1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:01,720 Ted, welcome to Early Days. 2 00:00:02,660 --> 00:00:05,000 Yeah, looking forward to the conversation today. 3 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:45,120 Yeah, so you're building FeedFilter.ai. 4 00:00:46,400 --> 00:00:55,960 How much AI is there in FeedFilter and could have been built four years ago before any of this AI stuff that's going on right now? 5 00:00:55,960 --> 00:01:07,200 Well, I guess I can back up for a moment and say that part of the reason I'm making a tool that filters the social media feed is to deal with some of the AI content that has come up. 6 00:01:07,520 --> 00:01:22,420 I mean, I don't know if you're familiar with dead internet theory, but the idea there, right, is that the internet will become kind of overrun with bots and AI and other things that make it not useful in terms of getting information on any subject you might be interested in. 7 00:01:22,420 --> 00:01:33,960 So in order to sift through that, there has been a lot of technology that's much simpler that doesn't require any sort of statistical model on like AI. 8 00:01:34,780 --> 00:01:38,140 What people have been using is keyword searches. 9 00:01:39,000 --> 00:01:44,920 You know, right now you can go into Twitter or X and mute words that you don't want to hear. 10 00:01:44,920 --> 00:01:48,360 So like I have Trump muted, I have Harris muted. 11 00:01:48,360 --> 00:01:53,680 I even sometimes mute Bitcoin when it's getting too raunchy and I just want to tone it down. 12 00:01:53,900 --> 00:01:58,400 So I use those mute words very aggressively, but it doesn't capture any of the nuance. 13 00:01:58,880 --> 00:02:03,820 Something could come out that is, let's say it's something Trump is doing that is extremely 14 00:02:03,820 --> 00:02:05,080 relevant and pertinent. 15 00:02:05,180 --> 00:02:06,280 I want to know that information. 16 00:02:06,820 --> 00:02:09,060 Well, a basic keyword search is not going to catch that. 17 00:02:09,840 --> 00:02:15,980 And so what happens is people like myself who use these tools, they're not working in 18 00:02:15,980 --> 00:02:20,640 the way that we attend it, which is we want to cut out the noise and get to the information 19 00:02:20,640 --> 00:02:21,540 we actually care about. 20 00:02:22,060 --> 00:02:27,720 And it really wasn't until the AI, the LLM started coming around and being able to interpret 21 00:02:27,720 --> 00:02:32,500 the meaning behind the words that has enabled a tool like feed filter to exist. 22 00:02:33,420 --> 00:02:33,540 Wow. 23 00:02:33,880 --> 00:02:35,320 And here comes the ambulance now. 24 00:02:36,100 --> 00:02:36,980 I wonder what happened to them. 25 00:02:37,140 --> 00:02:37,560 I don't know. 26 00:02:37,560 --> 00:02:43,820 Six in Congress is crazy, especially during the, um, during the summer. 27 00:02:44,560 --> 00:02:44,880 Um. 28 00:02:45,980 --> 00:02:51,360 I guess what I'm trying to get at is, you know, just with like Elon taking over Twitter. 29 00:02:52,880 --> 00:02:54,060 Now there's Noster. 30 00:02:55,080 --> 00:03:03,240 And for me personally, like I find myself in neither one of those places very often, you know, other than just to post on social. 31 00:03:04,860 --> 00:03:07,480 I spend most of my time on Stacker Days, as everybody knows. 32 00:03:10,860 --> 00:03:14,240 But a lot of it had to do with just the content that I was seeing. 33 00:03:14,240 --> 00:03:28,980 It was just extremely jarring for somebody like me who looks at content and wants to be inspired by it or wants to feel like it's wholesome enough to share with somebody. 34 00:03:29,140 --> 00:03:30,700 I didn't feel like that when I was on Twitter. 35 00:03:31,660 --> 00:03:33,460 I felt like that in the early days of Noster. 36 00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:39,940 I think it's going to get better over time with Noster, so I don't want to discount it completely. 37 00:03:39,940 --> 00:03:46,400 But I do see that kind of curation naturally happen on Stacker News. 38 00:03:46,820 --> 00:03:51,440 How can FeedFilter help with that type of curation? 39 00:03:51,940 --> 00:03:53,040 Yeah, that's such a good question. 40 00:03:53,200 --> 00:03:58,500 I think there's different solutions for different people and to different levels, like different degrees. 41 00:03:59,240 --> 00:04:01,100 So you could almost imagine like a pyramid. 42 00:04:01,500 --> 00:04:04,360 And for some people, Stacker News might be at the pinnacle. 43 00:04:04,360 --> 00:04:16,840 Like I know for myself, when I'm looking for kind of very deep Bitcoin content or even just content from people who kind of accept the premise that is Bitcoin, like that Bitcoin is inevitable. 44 00:04:17,140 --> 00:04:22,600 In that case, there's no better place than Stacker News, like hands down or coming into Ploblab, right? 45 00:04:22,700 --> 00:04:31,880 This is kind of ground zero in terms of getting to that culture and that group of people that are talking about this type of content. 46 00:04:31,880 --> 00:04:36,060 But that's such a small group of people, you know, such a small percentage. 47 00:04:36,700 --> 00:04:43,120 The vast majority of everyone is getting their information from Facebook and TikTok and Instagram. 48 00:04:43,620 --> 00:04:45,320 Right. And then Twitter is only a subset. 49 00:04:45,880 --> 00:04:48,640 So that's really what FeedFilter is targeting. 50 00:04:48,780 --> 00:04:56,100 It's a group of people that I feel might be in these social media environments getting content that they may not like, 51 00:04:56,100 --> 00:05:02,540 but they don't necessarily have the tools or be comfortable with using the tools that are there 52 00:05:02,540 --> 00:05:11,480 to improve their situation. And it goes more than just seeing better content. It's about 53 00:05:11,480 --> 00:05:17,580 unlocking yourself too, because I find that when you get sucked into doom scrolling on a feed, 54 00:05:18,020 --> 00:05:23,420 like for me, what I'm interested in is business and technology. Those are pretty much my only 55 00:05:23,420 --> 00:05:28,300 interest like that's that's basically you know science and space too but what do i see in my 56 00:05:28,300 --> 00:05:32,980 x feed i mean i deleted twitter the reason i deleted it was because all i was getting was 57 00:05:32,980 --> 00:05:40,000 politics violence and cute puppies so you didn't even get the puppies part i don't know at least 58 00:05:40,000 --> 00:05:43,580 get some puppies but the thing is i'm like i'll watch the cute puppies like they're great but 59 00:05:43,580 --> 00:05:48,420 i don't even like animals like i don't have a pet i don't have any intention of getting a pet so why 60 00:05:48,420 --> 00:05:52,880 am i getting all these puppies well you know it's because that's how the algorithm works yeah so 61 00:05:52,880 --> 00:06:03,480 So that's really the goal is people who are in my situation, they're doom scrolling and that doom scrolling is getting in the way of what they're trying to accomplish in their life in general. 62 00:06:03,860 --> 00:06:11,760 Starting a business or learning more about Bitcoin or catching up on your friends, what your friends are actually doing, not what they're pretending they're doing. 63 00:06:12,000 --> 00:06:19,720 All of those things are things that could really benefit from a filter on the traditional social media feeds at first. 64 00:06:19,720 --> 00:06:25,800 And then later they might move into those different arenas, which has more concentrated content that they're interested in. 65 00:06:26,520 --> 00:06:36,260 I guess the thing that I'm kind of wondering now is like, are you afraid of the people that have already left Twitter or Instagram or some of these other places like Facebook? 66 00:06:36,260 --> 00:06:57,480 Like, do you think that maybe, you know, that they already moved on to other kind of closed gardens and there's just a, or do you think it's, we're just at the tip of this kind of new, because AI is, I mean, obviously there's going to be new AI users and these type of bots that are going to exist in these platforms. 67 00:06:57,480 --> 00:07:01,180 And I think that's just going to happen even more and more and more over time. 68 00:07:01,320 --> 00:07:06,620 And I think even Elon has said publicly that there are AI bots on Twitter that are responding and stuff. 69 00:07:06,740 --> 00:07:08,040 And you can pay for that kind of engagement. 70 00:07:08,980 --> 00:07:14,560 How do you see FeedFilter working with a lot of that kind of new features that are going to be rolled out to these platforms? 71 00:07:15,000 --> 00:07:19,080 Yeah, I mean, it's definitely so in some sense, it's kind of competing against some of those new features. 72 00:07:19,340 --> 00:07:25,940 I was just on YouTube and I saw something I'd never seen before popped up and it said, please provide feedback. 73 00:07:25,940 --> 00:07:33,580 And they have a feedback section, but this feedback was in line on YouTube. 74 00:07:33,780 --> 00:07:36,000 And so what it was doing is just collecting. 75 00:07:36,680 --> 00:07:45,020 I don't know if it was going to a person on the support team, or maybe it was just going into their AI to tune the algorithm based on your kind of conscious statement. 76 00:07:45,540 --> 00:07:54,620 So those types of solutions are competitive against FeedFilter, as are better platforms that allow people to get better content. 77 00:07:54,620 --> 00:08:09,840 So if you're on Stacker News and you're not really seeing very much clickbait or politics or misleading posts or things that are irrelevant to you, if you're getting better content on one of these platforms, you don't need a feed filter tool. 78 00:08:11,220 --> 00:08:17,400 You know, feed filter could work on something like Stacker News or on Noster, but that's not really my priority. 79 00:08:17,660 --> 00:08:23,660 My priority is TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook is really bad. 80 00:08:23,660 --> 00:08:25,700 So those are my focuses. 81 00:08:26,040 --> 00:08:37,760 And I view it more as a kind of a jumping off board or a first step that someone could take going from an unfiltered feed to a slightly better, more curated environment. 82 00:08:38,140 --> 00:08:44,460 And then later they might say, hey, look, maybe I don't need a social media account or maybe I just want one like you did. 83 00:08:44,700 --> 00:08:45,680 Right. Kind of pare it down. 84 00:08:46,640 --> 00:08:47,520 OK, so. 85 00:08:48,700 --> 00:08:50,280 Let's let's run through this real quick. 86 00:08:50,280 --> 00:08:56,220 so hypothetically you have this twitter user that exists this this ideal customer that you that you 87 00:08:56,220 --> 00:09:03,480 want um let's just say he's like 21 to 35 or whatever and uh he doesn't have to be into bitcoin 88 00:09:03,480 --> 00:09:07,700 he's just a technologist that's into business let's just say he's you like you know five years 89 00:09:07,700 --> 00:09:14,220 ago right how do they find feed filter how are they going to know that they need something like 90 00:09:14,220 --> 00:09:21,940 feed filter. And then the second question to that is, is there enough there that he would even 91 00:09:21,940 --> 00:09:26,300 recognize the difference? And how are you going to kind of work through that? Like, how are you 92 00:09:26,300 --> 00:09:31,680 going to show that kind of happening in real time? Those are really good questions. That's honestly 93 00:09:31,680 --> 00:09:35,880 what I'm struggling with right now. So that's, you know, like when we talk about the founder's 94 00:09:35,880 --> 00:09:39,960 journey, like we were just talking about this before we went on the pod, you don't always have 95 00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:45,100 everything figured out, right? You have to kind of operate by faith a little bit and just be, 96 00:09:45,100 --> 00:09:49,640 you know, confident that you will figure some of these things out later on. Right now, probably one 97 00:09:49,640 --> 00:09:53,180 of the biggest things I'm thinking about is how do I get in front of the right people at the right 98 00:09:53,180 --> 00:09:58,620 time? And also explain this type of tool. In some sense, it's very simple. You know, cut the crap out, 99 00:09:58,700 --> 00:10:03,560 get stuff you don't want to see out of the feed. So people, okay, I get that. But how do you do it? 100 00:10:03,640 --> 00:10:08,220 Oh, well, it's a Chrome extension or it's a mobile web app. Like, so now I'm getting more 101 00:10:08,220 --> 00:10:10,740 to the technology that, okay, do I install it? 102 00:10:10,780 --> 00:10:11,900 Do I have to sign in? 103 00:10:12,220 --> 00:10:13,680 What's the privacy considerations? 104 00:10:13,920 --> 00:10:14,300 Yada, yada. 105 00:10:14,780 --> 00:10:16,780 So all of this needs to be explained. 106 00:10:16,920 --> 00:10:18,240 That adds burden to the user, 107 00:10:18,320 --> 00:10:21,180 just like Bitcoin adds burden when you're explaining it. 108 00:10:22,020 --> 00:10:23,820 So I need to find the right medium 109 00:10:23,820 --> 00:10:24,980 to get in front of these people. 110 00:10:25,100 --> 00:10:26,980 And to be honest, I haven't figured that out. 111 00:10:27,120 --> 00:10:29,740 I mean, I've been going to a lot of different events 112 00:10:29,740 --> 00:10:33,340 like health, AI, but not AI builders, 113 00:10:33,340 --> 00:10:36,340 but people who are using AI to improve their lives. 114 00:10:36,340 --> 00:10:38,400 I was at a gym in Houston. 115 00:10:39,240 --> 00:10:39,920 Did you get feedback? 116 00:10:40,320 --> 00:10:40,540 Yeah. 117 00:10:40,620 --> 00:10:42,020 So I'm getting feedback from all these places. 118 00:10:42,080 --> 00:10:42,580 What are they saying? 119 00:10:42,720 --> 00:10:43,080 Yeah, this is good stuff. 120 00:10:43,080 --> 00:10:49,240 A lot of people, we did a little vote and the fitness center in Houston, they voted for TikTok first and foremost. 121 00:10:49,540 --> 00:10:54,020 And they also overwhelmingly wanted a mobile app versus a computer app. 122 00:10:54,220 --> 00:10:55,180 I was aware of that. 123 00:10:55,700 --> 00:11:01,280 But TikTok is a tricky platform because you just kind of get one video at a time. 124 00:11:01,280 --> 00:11:06,680 um so so that way hang on so you're saying they don't want to they want to be able to swipe up 125 00:11:06,680 --> 00:11:12,600 and not see a video of somebody throwing up or something oh yeah so the way you want the filter 126 00:11:12,600 --> 00:11:21,140 to occur is instantaneously seamlessly behind the scenes with zero user input and it automatically 127 00:11:21,140 --> 00:11:26,640 tunes exactly to what you want it basically reads your mind and gives you exactly what you 128 00:11:26,640 --> 00:11:28,400 really want to see 129 00:11:28,400 --> 00:11:29,440 not just what 130 00:11:29,440 --> 00:11:30,140 you would be most 131 00:11:30,140 --> 00:11:30,760 addicted to 132 00:11:30,760 --> 00:11:32,740 or engaged with. 133 00:11:33,260 --> 00:11:33,380 Right? 