else you got acquired or merged and you became like the CEO of this. I remember looking at that just being like I have no idea what the hell he's doing. I don't wear watches, so I had no I was completely out of touch with it. And it just seemed like a you know a hobby project at the time and then

I started looking into it and I was like, Oh wow, there's like a huge passionate base around this and this company makes a lot of money uh do and has been around for a long time. I don't think it did make a lot of money, did it? Like I remember I read that and I was like I like this business'cause I'm into it, but like The skies. Frankly, way above this. What is he thinking? Like this is he's like this thing's needlessly hard.

Well, Watchville was so Uh Again, like just kind of like personal passion stuff. So I was into watches mainly because when my father passed away, he left me with a single watch. And it's something that I I wear every once in a while. And it was for him, it was like To afford a single Rolex

in a in a middle class household is a big deal. Like that's like back in the eighties, uh you know, when my dad bought that, he was just like I've made it. You know, I have a and I'm not talking about one of the crazy Rolexes. I'm talking about just a standard day date kind of like, you know, simple Rolex. And like that was Like the one thing he was really proud of, you know, that and his like GMC pickup truck, right? And so Um those that that was something I was left with. And then I started reading uh some of the content. So Ben Climber created Ho Dinky, the actual blog.

And I created Watchfill, which was an aggregator in an app that brought together all these different sources so that people could m read this stuff on the mobile. uh on their mobile phone because a l a lot of as s as silly as it sounds Back then most of the excuse me, most of the watch sites Didn't have

um mobile versions of their site. So they were on just like old, old software, publishing software. That was that was just horrible. So I I I I made it all very readable. um push notifications, like all this stuff, just a kind of a wrapper for like all this great content.

And it it just started growing and growing and growing and I had a lot of eyeballs like some of the the the biggest collectors were were now using the product. And um You know, I I Hodinky was the most kind of best prominent um source of this content that took it very seriously. So it was um you know they had had

A couple of full time writers and so W I talked to Ben and said, Hey you don't have the tech team here. merge and and combined forces. So We um we merged the two companies together. Um, he was three or four people and I was three or four people.

Um, I moved to New York, became CEO. At the time he was doing Uh, maybe a million and a half to two million dollars a year in revenue. Um, so just enough to kinda do payroll. And um

We grew up from there and then turned on e commerce and then started selling uh and and creating partnerships with the big watch brands. And now you know, as authorized dealers represent, you know, several dozen of the big watch brands that are out there. And that just became a massive um it was still a v a relatively unknown back then whether or not people would actually spend large sums of money over Apple Pay, right? And so um I remember

We had someone from Apple that was um You know, helping us on when you get to a certain size they kinda give you a little bit more concierge help on the apps stuff and They said that they had seen their uh a two hundred fifty thousand dollar um transaction come through Apple Pay um on an American Express and that was like

the largest known transaction at that time that had been done over Apple Pay for a sight unseen uh vintage Rolex, which was uh which was kinda crazy. But anyway, yeah, so that I mean Yeah. New new new luxury watches are double digit billions of dollars an a a year. Um

uh i in in terms of market size. So it's it's a big industry that that many people Uh It's not as apparent in the States. Um, when you go overseas, uh it you'll see how in in in Europe there you know, watches are so much more uh kind of a uh oh uh type of thing that is is worn versus smart watches or more of the normal no no watch at all uh here in the States.

Did you did you just say that it went from Like a million or two in revenue, and now it's Sam said it's over a hundred million. Yeah. Yeah, we're over a hundred million in revenue now. Man, that is wild. And a lot of it's commerce. I mean, you guys like When people talk about content and commerce, I think most of the time it's nonsense.

Like BuzzFeed talks about it and I'm like, I don't know, man. I don't think people are gonna be buying a lot of branded BuzzFeed pillows and shit like that. Or like they had that tasty thing. I was like, I don't think people are gonna buy a BuzzFeed oven. I just don't think that's gonna happen. And you guys did it and I was like Oh no. Is this like gonna be a thing? It seems so challenging. But you guys are a perfect example of that. And you know the other good example? G I bet you go to Brig a Trailer. Do you go to bring a trailer dot com? I've been to Bringer Trailer many times. Yeah. Uh the Zandro Hodinky, it's one of his favorite sites, actually.

They are awesome. And so they've done the same thing, but with cars, where it basically it's like this perfect tie of like I just I I bought one car from actually uh those websites and um but I read it every single day. I'm like let's just see like what they're gonna write about what cool cars out there. And then you guys did it with watches and I loved your videos with John Mayer, where he talks about his watch collection and all that shit. It's awesome. But what um what other verticals or what other like industries have you thought Man, maybe I could actually do this model. Uh I've always thought software, but like That's not nearly as sexy and cool as watches in vintage cars.

But has there any it's like when you're like thinking about this model, I I bet you're at at night you're like, I'm not gonna do it, but I bet you I could apply this here, here, and here. Yeah, I mean in in some sense that's kinda what we're doing right now in the world of NFTs, where they're Everyone that's armed with Photoshop can create a digital um piece of art on the blockchain. And there's this mad rush into the world of NFTs, but there is just a ton of

clutter, right? And and just A a ton of of of of projects to sort through. So What we created with proof was this this idea of you know, it's the same thing with Hodinki, it's the same playbook. It's this curation with a point of view. Where you can have a strong editorial team come in.

Um that isn't talking about the flipping side of the industry that isn't talking about how to make a quick buck in NFTs. Um that is really talking about what would you buy and hold for the next decade. Plus, right? And The playbook that that Hodinki nailed so well was that we took editorials so seriously and really hired out

Just a a absolute stellar team of writers that had a deep understanding of the world of watches and not just a announcement this is a new watch that was dropped, but a understanding of the m the mechanics of the internals of the watches. So they could tell you about the different movements and escapements and Why certain complications were harder to pull off technically than others.

