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Winning the Degenerate Economy with StockTwits CEO Howard Lindzon · Masters in Business

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, radio news. This is Masters in
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: Business with Barry Ritholts on Bloomberg Radio.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: This week on the podcast Strap Yourself In for a Banger,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: I welcome back my old friend, degenerate gambler Howard Linsen.
• 0:24
  Speaker 2: We talk about stock twits, about social leverage, about his
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: early investment in robin Hood, about why he's concerned about
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: the degeneracy economy, between meme coins and end of day
• 0:39
  Speaker 2: options and parlays. He's concerned about what the next generation
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: is doing. I thought this conversation was hilarious and I
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: think you will also, with no further ado, my sit
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: down with the one and only Howard Lenzen.
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: Wow, if only my kids could hear that.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: I know they think you're just an old man. They
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: have they wins, show, use the finger and ask for pity.
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: Surgically reattached.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Surgically reattached is a lesson of how lucky we are.
• 1:09
  Speaker 3: What I've lived without a cute pain. Like first of all,
• 1:15
  Speaker 3: when I when I cut it off, It's amazing how
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: many people do.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Do Was it still dangling on or was it severed completely?
• 1:22
  Speaker 3: You pick it up? You call nine one one and
• 1:25
  Speaker 3: as a jew. I wasn't sure if I boil it
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: or freeze it. So that was the question I asked.
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: It happened, Well, it's a jew.
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: You're only supposed to take the tip on.
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: I don't know if you'll cook it. I don't know
• 1:35
  Speaker 3: if you freeze it. It's like lobster. So uh, the
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: woman said, please don't bleed out. I go, that is
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: not helpful right now, As luck would have it, I
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: live on corn Good advice, Yeah, good advice. I'm like
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: the one I got to call nine one one. I go,
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: let's not talk, get me a machine over to my house,
• 1:56
  Speaker 3: give me a robot. So living in Cornat, it was
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: a magical place. You've been there, and the great news
• 2:02
  Speaker 3: about Corners and Navy baysed Navy seals are there. It's
• 2:04
  Speaker 3: like it's the greatest place.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: They have a hospital right there.
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: They do. But I'm saying, there's cops and firemen everywhere.
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: So literally, as I'm dialing nine one one, it's like
• 2:15
  Speaker 3: they knew I cut my finger off. So so as
• 2:17
  Speaker 3: a miracle would have it, the young I've never really
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: had to be in an ambulance. Again, I'm lucky, and
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: they took me off island because they've found a hand surgeon.
• 2:29
  Speaker 3: It turned out to be thirty years old, which freaked
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: me out because I thought he'd sew it on backwards
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: or whatever. Anyways, long story short, you know I was
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: at peace once you realize you're going to live, Yeah,
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: because I've never had that happen, like something like that happened.
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Were you gushing blood? Yeah?
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: Yeah. As a favorite of my wife, I went to
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: the neighbors to bleed. So it was like the next
• 2:49
  Speaker 3: day it was spotless in front of our house. But
• 2:53
  Speaker 3: as luck had, everybody did a great job. The amazing
• 2:56
  Speaker 3: thing we make fun of so many things in America
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: these days, the emergency system. I needed it. I don't
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: care what I pay in taxes.
• 3:04
  Speaker 2: It was. It was amazing right now, yet you still
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: have ten fingers?
• 3:08
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I have ten fingers for now. The joke in
• 3:11
  Speaker 3: the families, I don't want it because it's kind of
• 3:13
  Speaker 3: like a dead finger at this point.
• 3:14
  Speaker 2: Oh really, will it be functional? Will you regain function?
• 3:17
  Speaker 3: It feels like if I'm using it, it just feels
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: like a wet skin, right, and so I'm not happy.
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: But the doctor was like, you can decide later. It
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: was if you want a prosthetic or no, not prosthetic.
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: If you just want to work with a nub, it's
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: only a third of the finger, right, So anyways, it
• 3:36
  Speaker 3: was traumatic, but here we are. Yeah, there's great stories.
• 3:40
  Speaker 3: If you're a storyteller. Cut a finger off. I mean,
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: if you want traffic on Twitter bleed out. Yeah, you
• 3:49
  Speaker 3: can get traffic, but no engagement. That's the problem. I
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: want to go viral. I got nine chances.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: Twenty one if you want to be accurate, toes.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Are not good in the fingers are.
• 4:00
  Speaker 2: Good and twenty one the twenty first.
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: No go the twenty first. You could be president.
• 4:07
  Speaker 2: So let's roll back a little bit and start with
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: your early education. Bachelors from Commerce University, Bachelor's in Commerce
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: from the University at Western Ontario.
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: It's a famous business school for Ana Arizona State and
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: famous for bumbs as on state business school. What does
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: that even mean? And then masters at Thunderbird School of
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: Global Management, which was a great school now owned by
• 4:36
  Speaker 3: a great animated cartoon. And this is correct, So what
• 4:42
  Speaker 3: given all that? What was the original career plan? Comedy? Yeah,
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: I grew up you.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: And Martin Short right out of Canada, right.
• 4:50
  Speaker 3: No mine? He was already older. But I grew up
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: in Toronto and that was when I was seventy five
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: watching Johnny Cerson my first TV. You saw everybody and
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: it was like your living room, and so it's Toronto
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: had Second City, Yeah, John Candy, Martin Short, Eugene Levy.
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: Second City was before Saturday Night Live. And so I
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: grew up.
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: To Surround around the same time little earlier.
• 5:14
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, so I'm like twelve years old giggling, you know,
• 5:18
  Speaker 3: and there was no Internet, so you were like go
• 5:21
  Speaker 3: to the comedy clubs with your friends. Toronto had this
• 5:23
  Speaker 3: clubs called Yak Yaks, which was a famous chain like
• 5:27
  Speaker 3: the Improv but of Canada. And you had Mike Myers.
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: Another Canadian.
• 5:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, everybody exploding onto the scene at the same time.
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: And so I was doing stand up in high school
• 5:39
  Speaker 3: get out but not good obviously, but Mike Myers would
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: come up. Mike Myers would come up and kill He
• 5:45
  Speaker 3: was like seventeen years old. Jim Carrey fourteen years old,
• 5:48
  Speaker 3: r killing right, And so everybody wanted to be a comic,
• 5:52
  Speaker 3: no different than like the web two point everybody went
• 5:54
  Speaker 3: to Stanford to be an engineer's certain in nineties it
• 5:58
  Speaker 3: was investment banking. Right now, it'll be robots in AI.
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: It's just what's in the water. And I grew up
• 6:04
  Speaker 3: with comedy in the water, and so that was the goal.
• 6:08
  Speaker 3: And obviously, you know with Jewish parents at the time,
• 6:11
  Speaker 3: that ain't flying. Especially I wasn't good, right, and so
• 6:14
  Speaker 3: I went to school.
• 6:15
  Speaker 2: You drop that you weren't good as like an after thought.
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: I think if you're successful and earning a living, well,
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: it was even a Jewish parent will put up with
• 6:26
  Speaker 2: you now like Jerry Steinfeld's mom is fine with you.
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: Yes, But I'm saying now, if my son came in
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: and said, I'm gonna go hit the comedy tour, I'd
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: warn them how dark it is. But I'd say go
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: make it go on YouTube. Right. You know a ten
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: thousand hours you don't have to live in ten thousand hours. Yeah,
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: get the faster you get those ten thousand hours in the.
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: Better, That's right. So you grew up in Canada, you
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: start your career in Phoenix and San Diego and New
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: York City. I'm curious, that's an interesting you know, Toronto, Phoenix,
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: San Diego, New York. How did that geographical upbringing affect
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: your perspective as an investor.
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: Who is an investor? I don't know, because as you
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: as a kid, I was lucky because if you're Jewish
• 7:12
  Speaker 3: in Toronto or New York at that area, you go
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: to Florida, you know, the original Del Boca Vista. But
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: my dad was different and he discovered Phoenix and so
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: in the eighties, like Phoenix was like swamp coolers, and
• 7:27
  Speaker 3: he just liked the weather.
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: And I don't know, I'll let you know a little secret.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: The weather in Florida ain't great. It's humid.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: To my dad, obviously, that's the way he thought. Yeah,
• 7:37
  Speaker 3: so that's why he discovered Phoenix and bought a home.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: And I like golf and backing, and so lucky for me,
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: we had I went instead of going to Florida, we
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: were going to Arizona and so I would go to
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: the football games as a kid, and I was like, hey,
• 7:51
  Speaker 3: it's you. That was my dream. Just just go to
• 7:54
  Speaker 3: Arizona State University, which I ended up, you know, doing
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: for grad school, which isn't a great grad school, but
• 7:59
  Speaker 3: it was part of school. But that was my dream
• 8:02
  Speaker 3: get out of Canada, right, So I got lucky. You know,
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: my parents exposed me to you know, Arizona, and I
• 8:09
  Speaker 3: went tass you had the time. It was amazing. And
• 8:12
  Speaker 3: then if you're Jewish in Phoenix because the summers, it's
• 8:18
  Speaker 3: like New York goes to Flora in the winter. Jewish
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: people in Phoenix go to this. Go to San Diego
• 8:23
  Speaker 3: in the summer to get.
• 8:24
  Speaker 2: Out of there right the ocean. It's a nice weather.
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: Six hour drive and it's seventy degrees.
• 8:29
  Speaker 2: And I love La Jolla and that it's called.
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: Zoni's So Arizona flood San Diego to Del Mar. I
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: wish so we grew up Coronado. I'm not grew up, Sorry,
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: I I my in laws had a place in Coronado,
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: and so when we had kids, I'm like, get out
• 8:47
  Speaker 3: of the heat. You're yeah, we were not summer but
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: a week here, a week there.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: I wish California wasn't six hours away. If it was
• 8:55
  Speaker 2: two hours away. One we were just in San Francisco.
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: It's fun again.
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: It's a boomtown. Tales of an apocalyptic healthscape have been.
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: It's still not my favorite, but it's cool.
• 9:07
  Speaker 2: It's less homeless than New York.
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: You know, I'm not just talking about homeless that people
• 9:11
  Speaker 3: are still.
• 9:13
  Speaker 2: They're educated, they're intelligent. I mean, if you're if you lose.
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: If you're not in New York City, it's not New York.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: You know, when you leave New York, I don't know
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: about you. I make a conscious effort to not be
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: that New York abroad, even out of fun, out of town. Yeah, California,
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: especially San Francisco, it doesn't feel like you've left town.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: God love it. Yeah, I mean, I just have the
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: California bug. The coast to coast is a dream and
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: I get to live it.
• 9:47
  Speaker 2: It's just a lot of travel, the.
• 9:49
  Speaker 3: Thing about it. And I do like Florida a lot,
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: but same as you six hours like Phoenix or San Diego.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: Florida is like not on the no brain, it's no
• 9:57
  Speaker 3: no one does it like it's not a thing.
• 9:59
  Speaker 2: Right, No, it's Phoenix to San Diego makes sense. It
• 10:02
  Speaker 2: nexs to Florida, just like New York to Florida makes sense.
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: Correct New York too.
• 10:07
  Speaker 3: So you asked, So you ask how that happened. That's
• 10:10
  Speaker 3: the right of passions. Instead of Toronto, Florida my whole life.
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: I jumped to the West coast and then I discovered
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: San Diego through my in laws and my wife and yeah,
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: well you've been to Cornado.
• 10:21
  Speaker 2: Oh yeah yeah, So let's let me let me wrestle
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: this back into submission. So you've worn a lot of hats.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: You're a hedge fund manager, a founder, a CEO, a
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: seed investor, a media personality. How do you describe to
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: people who don't know you what you do?
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: It's a great question. My in laws are in their
• 10:40
  Speaker 3: eighties and they still ask me what do we tell
• 10:42
  Speaker 3: people you do? And I'm like, who the hell cares well?
• 10:45
  Speaker 3: And the world now decided that for you? No one cares, right?
• 10:49
  Speaker 2: So what do you do?
• 10:50
  Speaker 3: Right? Like, I think we're getting back into like where
• 10:53
  Speaker 3: it's you should be proud to have like a what
• 10:56
  Speaker 3: you call profession. I don't have a profession. So you
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: asked how I got started. It wasn't investing. I got
• 11:01
  Speaker 3: started as investing because I failed at everything else. And
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: which is kind of the Larry David part of it,
• 11:07
  Speaker 3: is like I stumbled into it because the Internet is
• 11:11
  Speaker 3: like water. It'd be like discovering California. Like internet was
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: like tech. So the nineties were like I didn't understand
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: semiconductors were full circle, right, I'm not a code. I
• 11:23
  Speaker 3: don't even know how things work. I never did radio
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: shack right like, so the like walkie talkies were freaking
• 11:29
  Speaker 3: me out. So the odds of me being in tech
• 11:32
  Speaker 3: are part of the comedy. Full circle. We are now
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: back in a tech world, roll modes, chips like.