134 00:11:33,440 --> 00:11:33,940 So that's like 135 00:11:33,940 --> 00:11:34,900 the perfect world. 136 00:11:35,340 --> 00:11:35,920 So then we kind of 137 00:11:35,920 --> 00:11:36,780 back out from that 138 00:11:36,780 --> 00:11:37,360 perfect world 139 00:11:37,360 --> 00:11:37,900 which is 140 00:11:37,900 --> 00:11:39,340 I don't know how to do that 141 00:11:39,340 --> 00:11:40,380 but I'm going to do my best 142 00:11:40,380 --> 00:11:40,960 to figure out 143 00:11:40,960 --> 00:11:41,580 what's the closest 144 00:11:41,580 --> 00:11:42,540 we can get to that. 145 00:11:44,220 --> 00:11:44,580 And 146 00:11:44,580 --> 00:11:45,400 so 147 00:11:45,400 --> 00:11:46,680 the way I make it work 148 00:11:46,680 --> 00:11:46,940 is 149 00:11:46,940 --> 00:11:48,160 well it's 150 00:11:48,160 --> 00:11:49,280 it's 151 00:11:49,280 --> 00:11:51,300 close to instantaneous 152 00:11:51,300 --> 00:11:53,080 gives the user 153 00:11:53,080 --> 00:11:53,760 the experience 154 00:11:53,760 --> 00:11:54,400 of instantaneous 155 00:11:54,400 --> 00:11:54,880 but 156 00:11:54,880 --> 00:11:55,820 you know 157 00:11:55,820 --> 00:11:56,360 nothing is 158 00:11:56,640 --> 00:11:58,780 perfectly fast behind the scenes. 159 00:11:59,380 --> 00:12:00,800 It worked out of the box, 160 00:12:00,800 --> 00:12:03,180 but a little user tweaking goes a long ways. 161 00:12:03,580 --> 00:12:06,220 So it kind of gives that experience. 162 00:12:07,480 --> 00:12:09,780 Tuning to the user's needs is very difficult 163 00:12:09,780 --> 00:12:12,100 because I can't use engagement metrics 164 00:12:12,100 --> 00:12:14,940 or else I'll just recreate the algorithm 165 00:12:14,940 --> 00:12:17,140 that is causing all the problems to begin with. 166 00:12:17,500 --> 00:12:18,920 So that's a challenge. 167 00:12:20,960 --> 00:12:25,260 And yeah, so I guess like the goal, 168 00:12:25,260 --> 00:12:27,880 ultimately I don't know how to get there yet is 169 00:12:27,880 --> 00:12:34,120 it's seamless instant you know reads their mind gives them the exact feed they want 170 00:12:34,120 --> 00:12:39,480 I think one of the biggest challenges I have in all this is that a little bit of 171 00:12:39,480 --> 00:12:49,200 conscious statement by the user goes a long ways so if I say verbally out loud you know I want 172 00:12:49,200 --> 00:12:55,760 motivating, actionable, practical advice that I can immediately apply. 173 00:12:56,280 --> 00:13:01,640 If I write that out as a sentence and put it into feed filter, well, that's going to filter out all 174 00:13:01,640 --> 00:13:06,620 the content that doesn't meet that criteria. So that's extremely powerful. But for me to write 175 00:13:06,620 --> 00:13:11,860 those words out, that's from a user's perspective. It may, as a developer, I'm like, oh, sure, 176 00:13:11,860 --> 00:13:16,060 they can write out a few words in an app, but no one wants to do that. Let's be real. We want to 177 00:13:16,060 --> 00:13:21,440 click one button max, like getting us to click the download button is already hard enough. So 178 00:13:21,440 --> 00:13:27,440 getting the user to click the install button and then like sign in, I mean, that's consuming. So 179 00:13:27,440 --> 00:13:32,560 that's such a cost that's been imposed on the user. So by the time they get to the app, you know, 180 00:13:32,580 --> 00:13:36,620 you're very lucky if you get to that point. So right now what I'm doing is I'm using, I'm actually, 181 00:13:37,140 --> 00:13:41,720 as part of the onboarding process, I'm asking them to give feedback on three posts. So like I said, 182 00:13:41,720 --> 00:13:46,760 it works out of the box, you apply feedback to three posts, and then that tunes the instruction 183 00:13:46,760 --> 00:13:53,300 set, basically the prompt that goes to the AI that tells the AI which posts the user does or 184 00:13:53,300 --> 00:13:57,960 does not want to see in their feed. Now, if the user would go in and edit the settings even more, 185 00:13:58,200 --> 00:14:03,900 that would make a big difference. But my hope is to generate enough difference, like you said, 186 00:14:04,380 --> 00:14:08,560 to show that this new feed that they have is going to be a lot better than what they were 187 00:14:08,560 --> 00:14:14,220 seeing before i think i think the thing that i that you were you were saying this and i immediately 188 00:14:14,220 --> 00:14:20,060 saw like an overlay like is have you have you is there like a raw version of this where you can 189 00:14:20,060 --> 00:14:28,600 have like an overlay of of feed filter and you can just search over it or or like it basically just 190 00:14:28,600 --> 00:14:33,800 pulls the data and there's an overlay and then it just like what you just said right now it just 191 00:14:33,800 --> 00:14:35,980 like searches over, this is what I want. 192 00:14:36,840 --> 00:14:37,900 Does that exist? 193 00:14:38,100 --> 00:14:41,740 Yeah, well, I mean, the feed itself is kind of an overlay, right? 194 00:14:41,740 --> 00:14:49,480 Because if you think about it, the client, the browser, the software that's running in 195 00:14:49,480 --> 00:14:54,820 the browser is making a request to the social media company's server, and then they're serving 196 00:14:54,820 --> 00:14:55,680 up that content. 197 00:14:55,900 --> 00:15:01,120 That content is then inserted into the feed, but a lot of that is either off screen or in 198 00:15:01,120 --> 00:15:07,480 a case of like Instagram or Facebook, it's being loaded up behind a loading overlay that's hiding 199 00:15:07,480 --> 00:15:13,300 that content. So from the user's perspective, like in those cases, they don't see all the content 200 00:15:13,300 --> 00:15:19,260 that's actually there, but feed filter goes in and gets all the posts that have been returned by the 201 00:15:19,260 --> 00:15:26,600 server. And then amongst those will filter, uh, well, basically you could call it a search, um, 202 00:15:26,600 --> 00:15:29,720 and whittle that down to just the ones that pass your criteria. 203 00:15:30,320 --> 00:15:35,280 Now, I can't search beyond what their server serves up in the first place. 204 00:15:35,660 --> 00:15:40,500 So like I'm not going out and fetching brand new stuff that you'd never see before. 205 00:15:40,660 --> 00:15:46,740 It's only kind of reducing of the stuff that, you know, Instagram or Twitter was going to 206 00:15:46,740 --> 00:15:47,400 feed to you. 207 00:15:47,400 --> 00:15:53,580 I can reduce that set, which causes Instagram or Twitter to go serve up more content and 208 00:15:53,580 --> 00:16:00,460 also adapt their algorithm over time to match the content that's actually making it through 209 00:16:00,460 --> 00:16:02,160 and getting your engagement metrics. 210 00:16:03,060 --> 00:16:06,400 So I guess I guess kind of like and can we just go down this road real quick? 211 00:16:06,400 --> 00:16:13,800 Because I'm just curious if you've actually have like considered this or even gone down 212 00:16:13,800 --> 00:16:14,300 this road. 213 00:16:16,480 --> 00:16:21,200 Just thinking about it, at least on the web version, it does seem like there's an abstraction 214 00:16:21,200 --> 00:16:26,840 layer there that should exist somehow because you're filtering things out but i wonder what 215 00:16:26,840 --> 00:16:33,280 what happens when you do the when you take the the content that's actually that's being lifted 216 00:16:33,280 --> 00:16:39,720 above the filtering and what if that was broken into a separate page where it's just now it's just 217 00:16:39,720 --> 00:16:46,080 goodness it's pure fruit yes it's just bounty and then that second page is literally looks like the 218 00:16:46,080 --> 00:16:50,420 exact same page of your normal feed, it's just all bouncy. 219 00:16:50,420 --> 00:16:52,140 And then all that's doing, 220 00:16:52,140 --> 00:16:54,600 so you basically have two tabs and then it's just, 221 00:16:54,600 --> 00:16:56,960 all it's doing is feed fillers just serving up 222 00:16:57,860 --> 00:17:00,540 this separate tab of just nothing, of like everything. 223 00:17:00,540 --> 00:17:03,640 It's all because you went over the overlay 224 00:17:03,640 --> 00:17:05,820 or what you're calling it, it's just like this overlay 225 00:17:05,820 --> 00:17:07,500 of your running search and just like, 226 00:17:07,500 --> 00:17:09,040 give me the top Bitcoin podcast 227 00:17:09,040 --> 00:17:11,940 or the top Bitcoin tweets of the past 24 hours 228 00:17:11,940 --> 00:17:18,280 the top Bitcoin, you know, entrepreneur tweets of the past 24 hours. 229 00:17:18,520 --> 00:17:20,440 And then it's like doing this thing. 230 00:17:21,380 --> 00:17:25,040 Yeah, so what I'm trying to understand that, because to some degree, it kind of does do 231 00:17:25,040 --> 00:17:27,240 that, but the overlay is the feed itself. 232 00:17:27,660 --> 00:17:27,840 Yeah. 233 00:17:27,900 --> 00:17:33,440 So it's basically, the goal is to make your feed be just pure goodness, right? 234 00:17:33,480 --> 00:17:34,160 So that's the goal. 235 00:17:34,580 --> 00:17:38,640 But it sounds like what you're talking about is kind of storing those best posts and kind 236 00:17:38,640 --> 00:17:43,660 of keeping them in almost like a repository, almost like a dashboard. 237 00:17:44,080 --> 00:17:45,140 Do you remember Instapaper? 238 00:17:46,200 --> 00:17:46,620 No. 239 00:17:46,620 --> 00:17:51,560 So Instapaper was this thing where it would, this was back when like we only had like 2G 240 00:17:51,560 --> 00:17:54,620 and like really like CDMA. 241 00:17:54,760 --> 00:17:59,240 Like it wasn't, we didn't really have a very, we didn't have very strong bandwidth back then. 242 00:17:59,580 --> 00:18:04,860 And so Instapaper was this little kind of thing where people would, would save websites 243 00:18:04,860 --> 00:18:08,160 and articles on the web and they would, it was this extension and you would hit it and 244 00:18:08,160 --> 00:18:11,700 And then they would send it to your own personalized web. 245 00:18:11,880 --> 00:18:12,760 It's the paper site. 246 00:18:13,120 --> 00:18:15,000 And then people would share those links and all that stuff. 247 00:18:15,020 --> 00:18:19,820 But you would be able to read it offline just because we didn't have 3G, 4G and all these other things. 248 00:18:19,860 --> 00:18:21,700 At least that's how I understood and grasped it. 249 00:18:22,100 --> 00:18:31,900 And it kind of, we're kind of, so like, I guess I'm thinking in that kind of thing where it's like, it's doing this kind of, yeah, I don't know. 250 00:18:31,980 --> 00:18:33,260 I guess we're just going down that road. 251 00:18:33,260 --> 00:18:34,920 It's almost like saving the posts, right? 252 00:18:35,000 --> 00:18:35,800 Saving them for later. 253 00:18:35,800 --> 00:18:37,900 so you can reference only the good posts 254 00:18:37,900 --> 00:18:38,780 that pass the filter 255 00:18:38,780 --> 00:18:40,340 or you could search through them later? 256 00:18:40,520 --> 00:18:41,920 Well, I guess I'm trying to figure out 257 00:18:41,920 --> 00:18:44,520 like if you've thought about this like from, 258 00:18:45,560 --> 00:18:47,980 because you're removing things, right? 259 00:18:48,040 --> 00:18:49,100 And I'm wondering if like, 260 00:18:49,520 --> 00:18:51,700 you're obviously not recreating it into a separate tab, 261 00:18:51,800 --> 00:18:53,940 but I do wonder, I'm like, 262 00:18:53,980 --> 00:18:55,660 huh, I wonder if he's thought about like, 263 00:18:55,860 --> 00:18:56,820 because you go to TikTok 264 00:18:56,820 --> 00:18:59,320 and imagine you went to TikTok and this is, 265 00:18:59,440 --> 00:19:01,200 I don't know, does TikTok have a web browser now? 266 00:19:02,180 --> 00:19:03,560 Can you browse it on the web? 267 00:19:03,660 --> 00:19:04,480 Or is it just on the phone? 268 00:19:04,500 --> 00:19:05,180 I think you can, yes. 269 00:19:05,180 --> 00:19:10,580 Well, let's just say hypothetically, like imagine just seeing nothing but goodness of stuff that you wanted to see on TikTok. 270 00:19:11,420 --> 00:19:19,820 And it's because I know you've shown me the the Instagram post, which is like a pure like thing that you have to kind of scroll past. 271 00:19:20,160 --> 00:19:23,820 Yeah. But I wonder if like if there's another way to approach it. 272 00:19:23,820 --> 00:19:36,220 Yeah. So like on and so what we're talking about is that on Instagram specifically right now, feed filters is blacking out that post, which kind of creates a hole in your feed. 273 00:19:36,300 --> 00:19:39,180 Yeah. Whereas on Twitter, I actually delete the post entirely. 274 00:19:39,780 --> 00:19:43,180 So you don't didn't even know that the post was there to begin with. 275 00:19:43,200 --> 00:19:45,420 It's gone. So you never even see it. 276 00:19:45,540 --> 00:19:48,000 Now, that's ultimately what Instagram will look like, too. 277 00:19:48,000 --> 00:19:53,020 So you'll have the option to completely remove that post from your feed as if it was never there. 278 00:19:53,820 --> 00:20:04,200 So in that case your feed then becomes that kind of dashboard Well it sounds like you talking about the next level of then taking all that goodness aggregating it together in a separate tab but then you could search 279 00:20:04,200 --> 00:20:06,261 But maybe this is the mobile app then. 280 00:20:06,580 --> 00:20:09,980 Maybe what it does is like feed filters the actual app. 281 00:20:11,220 --> 00:20:17,261 And then what it does is like, so feed filters the app that lives on your phone. 282 00:20:17,261 --> 00:20:22,720 and then you what you actually do is you pull a feed filter and then it pulls all the goodness 283 00:20:22,720 --> 00:20:28,540 from twitter shows it in line in the feed filter app pulls all the goodness from tiktok 284 00:20:28,540 --> 00:20:35,501 shows it in line and you're seeing like all these things inside your feed filter yeah yeah and you 285 00:20:35,501 --> 00:20:40,501 can take the different platforms is that possible yeah yeah that's i mean that's kind of uh what i'm 286 00:20:40,501 --> 00:20:45,140 looking at i mean i haven't decided whether or not to i mean i don't know if it could be done but 287 00:20:45,140 --> 00:20:48,800 it's just the more and more you start when you start saying these things it's just like huh 288 00:20:48,800 --> 00:20:53,241 what you're basically describing is just like this glorified version of 289 00:20:53,241 --> 00:20:58,241 of like insta the only thing i can think of is like instapaper 290 00:20:58,241 --> 00:21:04,601 instapaper did it but it was just um it was just done like in like web 2.0 days like yeah 291 00:21:04,601 --> 00:21:10,361 um i think they're probably still around now um but it was just it reminded me of that when you 292 00:21:10,361 --> 00:21:14,080 started saying that there was this overlay i'm like when did you do this overlay but i guess so 293 00:21:14,080 --> 00:21:16,320 So it's almost like the next level of the overlay. 