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Masters in Business: Stockwits Howard Lindzon (Audio) · Masters in Business

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: This is Masters in Business with Barry rid Holts on
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  Speaker 1: Bloomberg Radio. Welcome to the podcast this week. I'm Barry
• 0:10
  Speaker 1: rid Holtson. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
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  Speaker 1: This week. I have an old friend in as a guest,
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  Speaker 1: Howard Lindzen, who has a storied background in the world
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  Speaker 1: of angel and venture investing. I know Howard for a
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  Speaker 1: good couple of years, primarily from his time when he
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  Speaker 1: was running the stock Twits network, which was the largest
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  Speaker 1: financial social network out there, as well as a number
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  Speaker 1: of other investments that he's made over the years that
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  Speaker 1: I've been familiar with in the technology space. Howard is
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  Speaker 1: a Canadian, so that makes him nicer than most people,
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  Speaker 1: but also gives him a slightly different perspective on how
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  Speaker 1: things are here in the States. And and we've seen
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  Speaker 1: a number of different Canadians like Howard and Paul Couldraw,
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  Speaker 1: you know, there's such folks come down from Canada and
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  Speaker 1: just you know, have a slightly different perspective which lets
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  Speaker 1: them see things a little bit differently. And I think
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: you'll find this and amusing and interesting conversation with no
• 1:13
  Speaker 1: further ado. Here's my conversation with Howard Linson. This is
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  Speaker 1: Masters in Business with Barry Ridholts on Bloomberg Radio. My
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  Speaker 1: guest this week is Howard Linsen, entrepreneur, angel investor, hedge
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  Speaker 1: fund manager. What what else can we add to your curriculum?
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  Speaker 1: Vitae married nineteen years, two kids, two dogs, two kids,
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  Speaker 1: two dogs. I get my best ideas from the dogs
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  Speaker 1: and the kids. You know. I read somewhere that your
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  Speaker 1: hobbies are driving your kids around and staying awake, and
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  Speaker 1: I will save the answer to what that actually means
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  Speaker 1: till till later. So let's talk a little bit. Remind me,
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  Speaker 1: resumet and sleep are two big absolutely, So let's talk
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  Speaker 1: a little bit about your background. You grew up in Canada,
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  Speaker 1: in Toronto, and then not like it's like New York
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  Speaker 1: considered Canada, Montreal's Canada, Yukon territories as Canada. So you
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: don't think growing up north of the border impacted the
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  Speaker 1: way you view the economy, economic activities, and technology. Good question.
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  Speaker 1: I think Toronto's boomed for so long that I don't
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  Speaker 1: think we were subject to some of the some of
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  Speaker 1: the stuff that probably happened in the United States. Tront
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  Speaker 1: has just been in such a long boom. Maybe it's
• 2:36
  Speaker 1: because they couldn't leverage themselves. I feel the city has
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  Speaker 1: become like in l A without an ocean. So I'm
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  Speaker 1: not I'm not barish on Torona. I don't like it
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  Speaker 1: as much as I used to in it. But I
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  Speaker 1: moved away when I was young. I moved to Arizona
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  Speaker 1: when I was nineteen. So but you still effectively grew
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  Speaker 1: up north of the border. Oh yeah, I grew up
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  Speaker 1: love the city. All my friends were there. I grew
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  Speaker 1: up in a wealthy neighborhood, so I was lucky. Uh
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  Speaker 1: And so maybe I just didn't see the differences as
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  Speaker 1: much as you know. We grew up watching CBS affiliates Buffalo.
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  Speaker 1: We saw Buffalo burn during the seven News. Everybody was
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  Speaker 1: burning down Buffalo. Cheek to Wauga, Tonawanda. Those our news
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  Speaker 1: in Buffalo. And the Bills. We were bills, and I
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: don't know we were bill. So you moved to Arizona.
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  Speaker 1: You get an undergraduate degree in Canada, graduate degree in
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  Speaker 1: UM the United States? How did you find your way
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  Speaker 1: to angel technology investing? The I came out of a
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  Speaker 1: school called Thunderbird right after the Gulf War, whose logo
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  Speaker 1: looks like it's right from the trans never really cared
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  Speaker 1: about my degree, never mattered to mean, that's worthless. That
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  Speaker 1: logo looked it was right off of the Transformers movie.
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  Speaker 1: It was right off the Transfort So the dean was
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  Speaker 1: Optimus Prime and and I didn't know. They went why
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  Speaker 1: how does the school go bankrupt? How mismanaged is their endowment?
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  Speaker 1: They just college doesn't have TARP. That's why to go bankrupt.
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  Speaker 1: There you go no bailouts. But there's no bailout from
• 4:03
  Speaker 1: Howard's graduate school. Listen, it was a dual degree with
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  Speaker 1: a s U and Thunderbird, which is not So it's
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  Speaker 1: a good question. I don't know, because you could give
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  Speaker 1: yourself a doctorate if they don't assist anymore, you could
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  Speaker 1: promote yourself. I gotta be honest. Is this a funny story?
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  Speaker 1: The But I'll go quickly because there's more important things
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  Speaker 1: to talk about. I think I had missed two classes
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  Speaker 1: and we were in a fight over whether my degree
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  Speaker 1: was there. I waited a couple of years, walked in
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  Speaker 1: really dumb and asked for my degree one time, and
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  Speaker 1: they gave it to me. So I do have that degree.
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  Speaker 1: But more importantly, I don't know I think it's still
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  Speaker 1: I don't know. I you know, I don't I know.
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  Speaker 1: I have the most Twitter followers because they invited me
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  Speaker 1: to school. They never liked me, but I got invited
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  Speaker 1: social I got the claim to fame. The dean called me,
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  Speaker 1: who's now a George Mason who was a really good
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  Speaker 1: guy to President Angel Cabrera, not the baseball player, And
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  Speaker 1: uh he called me one day, goes, oh, we're very
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  Speaker 1: interested in social media and you are the so so
• 5:02
  Speaker 1: how did you become the man? How? Let's start first,
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  Speaker 1: how did you find your way to angel investing? Yeah?
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  Speaker 1: What a? What a? What a? First of all, very
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  Speaker 1: I think a lot of angel investing is uh, first
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  Speaker 1: of all passion. Second of all, it's no different than
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  Speaker 1: anybody with domain expertise, little luck, little passion um. But
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  Speaker 1: that's how do you be successful once you're there? Okay,
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  Speaker 1: how do you go from I'm a business major? Two,
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  Speaker 1: I have an idea. Why don't I seed a bunch
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  Speaker 1: of startups? Well? I only seeded one. I graduated. I
• 5:33
  Speaker 1: was illegal in the States. It was hard to work.
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  Speaker 1: I didn't have it was the Gulf War we had.
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  Speaker 1: And do you want to graduate from school? Uh? The
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  Speaker 1: country was at war. I was um. It was a recession.
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  Speaker 1: You had Charles keating, Phoenix was a mess s and
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: l Christis was the center of the mess. And you
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  Speaker 1: know I the only job I could get was as
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: a stockbroker for the Principal Group, which became Eppler became
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: many things. Principal Group. Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. But when
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: I was doing I was cold calling. It was the
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: only job I could get. They sponsored me and I
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: cold called this kid Mark scatter Day and he had
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: invented a product called the grip. It was a stress
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: ball to two meetings later, I realized he didn't have money,
• 6:18
  Speaker 1: so I wasn't gonna get him as a client. But
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: I had invested in twenty five grand hard during twenty
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  Speaker 1: five grand, I went to my dad's and Dad backed me.
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  Speaker 1: We got this great product. Blah blah blah. He asked
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  Speaker 1: for a business plan. It's a business plan. This is
• 6:29
  Speaker 1: just yeah, this is just a home run product. Come on,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: and uh, Unfortunately was probably one of the last times
• 6:35
  Speaker 1: I talked to my dad. So you failed backwards into
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: through through this product in events are investing exactly. This
• 6:43
  Speaker 1: product became the pet Rock. It's in the QBC Hall
• 6:46
  Speaker 1: of Fame. Uh. It was giant success, giant success, forty
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  Speaker 1: million in revenue. Um really got me going in my
• 6:54
  Speaker 1: hedge fund world because Mark and I had all this
• 6:57
  Speaker 1: cash to manage, and the nineties were point what a
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: boom time. It was roll up city and UH in
• 7:03
  Speaker 1: our business, which was the specialty business, it became you know,
• 7:07
  Speaker 1: I had learned about roll ups. I learned about the
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: healthcare indstory, fight Corps and all these uh healthcare roll
• 7:14
  Speaker 1: ups if you can remember. And it was a bullmarket
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  Speaker 1: of like a epic proportions in the night. It was
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: a low vall bowl market, and I thought I knew
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  Speaker 1: what I was doing. It was just a good lucky
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  Speaker 1: first Angel investment. And really the core of that Angel
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  Speaker 1: investment was, oh my god, this is the best product
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  Speaker 1: I had ever felt. Earlier, I used a quote of
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: yours and I want to repeat it. And have you
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: explained it a little bit? You recently said in print
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  Speaker 1: There's never been a better time to build the business
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  Speaker 1: in America than today. Explain I say it every time
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  Speaker 1: I get asked. November my favorite, the best time I
• 7:51
  Speaker 1: ever said it was in front of a bunch of
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: Canate Torontonians and two after I'd sold wall Strip and
• 7:57
  Speaker 1: it was the crash VIX was a hundred. I posted
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: a chart to the SMP on the VIX and I said,
• 8:01
  Speaker 1: what are you people doing watching me? You should be
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  Speaker 1: a building a business. That's really when I started plunking
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  Speaker 1: down a lot of my money. But today I say
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: the same thing. Here's what Well, let me just back up.
