Latest / Earn Your Leisure / YOU’RE OVERPAYING FOR YOUR PHONE BILL—HE BUILT A $1 BILLION BUSINESS MAKING IT FREE 👀

Transcript

YOU’RE OVERPAYING FOR YOUR PHONE BILL—HE BUILT A $1 BILLION BUSINESS MAKING IT FREE 👀 · Earn Your Leisure

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Why am I paying $ 20 a month for texting, $ 20
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: a month for calling, $ 20 a month for data when
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: I could text people for free on my computer?
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: Would you say that the average customer is getting ripped
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: off by their cell phone provider?
• 0:11
  Speaker 1: There's always ways to pay less. There's actually a federal
• 0:14
  Speaker 1: law that says once your phone's paid off, they have
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: to unlock it. They have to let you take your
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: phone to any other phone service provider.
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: How did you manage to make your service free?
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: It started paid. And then when mobile ads was available,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: we put it in our free version. We actually found
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: that we were making more money on our free version
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: than our paid version. Not a lot of people know that.
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: There's like this kind of like secret backdoor to like
• 0:36
  Speaker 1: convert email to text. And we use that. My history
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: is always like trying to find ways not to pay
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: for something. I still circle the block for free parking.
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: You have a $ 350, 000 car. But you're also financially frugal
• 0:48
  Speaker 2: enough to not want to waste $ 40 on parking. Where's
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: the balance here?
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: Instead of going straight to the most expensive option, I
• 0:54
  Speaker 1: always say, look, is there a better option?
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: How you were able to become profitable so early.
• 0:59
  Speaker 1: It's more fun to just spend time building products rather
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: than building PowerPoint slides for investors. Because if you take
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: on investor money, it's not your business anymore.
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: You've got 10 million monthly users. What's the pathway to
• 1:13
  Speaker 4: getting to 20 million?
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: Our goals always has been to just figure out how
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: to give people more for less. We started out with
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: just only free texting and then figured out how to
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: give people free calling. Now we're trying to figure out
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: how to give people free data.
• 1:26
  Speaker 2: The phone bill in 2006 was $ 44 a month. Today,
• 1:30
  Speaker 2: the average phone bill is $ 120 to $ 140 a month.
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: Why is it going up if the technology is getting better?
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: All right, guys. Welcome back.
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:39
  Speaker 2: We have a special episode.
• 1:41
  Speaker 3: Indeed.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Tech found that we always have a good time when
• 1:44
  Speaker 2: we talk to the entrepreneurs and people that's on the
• 1:47
  Speaker 2: cutting edge of actually changing the world and changing the game.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: So Derek Ting, co-founder and CEO of TechsNow. I'm sure
• 1:55
  Speaker 2: you guys have been seeing TechsNow. We've been doing a
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: lot of work with them. Great content, great interviews. So
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: it's an app-based wireless company that provides affordable phone solutions
• 2:07
  Speaker 2: to hundreds of millions of users. Is that the best
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: way to really describe it? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So we're
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: going to go into the business model behind text now
• 2:16
  Speaker 2: and also, you know, how you got started, your backstory and,
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: and explain the whole, the whole deal. But, um, so you, you,
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: you launched text now in 2009. Yeah.
• 2:26
  Speaker 3: Right. Yeah.
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: So, okay. So give us the backstory of how you
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: came up with this idea and explain your version of
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: like how, what text now is like, what's the elevator pitch.
• 2:38
  Speaker 2: If somebody has never heard of text now and they
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: see your t-shirt, and they say, what's text now? What
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: would you tell them text now is?
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the simple answer is if you want
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: free phone service, download our app, you get to pick
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: your phone number from any area code you want, and
• 2:57
  Speaker 1: then you can text and call for free. You got
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: a phone that has no service, you can also download
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: our app, and then you install a free eSIM on
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: your phone, and then all of a sudden your phone
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: has service. So you don't have to put a credit
• 3:09
  Speaker 1: card or nothing. It's just, there's no prepaid.
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: There's no monthly bill. Exactly. Exactly. So free, free phone service, right? Yeah.
• 3:16
  Speaker 2: What does that include? The ability to call, to receive
• 3:19
  Speaker 2: text messages, like a full.
• 3:20
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: Talking text is completely free. Um, if you also want
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: a second phone number, I know a lot of people
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: want to do that. For business purposes.
• 3:28
  Speaker 2: Exactly.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: You can just separate kind of business and your personal,
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: you download our app and you get a second phone
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: number on your phone without having to get a second
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: phone or pay for a second phone line. If you, yeah, exactly.
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: If you have also a phone that has no service,
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: like you just had like some phone in your drawer, right?
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: Has no service down their app. And then all of
• 3:48
  Speaker 1: a sudden your phone will have service. So talk and
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: text is free. And then if you want data plan,
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: there's affordable data plans too. You can add on in
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: the app.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: And data plan is for like apps. Yeah.
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly.
• 4:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 4:02
  Speaker 1: The eSIM will be free. Like you could talk and text,
• 4:05
  Speaker 1: you know, on, on your wifi or on the cellular network.
• 4:09
  Speaker 1: And then if you want to stream or browse or whatever,
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: then there's data plans you can buy. You can buy it.
• 4:17
  Speaker 1: What's unique is with us, you can buy it by
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: the day, by the week, or by the month. So
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: you're not committed to a monthly plan. You could just
• 4:26
  Speaker 1: pay for data when you need it.
• 4:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, flexibility at its premium. Yeah, exactly, yeah.
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: So this is, I mean, we like disruption, right? And
• 4:35
  Speaker 4: we like innovation too. What got you to the point?
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: Cause I mean, telecommunications is tough and there's legacy brands
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: that I'm sure are trying to disrupt what you're doing.
• 4:47
  Speaker 4: So what made you come up with this idea? Was it,
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: you know, I'm tired of paying the phone bill. Like
• 4:53
  Speaker 4: how did you get to the point where I need
• 4:54
  Speaker 4: to create something on my own?
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Interesting.
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: When we started, we knew nothing about telecom, like zero,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: had no experience with telecom. We actually started the company
• 5:06
  Speaker 1: actually while I was in college and I just didn't
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: want to get a job. I just needed to make
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: money and pay rent and buy pizza. And instead of
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: getting like a normal internship, like all my other classmates,
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: I didn't want a normal internship. I wanted just something
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: where I could just make money and do my own thing.
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: That's how it started. Back then, I heard these people
• 5:38
  Speaker 1: are making money from apps, like publishing their own apps.
• 5:42
  Speaker 1: So I was like, I could do this. I could
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: just sort of get a regular internship. I could just
• 5:48
  Speaker 1: make apps and just make enough money to pay my
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: $ 600 a month rent and get by. That sounds like
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: way more fun than working as an intern for these
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: big mega corporations. So that's what I did. I recruited
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: a classmate. of mine and say, Hey, you want to
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: do this app making with me for your internship? So
• 6:11
  Speaker 1: he decided to do it with me. And that's all
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: we did. Like for, for internship, all we did was,
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: was just make apps and trying to make money making
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: apps and text. I was one of the app ideas
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: because I, at the time was, was questioning why am
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: I paid 20 bucks a month for texting 20 bucks
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: a month for calling 20 bucks a month for data
• 6:31
  Speaker 1: when I could text people for free on my computer
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: because I can instant message anybody for free on my computer.
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: So I essentially have a pocket computer now with internet.
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: Why am I paying for text messaging? You shouldn't have
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: to pay for text messaging. So, so, so, so that's
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: kind of the conception of the idea is an app,
• 6:51
  Speaker 1: but an app where I don't have to pay for
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: text messaging because I was just too cheap to pay
• 6:55
  Speaker 1: for it.
• 6:55
  Speaker 4: And at the time, this is, you're doing this in Canada, right?
• 7:00
  Speaker 4: Or is this a domestic thing or international thing? How
• 7:03
  Speaker 4: did you break that barrier?
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: Because I know I bought a phone.
• 7:07
  Speaker 4: I'm saying it because I bought a phone in Montreal
• 7:10
  Speaker 4: and I came back to New York and they were like,
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: we can't do anything. You can't activate this phone. It's
• 7:14
  Speaker 4: a totally different SIM. You got to go back to
• 7:17
  Speaker 4: Montreal to activate it. And I'm like, you want me
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: to fly back to Montreal? And I didn't even understand
• 7:22
  Speaker 4: the international part of buying phones. How did you combat
• 7:27
  Speaker 4: that issue?