294 00:21:16,440 --> 00:21:20,341 So I was talking mostly about the overlay inside your browser or on a mobile device. 295 00:21:20,341 --> 00:21:25,460 But the next level that I think you're getting at is what is FeedFilter server overlay? 296 00:21:25,940 --> 00:21:31,420 Because FeedFilter has all those posts that were ranked as either good or bad by which user. 297 00:21:32,140 --> 00:21:38,060 Now, I'm going to make that pseudo anonymous, but you could still find like which users are correlated to which other users. 298 00:21:38,540 --> 00:21:43,220 And then you could actually pull like I could say, hey, me and Cara might be pretty similar with our views. 299 00:21:43,220 --> 00:21:48,160 so perhaps some of the posts that car finds interesting very interesting show up in mind 300 00:21:48,160 --> 00:21:52,160 this is basically how all the social media companies work but the main difference is 301 00:21:52,160 --> 00:21:57,820 they're motivated by engagement metrics and it exactly what passes a feed filter criteria is 302 00:21:57,820 --> 00:22:04,261 different so if it's not addictive engaging content it's you know whatever the people said 303 00:22:04,261 --> 00:22:10,940 as their filters which generally is along the order of you know factual informative not clickbait 304 00:22:10,940 --> 00:22:15,200 you know pretty much no one wants to see politics i mean some politics but like that's 305 00:22:15,761 --> 00:22:21,540 people generally don't want to see violence yeah 100 so it's like it's um more wholesome content 306 00:22:21,540 --> 00:22:26,040 that you're going to get yeah people still okay with some jokes and stuff but you don't want to 307 00:22:26,040 --> 00:22:30,320 be all jokes in your feed but you know it's really cool though because that's something 308 00:22:30,320 --> 00:22:37,380 where like i would i think i would look into something like that well that's great to hear 309 00:22:37,380 --> 00:22:44,460 because with the overlay no well like this feed filter app that can bring on the goodness from 310 00:22:44,460 --> 00:22:48,300 all these different accounts yeah and then it doesn't require me to go into these accounts 311 00:22:48,300 --> 00:22:52,501 what other or i don't know i don't know you tell me i don't know if i would have to 312 00:22:52,501 --> 00:22:58,241 other than just because the reason i want to go on like twitter again is just to source news but 313 00:22:58,241 --> 00:23:04,841 i don't want to withstand having to um look at all the craziness um yeah same thing with tiktok 314 00:23:04,841 --> 00:23:11,761 Because I know there's like good videos, I hear about them all the time, but I don't want to withstand all the, you know, pornography that's on there. 315 00:23:11,761 --> 00:23:12,120 Yeah. 316 00:23:12,420 --> 00:23:13,220 So, yeah. 317 00:23:13,720 --> 00:23:15,580 Suggestive content is a major issue. 318 00:23:15,660 --> 00:23:17,700 It's probably one of the number one requests I get. 319 00:23:19,220 --> 00:23:19,660 Yeah. 320 00:23:19,741 --> 00:23:24,261 So I think the feed filter could definitely deliver that kind of experience that you're talking about. 321 00:23:24,400 --> 00:23:27,501 It would make you feel like you never even logged into those platforms. 322 00:23:27,501 --> 00:23:30,780 what's happening behind the scenes is you are logged in, 323 00:23:30,940 --> 00:23:33,400 but with the feed filter overlay, like you're saying, 324 00:23:33,861 --> 00:23:37,220 that is going through sorting out all the crap, 325 00:23:37,440 --> 00:23:38,040 getting the goodness, 326 00:23:38,341 --> 00:23:40,660 and then queuing it all together into a single feed 327 00:23:40,660 --> 00:23:43,200 that has the best content. 328 00:23:43,300 --> 00:23:46,841 So you're not actually engaging on Twitter or Instagram. 329 00:23:46,940 --> 00:23:48,320 You might see an inline Twitter 330 00:23:48,320 --> 00:23:49,841 and then an inline Instagram. 331 00:23:51,021 --> 00:23:52,180 It's just pure pipe. 332 00:23:52,380 --> 00:23:54,261 I got to play with some of these different UIs. 333 00:23:54,560 --> 00:23:55,920 Yeah, it's just pure content pipe. 334 00:23:55,920 --> 00:24:02,880 But yeah, I think that's what, I think when you initially pitched me the idea, I was concerned about a lot of these things. 335 00:24:02,980 --> 00:24:06,021 But I think I knew at some point I was like, well, Ted's smart. 336 00:24:06,380 --> 00:24:09,400 You've done two startups in the past that I want to talk about. 337 00:24:10,120 --> 00:24:14,001 But, you know, I think there's, you know, it's just like building any product. 338 00:24:14,101 --> 00:24:18,861 You're going to start building it and then you're going to realize, okay, dead end here, maybe a dead end there. 339 00:24:18,861 --> 00:24:24,820 But there's enough traction here or like you'll start, you'll just figure it out and then you'll just move in the direction that you want to go. 340 00:24:24,820 --> 00:24:26,120 and then you'll hit pay dirt. 341 00:24:26,241 --> 00:24:27,480 And then before you know, you're off and rolling. 342 00:24:28,660 --> 00:24:29,460 That's the hope, right? 343 00:24:29,521 --> 00:24:30,021 That's the hope. 344 00:24:30,280 --> 00:24:32,241 I mean, you stick around enough, 345 00:24:32,501 --> 00:24:33,800 you'll find some traction, 346 00:24:33,920 --> 00:24:34,720 especially if you're working. 347 00:24:35,480 --> 00:24:36,560 I mean, what's the saying? 348 00:24:36,741 --> 00:24:38,400 Like you can't just keep hitting your head 349 00:24:38,400 --> 00:24:40,140 against the wall until, you know. 350 00:24:40,300 --> 00:24:42,341 Yeah, I find it fun to do this. 351 00:24:42,420 --> 00:24:43,080 I know you do too. 352 00:24:43,220 --> 00:24:44,040 Me too, it's so much fun. 353 00:24:44,040 --> 00:24:45,640 It's like one of the most fulfilling things 354 00:24:45,640 --> 00:24:46,660 that anyone can do 355 00:24:46,660 --> 00:24:48,400 is try to solve other people's problems. 356 00:24:48,761 --> 00:24:50,420 And I'm a very analytical kind of guy. 357 00:24:50,580 --> 00:24:52,640 And so like, that's kind of how I express empathy 358 00:24:52,640 --> 00:24:54,960 is if I can understand your problem 359 00:24:54,960 --> 00:24:58,220 and game out the arbitrage to solve it in a cheaper way 360 00:24:58,220 --> 00:24:59,700 than you're getting it done today. 361 00:24:59,960 --> 00:25:01,761 Also navigating all the competitors 362 00:25:01,761 --> 00:25:04,861 and their technical and legal barriers 363 00:25:04,861 --> 00:25:05,540 that they're putting up. 364 00:25:05,741 --> 00:25:07,080 I just find that it's a game 365 00:25:07,080 --> 00:25:08,640 and it's a really fun game to play. 366 00:25:08,761 --> 00:25:10,060 And it's like, honestly, the game 367 00:25:10,060 --> 00:25:12,241 that kind of moves society along. 368 00:25:12,501 --> 00:25:12,660 Totally. 369 00:25:13,040 --> 00:25:14,180 That's why we're in Bitcoin, right? 370 00:25:14,180 --> 00:25:15,880 Because it makes entrepreneurs and builders, 371 00:25:16,220 --> 00:25:17,880 gives fuel to the fire, right? 372 00:25:18,300 --> 00:25:20,380 I was talking to somebody in the, 373 00:25:20,780 --> 00:25:21,361 I won't say who it was, 374 00:25:21,400 --> 00:25:22,280 I was talking to somebody in the lab 375 00:25:22,280 --> 00:25:27,920 a few weeks ago and they had mentioned they're like yeah well it just sucks because you know like 376 00:25:27,920 --> 00:25:33,601 you know they're so much bigger than us and you know we're so small and i'm like it's fun it's 377 00:25:33,601 --> 00:25:40,420 like this is fun like that's business man like you're supposed to want to go out there and compete 378 00:25:40,420 --> 00:25:46,280 that's these are the men in the in the arena like that's fun that's the fun part this is the stuff 379 00:25:46,280 --> 00:25:52,040 that when you when you're when you're going to be in your 70s and 80s or whatever this is stuff 380 00:25:52,040 --> 00:25:55,380 you're going to remember you're going to remember like oh remember we went toe to toe with people 381 00:25:55,380 --> 00:26:00,220 and like did all the like this is the fun shit dude like this is the shit that you get up in 382 00:26:00,220 --> 00:26:04,741 the morning for yeah it's also where the opportunity is too right like i don't i don't know i don't 383 00:26:04,741 --> 00:26:11,640 know i just feel like it's uh it's uh yeah it's i think i think maybe once you go through it a 384 00:26:11,640 --> 00:26:16,101 couple times we get punched in the gut and you get kicked in the face then after a while you're 385 00:26:16,101 --> 00:26:19,960 just like oh i love that blood oh that dirt tastes pretty good and then you start getting 386 00:26:19,960 --> 00:26:23,940 kind of like you start getting a little a little bit of thing and then before you know you're just 387 00:26:23,940 --> 00:26:30,021 like more you start turning into like uh uh what was that guy's name from fight club uh tyler 388 00:26:30,021 --> 00:26:35,960 durden yeah well it's you know i don't know if i like getting punched in the gut but i would say 389 00:26:35,960 --> 00:26:41,841 that what i one thing that i do find is that and this is also i think bitcoin also just in general 390 00:26:41,841 --> 00:26:47,101 i i've always been kind of a contrarian and but i don't like i don't believe in being contrarian 391 00:26:47,101 --> 00:26:53,980 for no reason. Totally. But I do kind of observe a system and then I see where's the opportunity 392 00:26:53,980 --> 00:26:59,720 here. And what I've kind of learned, like when I was really young, when I was in middle school, 393 00:27:00,341 --> 00:27:05,700 you know, kids in my state wanted fireworks and there was no fireworks allowed in Massachusetts. 394 00:27:06,460 --> 00:27:10,341 But I had fireworks in Maine. I don't think I was even supposed to have them in Maine, 395 00:27:10,380 --> 00:27:13,460 but I got them from New Hampshire. And anyway, so I had fireworks and I was like, oh, well, 396 00:27:13,460 --> 00:27:18,940 I just need to transport the fireworks from this jurisdiction to this other jurisdiction. 397 00:27:19,200 --> 00:27:23,180 So I'm out of my, well, the losses, I can't do that, but I, you know, realized, okay, 398 00:27:23,180 --> 00:27:25,001 like here's how you're going to get caught or not caught. 399 00:27:25,180 --> 00:27:25,820 Oh, wow. 400 00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:26,761 Did you figure it out? 401 00:27:26,940 --> 00:27:27,120 Yeah. 402 00:27:27,501 --> 00:27:27,880 Oh, wow. 403 00:27:27,940 --> 00:27:32,280 You know, I made, you know, 50 cents selling this firework and $2 selling that firework. 404 00:27:32,280 --> 00:27:37,040 And I remember some kids I sold my fireworks to one time came outside and just set them 405 00:27:37,040 --> 00:27:38,200 off right outside my house. 406 00:27:38,320 --> 00:27:39,560 I was like, come on guys, what are you doing? 407 00:27:39,560 --> 00:27:55,761 But then like now you think much later in life, you know, as you do more and more complicated startups, it's the same kind of thing where you're looking at all these intertwined competitors or legal issues or, you know, users wanting impossible feature sets. 408 00:27:56,200 --> 00:27:56,940 Yeah, totally. 409 00:27:56,940 --> 00:28:02,140 And you say, OK, well, how can I solve this multidimensional problem? 410 00:28:02,521 --> 00:28:02,800 Yeah. 411 00:28:03,160 --> 00:28:04,900 Can I can I can I hack it? 412 00:28:05,040 --> 00:28:06,800 Can I make this whole thing work somehow? 413 00:28:06,800 --> 00:28:12,720 and it's amazing the kind of shit that you can get working yeah you know one of my projects was 414 00:28:12,720 --> 00:28:17,700 real fun i made a jet uh jet pack i don't know if i ever told you about no something about it i was 415 00:28:17,700 --> 00:28:25,001 working in uh denver colorado and uh for this company uh called um apollo flight labs what 416 00:28:25,001 --> 00:28:31,180 that sounds so cool yeah they were owned by go fast energy drink and they ended up pivoting from 417 00:28:31,180 --> 00:28:35,200 jetpack machines into energy gum. 418 00:28:35,700 --> 00:28:37,781 But before they completed that pivot, 419 00:28:37,860 --> 00:28:40,940 they were trying to build a flying motorcycle effectively. 420 00:28:41,261 --> 00:28:41,620 No way. 421 00:28:41,741 --> 00:28:42,220 Yes way. 422 00:28:42,601 --> 00:28:42,960 Wow. 423 00:28:43,200 --> 00:28:43,761 Yeah, I know. 424 00:28:43,800 --> 00:28:45,360 I didn't realize that's what I was signing up for. 425 00:28:45,380 --> 00:28:47,140 I just thought it was a drone that they're working on. 426 00:28:47,261 --> 00:28:48,400 But I toured the factory. 427 00:28:48,541 --> 00:28:49,761 They showed me what they were building. 428 00:28:51,200 --> 00:28:52,521 How far did they get, Ted? 429 00:28:52,860 --> 00:28:53,900 Well, we got off the ground. 430 00:28:53,900 --> 00:28:57,460 We got maybe, I don't know, 100 feet off the ground. 431 00:28:57,900 --> 00:28:58,320 Oh, wow. 432 00:28:58,420 --> 00:28:59,080 We could keep going. 433 00:28:59,180 --> 00:28:59,820 I mean, it's jet engines, 434 00:28:59,820 --> 00:29:02,001 So just keep going until you don't have enough oxygen. 435 00:29:02,380 --> 00:29:04,420 But, you know, we're flying over water. 436 00:29:04,501 --> 00:29:05,300 We want to be pretty careful. 437 00:29:05,761 --> 00:29:08,140 So it's two small jet engines you strap to the beginning of the end. 438 00:29:08,560 --> 00:29:10,281 The product didn't work at the end. 439 00:29:10,300 --> 00:29:12,700 Like the financials, like not enough people wanted it. 440 00:29:12,720 --> 00:29:18,080 And it would destroy concrete because it would superheat the concrete and the bubbles would expand in the concrete. 441 00:29:19,180 --> 00:29:23,241 So maybe not the best product or a vehicle. 442 00:29:23,300 --> 00:29:24,521 I mean, it looks sick, right? 443 00:29:24,560 --> 00:29:25,960 I mean, it looks really cool. 444 00:29:26,781 --> 00:29:28,101 But, you know, that didn't work. 445 00:29:28,101 --> 00:29:35,060 But it's just a matter of, you know, you have this crazy idea and you figure it out. 446 00:29:35,180 --> 00:29:42,341 You, you know, read the manual of the jet engine and you say, OK, if I deliver this voltage, then the jet engine will work in that way. 447 00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:48,460 And then you say, OK, the jet engines are attached to the body and the force is exerted in this way. 448 00:29:48,680 --> 00:29:51,940 You know, how does the stability work? And you just kind of keep moving up like that. 449 00:29:51,940 --> 00:29:58,080 It's the same in business. You know, if I file this paperwork in this jurisdiction, then now I have access to. 450 00:29:58,101 --> 00:30:05,220 a Bitcoin bond market in Japan. And now I can arbitrage that against, you know, London or 451 00:30:05,220 --> 00:30:09,980 whatever it is. I think business is very similar, kind of puzzle solving almost. 