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: Real stuff, a little secret we never left it just
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: kind of.
• 11:43
  Speaker 3: I found the goofball Ara. Web two was the Goofballer
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: or social media. You could be the class clown and
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: have scale. Now that's gone again, and class clown you
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: now need to be a bully again. It's it's you
• 11:56
  Speaker 3: need to already have distribution.
• 11:59
  Speaker 2: It's hard to build distribution today. So I'm saying when
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: an early adopter is certainly an advice.
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: Super but now it doesn't matter. You have to have
• 12:06
  Speaker 3: real tech chops again. You can't pose like I am,
• 12:09
  Speaker 3: like I have imposter syndrome for the right reasons, right
• 12:12
  Speaker 3: because I'm an embossedor meaning the Internet left a little
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: opening in two thousand and six for goofballs, and we
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: got to participate in an era of free growth. When
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: Facebook didn't charge you or have an AI algorithm that
• 12:26
  Speaker 3: blocked you. You could say whatever you want. People go
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: he's funny, and you could scale for free, which is
• 12:33
  Speaker 3: why we had an Internet boom, Web two point zero
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: Internet boom right after an Internet. Now we live in
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: an era where those people are confusing their genius for
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: a bull market, right, and we're all sick of those people.
• 12:45
  Speaker 2: Can I push back on you a little bit because
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: I know you for so well for so long. Hold
• 12:53
  Speaker 2: the imposter syndrome aside. The early inter rewarded people who
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: could communicate effectively, be it work your way through the media,
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: be it blogs or short form blogs like Twitter or
• 13:15
  Speaker 2: other social media, or podcasts or video and YouTube. There's
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: a whole run of different ways to use the Internet
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: to scale, so it's not an imposter. You basically just
• 13:33
  Speaker 2: kept tacking into what was working. Oh this works, let's
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: do more of it.
• 13:37
  Speaker 3: Of course, but the era was free, so you had
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: that great financial crisis that was going to happen, So
• 13:44
  Speaker 3: meaning Uber couldn't be possible without Google Maps. Like people
• 13:49
  Speaker 3: say Uber is great, it wasn't possible unless there was
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: an iPhone the cloud. People will be typing, I want
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: a taxi without Google Maps, I don't know where to go.
• 13:58
  Speaker 2: That's right, And all of that only worked because of
• 14:01
  Speaker 2: the bubble and the build out of Global Gross and
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: Metromedia fiber. So I'm saying one thousand dollars a mile
• 14:08
  Speaker 2: bought for pennies.
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: My impostor syndrome is born. Of of course I have
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: an ego, but my imposter syndrome is surrounded by crazy
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: people who are mistaking. As I was talking to Tim O'Brien,
• 14:19
  Speaker 3: if this was we went from a World war. Strength
• 14:22
  Speaker 3: mattered not that long ago. This matters right, And I'm
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: like people, just the humility is gone, and I feel
• 14:31
  Speaker 3: it's with my kids and everything. It's with the injury
• 14:34
  Speaker 3: and everything. You have to have some humilion. We need
• 14:37
  Speaker 3: to get back to having some humilion and laughing at
• 14:39
  Speaker 3: our success and going mait a minute. It was a bullmark,
• 14:42
  Speaker 3: a zero interest, the RESERP. There was the free internet aws,
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: you had, YouTube, you had if you here's my question.
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: If you aren't successful, that'd be more interesting. I want
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: to talk to the guy like the Larry Davi commercial
• 14:57
  Speaker 3: with ftx I, when he was like, oh the circle,
• 15:00
  Speaker 3: who fire?
• 15:01
  Speaker 2: Who needs who needs fire?
• 15:02
  Speaker 3: That was such a great commercial because only Larry David
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: or you know, I know the guys the commercial that
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: what made that commercial. Great is Larry David gets the
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: joke you're in on the fact that, of course you
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: made money. You worked at Facebook. It grew because the
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: product was genius and tricked people into signing up. You
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: did nothing except ride the train. Now I'm not saying
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: smart people didn't work there, but let's remember Game of
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: Thrones were all dead. The people that are successful today
• 15:33
  Speaker 3: are Mark Unries and Chamont. The people that I can't
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: like are hilarious to me. They have no humility. Is
• 15:39
  Speaker 3: that Game of Thrones there were all dead first second,
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: first scene there's a hammer in our heads and you
• 15:45
  Speaker 3: and I might have a chance because we're the court
• 15:48
  Speaker 3: just right, and if we dance well enough, dance with me,
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: Monkey Andreas and dead Jama dead there's just a pitchfork
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: in their foreheads on the first scene of Gladiator.
• 15:58
  Speaker 2: Well, if you you know that's see you have people
• 16:01
  Speaker 2: like da Vinci that were consultants to the king to
• 16:04
  Speaker 2: help build weapons and things. So unless you can you
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: know early days of palent here, unless you can say, sure,
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: hey here's how to make a better catapults. Sure you know,
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: those guys survive.
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: So I'm saying I come along with like tweeting stock
• 16:19
  Speaker 3: twigs like it was just enabling communication. Listen, I'm very
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: proud of this stuff, and I also can laugh about
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: how stupid it is, Like I don't have another trick. Right,
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: The Internet left this opening, kind of like discovering California,
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: if you're early to discover California, made to pass the
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: Indians in the mountains. Right, it didn't get robbed by
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: like murdered, stampeded cash, Like, let's carry all our money
• 16:43
  Speaker 3: in a stagecoast pulled by horses at three miles an hour.
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: What are the odds we get killed? Right, It's impossible.
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: So the Internet left this opening, and I snuck through it,
• 16:53
  Speaker 3: and it's fun to look back with some humor at
• 16:55
  Speaker 3: the whole thing. I think the holes closed up like pipes.
• 17:00
  Speaker 3: Zuckerberg owns the pipes. True Social owns their version of
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: a pipe. TikTok has an algorithm. How do you break through?
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Because those things get tired and the next gen says,
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: just the way fate, just the way Facebook became. Oh
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: my parents are on Facebook. I'm out. I'm going to
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: go to Insta and then I'm going to go to TikTok,
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: and so there'll be something.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: New questioning that I'm just questioning. It'll never have been
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: It'll never be easier than when I made money, And
• 17:29
  Speaker 3: I'm cool with that. That's the imposters.
• 17:30
  Speaker 2: I don't completely disagree with you, and you're touching on
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: a pet thesis. I love to ask what would have
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: happened to you had you been born one hundred years earlier,
• 17:42
  Speaker 2: or even or even twenty five years earlier. Right, if
• 17:46
  Speaker 2: you're born in nineteen forty, what happened?
• 17:49
  Speaker 3: I'm a furrier, look at my yes, most all these
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: beaver have a cafe that has so many dishes on
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: it that make no sense. And I'm selling first. I mean,
• 18:05
  Speaker 3: I have no shot, I have no strength.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: Right, Just think about how fortunate finger off? Right? So
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: if you didn't bleed out your nine figures, no, you
• 18:14
  Speaker 2: should have shown you stick. You stick your finger into
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: the fire and you quarterize it. That's what the old
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: timers would tell you. Get a get a piece of
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: steel in the in the fire. They'll heat up the iron.
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: You just burn it. And that's your thought.
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: Howie, what's the what's the is the ambulance going to
• 18:32
  Speaker 3: charge too much? And should I bleed at the neighbor's house?
• 18:35
  Speaker 3: Those were my first My wife will kill me that
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: I'm bleeding in our yard.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: Coming up, we continue our conversation with Howard Lindzen, co
• 18:43
  Speaker 2: founder of Social Leverage, discussing what he calls the degenerate economy.
• 18:50
  Speaker 2: I'm Barry Ridults. You're listening to Masters in Business on
• 18:54
  Speaker 2: Bloomberg Radio. I'm Barry Ridults. You're listening to Masters in
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: Business on Petberg Radio. My extra special guest is someone
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: I've known for too long, Howard Lindzen, co founder of
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: Social Leverage, one of the earliest seed investors in Robin Hood,
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: which is a chapter in my book. Oh, let's do
• 19:22
  Speaker 2: segment two, and I have to start by asking about
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: social leverage. You've been doing this for twenty years, so
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: from the first seed fund you did to today where
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: you have a portfolio of one hundred and fifty plus companies,
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: how has this evolved? First of all, what was the
• 19:40
  Speaker 2: first company you invested in?
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: So, the first company I invested in was so Dumb
• 19:48
  Speaker 3: Cars Direct nineteen ninety eight. The tippy top as my
• 19:51
  Speaker 3: wire left digitally my fingertips or wherever bank it was
• 19:57
  Speaker 3: coming from, it was worthless right, meaning like the the.
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: Series Q right, you were just early pets dot com eventually,
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: but I was later because would have.
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: Been Yes, that was your retail idiot. So I grew up,
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: like I said, I went to a su You're going
• 20:14
  Speaker 3: to be a fur year, right, that's your chance and
• 20:18
  Speaker 3: a bad one because you know, so the Internet comes along.
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: I fall in love with stock market because I had
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: made some money at my at my first startup and
• 20:28
  Speaker 3: I had to be my own broker and so yeahoo
• 20:30
  Speaker 3: finance Jim Kramer, Street dot com like they're still around, right,
• 20:34
  Speaker 3: So so those were my onboarding are you for the
• 20:37
  Speaker 3: Street dot com?
• 20:38
  Speaker 2: They were the dominant Like people who were younger don't realize.
• 20:41
  Speaker 3: Way that was still massive frame still.
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: I think the Street dot com doesn't get the Cramer. Yeah,
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: well he's on TV twice a day saying.
• 20:51
  Speaker 3: This is thirty years Yeah. So that was that's my
• 20:54
  Speaker 3: introduction to retail investing because I couldn't afford a Bloomberg
• 20:58
  Speaker 3: still can so I can afford.
• 21:01
  Speaker 2: I think you could afford a Bloomberg.
• 21:02
  Speaker 3: Posts I wouldn't. I wouldn't know how to use it.
• 21:05
  Speaker 2: Well, there's a phone church, especially with nine fingers, how
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: you need all ten fingers for the so.
• 21:12
  Speaker 3: I was inspired by you did street dot Com had
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: Murder's row of writers. It's a new investor, yeh. I
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: just would sit and wait for articles to come out
• 21:22
  Speaker 3: and yeah, who finance? So on the message where it's Pearlman,
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: you like, we were almost first the message.
• 21:27
  Speaker 2: So cars Direct was your first investment.
• 21:29
  Speaker 3: And ten years later I got ten percent of my
• 21:32
  Speaker 3: money back after it being successful. So so my first
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: thing was a disaster.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: What was your first successful investment?
• 21:38
  Speaker 3: So my first successful investment was a cold call that
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: I made pre Internet in a company I probably talked
• 21:44
  Speaker 3: about the leash called the Grip. It was the so
• 21:47
  Speaker 3: so I had the good fortune of being an hour
• 21:51
  Speaker 3: before the Internet, before the Internet, an hour before the
• 21:54
  Speaker 3: Innit the thing before the thing was QBC. I recall, okay,
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: so before the interstill on PBC was the interest right,
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: meaning there was the whole of Philadelphia was just old
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: people on the phone saying yes, yes, we'll take your
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: order and your credit card. And if you were on
• 22:10
  Speaker 3: QBC was a studio.
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: Like this, what was it?
• 22:12
  Speaker 3: We had a product called the Grit and it's in
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: the QBC Hall of Fame. So I made a cold
• 22:17
  Speaker 3: call while I was a stockbroker to this kid, I
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: thinking he was rich because back in the nineties.
• 22:23
  Speaker 2: It was just like the movie was on brad Streets.
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: You would get a newspaper and decide who you're going
• 22:27
  Speaker 3: to cold call that, right, So I hated my job.
• 22:30
  Speaker 3: That was my first job out of college, and I
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: was cold calling to get rich clients. And I called
• 22:34
  Speaker 3: this kid and he ended up needing money like he
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: was just promoting them.
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: He reverse pitched you.