And so it was a real geeks blog, and with that Technical. Hardcore writing. No. Develop trust. And so you

And once you have the trust of your readers Um, then you're able to extend commerce in a meaningful way. And it's not asking them to buy you know, um a a a microwave or some like inexpensive or a throw pillow. It's it's it's saying We have your trust. This is uh what we believe to be a very important.

you know, watch or collectible. And because of that, um, you know, you're willing to pull the trigger on a on a twenty, thirty, fifty thousand dollar purchase. So um It's trust is so essential. Do you think that Well, I at the hustle we're trying to h we hired a bunch of writers. Sean hired some writers as well for his thing is the crypto thing and

I I've always debated this in my brain. I'm like Do I hire good writers and teach them about business, or do I hire smart business people and teach'em how to write? What did you find was the best way to do that for uh watches? Yeah, I mean the best way to do that was to find people that had the natural organic built in A love for

uh horology, like just as decide uh for for all things mechanical watches. So You know, we would have writers that Um If you t

Take for example like the Speedmaster, th the the the watch that made it to the moon from Omega. Um, you know, they could tell you every single variant and movement change and the reasons why. And they were just super geeky on this stuff. And they may have been just like B plus writers where you get them, but they had the technical knowledge in their brain. And that's a lot easier to fix because You get them to put that that technical information out.

uh in draft form and then you just p uh apply an editorial layer over the top of it where you have copy editors that come in. And help, you know, stitch together a a better, more more cohesive story before you actually publish it out to the world. Yeah, I love that. This data is wrong every freaking time. Have you heard of HubSpot?

HubSpot is a CRM platform where everything is fully integrated. Whoa, I can see the clients' whole history. Calls, support tickets, emails, and Here's a test from three days ago I totally missed. Hotspot. Grow better. You're a pretty chill guy. When do you get like really fired up? Like what what gets you Excited.

Uh or in a good or bad way. Like um You know, I get really enthusiastic about the most random shit, like the most Uh it'll be like a creative project and I'm like, I bet I could pull this off. And I just go like I just get too excited about it. Sam has that same thing, but he also has it where if he feels he's wronged, Sam's like, you know, willing to fight to the death about it. And so he gets really pumped up. What gets you really pumped up? Ray Rage is my fuel. I I love I love fighting. Yeah, that so uh for me

New ideas and working with creative people is the the the most kind of like um strongest source of fuel for me. So when I get together with an artist or a fellow entrepreneur And I actually it doesn't have to be someone that has created something big. Uh it has it's rather someone that just has Wild ideas that

that are potentially um Uh J just new new ways of looking at the world. So th you meet a lot of entrepr entrepreneurs that are Opportunistic iterative entrepreneurs where they'll see something, they'll say, Oh, there's some s the rough edges on that particular product. I'm gonna go sand them down. make it easier for consumers and go launch a business and they have great success.

I like the ones that are just like Really thinking about um entire new verticals or just flipping something completely on its head. in new and creative ways. Um, so that is what I'm really drawn to from just a a straight idea uh point of view. And so entrepreneur wise and when I I invest in some of these startups

Those are my favorites are are are those those those crazy uh uh more world changing entrepreneurs um In terms of the the rage side of things, um Yeah.

Dude, you've had a bunch of rage inducing moments. I've I've followed your career. I've seen it. I've seen you throw the fucking raccoon. Yeah. We saw that one. I've seen people protest outside your house. I've seen you get in trouble for like I don't know, wanting to demolish like a historical building. I I don't know like the whole story, but like you you've had you've kinda been a target. Yeah, I mean those The the Those all have their own unique story. The the historical building thing was definitely not true.

That was a pretty funny one in that um but w but that was uh That was just people wanting to keep an old house up in the neighborhood and they called it historic, even though it really wasn't. Um Uh we wanted to take it down because it was filled with asbestos, which uh we didn't want to live in a house that had asbestos in it, but That's a whole nother story. Uh the rage stuff, you know, the the

The The last four to five years of of my life has been spent Um trying to to to kind of master my own mind. And and it I I think that if you can't Um

come to grips with your own imperson like personal peace of mind. uh it's it's a horrible place to be and so You know, I I remember as a young entrepreneur just kinda uh being on this twenty four seven hustle to go build, build, build, I gotta win, I have to win, I have to win And it created a level of anxiety that was not good for me. And and so I think that's probab probably why you saw me

Kind of do things like the meditation app and other other things.'Cause I It was just a a natural forcing function for my my own self to like take some of that stuff more seriously. And so, you know Um I I just want to be able to to be able to sit and not have to have my mind be always on.

And that that's kind of been my goal and it's something I'm still I'm still working on. So that It's not like I remember there was this interview with Elon Musk and I'm not comparing myself to Elon Musk, but I there is one thing that I I can certainly relate to where he talks about How his mind sometimes just never shuts off. And he's always

Thinking about things, problems, new ideas, like all these things and Um And it's it's It uh for me it i it's always been um that that has been not a blessing, but something that I has just been has weighed on me. And and I've always tried to um

I guess the the the big push in the last few years has been to try and wrangle that. What kinda gets you all hot and bothered now, where you're thinking about like the new industries or the things that excite you. What what ideas would you pursue to have One caveat. that you're that you're not currently pursuing. So uh because it's easy to say, oh I'm excited about this project I'm doing. I think uh like for example, Palmer Lucky was on the last episode and he was talking about all right, we're like you're doing Anderil, you did Oculus

What are the ideas that are on your kind of like, Oh, that's interesting, but like I only got one me, so I can't go do it. Cause I think that's that's the most interesting to the audience, um and to and to ourselves. And that's actually the origin of the podcast. Me and Sam have more ideas than we have time to do them. And so we're like, Well, if we just say them out loud here, maybe people will take'em and run with them or or find something interesting in it. By the way, have you ever talked to Palmer, Kevin? That guy is Wild.

No, I've never I've never chatted with them. I I I have to go back and listen to that episode though. I'm I'm really curious to know. I've I've seen I've seen some written interviews but never never anything on video for him. It went live yesterday. It's on like you our YouTube and um most of our listenerships on like podcasts. Uh feeds. He's something, man. That dude that guy's eclectic. He's just like enthusiastic about everything. He like knows a lot about a lot. He's like biology.

But more um But almost He's as smart, but is more common. Do you know what I mean? Like he's for some reason I can relate to him even though I know that he's just like so much more smarter than I am.