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah, the very first version had no cellular service. It
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: was just literally an app, and then you would text somebody.
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: And then.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: The way it would work is it would use your
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: phone's email to text you. So for example, everybody's phone
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: number has actually like an email, an email gateway. So
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: you could like actually text like, you know, 10 digit
• 7:54
  Speaker 1: phone number at txt.att.net or whatever. You can email that
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: and that email gets converted to text. So not a
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: lot of people know that. There's like this kind of
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: like secret backdoor to like convert email to text. And
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: we use that. So actually that's all the app did
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: at the time was just like convert email. email to
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: text i just learned something yeah yeah and then we
• 8:17
  Speaker 1: just made the app like to do all that work
• 8:19
  Speaker 1: for you so then you didn't have to do that
• 8:21
  Speaker 1: and then eventually we then realized almost all of our
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: customers actually were down we're using it on their ipod
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: touches and so that was kind of our aha moment
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: because we were like what why why do we have
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: all like these these ipod touch users And then eventually
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: we realized they were doing it because they didn't have
• 8:42
  Speaker 1: a phone plan. They didn't have a phone plan. That's
• 8:44
  Speaker 1: why they were on the iPod Touch. But they still
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: need to communicate. So then what it means is they
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: were using our app as their main means of communication.
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: So then that began our multi-decade obsession of how do
• 9:02
  Speaker 1: we actually give these people actual phone service, not an app,
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: just an app that gave free texting. So then we
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: started researching how all the stuff actually works. How do
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: we get phone numbers? How do we make the phone
• 9:18
  Speaker 1: numbers text message enabled? How do we get calling to work?
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: And now our latest thing is how do we make
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: the data plans cheaper? How do we make the data
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: plans free? That's our goal one day. Make everything free. Yeah,
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: that's our goal.
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: So would you say that the average customer is getting
• 9:37
  Speaker 2: ripped off by their cell phone provider?
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: I would say there's definitely a lot of people that
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: are paying too much, for sure. And there's always ways
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: to pay less.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: So like the average person, right? They're probably paying Like
• 9:52
  Speaker 2: I pay $ 110, $ 120 for my cell phone provider, T-Mobile.
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: So how would I pay less? Like what's the average breakdown?
• 10:04
  Speaker 2: Because nobody really looks at their phone bill, right? You
• 10:07
  Speaker 2: pay $ 100, $ 110, $ 120. What are things inside of there
• 10:10
  Speaker 2: that this is $ 20 too much, this is $ 30 too much,
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: this could be lower? Like what does that look like?
• 10:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the biggest expense... is like a lot
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: of people like upgrade their phones, right? So when you
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: upgrade your phone, the carriers will lock you in longer, right?
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: That's their way of like locking people in longer for
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: like a longer duration. So for example, like if you
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: go from like the iPhone now 16 to 17 or whatever,
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: then you gotta then that's another two years. You gotta
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: pay like 40, 50 bucks a month to pay off
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: your phone. But actually there's not a massive difference between
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: like the phone that's like a couple of generations older
• 10:53
  Speaker 1: than like the next, next one.
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: In fact, I'm still on the iPhone 12 pro because
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: I broke my newer phone. So then I just went
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: back to my older phone. I realized there's not much
• 11:02
  Speaker 1: of a difference. I'll just keep using my older phone.
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: So a lot of folks kept saving a lot of money,
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: just delaying the upgrade. Also with delaying the upgrades lets
• 11:10
  Speaker 1: you do is you could then once your phone's paid off,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: you can unlock your phone. There's a rule where after
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: your phone's paid off, the carrier has to unlock your phone.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: What does that mean?
• 11:24
  Speaker 1: That means you could take it to anybody. So let's
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: say you bought the phone from T-Mobile. Your phone's paid off.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: Now there's actually a federal law that says once your
• 11:35
  Speaker 1: phone's paid off, they have to unlock it. They have
• 11:38
  Speaker 1: to let you take your phone to any other phone
• 11:41
  Speaker 1: service provider. So T-Mobile can't lock their phone to just
• 11:44
  Speaker 1: T-Mobile because now you own the phone.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: So T-Mobile, you got the phone from T-Mobile, but after
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: you've done paying it off, now you can change it
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: to TexNow.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Then you can install an eSIM from TexNow and
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: then pay $ 30 a month for the same thing, right?
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: Or if you don't use data all the time, like
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: for example, most people are just at home most of
• 12:07
  Speaker 1: the time on Wi-Fi. You don't really need to be
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: paying a data plan all the time. So you just
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: pay for what you need, right? Not even with us,
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: with any other, there's tons of other phone service providers
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: out there that probably will beat that monthly price and
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: will let you just install an eSIM on your phone
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: and not lock you into a contract. But with TextNow,
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: you know, the beauty is, like, if you just need
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: talking text, it's free, right?
• 12:37
  Speaker 2: So.
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: That was my issue.
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: That literally is what happened when I when I brought
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: my phone to my provider after I came back from Canada.
• 12:44
  Speaker 3: They're like, the phone's locked.
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: Right. We can't add this to your plan because it's locked.
• 12:49
  Speaker 4: And then we try to unlock it. And I try
• 12:51
  Speaker 4: to call the store. But the Apple store said, look,
• 12:54
  Speaker 4: we can't help you. You'd have to come back. And
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: I was like, I'm not like driving five hours or flying.
• 13:00
  Speaker 4: two hours just to get a phone. I still have it,
• 13:02
  Speaker 4: but now, text now becomes an option for me because
• 13:04
  Speaker 4: I can just use that as a phone calling or
• 13:07
  Speaker 4: text service on that phone.
• 13:08
  Speaker 2: Exactly, yeah.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, any phone that you have in your drawer or
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: whatever that you think is no good anymore, it's actually
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: still good.
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's a brand new, at the time it was
• 13:19
  Speaker 4: a brand new 17.
• 13:21
  Speaker 3: iPhone 17.
• 13:22
  Speaker 4: I had just bought it because I wanted to use
• 13:24
  Speaker 4: the earbuds that translate, and then I needed to update
• 13:27
  Speaker 4: it to a new phone.
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: So I'm thinking, okay, perfect. This is going to work.
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: And then when I got home, it didn't.
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: But you said something important, and most people, when they
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: hear free, they're like, no, there's got to be costs.
• 13:37
  Speaker 4: So sometimes in the phone bill, if you look at it,
• 13:39
  Speaker 4: you see some of those things. You see taxes. How
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: did you manage to make your service free? How is
• 13:46
  Speaker 4: that possible?
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, our free experience is ad-supported. So there's no secret.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: That's not a secret. It's just like we make it
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: really clear. If it's free, how we make it free,
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: just like any other free service, there'll be ads. But
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: the ads are no different than ads you see anywhere else,
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: any other place like Facebook or whatever. It's just there
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: are ads in the app, and then you just continue
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: to use it for free. But that's how we make
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: the money, to support the free service.
• 14:22
  Speaker 2: So you started your first business when.
• 14:27
  Speaker 3: You was 15?
• 14:27
  Speaker 1: My first business, like, ever?
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: I was in high school, yeah.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: 15? Yeah, yeah. That was a tech business, was it?
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, kind of, yeah.
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: What was it?
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was this, like, well, my history is always, like,
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: you know, the theme is I'm always, like, trying to
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: find ways not to pay for some things. So I
• 14:51
  Speaker 1: didn't want to pay for text messaging. And back then,
• 14:53
  Speaker 1: you know, I was just like a teenager. So I
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: didn't want to pay for music. I didn't want to
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: pay for movies. So I made a website that allowed
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: people to like share bootlegs of like music and movies
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: and TV shows. It was like using a new technology
• 15:14
  Speaker 1: back then called BitTorrent.
• 15:16
  Speaker 3: Hey, I remember that.
• 15:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: Back then it was like, like a brand new thing.
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: Nobody knew about it. Everybody was using like Napster and like.
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 15:26
  Speaker 3: Rapid cheer, BitTorrent.
• 15:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: So the BitTorrent was really new. And what made BitTorrent
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: special was that, um, it's, well, it's, it's like back,
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: it's peer to peer.
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: But, but, but the thing is, since it's peer to peer,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: you need somewhere like you need a centralized place. to
• 15:46
  Speaker 1: like index all the stuff that people.