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: He he reversed pitched me, and I had a cobble
• 22:44
  Speaker 3: up twenty five grand from my mom and friends, and
• 22:47
  Speaker 3: I hated and I'm like, I'm in, And then he
• 22:50
  Speaker 3: paid off his AMEX with that twenty By the way.
• 22:52
  Speaker 2: Every stockbroker and salesperson appreciates a good sales pitch. The
• 22:57
  Speaker 2: soccer for a good sales panch.
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: Well, he was promoting himself and I was trying to
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: sell him something, and he sold me on his company.
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: So it turned out to be a home run company.
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: Well it was.
• 23:06
  Speaker 3: He was a dropout Mark Scatteday, unbelievable entrepreneur and he
• 23:10
  Speaker 3: had he made this product with five balloons wrapped around
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: this Siberian millet, and we were the largest Siberian millet
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: orderers in the world in the nineties because we were
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: making millions of balls a month by hand and selling
• 23:25
  Speaker 3: them with corporate logos on them. During the whole nineties pharmacies.
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: And on the desk toy Squeaze story, but.
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: Our genius was putting corporate logos on it.
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: Nobody had done that before.
• 23:35
  Speaker 3: Well, that industry was huge in the nineties, corporate giveaways
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: right with trade shows and whatever. And we just got
• 23:41
  Speaker 3: the right product at the right time, and it was,
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: oh my god. We were just how many were the
• 23:46
  Speaker 3: ball There's so many ball jokes, but they'd all get deleted.
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: Here we were the ball boys of the nineties.
• 23:52
  Speaker 2: How many did we We did sixty.
• 23:54
  Speaker 3: Seventy million in, said Wout. And the margins were crazy
• 23:57
  Speaker 3: because unlike retail, if you put bed, Bath and Beyond
• 24:00
  Speaker 3: or Compact on the ball, they own it. There's no returns.
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: And so so we just had this pet rock business
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: where like Compact would call them we need a million
• 24:10
  Speaker 3: balls for Condex and we'd just hire people illegal aliens
• 24:14
  Speaker 3: and they would come into Phoenix and they would all
• 24:16
  Speaker 3: cut their fingers off like making these things.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: But you made it in the stakes.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: We made it in the States. We spent all our
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: money was trying to figure out how to machine make
• 24:25
  Speaker 3: these in the nineties, and we wasted so much money
• 24:28
  Speaker 3: trying to like get humans out of the process. Compact
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: would order a million pay you in advance to start,
• 24:35
  Speaker 3: so we'd be buying cars. It was just two person company,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: like a bunch of like staff, and so we'd go
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: out to lunch and buy cars because we were paid
• 24:44
  Speaker 3: before we even started making the product. And so we
• 24:49
  Speaker 3: were like, that's how I learned business.
• 24:50
  Speaker 2: Kind of like you started this on QVC.
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: No QVC picked us up, and Mark used to go
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: on TV and back back in the nineties and KVC
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: if it was sell they just kept you out there
• 25:01
  Speaker 3: like a cartoon character. They didn't they hadn't scientifically gone
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: to the profit per second model because they were surprised
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: at their success. So the Grip appealed to like seventy
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: year old women who had carpet like they just like
• 25:15
  Speaker 3: squeezing the So we created this nineteen dollars three pack
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: that had soft medium and I swear to God, you
• 25:22
  Speaker 3: can't make this up and soft medium and firm, and
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: KBC just kept Mark on stage all day and the
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: numbers would go and it was a miracle. That was
• 25:34
  Speaker 3: our first success. So that was so I was very
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: much that was my first Internet success. So sorry, that
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: was my first success.
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: When did social leverage launch?
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: So so you you and I both lived through this,
• 25:48
  Speaker 3: the Great Financial Crisis, and that was an era of
• 25:51
  Speaker 3: so up until two thousand and seven, two thousand and six,
• 25:55
  Speaker 3: we lived in a world of financial leverage, meaning and
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: we know what happened to the end of that stacking
• 26:02
  Speaker 3: you know, Excel came out. People didn't have to my
• 26:06
  Speaker 3: dad when I grew up with my dad in Toronto,
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: if you did an acquisition, it was like seven hundred
• 26:10
  Speaker 3: pieces of paper with pencil taped together. Then Excel comes out, which,
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: of course nothing, you know, everything's made up at that
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: point and on one sell off can change the world.
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: But we became a world the stacking things financial leverage, right,
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: that was the banking era, and the end of financial
• 26:31
  Speaker 3: leverage era came in two thousand and six, two thousand
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: and seven at the same time that social media came out.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: So the play on words was I wanted to do.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: As an early adopter of social media, I was like
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: an idiot, like me, So the idea was social leverage.
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: You can't implode with social leverage where this financial level,
• 26:51
  Speaker 3: of course, well that was pre canceled. So I'm saying
• 26:53
  Speaker 3: my thesis was, oh my god, an idiot like me
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: who knows the right three people can just grow their
• 27:00
  Speaker 3: network for free forever. And so that was the birth
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: of the name social leverage.
• 27:06
  Speaker 2: It makes a lot of sense.
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It was just like a play on where some
• 27:09
  Speaker 3: people will call me and go, oh, you guys do
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: social investing. Oh, it's the last thing I do, meaning
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: I'm not, there's no impact. It was just the play
• 27:17
  Speaker 3: on words of financial.
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: Leverage to social level. I like it, but good point.
• 27:20
  Speaker 3: You can blow up on social leverage.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: So now you're up to fund four, fun six, fund six. Wow,
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: I have the I and the VE good news.
• 27:28
  Speaker 3: You pass on all of them. We continue to do
• 27:31
  Speaker 3: well until you come in.
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: As soon as I come in, it's over.
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: Well that's when we shut down.
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: And and I famously, more infamously was an investor in
• 27:40
  Speaker 2: stock to Its and then when you pitched me on
• 27:43
  Speaker 2: robin Hood it's a line in the book, how that's
• 27:46
  Speaker 2: the dumbest FN idea I've ever heard of my life.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: You weren't the only one, and it was it was
• 27:51
  Speaker 2: I will, I will, I.
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: Will you the majority. You were in the majority.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: I own it in the book, and between you and me,
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: I'll say a it was off brands and be no
• 28:02
  Speaker 2: doubt that the pandemic lockdown helped them dramatically.
• 28:07
  Speaker 3: No, no, no. The thing about Rominhood because I was there
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: from day one and by day one, I mean there
• 28:13
  Speaker 3: was another company, Kronos Research before they were like high
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: frequency guys and math guys, but you could only this
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: is about you ask about investing. It's you know, the
• 28:24
  Speaker 3: life I've led boots on, like just curiosity, your eyes, nose, ears, feet.
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: You become a great investor by like touching, feeling right.
• 28:36
  Speaker 3: You got to be on street level. The best investors
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: are street level. I'm talking about private markets. Public markets
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: are different thing.
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about private We were talking.
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: About Robin Hoood. So so the great thing about Robinhood
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: is it's not that I got it right. It's like
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: I was. If I didn't get that right, I'm nobody,
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: meaning I had to get that right. Yaho Finance user
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: street dot com guy E trade baby, you know what
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: I mean. Twitter user Stark twits founder, and I if
• 29:06
  Speaker 3: I had any nerve or any text skills or any
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: like real balls or whatever we're going to call it,
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: I build my own brokeer it like I was there
• 29:14
  Speaker 3: to do all that. But in twenty ten, even until
• 29:17
  Speaker 3: till robin Hood started, no one wanted to start it.
• 29:20
  Speaker 3: Brokerage ideas are terrible idea, So you have to understand
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: that in twenty thirteen when I saw Robinhood, no one
• 29:26
  Speaker 3: in America. That's shocking that no one wanted to build
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: each trade two point zero. But what the venture capitalists
• 29:32
  Speaker 3: were doing, they were enamored. And this is where venture capitalists.
• 29:36
  Speaker 3: I always goof on venture capitalists. They were enameled with
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: the wrong thing that at the time it was like
• 29:41
  Speaker 3: wealth Front Betterment. The vcs were enamored with Assets under
• 29:45
  Speaker 3: Management AUM. They felt like Vanguard was the one to disrupt.
• 29:50
  Speaker 3: So everybody wanted to be the next. If you're a
• 29:52
  Speaker 3: venture capitalists, you want to be the next Vanguard. No
• 29:54
  Speaker 3: one needs and I thought that was flawed. I thought
• 29:57
  Speaker 3: that was flawed. Margins are tiny and and you're never
• 30:00
  Speaker 3: going to build something ten times better than Vanguard, Meaning
• 30:03
  Speaker 3: wait a minute, what's wrong with Vanguard? And versus E trade.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: I'm like, it's interface trade, you know, it's just ripping
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: me off. And I was I was the right guy
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: to get that pitch at the right time, so of
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: course I had to do that deal. It would have
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: been That's what. That's why the podcast with the guy
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: who passed. If I passed on Rabbit, I'd be a
• 30:25
  Speaker 3: more interesting guest.
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: Like, so, how much did you put into.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: What we did? One hundred? Like we had it was
• 30:31
  Speaker 3: our first fun so we were writing one hundred thousand
• 30:34
  Speaker 3: dollars checks, so it was one hundred thousand dollars at
• 30:36
  Speaker 3: eight million. I thought it was expensive and an eight
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: million valuation, like at the time we were doing three
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: million valuations, so you know, Like I met them by
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: jew and Vlade. I flew up because they called me
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: because of stock Twitch. So they called me and said
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: we have this app they were they were at they
• 30:53
  Speaker 3: were out of money, and I flew up to Silicon
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: Valley and they showed up wearing Google glass two idiots
• 31:02
  Speaker 3: like I'm like, immediately am I like, no one? You
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: know what I mean? I remember that era. I don't
• 31:08
  Speaker 3: know what it was, but I was immediately like what
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: And two dorks, but they showed me the app. They
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: had this guy Joe who was their designer, who had
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: been at Facebook, and he showed me the app. And
• 31:21
  Speaker 3: that's when I knew it wasn't live. They didn't have
• 31:23
  Speaker 3: their finra, they didn't have their brokers, so it was
• 31:26
  Speaker 3: really early. But because of stock Twits and Twitter, I
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: knew that if you build it, they will come. If
• 31:31
  Speaker 3: you build a design like Uber, if you build Uber
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: for trading. Okay, what people didn't get again was they
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: were all betting. Hundreds of millions have been invested in
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: Betterment and wealth friend at the time, so the Silicon
• 31:44
  Speaker 3: Valley was leaning into the vanguard model. So no one
• 31:48
  Speaker 3: wanted to do the deal because who needs another brokerage
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: And by the way, building a brokerage getting SEC approval
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: VC's not like doing work, like waiting at you. Vcs
• 31:59
  Speaker 3: do not like doing investment. Now they do because there's
• 32:02
  Speaker 3: so much money in sovereign. You know, you can get
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: so much money in charge two percent. But back in
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: twenty thirteen, it was like, so, mamny, something that's working,
• 32:09
  Speaker 3: I want to be the over of that. So to
• 32:11
  Speaker 3: take a year off and go get SEC approval to
• 32:13
  Speaker 3: go do those things they deserved, and you had to weight.
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: You couldn't just go launch it and get sued.
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: This is in hindsight, if you want to be the
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: next vanguard. Wait, their secret sauce is that they have
• 32:28
  Speaker 2: such scale they could charge four BIPs and still make money.
• 32:31
  Speaker 2: You're losing money at twenty five bits.
• 32:33
  Speaker 3: And if you switch, you switch, but they have so
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: much assets, so switching costs. So I could we could
• 32:38
  Speaker 3: talk about this forever. I was in the right place,
• 32:39
  Speaker 3: right time, right people pitch me right valuation, everything worked.
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: I could tell you one hundred stories of like everything
• 32:46
  Speaker 3: lined up and it doesn't work. Robin Hood would have
• 32:49
  Speaker 3: worked whether I showed up or not. So we did
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: one hundred thousand. Now, obviously we helped them tremendously with
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: Stock to It. We were like responsible over hundreds of
• 32:57
  Speaker 3: thousands of early sign ups because Stocked with the user
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: loved the idea of course free trading, free trade, but
• 33:02
  Speaker 3: also the API hooking in that you could slide right
• 33:05
  Speaker 3: on right over and trade. Yeah, it's pretty funny now,
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: that idea. In O seven when I had it Jack
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: and Ev, like as a Twitter guy, I went to
• 33:14
  Speaker 3: Jack and ab yeah, and AV and Fred Wilson put
• 33:16
  Speaker 3: me in the room with them, and I'm like, guys,
• 33:19
  Speaker 3: what are you talking about Kim Kardashian taking a poop
• 33:21
  Speaker 3: on Kanye West. That's not interesting. You know what's interesting
• 33:25
  Speaker 3: The President's going to tweet one day and the markets
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: are gonna move. Like this is literally my pitch to
• 33:31
  Speaker 3: Jack and Ev set up my friend Wilson, who was
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: just they were like Kumbaya plane lands on a Hudson right, Uh,
• 33:37
  Speaker 3: you know, we're growing our beards. No, you know, like
• 33:41
  Speaker 3: I mean, they were just the darlings up. They didn't
• 33:44
  Speaker 3: need it.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Well, they were like it was the town, the town.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: They weren't massive, they weren't the guys. They were Kumbaya guys.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: They were builders. So my pitch fell on like who
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: are you They didn't.
