Episode of My First Million with Sam Parr and Shaan Puri.
Transcript
Note: This transcript was auto-generated from YouTube captions. It may contain errors and lacks speaker identification. A full Gemini audio transcript will replace this.
Kind: captions Language: en my motivation here was to open people’s eyes to what goes down in silicon valley where it’s not all sunshine and rainbows it is very fierce and there’s fierce competition and there’s also games that are played with powerful institutions and you know groups of people who uh you know help each other out [Music] don’t chickens have two wings but it’s not their actual wing hey what’s up ryan what’s up sean sam what is it dude you can you can settle this for us uh so sam uh this is ryan he’s the the founder of bolt and uh we’re having it we’re just going over this detail are chicken wings actually the chicken’s wings or are they just like the ribs of the chicken i think they’re the way what’s a drumstick do you think they’re the actual wigs i feel like they’re not the winners they’re like this is like this is like a such a marketing position of course they are like what’s a drumstick isn’t drumstick a leg powerful young ben ben look that up so you see if i’m right i think i think i’m right so we should we should switch gears uh okay so ryan’s here i met ryan in uh where are we hanging out la okay i was in la i’m at this dinner and um and ryan’s across the table from me and at this dinner everybody kind of like dressed up because it was at uh the dinner was at the owner of an nba team’s house and um you know so most people are pretty dressed up i see this one guy who looks like i’m like is this a tick tock star like who’s this guy he’s got earrings he’s got this like tie-dye shirt on he looked totally different than every other kind of like business schmuck at this thing and i was like oh what’s up man like what’s your i was like like i’m literally my head i was like this guy’s definitely a tick tocker or a youtuber uh he’s got this like charisma about him i feel like that’s who he is and he’s like no i’m ryan i you know i started uh payments company i said oh what is it bolt and i was like oh [ ] i know both that’s amazing and we ended up becoming friends uh ended up investing in the company and you ended up getting twitter famous over the last few months my friend and i wanted to have you on to talk about a couple things that you’ve done some pretty impressive stuff at a young age i want to talk about i want to give people the background of that and then you currently have some spicy twitter [ ] going on i want to get your take on on some of those things um welcome to the show i don’t know if you’ve ever listened but we have a very casual business show yeah it’s a pleasure to be on sean i’ve been looking forward to doing this and i think we picked the perfect time and sam what do you know about ryan besides what i just told you so i was googling you so i i i saw your twitter come out of nowhere about a month and a half ago and sean told me all about bolt and he told me about this dinner that he had and so bolt is a payments company uh that is at like 11 or 14 billion dollars in market or valuation so it’s a huge company what i know is that you look incredibly young and on your bio maybe on linkedin or something or maybe twitter it says that you’ve started two or three companies that are worth about a billion dollars including a bunch of crypto stuff and when i was googling you today one of the first images that comes up it’s beautiful because you’re tweeting about mobs and mafias your the forbes headline is meet the stanford bitcoin mafia and it was a picture of you and like three friends and so i know you’ve got your hands in a bunch of stuff so brian what’s the what’s your claim to fame so this is the part you don’t have to be humble just give people the the reason why they should be listening who is this cat uh what have what have you done what’s your claim to fame well my claim to fame is i think i’ve you know i operate pretty fearlessly i’ve you know done a lot of things that uh that i think i’ve told been told i shouldn’t be doing so i think it’s business i’ve been told by many people i shouldn’t be doing that would never be possible and uh you know we’ve written the framework on culture on conscious.org people are like who are you to write about culture now i have close to 100 companies pledging that culture you’ve written books done four day work week so you know i think we’re thinking differently myself and the whole bolt team and i’m very proud of that and so walk us through um the i don’t want to go too far into what bolt is i’ll give kind of like the tl dr on on i’ll oversimplify it you might cringe a little bit as i oversimplify but basically um the way we pay for things online is uh you know some people shop at amazon and amazon says hey one click check out we got your stuff saved and then you have shopify shopify has a bunch of stores now shopify has shopify pay which says hey you’ve shopped at a shopify store before you can check out that way if you want apple’s got apple pay they let you pay at some places and what you’ve done is you went to like you’re like hey you know even though those those companies are huge they’re monstrous the internet’s a lot bigger than that there’s a whole bunch of stores that aren’t on shopify there’s a whole bunch of platforms like uh pinterest uh where people go and they find products they love and they love to be able to check out and as somebody who owns an e-commerce store you i’ve felt this pain many many times which is you can look at how many people just drop off at the checkout because they don’t want to type in their name their first name last name address credit card you know zip code blah blah every single time when they’re on their phone and they’re on the go and i just see like that’s the biggest drop-off in our whole store and it’s like [ ] what can i do about that like wouldn’t it be amazing if there really was a way to just check out at any store have your information saved it would make a merchant like me more money because my drop-off would be lower it would make the consumer experience easier because i don’t have to type in the same [ ] over and over and over again and it has this like network effect where the more stores who use something like bolt the more shoppers have a bolt account now every single store benefits because that account can be used on all these different stores amazon is gonna work on amazon and shopify is gonna work in shopify but the world is a lot bigger than that all right how did i do out of ten did i die did i get it what did i miss sean that was like pretty epic [Laughter] we need to put you in customer calls yeah there we go i’m down so um so that so you create bolt and you’re saying at the beginning people told you don’t do this or it can’t be done what’s an actual story that happened there where somebody kind of told you look look man it’s not gonna work okay so i have a pretty extreme story i went to one of the you know tier one uh silicon valley firms someone who’s a paypal led you know not paypal sorry of payments legend um not paypal mafia but a payments legend big firm big name and i went and i told them about what were what we’re doing and they spent the entire conversation telling me why this couldn’t be done that you know they actually got mad during the conversation and then after the conversation they saw one of the people on our team because we were recruiting top people was that another