452 00:30:10,521 --> 00:30:15,041 Absolutely. Yeah. It's just about getting enough traction, right? And then producing some sort of 453 00:30:15,041 --> 00:30:20,781 revenue. And hopefully that turns into a lot of revenue. Tell me about the startups, because 454 00:30:20,781 --> 00:30:26,680 I know about the one with the health one. I know about that one, right? Tell me about the other 455 00:30:26,680 --> 00:30:29,341 one because i don't know if i've ever heard the other story about the other start i don't talk 456 00:30:29,341 --> 00:30:34,741 about the first startup i did much really um because it's like a it was just flounder floundered 457 00:30:34,741 --> 00:30:38,820 well i'll tell you my real first startup yeah yeah tell me yes when i was at the beginning of 458 00:30:38,820 --> 00:30:44,001 middle school before i figured out the fireworks i uh said i was going to sell pencil lead and so 459 00:30:44,001 --> 00:30:48,720 i take the pencils and i would like an old school pencil that you sharpen and i would pick apart and 460 00:30:48,720 --> 00:30:55,001 get long pencil lead and try to sell that to or try to barter it with other kids like obviously 461 00:30:55,001 --> 00:30:59,460 that doesn't make any sense right so that was the technically first startup but uh the first real 462 00:30:59,460 --> 00:31:08,320 startup is um when i was leaving college i went to school in boulder colorado and uh me and my 463 00:31:08,320 --> 00:31:14,620 two best friends at the time uh we founded a company called myra makes which was a children's 464 00:31:14,620 --> 00:31:19,820 book actually i gave it to darren oh cool so darren's kid will eventually enjoy that but 465 00:31:19,820 --> 00:31:25,660 the children's book market is a really tough market to go into. So it's, so picture this. 466 00:31:25,680 --> 00:31:32,160 So it's like me and my two buddies, we're all engineers, you know, 20, early twenties engineers, 467 00:31:32,480 --> 00:31:37,860 no kids. Making a children's book. Making a children's book, you know, and it's like four 468 00:31:37,860 --> 00:31:44,281 kids, you know, age five to 10. And really the methodology we use there was just fail fast. 469 00:31:44,281 --> 00:31:50,560 and the first thing I did was I used to work in retail when I was in high school. I was kind of 470 00:31:50,560 --> 00:31:56,041 paying my own way through high school and so I was a cashier and so I called up the owner of that 471 00:31:56,041 --> 00:32:01,440 shop and I said, I'm making a children's book. Would you be interested in supporting me somehow, 472 00:32:01,640 --> 00:32:05,900 maybe putting one on the shelf or could I come in and show it to you? He said, I'll buy him. How 473 00:32:05,900 --> 00:32:13,660 much? I said, $20 a book and he said, I'll get 10. So $200 order and our book was like, it was 474 00:32:13,660 --> 00:32:17,980 sketched out. We basically had a draft book, but it was not complete. So I hit up my co-founders. 475 00:32:18,060 --> 00:32:23,140 I say, all right, guys, we got to deliver this book in two weeks. And they were so mad at me. 476 00:32:23,200 --> 00:32:27,781 They were like, what the hell did you disagree to? This book's not even done. You know, a huge 477 00:32:27,781 --> 00:32:32,460 commitment, but we buckled down. We were able to get the book out to him and shipped it to him. 478 00:32:32,781 --> 00:32:37,560 And then, you know, a month later I check in with him, you know, Hey man, how's the book selling? 479 00:32:37,920 --> 00:32:42,880 I'd love to hear feedback. And he said, Oh, I actually was surprised that you even called me. 480 00:32:42,880 --> 00:32:43,900 I thought this was a joke. 481 00:32:44,640 --> 00:32:45,001 Whoa. 482 00:32:45,160 --> 00:32:45,841 And I said, what do you mean? 483 00:32:45,980 --> 00:32:47,660 So I walk into the store. 484 00:32:47,720 --> 00:32:48,200 I talk to him. 485 00:32:48,880 --> 00:32:53,860 He says, this book was so bad that I actually thought you were screwing with us. 486 00:32:53,940 --> 00:32:55,541 And you had just stolen my money. 487 00:32:56,120 --> 00:32:57,680 I mean, that's how bad the product was. 488 00:32:57,680 --> 00:32:58,601 Did you have a registered for it? 489 00:32:58,741 --> 00:33:01,800 Did you pay like half or quarter? 490 00:33:02,380 --> 00:33:02,940 No, no. 491 00:33:03,021 --> 00:33:04,220 He paid me up front. 492 00:33:04,360 --> 00:33:06,521 I think it was, I don't know, Venmo or something like that. 493 00:33:06,601 --> 00:33:07,521 Oh, so you actually had. 494 00:33:07,620 --> 00:33:07,800 Okay. 495 00:33:07,920 --> 00:33:08,620 Via email. 496 00:33:08,761 --> 00:33:09,841 I mean, it's very basic, right? 497 00:33:09,841 --> 00:33:39,200 But basically the point of this is that my product was terrible and is no wonder is terrible. This is our first book we ever created. You know, we were stapling it together. And so I said, OK, would you please explain? His name was Matt, the owner. And I said, Matt, will you please explain to me exactly why this book sucks so bad? And he said, OK. And he started listing. He listened maybe a hundred different things like the page width. It's not glossy. There's not enough pages in it. The animations look bad. The content's bad. 498 00:33:39,200 --> 00:33:40,120 It doesn't stand out. 499 00:33:40,180 --> 00:33:41,120 The title is no good. 500 00:33:41,440 --> 00:33:42,960 And went through all these different things. 501 00:33:43,741 --> 00:33:45,380 And I said, great. 502 00:33:45,420 --> 00:33:46,560 And I just took notes on it. 503 00:33:46,620 --> 00:33:48,360 And then we went and we made a V2. 504 00:33:48,660 --> 00:33:49,761 And then I came back to him. 505 00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:52,060 I said, what do you think about the V2? 506 00:33:52,241 --> 00:33:54,140 And he says, OK, a lot better. 507 00:33:54,220 --> 00:33:56,920 You fixed, you know, these 50% of the things. 508 00:33:57,021 --> 00:33:57,880 But what about this? 509 00:33:57,900 --> 00:33:59,021 And it's still not good enough. 510 00:33:59,101 --> 00:34:02,580 Or, you know, when you fold it, that was a big issue for us. 511 00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:05,521 The paper was probably one of the most difficult things in that book. 512 00:34:06,480 --> 00:34:09,041 And so that's how that startup went. 513 00:34:09,041 --> 00:34:13,720 It was just a lot of iteration and eventually got pretty good where basically passed the 514 00:34:13,720 --> 00:34:15,800 smell test and I could go into any store. 515 00:34:15,940 --> 00:34:21,260 I went into maybe 50 stores in Colorado and they actually, we came up with a deal where 516 00:34:21,260 --> 00:34:24,101 basically I would keep the books in that store. 517 00:34:24,420 --> 00:34:28,900 And then when they sold a book, I think then it was going for around $12 a book or something 518 00:34:28,900 --> 00:34:29,380 like that. 519 00:34:29,900 --> 00:34:34,220 You know, we collect a percentage of the revenue and they would get a percentage as well. 520 00:34:34,940 --> 00:34:38,021 But it turns out people didn't really want that book and it wasn't a very good product. 521 00:34:38,021 --> 00:34:39,300 the end users. 522 00:34:39,820 --> 00:34:41,400 There was a small subset of kids 523 00:34:41,400 --> 00:34:42,320 who actually really enjoyed it. 524 00:34:42,760 --> 00:34:45,041 We really got held up with the parents 525 00:34:45,041 --> 00:34:48,021 because the kids are playing Minecraft 526 00:34:48,021 --> 00:34:50,360 or they're watching TV. 527 00:34:50,800 --> 00:34:51,581 They don't want a book. 528 00:34:52,140 --> 00:34:54,101 And the parents are really busy 529 00:34:54,101 --> 00:34:58,760 and they need to occupy their child's time 530 00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:00,581 so they can get some peace of mind. 531 00:35:01,021 --> 00:35:02,420 And if it's educational, that's great. 532 00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:04,780 But first and foremost is they need peace of mind. 533 00:35:05,200 --> 00:35:07,960 So we did not, in my opinion, 534 00:35:08,021 --> 00:35:14,220 we did not do enough market research to uncover that before going through this whole product 535 00:35:14,220 --> 00:35:19,280 lifecycle. So at the end of this startup, which failed at the end of it, I was sleeping in a car, 536 00:35:19,400 --> 00:35:24,380 I poured all my money in this thing, I was totally bankrupt. You know, our team split up. 537 00:35:25,140 --> 00:35:29,380 And basically, I gifted all my equity to the two guys. And I said, Look, you want to keep going, 538 00:35:30,061 --> 00:35:36,320 you can have all my equity and carry this forward. But I'm out. I don't see the future here. I just 539 00:35:36,320 --> 00:35:42,420 think like i'm out of money so this this is dead uh basically and it's easier to start from scratch 540 00:35:42,420 --> 00:35:51,981 over we finally got a sponsor can you believe it vintech they're a legal firm out of dallas texas 541 00:35:51,981 --> 00:35:59,680 who club lab uses we actually use jim who is this amazing gentleman central texas lawyer 542 00:36:00,320 --> 00:36:05,041 straight shooter, and he does legal expertise, 543 00:36:05,420 --> 00:36:07,940 and he has this amazing thing called Vintech. 544 00:36:08,360 --> 00:36:11,601 It's a place where you can get access to legal forms. 545 00:36:11,840 --> 00:36:15,481 You don't have to use ChatGBT to spin up some kind of gibberish. 546 00:36:15,481 --> 00:36:19,140 You can actually get these legal forms that are there already pre-built. 547 00:36:19,581 --> 00:36:22,561 You get access to his consulting two times a month. 548 00:36:23,041 --> 00:36:28,840 There's 25% off all his legal work that he applies to the network of attorneys 549 00:36:28,840 --> 00:36:29,360 that he knows. 550 00:36:29,360 --> 00:36:30,620 There's no long-term commitment. 551 00:36:30,780 --> 00:36:32,481 It's all for $199 a month. 552 00:36:33,840 --> 00:36:36,460 He also has this other thing called Vintech Plus, 553 00:36:36,981 --> 00:36:40,541 which is three hours of additional services per month, 554 00:36:40,581 --> 00:36:43,601 which is contract review, drafting, LLC, corporate formation, 555 00:36:43,720 --> 00:36:44,440 all that kind of stuff. 556 00:36:44,680 --> 00:36:48,001 That's for $999 a month. 557 00:36:48,800 --> 00:36:51,260 And it's affordable business, legal stuff for startups, 558 00:36:51,440 --> 00:36:52,240 founders like yourself. 559 00:36:52,640 --> 00:36:55,400 Use the code PLEBLAB at myvintech.com 560 00:36:55,400 --> 00:36:56,780 and get 10% off your subscription. 561 00:36:56,780 --> 00:36:59,260 and a big thanks to Jim and the Vintech team 562 00:36:59,260 --> 00:37:00,420 for backing the builder community 563 00:37:00,420 --> 00:37:01,900 and helping us push things forward. 564 00:37:02,460 --> 00:37:03,660 All right, let's get back to the show. 565 00:37:05,001 --> 00:37:06,660 This is about a two-year effort, 566 00:37:07,061 --> 00:37:09,001 but I learned a lot about like market research. 567 00:37:09,640 --> 00:37:11,581 I made like every mistake in the book. 568 00:37:11,660 --> 00:37:12,820 Just going door to door. 569 00:37:13,200 --> 00:37:13,581 Oh yeah. 570 00:37:13,740 --> 00:37:15,001 Just going door to door 571 00:37:15,001 --> 00:37:21,460 and like having to talk to each one of those book owners, 572 00:37:21,720 --> 00:37:23,001 I think, or bookstore owners. 573 00:37:23,121 --> 00:37:23,981 I would imagine that. 574 00:37:24,561 --> 00:37:25,081 And it's still- 575 00:37:25,081 --> 00:37:25,360 Farmers markets. 576 00:37:25,920 --> 00:37:26,180 Yeah. 577 00:37:26,180 --> 00:37:32,760 And then, yeah, like you said, gosh, I couldn't imagine what that was like. 578 00:37:32,981 --> 00:37:36,521 I remember there was one day because we did a lot of like in-person sales too. 579 00:37:36,740 --> 00:37:39,740 So I was like that annoying guy with a clipboard outside going up to people. 580 00:37:40,001 --> 00:37:44,880 And I did a lot of that because the other two guys, my team, they were like, we do not want to do this. 581 00:37:44,940 --> 00:37:45,660 I mean, who wants to do that? 582 00:37:45,660 --> 00:37:46,440 No one wants to do that. 583 00:37:46,880 --> 00:37:50,041 And specifically, we're targeting, like I said, kids age 5 to 10. 584 00:37:50,601 --> 00:37:54,601 So I'm looking, I'm like out there with my clipboard looking for families. 585 00:37:54,601 --> 00:38:15,061 It was the worst. You don't want to be in that situation, but there I was. And so I wanted to get, you know, I said to my co-founder, I said, oh, I'll get 50 signups. You know, just give me three hours out there. I'll get 50 signups. I was like, there's no way I'm getting 50 signups. But, you know, I go and I, you know, I go up and talk to them and you're just getting rejected over and over and over and over again. But you are also getting signups. You're getting sales. 586 00:38:15,061 --> 00:38:22,140 um you know on occasion uh people would just buy the book outright right for me right at that moment 587 00:38:22,140 --> 00:38:29,900 um I remember one day it was really bad day you know I got maybe two signups after hours of of 588 00:38:29,900 --> 00:38:35,200 doing this at a farmer's market and my ego was so bruised that I had to step outside the crowd 589 00:38:35,200 --> 00:38:40,340 for a moment and just just lean over and just be like oh my gosh you know like I can't believe this 590 00:38:40,340 --> 00:38:46,420 what I'm doing. Maybe it was like $24 or something. Yeah. 20 bucks a book, you know, I was just like, 591 00:38:46,501 --> 00:38:50,920 wow, this is, this is tough work. So, you know, long story short is the company didn't work, 592 00:38:51,121 --> 00:38:58,420 but it was really valuable learning experience to just jump right in and just do this and get all 593 00:38:58,420 --> 00:39:04,360 this knowledge about, you know, value proposition, market research, creating good product, getting 594 00:39:04,360 --> 00:39:09,660 feedback from customers, sales, team, dealing with teams, legal. 595 00:39:09,900 --> 00:39:10,880 What did the other guys say? 596 00:39:10,981 --> 00:39:14,900 I'm curious, like, what were the other guys saying when all this was going on? 597 00:39:14,960 --> 00:39:16,700 Did they see the same signs that you'd see? 598 00:39:16,880 --> 00:39:21,420 Or did they all, like, what were you guys as a group of individuals like? 599 00:39:21,601 --> 00:39:22,760 Yeah, that was really interesting. 600 00:39:23,760 --> 00:39:26,081 We were very, very creative, the three of us. 601 00:39:26,160 --> 00:39:27,460 And we had done projects before. 602 00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:31,200 We actually started a student group, the three of us before. 603 00:39:31,200 --> 00:39:36,981 And then we started to create another company, but we kind of bailed on that and we moved to Byron Makes. 604 00:39:37,541 --> 00:39:39,440 But it was interesting. 