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: Get monetizing Twitter through.
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: They didn't. It's not about monet they didn't understand what
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: they had, meaning selling ads against something that Goldman Sachs
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: will pay Infinity for, meaning a new pipe where Bloomberg's
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: charging two thousand dollars to get real time information now
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: like Osama bin Lana and getting killed the futures like
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: in oh wait, whenever Osama was finally killed. I know
• 34:24
  Speaker 3: where I was because immediately I checked the futures and
• 34:27
  Speaker 3: they had already moved. And that's because of Twitter, right,
• 34:30
  Speaker 3: because some guy in Pakistan saw it in the futures
• 34:32
  Speaker 3: move Like that's when I should have clicked. Is like,
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: shut down everything, delay the feed thirty seconds and you
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: know what's going to happen. Goldman will call you Reuters, Bloomberg,
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: They'll see that you're off by thirty seconds, and they'll
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: pay you fortunes to get the real time feed. You
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: and me Schmucke don't need real time one seconds. So
• 34:53
  Speaker 3: my pitch to Jack and Ev with Fred Wilson was like,
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: slow down the feed because ninety nine percent of the
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: populace and then we're there anyways with AI knowing they
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: don't one gets the real time feed. Right, slow down
• 35:05
  Speaker 3: the feed. Your phone will ring for the people that
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: know that the feeds are not in real time, and
• 35:10
  Speaker 3: they will pay you infinity to get the pipe. And
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: they were like, no, let's sell ads. So here we are.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: So so you haven't talked about the cash tag, which
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: I really want to talk about something stock Twits invented, yes,
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: a dollar sign and then AAPL is the symbol for appsle.
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: So this is the Jack and out stores. So again
• 35:29
  Speaker 3: I didn't want to start a company. I just sold
• 35:32
  Speaker 3: wall Strip, which you know, which was my best work.
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: But again stupid. But no, personally, I'm most proud of it.
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: You sell a company to CBS when you are literally
• 35:42
  Speaker 3: an idiot, is the dream?
• 35:45
  Speaker 2: It's a fair disclosure.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, they said. By the way, as they wrote
• 35:48
  Speaker 3: as less, Moondez wrote to CHETI goes, I can't believe
• 35:51
  Speaker 3: we're writing an idiot like this. A check that was
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: like quote. I said, please write that like you and
• 35:56
  Speaker 3: your book. Please write that. You're so angry. So anyways,
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: they had just bought my company and literally a month later,
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: I'm like, you made the wrong acquisition. You need to
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: buy Twitter like Twitter is to Quincy At who had
• 36:12
  Speaker 3: bought my company at CBS, and I remember there was
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: no iPhone yet and Twitter came out and I thought
• 36:18
  Speaker 3: it was stupid. You thought it was stupid.
• 36:20
  Speaker 2: We all thought it was just annoying.
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: Andy Swan, an old friend, was like, I get this,
• 36:25
  Speaker 3: this is financial because you know, at the beginning, I'm on,
• 36:27
  Speaker 3: we all had our BlackBerry. It wasn't even it wasn't
• 36:30
  Speaker 3: even a native mobile app. It was just the web
• 36:33
  Speaker 3: and it was all venture capitals. And my shtick in
• 36:36
  Speaker 3: two thousand and six two thousand and seven was I
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: just peeed at the grammar cy like. So the vcs
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: loved me. They were like, who's this idiot talking about?
• 36:43
  Speaker 3: Was Bowel movements And and then Andy Swan said, you
• 36:47
  Speaker 3: know this is like financial this is like a new Bloomberg, right,
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: And I said, and I just so. So the hashtag
• 36:53
  Speaker 3: was a thing, and I'm like, it was all spam,
• 36:55
  Speaker 3: like if you went to Apple, like hashtag aapl or
• 36:58
  Speaker 3: hashtag apples, like I went to the store and bought
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: a green apple, right, Like that's literally what people were saying.
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: It was so now it would be lots of new apples,
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: but like at the beginning, it was like I bought
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: a green apple and I'm like that spam. So I
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: sent Fred Wilson the first message, and I'm saying like
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: and back then BlackBerry was the hot stuck and I'm like,
• 37:15
  Speaker 3: I just bought dollar sign ri imm And Fred Wilson
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: is the godfather of all this and was an investor
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: in Twitter sent me back at Texacos, this is a genius.
• 37:23
  Speaker 3: You need to start a company, and that's what set
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: me down.
• 37:26
  Speaker 2: The stock Twits past was Wilson, an investor in stock.
• 37:29
  Speaker 3: Twits, No, because he was an investor in Twitter and
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: he thought there would be a conflict.
• 37:32
  Speaker 2: It's no conflict.
• 37:33
  Speaker 3: I agree, but Fred is a Fred is zero g
• 37:36
  Speaker 3: Why Fred's the OG? So Fred's strategy is if he
• 37:40
  Speaker 3: bets on one, he does, and I follow Fred's strategy.
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: There's other people who spray and prey and don't care
• 37:46
  Speaker 3: who they are, and ninety percent do that. But Fred
• 37:49
  Speaker 3: was of the opinion back then it's like, I work
• 37:51
  Speaker 3: with you, there's going to be conflicts. Are a thing
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: like no conflict, no interest. That's He's very cool that way.
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: But don't create conflicts just to create conflict. So in
• 38:02
  Speaker 3: his wisdom, he was like, you know what's going to
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: happen if you guys get in a fight and YadA
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: YadA yadas. So he politely backed out, but we were
• 38:10
  Speaker 3: backed by good VC is. Raising money was not my problem.
• 38:14
  Speaker 3: My VC should have said, Harry, you know it's not
• 38:17
  Speaker 3: a good enough idea.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: So as an investor in stock twits, I always wondered
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: why the hell in Twitter buy stock to its?
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: Well, they don't understand finance is that should have bought it.
• 38:26
  Speaker 3: You remember the last scene in Raiders was a the lostart.
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: The whole movie it was about getting and then the
• 38:33
  Speaker 3: last scene is this is a very important and it's
• 38:38
  Speaker 3: just a black hole forever whatever, never to be seen again.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: The best tech companies like Salesforce, he understands corporate death.
• 38:48
  Speaker 3: Sometimes you buy something.
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: To kill it.
• 38:51
  Speaker 3: To say, and by the way, they're like my newman.
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: Twitter's like my newman from sipos.
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: It's like Twitter, like, you know, now who's dating themselves?
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: So no, but what I'm saying is they're Minuman like
• 39:05
  Speaker 3: in Seinfeldt, meaning these people. It was a clown car,
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: as Zuckerberg said, there's so many people that got rich
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: executing I love the line it was posts, but Zuckerberg
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: said it first, which was a clown car.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: I don't know that crashed into a gold mine.
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And so Twitter, And the real problem with Twitter
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: was it was a financial product. And Elan knows that
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: better than anybody in the end because although he just
• 39:32
  Speaker 3: well he monetized it by stuffing it in a shell company,
• 39:35
  Speaker 3: it's still like it's an asset. He's made tremendous mistakes
• 39:39
  Speaker 3: to think that Trump end arounded the whole thing, meaning
• 39:43
  Speaker 3: Twitter is supposed to be a real time network they
• 39:47
  Speaker 3: have to pull. True social is worthless other than one
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: guy who sits on top of Twitter and you have
• 39:54
  Speaker 3: to copy paste his tweet.
• 39:56
  Speaker 2: Like so Twitter on a different plat forgetting.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: How bungled the the fact that they owned real time
• 40:02
  Speaker 3: and do not own real time, and that I'm the
• 40:05
  Speaker 3: schmock that came up with the original, like Trump is
• 40:08
  Speaker 3: going to tweet now, obviously Obama was president when I
• 40:11
  Speaker 3: had this idea, but like that, the pipe matters, and
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: who is king of the pipe. To think that Trump
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: beat Elon at his own game is pretty insane.
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: He is savvy in ways that people don't appreciate.
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: Insane. The truth social exists, it's worthless, but for one
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: guy tweeting right, unbelievable. So it's inconceivable to bring best
• 40:32
  Speaker 3: in my man of Orange. So the poison cannot be
• 40:35
  Speaker 3: in front of you.
• 40:36
  Speaker 2: So now twenty twenty four, you come back to Stock
• 40:41
  Speaker 2: to its as CEO. What motivated that? Are the early
• 40:45
  Speaker 2: investors going to see an exit? What's going on?
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: That's inside information?
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: No, it's not public, No, So it's it's non public information,
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: but it's not a legal inside information.
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah, stuctures is like a corn on your foot.
• 41:00
  Speaker 2: I mean, listen, can't go.
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: Here's the thing about venture capital is here's the thing
• 41:04
  Speaker 3: about venture capital. Not everything should be venture capital.
• 41:07
  Speaker 2: True.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: Okay, So I joke about this with with my finger,
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: like whose fault is it? Okay, I think Stoctor was
• 41:16
  Speaker 3: a great idea. The cashag was a great idea. I'm
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: very proud of that. I'm not proud of having to
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: run a company seventeen years later, not that it wasn't
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: my dream when I started as stock to this is
• 41:26
  Speaker 3: to be sitting here answering questions about how am I
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: going to make money?
• 41:29
  Speaker 2: Let me buy You are a very right to do this.
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: So what I'm saying is I and young kids need
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: to know this, like math, Not everybody gets to have
• 41:37
  Speaker 3: a startup of course. Okay, Well, my venture capitalist, if
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: they're as good as they say, and they are great,
• 41:44
  Speaker 3: should have stopped me and said this isn't quite a venture.
• 41:48
  Speaker 2: Let me push back on that, because I knew you.
• 41:50
  Speaker 2: I know that I am and your venture capitalists, and
• 41:53
  Speaker 2: we know a lot of the same people said hey,
• 41:57
  Speaker 2: there was a window to get out. You wouldn't have
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: gotten an f you number, but you would have gotten
• 42:02
  Speaker 2: a pretty good No, I never got a number. There
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: was never I thought there were discussions that just never
• 42:07
  Speaker 2: came to discussion. Yeah, I thought you guys were on
• 42:10
  Speaker 2: the one yard.
• 42:11
  Speaker 3: I'm discussing it right now openly. There's always a price
• 42:14
  Speaker 3: which camera camera two? No, listen, we have never Some
• 42:19
  Speaker 3: things are only fairly valued for a second, right, and
• 42:23
  Speaker 3: somethings stay overvalued or undervalued forever as well. From the
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: sure and I think stock twits. I'll take full responsibility.
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: We've always missed a window of positioning, right. But the
• 42:36
  Speaker 3: goodness is stock is thriving right, Well, this is the
• 42:40
  Speaker 3: perfect So I'm saying, like Robin Hood, we were ten
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: years ahead of our time. If you think about where
• 42:46
  Speaker 3: public when when I started Stock to its retail investing
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: was a laughing stock, and it still is the most institutions.
• 42:53
  Speaker 2: Much less so today.
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: Correct. So again, if you look at my portfolio.
• 42:57
  Speaker 2: By the way, the private equity, private credit, it wouldn't
• 43:01
  Speaker 2: be so hungry for retail investors. It was, truly.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: Yes, they call me every day, right, So there's two
• 43:07
  Speaker 3: worlds that I live in the world where retail doesn't
• 43:11
  Speaker 3: take itself seriously enough, and private equity guys call me
• 43:15
  Speaker 3: CEOs of public companies called me to take like I'm
• 43:17
  Speaker 3: in a crazy seat because I'm a goofball. But I
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: am serious, you know, like I am serious, Like I'm
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: trying to be serious.