Yeah, I I had read some stuff and and I I don't know how much of it's true, but some of his his company stuff that he was creating around drones for tracking people and and some controversial Yeah, I just it doesn't it doesn't fit well with my ethos, so I I I haven't really followed his career as as closely, but um I'd be curious to listen to the interview for sure. I think it was probably w it was probably our best guest episode. Uh we've done a bunch of them. And and the reason why is he's like

Yeah, he's like um A he's a pretty Genu like he's pretty uh he's high energy, but he's he's like direct. So it's like Um You know, why why do you do this or how do you think about this? And he's like for example, he's like

I thought about c you know, I'm kinda overweight. Could I like solve obesity? And he's like, you know, but here's what doesn't work. Telling me to eat less of foods that I don't like the taste of, and blah, blah, blah. And so he's like, he's like, My solution was, and I started prototyping this in my house, was to just Instead of beyond meat and stuff to where they try to make like a burger out of chickpeas, he's like, I wanted to just make fake food out of oil. Zero calorie food that tastes amazing because oil tastes amazing and we can manipulate oil into anything. We can turn oil into candles, we can turn it into gr waxes, we can turn it into this, into that. He's like I created a grilled cheese sandwich that was zero calorie that tasted delicious using Vov and we're like Dude, that sounds kind of insane. And like he's like the pro we're like, Why didn't you do this crazy idea? You sounded pretty fascinating. You went pretty far. He's like Well, there just simply wasn't gonna be enough oil supply to do it. And he's like we would have had to

take the oil out of the sewage system and centrifuge it to the recycle it? He's like I and I realized, you know, even I couldn't do that. And I was like, Wow, this guy's um like You know, half genius, uh, half crazy. And I, you know, I don't even know where the line is, but I find it fascinating that he. A thinks like this and B doesn't just think about it. You know, literally is like

Yeah, in my house we converted the dining room into like this lab in order to like do these you know these sorts of projects. And like, you know, out of one of them came Anderil, the the eight billion dollar company, and the other one was gonna be this crazy, like, you know, oil based fake food. That's crazy. That is awesome. I love yeah, see, that's the type of entrepreneurship that I'm I'm really drawn to is just like people that are hacking on stuff. um at night. You know, for me uh a lot of the stuff that that I think about in that that vein I tend to outsource and get other people to to to work on it. Um, a lot of the stuff around um longevity I've been interested in uh specifically uh uh

uh a drug uh called rhobmycin where where it's been proven now to extend life in in in various animals and now apply to dogs. So Myself and um Jack Dorsey and Brian from Coinbase and a few others. all have been putting money into funding studies out of the University of Washington.

um to to really prove this out in dogs and canines and then eventually move it into human trials. So, you know, some of that stuff and the biohacking stuff I I still put a lot of effort and time and a and attention in and I I try this stuff out on myself as well, you know, I'm I'm I'm trying some of these experimental things. Um not because I I'm not one of these

People that wants to put, you know, young people's blood in them and live forever. I I I I wanna die. I just, you know, I I do like the idea of Not Well I am an older dad. I I didn't have my first kid in until my four until I was forty. I I I would like to be around a little bit longer for that, and that's that's all. W I've heard of people doing this. I know Tim's doing this with uh what's it called? Silicillum uh like mushrooms. Um

Yeah, and uh how much does it cost to fund a study and what do you get out of it other than like the altruistic of like, well, we're just contributing to like the grand thing, but is there is there like a direct outcome that you can get from it. Like we can use this to fund a company. No, no, not not in this particular case. Yeah, Tim was also uh put some money into this one as well. And there there was there's nothing you get out of it other than just trying to help further science. You know, a lot of these um In this particular case, the study was funded but be

Depending on the sample size and how many canines you have involved, you can only d detect um certain levels of of um uh of output. Uh you need a larger sample base. Uh in this called like a properly powered study. In order to detect smaller little nuances in the data. And so we wanted to make sure it was powered enough to detect, um, I believe up to ten percent lifespan increase.

And so to power it. um was to add another million dollars or so into the study, um to to make sure that w they could bring on the additional canines required to make that happen. And um you know, I put my dog on it as well and and I and he's um twelve now, and he still runs around like a pop. And and um I attribute some of that to to a a cycle of this that he did.

Um but Yeah, it's it's nothing other than just like you you You're figuring out ways in which you can like there's there's all these different avenues on the philanthropic side where you're you're like what what is meaningful to me personally and um Uh

th this this this particular study, you know, I think even if it just were for dogs would be fantastic. Like Forget humans. If if I could have my dog live for an additional five years, like what a win, you know? So that it was kind of a a win win study. Dude, I I talked to this guy that was like building I think it was called Is it called A Ageless R X? I forget his the name of his company, but he was he's trying to like you know, do longevity stuff, uh supplements and shit like that. And uh s things are going well for him.

But I w he was kind of explaining his reasoning. He was like, You know, a lot of people are afraid to take these medicines, but we've been thinking If we told them it's good for their dog They're actually will give it to their dog. And he was he was kinda like

hypothesizing to me and like brainstorming with me in real time. He was like Maybe we should just like do this for dogs and just give it to dogs and if once people see that it makes their dog live longer, then they'll be like, Yeah, you know, fuck it. Give me that pill, I'll take that thing. Uh because there's they're so much easier to convince to for to give it to their dog. I'm with Kevin for sure. But the humans die so much. Dogs live forever. Well genome wise, there's so much more overlap and and and connection there between canines and humans than there is a lot of other animals out there. So Um, but you know, the uh back to your question though about um you know out of curiosity, what what would I go pursue right now in terms of startups that I'm not doing

Um, I believe and it's very, very clear now. that AI in the next five years is gonna change everything. Um, with seeing open open AI and a lot of the projects they put out there recently. Um, whether it be creative writing or I believe Fiverr as a company, it will just be non existent. um it's gonna destroy the low end of the creative market initially and then work its way up the chain.

And you know, just the the outputs that you're getting now from prompt based art Um, you know, the future versions of Photoshop are are not gonna be about moving uh mouse and pixels around, it's just gonna be telling the computer what to do on your behalf. You know, you'll highlight an area and say you know, change this aspect and and it'll all be done via prompt and and meaning you type in what you want to see.

change and the A well will just make it happen. And we're seeing that today. And I'm seeing You know, advancements on the A side in in in medicine Uh obviously all the creative side, there's Uh probably half dozen or so tools now that will

complete uh, you know, write complete paragraphs for you. If you're writing sci-fi, you give it some initial kind of prompts of where you want the story to go. And The writing is quite good. A I I have uh no doubt in the next five years we'll see a New York Times bestseller that was ninety percent written by AI. So It's it's Uh

There's just so much Yeah, interest in With the interest and excitement flows the engineering talent. So I've seen a lot of Um

friends that are these you know, a lot of people I worked with at Google and and other places where You know, they're they're very insanely amazing engineers, you know, previously working on distributed systems and some of these hard problems that They were trying to solve. And now said, Hey, I'm

I'm actually gonna pivot into this this new world of AI and any time you watch that kind of flow of high quality engineering talent and go move into something you you You pay attention. So I'm looking for at a lot of investments in that particular sector, um, and I'm I'm very bullish on it. And something I don't have time to work on, but I I believe some great businesses are gonna be built there.