• 8:12
  Speaker 1: Wall Strip was one of your earlier investments. It was
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: a satirical um sort of like the Daily Show for finance,
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  Speaker 1: only online and three to five minutes segments. You had
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: lindsay correct, Libell threw was terrific, right, and um you
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  Speaker 1: sold that to CBS for a nice jump to change. Yeah,
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  Speaker 1: we started six months. I cold called Fred Wilson, who
• 8:35
  Speaker 1: would backed Cramer at the Street dot com. Fred gave
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: me my first fifty K, introducing me to a bunch
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: of other vcs. I used the term loosely because they
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: all invested without meeting me. Twenty five Grand Brad Feld,
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: Mark Pinkas. It was a who's who at the maybe
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: not at the time on Fred's phone call, the funniest
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: being Mark Pinkas, who said no at first and said
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: tell Fred to stop giving up my phone number. Mark
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: went to under starred Zinga but he it has been
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: a big success. But he did invest, but never really
• 9:03
  Speaker 1: give me any at kudos. Marks a pretty tough kid.
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  Speaker 1: So but so by the way, Fred Wilson runs at
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: hopefully we get him in here, hopefully we so. So
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: just a little background, Fred runs Venture from my mentor.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: He started Union Score Venture, which has been wildly successful.
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: I would say the best East Coast media VC of
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: all time. Right and after he's made people enough money
• 9:28
  Speaker 1: at a certain point, he calls up and says, hey,
• 9:30
  Speaker 1: I'm putting some money into this throw or fifty and
• 9:33
  Speaker 1: most people don't even He looked at it as an
• 9:35
  Speaker 1: art project. Obviously YouTube it just started. We had chatted
• 9:39
  Speaker 1: on his blog for a long time. I never really
• 9:41
  Speaker 1: needed anything. I was taking ideas from him. Term sheets.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Had to build a term sheet. This was you know,
• 9:45
  Speaker 1: this was my way into the into the truly learned,
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: real education. For it was Fred the school. Fred was
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: this is who's going to pay the teamsters type stuff
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: from Rodney Danger Phil. So I would cut and pay
• 9:59
  Speaker 1: stuff from their blog and build term sheets. And I
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: was so grateful. And there's oh five and the uh
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: when I saw YouTube. I said, it's time to disrupt them.
• 10:07
  Speaker 1: See let's build a show reverse it cramer, a female
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: cramer that there's nothing about the markets. Let's see if
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: we can educate her and teach her about trend Following
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: Fred plunked down, we put our first show on online.
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: It was really funny. The Apple Show was the original show.
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: It was like, let's get long Apple. Obviously continue to
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: be long Apple probably a probably about twenty bucks counting
• 10:28
  Speaker 1: for oh now it splits, it's probably like six bucks,
• 10:32
  Speaker 1: five six bucks, So home run idea. We covered Nike
• 10:35
  Speaker 1: next to Paul Day's companies that I felt. The idea
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: was stocks making all time highs that I felt were
• 10:41
  Speaker 1: in trends that were everlasting. Obviously what not quite ever lasting,
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: but long long lasting, everlasting themes. But the point is, yeah,
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: trying to find companies that you didn't have to day trade.
• 10:52
  Speaker 1: So uh. We raised six hunder grand sold to CBS
• 10:55
  Speaker 1: for five million in six months. Now, so I became
• 10:59
  Speaker 1: a little bit of a almost ten x and six
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: times that came a little bit of a celebrity. So
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: that was kind of the fun little interlude to started
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: parlaying that money into Angel investment. The comment, there's never
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: been a better time to build. Here's here's here's what
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I said. Go ahead. In nineteen eighty when I started
• 11:18
  Speaker 1: a company, it was you had to spend three grand
• 11:20
  Speaker 1: on a box, just a box. To get a telephone
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: in your room, you had to spend a rent with
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: your name on it. You had, um, you had. You
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: had to buy PCs for four or five grand. Uh.
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: It was just ridiculous. Today you do it at Starbucks
• 11:36
  Speaker 1: with the laptop that you can let your parents you Now,
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: anybody can start a product. The other thing is number
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: one way to get into business by yourself, to start
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: a franchise. Right, Okay, so so even today, UH to
• 11:48
  Speaker 1: toot one of my portfolio companies. We you know, with
• 11:51
  Speaker 1: Lending Club going public and on Deck Capital going public.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Now we're going to see the verticalization of these platforms
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: were getting money. I invest in a company called apple
• 11:58
  Speaker 1: Pie Capital, which helps franchise e s UH crowdsource money
• 12:02
  Speaker 1: to open their first UH franchise operations. So the franchise
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: ors are now because the banks aren't lending going on
• 12:09
  Speaker 1: these platforms or someone being apple poecat like a kick
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: Starter for angeling starter but in a very specific niche
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: of franchisees. Yeah, which is business in America. It's the
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: it's the it's the pulse of America. Fran I want
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: to open to McDonald's saying McDonald's because we're not doing
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: business with me yet. But companies in the Midwest, whether
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: they're like this big jewelry franchise or a pizza franchise
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: where it's approven franchise, if you follow the instructions, you
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: can make the money. Uh, and they can't. Banks can't
• 12:36
  Speaker 1: fund them. So now you know that's a great yield
• 12:39
  Speaker 1: type play for institutions. So put two hundred thousand across
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: a diversified portfolio of franchises. So when I say never
• 12:47
  Speaker 1: been a better time to start a business, you go
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: start a franchise company right now. A business you can
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: go start, You go get a job anywhere you've got
• 12:54
  Speaker 1: Craigslist LinkedIn. Uh, there's no excuse not to be able
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: to just show up at a company and just approve yourself. Yeah,
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: you can go learn to code for thirteen grand and
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: one of these private schools and Nila, build a game.
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: Build I'm not saying you have to go build something
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot more skills and marketing and sales
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: and getting your first customers and figuring out all that
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: to do. But you can get your skills free. You
• 13:16
  Speaker 1: get your skills for basically free. It's more than just
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: the basic technology, it's everything that surrounds coming up with
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: an idea, making it sellable, and then doing everything surrounding
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: it beyond the technology. And you can do this while
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: you have a job. So, I mean, you know, I
• 13:30
  Speaker 1: always recommend people don't take the leap until you really
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: are committed to being an entrepreneur. A lot of people
• 13:35
  Speaker 1: call themselves entrepreneurs. I think we're at a stage where
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of entrepreneurs. There's these people that you know,
• 13:41
  Speaker 1: have a job, they think they have another business. You
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: don't have a business until you're doing it full time.
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: You're not committed. Uh no real investors going to give
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: you money if you haven't taken the leap away from
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: or at least guys like me aren't. But um, you know,
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: it's never been a better time to take that leap
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: to do research. All these things that used to be
• 13:59
  Speaker 1: behind needs now in the wall are now there. Uh.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: Your phone is forty bucks a month, eighty bucks a month.
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: That is your your your business. You've got relate i Q.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: You can go build a CRM product, you go use
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: a CRM product on your own, start your business Gmail,
• 14:14
  Speaker 1: relate i Q. That sounds like it's all very straightforward stuff,
• 14:19
  Speaker 1: not a lot of out of pocket cost. One of
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: the things I wanted to talk specifically about today. You know,
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: we always hear about the the idea, here's a world
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: changing idea. But as an investor in startups, I want
• 14:32
  Speaker 1: to throw five bullets out and you tell me what's important,
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: what's less important, what's not important? The founders, the idea,
• 14:41
  Speaker 1: the technology, the business model, or the valuation. What are
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: those things matter most? I see them and getting so
• 14:48
  Speaker 1: I would throw out a technology doesn't not important, Well
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: I don't think so. So over the tech behind Uber
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: not significant doesn't work unless there was Google Maps. That's
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: theoretically it's not even their technology. Well it is, but
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: I mean you gotta blend it with Google Maps. Where
• 15:03
  Speaker 1: would over show up? They wouldn't know where to show up.
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: So you know, I can talk about that with all
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: the things that I do. You know, a mashing just
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: like speech up. So I think Tommy domain expertise in
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: the founders matter. You know, I'm forty nine years old.
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: I'm not writing checks like a surpriad chicken anymore. This
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: gray and prey. I'm looking for founders with domain expertise,
• 15:20
  Speaker 1: because you're gonna have to get You're gonna get hit
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: over the head. There's gonna be false starts, there's gonna
• 15:25
  Speaker 1: be all kinds of issues. I think we're you know,
• 15:28
  Speaker 1: uh still called Valley has been fanatical about these young kids.
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: I think as the market boom matures, uh, you know,
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: having some domain experience matters. So founders matter. The idea
• 15:38
  Speaker 1: obviously matters because with the founders they have to have
• 15:41
  Speaker 1: passion around the idea and some knowledge around the idea.
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: So um, it's a founders first, uh value technology lass
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: valuation second last. Because if the founders are great, the
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: market idea is great, and the idea is great, you're
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: not gonna have that much choice over what the valuation is.
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: My biggest mistakes so far have been in passing based
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: on valuation Twitters and Twitter at twenty million valuation in
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: two thousands and seemed crazy. Luckily, I am an investor
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: through Bitley and tweet Deck and many other companies in
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: that system they bought. They bought some Eyes, which was
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: the search engine of Twitter. So luckily I ended up
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: with a lot of Twitter shares and then a very
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: low profect the same valuation. And I basically tweet deck
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: as well, the same thing. So I backed into a
• 16:32
  Speaker 1: lot of Twitter shares. But and and Twitter inspired me
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: to start stock Twitter, which is now, like you said,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: the largest social network for traders. So founders idea, um,
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: business model matters. I think as we get late in
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: the boom, you gotta have a thought about how you're
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: going to do business. So you now just hinted it.