• 43:24
  Speaker 2: You used to be sixty forty goofball serious, Now you're
• 43:27
  Speaker 2: forty sixty. Yeah, it switches, You're the new sixty forty.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm I'm I can laugh at myself, but I'm
• 43:34
  Speaker 3: trying to run a serious business, right because because it's
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: been a long time and we were just way ahead
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: of the curve. Like Jack and Ev didn't understand what
• 43:43
  Speaker 3: we have. Fred Wilson understood it right. There are very
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: few people that understood. Very few people liked Robinhood until
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: twenty twenty in GameStop. Then they like it for the
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: wrong reasons. By the way, I don't like the Robinhood
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: that became, like I'm not. I call it the degenerate economy.
• 44:00
  Speaker 3: But when I invested in Robinhood, I didn't know the
• 44:02
  Speaker 3: degenerate economy we exist. I didn't know the prediction markets
• 44:05
  Speaker 3: it would exist. I didn't know options would be their
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: biggest product. I was just wanting to see.
• 44:10
  Speaker 2: Options are bigger than crypto for robin Hood.
• 44:12
  Speaker 3: Crypto tiny options is everything of their profits will come
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: from options.
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: Any Wow, I didn't realize that.
• 44:20
  Speaker 3: Why are they going to make money on zero commission
• 44:22
  Speaker 3: other than options.
• 44:24
  Speaker 2: In their order flow margin loans?
• 44:26
  Speaker 3: That's just that's just media being bad media.
• 44:29
  Speaker 2: I'm going to tell you that the big shops like
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Fidelity in Schwab, the single biggest line on the line
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: item of profitability are credit loans.
• 44:39
  Speaker 3: Okay, it could be. I don't know, I'll do the
• 44:42
  Speaker 3: fin At.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: One point in time it was over half at Schwab.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: I don't know what is today.
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: When we invested in Robinhood, here was my thinking is,
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: first of all, I love the product. You got to
• 44:51
  Speaker 3: be a user of the product to be a good investmentator.
• 44:53
  Speaker 3: I'm not the guy who's like, here's space check and
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: here's a biotect. What do I know? So the odds
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: have to be stacked to my favor first of all.
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: But second of all, and they were I was Yahoo,
• 45:03
  Speaker 3: I was Yahoo Finance, I was you, I was blogging,
• 45:06
  Speaker 3: I was doing everything. And they came along at the
• 45:09
  Speaker 3: right time. When Robin the pitch for me with Robinhood
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: was not that they were going to make money. It
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: was an eight million valuation. Like you know, at my event,
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: people were like, how are they going to make money?
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: I'm like, chill the hell out. They haven't even launched
• 45:21
  Speaker 3: a thing. The point was, Schwab was paying one hundred
• 45:24
  Speaker 3: and fifty dollars to get a customer.
• 45:25
  Speaker 2: Too, a choir customers position, and.
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: My thesis was like uber Robinhood would pay zero. So
• 45:31
  Speaker 3: if you get a million people, even if they're four
• 45:34
  Speaker 3: dollars in their capas it's one hundred, that's a good ARB.
• 45:37
  Speaker 3: Those don't come along very right. Well, did I think
• 45:39
  Speaker 3: it could be a thirty billion dollars. I'm not so
• 45:42
  Speaker 3: psycho that I thought I was investing in a thirty
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: forty million dollar company billions billion, So of course I'm
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: not that smart. But what I'm saying is I saw
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: the ARB and all they had to do was deliver
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: the product. Now it went way beyond my expectations. That's
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: the Larry Davis, the.
• 45:57
  Speaker 2: Way you didn't give me that pitch.
• 45:58
  Speaker 3: The pitch was, I'm sure I did it.
• 46:00
  Speaker 2: The pitch was free trading millennials. The whole next generation.
• 46:04
  Speaker 2: You're going to capture them before anybody else.
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: Well I knew that from structors. I knew i'd capture them.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: But if I say, if I mentioned the ARB trade,
• 46:11
  Speaker 3: people are like, oh, they're gonna have to raise so
• 46:12
  Speaker 3: much money.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: There was a lot of trade. In hindsight, yeah, the
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: AR trade would why I invested? What would have been compelling?
• 46:19
  Speaker 2: And again it's a chapion. I'll tell you a grade.
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: It's so off rand one great story go ahead.
• 46:25
  Speaker 3: Because because this is just an investing story. So we're
• 46:28
  Speaker 3: very small fund The first one was six million. We've
• 46:31
  Speaker 3: done now we run one hundred million dollar funds and
• 46:34
  Speaker 3: cap it at a hundred or Yeah, I don't think.
• 46:36
  Speaker 3: I don't think our returns would be good. We like
• 46:38
  Speaker 3: writing one to two million dollar checks. That stay in
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: your lane is something everybody hates saying, but I think
• 46:43
  Speaker 3: in my world, unless your fee gathering, stay in your lane.
• 46:46
  Speaker 3: Like people know what we do.
• 46:48
  Speaker 2: You can laugh.
• 46:49
  Speaker 3: I believe in that, and I hate when people say it,
• 46:52
  Speaker 3: but I practice.
• 46:53
  Speaker 2: That's an annoying way to say. I disagree with what
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: you're saying, but right, but what you're saying is story
• 47:00
  Speaker 2: berteas here's my skill set. I'm a good one to
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: apply the area I know better.
• 47:04
  Speaker 3: So with Robin so occasionally and again, and I had
• 47:08
  Speaker 3: breakfast with Fred this morning. We're talking about like your
• 47:10
  Speaker 3: a legend, Josh is alleged, Like I'm around surrounded by
• 47:14
  Speaker 3: legends because I've lived long enough.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, I've lived.
• 47:17
  Speaker 3: Long enough, and I'm curious and I'm nice and i
• 47:19
  Speaker 3: call people to say hello, I'm a salesman. So who
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: do I see this morning? Fred Wilson, Like who did
• 47:25
  Speaker 3: I rend it? Tim O'Brien like I'm friends with like
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: people that have you have signal because you have what
• 47:30
  Speaker 3: you've been on the strut and you have experience, not
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: maybe in space, but in what you do, you have signal.
• 47:36
  Speaker 3: So with Robinhood and I had learned from Fred Wilson,
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: like if you really believe in something, and I'm not
• 47:42
  Speaker 3: a poker player at at all, and ball, you gotta
• 47:44
  Speaker 3: go in as a VC. You have to.
• 47:46
  Speaker 2: So Robinhood, you're convincing me to throw money into fun
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: seven and that'll be the end of your run.
• 47:52
  Speaker 3: But that's different. Every fund is like a crop of wine.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: It could go riding.
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: How you know we're twenty four was a good Vintage.
• 48:00
  Speaker 3: Twenty twenty one terrible biture. So so so when Robinhood
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: was doing very well, but they the two guys were like,
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: it was not popular. Everybody. All the vcs had committed
• 48:12
  Speaker 3: to a better meant well front model. So now they
• 48:14
  Speaker 3: needed to raise another round. And I'm like, they wanted
• 48:18
  Speaker 3: to raise.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: It think fourteen fourteen, yeah, so it was I think
• 48:21
  Speaker 2: that's when we spoke.
• 48:22
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So they were like, and I'm like inexperienced because
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: we write one check, we don't have more money. So
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: they call me up and they go, can you write
• 48:29
  Speaker 3: us a term sheet. It's a very sophisticated way of
• 48:32
  Speaker 3: saying like you won't have to like actually invest, but
• 48:36
  Speaker 3: if you come in like we can shop like we
• 48:38
  Speaker 3: can kind of shop it around. So I'm like, dude,
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: screw that all I want to invest. So over like
• 48:44
  Speaker 3: July fourth weekend, told my partner and I was two
• 48:47
  Speaker 3: of us at a time. I'm like, let's just write
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: an eleven million. They needed to raise eleven million bucks
• 48:51
  Speaker 3: and they wanted to raise it at some stupid valuation.
• 48:54
  Speaker 3: It was sixty million ish and I'm like, well, we're
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: never going to have to really write it. But even
• 48:59
  Speaker 3: if we do. I can convince my friends like this
• 49:02
  Speaker 3: is the one. And I called Fred Wilson and goes,
• 49:04
  Speaker 3: what are you calling me for? You know what to do?
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: Write a term sheet? I go, but we don't have
• 49:08
  Speaker 3: eleven million dollars and Fred goes, you'll find it. Just
• 49:11
  Speaker 3: just do it like a six week which is absurd
• 49:14
  Speaker 3: now today people write billion dollar checks in an hour.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: But like goes, just ask for six weeks. Right, so
• 49:20
  Speaker 3: we you know, we're you know whatever, you're typing it up.
• 49:24
  Speaker 3: Send him a term sheet. So yeah, back then more
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: but you know, ten fingers more errors. So anyway, so
• 49:31
  Speaker 3: we write up this term sheet, we send it to him,
• 49:34
  Speaker 3: and they shop it as they probably index ventures. Jan Hamer,
• 49:40
  Speaker 3: who's like like one of the best investors, comes back
• 49:43
  Speaker 3: with a term sheet of eleven million on sixty five million,
• 49:48
  Speaker 3: Wow and like a five day close, so like, you know,
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: they got what they wanted. Oh and by the way,
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: index in their term sheet index in the terms social leverage.
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: That's a typical like who are they Luckily by writing
• 50:04
  Speaker 3: that term she bought them by jud did the right thing,
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: and they carved out like as much as we could.
• 50:09
  Speaker 3: We couldn't even raise a million. So when we so,
• 50:11
  Speaker 3: they carved us out. We put eight hundred grand in
• 50:13
  Speaker 3: the Series A. If we had done the eleven million,
• 50:16
  Speaker 3: I'd be a billionaire two hundred x on the Yeah,
• 50:20
  Speaker 3: no way bigger like at the peak. But like, but
• 50:24
  Speaker 3: we've had better investments.
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: We had better hitting with the Robin Hood shows.
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: A lot of my alpas we distributed the Stark. A
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: lot of my LPAs have not sold.
• 50:33
  Speaker 2: Nobody says, I don't ask.
• 50:34
  Speaker 3: Our job is to deliver them the cash.
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: I want to start with a quote of yours that
• 50:41
  Speaker 2: I really love. Quote. The whole world has become a casino.
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: Thanks to AI and prediction markets, we are all more
• 50:50
  Speaker 2: productive and degenerate. Now let's talk a little bit about
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: the degenerate economy. Explain to listeners what is the degenerate
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: economy or the d gen economy.
• 51:03
  Speaker 3: I don't like the word djen, So when I say degenerate,
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: I say it in the humoristic way. You and I
• 51:08
  Speaker 3: are degenerates, right because we'll buy a watch, we'll bet
• 51:11
  Speaker 3: on a game we laugh at degenerously. We don't. We
• 51:16
  Speaker 3: don't we appreciate the art of degeneracy versus meaning meaning
• 51:21
  Speaker 3: Laser eyes was dumb, right, But degeneracy is an art
• 51:25
  Speaker 3: form like speculation. And I live, I own, and I
• 51:28
  Speaker 3: joke that I own and operate two millennials. And when
• 51:32
  Speaker 3: you own and operate two millennials, you watch you look
• 51:35
  Speaker 3: over their shoulders.
• 51:36
  Speaker 2: Those were your first startups?
• 51:37
  Speaker 3: No, my kid, Yes, but these two startups the only
• 51:41
  Speaker 3: startups that matter.
• 51:43
  Speaker 2: And did either of them merge it? We have any
• 51:45
  Speaker 2: m and.
• 51:45
  Speaker 3: A activity we need, We need.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: Dividends I'm talking about are they married? So no mergers yet?
• 51:54
  Speaker 3: My son was, My son was on the board. You
• 51:57
  Speaker 3: should be chairman of their booyman on the board. I'm
• 52:00
  Speaker 3: trying to get you see, I'm trying to get them fired.
• 52:04
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to get medical checks to see if anything's working.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: So so degenerate economy was born of this idea that
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: I couldn't believe where we went, like with Game Stop.
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: Like I was so stressed during the Game Stop thing
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: because really I hadn't monetized. I hadn't monetized our investment.
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: I'm like, er, there was a weekend when robinhood was
• 52:27
  Speaker 3: worth forty billion, right, and it could have been worthless?
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: Do you understand? Like I wasn't rich and I'm like,
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: it wasn't even their blame. Whoever you want. People lost
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: their minds, and so let me just explain to you.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: If you have your.
• 52:42
  Speaker 2: Phone, go ahead.