What would be an application you would want to do in that space? So all those kind of like threads where it's like creative work, medicine, um, you know, writing a an AI book. Is there an application that you can think of that you're like, I feel like AI could solve this'cause I think that's the that's the it's a hammer in search of nails at this point. Uh that's what when I talk to you. Sean you made a joke. You made a joke. I I I always tease Sean about web three'cause I'm not the biggest fan of it. And he was and we were joking about how uh He was like coming up with ideas with with AI. And he's like, Finally a use case! We found it. And like with AI, it seems like there's actually way more obvious use cases, right? But uh yeah, what what application excites you? Oh, I'd love to have that web three debate at some point, too. But um on on the AI side. You know, it we're already seeing this, right? So so Figma was purchased by Adobe, probably all saw that. It was a crazy acquisition. Um, you know, probably the the the the the standard these days for prototyping and and creating

um interfaces for everything from mobile apps to websites to to you name it. Um we're seeing uh already built in plugins to Figma. Um that allow you to prompt base build uh anything in in just a matter of seconds. So you can say Hey, give me an interface for a mobile app that has these five options.

uh in this color with this futuristic type style and You know, you get something back in real time in in in in twenty five seconds. And it's it's rough, but it's giving my design team and other designers out there Um, just a great starting point and it saves them a ton of time and effort. But this is like inning one.

Like two, three years from now, it'll be doing ninety percent of the work versus, you know, the first right now was probably twenty percent of the work. So Um that is is is super exciting in the assistance and and time to market for new ideas, new projects, I think is gonna be Compressed even further. It's it's the same thing that w we what happened with the kind of like late web two when we went from racking our own servers to fully deployed in an in on automated and managed, you know, AWS instances that uh in in some of these databases that just auto scaled as you threw traffic at it.

It it really Compress the time to the go to market time, you know, uh by quite a bit. And I think we'll see the same thing on d on the uh design side. So The speed at which we can develop uh and deploy new ideas is just gonna be uh you know probably uh an order order of order of magnitude better than it is today. Um, so I'm excited for that.

Where do you Uh a a question that we started asking people and it's actually uh I've always learned so much from this, but What message boards or gr Facebook groups or websites Uh What corners of the web are you lurking in right now? Like for me, I I love Facebook groups. There's always like a weird Facebook group, like

A tiny example is overlanding. Do you guys know what overlanding is? It's like No It's like um I don't know the exact definition, but it's like you know how you see like Toyota forerunners or F one fifties that have like campers on it and it looks like they can go in the desert for like two weeks. So I started like joining overlanding groups like three years ago because I was like, Oh, this is a kind of an interesting turn that's picking up, or another one that we got really into a couple of years ago was mobility. So like all these grown men not caring about yoga, but they called it mobility and it was all about like stretching. And it's like what's going on with there's like all these weird Instagram guys like doing all this stretching shit. It's kind of intriguing and like A lot of times it's like a instead of except of therapy, executive coaching. Uh you know. That's what happened from uh from yoga to mobility. Yeah, they just changed like mayo and eoli. And uh it totally worked. It's awesome. Like I love mobility now and like

For ex t f r for the body stuff, Tim Ferriss was always pretty good at that. Like he'd be talking about all this weird stuff, like fasting. It's like, dude, what the hell is this fasting thing? What are you talking about? Uh and uh that was like a really cool corner of the web to like look in on and like see like how our The geeks behaving now so I can learn like how the rest of the normal, like average Joe is gonna care about in the next five or ten years. Yeah, where there's that Chris Dixon quote. You are you familiar with it? Yeah. It's just what the geeks who are playing with on the weekends will become like what we're all using like if several years later. It's something some version of that. Yeah. So like what geeky places are you hanging out right now? For for for Sean and I'm like a lot of Twitter people. So we'll find like specific people on Twitter who are like quirky and we're like, What the hell is this guy talking? He's talking crazy to me, it's really cool. Yeah, I mean I I follow a ton of people in in crypto Twitter, so I I pay attention to all the un you know, the what's happening on web three via via um

Twitter and then also You know, mostly Discord. It's just a lot of private discords, it's a lot of private telegrams, small groups and gatherings of peers that get together that discuss new ideas, new projects. Um, these Dows, uh these uh decentralized autonomous organizations where people get together to discuss and collect and purchase things. Um, so it it it's a lot of I I've never spent so much time in Discord. It's like it's crazy that the conversation has shifted there in in Twitter largely.

Um Dude, I hate that, by the way. I love the fact that like a dig or a Reddit or something exists where you can just like if you googled it and found it, like you could participate. Now I'm like Oh, what the fuck, man? Kevin's probably got this crazy ass Telegram group that like there's I don't even I can't get in'cause I don't even know it exists. No, you can join proof. It's fifty thousand dollars and you're in, bro. It's easy. No, it's I I think it's more like

It's People realize that um They wanted a little bit more intimate conversation. So I I have a feeling that like there was a l there was a lot of of this move to do smaller private discords and smaller telegram groups because it would lead to Just not the masses flooding in and the chaos that you would see on Reddit.

And so I that's kind of been the move that I that I've seen in and the dr the reason behind a l a lot of that. But Um It it's not hard to get into th you just have to actually show them that you you know what you're doing. Like you have to You know, get in there and embrace web three, which it sounds like, Sam, you may not be the biggest fan of, but

You have to you have to get in there and and and and talk the talk and know where to go and People will tell you like this is the b place to be hanging out or I'm I'm enjoying this d Discord over here, and you'll learn about this and that this is where the AI discords are or whatever it may be. And Um, that's just kind of the new It's the new Facebook. Facebook's uh It it's it's it's I'm sure it's good for some things, but it's it's it's dead when it comes to web three. You want me to tell you my why I'm not a fan of this and try and get you fired up here and then we'll talk about proof. I do it sounds like I'm making an easy out, which

I kinda am, but basically like I am I'm I'm I'm decently educated just by hanging out with Sean. And so I have to admit that like some of my beliefs are a little bit loosely held. Uh And and I'm not the most educated on the topic, but My opinion on web three is basically it's a bunch of like

It's just this kind of circular economy of a bunch of people making Making products to serve an industry that has yet to like truly figure out or I don't know what you call it industry, a movement that has yet to truly figure out like what the what the thing is that they're doing. And there's so many examples where people I think are fairly like egotistical and elitist about it saying like Web two point oh is old and like the way the this has to be decentralized or this has to be this way. It's like man, just because you're putting web three in front of something, that doesn't mean that there's actually a problem here. And I think you're just wasting so much time and energy

working on something that is just like a circle jerk that doesn't actually solve a problem better than the web point web two point oh version. Also, I thought it's pretty dogmatic where it's like Decentralized everything. It's like, dude, I want some stuff centralized. Like Can you imagine like calling customer service on a decentralized like it's like no, I like there are some things that I want like to have a to to be centralized, and I thought that they were a little bit too dogmatic, and I thought that they were oftentimes I'm saying like they, like you people.