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: My next question as we get like technology last and
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: valuation last. So here's the other question. So is the
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: startup market frothy? We've been here for five years, Ah,
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: Silicon Valley, it's a bubble, it's this Is it frothy?
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: Does it? Is it? Always? Is this abnormal? Tell us
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: the state of technology investing in Well, like I said,
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: I don't think there's enough entrepreneurs. There's there's Cash has
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: become a commodity. Uh. Platforms to invest, whether it's angel
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: List or Kickstarter or apple Pie Capital or lending Club,
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: have become helped cash become a commodity interest rate to
• 17:24
  Speaker 1: zero or forcing people to invest. So that's where the
• 17:26
  Speaker 1: bubble is. The bubble is in the commodity of cash,
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: I mean bubble cash that they've created another one. Bitcoin
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: capital isn't as valuable as it once was because there's
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: so much. There's so much of it and leields are
• 17:37
  Speaker 1: so low. So don't kid yourself what we are shortage
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: of our great entrepreneurs, but domain experience. Who knows anything
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: about But you go back a kid or to do
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: a blockchain or a bitcoin thing. They may know a
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: little bit about tech, they know nothing about how the
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: regulations work in the industry works. So there's a huge
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: disconnect there. The second disconnect is, you know, there's a
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: lot of great ideas, but good luck finding an entrepreneur
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: the execute soup to nuts on that. Including myself, it's
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: very hard to do that. I haven't turned out to
• 18:03
  Speaker 1: be able to do everything I wanted with stock twids
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: because there's a lot of moving parts to how all
• 18:07
  Speaker 1: these things work and timing in raising the right capital, etcetera.
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: It's a very subtle thing to be a great entrepreneur.
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: And so I'm biased in the sense that my big
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: winds have come from great entrepreneurs. So when we look
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: at when we look at the issue of of the bubble,
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: is this just too much cash taste chasing too few
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: entrepreneurs or do you think this is a full blown
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: bubble that ends the two thousand ended? And no, this
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: is not. I mean, let's let's let's really look at
• 18:33
  Speaker 1: this market. And I see crashes and oil, I see
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: crashes and currencies. I see crashes in Russia, and I say, well,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: you know, the bubbles have never been like this, where
• 18:41
  Speaker 1: this SMP continues to rise through it and race continue
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: to decline. So I would say I went down almost
• 18:46
  Speaker 1: from the peak. I don't I think what we have
• 18:51
  Speaker 1: a bubble in h is this idea of being an
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: entrepreneur and that's dangers. So it's it's not it's you know,
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: similar to nineties and everybody said, hey, I could be
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: a day trader. Similar, exactly similar. And when people thought
• 19:04
  Speaker 1: they could be a day trader, everybody thinks they can
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: start a company. And I'm saying, if you have a
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: good job, don't kiss a goodbye so quickly. And if
• 19:11
  Speaker 1: you don't have a good job, absolutely start looking to
• 19:14
  Speaker 1: build your network. I mean now anybody can build their network.
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: My fund is called social leverage. The whole premise based
• 19:20
  Speaker 1: on financial leverage was a bubble that was the last
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: true bubble and then ended in two thousand eight, and
• 19:26
  Speaker 1: we still are paying the price for that. But social
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: leverage is a brand new boom, and that's people using
• 19:32
  Speaker 1: the networks LinkedIn Twitter, Facebook to accelerate themselves, kind of
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: like the peloton, to accelerate themselves through learning curves, mentorship,
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: what I did with Fred and Brad in terms shoots,
• 19:43
  Speaker 1: and what you can do on stock, Twits and Twitter
• 19:44
  Speaker 1: now to accelerate yourself. I want to talk a little
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: bit about some of the lessons learned from investing. You
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: mentioned earlier you passed on Twitter. That's a giant mess.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: You ended up backdooring into a lot of Twitter shares.
• 19:58
  Speaker 1: But how does one deal with, Hey, this is a
• 20:02
  Speaker 1: good investment and it turns out not to be or
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: this is a band investment it turns out to be great.
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: What do you learn from that process? What do you
• 20:08
  Speaker 1: take away from that? Oh? You know the number one question.
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: I guess if you're gonna call me a master in business,
• 20:17
  Speaker 1: it would be because it goes down to the basics, right,
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: you can learn all this stuff and textbooks. Um, and
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: I have a kid's fifteen and seventeen. I wonder if
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: I want them even go into business school because it
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: really comes down to pie, right, how do you slice
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: the pie? And then it comes down to foundation. How
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: do you structure the company? You know at the beginning,
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: because the mistakes you make at the beginning over those
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: simple things of understanding how you're splitting up a pie
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: and what you really own, the type of shares you own,
• 20:46
  Speaker 1: the type of shares everybody else owns, and the way
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: you structure the company. Meaning if then then that, if this,
• 20:52
  Speaker 1: then that you have to assume you've been through this.
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: You have to assume how you're gonna fight with your
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: partners mathematically, you have to assume you're gonna back looking
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: at this cap table. You know all the time this
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: weekend on that exact subject. And I remember saying to somebody, Dude,
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: you're doing this twenty years. You haven't figured out the
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: cap structure is significant. It was, It drives stud paying,
• 21:15
  Speaker 1: it drives all the pain here. I've made so many mistakes,
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: meaning the capitalization structure, who owns? What? What happens when
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: you fight all those basics you're talking. If we're talking
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: masters of business, learn that understand what you own always
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: goes back to understanding what you own. We buy public stocks.
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: I look at public stocks. Is I think, I'm it's
• 21:34
  Speaker 1: the worst piece of paper you could possibly own in
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: a company. Yeah. So I prefer to own the most
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: high momentum, high pe things because they're liquid and I
• 21:43
  Speaker 1: can change my mind. But I'm betting on catalysts, which
• 21:46
  Speaker 1: are products and not people. I'm betting on products and
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: themes at the public company. In public companies the earliest stage,
• 21:54
  Speaker 1: I am trying to control the cap table and make
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: sure everybody understands because my job is as a maestro
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: of all this is making sure the founders have structured
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: themselves right. Uh do they get along? Are they going
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: to get along? How does the cap table look? What
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: are my rights? What are my investor rights? Because those
• 22:11
  Speaker 1: are the mistakes that I've made the most. Do I
• 22:13
  Speaker 1: have follow on rights to what happens if a founder
• 22:16
  Speaker 1: hates another founder? Let me let me interrupt you right here.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: You said, do you learn more from your failures or
• 22:22
  Speaker 1: your success? You don't learn from winning the grip? The
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: grip my squeezeball company. I didn't learn a damn thing.
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: We were smoking cigars, buying cars at lunch, orders were
• 22:31
  Speaker 1: coming in over the fax machine. Gross margins. You don't
• 22:34
  Speaker 1: learn from having gross margins. You learn from having tem
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: percent gross margins. Going the hell am I doing with
• 22:40
  Speaker 1: teen percent gross margins? Shut this business down? Uh? So
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: I can say that all my growth has come from failure. Uh,
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: it's painful. I don't recommend it. I don't think you
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: have to have failure. I mean the grip was the grip.
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: I should have just retired and and done nothing. But
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: what what are then we wouldn't be having this conversation.
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: So what are your biggest failure and what were the
• 23:01
  Speaker 1: lessons from those? The biggest failures I have and you
• 23:04
  Speaker 1: can get specific. Yeah, I mean it's just putting myself
• 23:07
  Speaker 1: in business with the wrong people and not really understanding
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: the business that I myself was involved. And I was
• 23:12
  Speaker 1: in a brokerage business in the late nineties. I thought
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: it was a great idea, as a hedge fun guy
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: to own my brokerage to cut my commissions. I got
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: myself in bed with a nastack guy who I thought
• 23:23
  Speaker 1: it was the right guy to be in business with.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: And let me just tell you, I didn't understand what
• 23:28
  Speaker 1: a broker dealer really how much trouble you could get
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: yourself into at a broker dealer. Long story short. He
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: was putting winning accounts in his personal account and and
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: bad and bad winning trades in his personal account, bad
• 23:40
  Speaker 1: trades in the air. How do you that it was
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: impossible to discover their Stearns never called him out on this,
• 23:48
  Speaker 1: and then ran up a six million dollar air account.
• 23:50
  Speaker 1: I would say that was a local six and you
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: know the power by arbitration, so I couldn't even really win.