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: Have, right?
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: So they got, these are like torrent files and you
• 15:54
  Speaker 1: need like a tracker to track all these things. So
• 15:57
  Speaker 1: I built a tracker, right? And they eventually turned the
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: tracker into like a, because back then, you know, BitTorrent
• 16:05
  Speaker 1: trackers weren't user-friendly at all, right? It's like literally just
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: like a piece of software that like tracked all these
• 16:11
  Speaker 1: different like files, right? And then, so then I turned
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: that into something just more like user-friendly. So it looked like,
• 16:18
  Speaker 1: like actually looked like a website where you can like
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: browse all the different bootleg stuff.
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 16:23
  Speaker 1: And then you could pick the bootleg thing you want.
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: Right. Sometimes you got to download about four of them
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: to see which one's the best.
• 16:29
  Speaker 1: And, and, and you know what, that's the beauty of
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: that is like it organized everything for you. So you
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: don't have to like figure out like. what's good or
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: what's bad. It would just like show you like all
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: the good ones and all the bad ones, you know,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: just put them in the bottom. So anyway, that was,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: that was my first thing. And then, and then because
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: it's not exactly kosher and I was about to go
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: to college. Yeah. And then my parents didn't know about it.
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: I was doing it in their basement on my home
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: internet connection. And when the website blew up, my home
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: internet stopped working. So, so my mom was like, why
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: is my internet not working? I was like, I don't know.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Because I was hosting on my home internet connection.
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: Wow. Yeah.
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: Because I didn't have any money, right?
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: For the people who are not in the know, when
• 17:13
  Speaker 4: you say kosher, that's a cold word for it.
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: This was illegal at the time. And there's a story
• 17:17
  Speaker 3: behind that.
• 17:18
  Speaker 4: Because when I was doing a lot of stuff with computers,
• 17:21
  Speaker 4: I was studying computers at the time, using BitTorrent, using
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: RapidShare to download music, sometimes movies.
• 17:26
  Speaker 3: This is the first time I ever hear the word Bitcoin.
• 17:29
  Speaker 4: Because it was illegal and then in order to have
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: a subscription sometimes guys got sophisticated in order to use
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: their site you had to you know get a subscription
• 17:37
  Speaker 4: to their platform but if you use the credit card
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: that was traceable and we they try to figure out
• 17:43
  Speaker 4: what people could use to not be traced anymore and
• 17:46
  Speaker 4: this is the first time i hear bitcoin it's like
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: 2011 12 and people are using bitcoin to pay for
• 17:52
  Speaker 4: their subscription so it can't be traced because again it
• 17:54
  Speaker 4: wasn't kosher right right right right on right on This
• 17:59
  Speaker 4: message is a paid partnership with Apple Card. One thing
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• 18:05
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• 19:28
  Speaker 2: So how did you learn at such a young age
• 19:31
  Speaker 2: how to build code and how to do the computer? Like,
• 19:34
  Speaker 2: did you teach yourself or were you being taught this
• 19:37
  Speaker 2: in high school? Like, how did you learn?
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: No, my high school actually didn't even have a computer
• 19:41
  Speaker 1: science program. So it was just like learning on the internet.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: So you taught yourself? Yeah, yeah. trial and error trial
• 19:50
  Speaker 2: and error locking yourself in the basement just figuring it.
• 19:52
  Speaker 1: Out literally yeah it'll be just out of the basement
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: yeah just I'm just like having fun really.
• 19:59
  Speaker 2: So what lessons did you learn from that in the
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: basement that helped you you know become the entrepreneur that
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: you are today what takes.
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: Now I think what It taught me was this different
• 20:11
  Speaker 1: avenue to like make a living, right? Like a lot
• 20:15
  Speaker 1: of people, a lot of my friends or peers growing up,
• 20:20
  Speaker 1: their mental model is like, hey, the only way I
• 20:22
  Speaker 1: make a living is like I go to college, I
• 20:25
  Speaker 1: get like a corporate job, like climb the career ladder.
• 20:29
  Speaker 1: And then because I kind of was making money in
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: high school already doing my like weird side projects, I
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: kind of knew there was like multiple options, you know,
• 20:40
  Speaker 1: that you could like either do this or that. And
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: I tried that for a while engineer engineering.
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: I went to, I went to like a fancy schmancy
• 20:49
  Speaker 1: engineering school. Um, it was really, really hard school to
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: go to. Uh, it's called university of Waterloo, which is
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: like one of the hardest engineering schools to get into
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: in Canada. Uh, it's like the quote unquote MIT of Canada.
• 21:04
  Speaker 2: What kind of engineering did you study?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: Um, computer engineering, computer engineering.
• 21:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: And then, so yeah, all my peers, you know, got
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: these like corporate jobs and then also like the school
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: to graduate, you had to have like certain amount of
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: internships to graduate. So every other semester you actually had
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: to like, you actually like had no choice. You had
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: to apply for a job. You had to like do
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: the job and then like, you know, and then, and
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: then you have to get your credit.
• 21:30
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: Um, So eventually through that process, I was just like,
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: that's not for me.
• 21:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: Like doing, doing this like normal, like corporate job thing
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: and kissing my boss's butt and all that stuff. Like
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: I just know it wasn't for me.
• 21:44
  Speaker 2: Entrepreneurship was the only way. Yeah.
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: And at the time I didn't even know it was
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: called that. It was like this other thing where I
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: would just like do it yourself, do make my own
• 21:52
  Speaker 1: stuff and generate enough income from it to just sustain myself.
• 21:59
  Speaker 1: That sounds like a better deal for me. Um, there
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: was no plan to turn this into like, you know,
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: like a big company or anything like that. It was
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: just like, I'd rather just do this rather than do that.
• 22:12
  Speaker 4: So you, I mean, you obviously have the engineering side
• 22:15
  Speaker 4: down back, but the business side is something completely different.
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: So did you, your partner that you brought along with you,
• 22:23
  Speaker 4: did they know the business side or is this something again,
• 22:26
  Speaker 4: you're learning trial and error as you're building this app
• 22:28
  Speaker 4: that number one, you know, is disruptive, but number two
• 22:32
  Speaker 4: is has potential to scale.
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: I didn't know much about business. Um, I didn't know anything.
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: I didn't even know what bookkeeping was. I didn't know
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: how to like do taxes even, um, didn't know anything
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: about HR. I think these are all things I kind
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: of learned as I, as I go. And then good
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: thing is there's a lot of resources out there. You know,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of advisors that will, just either advise
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: you for free or you could just pay them. They'll
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: advise you. So, um, that's what I did. I just
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: either learned it myself or just paid people to teach me. Right.
• 23:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 23:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 23:09
  Speaker 2: So when you start this company, right, you raise money.
• 23:13
  Speaker 1: Oh, that was the other thing too, is like, um,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: for a while I thought, Yeah, I had to raise
• 23:22
  Speaker 1: money because all these other successful companies were raising money. So, um,
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: even though, you know, we had enough money to sustain ourselves,
• 23:31
  Speaker 1: we thought, Hey, we needed to raise money. Um, and
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: then we did, we did like a small seed round. Um,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: but then as time went on, I realized that it's
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: more fun to just spend time building product. building actual
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: stuff rather than building PowerPoint slides for investors because that
• 23:54
  Speaker 1: took just as much time from me as actually just
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: building stuff and if I built stuff that also makes
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: money right whereas if I built PowerPoint decks you know
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: yes I'll raise the money but then what right so
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: eventually I realized actually like I don't really need to
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: raise money I could just keep building product.