Uh like you guys like didn't always have wonderful solutions, you were just making shit up. in order to like get in the game and I just thought that it It kinda bothered me. Yeah, I mean

I I I feel your frustration there and that I too am someone that Um, when I look at what's being built in web three If it's it's just for the sake of calling something decentralized and there's nothing behind it or no structural advantage for that being the case. Um, I think it's it's it's it's silly. You know, it's like I'll I'll give you a great example. Um

We're we're working on um there there's a lot of things that you wanna do in web three. Some of them are high value and some of them are are low value. When you were talking about working with the community, so we have a community of people that come together. To do all different types of things. And some of it is what we call token gated content. So it's like a membership model where you have to be a member of something or hold a certain NFT in order to unlock certain access to videos or content or whatever it may be. Some of those things can be high value

uh items where you receive an NFT or something that is um actually has some financial Like, you know, something behind it. That is a case where you want to actually have that hardware wallet and pull it out and and do it in a way that is secure. And that is protected and Um but

The rest of the time you don't need that. You can use a Google login. It's okay to use a web2 login. It's okay to use your email and password with two factor authentication. Like we don't have to throw away a lot of the fantastic technology that's been built in web two. There's other things like for example Some decentralized uh maximalists and I think maximalists is really what we're talking about here because

Anyone that is a maximalist Uh on this means what? You just like extreme and extreme. This means that you are so into something that you can't see any other way. And it's like it's your way, or there there's no possible there are people out there that say there is no other cryptocurrency than Bitcoin. That's the only one.

Is it Pomps Pomps our our our buddy, isn't Pomp like don't they call him online like a Bitcoin Maxi? He I don't think he I think he is a maxi on Bitcoin. And and you know, Dorsey's in that camp too, where he's like trying to extend Bitcoin and says that's that's kind of the only currency And I I think this applies to so many different things. Like I don't wanna get into to political talk, but anytime you get to the fringes of anything where it's like this is the only thing that matters You get into crazy town in my point of view. And so

You know, I think that is a dang of web three, where there's a lot of that kind of idea that if if it's not pure web three It's not right. And Th I'm with you. I a hundred percent agree. But that said Like

I've seen this idea in a lot of the DeFi tooling. When I say DeFi I mean decentralized finance. a lot of the DeFi tooling that's being built on the blockchain uh in a performant way, in a cost effective way, in a way that When you think about Wells Fargo as an organization with, you know, a hundred and fifty thousand employees, I'm just making that up by maybe it's fifty thousand or seventy five thousand, it's somewhere in between that that range. Where that is just a lot of bloat and it and because of that bloat and because of that ins insane.

monthly not that that company has to cover. Um you know, th those dollars are are not uh not flowing to the right people. And so There are examples of more efficient ways of doing fine. on the blockchain that that can be done in a trustless way. Written into smart contract code.

that will mean for better outcomes for the consumer. Now Those can be paired with centralized solutions, right? Like Coinbase is a centralized organization. You have a email address you can send it if something goes wrong with your crypto account.

But they hold and keep decentralized currency, right? And they and they do things like decentralized staking where you earn four percent on your Ethereum, but they're a centralized company that gives you that customer support. So I'm not I'm I'm a fa I think that the the ones that really win here

Yes, there are gonna be the people that say self custody is the only way. They there's this famous saying that if it's not your keys, it's not your crypto. Like like you have to hold your own private keys. I I'm not in that camp. I do that personally and use safety deposit box and a whole slew of things to safeguard that for some things. But there's other solutions where where A hybrid approach makes more sense. So know that your argument is completely valid.

And that a lot of entrepreneurs that are building a web three completely agree with you and that Let's not throw away the baby with the bath water here. There's a lot of great things. But there are also some great advantages. that come with being uh decentralized or a whole slew of other technologies. That's being built on web three. Um that that I could point to that you'd say like, Oh, that yeah, that actually that that does make more sense than the old way of doing things. So so let's let's do this real quick. So

You've probably seen, just like anybody else, these like um there's like these permanent uh like there's like there's perma bulls for crypto, there's perma bears, and their mission in life is to basically find every stupid use case of crypto and highlight it or every bad investment or every clip of a A a pro you know, some dude at A sixteen Z who goes on a podcast and says something dumb about crypto when asked a use case. Um you talk about me because I was just on their podcast two weeks ago. No, no, they uh I haven't seen it. But Dixon. But like, you know, there's there's people that sort of are are are focused on on poking holes. And I think there's some value in poking holes, but there's also, you know, it's a little bit embar embarrassing to spend your whole day poking holes on something, you know. But let's put it this way.

I'm a on this podcast, I'm the the crypto believer. I'm the one who puts a significant portion of my net worth. I have a cryp media company. I have a bunch of belief in crypto. But for this use case for this exercise here, I'm gonna Uh point out two things that I think uh or would be s would be, you know, strong and valid points against crypto to somebody like you who is also a a crypto believer. So I want you to kinda argue against these and I hope that uh this doesn't get clipped as like you know famous investor X fumbles the ball uh when trying to explain you know crypto things. So let's try to do better than that. Yeah. Let's do it.

Okay, so the first would be around uh NFTs, right? So you're a big NFT guy. And there's NFT art, which I think Pretty hard to argue against at this point, like digital art. Cool, their ability to own digital art. That's one use case for NFTs. But a lot of people who believe in NFCs will also say

But that's just the beginning. NFTs is a is a file format, it's a protocol, there's all these different use cases for NFTs. And um I saw the founder of of OpenSea, I think, uh talking about this yesterday on a on a podcast where he's like They're like, why uh he you know, he's like, Oh, another use case is NFT tickets. And they're like, So why would there why would you want to have an NFT ticket? He's like Well because then You it's you know, you could plug it into DeFi and you could take a loan against your ticket. And then people were like, Why the fuck would I want to take a loan against my sixty dollar like concert ticket? Like is that really the what the hype is about? And it's sort of a silly use case. So I would like you to give me the non-silly.