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: And then nine eleven happens, of course, and most are
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: counts are a few thousand dollars five rand max. And
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: we bought, we bought a little too much of this
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: and moved against us client argues about the price and
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: your that's insane. It was insane. It was the worst. Yeah, yeah,
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: and he dollar fine still works at a hedge fund. Criminal.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: You know, the sec is so broken. The NS used
• 24:24
  Speaker 1: to trust them. When we started stock Twits, we went
• 24:27
  Speaker 1: at a disadvantage because I said, you know what, I
• 24:28
  Speaker 1: don't want to be a broker dealer. You know, I
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: could probably build a big business if I was actually
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: in charge of the trades. But you know, I've just
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: tried to figure out how to do business without even
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: getting myself involved with FINRA, an E s D and
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: the N s D. Uh they're sloppy. Uh. They don't
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: work for the people that matter. Uh. They work for
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: the wealth and they work for the wealthy. It's just broken,
• 24:49
  Speaker 1: you know. So combat struggled with disrupting this this industry
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: because they don't. Google don't even want to be involved
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: the one industry. Google doesn't really want to put it
• 25:00
  Speaker 1: himself involved in his money, and actually that is Google
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: is the smartest people in the world. All they do
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: is feed brains and they go, you know what, let's
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: avoid the N s D, SEC and FINRA because you
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: know what they're they're wild cards. They're the worst part
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: of the government. That's really fascinating you. I know you personally,
• 25:17
  Speaker 1: I don't know these people. I know, I know you're
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: friendly with Mark Cuban. When we did the interview with Mark,
• 25:23
  Speaker 1: you're basically quoting from his playbook. He went off on
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: a on a jihad for ten he has more reason. Right,
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: I was involved criminal. They didn't mean no wrong. The
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: finn run any s D, I, like an idiot, take
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: full responsibility for not understanding what I was doing. I
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: wasn't a criminal. I was involved with the criminal. So
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: this is a different reason. I just look at it
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: as like Google, the greatest company we've ever seen, refuses
• 25:51
  Speaker 1: to challenge Bloomberg or the or nasdak cme the market
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: makers are the biggest market maker in the world. I
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: don't think with the sec and finright, we want to
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: be we don't want to go there. That is how
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: I would decide that. That's the difference between East Coast
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: and West coast. And that's why nastac that story. That's
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: why it's still combat. But it's coming, man, it is coming.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: And by the way, there's end a rounds with bitcoin
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: in the blockchain. Uh. Google's an investor with me and
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: robin Hood and many financial startups. Now they're getting so
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: buch sort of financial startups. Data Fox, which is kind
• 26:20
  Speaker 1: of like a which I'm an investor company. No, no, no,
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: it's just a way to organize private company information. So
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: it's kind of like a NASDAC for private companies. That's interesting,
• 26:29
  Speaker 1: very interesting. Uh, they're involved in robin Hood with me,
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: which is a broker dealer, a mobile broker deal I
• 26:35
  Speaker 1: call it the Uber of trading, which is my favorite
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: startup at the moment. They are involved in Lending Club,
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: They're involved in Uber, they are involved in uh so
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: many financial startups that you don't know, and Uber being
• 26:48
  Speaker 1: and Lending comb being two of the biggest ones. So
• 26:50
  Speaker 1: they're backdooring into this space. They're they're buying their time patiently,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: and uh you know, it's going to be exciting next
• 26:57
  Speaker 1: ten fifteen years in finance. I'm very bullish on fintech.
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: So so let's talk So there's fintech, let's talk about
• 27:03
  Speaker 1: a couple of other technologies, wearables, you mentioned bitcoin, nano genomics, biotech.
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: What what space coming down the road is really exciting
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: beyond fintech. Well, they talk about big data and fintech.
• 27:16
  Speaker 1: I think that's a bit of a Bologna maneuver. I
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: think Bloomberg has got a great handle on big data
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: on markets. I think big data as it applies to
• 27:24
  Speaker 1: genetics is obviously the cloud computing. So so all this
• 27:28
  Speaker 1: technology applied to you're seeing the biotech. Nobody understands them,
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: nobody owns them, right, it's been a five year bull run.
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: They were, they've had a huge understand But when people
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: really start owning these things, they're still not talked about,
• 27:43
  Speaker 1: Like on CNBC, BBC still shutters on Fanny May, City
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Bank old analysts that Google Apple, When was the last
• 27:54
  Speaker 1: time they really dug in for months? On biotech it's coming,
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: I'm not that's a bubble. That's the closest we have
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: to a bubble is what is biotech but a time
• 28:02
  Speaker 1: But nobody's talking about biotech. But I'm saying they can
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: double during that last phase. But they've you know, they've
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: definitely had a great run, you know, the leader since
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: the bottom of aile way. The the amazing thing about
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: biotech is any one of these companies can easily put
• 28:18
  Speaker 1: out a billion dollar product if it hits. And the
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: traditional way of putting out a new drug is you're
• 28:26
  Speaker 1: spending three four five million dollars in R and D
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: and but no, you don't have to and and so
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: you buy one dollar. Company could come from biotech. You know,
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: everybody's focused on Apple and Google, but let's face it,
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: it could come from a biotech company. Someone who can
• 28:41
  Speaker 1: help us live to a hundred heart company you know
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: a global company that solves you know, helps me live
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: ten years longer. Uh is could be a trillion dollars?
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: How far off are we to a cure not for
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: cancer with a capital C, but your cancer that we
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: take your genomic reading and identify exactly what we need
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: to do to kill your specific runaway cells that are
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: unique to you. You and I are yeah, I'm a
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: little older. Yes, so we're screwed. But our kids may
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: live till they're hundred very easily. And that goes to
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: why I'm investing in fintech. My kid's generation doesn't like
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: what's retirement. I have a mobile phone, I have have Uber.
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna live till I'm a hundred. You're the idiots.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Uh you know this is uh, this is why you
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: have to rethink how things are done. We have this
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: long Schwab generation, which I'm bullish on Schwab but and
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: I own the stock. But they don't understand how to
• 29:43
  Speaker 1: think like a fifteen year old whose whole life is
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: on a phone. Every message disappears in snapchat, every car
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: is on demand. They can get shows up and then
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Netflix for all my content that is my life and
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: my iPhone or in my droid. So if you think
• 30:00
  Speaker 1: you can understand what's going through a millennial's head, you're
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: just lying to yourself, and that's a beautiful opportunity. I've
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: been speaking with Howard Linson of Social Leverage. He's an
• 30:09
  Speaker 1: angel investor and venture capitalist. If you enjoy this conversation,
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: be sure and check out our podcast extras, where we
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: continue speaking at great length about these and other subjects.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: You can also check out the entire archive of past podcasts.
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: You can find that at Bloomberg dot com or on
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: Apple iTunes. Be sure and follow me on Twitter at Ridholts.
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: Check out my daily blog at Ridholtz dot com, or
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: read my daily column on Bloomberg View dot com. I'm
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: Barry Ridholts. You're listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio.
• 30:46
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Barry Ridholts, and you're
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: listening to Masters in Business on Bloomberg Radio. This is
• 30:54
  Speaker 1: my favorite part where I don't have to worry about
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: reminding you that there are no commercials or anything else.
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: My guest is an old friend today, Howard Lindson, have Aldwie,
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: how weird, how weird? How weird? So I know Howie
• 31:09
  Speaker 1: for a long time. Um, what is it about people
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: like you and Kedroski coming down here from Canada trying
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: to eat our launch here in the States. What he
• 31:18
  Speaker 1: truly he's from Vancouver. That's as opposed to Toronto, which
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: is merely situated across the border. State right, it's the
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: it's I mean, Paul is an academic, a good investor
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: in a smart cookie. Um, I think I think we're explorers,
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: right or anybody who explores, uh is not going to
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: choose the Yukon. They're going to choose California. So a
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: Canadian explorers prefer to come south people better weather, Yeah,
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: more more, You're not just doing oil and timber. And
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: And that was the one guy from my friends that
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: just just wanted to come to the States. I love
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: the desert. I moved to Arizona and now I love
• 31:58
  Speaker 1: the beach. I think a mayor, as a Canadian in America,
• 32:04
  Speaker 1: I look at politics and it disappoints me because we
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: have so much good that we could do, and I
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: just you know, it's been so good to me living
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: in America. With the size of a market, it's always
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: disappointing to see the negative news. I don't watch TV
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: anymore because it's impossible to gauge the negativity. It's just
• 32:22
  Speaker 1: negative two seven. Can I tell you I haven't watched
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: live TV to be fair, and my wife flips on
• 32:30
  Speaker 1: um CBS to get the weather in the morning and
• 32:33
  Speaker 1: when I'm sitting at my desk at four thirty writing
• 32:36
  Speaker 1: the morning commentary. But other than that, we never watch
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: live TV. Watch the watch TV. Any of the top
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: investors if they're watching TV and be shocked, it's either
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: something that I wanted to see that I DV yard
• 32:52
  Speaker 1: or something that I specifically hunted. By the way, so
• 32:55
  Speaker 1: I've used Apple TV. Everything on Apple TV is it's
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: net flicks, put every plus everything else. But where I
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: live up in the Woods, we have Dish instead of cable,
• 33:07
  Speaker 1: and now Dish has Netflix built into them. You're lucky.
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: I'm stuck on Tyre Moarner from the moment. I don't
• 33:13
  Speaker 1: think there's a work. You can move to Dish if
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: you want, you can move to satellite of you. It's
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: like it's like Wells Fargo. I cannot believe what they
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: put me through yesterday with fraud. You know, I'm in
• 33:23
  Speaker 1: New York trying to spend money at Lululu Iman then
• 33:26
  Speaker 1: they've decided my card to stolen despite you purchasing a
• 33:30
  Speaker 1: plane ticket to come to New York City. So I
• 33:33
  Speaker 1: think you talk about big data. That's dumb day small data. No,
• 33:37
  Speaker 1: they can't do small data like pick up the phone.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: They have my cell number, call me uh and then
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: I give Wells Fargo, my name, my social my shoe size,
• 33:46
  Speaker 1: and they asked for my They asked for my Internet online. Yes,
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: some number, would I know? I don't know. Driving in
• 33:52
  Speaker 1: a car trying to spend money at Lulu with your
• 33:54
  Speaker 1: credit card? Can I get my money? No? Can I
• 33:57
  Speaker 1: tell you what I found? Very effective? The systems are okay,
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: this is what makes me bullish. So so never I
• 34:02
  Speaker 1: will do everything I can to talk badly about Wells
• 34:05
  Speaker 1: far going to with TARP money, holding me iron zero interest,
• 34:11
  Speaker 1: holding me hostage while I try to try and spend
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: money in the economy. So we know what. So we
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: have two separate in our house. In our household, we
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: have two separate um JP Morgan Chase accounts. The first
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: one began as the Dime, which was brought by Chemical,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: which was brought by Manny Have and it ultimately ended
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: up in JP Morgan. The second was Washington Mutual, which
• 34:36
  Speaker 1: in the middle of the financial collapse, the fd I
• 34:38
  Speaker 1: c auctioned off to JP Morris. So now all of
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: our cancer JP Morgan, and we we know that we're
• 34:45
  Speaker 1: gonna get this headache. So anytime we travel abroad, we
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: go to Chase and we say, look, we're gonna be
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: in this country or this island, and this isn't fraud,
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: it's us. Hi, here's our I D it's US. So
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: expect from the fifth to the tenth or whatever it is,
• 35:02
  Speaker 1: the first of the eighth, we're gonna be sitting on
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: a beach and here's the hotel, and don't be surprised
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: when you get thinks. So what happens We go to
• 35:09
  Speaker 1: the hotel, give them the card immediately. What bounces back
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: is UM, you have to contact the bank they have
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: a I did this previously, So now what I've started
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: doing is when that happens, I pull out the Amex
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: and then when I don't get the transaction through UM Chase,
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: I then call him up and say, hey, I just
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: want to let you know we dropped ten grand on
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: Amex because you idiots. Despite me saying I'm gonna be
• 35:33
  Speaker 1: on I'm gonna be in this island at this date.