• 52:43
  Speaker 3: What Robinhood perfected which no one figured out, was like
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: when we used to play pinball. Everybody there was always
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: that kid who was so good at it crazy could
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: stump it well, he could bump it without tilting it right,
• 52:56
  Speaker 3: and he could just get the he could just get
• 52:58
  Speaker 3: the machine to dance tilt. Happened everybody. The app was
• 53:04
  Speaker 3: so well designed. The app was so well designed that
• 53:07
  Speaker 3: everybody pushed the same button at the same time.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: And it couldn't carry the I remember when you.
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: Understand, that's literally what happened. So it was a design flaw,
• 53:15
  Speaker 3: it was a design flow.
• 53:16
  Speaker 2: It wasn't the design floor. Nobody expected it to scale
• 53:20
  Speaker 2: ten thousand x no.
• 53:21
  Speaker 3: But well, if you push everybody to one button right
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: or another button, yeah, and then people come on, see me,
• 53:26
  Speaker 3: say push this button, and everybody's like, let's see what happens,
• 53:30
  Speaker 3: and guess what happened. Crash not to be repeated again,
• 53:32
  Speaker 3: hasn't been repeated again, and that's what makes the markets great.
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: That hole was filled by the whole being created. We
• 53:38
  Speaker 3: haven't seen another thing like this, although recently with Carl Avis.
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: But like GameStop broke the machine and almost bankrupted the company.
• 53:47
  Speaker 3: And it was many lessons in there. The most important
• 53:51
  Speaker 3: was Robin Hood not in their hubris or anything. They
• 53:55
  Speaker 3: mistook success for a brand. When you build a brand
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: in four years, not forty years, you don't appreciate that
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: you have no brand value, right, And I'm like, no
• 54:07
  Speaker 3: one understands this, like they were one of the first
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: case studies, and like what it didn't deserve to be zero?
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: Who knows all the things that went wrong. But I'm
• 54:14
  Speaker 3: just some guy who's like, what the right couldn't how
• 54:18
  Speaker 3: embarrassing would be if it goes from forty billion to zero?
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: And you know, Galloway and all these guys were piling
• 54:23
  Speaker 3: on and all these people piling on them, like you
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: don't even understand what's going on.
• 54:26
  Speaker 2: So wait, let me tease this out of you a
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: little bit. I thought you were going in a different direction.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: How degenerate the trading in things like GameStop and when
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: Hurtz was bankrupt and or was it Avis, I don't
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: even remember which some really foolish reckless, and I think
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: those of us with gray hair looked at it and
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: kind of laughed because we knew exactly how.
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: That gapes and all the stuff. I hate it, right, But.
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: That wasn't your concern. Your concern was, Hey, here's a
• 54:58
  Speaker 2: fire hose of new clients, new orders. This is the
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: scale this company needs to become wildly successful, and they're
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: just not prepared to deal with the sheer volume. And
• 55:09
  Speaker 2: if this crash goes on more for a couple of hours,
• 55:12
  Speaker 2: two days from now, this is a zero.
• 55:14
  Speaker 3: It was a zero. We can argue. I don't know
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: the whole story, but I imagine someone called someone at the
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: options clearing firm and said, you're bankrupt, and the VC's lucky.
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: We're in so big they had put more money.
• 55:24
  Speaker 2: They didn't have the reserve cash large trades of options.
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: We'll never know the real.
• 55:29
  Speaker 2: Sty So technically Cibo is the counterparty on all trades,
• 55:34
  Speaker 2: and they also on the platform, so they demand a
• 55:36
  Speaker 2: certain amount of capital if you're going to trade X,
• 55:40
  Speaker 2: and they're trading billions of dollars. They didn't have that capital.
• 55:44
  Speaker 3: So this is why my degenerate economy index was born.
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: Meaning I don't think AMCs. What's in my index, which
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: is outperforming everything is Cibo is one in my time,
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: in one position who benefits. So my degenerate economy thesis
• 55:57
  Speaker 3: is finding the companies that benefit from global degeneracy.
• 56:02
  Speaker 2: You created this last year two years ago, right, so free.
• 56:06
  Speaker 3: I had to share it.
• 56:07
  Speaker 2: Just to put some numbers on this. It's gambling, it's
• 56:12
  Speaker 2: day trading, it's mean coin speculation. It's vaping one hundred
• 56:16
  Speaker 2: and seventy percent. The Nazak one hundred of the same
• 56:19
  Speaker 2: time period isn't even up one hundred percent, it's ninety
• 56:21
  Speaker 2: four percent. You're almost doubling the nasdack.
• 56:24
  Speaker 3: And I give it away for free because and I share.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: It's not Why isn't this an ETF because.
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: The bank always talks about I was like, why do
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: you want to be in the ETF business?
• 56:33
  Speaker 2: So do it? You know you use alpha ETF architects
• 56:37
  Speaker 2: work with But then I have.
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: A product again. This is I think part of like,
• 56:42
  Speaker 3: you know, the age I'm at is like I don't
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: want to be someone yelling I mean that my that
• 56:46
  Speaker 3: I kathy that as soon as I monetize it or
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: go to zero, like this thing will stop working. I
• 56:52
  Speaker 3: love the idea that I can give it away for free.
• 56:54
  Speaker 3: This goes back to the I appreciate social media, meaning
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: what am I going to make? It's like as soon
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: as I start charging for it, the whole thing becomes I.
• 57:03
  Speaker 2: Took ads off the blog because they were annoying and
• 57:05
  Speaker 2: ugly and the amount of revenue it made was just
• 57:08
  Speaker 2: too annoying. You're saying the same thing.
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm saying like, hey man, I'm like, I got
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: a little thesis. It's not that complicated.
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: I love this thesis.
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: I think people the CBO CME hyper liquid now is
• 57:24
  Speaker 3: in there, and no one knows what hyper liquid is.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: I constantly imagined hyper liquid is the is the thing,
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: Meaning today all I get pitched on are by the
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: next Robinhoods, and I'm like.
• 57:35
  Speaker 2: The world doesn't robinhood.
• 57:37
  Speaker 3: But all they keep talking about is, you know, we
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: got purpse trading twenty four to seven on hyper liquid.
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: It's it's it's a new salon now let's call it.
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: Because I'm not a crypto guy, and I'm like, after
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: getting one hundred pitches of the same product and they
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: all talked about hyper liquid, I just bought hyper liquid.
• 57:51
  Speaker 2: And what's the market cap of that.
• 57:55
  Speaker 3: Couple. It's like twelve people in one of the most
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: profitable companies in the world out of Singapore. Like the
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: guy has no freedom because he's so rich. It's like
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: a system. It's like a very fast change. What's the
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: symbol hype?
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: Hype? What a great symbol.
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's a token and you can buy it on
• 58:11
  Speaker 3: robin Hood. I'm not promoting, I'm.
• 58:13
  Speaker 2: Just saying, so this you can buy it on robin Hood.
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: But does this not trade over the counter. You can't
• 58:17
  Speaker 2: get it anywhere?
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: You can trade it as a There's a dat called
• 58:21
  Speaker 3: p you are arm Again, I'm not recommending it, but
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: I'm long and little is a way that you can
• 58:27
  Speaker 3: trade it over the counter. And again you're betting on
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: the fact you don't know anything about supply to man,
• 58:32
  Speaker 3: you're just right. It's the system that everybody's trading.
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: Your speculation speculation on other people's speculation. That's that's my
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: basis squared.
• 58:40
  Speaker 3: So anyways, what I'm what, So the degenerate economy is
• 58:44
  Speaker 3: about picks and shovels. We can't stop if a young
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: person like my son, And again I own and operate
• 58:50
  Speaker 3: two millennials and I don't want them, betting my son
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: will call me and goes, I can't believe I lost
• 58:55
  Speaker 3: a twenty team, Parlago, Who are you we even of
• 58:59
  Speaker 3: my This is why I have to do a step
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: in takeover of my son's company, because I'm like, are
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: you talking to me? Like you asked them to ven
• 59:08
  Speaker 3: you fifty bucks to put on a twenty team parliam
• 59:10
  Speaker 3: and your complaining about it's so idiotic. So I'm like
• 59:12
  Speaker 3: trying to teach them not to be idiots.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: You can have a degenerator a little bit of math,
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: the problem is not a math.
• 59:20
  Speaker 3: And you also full circle on the general economy. You
• 59:23
  Speaker 3: have the wrong teachers right now. I got brought on
• 59:26
  Speaker 3: board by guys like you, Kramer, the people whould experience stuff,
• 59:29
  Speaker 3: Fred Wilson. These kids are learning from chrum Mouth and
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: David Secks. These guys were born of one generation. They
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: worked at Facebook, they work for Elon. You could if
• 59:37
  Speaker 3: you're not rich working for Elon or Facebook, that would
• 59:40
  Speaker 3: be interesting. If you are rich and you're kissing the
• 59:42
  Speaker 3: nipple of Facebook, and it's not interesting. You were supposed
• 59:46
  Speaker 3: to be rich, right, have some human so we're my
• 59:52
  Speaker 3: kid is stop being a degenerate. But The fact is
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: you can't not be a degenerate when prices. Kids are
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 3: yoloing because they can, and because friction lists we have
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 3: learned some of these kids will learn how to be
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: good put sellers. Premiums I understand, but the markets are
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 3: very important, meaning having a price on everything is fantastic.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: Coming up, we continue our conversation with Howard Linzen, co
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 2: founder of Social Leverage. I'm Barry Ridults. You're listening to
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. I'm Bury Ridults. You're
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. My old
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 2: friend Howard Linzen of Social Leverages here, And when I
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: say old, it's only partly because we know each other
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: so long. It's mostly because he's an old man and
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: is now sixty years old. Years ago, my wife and
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: I I'm not a cruise person. We were young, we
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: were broke. We used to use this website called vacations
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: to Go dot com. You've booked last minute, would question
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: nothing like a week long cruise through eight islands in
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 2: the Caribbean. Five hundred bucks, food and drink included. Booze included,
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: so as soon as they hit international water as the
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 2: casino opens, I am not a gambler. We walked through
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 2: and I just decide to look at the roulette table,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 2: not bet look at it. And this is the difference
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: between my wife, who taught fashion illustration and design, is
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: a visual person. I'm a little more of a math guy.
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: And I say to her, so we're watching twenty minutes
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 2: of roulette, and it's just it's so dumb. Yeah, it's
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: for random, stupid reason. But I point out to her, Look,
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 2: the red pays or red or black or otter even
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: pay two to one, but you have zero and double zero,
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: so it's not even odds. And then this group pays
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: three to three to one, but it's one and four
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: chance of winning. So they're making money. And I'm going
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: over all the math with her, and she listens to
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 2: all the numbers and says to me, I don't know
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: about the ratios of the math, but all I can
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 2: tell you is I see people. I see the croupier
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 2: taking off a whole lot more money than she's handing
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 2: out to gamblers. That that's the takeaway, hear, the croupier,
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: not the odds. Be the house.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 3: Don't bebo hit all time high the house. Yeah, have
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: you ever hear anybody on social media talking about cbo ever.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: They love that no one's talking about them. So the
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: other thesis that I have is trends with no friends.
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 3: Uh huh, Okay, So I'm looking for trends because again,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 3: I run a huge social media site, right, So I
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 3: if I have a choice between Navidi and sand Disk,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 3: everybody's talking about Navidio. You want something, I'm not saying,
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: I know, same thing, same thing. So on stocks, I
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 3: can look for tickers that are trending with very fair followers.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 3: No does not have to be here. I don't like
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: small caps, so I'm like, no, I.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 2: Mean before it really goes up.
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 3: So it's the one thing that Starctor tells and I
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 3: have to AI. You asked me why I came back
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: to Starctor. It's two things, AI and the fact that like,
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 3: I can now code with clog code and so I
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: can call both own engineers a little bit.
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 2: Oh, this could take six weeks. I need it by today.
• 1:03:25
  Speaker 3: Well again there's not today, but there's not six weeks, right, Okay.
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: So there's that, and then there's the fact that we
• 1:03:30
  Speaker 3: have all this data and we have a great community.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: So I wanted to come back and like see this
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 3: thing through and we're and we're doing very well. The
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 3: the issue is now I can explain to people and
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: I can pull out the data to show people trends
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 3: with no friends meaning I want to you want to
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 3: find stocks that are trending that have very little.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: Discussion makes a lot of sense.
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's just intuitive meaning IBD. I learned on IBD.
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 3: I love price relative strength. I've just added a layer
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 3: to that that matches high price relative strength with low socials.