• 24:19
  Speaker 2: Well we'll talk about that because that's not the traditional
• 24:21
  Speaker 2: model as far as tech companies in silicon valley right
• 24:24
  Speaker 2: is it is to raise money um and it's they
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: may not be profitable for a while so being that
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: you decided not to raise money after the initial raise
• 24:34
  Speaker 2: that forced profitability early right so talk about like how
• 24:42
  Speaker 2: you were able to become profitable so early and just
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: the general mindset of not raising capital and actually just
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: bootstrapping it when most of your peers are doing the
• 24:55
  Speaker 2: exact opposite. Yeah.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: I think we, a lot of venture backed companies, they
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: like get a bunch of users first and then they
• 25:05
  Speaker 1: figure out the business model later. And so then as
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: it gets bigger, it just needs more capital and then
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: it'll burn capital till it figures out the business model.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: That's one way to do it. Another way to do
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: it is just figure out your business model and your
• 25:22
  Speaker 1: product at the same time. And then when you do that,
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: as you grow, you actually generate cashflow rather than burn cash. Um,
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to say there's a better way to
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: do it. It's just one way to do it requires
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: less capital than the other way. And you get to
• 25:43
  Speaker 1: keep more of your business. And you get to be
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: in control of your own destiny at the end of
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: the day, because if you take on investor money, eventually
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: you don't really own it at the end of the day, right? You, you,
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: you share it with investors and investors will have a
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: say on whether you should sell a business, whether you
• 26:03
  Speaker 1: should do this with your business or whatever, because it's
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: not your business anymore. Um, so that's one thing that
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: I've realized because when I look at my peers too,
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: that raise a lot of money, they, they don't get
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to call the shots anymore.
• 26:14
  Speaker 4: Right.
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: They say they do, but underneath the hood, there's all
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: these like legal issues and yeah, legal fine print that like,
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: they got to ask them permission to do this. They
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: got to ask them permission to do that or whatever.
• 26:29
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Because yeah, with investors, they want to protect their investment.
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: So you got to ask them for permission when you
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: want to do stuff.
• 26:37
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: So, so that's one thing that, you know, people got
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: to keep in mind.
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: And also with, cost of building things now going down
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: with the new age of AI, a lot of people
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: could bootstrap because you got now Cloud Code, you got
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: now Codex with ChatGBT. You don't even need to know
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: how to code anymore to build stuff. You don't need
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: to actually hire an engineer to build your prototypes. You
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: could actually just have AI build it for you. So
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: now investors are even less relevant when you have a
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: new idea because you don't even need to hire anybody
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: to build it. You could build it yourself.
• 27:30
  Speaker 2: So you think AI is making investment less. You don't
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: need investment as much as you once did because now
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: artificial intelligence.
• 27:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly. Because back then, you're like, hey, I need
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: to hire a mobile... app engineer, I need to hire
• 27:44
  Speaker 1: this engineer to make my idea real. You don't need
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: that anymore. You can just go do like, like a
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: AI tool that will like build an app for you.
• 27:57
  Speaker 3: How has that changed your business model?
• 28:00
  Speaker 4: I'm assuming when you're doing this, you're building, but there's
• 28:03
  Speaker 4: a team that you're probably assembling to scale. And now
• 28:07
  Speaker 4: you're looking at the advent of some of these models
• 28:08
  Speaker 4: and Has it changed the business model for you?
• 28:12
  Speaker 1: Oh, I think it unlocked a whole new world for
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: us before we would say, hey, we only got this
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: much time, right? And because we only got this much time,
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: these are the things we got to focus on, right?
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: There's all these other opportunities out there. And gosh, we
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: would love to get to those things, but we only
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: got so much time. So we got to focus on
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: the things that are most important, right? And now with
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: AI and the whole company now, adopting AI, we're finding
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: ourselves not able to, like, tackle some of these opportunities
• 28:47
  Speaker 1: that before we're like, hey, we just don't have enough
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: time to do it. So, for example, we always wanted
• 28:52
  Speaker 1: to build a phone plan for kids because we just think,
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: you know, social media is toxic, but then also, like,
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: the phone itself, though, is really valuable because it unlocks
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: the ability for someone to communicate, right? So, for example, like,
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: I want to wait for my kids to text or
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: call their grandparents without the social media shit on the phone.
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: So we always wanted to build a phone plan for
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: kids that they can communicate, but it doesn't have all
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: the stuff that we don't want them to be exposed to.
• 29:29
  Speaker 1: And now we finally were able to get that done.
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: So let's talk about AI just in general, right? because
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: obviously you've been in tech pretty much your whole life
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: yeah and it's the number one trending topic right now
• 29:43
  Speaker 2: as far as you know the dangers of ai well
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: ai in humanity but like you said as far as
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: this revolutionizing business so what what are your thoughts on
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: the on the current state of ai as far as
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: do you think it's more of a danger than a
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: help at this point?
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: I'm not like seeing that right now. And maybe I'm naive,
• 30:13
  Speaker 1: but I'm not seeing people using it for like dangerous
• 30:19
  Speaker 1: things yet. I do think like there are safeguards in
• 30:23
  Speaker 1: it and there should be safeguards in it. So if
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: you're using it to like, do nefarious stuff. I think
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: it should not let you do that. But I think
• 30:32
  Speaker 1: in general, it's kind of like the next, I think
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: it's like the next industrial revolution where we're all just
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: going to get so much of our, like humans in general,
• 30:43
  Speaker 1: we're going to get so much of our time back
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: and then we're going to be able to redeploy our
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: time into other things.
• 30:51
  Speaker 2: Like in 10 years, right? What do you see the
• 30:53
  Speaker 2: world look like in 10 years as far as how
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: AI changed it?
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I would like, I would say like the best
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: analogy is like back in the old days, I'm sure
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: like most of our time was spent like farming, right? Like,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: cause we didn't have like machines, machines to like harvest
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: the potatoes or whatever.
• 31:12
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: So then you gotta do it by hand.
• 31:14
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: So to eat, there's gotta be this many people that
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: have to go and, you know, farm. Right. Um, but
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: then since now they've automated a lot of farming. Like
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: we all get to do other stuff. Like we don't
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: have to farm anymore. Only a small percentage of people
• 31:30
  Speaker 1: have to farm and then feed the whole population. So
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: I think it'll be just something like that where there's
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: going to be a lot of like busy work that
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: people are doing today. Not even busy work, just work
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: in general that people are doing today that now AI
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: could do for us and that would just free our
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: time to do stuff that AI can't do, which is
• 31:53
  Speaker 1: more creative things.
• 31:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. I think I'm with you on that.
• 31:56
  Speaker 4: I think the time is the thing we need to
• 31:59
  Speaker 4: think of. And even from the entrepreneurial mindset, working in
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: a nine to five, which I was for years, and
• 32:07
  Speaker 4: then being an entrepreneur, you don't realize how much time
• 32:10
  Speaker 4: you have to think, right?
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: Because when you're in the grind of get.
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: Up, go to work, do the job, have lunch, do
• 32:18
  Speaker 4: the job, go home, eat dinner, reset, do the same
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: thing again tomorrow. There's not time to be creative, to
• 32:25
  Speaker 4: critically think, to figure out what else I can do.
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: And if that's given back, how much more creative things
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: can be done? So I think that you're spot on
• 32:34
  Speaker 4: with the assessment there. I want to talk about the
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: revenue model because it is ad-based. Getting partnerships is tough.
• 32:43
  Speaker 4: Finding people to sponsor and be part of the ad
• 32:46
  Speaker 4: team is tough. How has that been to you early
• 32:50
  Speaker 4: stage as to now? Because and you can correct me
• 32:53
  Speaker 4: if I'm wrong, cumulatively, you've generated a billion dollars throughout
• 32:58
  Speaker 4: the course of the company?
• 32:59
  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: So how's that gone for you?
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we have a hybrid business model. So we make
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: money from ads, and then we have upgrades in our
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: app that people can upgrade to.
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: Also, within ads, there's ads that we sell directly, and
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: then there's ads that we auction in the marketplace for
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: people to bid on.
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: Mm-hmm.
• 33:22
  Speaker 1: So in the early days, we actually didn't even have
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: to sell ads directly. We just put our ads. And
• 33:31
  Speaker 1: there's like auctions that you could just like put your
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: ads in an auction and then people bid on it.
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And then, so the ad ecosystem is pretty sophisticated like that.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: It's like you actually, a lot of independent properties that
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: want to make money, like monetize their ads. their properties,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: they don't actually have to hire their own ad sales team.
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: They can just either use Google's auctionware or all these
• 33:59
  Speaker 1: other auctionwares out there. You can just integrate it into
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: your app and then the people can just bid on it.
• 34:04
  Speaker 4: So as it scales, obviously you need more people, then
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: more ad dollars come in. Is there any point that
• 34:10
  Speaker 4: you think to yourself, all right, maybe we should charge
• 34:13
  Speaker 4: 99 cents? Or has it always been the thesis, we're
• 34:16
  Speaker 4: making this free the entire time?