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: And here's the hotel. You still kick the charge back,
• 35:39
  Speaker 1: embarrassing me at the desk, and the m X went
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: right through. Well, they're not embarrassing you, because now that
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: happens to everybody, But it's annoying. You're annoying me if not.
• 35:48
  Speaker 1: And here's what happens. I Meanwhile, I'm I tweet I
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: hate Wells Fargo. What do I get today? A d
• 35:52
  Speaker 1: M or a question from Wells Fargo? Pack the freaking phone.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: Oh no, that's tree twittering. So let me tell you
• 36:00
  Speaker 1: you're gonna do I don't want to talk to them
• 36:02
  Speaker 1: ever again. They're done. So one of the great advantages
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: of working hard in this country and getting lucky a
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: few times is we're in this age where everything's robot.
• 36:09
  Speaker 1: Oh you gotta cut fees. You gotta cut fees. I say,
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: the number one thing you should pay for is financial
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: advice and for I mean obviously gotta find the right
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: financial advice and for service. I just the greatest gift
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: I've ever had is having a uh high net worth
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: Morgan Stanley account. I pick up the phone. Yea, I
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: need a wired that it's done. Okay, I don't care
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: what they're charging me. I just wanted to want it
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: done professionally, on time, on demand. I want my trades
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: done on demand. I want I want to talk to somebody.
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: I don't want to any But one of the benefits
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: of of working hard, that is the difference between the
• 36:51
  Speaker 1: robo advisors and the other robo advisor is geared to
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: be very inexpensive. In my office lift Off, we set
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: up a row Bowl advisor because we have clients that
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: and we have potential clients that don't want to pay that.
• 37:06
  Speaker 1: Not if they're paying, you know, they still think they
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: can call you. And I believe in it at many levels.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: I'm just saying one of the greatest we and we enough.
• 37:17
  Speaker 1: Have you called Amazon to have No, you can't. That's
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: part of the reason it's so an expense. No, I understand,
• 37:22
  Speaker 1: you know, pick up the phone and call PayPal to
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: complain about a mistake, and it can happen. That's why
• 37:27
  Speaker 1: it's so biggest change coming is fintech, Wells, Fargo, all
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: these banks they got their free paths and two eight
• 37:36
  Speaker 1: they maybe they've been unfairly punished, uh and fines would
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: be interesting thing about the fines is it's been a
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: distraction for the banks, and so as much as they've
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: had the cash to pay these things, they the gramlins
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: are loose, whether it's payments or whether it's now transfer wise,
• 37:55
  Speaker 1: it's just raised money. So you can do uh wires
• 37:59
  Speaker 1: inter country without the money ever crossing border genius friend
• 38:04
  Speaker 1: of mine investor Roger in Berg, or whether it's Robin
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: Hood or whether it's bitcoin, or whether it's just Apple Pay,
• 38:09
  Speaker 1: which still is not quite there because the banks are
• 38:12
  Speaker 1: still involved, and so I refused to use it. Well,
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: Apple has all these credit cards to Apple Pay because
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: it could have been exactly what I want them to
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: have a bank. Yeah, I understand they don't want to
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: mean anything to me. Well, they need to do it.
• 38:24
  Speaker 1: And that's so I said about the banking. Google and
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: Apples still have that. That's not what they do, that's
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: not what they're interesting to understand. But there's got to
• 38:31
  Speaker 1: be another There's gotta be something better than seeing the
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Chase logo. I don't want them to see a nickel
• 38:36
  Speaker 1: of my money. I don't trust them. They don't pay me. Uh,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: they waste money on real estate and services that I
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: don't want, so you effectively invented the cash tag on Twitter.
• 38:47
  Speaker 1: It's called the hashtag, it's called the cash. They they
• 38:50
  Speaker 1: have now stolen that idea and called it the cash
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: like it hasn't heard us. We've been growing really fast,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: but you know, it's not something that we felt that
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: we could patent. All they're signed in front of a
• 39:01
  Speaker 1: symbol and was a language that when Twitter started, I
• 39:05
  Speaker 1: was inspired to start to start stock twits. I called
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Fred Wilson. I said, Fred, what do you think? He goes,
• 39:09
  Speaker 1: this is genius, but I can't invest because I first
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: see this is where Fred's genius comes in. He could
• 39:14
  Speaker 1: see the future and say, you know, I'm gonna be
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: in a board meeting a Twitter and they're gonna be like,
• 39:18
  Speaker 1: you know, I just don't wanna I foresee a prom
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: So he passed. But also it was very bullish on
• 39:23
  Speaker 1: the idea. Twitter didn't think it was interesting. So we started,
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: you know, using a couple hundred thousand people, right, it's
• 39:29
  Speaker 1: a lot of half a million people, a hundred thousand
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: regular lunatics. Every month, I've been doing the digging, like really,
• 39:35
  Speaker 1: our training tickers really means something because of our messages
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: today are on just stock twits. They don't see the
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: light of day. On Twitter. Sixty one percent of our
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: messages on a daily basis now have the cash text.
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: So there's really a lot of intent on stock twits.
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: You know, May you may not like day trading, but
• 39:53
  Speaker 1: the traders are the market makers. They are the ones
• 39:55
  Speaker 1: that talk about what's important. So our job is to
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: surface that stuff. But let's get to some questions on
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: stuff that we um we missed earlier. Um, I'm gonna
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: throw some stuff out you and I feel free to
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: go as longer as short as you want on any
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: of these. So we briefly touched on this, but we
• 40:12
  Speaker 1: didn't spend a lot of time on it. What are
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: some of the similarities and differences between startup investing and
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: buying regular stocks? Yeah, one of my favorite subjects. So
• 40:22
  Speaker 1: started a complete opposite the way I look at it.
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: You know, I think I've dropped earlier that if if
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: I'm looking at stock I assume my paper is the
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: worst paper in the world, I wipe my butt with it.
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: I don't want the paper out of one, I don't
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: want the searchs. I just assume everything's corrupt. So when
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: I buy a stock, I think the world's were against me.
• 40:41
  Speaker 1: First of all, I don't care about the information that
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: I'm getting. I have a catalyst in mind. I look
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: at price and volume characteristics of stocks. I like to
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: buy stocks that are at or near all time highs
• 40:51
  Speaker 1: or five year highs, which means that frowned upon the
• 40:55
  Speaker 1: word momentumus, which means that, which means when we're in
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: a correction or sessions and you're just anything well, and
• 41:01
  Speaker 1: I get hurt at the end of a run, and
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: I take my lumps at the end of a run,
• 41:05
  Speaker 1: but you're missing that whole down down, I hope if
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: I'm doing my job right, I'm missing the whole most
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: of it, anything and and and in markets like this,
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: it's been difficult because last February I got stopped out
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: of a lot of things you had pullback in last year,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: and I haven't really found a good my portfolio. I
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: haven't found you know, I've had occasional winds, but it's
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: been choppy and whatever. So you want a trending market,
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: not a range bound sadways, yeah, two steps forward, one
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: step back, everybody gets panicking. I mean, cash is not
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: a dirty word to me. My investors have known me
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: a long time, and I'm patient and I'm busy, So like,
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: I like easy markets, and I don't think we're in
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: an easy market no longer and easy an easy market
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: for bond people because it's been trending for twenty years,
• 41:45
  Speaker 1: but they're not a bond guy. So I've missed that.
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: I definitely have missed biotech. I mean, I don't understand
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: the catalysts, and I don't understand the valuations, and I
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: don't use the products, and I'm too old, so I mean,
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: you can only be an expertise in a few things.
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: So for stocks, I like to keep it simple. I
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: like to understand the catalyst. For me, Nike has been
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: a huge winner. Uh for me, Apple and Google have
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: been huge winners. There's been deep corrections along the way,
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: but I've stuck with them in one um. In the
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: private market is completely different. Private market, all I care about,
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: rightly or wrongly, as the team and the management and
• 42:23
  Speaker 1: the valuation, even the evaluation I said earlier, sometimes it's
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: important to me it matters because I can't get out.
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: I mean, I'm gonna be in this. It's a combination
• 42:32
  Speaker 1: of both. But in the public markets, I want to pay.
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: I want the most liquid securities, right, I want to
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: see in And that matters to me. I don't care
• 42:40
  Speaker 1: about the valuation. I care about can I get out?