• 1:04:02
  Speaker 3: It's almost like the Mooshe of Vegas. I'm trying to
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: find the stocks that know even though I run a
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 3: social media site, I'm like betting on the fact that like,
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 3: they'll discover this in time.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 2: You should talk to Ben Hunt and what he's doing
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: with the Persians because they're too they have a narrative
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 2: then there too. But the combination of where the narrative
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 2: is just starting to take the tipic and where the
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: trends is friends.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 3: That's why I so I give it away from quantify it. Yeah,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 3: I hate the quant side. I did visually see it
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 3: from years of being a known quiet which there's you
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 3: I don't even know.
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 2: Matt, but but if you want AI to help you with.
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I got to catch up with That's awesome, But
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 3: but he also sees the role a little darker than
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 3: I see it. I'm a much more of an optimist.
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 2: You and I both, Yeah, but when I want to
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: know what's the worst case scenario, like when the tariffs
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 2: were first rolled out, not so much losing the finger,
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: but his piece the end of the Pass Americana is true,
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 2: was the end point where if this really goes off
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 2: the rails, this is how bad it.
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 3: It's deglobalization, right.
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: But he works out the details. Yeah, so great, But again,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 2: you and I are both a little more of it.
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 3: I'm much more simple. Right, If I see something going up,
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 3: you want to that's my queue book. And then if
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 3: it's a certain market cap, and then I check stocks
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 3: and I go, no one cares. I love that. Then
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 3: I need to tell a story. Everybody needs to tell stories.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: Stocks are stories, and some people are great at storytelling.
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 3: The pounter guy, there's certainly. But again, the numbers eventually matter,
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 3: and I'm trying to find companies going up, right, and
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 3: that's not complicated. But then I have other layers to it,
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 3: and I need to understand the catalyst myself, like, if
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: it's just something I'll never understand, it's hard for me
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 3: to ride the waves. So if I don't really understand
• 1:05:52
  Speaker 3: and use the product, the odds of me getting scared
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 3: out of a trade are ninety nine percent.
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about you.
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 3: So that's my index.
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: Let's talk about your startups who are becoming degenerates. Your
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 2: kids given social apps, zero commission trading, all the option
• 1:06:10
  Speaker 2: stuff that's going on for your kids benefit. What sort
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 2: of guardrails I don't know. If it's the product, regulation, educational,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: what do you wish was in place to protect them
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: that isn't there yet? And let's also add these are
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: not miners. These are late twenties adults out of school
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: for almost a decade, real people. What guardrail should they
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: have to protect them from their own most instincts?
• 1:06:40
  Speaker 3: Listen, we could argue that the bet we put our
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 3: negative hat on it. It's like, you can go buy
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 3: bullets at Walmart, So it's like, what is a guardrail?
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 3: Right in a world where you can buy bullets and
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 3: you know everybody's got drones. So I'm like more like, okay, guys,
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: if I hear that you did a parlay. We can't
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 3: be related, so stop betting. Betting different than investing. So
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 3: if Shane at Polly Market and they're partners of ours,
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 3: if Shane or Tarika at Call she had pitched me
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 3: those ideas at the same time that Robin had pitched
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 3: me their idea, I would have passed. Why I don't bet.
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 3: I think it's stupid, right, okay, Like I think it's funny,
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: and I think prediction markets are news better than the
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 3: New York Times. No offense because I like prediction markets
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 3: because I don't have an opinion. I just look at
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 3: the price and I go whether I believe it or not.
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 3: I think that's the genius of it. But if poly
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 3: Market and Call she went out to VC's and said
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 3: we're the new news, their valuation would be a dollar right, okay,
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 3: so we know the real story. They can't tell what
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: they really are good at, which is news.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: And by the way, they're not great at news.
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 3: I understand there is news. Good at news, it's.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 2: Probability of something happening, But I'd rather not.
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 3: Read someone's opinion. I don't need to see Elon's finger
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: on the news because that's a story. They're not the
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 3: real story. Give me the numbers. I know it's fake,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 3: but I got a numbers. If Mondamie isn't ninety percent
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 3: of my daughter's mad. But Rachel, here's what you do.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 3: Then bet the other side. Do you make eight time
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 3: or put it's ten to one, ten to one. But
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 3: I would bet money on Mandamie. And if you really
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 3: want to change how you think about the world, go
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 3: help somebody on the other side who has a chance.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 3: Go put in the time. Go help Mark Cuban if
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 3: you really want.
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: To be I love what he's doing on the healthcare.
• 1:08:20
  Speaker 3: But what I'm saying to my daughter, I said, call Mark,
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 3: I'll get you in touch with Mark. Do something. But
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 3: just complaining about the numbers that you see and the
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 3: numbers were right, whether they whether they tipped it in
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 3: this again, I don't want to get in all like
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 3: the fraud and all the fake stuff about it. But
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 3: the numbers is much e's than reading an opinion piece.
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: I'm gonna Can I tell share something fun?
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 2: So there were some of the early bets about outcome
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 2: of the war and different events happening, and I said
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 2: in a quarterly call, Hey, I don't really know who's
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 2: putting We don't know who's putting these bets in. Yeah,
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 2: but if you stop and think about it, if you're
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 2: negotiating with another side, this being the syop, because you
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 2: spent half a million dollars to move the outcome of
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 2: something that's the least money the Department of Defense will
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 2: ever spend, and anybody on this side is looking as oh,
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 2: they're they're really going to put boots on the grounds.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 2: A look at the track record. Here, here, here's a
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 2: wallet that's ten for ten. Oh my god, we have
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 2: to stop and think about You don't really know who's
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: using this, who's betting this, who's manipulating? But we didn't
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 2: that guy who got arrested, that was a throwaway.
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 3: That's it's still better than Russia and China using our
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 3: social media.
• 1:09:37
  Speaker 2: Oh my god, I'm very and North Korea and I ran.
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 3: Yeah. So I'm not saying I'm for. I'm an investor
• 1:09:43
  Speaker 3: in poly market and call she personally at crazy evaluation
• 1:09:46
  Speaker 3: because I wouldn't have invested. I just chased it in SPVs.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: The co founder of Calshi, the woman what's her.
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 3: Name, I don't know, but I know that's a woman.
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: I know she was a guest on the podcast is
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: she rites she was really good this three years ago.
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: I shed never even thought to put money into it.
• 1:10:06
  Speaker 3: So it's more academic than anything. It was academic it
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 3: still is because there's very few people using these products
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 3: for all the free presses. It's like Twitter. There's very
• 1:10:16
  Speaker 3: few people using Twitter and the drain at this point. No,
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 3: but I'm saying at the beginning it had a lot
• 1:10:23
  Speaker 3: of power even though there weren't that many uses.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: It was it was, you know, it was a fraction
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 2: of Instagram with TikTok so fraction.
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 3: It's a fraction of the news. But I'd rather my
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 3: son and daughter go to page two of poly market
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 3: because you know what they're going to see, news that
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: they didn't would never look at in the New York Times, saying,
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 3: look at the election in Peru and now at least.
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 2: I'll know the names Venezuela for that or Venezuela.
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 3: So I'm super bullish for different reasons on prediction markets.
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: And I know there's like obviously.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 2: Money right into the Degeneracy index completely. How long does
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 2: the DJN index run for us this short term thing
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 2: or does this question?
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 3: That's why I don't want to charge for it because
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: I think I'm allt because Google and Apple are my
• 1:11:06
  Speaker 3: biggest positions because they are the rails for the degenerated economy.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 3: They are the front facing tool of it.
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 2: Apple of the phones and mobile.
• 1:11:16
  Speaker 3: And Google because of the phones, and YouTube and the
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 3: casino games all run on the app stores. The free
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 3: games that you have, they make Amazon or face. Amazon
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 3: just added at the beginning of the year because of
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 3: robots Axons and.
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: Not not Amazon Web Service because of robots.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, it's just you can't not own Amazon
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 3: at this era in the generate economy because they are
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 3: the center of it, robots, the degenerate economy. You have
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 3: to any of the robot builders you like, because they're
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 3: too early. I'm a personal investor in a few, but Aptronic,
• 1:11:52
  Speaker 3: which is just massive. But again it's a personal You.
• 1:11:56
  Speaker 2: Have any interest in what uh Elon is doing with Groan.
• 1:12:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but it's a holding company, like I don't know
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 3: what this position is kind of a round.
• 1:12:06
  Speaker 2: It so so meaning Tesla is a holding company for everything.
• 1:12:10
  Speaker 3: But is that going to be the entity that goes
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 3: public for No. But I'm saying to SpaceX, why does
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 3: he need two tickers? Like, again, I don't understand what
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 3: the final being is, So why do I need to
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 3: own some Elon holding company. I think I'm stupid. So
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 3: you're betting on him, and you know I'd rather bet
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 3: on something I understand.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: I'm with you, I'm not I don't disagree. I'm trying to.
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Another recent ad is it's already doubled as Clear secure.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: You know Clear when you go through, it's so to me,
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 3: if the world's degenerously, you need security. So it's like
• 1:12:41
  Speaker 3: it's a clear Clear has been a home run. They
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: don't have a lot of tech, but the great brand.
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah I thought they have tech is I.
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: Think they license a lot of this every their own. Yeah.
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 3: So again, once you dig into a story, my conviction
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 3: comes like how much of this they own? But the
• 1:12:56
  Speaker 3: hell of a brand that the company has been around
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 3: forever and they have they lailed many fat and they
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 3: can do so much more stadiums, the brand, Man.
• 1:13:05
  Speaker 2: What are you talking about? You go to wash a
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 2: nick game, it's clearer, it's clear on the way in.
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 3: That was my bet. It's just a clear trend. No
• 1:13:14
  Speaker 3: one ever talks about it too, so it's a massive
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 3: up trend. Broke out and you never hear people talk
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 3: about it.
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 2: If I use either CHASEEFI Reserve or MX, I want
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 2: to say, PLAT you get a credit towards any travel
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: and clear is just an automatic. It's no brainer.
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 3: Yes, what is it?
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: One hundred and fifty dollars a year. It's fantastic.
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 3: My son would call me because that's the greatest gift
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 3: you ever got.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: Man.
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 3: I'm like, wow, when a twenty year old knows something
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 3: and any year old knows something, those are a good trend. Yeah,
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 3: you know that's a brand. Yeah, when it's just a
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 3: twenty year old knows it, not a brand?
• 1:13:45
  Speaker 2: Maybe catch them? Maybe it doesn't.
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, CBOE I love it because they power the whole thing.
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 3: You can't do this without CBOE. Cme the MRK you know,
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 3: I yes, you know the New York stocking shame.
• 1:13:58
  Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question of direct investing question
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 2: before we get to our favorite questions that I think
• 1:14:05
  Speaker 2: a lot of investors have a hard time with. I
• 1:14:08
  Speaker 2: started on trading this, so I'm okay with losses. It's
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 2: a given. But if you say to somebody, I want
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: you to put a little money into these ten or
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 2: twenty stocks, half of them going to go out of business,
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: maybe five or break even. You'll make money on a
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: couple and maybe one's home run. How do you deal
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: with that? Really fat head long tail?
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 3: You know what I mean? Index? I'm so into indexing.
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 2: No, I mean on your on your private seed state.
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 2: Like most of the seed investments you're going to make
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 2: aren't going to get you a greatful of your time.
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 2: I am Oh, I'm wrong all the time.
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 3: I'm to bearish on my industry, right, I never I
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 3: believe it was a moment in time with ZERP. I
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 3: think it got the country through its unintended circumstances. We
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 3: live in all these unintended circu consequences, right, yeah, or
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 3: unintended consequences.
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 2: Sorry, By the way, it's nicely wealthy. That happens a
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 2: whole lot.
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 3: I am wealthy, just born at the right time, a
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 3: lot of untended circumstances. SURP is a good thing, right,
• 1:15:07
  Speaker 3: I'm not saying. I'm not saying I shouldn't be ashamed.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: But if you have assets, if you're if you're a
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: work and stiff, it's like I used to be. It
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: was tough.
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah, s and p's at all time highs cash levels
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 3: at all time high. If I hear those two things together,
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 3: what do I think of inflation? It's never been a
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 3: better time to have assets, right, doesn't mean I don't
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 3: know when it's going to end. I have cash and
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 3: stars the double whammy. So I'm lucky. I am so
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 3: bearish on what I do for a living, meaning what
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 3: value do I add in a world of six percent
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 3: interest rates tying someone up for ten years, when I
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 3: can go buy sand disk in the public markets and
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 3: get six thousand percent in a year. I'm not saying
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 3: I'm smart enough to hold these things, but in a
• 1:15:51
  Speaker 3: world where Robinhood and a thousand Robin Hoods are going
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 3: to bloom. If you're asking me my biggest bad public
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 3: markets do the work. You have an analyst and CLO.