605 00:39:39,880 --> 00:40:03,561 One of the most interesting things to me is that on my way out of that company I felt like a lot of the learnings that I was taking away from that experience were not the same conclusions that they had drawn despite us three of us going through this side by side What conclusions did they drew well I would say for the most part they viewed it as kind of a perseverance problem 606 00:40:03,561 --> 00:40:06,301 where we were doing all the right things 607 00:40:06,301 --> 00:40:08,581 and we just need to keep at it and never give up. 608 00:40:08,641 --> 00:40:10,181 And eventually it would work out. 609 00:40:10,821 --> 00:40:12,741 And that's why I gifted my equity over 610 00:40:12,741 --> 00:40:15,121 because I just fundamentally disagreed with that. 611 00:40:15,121 --> 00:40:17,961 I mean, you could always do something forever 612 00:40:17,961 --> 00:40:21,461 and the likelihood of it succeeding eventually is possible. 613 00:40:21,461 --> 00:40:27,321 yeah but i kind of looked into myself and into the business and i thought you know we do this for 10 614 00:40:27,321 --> 00:40:32,201 years and we finally get a hit okay first of all i need to go back to work because i'm out of cash 615 00:40:32,201 --> 00:40:37,461 i've just put all my money saying i'm sleeping in a car you know like i smell bad because i'm not 616 00:40:37,461 --> 00:40:41,561 showering enough like you know there's there's like like i was i don't mean to laugh but just 617 00:40:41,561 --> 00:40:44,921 the way you say it's well that my friends didn't tell me this until afterwards i wish they told me 618 00:40:44,921 --> 00:40:53,561 at the time you know it's like so but uh so from my perspective the issue was that we had not done 619 00:40:53,561 --> 00:40:58,141 the foundational market research from the get-go and we're also not the right founders for that type 620 00:40:58,141 --> 00:41:02,161 of business because we didn't have kids that's crazy right so like that seemed like very foundational 621 00:41:02,161 --> 00:41:07,481 to me and you know probably need to do something in digital so the product was fundamentally 622 00:41:07,481 --> 00:41:14,641 foundationally flawed too and we also had some uh team dynamic issues around kind of uh expectations 623 00:41:14,641 --> 00:41:20,241 um like i think the three of us were kind of trying to build different types of companies 624 00:41:20,241 --> 00:41:26,441 and um i was probably being a little like aggressive in general in terms of trying to 625 00:41:26,441 --> 00:41:33,301 sell you mean or like or trying to make it a bigger startup than i think they might have been 626 00:41:34,001 --> 00:41:35,601 What were they, I guess, what were the, 627 00:41:35,681 --> 00:41:37,121 I'm more curious about the other two founders. 628 00:41:37,221 --> 00:41:38,001 Like, whatever happened to them? 629 00:41:38,521 --> 00:41:40,641 So one of them became a lawyer. 630 00:41:41,181 --> 00:41:41,821 Oh, that's good. 631 00:41:41,961 --> 00:41:45,381 And the other one, and he ended up the final founder 632 00:41:45,381 --> 00:41:46,841 with the startup. 633 00:41:47,121 --> 00:41:47,721 What happened to it? 634 00:41:48,161 --> 00:41:50,061 Well, so it fizzled out. 635 00:41:50,721 --> 00:41:51,501 Well, it's interesting to me. 636 00:41:51,641 --> 00:41:52,721 How many books got created, though? 637 00:41:53,961 --> 00:41:54,721 Oh, I don't know. 638 00:41:54,781 --> 00:41:56,541 I mean, you have to do batch orders from Amazon, 639 00:41:56,741 --> 00:41:57,981 so there's probably thousands of books. 640 00:41:58,301 --> 00:41:59,441 I mean, I have 20 of them. 641 00:41:59,961 --> 00:42:02,301 Oh, that's the one that, yeah, interesting. 642 00:42:02,301 --> 00:42:05,141 I tried to find him the latest version for Darren's. 643 00:42:05,141 --> 00:42:05,461 Okay. 644 00:42:05,841 --> 00:42:08,781 So you have all these books that are just sitting there? 645 00:42:08,781 --> 00:42:10,281 I only have those 20 remaining. 646 00:42:10,921 --> 00:42:14,141 But for a while, you could buy on demand from Amazon, but it's no longer listed. 647 00:42:14,441 --> 00:42:15,321 It kind of fizzled out. 648 00:42:15,421 --> 00:42:20,101 And see, what's interesting is that I knew it was going to fizzle out, or I was very confident that would be the outcome. 649 00:42:20,701 --> 00:42:24,621 But the other two founders really believed that they could keep it going. 650 00:42:25,261 --> 00:42:30,601 And maybe they could, but you need to spend a lot of effort and energy and time to make these things happen. 651 00:42:30,601 --> 00:42:36,061 And you also need to learn like the biggest thing, like one of the biggest takeaways for 652 00:42:36,061 --> 00:42:40,501 me personally is that you have to learn from your mistakes and you have to be super honest 653 00:42:40,501 --> 00:42:46,081 and humble about what you did wrong so that you can improve for the next time. 654 00:42:46,621 --> 00:42:51,861 And if you have any sort of reality distortion, you can be reality distortion when you're 655 00:42:51,861 --> 00:42:55,921 trying to sell to someone and sell them on your vision, but you cannot have any reality 656 00:42:55,921 --> 00:42:59,681 distortion with yourself internally, which is very difficult to navigate that duality, 657 00:42:59,821 --> 00:43:00,321 right? 658 00:43:00,321 --> 00:43:05,841 Like I, I'm on the opposite end where I don't, I don't think I do enough like selling or marketing. 659 00:43:05,841 --> 00:43:08,541 I kind of, I'm really hard on myself and my product. 660 00:43:08,621 --> 00:43:09,821 I'm like, all this stuff is broken. 661 00:43:10,001 --> 00:43:14,081 Like I'm kind of a little bit too much on that extreme, but if you're not doing that 662 00:43:14,081 --> 00:43:17,581 at all, or you're not doing it very much, you're going to end up with a baby that's 663 00:43:17,581 --> 00:43:19,861 ugly and you don't want to fix it. 664 00:43:19,861 --> 00:43:23,421 You don't want to accept that's ugly and you'll blame everyone else for the reason 665 00:43:23,421 --> 00:43:24,221 that product failed. 666 00:43:24,701 --> 00:43:27,161 That's my read on that, that whole experience. 667 00:43:28,021 --> 00:43:28,421 Yeah. 668 00:43:28,661 --> 00:43:29,341 Oh man. 669 00:43:29,341 --> 00:43:31,281 I could share a lot about that kind of stuff. 670 00:43:32,841 --> 00:43:35,621 There's, I think for me, 671 00:43:36,441 --> 00:43:38,561 I think the reality distortion field 672 00:43:38,561 --> 00:43:39,361 that you're talking about, 673 00:43:39,541 --> 00:43:41,481 you know, and Steve Jobs famously 674 00:43:41,481 --> 00:43:44,081 is the one that, where that came from. 675 00:43:44,141 --> 00:43:44,701 He had that. 676 00:43:45,301 --> 00:43:48,441 But a lot of other founders think they have that 677 00:43:48,441 --> 00:43:50,541 or they try to wear that 678 00:43:50,541 --> 00:43:52,861 as like some kind of like badge of honor or something. 679 00:43:53,081 --> 00:43:53,861 But it's not true. 680 00:43:54,281 --> 00:43:56,041 Like what you're describing is the reality though. 681 00:43:56,041 --> 00:43:57,421 Like that's why I think for, 682 00:43:57,421 --> 00:44:03,161 it's so important to like bring somebody with experience in the fold like even if it's just an 683 00:44:03,161 --> 00:44:12,681 advisor or like a um you know somebody that's it in your in your kind of uh in your group right 684 00:44:12,681 --> 00:44:18,081 that's why like i think that's why i think club lab is such a great place is because right now 685 00:44:18,081 --> 00:44:22,761 just before we started the podcast we were talking about a product that we're building in here and uh 686 00:44:22,761 --> 00:44:29,461 like uh and it was great because we all came in and we're all having discussion and you know and 687 00:44:29,461 --> 00:44:35,101 you there is no kind of there's no wiggle room around it we're all just going to have to like 688 00:44:35,101 --> 00:44:41,021 uh you know it's a it's a it's a bloodbath of ideas right and like you know your your ideas 689 00:44:41,021 --> 00:44:44,201 are going to get slayed and they're going to be in the bathtub and we're all going to look at and 690 00:44:44,201 --> 00:44:48,261 say like yeah yeah your idea is slayed so don't even bother but it's good because we're all talking 691 00:44:48,261 --> 00:44:52,481 about this thing that we just slayed in the bathtub. And then we go in the living room, 692 00:44:52,541 --> 00:44:58,081 start watching, you know, we're all hanging out again, but there's, there's the bathroom of the, 693 00:44:58,081 --> 00:45:03,481 of the idea that we just slayed. Yeah. And we're all, we'll all know what's in that bathroom. 694 00:45:03,561 --> 00:45:06,701 Let's just give it 24 hours before we go back in there. Cause the main's going to go clean it up. 695 00:45:06,961 --> 00:45:11,281 But what I'm trying to say is like, that's where it's so important to be around other builders 696 00:45:11,281 --> 00:45:17,981 because you have to, it's good for somebody else to look at what you're working on and to 697 00:45:17,981 --> 00:45:25,321 at least check right and but i think also too just having that experience but dude it's man that's a 698 00:45:25,321 --> 00:45:31,681 tough one ted i never i never you never told me that i feel bad for you on that one that one's 699 00:45:31,681 --> 00:45:36,541 tough yeah because like when you when you told me that the first thing i thought was like 700 00:45:36,541 --> 00:45:42,661 yes 100 like no reason doing that startup right the second thing is like how do you 701 00:45:42,661 --> 00:45:47,721 like so you're just going to sell books and like there's three guys like how are you going to eat 702 00:45:47,721 --> 00:45:52,821 and then the third thing is like people are just too busy like they're just going to read the new 703 00:45:52,821 --> 00:45:56,841 york times and they're going to tell them what to what to buy and then like you said you should 704 00:45:56,841 --> 00:46:02,401 have been doing it digitally yeah and then the third thing is like the um like kids want like 705 00:46:02,401 --> 00:46:07,861 those like kind of pop-up books and like something that's just more in front of retail and stuff so 706 00:46:07,861 --> 00:46:13,201 it's just like all these other things yeah i mean you look at minecraft i was babysitting for these 707 00:46:13,201 --> 00:46:19,561 two twin boys and they would, they took, you know, they showed me their Minecraft civilization 708 00:46:19,561 --> 00:46:23,001 that they're building, like the most amazing universe you've ever seen. And they're getting 709 00:46:23,001 --> 00:46:27,681 there. Oh, you know, we're working on this, like ask this room of this building on, in this part 710 00:46:27,681 --> 00:46:33,281 of the continent. And there's no way a book can compete with that. And there still is a place for 711 00:46:33,281 --> 00:46:39,461 books. Um, it's not like books are going out, but you, when you're creating a product, you want it 712 00:46:39,461 --> 00:46:44,761 to be significantly better than the competition and so for us like you said all those things wrong 713 00:46:44,761 --> 00:46:49,861 that we're doing in terms of our position of who we are as people going into this type of business 714 00:46:49,861 --> 00:46:55,761 yeah on top of the revenue the you know you know we're probably spending like a hundred dollars to 715 00:46:55,761 --> 00:47:01,021 get one twenty dollar sale well it's not even way out of whack it's not even that it's the amount of 716 00:47:01,021 --> 00:47:05,741 like uh like the amount of work that y'all are doing for your own like you like you said you're 717 00:47:05,741 --> 00:47:12,121 sleeping out of your car but like that was uh the actual work that you're right yeah you're not even 718 00:47:12,121 --> 00:47:17,501 counting those hours yeah it was it was uh yeah so we basically made every mistake in the book 719 00:47:17,501 --> 00:47:24,101 that's that's kind of the story i say is like we went in and we said we followed you know you can 720 00:47:24,101 --> 00:47:28,741 listen all these advisors and they'll tell you you know lean startup or jobs to be done or all 721 00:47:28,741 --> 00:47:33,861 these other you know frameworks and methodologies like no we're following nike advice just do it 722 00:47:33,861 --> 00:47:36,241 And then don't even worry about all the other advice. 723 00:47:36,541 --> 00:47:39,441 And like, honestly, that's a pretty fast way to learn. 724 00:47:39,441 --> 00:47:42,301 Like just jumping in and we jumped in, we really meant it. 725 00:47:42,381 --> 00:47:48,081 So like we did a kind of a short two month, um, what I described as an incubator or an 726 00:47:48,081 --> 00:47:48,901 accelerator program. 727 00:47:49,481 --> 00:47:52,061 And, you know, we're working full time. 728 00:47:52,101 --> 00:47:56,221 I mean, I, I would try to sleep as little as possible during that time period. 729 00:47:56,221 --> 00:48:00,781 I did probably permanent brain damage from, from, oh yeah, from that little sleep. 730 00:48:00,781 --> 00:48:05,921 But we were really putting a lot of effort in, but we just made all those mistakes. 731 00:48:06,121 --> 00:48:08,541 But now I know about those mistakes. 732 00:48:08,901 --> 00:48:10,861 When I came back to do the health startup. 733 00:48:10,961 --> 00:48:13,241 Yeah, so talk about that one because that's the one I know about. 734 00:48:13,241 --> 00:48:18,361 Yeah, so this one was really cool. 735 00:48:18,461 --> 00:48:21,041 Kind of very different than what I told you about before. 736 00:48:21,201 --> 00:48:27,101 So after this children's book startup failed, I kind of went back to my technology world. 737 00:48:27,761 --> 00:48:28,461 So I studied physics. 738 00:48:28,541 --> 00:48:29,581 I was very interested in space. 739 00:48:29,581 --> 00:48:35,281 So I started working in a space lab where I was kind of assembling small spacecraft. 740 00:48:35,541 --> 00:48:38,061 It was pretty cool from a technology standpoint. 741 00:48:38,321 --> 00:48:42,041 But I was studying a topic that no one was interested in. 742 00:48:42,081 --> 00:48:43,321 This was space dust. 743 00:48:43,801 --> 00:48:45,821 And they're like, whoa, that's far out. 744 00:48:45,861 --> 00:48:47,081 Like you're studying space dust. 745 00:48:47,201 --> 00:48:50,041 But at the same time, no one cares about space dust. 746 00:48:50,161 --> 00:48:53,061 Like that is like some weird niche of science, right? 747 00:48:53,361 --> 00:48:55,401 So I was like, OK, I want to go back into startups. 748 00:48:55,721 --> 00:48:58,921 But I was just kind of shell shocked from this whole experience, right? 749 00:48:58,921 --> 00:49:00,901 Like I'm very cautious now. 750 00:49:01,061 --> 00:49:07,761 So what happened was I met this professor in the computer science department who had a technology he was working on. 751 00:49:07,801 --> 00:49:10,841 It was a wearable and it could do all these amazing things. 