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: And the private markets I care. I know I can't
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: get out. So what matters to me is is this
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: management team wanted to get hit in the head for
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: six or seven years, because that's what it takes. You know,
• 42:52
  Speaker 1: now that I've been doing this for six years to
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: Mogil an example, being like, I don't know about twenty
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: I don't know if I want to be in companies
• 43:00
  Speaker 1: that take twenty years. No, No, you you've been doing this, yeah,
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: but I mean I've been in deals now and I
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: have It's like investing in horses, are investing in seeds, right,
• 43:08
  Speaker 1: you have to continually invest in crops to make money, right,
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: because it's gonna be wipeouts. There's gonna be a year
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: of a group of bad investors, are going to be
• 43:17
  Speaker 1: a group where everybody got the technology wrong, and you know,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: so you have to continually place bets. And that's different
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: building the ladder, building an angel investing ladder, I call
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: it a ladder, or I call it crops. You know,
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: you can't be biased. Right, when my investors give me money,
• 43:36
  Speaker 1: it should be for three or four funds. It shouldn't
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: be for one fund because then they're cherry picking. And yeah,
• 43:41
  Speaker 1: they're cherry picking. And technology changes, so you know, the
• 43:45
  Speaker 1: social wave of his past, what's the new wave? You know,
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: I'm not so much doing hardware a wearables um, but
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: I'm more focused on fintech, okay, and I'm learning quickly
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: that I've evolved from social to fintech and even and
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: social right now. But it's a much small or niche,
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: you know. It's you're not going to get billion dollar
• 44:03
  Speaker 1: companies and niches, so you have to accordingly adjust your
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: expectations and evaluations and all that stuff according to the
• 44:11
  Speaker 1: niche that you're in. But I think we're in an
• 44:12
  Speaker 1: era of the mega niche where mega nie. Yeah, we're
• 44:16
  Speaker 1: in China, we chat dominates, Twitter doesn't dominate, or Facebook
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: doesn't dominate, and the rest of the world Facebook dominates,
• 44:23
  Speaker 1: Twitter dominates in certain other areas, LinkedIn dominates. But now
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: we get into the air where with all those networks proliferating,
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: now you've got to focus on drilling deep. Let's talk
• 44:33
  Speaker 1: about linked In a second, Yeah, they're I think they're
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: the best of the of the business networks because I
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: I find that LinkedIn for me personally. Now, obviously you're
• 44:43
  Speaker 1: not hiring, well, we have hired from LinkedIn. The problem
• 44:47
  Speaker 1: is the other eleven months when we're not putting out
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: a request for we need a new setifically, the other
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: eleven months people are just bearing me with resumes that
• 44:57
  Speaker 1: I have no interest in. Hi, can can you be
• 45:00
  Speaker 1: in my network? Now? That person who doesn't listen to
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: you and say you're not if when you're not using
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: a network and people are still hitting you over the head,
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: they're not using the network properly, so they're probably not.
• 45:09
  Speaker 1: Isn't that endemic to LinkedIn and many other networks? It's not,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: but that's the mistake that people make. They make fun
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: of LinkedIn because of that, but they're not understanding that. Really,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: it's really uh the other way scenario. The companies that
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: are hiring are using it like crazy. Can I tell
• 45:25
  Speaker 1: you something? So you have every time we've made a
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: major higher all of our hires have come from Lincoln
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: And if you're a growth company, that's what you live on. Yeah, No,
• 45:34
  Speaker 1: it's terrific. The problem is. So. The nice thing is
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: when you say don't know how to use social, some
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: people will walk up to you on the street and
• 45:42
  Speaker 1: like immediately a costume. Do they know Social? They're idiots.
• 45:46
  Speaker 1: So there's idiots out there, like people know how to
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: use the tools you mentioned as far ago. Ye, they're
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: m when they could have just called me, well, they
• 45:54
  Speaker 1: can't DM me, you're not following, damn me. But they're
• 45:57
  Speaker 1: now publicly embarrassing themselves. Every want to with every now
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: and again, I will be so I take the same
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: train ride back and forth to work every day, and
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: I'm my little Verizon modem which I plug into my laptop,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: which is fantastic because I get basically, i could leave
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: an hour early because I'm working on the train, I
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: mean on the way home, on the way in if
• 46:17
  Speaker 1: I want to come in later. I'm at work at
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: wherever I am with the laptop, and every there's a
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: couple of dead spots. You would think in New York City,
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: perhaps not Manhattan proper, but within the border of New
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: York City, my data service should be flawless. I know
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: we're not Singapore or other countries that have a good infrastructure,
• 46:38
  Speaker 1: but so every now and then I just get so
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: frustrated and I'll tweet about how angry I'm about how
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: terrible VERI Verizon Wireless is. The last time I did it,
• 46:48
  Speaker 1: a T and T Wireless comes at me. If so,
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: I turned to I responded back to them, I go, no, no,
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: I'm with Verizon Wireless because you guys are so awful.
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: I went to that they're the tallest midget in the room.
• 47:03
  Speaker 1: They're the best, but only because the rest of you
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: are so Often if these companies new And by the way,
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: I haven't made a lot of money in my private
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: investing along customer support. So one of my other well
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: my other thing was customer support. When social came along,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: I thought Twitter would be a great customer serce. So
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: we invested in Buddy Media, which got bought by a
• 47:23
  Speaker 1: Salesforce eight d s. Salesforce is an unbelievable company. Unbelievable company.
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: Some people hate the product. But I'm using relate i Q,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: which is the dumb down version that they just played
• 47:36
  Speaker 1: quarterbillion for. It's a great product. Um that changed my life.
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: Semantic act in the eighties change remember that. So I
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: am big believer in contact management and Benny Off running
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: the table. Uh's he's pretty much. This is who Mark
• 47:51
  Speaker 1: Beneof has been on how to choose the table sales
• 47:54
  Speaker 1: t is Salesforce found sales. So luckily for me, they
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: bought four companies of of mine over the years because
• 48:01
  Speaker 1: I believe in customer support as they've got a billion
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: dollars on companies that I was an angel investor, and
• 48:07
  Speaker 1: so I'm very grateful to them. But the media assistly
• 48:10
  Speaker 1: go instant. They've invested in in Bedley, on and on
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: and on, great great vision. For whatever they can't build,
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: they buy um, which a smart way. Here's what corporate
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: America doesn't know. They don't know how to use these tools, right.
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: Why are they not using the They use the tweets
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: when they should be using the phone. They use the
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: phone when they should be using the tweets. They're there's
• 48:33
  Speaker 1: you know what I mean. They don't have instinct. So
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: so I don't want to talk to Verizon or my airline.
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: I want to vent on Twitter. Doesn't mean they shouldn't
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: interrupt my vent. They should listen. And by the way,
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: if they really want to do something, if you really
• 48:47
  Speaker 1: have a voice, don't talk to me, send me ten
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: bucks in a coupon because I'm a good customer, or
• 48:53
  Speaker 1: or asking why you unhappy? Never asked me why if
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: I'm kid? How about fix what's not? I can't, of
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: course they can. They don't want to. You're on the train,
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: You're respected to be done by the time I get
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: into the understand. All they could say is Verizon is
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: a good example. Hey, if I'm complaining about this, put
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: some guy in a train, follow that and see where
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: the weak spots are and throw another damn tower. Okay,
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: but they can that, Hey, we heard you. But they
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: can also win a d M or or at messaging. Barry,
• 49:24
  Speaker 1: I see you know. They know that you have a
• 49:26
  Speaker 1: lot of followers, They know you have a lot of influence.
• 49:28
  Speaker 1: They could easily buy a service that would allow that
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: and send you ten bucks for your aggravation. I don't want.
• 49:34
  Speaker 1: I want the product to work the way it works
• 49:37
  Speaker 1: in Singapore, in London, in Berlin, you go anywhere outside
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: of the United States, the internet is faster and chief
• 49:44
  Speaker 1: the cell phone services. I think you should move. I
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: like Berlin. I enjoy every time I go to Berlin.
• 49:51
  Speaker 1: I have a great time. But probably probably the hippest,
• 49:56
  Speaker 1: hottest city in Europe right and has been for some time.
• 49:59
  Speaker 1: It's also the cheapest of all the European cities outside
• 50:02
  Speaker 1: of Greece. So um, But that's not the issue. The
• 50:06
  Speaker 1: issue is you try a lot of America. What isn't
• 50:09
  Speaker 1: the stats something like one in four Americans have a
• 50:11
  Speaker 1: passport you travel abroad, And even though in many ways
• 50:16
  Speaker 1: we live in a great country, we've allowed a lot
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: of other people, a lot of other countries to pass us.
• 50:22
  Speaker 1: We're the forrest country that had this spectacular national highway
• 50:27
  Speaker 1: system which is now falling into disrepair, and everybody else
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: leapt fraud us because they started twenty thirty years after us.
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: Everything we have is on a relative basis. Are two
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: flaws are uh not keeping our infrastructure up to speed? Tremendous? Okay,
• 50:42
  Speaker 1: so that's number one money wasted on that. We're not
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: helping the poor hare we're helping everybody else. The second
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: thing is education we're taking I look at my kids
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: and in their special kids in my opinion, but they're
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: all thrown in the same funnel to the wider the
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: funnel at the tops getting wider in and the testing
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: gets weirder, meaning more kids are different. Kids have Google today,
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: the testing does well because kids have Google today. To
• 51:09
  Speaker 1: have any test in an era of Google that's the
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: same as twenty years ago is ridiculous. Right, My kid
• 51:15
  Speaker 1: shouldn't be punished for understanding how to use Google. It
• 51:18
  Speaker 1: just changed education and they have It's going to be
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: a decade long understand. But you're asking what the really
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: big issue? And then the third one is banded with
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: I don't understand how country this great can't have the
• 51:28
  Speaker 1: best band with elsewhere. Canswer it true that calls itself
• 51:32
  Speaker 1: democratic and free to be trailering and anything Internet. Well,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: the answer is when you go to Singapore, you go
• 51:39
  Speaker 1: to Hong Kong, the rule is, oh, you want to
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: be an Internet provider. These are the minimum require absolutely,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: and we look at that as a nanny state in
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: the United States. But it's like certain, why right, Sorry, hey, listen,
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: You're free to do whatever you want as long as
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: it's one gigabyte up and down, anything that get to it.