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 3: You can go see beaten up. No one's following any stock.
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 3: Everybody's momentum investing, Go find ten companies. So why would
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 3: you do a startup investing? Every kid wants to be
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 3: an angel investor. I'm like, dude, do it in the
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 3: public markets. You have liquidity and you're not locking up
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 3: your clients for ten years.
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: But you're not answering my question. Okay, which is how
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 2: do you as an investor deal with the psychology of
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: knowing most of your seed investments aren't going to work out?
• 1:16:29
  Speaker 2: Is it just the nature of the beast?
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 3: No?
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 2: Or does that weigh on you at all?
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 3: No? I think it aligned with how I thought of
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 3: the world as as someone who believes their high integrity
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 3: wishes who wants people to believe their high integrity for
• 1:16:42
  Speaker 3: my kid's sake. And you know, the integrity of telling
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: my investors that up front is the release meaning I'm
• 1:16:50
  Speaker 3: not telling my investors we're going to be ninety percent
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 3: hit right. If you give me money, you're gonna hate
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 3: me because you're going to think the idea that I love,
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 3: the dumbest idea, the robin.
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 2: Quote unquote, yeah, dumbest idea.
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 3: You are betting on me to hang thirty pieces of
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 3: art in Howie's gallery did Larry David Gallery, and you
• 1:17:11
  Speaker 3: will pick If I gave you the choice to invest
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 3: in all thirty, you would pick the two that went
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 3: to zero. So you're betting on me to to see
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 3: the world my way. And then I'm not telling you
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 3: we're going to make a hundred times their money. But
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 3: my job is to find one company that's a hunter bagger. Okay,
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: So so I have to know math, I have to
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 3: do this. I have to have just get yelled up
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 3: by malps when they read our quartery letters ago that
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 3: was the dumbest idea. I'm like, you're right, Like I'm embarrassed.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 3: But our job is to find a robin hood, and
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 3: we found many of them, you know, LifeLock, Robinhood, bee Hive,
• 1:17:45
  Speaker 3: we got one called Alpaca again a trend within no face. Well,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 3: a pack of powers, thousand robin hoods around the world.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 3: They're like the eight modern apex. So I'm saying, like,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 3: our job is to know what we know, take crazy
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: bets and sell that to our LPs. Is like you're
• 1:18:02
  Speaker 3: investing for ten years. This is like you know, it's
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 3: not as good as it was in twenty thirteen when
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 3: rates were zero, and now it's a different game again.
• 1:18:13
  Speaker 3: And I'm thinking, like with you've got clawed and you
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 3: can do an you can analyze it stuck in like
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 3: three seconds, like the the everyone's a CFA all of
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 3: a sudden if they want to be what a great
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 3: time to be a public market investor, and yet everybody
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 3: wants to be a private investor.
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: So again, so funny coming from you.
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, in twenty twenty. I've been writing about this since COVID.
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 3: It's like public markets are amazing because there's so many
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 3: stupid people making dumb bets on robinhood and dislocation is everywhere,
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 3: and it's only getting.
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: Worse, and the degenerate economy is going to continue driving
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: this theme.
• 1:18:47
  Speaker 3: Yes, and I think most people should index, but everybody
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 3: should learn how to pick stocks too. In this era,
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 3: I got you.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, so it's almost midnight. I only have
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 2: you for a few minutes more and you have to
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: end up.
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 3: At you tonight breaking. This is October Fast, October sixth,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 3: coming back to New York. That's our big event.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 2: That's exciting.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah, a thousand people on the West Side. I am
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 3: looking for October six If you want to come, hit
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 3: me up.
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 2: Let's do our speed round. Five questions two hours, ten
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: seconds each. I'm going to jump right into it, starting
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 2: with boxers. Who were your early mentors who helped shape
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: your career.
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 3: I think part of I hate saying this. I didn't
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 3: have good early mentorships, so I really take pride in
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 3: mentoring other people because were.
• 1:19:34
  Speaker 2: Your later mentors. I hear Fred Wilson.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you like people that I discovered like the mentorship
• 1:19:39
  Speaker 3: came from the community. Being the mentor led me, like
• 1:19:42
  Speaker 3: stock Twits. Being a giver opened me up to get mentorship.
• 1:19:46
  Speaker 3: I think young kids are not getting good mentors.
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: So just pure karma karma. I love that. What are
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: some of your favorite books? What are you reading right now?
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: I know what you're reading next. What are you reading now?
• 1:19:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I got your butt. I don't read.
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: You're on flights all the time. Do you do just movies?
• 1:20:02
  Speaker 3: I'm so addicted to like HBO Amazon?
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 2: So you're watching series I built.
• 1:20:08
  Speaker 3: I'm just very my next question, but hang on, so
• 1:20:10
  Speaker 3: you're asking books. I still love the classic Shoetog for Business.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 3: You know Phil Knight's book. I loved Agacy's biography. I
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 3: like stuff. I just I just my brain doesn't work
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 3: with books.
• 1:20:22
  Speaker 2: Huh, that's really interesting. Tell us what you're watching on Netflix, HBO, Amazon?
• 1:20:27
  Speaker 3: I just rewatched The Nick. Have you watched The Nick
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 3: on HBO? Soderberg? Oh, it's about the nineteen hundreds, the
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: Knickerbucker Hospital.
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: No, I did not show real season.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 3: It's like surgery wasn't done until like barbers used to
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 3: do surgery. In nineteen hundred, all the rich oil guys
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 3: started backing hospitals and that was the original tech. Surgery
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 3: was tech. And it's just an incredible period piece about
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 3: the nineteen hundreds and soho in New York.
• 1:20:57
  Speaker 2: Huh, I'll turn give us one more.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: There's very little good stuff on TV. I think Oaster
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: is pretty good.
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 2: Can I tell you some HBO? We have that backwards? Okay,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 2: there's too much.
• 1:21:07
  Speaker 3: I think I've seen it all. Have you?
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: Some Landman?
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: Great? But that's that's more like Harlequin. Romance kind of
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: series are fun to watch, and the kids like them too.
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: Okay, n you will because three body problem. If you
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: want something a little.
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 3: More, that's sci fi. I think I don't like sci fi.
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: You don't like sci fi? So you didn't watch an Spance.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 3: No, I didn't like that either. I try it and
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 3: I never get into it.
• 1:21:30
  Speaker 2: Huh, that's interesting.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 3: I like Degenerous.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 2: How do you feel about U Spy? That sort of stuff.
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 3: I love them killing Eve killing. I can rarely follow it. Well,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 3: I started saying it was good.
• 1:21:46
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, the British period piece. I love BritBox brick box,
• 1:21:51
  Speaker 3: so the Crown, not Bridgeston. But BritBox is a great channel.
• 1:21:57
  Speaker 3: There's that Carter criteria for old movies.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 2: If you have BritBox, go back and watch what was
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 2: the name of that show? There was a show that
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 2: came out around the same time as Friends, only Coupling,
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 2: and it has teeth. It's I mean, everything from the
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 2: nineties is a little dated. But whereas Friends was kind
• 1:22:19
  Speaker 2: of milk toast and mushy, this has a sharp edge
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 2: and it's British, so it's nasty and funny in a
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: way that only the Brits can do.
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 3: Okay, Yeah, so I'm a media fanatic, but not like
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 3: I'm weird and I'm bullish on YouTube. Apple TV YouTube
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 3: is just great. I just love YouTube, all right.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: So final two questions. What sort of advice would you
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: give to a college grad interested in either becoming a
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: seed investor or a startup entrepreneur.
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: Well, I think there's no sham of being a number two,
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 3: number three, or number four. So chief of staff is
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 3: the new CEO. So go be someone's chief of staff. Like,
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 3: don't worry about pay or title, worry about finding something
• 1:23:08
  Speaker 3: that's working. This way, it's much easier to go work
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 3: for a company that's just working. So go, like, ignore
• 1:23:16
  Speaker 3: the title job, ignore the salary, find a rocket ship
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 3: and attach yourself. Whether it's Manscape, You're going to learn more.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 3: They're gonna be smarter people around. There's going to be
• 1:23:26
  Speaker 3: you know, less aggravation, more work. But hey, like if
• 1:23:31
  Speaker 3: you're really serious, tell my daughter. It's like, if you're
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: really serious about this, it's going to take a lot
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: of work, but go do it. If you're not serious
• 1:23:38
  Speaker 3: to be a socialist, like it's okay, but like, don't commit,
• 1:23:42
  Speaker 3: don't fool yourself, Like, go work for a rocket ship.
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 3: Otherwise who are you talking to? So like there's no
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 3: room anymore for these kids that like, if you want
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 3: to start a company, do you know it's twenty four
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 3: to seven, right? And if you and no one's going
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 3: to like you? And if you want to be a
• 1:23:58
  Speaker 3: number two, do you know when to take to be
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 3: a number two? So I'm like, be honest, but like,
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 3: go work for a company that's working.
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 2: And our final question, what do you know about the
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 2: world of venture and seed investing today that would have
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 2: been helpful sixty five seventy years ago when you were
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: first getting started.
• 1:24:18
  Speaker 3: No, I think I luckily got the right mentorship, entered
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 3: at the right time. I think you have to do
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 3: it for a while. You got to get a crop.
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 3: Like if you're gonna go do wine or weather matters,
• 1:24:27
  Speaker 3: And same with tech, Like what matters with tech is
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 3: you have to get you If you were of the
• 1:24:31
  Speaker 3: Google Glass era and not much worked, right, if you
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 3: were in the BlackBerry fun two thousand and eight, no
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 3: go baby.
• 1:24:38
  Speaker 2: Soles unless you could have been an early investor in
• 1:24:41
  Speaker 2: Apple or when they were public.
• 1:24:43
  Speaker 3: I think the public markets are underappreciated because seed investing
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: became cool because of Zuckerberg and because of a few
• 1:24:50
  Speaker 3: of these rocket shit.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: I thought seed investing or venture investing really became cool
• 1:24:54
  Speaker 2: in the nineties and then in the two thousands it
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: became evaded.
• 1:24:59
  Speaker 3: No, it's never been more.
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 2: It's never been more loved today.
• 1:25:04
  Speaker 3: Oh I go see these young kids. It seems like
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: they know nothing and they all want to be venturing
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: invest I'm like, yeah, have you ever bought a stock?
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 3: Like you get wounded? Like day one, like stock drops
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 3: twenty percent? Like go open a Robinhood account and learn
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 3: how to invest. Like if you don't know the public markets,
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 3: what are you doing? In the private.
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: Markets got to graduate to private.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think the most guys, the guys who are
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 3: interested in me, and I'm not saying they still are
• 1:25:26
  Speaker 3: the crossover investors, the people that like knew the public
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 3: markets and then started doing private And I think that
• 1:25:31
  Speaker 3: was my edge. I knew how pricing worked market. Whether
• 1:25:34
  Speaker 3: I was right or wrong, I understood how markets worked,
• 1:25:37
  Speaker 3: and the seed investing the prices made sense to me
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 3: relative to public markets. Now the prices in private markets
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: make no sense to me.
• 1:25:44
  Speaker 2: Howard, it is always a blast when you come in.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 2: You're bucking Bronco. I never know where we're going to go.
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: You are not Larry David. You are the Zach gallifanakish
• 1:25:54
  Speaker 2: I love of finance. It was I should put two
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 2: ferns in here just for your arrival. Thank you, by
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 2: the way, for being so generous with your time, and
• 1:26:04
  Speaker 2: good luck at the Cash Tags Awards tonight. If you
• 1:26:07
  Speaker 2: enjoy this conversation, well check out any of the six
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: hundred we've done over the past twelve years. You can
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: find those at iTunes, Spotify, Bloomberg YouTube, wherever you get
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 2: your favorite podcasts. I would be remiss if I didn't
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 2: thank the crack team that helps put these conversations together
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 2: each week. Alexis Noriega is my overworked video producer. Sean
• 1:26:31
  Speaker 2: Russo is my researcher. Anna Luke is my podcast producer.
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 2: I would also like to just drop a little pits information.
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: The paperback of How Not To Invest comes out today.
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 2: By the time you hear this, it'll be out already.
• 1:26:50
  Speaker 2: What else do I want to say other than.
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 3: You look good. Thanks.
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 2: I'm Barry Dhelts. You've been listening to Masters in Business
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 2: on Bloomberg Radio