752 00:49:10,841 --> 00:49:28,901 It was basically electrodes that would go inside of your ear, but give you the experience as if you're wearing a full EEG, electroencephalogram hat that puts electrodes across your head and then monitors the electrical signals that are happening because of each of your neurons is firing potassium. 753 00:49:28,921 --> 00:49:30,401 and potassium is charged. 754 00:49:30,581 --> 00:49:33,161 So it's distorting the electrical field of your brain. 755 00:49:33,161 --> 00:49:40,181 And then you can, you know, detect your level of alertness or your sleep stage or epilepsy. 756 00:49:40,841 --> 00:49:43,301 A lot of things you can determine about someone. 757 00:49:43,561 --> 00:49:46,861 So he was able to reduce all that to the form factor of an earbud. 758 00:49:47,381 --> 00:49:48,941 And I just thought that was so cool. 759 00:49:49,241 --> 00:49:52,441 And he was a really persuasive, compelling speaker as well. 760 00:49:52,541 --> 00:49:52,961 Oh, wow. 761 00:49:53,261 --> 00:49:54,301 And so I had one of those. 762 00:49:54,601 --> 00:49:54,741 Yeah. 763 00:49:54,741 --> 00:50:03,081 So I, you know, so I got involved with this and I said, you know, I'd like to help you take this from the lab out into the real world. 764 00:50:03,281 --> 00:50:06,501 So I ended up becoming employee number one at this company. 765 00:50:06,501 --> 00:50:10,181 It was kind of a, it's a technology spinoff from a university. 766 00:50:10,681 --> 00:50:16,861 But because it was a spinoff, it already had grant money and it made it very easy for us to raise venture capital. 767 00:50:17,201 --> 00:50:18,901 We raised a lot of money for this thing. 768 00:50:19,381 --> 00:50:20,381 How much should you be asking? 769 00:50:20,761 --> 00:50:21,661 I kind of lost count. 770 00:50:21,721 --> 00:50:23,381 I think it was around the order of $70 million. 771 00:50:24,101 --> 00:50:24,441 Really? 772 00:50:24,741 --> 00:50:26,961 I left around 20 million though. 773 00:50:27,001 --> 00:50:29,781 So I pulled myself out of that project. 774 00:50:30,801 --> 00:50:34,141 But the, yeah, I mean, it was an amazing experience. 775 00:50:34,821 --> 00:50:40,141 And it also gave me a deep understanding of kind of morality in business, the good, the 776 00:50:40,141 --> 00:50:41,021 bad, and the gray. 777 00:50:41,161 --> 00:50:44,981 I think the gray is the most interesting because there's a lot of situations you find yourself 778 00:50:44,981 --> 00:50:49,141 in which might not feel right, but they could be right. 779 00:50:49,141 --> 00:50:59,101 And you just need to like be very careful with your decisions to make sure that your feelings aren't getting in the way of what will succeed from the business. 780 00:50:59,101 --> 00:51:04,461 And also you're doing a moral business and you're not doing immoral things to further that business. 781 00:51:04,741 --> 00:51:08,641 That is very difficult, in my opinion, especially when venture capital gets involved. 782 00:51:09,501 --> 00:51:11,821 And you're, you know, every founder does this. 783 00:51:11,881 --> 00:51:13,041 You sell a dream. 784 00:51:13,341 --> 00:51:16,521 Like when I talk about FeedFilter, I talk about the perfect situation. 785 00:51:16,521 --> 00:51:18,541 But, you know, the product's not perfect. 786 00:51:18,541 --> 00:51:21,701 Like it's not going to deliver the best experience for everyone, right? 787 00:51:21,821 --> 00:51:22,821 There's work to be done. 788 00:51:23,581 --> 00:51:30,741 So when you take a product, you know, some people are going to pitch that product further 789 00:51:30,741 --> 00:51:34,141 than it is even possible to deliver on. 790 00:51:34,441 --> 00:51:38,361 That's when you get into the territory, in my opinion, that is like impermissible. 791 00:51:38,501 --> 00:51:39,641 So I'm okay with overselling. 792 00:51:39,861 --> 00:51:41,001 I mean, look, everyone oversells. 793 00:51:41,101 --> 00:51:41,921 You go to the car dealership. 794 00:51:42,021 --> 00:51:44,301 Oh, yeah, this car's got no problems, right? 795 00:51:44,761 --> 00:51:47,061 And then you drive it off the lot and the engine falls out the bottom. 796 00:51:47,161 --> 00:51:48,181 It's happened to my friend. 797 00:51:48,181 --> 00:51:51,061 is like the engine was like sitting on the bottom of the car. 798 00:51:51,361 --> 00:51:53,621 You know, it's like, that's false advertising. 799 00:51:54,221 --> 00:51:55,621 But is it immoral? 800 00:51:55,801 --> 00:51:57,701 I mean, you know, that's kind of a stretch. 801 00:51:58,081 --> 00:52:01,341 But now if you say that this car can fly and it can't fly, that's a problem. 802 00:52:01,761 --> 00:52:01,941 Yeah. 803 00:52:02,201 --> 00:52:04,341 So getting back to the story of this wearable device. 804 00:52:04,341 --> 00:52:10,801 So the first thing I did was kind of take a state of what is the situation of this technology? 805 00:52:11,321 --> 00:52:12,841 It's on a lab bench. 806 00:52:13,241 --> 00:52:14,421 There's wires everywhere. 807 00:52:15,041 --> 00:52:17,761 There's kind of a cool demo, but it's very technology savvy. 808 00:52:17,761 --> 00:52:22,941 It's just showing wiggles on a screen and there's wires hanging off the person when they're doing the demo. 809 00:52:23,041 --> 00:52:24,741 So I was like, OK, so we're going to take this. 810 00:52:24,801 --> 00:52:28,861 We're going to take all the wires and put them in nice, clean, single cables. 811 00:52:29,361 --> 00:52:30,601 And they already had a rendering of this. 812 00:52:30,661 --> 00:52:33,841 So it wasn't like this was my idea from scratch. 813 00:52:34,301 --> 00:52:43,941 But what I recognized was that we needed to get to a presentable demo to show to both investors and to customers to do customer research. 814 00:52:43,941 --> 00:52:47,501 Because I had learned the importance of customer research from my past startup. 815 00:52:47,761 --> 00:52:53,321 So we modified the product. 816 00:52:53,461 --> 00:52:55,081 I mean, this is an MVP at this point. 817 00:52:55,441 --> 00:53:00,681 And we're able to make it something that looks very presentable, very small and minimal form factor. 818 00:53:01,001 --> 00:53:07,421 I was arguing with China to get the right size of battery and like spending a lot of attention to get the electrodes to fit into the earbud. 819 00:53:08,481 --> 00:53:13,381 And then once we had it at that size, I did a similar thing to the pitch deck. 820 00:53:13,741 --> 00:53:15,321 Because originally, this was a professor. 821 00:53:15,321 --> 00:53:20,461 the pitch deck was very academic, long text charts. And I was like, okay, we need to delete 822 00:53:20,461 --> 00:53:27,801 everything and make it just blue or black or white, right? Just make it very simple and say 823 00:53:27,801 --> 00:53:32,941 our statements bold and in the center of each page and then get the total slide count out of like 20 824 00:53:32,941 --> 00:53:40,601 slides. And then we started entering into some university pitch competitions, applying to some 825 00:53:40,601 --> 00:53:45,301 more grants, and then eventually starting to apply to the Y Combinators of the world, 826 00:53:45,841 --> 00:53:50,901 accelerators. We ended up getting into 500 startups, which is kind of a tier three. 827 00:53:51,541 --> 00:53:55,881 So it's Y Combinator, then Techstars, then 500 startups. We got into that, and then I think that 828 00:53:55,881 --> 00:54:03,021 really started unlocking the venture capital side. While that's all happening, I got us into a grant 829 00:54:03,021 --> 00:54:07,941 program that would allow us to do market research via Lean Startup. This was called iCorps. 830 00:54:07,941 --> 00:54:11,281 and for innovation corporations. 831 00:54:12,221 --> 00:54:17,581 And so I would execute customer interviews 832 00:54:17,581 --> 00:54:19,461 over the course of a two-month period. 833 00:54:19,761 --> 00:54:24,001 And I conducted 117 customer interviews. 834 00:54:24,301 --> 00:54:26,841 And each interview was around 45 minutes long. 835 00:54:26,961 --> 00:54:29,261 These are long-form discussions. 836 00:54:30,041 --> 00:54:32,541 And it was two people, so it was myself and a note-taker. 837 00:54:32,921 --> 00:54:34,741 And we'd execute these interviews, 838 00:54:34,741 --> 00:54:38,101 take all the notes about really everything. 839 00:54:38,221 --> 00:54:41,641 I mean, the body language, the stories, the intonations. 840 00:54:41,921 --> 00:54:44,901 I mean, we really want to sap all the information 841 00:54:44,901 --> 00:54:46,121 out of the person we were talking to 842 00:54:46,121 --> 00:54:49,241 to try to understand what their actual needs were. 843 00:54:50,061 --> 00:54:51,681 And throughout all that effort, 844 00:54:51,841 --> 00:54:53,701 my personal conclusion was that 845 00:54:53,701 --> 00:54:57,381 the product really should be solving epilepsy. 846 00:54:58,921 --> 00:55:01,741 And the reason for that is because 847 00:55:01,741 --> 00:55:03,741 this is a specific group. 848 00:55:03,741 --> 00:55:08,701 group. So you start with these broad groups and then you say, okay, this group doesn't have the 849 00:55:08,701 --> 00:55:13,761 problem, but maybe the subset of the group has the problem. So we started out with general sleep tech 850 00:55:13,761 --> 00:55:18,321 or people who are trying to get better sleep. I mean, that's everyone, right? That's one third 851 00:55:18,321 --> 00:55:23,141 of the planet. At least that's what we said on the pitch deck slide. But then later I said, okay, 852 00:55:23,161 --> 00:55:27,921 well, I'm not sure if that's a really, like I'm not seeing in my customer interviews that these 853 00:55:27,921 --> 00:55:33,581 customers actually need that product. And there's much better, like Aura Ring is something I use or 854 00:55:33,581 --> 00:55:40,061 eight sleep. These are like way easier wearables. They're not as accurate, but, you know, do these 855 00:55:40,061 --> 00:55:43,981 users really need that level of accuracy, you know, to have something on your head? 856 00:55:45,101 --> 00:55:49,721 And so then we started, what about people who have epilepsy while they're sleeping? 857 00:55:50,141 --> 00:55:55,581 That broke us into the whole epilepsy world. And then we talked to people who had seizures of, 858 00:55:55,721 --> 00:56:01,481 you know, they were controlled by medication. They were not controlled by medication, young, old, 859 00:56:01,481 --> 00:56:11,601 doctors. And then we got to parents of people who, of kids who were recently diagnosed with epilepsy. 860 00:56:12,001 --> 00:56:17,481 And it actually takes three years before the medication controls the epilepsy. So there's a 861 00:56:17,481 --> 00:56:22,561 three-year period where the parent is working with the doctor to try all these different types 862 00:56:22,561 --> 00:56:28,341 of medication to get the kid's epilepsy and seizures under control. And it's a traumatic 863 00:56:28,341 --> 00:56:33,501 experience for the parent. Everyone thinks about the child, but it's actually the parent that is 864 00:56:33,501 --> 00:56:39,981 struggling way more than the child. The child just wants to not be weird at school and just fit in. 865 00:56:40,661 --> 00:56:45,321 They're embarrassed, right? But that's really the extent of their worry. They don't care too much 866 00:56:45,321 --> 00:56:49,841 about the personal danger, but the parent is terrified that something's going to happen. 867 00:56:50,301 --> 00:56:57,341 Like at night, the child could flip over on their front and stop breathing. So it actually is so bad 868 00:56:57,341 --> 00:56:59,901 that actually interferes with their jobs. 869 00:57:00,041 --> 00:57:01,521 They can't hold down a full-time job 870 00:57:01,521 --> 00:57:02,961 because they're worrying about this so much. 871 00:57:03,901 --> 00:57:06,381 So I discovered that through these customer interviews 872 00:57:06,381 --> 00:57:08,801 that this was a real pressing need 873 00:57:08,801 --> 00:57:10,241 with this group of people. 874 00:57:10,361 --> 00:57:12,581 Probably 80% of people in this category 875 00:57:12,581 --> 00:57:15,161 would buy this product at a certain price range. 876 00:57:15,861 --> 00:57:18,361 And I really kind of nailed down 877 00:57:18,361 --> 00:57:22,361 the level of accuracy the technology would need 878 00:57:22,361 --> 00:57:23,841 to get these people to buy. 879 00:57:24,661 --> 00:57:26,181 And so this was kind of all mapped out. 880 00:57:26,181 --> 00:57:30,221 But the problem was the total adjustable market was not big enough. 881 00:57:31,301 --> 00:57:33,281 And so the investors were like, we're out. 882 00:57:34,041 --> 00:57:38,521 And the CEO was like, I don't want to, you know, if the investors are out, I'm out. 883 00:57:39,301 --> 00:57:44,621 And what I said is if we're not going after the needs of the customers, then I'm going to be out too. 884 00:57:44,701 --> 00:57:51,561 Because I just fundamentally believe in my bones that the purpose of a business is to solve customers' needs. 885 00:57:52,001 --> 00:57:55,561 And if that's not what we're doing, that's not a business I want to be part of. 886 00:57:56,181 --> 00:57:59,081 Um, so, you know, that was the end of that. 887 00:58:01,401 --> 00:58:02,321 That's crazy. 888 00:58:04,101 --> 00:58:05,041 That's insane. 889 00:58:07,261 --> 00:58:08,801 Do they, are they still around? 890 00:58:08,941 --> 00:58:09,301 Do they? 891 00:58:10,081 --> 00:58:10,921 Sort of. 892 00:58:11,181 --> 00:58:11,761 What do you mean? 893 00:58:12,121 --> 00:58:13,221 Well, they're a zombie company. 894 00:58:13,321 --> 00:58:14,101 They're a zombie company. 895 00:58:14,301 --> 00:58:16,021 Um, yeah. 896 00:58:16,041 --> 00:58:20,141 So it's, it's always possible like that, that technology gets rolled up into something else 897 00:58:20,141 --> 00:58:25,301 or, um, but you know, fundamentally they're still going after sleep tech and the need 898 00:58:25,301 --> 00:58:29,841 was in epilepsy or, you know, there might've been need in sleep tech, but if you're going to find it, 899 00:58:29,841 --> 00:58:35,861 you got to do this kind of rigorous process. They never really agreed with my perspective that 900 00:58:35,861 --> 00:58:41,681 the rigorous process did surface insights. They said, Hey, we did this whole customer research 901 00:58:41,681 --> 00:58:47,321 effort and all you told us was something that the investors wouldn't even do. So you basically just 902 00:58:47,321 --> 00:58:53,561 waste all this time. From my perspective, it's like, no, we found a real business and screw the 903 00:58:53,561 --> 00:58:58,321 investors like you know like we just do the right business because they're going to get more than 904 00:58:58,321 --> 00:59:03,421 zero they're either getting zero dollars or they're getting non-zero dollars yeah or we should do more 905 00:59:03,421 --> 00:59:08,501 market research to find the need in something that'll make them happy yeah um but that that 906 00:59:08,501 --> 00:59:16,301 was just my perspective i was not the founder of that company yeah gosh what uh i guess through all 907 00:59:16,301 --> 00:59:23,481 that through these two failed startups what did you uh i guess what did you learn because you you 908 00:59:23,481 --> 00:59:29,721 found your way to bitcoin eventually yeah and um it's probably because you you you went through 909 00:59:29,721 --> 00:59:36,221 these i would imagine these two these learnings but um yeah what did you take away from from doing 910 00:59:36,221 --> 00:59:40,861 these well there's so many things to learn and you know like sometimes you can kind of say the 911 00:59:40,861 --> 00:59:46,241 learnings but you know people are listening they're probably like they hear advice or learnings from 912 00:59:46,241 --> 00:59:46,901 all sorts of people. 