NFT use cases that you're excited about. So like And uh the Well let's let's take a take an example. Let's take the ticket example and and the art one is easy. It's a new canvas. The art one is easy. It's a new canvas. You can do things and pull from

Uh real time data to display art in very unique, fun, creative ways, right? It's it's really not that much different than your uh than Rolexes. I mean like There's no reason why a Rolex is a hundred and fifty thousand dollars other than like a lot of people think it's cool. So Yeah, well, I would say there's a difference there because something you may not know about Rolexes is they make over a million Rolexes per year. And so Rolex it hides that number.

And the reason they hide that number is because if they didn't have th a sense of scarcity around it. And they they do this specifically when you go in their stores, there'll always be a if n next time you walk by an actual true Rolex boutique. Noticed how there's like some missing spots. And and when you go inside and that's all play. It's play because they're like, Oh they're they're sold out, they're not available. But We can put you on this list and in in three to four months we might you might get a phone call. Guess what? You always get the phone call. And and the the watch is coming because there's they're making a million a year.

The nice thing about You know, the the one of the things that I was always so confused by Is I was a comic comic book collector way back in the day. And I bought Wolverine number one'cause I love Wolverine. It was like my childhood, like I always wanted to own one, right? And so I bought Wolverine number one.

And it always hovered around fifty dollars. And I was like, why is this not going up? It's the very first Wolverine launched in the eighties, right? It wasn't the first appearance of Wolverine, but it was the first Wolverine comic. And I finally got a hold of a really well known collector and he goes, Oh, he goes, You don't know Well they knew by that point that Wolverine was a hot character and so they printed over three hundred thousand copies of that first edition. as like oh shit like that's what there's just the a flood of these in the market so

You know, NFTs the beautiful thing about this when you have an artist produce a piece It has proven provenance, so you know where it's come from. It has proven scarcity, so you can't like create, you know, additional add ons or duplicates'cause it's all recorded on the blockchain. And then you have the uh unique ability to do very creative things like Animation.

uh oracles where the art can change based on the stock market price or time of day or phase of the moon and there's just so much more extension. It's a new vertical for art. Fine. That's great. Awesome. Like Digital frames are gonna be getting better. It it it is gonna be a thing. Like there's no in my mind, there is no argument to be had there that this won't be I don't bet against the the the the future or the inevitable and art is the easy use case for NFTs. The ticket thing is different, right?

So the ticket thing I I I'm with you, like I understand that people are In in web three Are trying to like create these fancy financial instruments to like leverage you on anything that you own. Like hey, you have a ticket to

That upcoming concert that sold out. You know, spin it into this DeFi unit and take a loan against it and then you can buy it back and use the money in the short term. And it's like that's all bullshit, man. That nobody's gonna do that, right? It's It's it's There is there's there are specific use use cases where that does make sense. Like loan against the NFTs is gonna be the same thing that happens when Christie's gives you a loan against your Picasso, right? Like these these happen this happens all the time. It's just a parallel for the digital world. There are certain types of of assets, digital assets that

getting loans against them if it's something you want will make sense. The tickets thing for me is very confusing. But what I will tell you is interesting and I've talked to actual rock stars about this. Like I had Mike Shinoda from Lincoln Park on my show and he's a huge NFT fan and he creates them and Um you know awesome flex, by the way. I've talked to some rock stars about this. I'm gonna that's it. No, but like I don't I'm not making fun of you. I'm thinking that's cool. I think it's cool. I think it's important because like you you you want to get the artist to buy in on this model, it's just like they're saying it's cool. Yeah.

Yeah, he he's a he's an awesome guy. Very approachable very approachable r um in the terms of rock star uh guys. But Shinola will tell you that like Well what we talked about, which is an obvious one, is like Okay, imagine the tickets. Uh well, but let me step back. One thing I believe s to be true. Ninety plus percent of people that interact with NFTs over the long term w I believe

won't even know it as they're doing it as an NFT. It'll just be something where they have a digital wallet, an app or something like that, and they have a ticket there, right? They're not gonna know that behind the scenes that is powered by the blockchain and recorded by the blockchain, right? So I think what's gonna happen is The nice thing about the blockchain is

Because it is a ledger, in immutable ledger. That is that is a way to say and prove that you have done something, that you either attended an event Or you've you know, you've actually physically done something. There's a ton of possibilities that I can un unlock, right? If I go And I see Mike Schnoda play

five shows or ten shows. Maybe he says, Okay, now according to the blockchain in our app, and again, the consumer doesn't need to know about this. Anyone that's attended ten of my shows gets a VIP meet and greet before the show, right? And there's a thousand different things that you can do that you want to have that security of the blockchain behind the scenes. So it's not being forged. So there's not being copies of it being made. So there's not like a way to fake it. And that's the nice thing about the blockchain is it provides you a way to have the security and knowledge that something is not being faked.

And you can imagine that's broadly applicable to a whole slew of different industries. Um, I don't think we'll be calling them quote unquote NFTs. You know, it it's just gonna be a great piece of tech. It's just another database. That's all it is. It's it's a distributed Um immutable database that is decentralized. It's that's all this is, which unlocks a bunch of fun new use cases. Let's caveat it. All right. So let's say

'Cause I think I get it when I get what you're saying, but I also get the uh the eye rolls that people get when it's like Cool. Tell me like how this is gonna make my life better. And it's like well the cool thing about a blockchain is that it's provable scarce. It's like It's like, Wait, you're telling me about the under the hood part, whereas, for example, if my mom is like If I'm like, mom, you should set up an email address. And she's like, What the heck is email? I don't need that. And it's like, well, no, check this out. Like, you know, you send letters or you, you know, you send letters to your sister who lives across the country, like, watch this. If you do it this way, it's free and it'll be instant.

And like oh wow, that's cool. And hey, you know what's even better? Because it's all digital, you can just type the word and it'll find that file. You don't have to keep it organized somewhere in a folder in your house. Uh right. So I can I don't have to tell her how it works at all. I can literally just say it made your life better by being by giving you, you know, more time, more money, more whatever. And so I think the question is. What does NFTs give what what does what will an N F T give a person that makes their life better

Without explaining how how the tech works at all. Sure. I'll I'll give I'll give you a great example of one that hasn't launched yet, but something that that I'm personally working on. So I I I'm I'm working with um a well known, like very culty kind of wine producer out there. And um You know, wine at the highest level at the high end it it it's a tricky

It's a tricky business because There's, you know, forgeries, there's fake labels, there's they're putting holograms on the side of them, they're putting um uh chips inside of the labels so that they can be scanned to to prove that they're authentic, right? Um, that's one piece. So the qu the first question is if I'm buying off the secondary market and not directly from the producer. Am I getting something that's legit?