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: So it's actually the opposite. It started paid because there
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: was no ads back then. Back then, there's no such
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: thing as mobile ads. So then we had to come
• 34:31
  Speaker 1: up with a price for the rent to be paid
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: and the pizza. Don't forget the pizza. And the ramen
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: and the pizza. So we experimented in the beginning. For
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: a while, it was like five bucks for the app.
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: which may seem like a lot, but, you know, our
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: rationale is, well, you're texting 20 bucks a month. So
• 34:53
  Speaker 1: five bucks is a one-time fee is a bargain, right?
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: So actually that's how it started off. But then a
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: lot of people didn't trust that it worked, didn't know
• 35:05
  Speaker 1: that it would work. So it was like five bucks
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: was a lot to risk, something that you don't know
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: is going to work. So we then lowered the price
• 35:11
  Speaker 1: to a dollar and then our sales like went through
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: the roof. then we're like, okay, well, what if we
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: made it a dollar for the first three months and
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: then four bucks a year? And then it didn't really
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: change or like volume at all, except it's, except we
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: just made more money. Um, because, because the idea is
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: once people found out it worked, you know, they, they
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: see the value and they don't mind paying, paying more. Um,
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: so that was like original business model. And then eventually
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: we had a free version, which let you test send
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: 15 texts a day. Um, And then you want to
• 35:45
  Speaker 1: send more than 15 texts a day, you got to
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: upgrade to the paid version. And then that really made
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: it really, really take off. Because now you don't have
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: to pay any money to see if it worked or not.
• 35:54
  Speaker 1: You get to see it for free. So that was
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: kind of the original business model. And then when mobile
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: ads was available as technology, we put it in our
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: free version. And we actually found that we were making
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: more money on our free version than our paid version.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: which wasn't very intuitive. Um, so they were like, well,
• 36:18
  Speaker 1: why don't we just make it free? So that's what
• 36:21
  Speaker 1: we did. We just made it, made, made, made, made,
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: made it free. That's, that's how it's kind of evolution
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: of business model.
• 36:28
  Speaker 2: And how have you been able to market it? Like how,
• 36:31
  Speaker 2: how do people find out about it? Like how, what's
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: the campaign that you've been?
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, in the early days it was just word
• 36:37
  Speaker 1: of mouth. And then the initial seed of users was
• 36:41
  Speaker 1: just like me, like, reaching out to people being like, Hey,
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: can you review our app? Give me some promo codes. Um,
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: and just doing that over and over and over again.
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: And then bird of mouth, uh, got us to probably
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: our first million customers.
• 36:58
  Speaker 2: How many users do you have?
• 37:00
  Speaker 1: Um, we have 10 million monthly active users, something like that.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: So in the app store, like Apple takes 30%, right? But,
• 37:08
  Speaker 2: but if it's free, How does Apple get paid for
• 37:11
  Speaker 2: a free app in the App Store? Do you have
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: to pay Apple to have your app in the App Store?
• 37:15
  Speaker 1: No, just the app purchases. They'll get a cut of that.
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: I think in the ads, too, there's other people that
• 37:24
  Speaker 1: take a cut of the revenue, like people that provide
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: the auctionware and all that stuff, like Google, whatever. There's
• 37:30
  Speaker 1: a lot of players in the middle that take a
• 37:32
  Speaker 1: cut of their ad revenue in the middle. Apple used
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: to do that, but they don't anymore because Apple kind
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: of exited the ad business.
• 37:41
  Speaker 2: Oh, Apple's not in the ad business anymore?
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they used to run their own ad platform called iAd,
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: but that doesn't exist anymore. So I don't think Apple
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: gets a cut of the ad revenue.
• 37:54
  Speaker 4: So 10 million monthly users. I mean, it's a lot.
• 37:59
  Speaker 4: It's a lot. How are other telecommunication companies viewing you?
• 38:05
  Speaker 4: Are they looking at you as hey, this is an
• 38:08
  Speaker 4: alternative to that scaling that we need to take notice of,
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: or are they looking like, hey, we need to change pricing,
• 38:13
  Speaker 4: or is it C, how do we try to acquire
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: that company?
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: I think it depends on the company. I think not
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: all telecom companies are the same. They all have different management,
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: and they all think about it differently. I think some
• 38:28
  Speaker 1: of them for sure view us in a more hostile way,
• 38:33
  Speaker 1: and some of them view us more of a friendly way.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: And so, yeah, we work with actually one of them, right?
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: We go on their cellular network, right, when you're off Wi-Fi.
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: So we partner with one of them. And one of them,
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: you know, it's AT & T. We partner with them. They, yeah,
• 38:54
  Speaker 1: they see the value in partnering with us. So, you know,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: we write them big checks every month, right? And the
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: way they see it is we partner. It's a win-win, so.
• 39:05
  Speaker 4: I'm thinking about the 10 million again. How were you
• 39:08
  Speaker 4: able to handle that bandwidth? That's not something that people think, oh,
• 39:12
  Speaker 4: more people is better. But when you go from a
• 39:14
  Speaker 4: million to two, now you've increased by 100% in terms
• 39:18
  Speaker 4: of bandwidth. How were you able to manage that up
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: to 10 million now?
• 39:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's another thing is like when we
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: first launched our app, it was like you know, we
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: like kind of like put it on like a server
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: somewhere and we kind of, you know, had duct taped
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: it together, right? Like, and then once we got like
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: our first like 100,000 users on it, it would just
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: crash all the time, right? Actually, interestingly, like the first
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: Christmas after, we like launch text now, um, all these
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: people were opening iPod touches on the 25th. That's their
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: birthday present. Right. So then what happened was like, there
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: was like a massive surge in traffic, um, on the 25th.
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: And then literally like, I remember like that Christmas at like,
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: like we didn't get any sleep. We, we like had
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: no time off. We were just like 24 seven trying
• 40:16
  Speaker 1: to figure out how to keep our servers up. from
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: all the new traffic. Also, we didn't really, we didn't
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: have experience back then on how to like scale a
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: web service. Cause yeah, we never had to. So then, yeah,
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: as you scale from like, you know, a hundred thousand,
• 40:35
  Speaker 1: a million, 10 million, you have to like hire people
• 40:39
  Speaker 1: that have done this before and can scale web services.
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: So you just can't have it on like one machine anymore.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: You got to have it like on the cloud on
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: AWS and you got to like scale your services like horizontally.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: That's what they call it. And then, and then, so
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: then no matter if it's like one person accessing the
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: service or a hundred million people accessing the service, there's, there's, um,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: there is server capacity available.
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 41:09
  Speaker 1: Um, and you can just scale dynamically on the cloud. Um, so, but,
• 41:13
  Speaker 1: but back then your AWS wasn't a thing.
• 41:15
  Speaker 3: I'm trying to think as you're saying, I'm like, was
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: AWS even there?
• 41:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: So, so, so, so, so then back then you had
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: to like buy multiple servers.
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: And then, and then, and then like, Oh wow. You
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: got to like project like, okay, how many users are
• 41:28
  Speaker 1: you going to get?
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: If like, okay. Like if you're going to have like
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: this many users, then like, okay, we need like more servers.
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: So that I remember like for Christmas, the next Christmas
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: we had to like, plan for like more capacity than
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: we have in case, you know, there's a surge of users,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: we won't go down. But nowadays, yeah, and then eventually
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: when AWS came along, now you can just like move,
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: we move our infrastructure to AWS and now you can
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: like dynamically scale.
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, that changes everything. Yeah.
• 41:55
  Speaker 2: So you invest also. I heard, Sam, you invested $ 8, 000
• 41:59
  Speaker 2: in Apple and it grew to $ 80, 000? Sorry, what? You
• 42:04
  Speaker 2: invest in the stock market, right?
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I do.
• 42:06
  Speaker 2: You invested in Apple?
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I did, yeah. Well, back in the old, like,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: college days, yeah.
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: I, like.
• 42:12
  Speaker 2: 8,000 and it grew to 80?
• 42:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, something like that. Yeah, I, like, took all my, like,
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: internship money and, like, instead of, you know, blowing it, I, like,
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: I just kept buying Apple stock.
• 42:26
  Speaker 2: So, what did, what did dad teach you about investing
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: and patience and the markets?
• 42:32
  Speaker 3: Um.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Connecting your money as a, as a young kid, like,
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: you know, that's something that's, like, you probably was 20
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: years old, 21 years old, so. What did that teach you?