• 51:56
  Speaker 1: Anything less than that, we're not interested. Here's the floor. Now,
• 52:00
  Speaker 1: everybody compete with this floor. Were not that complicated. We're
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: on the same page here. If you give people the tools,
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: the smart people will use them, and the country will
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: explode the peloton situation. Everybody will nothing wrong. I mean,
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: you know, you gotta watch out for the blood doping,
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: and you gotta watch out for the tricks, and you
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: gotta watch up for the criminals, the outliers, and you
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: punish the outliers. You don't, you know, we live in
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: a country where we're not punishing the outliers and we're
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: not encouraging the peloton. So let's you know, and I
• 52:29
  Speaker 1: and I and I and I relate everything to sports
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: because it's pure right. Other than the blood doping. Peloton
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: has been the same since the race started. You the
• 52:39
  Speaker 1: great riders figure out when strategically to break free. But
• 52:42
  Speaker 1: the peloton is the pelotoni United States, our peloton of
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: internet system is behind. Everybody else's behind the keep up,
• 52:49
  Speaker 1: no excuse for that and the money wasted on Why
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: is there not a San Francisco l a train, a
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: bullet train. There is no excuse period. Why can't I
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: get there's no so since mentioned blood doping, let's let's
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the Federal Reserve because um,
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: you you had not a great subject of mind because
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: I don't really understand. But well, but here's the question.
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: So you mentioned earlier rates are at zero. You know
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: ZERP quantitative easing, the FED has tilted the playing field.
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: Let's bring it back to the area of your expertise.
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: With money effectively at no cost, what does that do
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: to start up investing? What does that do to start ups?
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: And how does that change the entire venture market. I
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: think I can talk to that well. I'll talk to
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: first about the markets and my experience lately with the markets.
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: I think that's so good, that too good, But you're
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: not getting a bubble this time. You're getting You're getting
• 53:44
  Speaker 1: really weird behavior because everybody knows it's overvalued, so the
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: game is being played to not be a ninety No,
• 53:50
  Speaker 1: I don't know if everybody knows it's overvalue. The smart
• 53:53
  Speaker 1: money is like very fidgety myself, but that's what I'm saying.
• 53:59
  Speaker 1: It makes it very hard even in a glow interest
• 54:01
  Speaker 1: rate environment. What I'm saying is the market should just
• 54:04
  Speaker 1: be relentless. And although it looks relentless on the SMP,
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: there's been massive rotation because everybody fidgetty trying to find
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: cheap things because it's so crazy out there. So we've
• 54:13
  Speaker 1: avoided the bubble. Because everybody's pulling money out of things
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: as soon as they feel like a bubble into the
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: non bubble idea. So guys who have been in the
• 54:21
  Speaker 1: market for forty year and fifty years, guys like Jeff
• 54:25
  Speaker 1: s Out and Laslow Burrini, and they've all said that
• 54:32
  Speaker 1: this reminds them very much of the early nine eighties,
• 54:36
  Speaker 1: where you had just come off of a sixteen year
• 54:38
  Speaker 1: bear market. The negativity could be cut with a knife.
• 54:42
  Speaker 1: People's muscle memory was, hey, every time there was a
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: pullback and I bought it, it was a rally and
• 54:47
  Speaker 1: I got killed. So this is this is just like
• 54:50
  Speaker 1: we're going back to the crash. But they said it
• 54:53
  Speaker 1: took a full five six seven years after the bear
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: market ended for people to wrap the head around that, hey,
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: this is a different secular market. Even the eight seven crash,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: we still finished the europe one and everybody used the
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: eighty seven. Let me rephrase that. The people who were
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: unwilling to accept that the bear market, oh it was over,
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: use the eighty seven crash as a c I told you,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: But again they missed. They avoided the drop, but missed
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: move up. I try not to think I let the
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: market get me into positions. The private market is interesting
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: because companies that I was investing in an oh ay
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: to two million valuation, those same founders and companies are
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: getting ten to twelve million dollar valuations to start, and
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: so the math really starts hurting. You know that two
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: to twelve You know that's different than the market being up.
• 55:47
  Speaker 1: So so I think that's what makes me nervous. You know,
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: when you're investing in a company that everything can go
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: wrong at a start up phase, right, you know, two million,
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: I'm sure it might have sounded cheap, but it's still
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: like for a company that don't have anything going on,
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: Like I'm still in my head the old guy in
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: the industry where I'm complaining that I can't pay ten
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: million valuation for three kids in a room. But earlier
• 56:08
  Speaker 1: you were saying valuation is your least important thing. It's
• 56:11
  Speaker 1: it's just it's it's just something that I've never gotten
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: comfortable with. That's why Fred Wilson is the best, and
• 56:15
  Speaker 1: I'm just so he's willing to take a chance ignore
• 56:17
  Speaker 1: the value he thinks, like I did with Robin Hood
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: in certain companies. I'm starting to get more comfortable and
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: become a better investor, because if price is the only
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: reason you do not want to do a private investment,
• 56:31
  Speaker 1: you should do that in the public markets. Know, if
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: price is the only reason to not do something, it's
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: also a mistake because you can get liquidity the next day,
• 56:42
  Speaker 1: so price drives every next day. But that we're talking
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: quarters and years, not hours and days. Sure, absolutely, but
• 56:50
  Speaker 1: that's a trade. Not if you don't want to buy
• 56:52
  Speaker 1: Google because you think it's pricey, and and your answer is,
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: but you can sell it tomorrow. Most most people these
• 56:59
  Speaker 1: days is aren't looking at day trade Google. They're looking
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: to buy a tech company. Look at Apple as a
• 57:04
  Speaker 1: perfect example. You know, it was seven and change. It's split,
• 57:07
  Speaker 1: it's a huge split, and here we are we're now
• 57:10
  Speaker 1: over that prior pre split high. But when you spoke
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: to people at Apple at six fifty Apple, oh that's crazy. Yeah,
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: I mean, I just I'll use it more at the
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: private market. What if price is the absolute reason you're
• 57:25
  Speaker 1: passing on an investment and you really feel good about
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: every other aspect team market everything, will hold your nose
• 57:32
  Speaker 1: and it and own it. Okay, Um, that's a very
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: hard hurdle for the average, even good investor. That I
• 57:41
  Speaker 1: was at the beginning to get over. I have definitely
• 57:44
  Speaker 1: learned to live with that. In this disk Us evaluation,
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: Twitter and Zingle two giant home runs, I know, but
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: his Zingle was twenty million valuation when a poker room
• 57:55
  Speaker 1: at the time. What Zingle worth today, I don't know,
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: but I mean it definitely was a mistake on Twitter.
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: We know Twitter as a multibillion dollar times but you
• 58:03
  Speaker 1: learn it's not like I'm perfect. I mean, like I said,
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: you know on my if you go to my blog
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: or if you go to my our website at social leverage,
• 58:10
  Speaker 1: I'm proud of those misses. What am I doing there?
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: At least I was in the batter's box. The biggest
• 58:14
  Speaker 1: crime is for my investors is not to see those deals.
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: So if they pay me the two and a half
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: and twenty, which they do and half and half, and
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: that's standard in it's in the in the industry. I mean,
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: the middle of our third fund raising and you know
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: we're we're raising capital, but I mean that is standard, right,
• 58:34
  Speaker 1: there's certain standards. It's richer than funds fee structure. Yeah,
• 58:38
  Speaker 1: I mean because two point five yeah, and it's like
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: that those are ten years of these things that standard.
• 58:44
  Speaker 1: I mean, listen, if you're if you're gonna write me
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: a check for ten million, you're probably going to negotiate fees.
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: I've never had that happened negotiation, but it can happen.
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: So those are you listening? If you got ten million
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: for Howard, you could cut a deal. Yes, the sounds
• 58:56
  Speaker 1: good to me. The Jerry picks up the difference, the
• 58:58
  Speaker 1: it's good to be the GP Is that what you today? No?
• 59:01
  Speaker 1: But this this the thing about this style of investing
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: is the Twitter. I'm embarrassed about in hindsight Twitter and
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: think it looked like unbelievable gaffs. And you could laugh
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: at me for that, but it would be worse to
• 59:13
  Speaker 1: not be seeing the deals. My job is to get
• 59:16
  Speaker 1: into the flow. You got good deal flow, but you
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: looked at these valuations and said a little rich for me.
• 59:21
  Speaker 1: Well and I and I looked at the products and
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: I wasn't using the products. The other thing is I
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: got to use the products Twitter. At the time I
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: was laughing at we were on our blackberries. Remember two
• 59:30
  Speaker 1: thousand seven blackberries market crash, twenty million valuation in an
• 59:34
  Speaker 1: era of two million valuations. By the way, you could
• 59:37
  Speaker 1: have bought Apple and Google and tripled your money. Whatever
• 59:40
  Speaker 1: not not. Twitter obviously returns because it was a mistake.
• 59:44
  Speaker 1: But I'm really proud because by being in the market,
• 59:47
  Speaker 1: I caught an Uber at four million valuations. So you
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: have to be in the market, meaning I'm gonna make mistakes.