Excuse me. Once I received that bottle. You know, how do I store it to ensure that if I'm gonna keep something and I want this asset to appreciate over time Um and I want to drink it a decade from now or two. then you know, how do I ensure that it is being stored the right way?

So one thing that is happening in the next four months will be the issuance of NFTs to people. that is gonna be from a major well known winery. Where it will represent one physical bottle of wine. There's a couple of advantages here. One, you don't have to take possession of it right away. You can let it sit in its proven perfect storage conditions.

and age for decades to come. You can let it appreciate in that in those storage conditions and you can hold on to the proven ownership of it as an NFT. Let's say that bottle of wine F four or five X's over the next decade.

You don't ever have to then pull the wine in out of the cellar, take ownership of it, find a third party to sell it, and then resell it where that person is questioning the authenticity of that wine. Instead, you can just transfer the NFT to a buddy, you can gift it to them for a special occasion or an anniversary. And then when they're decided, hey, I want to drink this, They press two buttons and that bottle of wine that has been stored perfectly for a decade shows up at their door. That is efficiency. That eliminates fraud.

There is just so much to love in that equation, and that'll be applied to the watch industry, to the luxury world, to all these different verticals. And it just makes sense. Like, what about that? I'm just curious if as you hear me explain it. doesn't sound like a better world, like in in terms of fixing a bunch of problems. I think uh if I was gonna If I was gonna argue against that. Like just to steel man the argument against it. I think it would be

Cool. Uh like maybe it's gonna maybe these are certificates for collectibles. Most you know, th it's not gonna that doesn't impact most people's lives because most people are not collecting high-end bags or wines or this where there's huge problems of forgery like that. Uh that may be one thing, which is it's not going to impact that many people. Um In in that sense, oh you're telling me N F T is this game changing, world changing technology, but that's a really niche specific, you know, one percenter type problem. And then the other is like, you know Um Sounds like an NFT is like a digital certificate. Um yeah, you could have done that with a with another type of certificate.

But um or another type of database. Maybe uh and uh but maybe this is better. Uh like I do agree it's better, but like it was possible before. It didn't take the impossible and make it possible. It made the uh the possible made it maybe made it more efficient or a little bit more convenient for the consumer. And so I think that would be maybe one argument against it, but I don't want to go Too far in the weeds. Yeah. I I the other thing that I think that to add on to that though is that because you have Well, I'll give you an example. Like back in in in You know, the back to the rock star example of a of a an artist. Um, you're reliant upon if you did want to do some type of rewards program or something for well actually let me step up one more point. The point you made about the one percenter problem and is this applicable to those people, you're absolutely right. Like there's only a certain number of people that are gonna collect art at the highest level and wine at the highest level and all that.

I mean, granted, these are double digit billions of dollars of year like big markets to go after. But you're right. These specific use cases that I'm giving are are very niche, right? Um I think on the more broadly uh on on the on the idea of just membership and access, and prove where you've been, what you've done to lo unlock loyalty and rewards over the long term and think about, you know, replacing the Amex points or you know other point type systems or reward systems with blockchain. The beautiful thing about it being decentralized, and this is one argument for decentralization

is that it's forever on the chain and you're not dependent upon a company being around for that for for that to exist. So if an artist is engaged with a startup that is working on a loyalty rewards program for them and they run out of capital and die three years later, as long as they stored their information on the blockchain, that artist can then just pick up where they left off and it just it continues forward. And we've already seen this happen where there's been several startups that have stored their information on the blockchain where they go out of business because they just Their their idea didn't hit

And then someone fills the the void and comes and says, I have a better take on this. And now let me tap into that public data and use it going forward so that But not all is lost, which is kind of a a new concept and rather than a just a database going away, it's always gonna be there and can be reused, which I think is pretty pretty compelling. The really simple two second example of this is you play a game, you g you you get really into Fortnite You go buy a bunch of skins, you you dress up your character, you got the cool you know, like glider, and you you bought all that stuff. And you know, a year and a half goes by, your friends have moved on, they're all playing Call of Duty now. Um, you've sank$350 into Fortnite. You don't own those items, you can't resell those items, you can't recoup any of that value, um, nor could you take those items into any other game. So in a web3 world, either another game could come out that says, hey, we accept item. We we we plugged into this protocol, so you can bring your cool sword from game one. To game two, that makes the sword more valuable because now it can be used in multiple games. So maybe I'm going to be able to do that. And we're seeing this already. The interoperability between multiple web three platforms saying that this is a defined standard and now these items can digitally move between platforms. It makes it a ton of sense. Now those items are more valuable because they can be used in more places. And the other one is that

If I'm just done with the game, I could just dump it on to the next person who's really interested in Fortnite and I can recoup my some of my investment, which will make more people want to spend in games because it's not just a muddy pit. It's an asset that they could resell. All right. So that's like the the quicker example, maybe. I love that you joined my side and you were you're going to be able to do it. But I have to argue the other way uh in order for this to be interesting. At the end you're like, I get it, I'm in. The other crypto nerd argument would be Okay, for years p people have been saying that Bitcoin is this this inflation hedge or this currency that that's that's um that doesn't inflate. And oh my God, you know, how lucky for you guys. The US government starts printing trillions of dollars, inflation is at record highs, it's in the news every day.

Wait, what happened to that awesome inflation hedge asset? Why is it down fifty percent when inflation is Is is Shouldn't this be your time to shine, Bitcoin? So yeah, what say you to that? Yeah, I mean it's it's a real shame that that Bitcoin has been so spiky because if it had it been this linear growth to twenty thousand to where it is today

we'd all be like, This is the most amazing thing ever. Like like if you just take the spikes out and make it look linear It it's it still looks like an incredible asset. Like, you know, just go back five years, look where it is now versus five years ago. So It it's the spiky nature of it that that that hurts it in the end. I would say that um You know, I I'm a fan I think bitcoin is is a tough one because it's

I I I don't like that it's not a green currency and I don't see a clear path uh ever being the case. Um and I know everyone's trying to extend it in new and exciting ways and try to make it more Ethereum like and so that it can do more than just be uh this type of digital gold. Um for me, you know, when I when I think about those types of assets

I it's I'm responsible in that I I I'm not betting the farm on this, but it is it a small Percentage of my portfolio? Absolutely. And I just considered another asset class. That provides me a little bit of um of diversification across the board. So you know, m s the majority of of my uh, you know, personal holdings is is still um standard, you know, index funds.