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: Oh, I think, I think, yeah, I mean, yeah, I
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: was fortunate. Like I, I, growing up, I had like
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: a friend in school, um, that, you know, his dad
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: was really wealthy. Um, and then, so I learned a
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: lot from my friend cause he was like a middle
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: school friend. And then, so like, he like learned about this,
• 43:04
  Speaker 1: he learned about the stock market from his dad and
• 43:06
  Speaker 1: I learned about stock market from him. And then through that,
• 43:10
  Speaker 1: I kind of learned that like, oh, like if you
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: actually just like save your money, but like not in
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: like a savings account, you just keep putting money in
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: the stock market, the money when the stock market will
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: actually work for you and then also compound. So what
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: that means is the earnings from the stock market, right?
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: If you don't take it out, those earnings will, will
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: get automatically reinvested. And then you get compound interest. So
• 43:42
  Speaker 1: I learned that concept from him. And then that's kind
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: of like how, you know, when I was in college,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: I was like, well, instead of with all my internship
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: money that I didn't use, instead of, you know, finding
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: new ways to spend it, I was like, yeah, I
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: should just buy Apple stock. Cause that was also the
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: only company I actually really understood what they do. So
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: instead of buying like, Because I also remember if I
• 44:08
  Speaker 1: buy random stocks, I would lose my money, right? So then,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: you know what? I'm going to stop doing that. I'm
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: just going to buy the one stock that I understood
• 44:18
  Speaker 1: what they do. And I knew it was a good
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: company and the management was good. So all I did
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: was like every dollar that I didn't spend, I would
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: just like buy Apple stock.
• 44:30
  Speaker 2: You still have it now?
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: I sold it, I think. Few years ago.
• 44:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:38
  Speaker 1: Not that long ago.
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: I mean, you know, I think still a good company,
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: but I think now there's like better, more interesting things
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: to put my money in.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: But how have you been with money?
• 44:53
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 44:53
  Speaker 4: Like you said, I'm putting every dollar ahead at that
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: time to a point now where you have a business
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: that's generating pretty, pretty good profits.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:03
  Speaker 4: Have you always been disciplined with money or were you
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: frivolous at it at a point as it started to
• 45:07
  Speaker 4: come in more?
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Um, yeah, it's interesting because my mom was always pretty frugal.
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: So I kind of like learn those ways from her. Uh,
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: she's always like trying to find the best deal.
• 45:18
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: So I, I still am, you know, um, you know,
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: my wife makes fun of me when I like, um,
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: circle the block for parking and I could just, pay.
• 45:32
  Speaker 2: For parking, you know?
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: Cause like, Hey honey, your, your time is worth more
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: than whatever, you know? Like, why don't you just pay
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: for parking? But I still, I still circle the block
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: for free parking, free parking. So there's some habits that don't,
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: don't change. Um, um, so, but that parking situation, right? Yeah.
• 45:51
  Speaker 2: Is this, so one thing to circle a block, you
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: have a $ 350, 000 car.
• 45:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:55
  Speaker 2: What car is it?
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: It's a, GT3 Touring, a Porsche GT3 Touring.
• 46:03
  Speaker 3: I was just looking at that car. Is that a
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: dream car?
• 46:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: Sick car.
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: Okay. So you have a $ 350, 000 car and your wife
• 46:16
  Speaker 2: caught you on a computer, like looking for free parking?
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: No, no. It was actually, the story was like, I...
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: was going to meet her at Benihana because it was
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: my father-in-law's birthday, you know, celebration, right? We were going
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: to go meet Benihana. Um, and then instead of going
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: home and then going together, I was like, I'll meet
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: you there. And so, um, and she was like tracking
• 46:44
  Speaker 1: me on the life 360 app. And then I was like, Hey,
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: I'm there just finding parking. And then, you know, and
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: I was supposed to be there at seven and I
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: was there like 710 or something like that it was like.
• 46:57
  Speaker 2: Because you couldn't because you didn't want to do valet.
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah so she caught me like circling yeah yeah
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: eventually i gave in i like paid for parking but
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: then she caught me circling the block.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: Well what's the mindset of that because this is an
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: interesting paradox right where yeah you obviously aren't afraid to
• 47:13
  Speaker 2: spend money on things that you like because you have
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: a 350 000 car but you're also financially frugal enough
• 47:21
  Speaker 2: to not want to waste $ 40 on parking when you
• 47:25
  Speaker 2: can find a free parking spot. That's an interesting dynamic.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: What's the psychology behind balancing? Because it would be one
• 47:34
  Speaker 2: thing if you had a Prius and you was doing that,
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: but you have, you know.
• 47:38
  Speaker 3: They don't even make that anymore.
• 47:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you got the rare Porsche and you're doing that.
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: So where's the balance here?
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the psychology is like, just the value
• 47:50
  Speaker 1: I'm getting out of it. And like, what's my alternative, right?
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: If like, okay, the value of parking is just like, okay,
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: like it's gotta just be close to where I'm going.
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: And then, you know, has to like, also like do
• 48:03
  Speaker 1: the job of just like, okay, here's a spot.
• 48:06
  Speaker 2: If it's, right. The value add proposition. Yeah. The car is,
• 48:11
  Speaker 2: you can rationalize the uses of the car, but parking
• 48:15
  Speaker 2: is like not a finite resource where, does it really
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: make sense to pay $ 40 for parking when mathematically there's
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: a good chance that you can find parking for free?
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: It's like an equation. Exactly. Yeah.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: There's alternative. Then you go for like the alternative that's better,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: but there's no alternative. Then I'll just pay for, for it. Right.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Rather than go to the, like the most expensive op,
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: like it's never going straight. The most expensive option. I
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: always say, look, is there a slightly better option?
• 48:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 48:45
  Speaker 1: Um, and if, There isn't, then I'll give in to
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: the more expensive option. And I guess that's how I'm
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: thinking about parking. It's just like, okay, well, if there's
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: a better option, which is free street parking, I'll spend
• 49:00
  Speaker 1: the five minutes to just check if there is.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: Then that's text mail. The better free option.
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's how it started. I was like, hey, you
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: can go straight to the most expensive option, which is
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: paying $ 20 for texting, but hey, there's probably a free option.
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: And then that's how I found out that That's... hack
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: that you could send text messages for free. And then
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I'll make an app to let
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: everyone use that hack.
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: I do the same thing. I'm trying to figure out,
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: let's look at free first.
• 49:30
  Speaker 4: So in the city, usually after seven, you're pretty good,
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: but definitely after nine, you got a good chance. So
• 49:35
  Speaker 4: I'm like, no, let's go around that time. Let's see
• 49:38
  Speaker 4: if we can find free. And if not, we'll park.
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: But parking that on the street is kind of tough.
• 49:42
  Speaker 3: That GT is.
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: Actually, like, see, it's like I also thought about that.
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: Parking on like a, you know, in San Francisco, parking
• 49:53
  Speaker 1: spots are really tight.
• 49:54
  Speaker 3: That's true.
• 49:55
  Speaker 1: So I'm exposing myself to door ding risk.
• 49:58
  Speaker 4: Ah.
• 49:58
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: Whereas I'm parking on the street, I'm not exposing myself
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: on door ding risk. I might be exposing myself to
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: bird poop risk. which I'm fine with.
• 50:09
  Speaker 2: The street is actually safer.
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: I think so. As long as you're not curb-rushing your wheels,
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: you know, parking too close to the curb, I actually
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: think street parking is way safer. You don't expose yourself
• 50:23
  Speaker 1: to door dings.
• 50:24
  Speaker 4: Here's what I want you to tell them next time
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: you go to the parking garage. Leave mine in the front.
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: Leave it right in the front. Don't put it in
• 50:33
  Speaker 4: the elevator. Leave it right in the front. I'll be
• 50:35
  Speaker 4: back in an hour to come get it.
• 50:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:36
  Speaker 3: That way nobody can touch it.
• 50:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: That's another way to do it.
• 50:39
  Speaker 3: You've earned it.
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You got to pay extra money for that. So upcharge.
• 50:43
  Speaker 3: We'll upcharge.
• 50:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 50:45
  Speaker 3: No dings though.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: No dings.
• 50:47
  Speaker 3: No dings.
• 50:48
  Speaker 2: So you keep, you referenced this a few times as
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: far as like, there's a backdoor way that you found out.