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: I didn't know. I didn't know that outside return, Twitter
• 59:57
  Speaker 1: was the nil brain or Uber was the hardest thing.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: That's fascinating to me. Tell me why, because when Uber
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: first came around, it's like, wait, and he used my
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: phone to call a cab. I walked down to the street.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: I waved my hand. There's a cab. Tell me what
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 1: made you think the magic of it? I live in
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: Coronado and I could just push a button and the
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 1: car would come over the It wasn't it was fifteen minutes,
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 1: five years ago a cab. Don't trust the cab. I mean,
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: I don't trust the system. You know, the medallion system
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: was broken. It deserves disrupted. Weren't investing in their infrastructure. Okay, no,
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: this is the problem I have with the Listen, it's
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: not fair. Let's talk about it right up front. It's
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: not fair. It's not fair. They're breaking some rules and
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: Uber is not fair, and well, I'm just saying they
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 1: don't have their licenses and they've they've been creative. Let's say,
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: and I say this offer a more creative Let's just
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 1: think how broken the medallion system is. One dude making
• 1:00:50
  Speaker 1: all the money or one woman making all the money
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 1: at the top. They're not investing in technology. The drivers
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: are unhappy, the customers are unhappy. Everything's broken. There's no
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 1: trust in the system. It was due to be disrupted
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: in hindset. Okay, so what and then we're looking at Zinga.
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: I'm going on, I don't play mobile games. Uh, twenty
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: millions crazy, the markets crashing, and so as a non
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: user of the product, ever still not to this day.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 1: You know, it was such a leap of faith. But
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: market played angry Birds or anything like that. But Mark
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 1: Pinkas was the outlier. Actually just invested in him because
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: he was going to do anything, gonna be a billion.
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: He wanted to do anything to be ability. So back
• 1:01:30
  Speaker 1: to Uber and so the people you look at this
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 1: and say, here's an entire infrastructure right to be disrupted.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 1: We've seen four million valuation, I mean and New York
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: City taxis the medallions have dropped value just as a
• 1:01:45
  Speaker 1: reflection of how broken and if the city was going
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: to do its job, whoever is a mayor would step
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 1: in and say, listen, we're going to train people on Uber.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 1: We're going to train people how to use their iPhones,
• 1:01:54
  Speaker 1: and we're going to give people. You don't have to
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: train people to use it, That's what I'm saying. Like,
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: so that's why they And you know, I'll tell you
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: a funny Uber story. So last week, we're in Seattle
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: and I'll spay you. What's that. That's in the US,
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: not too far from Vancouver, And I'm on the Microsoft campus, which,
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: by the way, you know i'm Microsoft. You know, I'm
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 1: an Apple guy, was never a giant Microsoft fan. It
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: is astonishing. The campus is I'm insane. Number it goes
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 1: as far as the I can see. You can get
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: in a car and keep driving. So we we call
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: an uber to get back into into Seattle proper. The
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 1: place is so big and the way the maps work
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 1: because it's not like roads. So we had a haunt
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: a make a left. I'm on the phone with one phone,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 1: looking at the Uber with the other phone. All right,
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 1: look make a left. It took us fifty minutes for
• 1:02:49
  Speaker 1: the guy to find New York, Seattle, London. Uber doesn't
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: work perfectly because subtleties to the road. I've never had
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 1: issues in Manhattan having had a driver didn't know the shortcuts.
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: So one other, one other personal story. So we have
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: a client who happens to be the guy who turns
• 1:03:06
  Speaker 1: Google Maps into Google Map app. That's a client of us.
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: So one day someone's going to meet the office and
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: meeting us and they're late, and I was like, how
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: are you late? Well, google Maps sent me to not
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: too so our addresses a Park Avenue South address. I'm sorry,
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: our addresses park having you proper and it sent them
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: to Park Avenue South, and so where are you? I'm
• 1:03:29
  Speaker 1: down now, we're all the way. We're by Grand Central.
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: Well google Maps sent me to Park Avenue South, not
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: Park Avenue. I sorry, I'll take care of it. They
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: thought I was joking and send send an email a client. Hey,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: here's the issue with Google Maps. Here's the fix. Oh no,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 1: it was by the time the person got to office.
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: I go search for Google Maps, search for address. He's like,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: how did you do that? I go, which is really
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: a hilarious. So the key is flow my customers or
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: my partners. Uh, the way I do them wrong is
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: to be out of every deal. Just so batter's boxing.
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 1: You've got to be swinging. I'm not happy I made.
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: Here's what a mistake I made was Zinga. I passed
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: on a great founder. The stake I made in Twitter was, uh, well,
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: this price was my only reason for not doing it.
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: It was I was using it and I didn't get
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: the valuation. Although you're still not happy with the product,
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 1: and you're not happy with the phenomenal, you're not happy
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: with the business around the product. Well, I'm just you know,
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: they've created all these pressures the market. The public markets
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: are all about pressure. You can delay ratification, you can
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: push off evaluation. Amazon's done that successful. Twitter hasn't done
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: a good job of talking to the street and explaining
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: their vision, let's face it. But at the same time,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: it's an incredible product. It's an incredible company to build
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: so fast. But they're obviously having trouble living within the
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: market cap that they've been given. They have to figure
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: out how to monitor, they need to figure out how
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: to communicate the vision. Yet, yeah, and so, so you
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: and I can talk about it is the core product.
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: I think it's the greatest product ever created for guys.
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: Can I tell you I was never a very active booker.
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: It was always like, I don't care about the pictures
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: of your kids. I don't care about your vaca. It's
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: like everybody's the minutia of everybody's life without the wit
• 1:05:20
  Speaker 1: and charm of Seinfeld. That's that's so. And then it's
• 1:05:23
  Speaker 1: the same LinkedIn thing. You start to friend everybody and
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: the next thing you know, it's it's it's completely worthless. Twitter.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 1: On the other hands, what I love about Twitter is
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: I get to say I'm going to effectively higher the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: smartest people I know to be my research to point.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: That's exactly it. It's completely complete expert network. And but
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: it's not free in the sense that it's just magically
• 1:05:49
  Speaker 1: going to work for you. It's free, you have to invest.
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: The investment is time, not money, and that's and curation
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: and get what you put it in stock Twitch, which
• 1:05:58
  Speaker 1: we created, was just a pew Alton for finance and
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: a peloton of traders and investors define peloton for research
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 1: for listeners who may not be bike racing fans. Well,
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 1: I mean, if we watch the Tour de France, which
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: bores most people. It's because it is a peloton most
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: of the time. That's just a beautiful looks like a bumblebee,
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 1: looks like a hive of bees, a group of people,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: which is really hard to stay in if you're that's
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 1: the That's why people love it is because it is
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: beautiful to see two people who so close together riding
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: at forty. There is an art to that, but there
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: art too. Winning the race is deciding when you're going
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: to break free. When when you linked, I mean, Twitter
• 1:06:38
  Speaker 1: is the greatest mental and and educational and mind expanding peloton.
• 1:06:46
  Speaker 1: You're hanging out with the smartest people in the world
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: just flipping the news or and it is your job
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: to curate. That's a that's a that's an overwhelming to
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 1: most people. Lazy people's Oh, I want this to magically work.
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: We're in a world of Netflix, and this is where
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 1: Twitter could really do something interesting. I could start a
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: business tomorrow called Twitter, and I could put five people
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: in the room and start shipping and and have you
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 1: called me to tell you how to use Twitter. Twitter
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: should have had a much bigger support test to help
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: people get to the peloton stage. Faster. Hey I'm interested
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 1: in beer. Okay, I'll send you a list in ten
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: minutes of the five people that will give you the
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 1: best links and the best brains on beer. And how
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 1: is that for Twitter to set up a dozen verticals
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: and say if if you're an entrepreneur, you should do
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: it like I've often thought of starting a Twitter helped deak,
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 1: So just play it with that. You take the daily
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 1: sections of the New York Times, so it's it's it's
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: business and investing, it's sports, its metropolitan, it's food, it's theater,
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: it's film, it's going down the list, sports and dining,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: and travel and hauntamobiles. Those are your verticals. You come
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: up with variations of each of those verticals and say, hey,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: you follow this, here click this, and here are those
• 1:08:07
  Speaker 1: you're following the hundred people in the space who cover this.
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 1: We invested. I invested with Mark Cuban in a company
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 1: called Get Little Bird that does that. So it's just
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: a matter of when we execute on this. But Mercia Kirkpatrick,
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 1: it's called get Little Bird dot Com and it's you know,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: people are solving these problems, just not Twitter. Sawing. Now
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 1: with Twitter buys these companies that will be interesting. But
• 1:08:26
  Speaker 1: this is this is what people don't understand about a
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: Twitter is it's got so much potential. And that's what's
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: exciting about stock twitch at the same level. Why why
• 1:08:33
  Speaker 1: we're so excited about stock twits, the same thing for finance.
• 1:08:36
  Speaker 1: So we're gonna I'm gonna interrupt you here because you
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: and I have been talking now for ninety minutes. We
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: could go for another two hours. I know you have
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 1: places to go and things to do, so I'm gonna
• 1:08:45
  Speaker 1: wrap this up. Howard. I really appreciate you coming in
• 1:08:48
  Speaker 1: and speaking with us for for so long. I hope
• 1:08:51
  Speaker 1: listeners can parse um son of the subtleties in our
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: conversation and actually pull something out. I've been listening, You've
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: been listening. I've been speaking with You've been listening to
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 1: Howard Lindzen of Social Leverage, stock Twits, and a variety
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 1: of other companies. He's an angel investor and venture capitalist.
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 1: Be sure and check out our previous UM previous podcasts.
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: If you're listening to this, you probably know where our
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 1: podcasts are there on iTunes, in Bloomberg dot com. Uh my,
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: follow me on Twitter. What is your Twitter handle at?
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: Howard That's gonna be That's gonna be tough. Remember at
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: Howard Lindzen. You can follow me at rid Holts or
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 1: check out my daily column at Bloomberg View dot com.
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: I'm Barry rid Holts. You've been listening to Masters in
• 1:09:36
  Speaker 1: Business on Bloomberg Radio. You're listening to Masters in Business
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: with Barry rid Holts on Bloomberg Radio.