913 00:59:47,141 --> 00:59:49,081 So it's very situationally dependent. 914 00:59:49,821 --> 01:00:18,581 I will say that these experiences like really coming out of my first startup when I was kind of looking around for other opportunities is when I found Bitcoin I was working I was living in kind of a hacker house with some other startup guys And then I was going to a accelerator in the university And you know I was kind of coaching at that point kind of like an advisor sharing my you know battle scars with people kind of trying to scare them off of what they doing not doing a very good job at it 915 01:00:18,581 --> 01:00:21,621 founders are hard to talk down off the cliff. 916 01:00:21,841 --> 01:00:22,001 Yeah. 917 01:00:22,161 --> 01:00:25,401 But, you know, it's just basically I'd go up to a startup founder and say, 918 01:00:25,881 --> 01:00:26,681 oh, what's your product? 919 01:00:26,841 --> 01:00:29,341 And, you know, what need is it solving? 920 01:00:29,781 --> 01:00:32,241 And I listened to it and I'd ask some follow-up questions. 921 01:00:32,241 --> 01:00:34,281 And then I'd walk away and think to myself, 922 01:00:34,281 --> 01:00:35,721 do I have any idea what they're building? 923 01:00:36,081 --> 01:00:38,321 And 99% of the time, the answer is no. 924 01:00:38,681 --> 01:00:41,161 But sometimes it's like, okay, kind of see it, but I'm not sure. 925 01:00:41,801 --> 01:00:43,201 But I always give people the benefit of the doubt 926 01:00:43,201 --> 01:00:45,781 because in a short conversation, you can't really fully see that. 927 01:00:45,781 --> 01:00:52,921 um so then bitcoin was in the news and so i said can anyone explain what bitcoin is like i just 928 01:00:52,921 --> 01:00:56,641 treated it as if it was another one of these products that i was assessing in the startup 929 01:00:56,641 --> 01:01:05,941 world and one of my friends said you know he's a bitcoiner like not an og but he's maybe og 930 01:01:05,941 --> 01:01:11,541 202 or whatever and he said yeah i can explain bitcoin to you but you know do you actually want 931 01:01:11,541 --> 01:01:15,041 to know and i said yeah i want to know and he said well i'm gonna need one hour of your time 932 01:01:15,041 --> 01:01:15,821 in a whiteboard. 933 01:01:16,281 --> 01:01:16,681 Wow. 934 01:01:16,721 --> 01:01:18,041 And we're in a space just like this, 935 01:01:18,441 --> 01:01:19,901 kind of a startup environment, 936 01:01:20,121 --> 01:01:22,221 but he's probably the only Bitcoiner there. 937 01:01:22,521 --> 01:01:22,781 Yeah. 938 01:01:22,981 --> 01:01:24,221 This is late 2017. 939 01:01:25,061 --> 01:01:27,001 And so he pulls over a whiteboard 940 01:01:27,001 --> 01:01:27,881 and I pull over a chair, 941 01:01:27,981 --> 01:01:28,781 like right then and there, 942 01:01:28,841 --> 01:01:29,541 he pulls out a marker 943 01:01:29,541 --> 01:01:32,541 and he just explains cryptography and hashing. 944 01:01:33,021 --> 01:01:33,381 Wow. 945 01:01:33,861 --> 01:01:35,381 And so I walked away from that conversation. 946 01:01:35,381 --> 01:01:36,721 It was a one hour conversation. 947 01:01:37,161 --> 01:01:37,581 And I was like, 948 01:01:38,221 --> 01:01:41,541 okay, I believe that Bitcoin is unhackable. 949 01:01:42,141 --> 01:01:43,521 Like I'm sold on that belief 950 01:01:43,521 --> 01:01:44,821 based on this technical description. 951 01:01:45,041 --> 01:01:46,721 I mean, it's not terribly complicated. 952 01:01:46,861 --> 01:01:50,661 It's weird, but it's not overly complex, right? 953 01:01:51,101 --> 01:01:53,221 But then I had to ask, okay, that's a cool feature 954 01:01:53,221 --> 01:01:55,581 that you have this thing that's kind of like money, 955 01:01:55,721 --> 01:01:57,301 but it's unhackable. 956 01:01:57,661 --> 01:02:02,141 So why would we want unhackable money? 957 01:02:02,241 --> 01:02:05,441 I mean, it seems like that doesn't seem like a bad thing. 958 01:02:05,661 --> 01:02:07,361 No one would not want unhackable money, 959 01:02:07,381 --> 01:02:09,301 but why do we need unhackable money? 960 01:02:10,441 --> 01:02:12,701 And that's what led me to Austrian economics 961 01:02:12,701 --> 01:02:13,441 and all this other stuff. 962 01:02:13,601 --> 01:02:14,621 Eventually, I'm a Bitcoiner. 963 01:02:15,041 --> 01:02:21,281 So, you know, like, I guess the overarching learning is the number one learning is do 964 01:02:21,281 --> 01:02:26,301 market research and talk to the customer and try to understand deeply what the need is 965 01:02:26,301 --> 01:02:32,661 and why, what solution would best solve their need, because it's probably not the solution 966 01:02:32,661 --> 01:02:37,661 that you start with, but maybe it's some variation or it's a solution that's out there in another 967 01:02:37,661 --> 01:02:39,101 industry that you can pull over. 968 01:02:39,581 --> 01:02:42,601 But really be humble and try to understand that. 969 01:02:43,101 --> 01:02:43,641 Curious. 970 01:02:44,481 --> 01:02:48,241 And then, you know, I've learned lots of other things about kind of more tactical stuff. 971 01:02:48,341 --> 01:02:49,481 I would say that's foundational. 972 01:02:49,921 --> 01:02:51,421 Get the value proposition right. 973 01:02:53,101 --> 01:03:02,001 And then the more tactical stuff is like how to make a good pitch deck, you know, how to work with your team, you know, how to get founder market fit. 974 01:03:02,001 --> 01:03:04,921 So make sure that you're working on the right domain. 975 01:03:05,421 --> 01:03:05,521 Right. 976 01:03:05,701 --> 01:03:06,541 Those types of things. 977 01:03:06,781 --> 01:03:06,961 Yeah. 978 01:03:08,661 --> 01:03:09,981 We're doing so we're doing. 979 01:03:10,181 --> 01:03:10,961 I think I told you this. 980 01:03:11,001 --> 01:03:13,501 We're doing a startup school right now. 981 01:03:13,641 --> 01:03:20,161 And so I've, we've been trying to, me and Teresa have been trying to put this together for about a year now. 982 01:03:20,561 --> 01:03:31,401 And, and, you know, since we started startup, startup today, we've always had these kind of like ideas swirling around about how are we going to do this and that kind of thing. 983 01:03:31,421 --> 01:03:38,841 And I think one of the things I realized like doing this, because it's like a, it's like a Bitcoin version of it. 984 01:03:38,841 --> 01:03:48,101 It's not like a traditional startup program that you would see from like a, you know, a traditional place like Antler or something down the street, right? 985 01:03:48,101 --> 01:03:50,481 Like it's an actual Bitcoin version of it. 986 01:03:50,801 --> 01:03:58,541 And so I didn't realize too, but like I'm stretching my mind, like literally stretching my mind, putting these things together. 987 01:03:58,701 --> 01:04:00,201 Teresa's also doing the same. 988 01:04:00,281 --> 01:04:03,981 And it's like, it's really hard. 989 01:04:04,381 --> 01:04:04,541 Yeah. 990 01:04:04,661 --> 01:04:05,701 It's like really hard. 991 01:04:05,701 --> 01:04:12,581 But I told her and I was just and just through our conversations that we have, I was like, but I think we have enough data. 992 01:04:13,041 --> 01:04:20,801 Like, I think Club Lab has enough data from 21, once we started till now to at least do the first iteration of it. 993 01:04:21,241 --> 01:04:22,801 It probably won't be perfect. 994 01:04:23,341 --> 01:04:25,001 It probably won't even be like. 995 01:04:26,761 --> 01:04:28,141 Compelling enough, right? 996 01:04:29,481 --> 01:04:32,081 And so we brought up we brought a startup in there. 997 01:04:32,161 --> 01:04:34,641 We're working with him and we're going to have two initially. 998 01:04:34,641 --> 01:04:41,681 and then you know the second one we realized you know it probably be best if we we have that person 999 01:04:41,681 --> 01:04:45,861 maybe work more closely with him inside the lab as opposed to inside this program because 1000 01:04:45,861 --> 01:04:51,001 like you said founder market fit that kind of thing but this one person that we're working 1001 01:04:51,001 --> 01:04:57,641 with right now and we told him ahead of time like hey this is a new thing uh we're we're we're really 1002 01:04:57,641 --> 01:05:04,021 test running with you like like uh and none of this has been created before so uh welcome to 1003 01:05:04,021 --> 01:05:12,021 club lab, you know? Um, and kind of like what you said, it's, it's, uh, you know, we were able to, 1004 01:05:12,081 --> 01:05:18,981 we were able to divvy it up into four buckets, like foundation, product, revenue, and pitch. 1005 01:05:19,221 --> 01:05:25,381 And we think those are foundational to a Bitcoin startup. Now we'll see if we're right or not. 1006 01:05:25,921 --> 01:05:31,101 Um, we'll see if, um, if that's going to need some tweaking next, next year when we do it again. 1007 01:05:31,101 --> 01:05:36,601 but I do think there is something, like you said, 1008 01:05:36,661 --> 01:05:38,421 there is something worth pursuing 1009 01:05:38,421 --> 01:05:42,921 and then iterating as we pursue it 1010 01:05:42,921 --> 01:05:46,261 and then moving towards that direction 1011 01:05:46,261 --> 01:05:48,401 and moving towards this and then dialing it in. 1012 01:05:48,821 --> 01:05:52,281 And one of the things I've been lucky enough to have 1013 01:05:52,281 --> 01:05:54,541 is like these people down the street, like Antler, 1014 01:05:54,681 --> 01:05:55,901 like being able to talk to them 1015 01:05:55,901 --> 01:05:56,981 and ask them these questions. 1016 01:05:58,221 --> 01:06:00,841 That for me has been a big help for me this past year. 1017 01:06:01,101 --> 01:06:06,061 and just seeing how they're able to create their accelerator 1018 01:06:06,061 --> 01:06:07,061 and how they did it. 1019 01:06:07,221 --> 01:06:10,801 And I think without that kind of help, 1020 01:06:10,941 --> 01:06:13,661 and even with Capital Factory, how they're doing it, right? 1021 01:06:15,461 --> 01:06:17,581 I don't think I would have ever been able to, 1022 01:06:17,961 --> 01:06:19,861 at least me and Teresa would have never been able 1023 01:06:19,861 --> 01:06:21,941 to even think we even have the, 1024 01:06:23,941 --> 01:06:27,121 that we could take that next step to do that. 1025 01:06:27,121 --> 01:06:29,461 And I think that just kind of goes to what you're saying. 1026 01:06:29,461 --> 01:06:40,881 And it's like you have to go through these kind of like initial kind of like painful process of like birth, rebirth, birth, rebirth. 1027 01:06:40,881 --> 01:06:45,421 And then finally, you think that you you're there as a founder. 1028 01:06:45,421 --> 01:06:48,681 But, you know, I'm just out of curiosity. 1029 01:06:48,841 --> 01:06:51,901 Well, the foundation, I love how you categorize that into the buckets. 1030 01:06:52,081 --> 01:06:59,281 I mean, I feel like that's some of the hardest thing is just disentangling all the mess that is startups into simple buckets. 1031 01:06:59,461 --> 01:07:24,161 Yeah. What is in your foundation bucket? Yeah. So right now we have we start I would have to pull up the the thing that we're using. I'll show you after the thing. But right now we start off with like Bitcoin Ventures 101, Bitcoin Startups 101. We're literally getting into like what is a traditional startup look like? What are the pros and cons of it? What does a Bitcoin startup look like? What are the pros and cons of it? 1032 01:07:24,161 --> 01:07:31,981 I'm like really going into it. And that way there's a, there's a based reality, like an actual 1033 01:07:31,981 --> 01:07:40,141 based reality of what it's like building a traditional Bitcoin startup. Like you're like, 1034 01:07:40,201 --> 01:07:47,941 I was telling Keanu about this. I was like, I'm trying not to oversell this like dream. Cause I 1035 01:07:47,941 --> 01:07:53,041 feel like in, I felt like in like the normal traditional, and there's nothing against that, 1036 01:07:53,041 --> 01:07:58,941 But like, but in Bitcoin, there's just like, there's just a real this. 1037 01:07:59,321 --> 01:08:02,321 I don't know how to explain that in words, but there's just this. 1038 01:08:02,661 --> 01:08:04,941 There's a fundamental reality that you have to accept. 1039 01:08:05,961 --> 01:08:08,541 You always say this, building in a Bitcoin era. 1040 01:08:08,801 --> 01:08:10,801 I love that term that you say. 1041 01:08:10,961 --> 01:08:15,101 Because it's just a fundamental reality that you have to start building on it. 1042 01:08:15,301 --> 01:08:18,181 And then, and then, and then we get to the other part. 1043 01:08:18,381 --> 01:08:21,082 But yeah, this is not about us. 1044 01:08:21,082 --> 01:08:24,721 What I'm trying to say is, but like, this is about your, your, your thing. 1045 01:08:24,881 --> 01:08:29,401 But what I'm trying to say is like, there is this, this, this hardness that comes to 1046 01:08:29,401 --> 01:08:33,481 building a startup, whether you're doing it in a traditional space or whether you're doing 1047 01:08:33,481 --> 01:08:38,421 it in like the Bitcoin space, or eventually our hope is these things merge and they become 1048 01:08:38,421 --> 01:08:38,701 one. 1049 01:08:38,761 --> 01:08:42,221 And I think that's going to happen hopefully within the next five to seven years, hopefully 1050 01:08:42,221 --> 01:08:42,761 if we're lucky. 1051 01:08:43,081 --> 01:08:47,581 And then we won't have that kind of delineation anymore. 1052 01:08:47,861 --> 01:08:48,261 Yeah. 1053 01:08:48,261 --> 01:08:53,002 Yeah, I put a good amount of time of thinking about this specific thing of building a startup in the Bitcoin era. 1054 01:08:53,401 --> 01:08:55,841 So I've made a number of kind of unconventional decisions. 1055 01:08:55,921 --> 01:08:58,321 Like one of them is I don't have a co-founder. 1056 01:08:58,581 --> 01:09:03,181 I mean, a lot of people don't have co-founders, but if I had the opportunity to have a co-founder, I would. 1057 01:09:03,321 --> 01:09:05,421 But you want to be very careful about that. 1058 01:09:05,741 --> 01:09:08,721 Plus, you get more control as a single founder. 1059 01:09:09,561 --> 01:09:12,801 I think you have enough experience, though, where you probably don't need a co-founder, right? 1060 01:09:12,801 --> 01:09:15,841 Yeah, I've dug some hats and, you know, I leaned into more technical side. 1061 01:09:15,961 --> 01:09:18,102 I take on multiple roles, which is challenging. 