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: Like you said, like the email, if you have an email,
• 50:55
  Speaker 2: you can send a text message for free. You found,
• 50:57
  Speaker 2: that's what you found out. That's like the. Yeah.
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: I found out every like phone number has like an
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: email attached to it.
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: Every phone number has an email attached to it.
• 51:06
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: What's the email? Just a random, nobody knows that email.
• 51:09
  Speaker 2: Like I have a phone number. Yeah.
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: It's like, it's like, um, it's like the format's usually
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: like your phone number at like, and then the carrier email.
• 51:19
  Speaker 1: So for example, if you have like Verizon, it would
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: be like V text or whatever.com your phone number at
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: V text.com. If it's T-Mobile, I think it's like your
• 51:29
  Speaker 1: phone number at T-Mobile mail or whatever. And then if
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: it's like, It's like your phone number at txt.att.net or whatever.
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: So then like every carrier has like this email that's
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: attached to the phone number in that format. And then
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: if you email it, it'll just come through as text.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: And that's how you figured out that we could just
• 51:51
  Speaker 2: have free texting. Yeah.
• 51:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: It doesn't work that way anymore because now we actually
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: get people actual phone numbers and it works like a
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: normal phone now. But back then, that's the very first
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: version of an app. That's how it worked.
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: No, we travel a lot.
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: So I'm wondering now, I got text now on my 17.
• 52:12
  Speaker 4: When I travel to Africa, if I travel to Europe, same,
• 52:18
  Speaker 4: is it international rules apply?
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: How does it work from an international standpoint when I'm traveling?
• 52:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, as long as you have Wi-Fi and internet, the
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: app will work. The eSIM... Won't work unless you're in Canada, US,
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: or Mexico.
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah.
• 52:36
  Speaker 1: But yeah, internationally, all you do is connect to Wi-Fi.
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: The app will work.
• 52:41
  Speaker 3: The app will work.
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: And you can text and call through the app.
• 52:45
  Speaker 4: So almost like WhatsApp, in a sense, where I can text, call,
• 52:48
  Speaker 4: do all those things. I just need to have Wi-Fi.
• 52:50
  Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah. Gotcha.
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: Cat Williams. How did you decide to work with him
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: for the, I believe it's the Way Too Smart to
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: Pay Dumb campaign?
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: Um, I'll be honest. I mean, that's something that I
• 53:03
  Speaker 1: think a mark, you know, marketing team, um, their excellent job.
• 53:09
  Speaker 2: Did you know who he was?
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: Uh, I'll be honest.
• 53:12
  Speaker 2: Not really.
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: I found out about him after we picked him. I'm
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: not like plugged in to pop culture. Um, I kind
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: of joke, you know, cause I'm building my thing. I'm
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: like kind of under a rock, you know?
• 53:27
  Speaker 2: So how much, okay. you say you're under a rock, right?
• 53:32
  Speaker 2: What does that look like? Do you actually have social media?
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: Are you on social media? How many hours a day
• 53:38
  Speaker 2: are you, you know, reading or in front of a computer?
• 53:40
  Speaker 2: Like what's your normal day look like as far as
• 53:43
  Speaker 2: what is your exposure to the outside world and how
• 53:46
  Speaker 2: is your workflow?
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: Um, I mean, like I watched like I'm Canadian. So
• 53:52
  Speaker 1: like my obsession, um, outside of work is like hockey.
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: So I'll like watch like, hockey highlight videos.
• 54:01
  Speaker 3: Leafs? Yeah.
• 54:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:03
  Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah.
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: They had their first, uh, regular season game yesterday. Yep.
• 54:08
  Speaker 2: Um, yeah.
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: So I'll like watch that. Um, and then, and then
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: the rest is just like, yeah, I'll kind of boring.
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: I just read the wall street journal and like stuff
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: like that. I'll read the news.
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: Um, no time for social media.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: I mean a little bit, little bit but most of
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: you look at my social media it's mostly just like
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: hockey content really yeah um and like other sports content
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: too yeah yeah mainly sports.
• 54:39
  Speaker 4: Yeah that makes it that makes a lot of sense
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: i wonder like when you're thinking about i'm under the
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: rock i'm working like what is something that you see
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: in the future that you guys.
• 54:49
  Speaker 3: Don't already have in the tool belt that's like.
• 54:53
  Speaker 4: I'm looking at the space and this is something that
• 54:56
  Speaker 4: I see it's going this way. We need to figure
• 54:58
  Speaker 4: out how to build that for us. You mean like
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: new products, new products?
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 55:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: Um, I mean, that's one thing we really always wanted
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: to build was like a really smart phone service for
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: small businesses.
• 55:20
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: I think small business owners spend a lot of time
• 55:25
  Speaker 1: answering phone calls, talking to customers, delivery customer service, you know,
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: like for us, we're a bigger company. So we kind
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: of have the luxury of like, you know, bigger company having,
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: being able to divide and conquer, right. You know, we
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: got like customer service department and we've got like different departments,
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: but like if you're a small business, you gotta like do,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: you gotta wear like all the hats and do everything.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: And I think it managing customer communication and, customer service
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: i think it's a huge pain point for a lot
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: of like small um small business custom small businesses so
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: i think we have an incredible opportunity to provide a
• 56:03
  Speaker 1: bunch of tools for them to be more efficient.
• 56:06
  Speaker 4: Yeah i'm not i'm thinking envision like i have this
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: small company everybody has their own cell phones i'm assuming
• 56:13
  Speaker 4: but having another cell phone an additional cell phone that
• 56:15
  Speaker 4: is like most people say i have a work phone Right.
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: Are you envisioning like that? Like we'll be that for
• 56:21
  Speaker 4: that additional quote unquote work phone.
• 56:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: Well, on top of that also help.
• 56:26
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 56:27
  Speaker 1: And, you know, help them also get their time back. Um,
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: because we're, we're helping them be more efficient at answering
• 56:37
  Speaker 1: phone calls, knowing what calls are spam. They could ignore
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: knowing that like, oh, like this phone number belongs to
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: so-and-so customer. They called you. already like five times right
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: about this thing so and then have like a summary
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: of like hey you know you have this history with
• 56:56
  Speaker 1: this customer um being able to summarize that um being
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: maybe eventually have it be able to like answer phone
• 57:02
  Speaker 1: calls for you a receptionist um take notes for you
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: right with what the customer wants you're building the algo
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: to do that yeah or yeah i think it's like
• 57:11
  Speaker 1: with ai i think there's a lot of interesting things
• 57:14
  Speaker 1: we could build to just help small business, how small
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: businesses get their time back. So that's something we're thinking about.
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: We talked about the kid phone. So that's something that's
• 57:31
  Speaker 1: also top of mind for us too. Yeah, there's a
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: lot of things like that we're cooking.
• 57:40
  Speaker 2: You said something that made me think about something where
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: I was talking to troy i was um talking to
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: the guy sells solar energy and he was saying how
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: solar energy is one of the few energies that's actually
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: got cheaper over the course of time like 1970 to
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: have solar power your home it was like a thousand
• 57:59
  Speaker 2: dollars a month now you can do it for 200
• 58:01
  Speaker 2: a month because nobody really had it in 1970 right
• 58:05
  Speaker 2: and it was it was so involved now that more
• 58:10
  Speaker 2: and more people are getting it, it's becoming a lot
• 58:12
  Speaker 2: easier for the install. So it's actually, the cost is
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: going down. When you really think about it, that should
• 58:18
  Speaker 2: be true for any level of technology, right? Because I
• 58:20
  Speaker 2: just looked and the phone bill in 2006 was $ 44
• 58:23
  Speaker 2: a month. Today, the average phone bill is $ 120 to
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: $ 140 a month. That's a 175 to 200% increase. But
• 58:26
  Speaker 2: technology has gotten more efficient. So In reality, the phone
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: bill should actually be even cheaper. So why don't we
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: have a question why our bills keep going up if
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: more and more people are coming to the ecosystem and
• 58:47
  Speaker 2: the technology is becoming more and more efficient? What's the
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: justification for it to be extremely, because that's not even
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: like a small increase. That's almost 220% increase, right, in
• 58:59
  Speaker 2: 20 years. That's a pretty extreme increase. Why is it
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: going up if the technology is getting better?
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: I mean, to be honest, there's no justification. for it.
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: But nobody ever asks the question either. That's the thing too, right?
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: We just pay our cell phone bill. We never really
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: think about it from that standpoint.