Uh that that are are pretty vanilla. The low cost index funds, you know, the Vanguard way, right? Yeah. Um I was actually gonna ask that. What what is your liquid portfolio look like? Like where uh like I I was I was been waiting to ask you that. Sam is like uh ETF low cost ETFs and bonds. Dude, I'm eighty percent in the Vanguard index funds, twenty percent bonds. That's that's all that I build private businesses. Where Sean like has put everything into the I'm like crypto and then like, you know, five companies I believe in and you know a little bit of indexed ones like that. It's like Zero like it's like five percent or something like that. I keep ten percent in cash or something. And so what would your What would your pie chart look like? And obviously it changes over time. Yeah. So so my my pie chart would be essentially this.

Um You know, eighty Well, Th I think that there's an important thing to uh caveat here is that as a a venture capital uh partner over True Ventures, I have a lot of um risk on the table there in in venture early stage investments.

Did you have to put your own money into that, or is that just your care? I do, yeah. I have to put my own money into it as as an investing partner. You also invest alongside the fund. So Um, that is my bucket of risk, right? So just setting that aside and saying, Okay, you know, I have carry in the fund, that's my bucket of high high risk. Too much capital in right? You put like I don't know, what like quarter million dollars or a million dollars or something like that in into that. It depends on the size of the fund. It's it's a it's a it's a percentage of the fund. We just closed our latest fund, which is seven hundred and fifty million, and so the partners put in uh a percent of uh of that um in in back into the fund. Uh I'd have to look at what the exact numbers are, but it's it's substantial. They want you to have skin in the game when you're investing Um so

You know, I consider that to be like Those are those are the big high risk buckets. So everything else I do, I want to be just super vanilla. And it it's that it's that Vanguard index fund Um, keep it, you know keep it really simple. I don't do Bond funds. I'd rather r rely on people to buy bonds on my behalf.

Um, you know, I am laddering into uh uh bills right now because you're getting four plus percent in the short term. And so, you know, just just laddering to to to those makes a ton of sense right now. Um You know, anyone out there that has ten grand that's sitting around that doesn't go buy an I bill right now, that's o earning over nine percent is just insane.

Like that's the most no brainer scenario for for someone that's listening to this podcast. By the way, there's like one week left of that, right? I was like, Yeah, that's right. Obviously not investment advice, but you are getting the full faith of the US government as the backer and it's over nine percent And you can do ten thousand for yourself and ten thousand for your spouse, which is uh amazing. So um Anyway. It it's I keep it really simple. And then and then the rest is is is the crypto the crypto side of things

Is like You know Let's call it Uh, fifty percent NFTs and fifty percent uh digital assets. And that's, you know, probably ten percent of my overall. Okay.

So so ninety percent of non Venture stuff is in just A an index fund. Yeah, yeah, and multiple index funds that cover a variety of markets. But yeah, low cost. Did you touch real estate at all or no? Not really, other than just, you know

my own stuff. Do you own or rent? I am. Uh we're we've always had this debate and I know you gotta go in a minute, I hear your alarm's going off, but we always have this debate. Well, we both agree.

I I own. I wish I would have rented. Dude, I just wanna rent everything. I don't wanna own a lot of stuff. Do you regret owning or or do you like being an owner? Um you know The the thing is. When interest rates were low, you can just take a bunch of capital back out of your house and pour it back into the market, assuming that you're gonna beat that. You know, if you could get uh

own a house. Uh Take a loan out against aga aga against that house and get, you know, two b a couple couple of points and and earn five to seven in the market, like I'll take that Delta all day long. So

Um, that's kinda the way I play it. Well, well dude, you're uh I'm really happy we got the talk. I um I used to work out of the Reddit building uh uh Third and Bryant, and I remember seeing you walk by and I was like, Oh shit, that's Kevin, I wish I would have said hey. That was in two thousand twelve. So it's only been eleven years later, ten years later. But uh I'm happy that we are able to talk. Um I've been a big fan of yours, I know Sean has as well, so it's really uh exciting to to be able to meet ya.

I well I love that you guys are doing this show. I mean it reminds me a lot of like the the kind of fun little hash out debates that Tim Ferris and I have when we do our random shows. Like they're just fun, right? You get a couple of friends together and shoot the shit and some some crazy discussions uh c come out of it. So that's that's great. Dude, those were I can't believe how big those were back then. I remember the the Kevin and Tim shows, I think they call that he like had a funny name for you, like Tim Tim Top Top. Yeah, well, I call him Tim Tim still. And it he supposed to be Kev Kev, but yeah. We just shot one here uh in person uh maybe two weeks ago, which was fun. It was good to see Tim again. I had seen him in in a minute. But uh so many little things you like I remember you talked about Wim Hof back then and I was like oh next day I'm on my floor like breathing uh hyperventilated on purpose. I even remember your wife uh Doctor Dar. Is that her name? Daria, yeah. Daria like It it's funny. It's like that stuff was so inf I mean it still is, but it was like particularly when I was in twenty two and just getting into Silicon Valley, like I really looked up to you guys as like just show me how to Silicon Valley. You know what I mean? And it was really cool. Yeah, that was that was a fun I was I I miss not living in the same city as as Tim'cause uh we we we always have getting into some trouble when we're together. So

Yeah, you guys provided a blueprint for us in in terms of like, hey If you can find somebody you got chemistry with and you shoot the shit and like what's your content? Your content is just, yo, I'm super curious and interested in a bunch of things. And this becomes my outlet to summarize, you know, my set of experiments and rabbit holes I've been going down. And like You know, we would have never done a podcast of like, oh, the ad revenue will be enough. It's like, no, it's not really like fuck that. It's not really relevant. Um

And seeing, you know, Tim and you and how oh, actually it's these relationships and these investments and there's these little side projects you kick up and actually you can make this whole thing work. without having to go, you know, do this like you know traditional kind of venture path of uh of of raising money to go do this thing. So that was pretty Uh inspiring. So yeah, thank you for that. I think uh you know, just seeing a blueprint. is like that Roger Banished or four minute mile where you're like, oh I can have the lifestyle I want.

But on my terms. And uh if these guys can do it, then we can do it. Well, I mean it's it's congrats to you both. It seems like uh from from what I heard here at the beginning of this episode, you guys have done quite well and and uh congrats on your success. It's awesome. Congrats to you too and thanks for kinda paving the way. We appreciate it and thanks for coming. Thanks.

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