1062 01:09:18,261 --> 01:09:35,481 Another one is I'm not pursuing venture capital. And the reason for that is my prior experience of venture capital. And also, when you accept Bitcoin as inevitable, and then you accept all the other things that happen because Bitcoin is inevitable, the Fed goes away, the finance system is wrecked. 1063 01:09:35,481 --> 01:09:54,321 You know, you have a hostile government. You might have hostile corporations romping around the world that have no checks and balances from a court perspective. Now, it might not be that extreme, but that's a possibility. So when I'm thinking about my startup, I'm like, OK, not only am I building a startup, but I'm building a startup that. 1064 01:09:55,261 --> 01:10:03,361 Like could survive without venture capital is can bounce from this jurisdiction to another jurisdiction. 1065 01:10:03,361 --> 01:10:05,261 So you're thinking about that Bitcoin era. 1066 01:10:05,761 --> 01:10:08,261 You're thinking of like, that's in the front of your mind. 1067 01:10:08,421 --> 01:10:08,621 Yes. 1068 01:10:08,621 --> 01:10:12,741 It was actually when I was first mapping about a year ago, I started mapping out this idea 1069 01:10:12,741 --> 01:10:14,901 of this company. 1070 01:10:15,461 --> 01:10:18,661 And I actually started pursuing a totally different company. 1071 01:10:19,102 --> 01:10:22,881 And I got one or two months into it and I killed it right off the bat. 1072 01:10:22,941 --> 01:10:23,921 I said, you know what? 1073 01:10:24,542 --> 01:10:27,602 I don't like the direction that the setting was a finance company is going to be a lot 1074 01:10:27,602 --> 01:10:34,181 more like helping people kind of like what Unchained does with their retirement calculator. 1075 01:10:34,661 --> 01:10:40,861 So like imagine that on steroids. So basically a portfolio tool that will allow you to invest 1076 01:10:40,861 --> 01:10:47,701 Bitcoin, which I do think like there's a definitely a need there to some degree. But, you know, 1077 01:10:47,781 --> 01:10:52,901 the route is managing payments. And I didn't want to have that sort of regulatory 1078 01:10:52,901 --> 01:10:55,921 burden or exposure. 1079 01:10:56,681 --> 01:11:01,521 So I decided, and also I just, I want to do something, what I feel is more meaningful 1080 01:11:01,521 --> 01:11:04,002 than just working purely in finance. 1081 01:11:04,102 --> 01:11:05,641 I want to get outside of finance a little bit. 1082 01:11:06,201 --> 01:11:08,941 So then I said, okay, I want to build a business for the Bitcoin era. 1083 01:11:09,521 --> 01:11:15,002 Feed filter comes out of that because I view, you know, the social media platforms as kind 1084 01:11:15,002 --> 01:11:18,861 of a hostile environment and increasingly hostile over time. 1085 01:11:18,861 --> 01:11:28,121 Now, you can leave entirely go to Noster, but, you know, there might be that middle period where you still might need to go into the hostile environment, but you need to go with a little bit of armor. 1086 01:11:28,761 --> 01:11:28,881 Right. 1087 01:11:28,981 --> 01:11:31,661 And so you need to go in with your tools. 1088 01:11:31,921 --> 01:11:36,401 And so FeedFilter is a tool in that kind of hostile world. 1089 01:11:36,701 --> 01:11:46,761 And, you know, I made a lot of technical decisions, like not just not taking on venture capital, but also the types of technology I'm using to make it really hard to shut down. 1090 01:11:46,761 --> 01:11:48,421 I mean, you really can't shut it down. 1091 01:11:48,421 --> 01:11:55,781 So that's the goal is to kind of systematically eliminate counterparty risk. 1092 01:11:56,861 --> 01:12:02,781 And so that's, it's not a Bitcoin company per se, but it is, you know, building for the Bitcoin era. 1093 01:12:02,981 --> 01:12:05,961 It's a company that should exist in Bitcoin world. 1094 01:12:06,181 --> 01:12:13,401 And that's hard to think about because, you know, there's a lot of similarities, a lot of overlap in startups, but no one else. 1095 01:12:13,401 --> 01:12:14,321 I mean, this is ground zero. 1096 01:12:14,421 --> 01:12:20,801 What you're doing here at Plob Lab really is where, you know, kind of you're breaking fresh ground. 1097 01:12:21,161 --> 01:12:22,981 What does it mean to build in the Bitcoin era? 1098 01:12:23,301 --> 01:12:28,481 I think that's something that over the coming years, you know, everyone, the whole world is going to have to really reconcile. 1099 01:12:28,981 --> 01:12:29,881 Adapt, at least adapt. 1100 01:12:30,002 --> 01:12:31,102 I think that's where I was going to. 1101 01:12:31,841 --> 01:12:32,881 I think that's where. 1102 01:12:34,321 --> 01:12:37,761 I keep saying this, but it's like Bitcoin was this thing. 1103 01:12:38,481 --> 01:12:43,102 And it had to fit in, like, at least in the 2010s, it felt like it had to fit. 1104 01:12:43,401 --> 01:12:50,661 inside of this like fiat like environment with these fiat rails and it was always trying to 1105 01:12:50,661 --> 01:12:55,581 fit itself into this thing into this structure even now you kind of see it now where it's still 1106 01:12:55,581 --> 01:12:59,542 trying they're like people trying to force fit this thing and for the first time in history we 1107 01:12:59,542 --> 01:13:03,861 have like ai and like uh and that's kind of taken off and then we're seeing like spatial computing 1108 01:13:03,861 --> 01:13:08,401 taking off and like this is going to be the first time where bitcoin's actually functioning in its 1109 01:13:08,401 --> 01:13:13,141 own environment and guess what like the rails are being polished and they're getting better all the 1110 01:13:13,141 --> 01:13:17,542 time and lightning's taking off and there's all sorts of really cool stuff that you know a lot of 1111 01:13:17,542 --> 01:13:23,081 companies in here that are doing and i'm just even more bullish than i was like a year ago six months 1112 01:13:23,081 --> 01:13:28,661 ago three months ago two months ago yesterday and that's where like for me i'm just like if this 1113 01:13:28,661 --> 01:13:34,102 keeps going that way like everybody else is trying to build for things to fit in this old 1114 01:13:34,102 --> 01:13:41,441 to me that's just like that's like trying to build yeah it just doesn't make any that's like 1115 01:13:41,441 --> 01:13:46,721 that's like trying to make like like net zero work in the broadband era it doesn't it doesn't 1116 01:13:46,721 --> 01:13:54,561 make any sense yeah uh and uh yeah i i don't know i don't know i just extremely bullish you don't 1117 01:13:54,561 --> 01:14:00,761 move into the collapsing roman empire and uh start buying up real estate now you you built you get a 1118 01:14:00,761 --> 01:14:05,502 castle outside on the edges yeah for sure i was gonna bring up something else that you had brought 1119 01:14:05,502 --> 01:14:10,221 up too but gosh i can't remember what it was it was uh maybe on the next podcast maybe on the next 1120 01:14:10,221 --> 01:14:16,441 podcast yeah where can everybody find out what um where to check out feed filter well that is uh 1121 01:14:16,441 --> 01:14:22,901 feedfilter.com is you got the dot com i thought it was a dot ai not anymore what feedfilter.com 1122 01:14:22,901 --> 01:14:29,301 and um there's a a button right there big button can't miss it add to chrome uh definitely love 1123 01:14:29,301 --> 01:14:35,141 uh any feedback that people can give me right now it's early days right so i'm getting the product 1124 01:14:35,141 --> 01:14:42,002 out there i'm doing live testing right now works for uh x and instagram on chrome on desktop so 1125 01:14:42,002 --> 01:14:47,561 yeah really appreciate anyone's feedback and just give you feedback on twitter is that right when 1126 01:14:47,561 --> 01:14:51,401 you install it there's a little feedback button that pops right up and just click on it's a little 1127 01:14:51,401 --> 01:14:56,901 survey really easy uh but if you just want to shoot the shit with me or give me some ideas or 1128 01:14:56,901 --> 01:15:04,201 um learn a little bit more uh you can send me a note i'm ted thayer underscore on twitter which is 1129 01:15:04,201 --> 01:15:06,981 Ted, T-H-A-Y-E-R underscore on Twitter, 1130 01:15:07,241 --> 01:15:08,021 or you can email me. 1131 01:15:08,021 --> 01:15:08,861 Find him at Plob Lab. 1132 01:15:08,981 --> 01:15:09,641 You're at Plob Lab. 1133 01:15:09,661 --> 01:15:10,241 Yeah, come right here. 1134 01:15:10,381 --> 01:15:11,181 I sit right there. 1135 01:15:12,641 --> 01:15:15,381 But yeah, my email too is Ted at FeedFilter.com. 1136 01:15:15,542 --> 01:15:16,961 And yeah, just really appreciate it 1137 01:15:16,961 --> 01:15:18,081 for the opportunity to be on this. 1138 01:15:18,301 --> 01:15:20,321 No, dude, thank you for just everything 1139 01:15:20,321 --> 01:15:22,381 you've done for us just internally 1140 01:15:22,381 --> 01:15:25,121 and just for being that great guy in the room 1141 01:15:25,121 --> 01:15:28,261 that's always speaking up 1142 01:15:28,261 --> 01:15:30,801 and explaining things on a much deeper level 1143 01:15:30,801 --> 01:15:33,401 than we can hardly grasp. 1144 01:15:33,401 --> 01:15:37,881 I feel like you're just like an intelligence, like kind of just like a brain. 1145 01:15:38,481 --> 01:15:40,681 And it's just like you always pull it back for us. 1146 01:15:40,761 --> 01:15:41,741 You're like, OK, hang on, guys. 1147 01:15:42,921 --> 01:15:45,781 You're always the sensible one in the room with things. 1148 01:15:46,002 --> 01:15:48,081 I feel like an internal student here in Plubb Lab. 1149 01:15:48,181 --> 01:15:49,801 So I'm honored to be in here. 1150 01:15:49,981 --> 01:15:51,121 Dude, I'm like that, too. 1151 01:15:51,301 --> 01:15:53,861 I feel like the dumbest person in the room because I know I am. 1152 01:15:54,021 --> 01:15:54,741 That's where you want to be. 1153 01:15:54,921 --> 01:15:56,121 That's exactly where I want to be. 1154 01:15:56,861 --> 01:15:57,861 What was I going to say? 1155 01:15:58,641 --> 01:16:00,401 OK, so VFilter.com. 1156 01:16:01,201 --> 01:16:03,261 And then does it cost anything right now? 1157 01:16:03,261 --> 01:16:03,761 Or is it free? 1158 01:16:03,901 --> 01:16:04,181 Free. 1159 01:16:04,721 --> 01:16:05,261 Free right now. 1160 01:16:05,281 --> 01:16:06,361 At some point it will cost money. 1161 01:16:06,641 --> 01:16:13,341 But anyone who is an early user is free forever for all eternity throughout the universe. 1162 01:16:13,681 --> 01:16:14,201 Oh, wow. 1163 01:16:14,921 --> 01:16:18,161 And at some point I am planning on doing a subscription. 1164 01:16:18,542 --> 01:16:18,821 Okay. 1165 01:16:18,981 --> 01:16:22,301 So it'd be, you know, I'm going to start with the highest number I could possibly think of. 1166 01:16:22,602 --> 01:16:26,521 $20 a month if you pay dollars. 1167 01:16:26,641 --> 01:16:28,701 But if you pay Bitcoin, it's $10 a month. 1168 01:16:28,801 --> 01:16:29,042 Okay. 1169 01:16:29,042 --> 01:16:33,841 And, you know, I'm kind of open to different financial angles. 1170 01:16:34,901 --> 01:16:44,621 Right now, if you pay for premium X, premium YouTube, all the, you know, to block all the ads, you're only blocking a fraction of your feed, but you're spending $50 a month. 1171 01:16:45,021 --> 01:16:45,081 Exactly. 1172 01:16:45,341 --> 01:16:49,801 So feed filter, while $20 does seem like a lot, it's priced to be lower. 1173 01:16:50,441 --> 01:16:53,502 It blocks more content that you don't want to see. 1174 01:16:53,561 --> 01:16:57,481 And it's the bad gray area content, but at a cheaper price. 1175 01:16:57,481 --> 01:17:04,041 I have to do the subscription because I do not want to sell data or monetize with ads. 1176 01:17:04,361 --> 01:17:04,721 Absolutely. 1177 01:17:05,021 --> 01:17:08,581 So I need to avoid the addiction engagement metrics. 1178 01:17:08,941 --> 01:17:10,721 And so that's the angle that I'm taking right now. 1179 01:17:10,721 --> 01:17:10,921 Yeah. 1180 01:17:11,002 --> 01:17:16,201 And I think most people are going to start seeing those prices come out everywhere. 1181 01:17:17,221 --> 01:17:18,841 Jim does that with Cascader. 1182 01:17:19,201 --> 01:17:22,321 It's like $49, but he's not doing any of that stuff. 1183 01:17:22,401 --> 01:17:23,221 Same thing with yours. 1184 01:17:23,841 --> 01:17:24,921 If you filter at some point. 1185 01:17:24,921 --> 01:17:30,721 you know yeah that's what you can pay me right now is feedback or just connecting is yeah the 1186 01:17:30,721 --> 01:17:35,461 other thing i was asking what so if when you do release a subscription we'll have new features and 1187 01:17:35,461 --> 01:17:40,861 when can people expect like new features and yeah i just put out some new features a couple days ago 1188 01:17:40,861 --> 01:17:48,481 um i usually push out a couple updates a couple times a week um so it's constant updates um the 1189 01:17:48,481 --> 01:17:55,821 next uh you know next updates are going to be some added functionality to uh instagram to allow 1190 01:17:55,821 --> 01:18:02,921 friends and uh family as well as block sponsored content uh then we'll be launching uh either 1191 01:18:02,921 --> 01:18:06,801 tiktok or youtube i haven't decided i personally am leaning towards youtube uh dude i think the 1192 01:18:06,801 --> 01:18:12,061 voters really wanted tiktok out so i'm talking to people and yeah if you have an opinion on that let 1193 01:18:12,061 --> 01:18:17,901 me know did you see what youtube added on their on their thing now in their app you can do like ai 1194 01:18:17,901 --> 01:18:23,441 summaries inside of the video that you're watching which is really helpful now like you can you can 1195 01:18:23,441 --> 01:18:27,621 be watching the youtube video and then it'll give you like a summary of the video while you're 1196 01:18:27,621 --> 01:18:33,461 watching that all the time i go to the video i grab the transcript dump it in hit the summary 1197 01:18:33,461 --> 01:18:37,721 then i have to watch the whole video but now it's doing that inside the video like you swipe over 1198 01:18:37,721 --> 01:18:41,961 the comments on it it's really cool yeah the way i want to do youtube is basically it pre-watches 1199 01:18:41,961 --> 01:18:46,761 the video ahead of ahead of you before you even see the video appear on your feed summarize it 1200 01:18:46,761 --> 01:18:52,002 then matches that summary against your filter criteria and it does that all instantaneously so 1201 01:18:52,002 --> 01:18:57,581 you don't even you just arrive on your feed and it's a it's a filtered feed so it still looks like 1202 01:18:57,581 --> 01:19:02,581 your normal youtube feed but it's pre-watch all that stuff and found out what's just clickbaits 1203 01:19:02,581 --> 01:19:06,821 or yeah actually that would be cool yeah that'd be really cool awesome well thanks 1204 01:19:06,821 --> 01:19:10,002 for coming on early days and uh i appreciate you good to be here 1205 01:19:16,761 --> 01:19:46,741 Thank you. 1206 01:19:46,761 --> 01:19:56,621 需要