• 59:19
  Speaker 1: From an economic standpoint, I think if you want to
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: break it down, it has to do with consolidations.
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: Of companies. Yeah, yeah.
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: Like a lot of telecom companies merged, they merged or
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: they get bought by bigger ones. And as more of
• 59:38
  Speaker 1: them consolidate, there's less players competing in the same market.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: And when there's less players competing for business in the
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: same market, those fewer people have more power to compete.
• 59:55
  Speaker 1: whatever price is high to whatever they want.
• 59:57
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah you only got like a few options.
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah i mean you know like think of all the
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 1: companies that got you know bought recently right even like
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: you know for example one one recent example is like
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: boost boost mobile right um it doesn't you know not
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: independent anymore um.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 3: T-mobile bought sprint sprint doesn't exist.
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: So there's just some examples of just like so much
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: consolidation in the industry has probably contributed to prices going up.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 4: And they'll probably use it from their standpoint. They're going
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: to say, well, we had to expand on infrastructure. So
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: when we went to broadband, that costs money. You want
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: to go from 3G to 4G, that costs money. 5G
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 4: costs money. Then they'll say, the other part is that
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 4: they're passing on costs because when they buy from tech companies,
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 4: let's say it's Apple, they're buying those devices in bulk
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 4: and they're subsidizing it and they're saying, how are we
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: going to pay for this? We're going to add that
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: into a bill and nobody understands the cost, but it
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 4: just gets added to it, right? Because every year they're
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 4: getting new phones, but they're buying it at a certain
• 1:01:05
  Speaker 4: price and selling it to you at a different price.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 3: Exactly, yeah.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, also at the end of the day,
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 1: it's like most people don't really need 5G. Like, there's
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 1: not a huge difference between 5G and 4G or LTE, right? Like,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 1: your YouTube still works on LTE, right?
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, they'll give us a statistic. It's 10 times more faster.
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: And what does that even mean?
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly. Exactly.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: It's just, again, it's just like a way for them
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 1: to justify charging more. I think it's doesn't really, most
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: consumers don't need that level of performance, right? They, they just,
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: they're just, you're just texting and calling your friends and
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: family and then scrolling TikTok and as long as it loads,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: you know, like I think coverage matters more than, than
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 1: whether it's 5g or LTE or whatever.
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Um, what do you, From a health standpoint, there's been
• 1:02:09
  Speaker 2: a lot of things, especially talking about the 5G. And,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 2: you know, there's all types of things. It's like you
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: should cut your Wi-Fi off when you're at night, when
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 2: you're at home. You shouldn't sleep next to your phone.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 2: It could, you know, microwave your brain. What are your
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 2: thoughts on the power that our phone has from a
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 2: health standpoint on us?
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: I'll be honest. I don't know much about the... the
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 1: effects of like the, the, the, the radio waves or
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: anything like that. But I do think like the, like
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: the screen time, it's like a pretty big issue. Like,
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: like in general, um, there's a lot of like addicting
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 1: apps on our phone. So it's like, I feel like
• 1:02:58
  Speaker 1: that's just like a general issue now. It's just a
• 1:03:01
  Speaker 1: lot of people are hooked on their phones. It's like crack.
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Especially for kids. You know, recently there was like that
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: ruling against Meta. So I think that's just like a
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: trend of just like, you know, just us trying to
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: figure out like as society, like how do we handle
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 1: that problem? I don't think anyone's figured that out yet.
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 4: We got 10 monthly, 10 million monthly users.
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 4: What's the pathway to get into 20? Like how do
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 4: we get there?
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Um, I think it's really simple. Um, you know, since
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 1: the beginning of time, we've just been, our goals always
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 1: has been to just figure out how to give people
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 1: more for less. You know, we started out with just
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 1: only free texting and then we figured out how to
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: give people free calling. And then now we're trying to
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: figure out how to give people free data. Uh, we're
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: trying to figure out how to make the data cheaper.
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: So we're always just always trying to figure out how
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: to give people more for less. And as we just
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: continue to do that, yeah, that's how we grow.
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: So would you look at your company right now as
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: a compliment to the major providers or a potential replacement
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 2: for the major providers?
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: It's both. It's both. If you're already using a major provider,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 1: you can use us as your second phone line. A
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: lot of people could use a second phone line A
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: lot of people have multiple email addresses. They have the
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 1: Rook email, the personal email. They have their other email.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: So why not have multiple phone numbers? I think that
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: just makes sense.
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 2: Especially if you're running a business.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: Especially when you're.
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 3: Running a business.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: I think that's really important when you're running a business
• 1:04:54
  Speaker 1: that people don't have your personal phone number. Because when
• 1:04:57
  Speaker 1: you're with your family or whatever, you could just send
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: the other phone number to a voicemail.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: So if I want to make a call from my other,
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: I just go on the app and I make a
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: phone call from there? Yeah. That's, that's how it gets
• 1:05:07
  Speaker 2: that number. Yep. Exactly.
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: Yeah. And then, yeah. And then I think there's a
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: lot of folks that.
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 2: How do I know somebody's calling? Like somebody's calling me, right?
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 2: How do I know that they're calling the business line
• 1:05:19
  Speaker 2: and not the personal line? If it's the same phone.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: On your lock screen, it'll show like.
• 1:05:24
  Speaker 2: Say text now?
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: Text now on it.
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Okay.
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah. When the incoming call comes.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah.
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 2: So you answer it from the business. Hello. This is
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: as opposed to hello. This is John Doe. This is hello.
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 3: This is a whole different voice. Hey, how are you
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 3: doing today?
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: He got your professional. Hello. He got your, what up?
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 3: What'd it do?
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: And then, and then for folks that just want something
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 1: that's free or cheaper or whatever, also we could, yeah,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: we could also replace your, your carrier line as well.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: Right.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of people that are juggling
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: a lot of expenses. So like, Maybe it's like, hey,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: maybe you are stuck between, hey, do I pay for
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: food or do I pay for my phone bill? If
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: anybody is in that situation, then you don't have to
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: worry about that. You could choose not to pay for
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: your phone bill.
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 2: And if you have a family plan, you guys have
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 2: family plans? No.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: Okay.
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 4: No.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 2: Okay.
• 1:06:29
  Speaker 1: No.
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 2: Well, what I'm saying is that if somebody is paying
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 2: for multiple phones, now that cost savings, like if they
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 2: have text now on every single phone, right? Now, instead
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: of dropping maybe $ 80, now it's like $ 300 that's being saved. Right, right, right.
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: Across the family. Right.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: Well, you can get the whole family on text now.
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying. Yeah. If the whole family's on
• 1:06:50
  Speaker 2: text now, now everybody's bill goes down.
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 1: That's true.
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 2: So now it's a bigger group savings. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:07:00
  Speaker 1: Also, you know, not everybody in your family may need
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: a data plan, right? Maybe you're paying for your kid's
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: phone plan. Maybe you're paying for grandma or grandpa's phone plan,
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 1: but they don't really use all the data, right? Get
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 1: them on text now and then you'll, you're safe paying
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: for their phone plan, right?
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 4: It's true. I just updated my parents' phone. They're on
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 4: the same plan and their plan was so old that
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: it doesn't even exist anymore. So they had to upgrade
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: to a newer plan.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 4: Because, you know, they were like, hey, the data is
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 4: getting used at a faster rate.
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 3: This is all nonsense. But I'm thinking to myself, they
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 3: don't even need data. They're home most of the day. Exactly.
• 1:07:45
  Speaker 4: They're on Wi-Fi most of the day. And they're not
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 4: using it. And they're only calling and texting a few
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 4: people in life.
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 3: Yeah. But I still got to pay this.
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: I think it was like $ 112 for both of them now.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:07:56
  Speaker 1: You can pay zero.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 3: Zero is a lot better.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 1:08:02
  Speaker 2: Well, thank you. Thank you for your time. Tell the people,
• 1:08:06
  Speaker 2: you know, the Instagram for TexNow and how to download
• 1:08:10
  Speaker 2: the app and any information.
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, at TexNow and yeah, search TexNow in the app store.
• 1:08:16
  Speaker 1: Check us out at TexNow.com.
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 4: Yeah, that's what happened, man. And check out our series, man.
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 4: Outsmart the System with TexNow. Make sure y'all go check
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 4: that out. Dope content.
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: All right, guys. We'll see you next week. Peace.