company they were involved with spent three hours trying to convince that person not to join us and to join other portfolio companies and so it’s amazing you know i think everybody coming from the payments space the og’s they have real you know they’ve been in the sausage factory they see how hard it is but i think there is a little resistance to the fact that there could be something this disruptive that’s this obvious and uh we just you know decided to go ahead and do it what were you and i want to hear all about that but what were you doing before this before bolt uh sean mentioned i dropped out of school it’s so a little bit about my background first job was bagging groceries that for three years and then i started going to the internet to make money started some websites online businesses ran a web development agency working for a lot of other customers so that’s why i learned everything there is about e-commerce and then i was lucky to get into stanford i saw the stanford bitcoin group with some friends in early 2013 many of which have gone on to do amazing things and i dropped out of school in to focus entirely on crypto my crypto is going to change everything about payments i still believe but about a year in so mid-2015 i was like wait a second why does nobody solve this checkout problem if you create a checkout and all the users who go through your checkout enroll in shopper accounts you could create the most powerful important shopper network payment network on the planet and so like this is a site i couldn’t unsee and i decided to go you know realize learn about the space the more i learned the more i realized this was an opportunity and so we started building and yeah so that’s that’s that’s the story did you did you did you me you dropped out before i mean you’re probably what 21 22 you dropped out at a young age did you did you just like knock it out the park with crypto to the point where like money you you fix money’s good you’re good now you’re gonna go and start things did it happen at that young of an age unfortunately it did not i had this mentality that i was going to build things in crypto not invest in it which was a very costly mentality i had like a little bit of crypto i mean you know but you you you didn’t become you know few rich no no not at all um so i had to uh both had to make it i was couch surfing like i didn’t have enough money to like even rent a place to stay so i was cow a friend texted me before this podcast and he said ask him like how well like uh uh be like well he already got really wealthy from bitcoin is that why he’s like so brash now and so you’ve kind of just answered that question you weren’t wore it and at bolt i started off at a 40k salary and for about five years it never got higher than 60k so i was living paycheck to paycheck i wanted every dollar to maximize bolts outcome and just recently i’ve sold a very tiny amount of shares um just to kind of pay for some expenses but up until about a month ago i hadn’t sold a single share almost eight years into the journey what about your other businesses yeah you didn’t sell any of those you also helped start eco right uh or now known as eco your buddy runs it i think uh who’s also what’s the name super like impressive as well yeah and uh i don’t want to go too much into eco because your twitter stuff’s frankly just more spicy right now but basically you kind of helped the what just with the vision of that or the the kind of the initial strategy of that yeah so i what i can take credit for is i helped build an awesome team of founders and inspire some of the ideas but they have really manifested eco into what it’s come become today uh the founders there have drove amazing vision the ones who are on the ground every day and they’ve executed and so i’ve played a part in the journey but andy bromberg is one of the ceos i have the most respect for on the planet henry ryan sacks joey krug there have done uh miracle work cool and so let’s talk about this twitter thing so you came out the other day and you you basically said look um you’re like bolt uh you know we we’ve become successful now but it wasn’t uh without kind of some some challenges and there’s like the normal business challenges and then there’s sort of the like the challenges of the powers that be and in silicon valley there’s two kind of like very powerful and in in most people’s minds you i think you picked a fight with people that very few people had bad things to say about y combinator and stripe right stripe is probably like the most beloved startup in silicon valley respected beloved whatever and uh nyc is also you know the most powerful sort of like a brand in you know it’s like basically if you’re gonna pick on a college you’d pick on either stanford or harvard if you were going for the top and uh and you basically told the story about them being the mafia and so i want you to kind of quickly uh can you quickly bullet point the what your argument was for people who aren’t nerding out on twitter and aren’t seeing it because this all the audience we have here is not gonna have seen it so bullet point that and then i got some questions for you yeah so the point is with powerful institutions and who uh you know help each other out if you’re starting a company especially in payments you’ve likely failed there’s you know the only ones that have been successful have been internationally um and we probably should have failed five times over with investors pulling out of term sheets when we were about to run out of money and so we i’d say bolt almost didn’t exist because of the powers that be the powers that be and you know i think there are a lot of other companies that would have existed today if it wasn’t for the powers that be and so you know now i don’t blame these institutions but but well you’re you’re i i i don’t know if you’re doing this on purpose to be kind but you’re kind of being vague is it possible that you like what does institution mean and are you able to like actually let’s separate out right there’s there’s fair fair uh you know fair business game games which is like we’re competing against somebody that’s fair they can compete with us fiercely there’s um investors just deciding uh this space is too competitive or stripes gonna win i’ve just got i’m just gonna back away right so perception thing that’s kind of like nobody would say that that’s unfair talk about the specifics of what you felt was unfair or where you know some some uh some there was some heavy-handedness to it yeah so when we would be pitching investors they’d get interested they’d say they want to invest and then they would talk to somebody at stripe someone related to stripe and either be told they can’t invest or they shouldn’t invest or somehow the conclusion was they were dissuaded from investing but how do you know that that’s what many they might just come to you and say we’re not hold me the stripe would always come up somehow in that conversation so many of them pull me directly have investors say directly i got a call by stripe and they told me i can’t invest in you guys is that bad though i mean what if they if they were already an investor of stripe i i understand i have a conflict of interest right but you know stripe has like all the big names in silicon valley invested in them all right so they’ve intentionally put every single you know tier one firm on their cap table and they even stuffed them with small checks they’re like everybody’s on their cap table right and so you know from and then they say you’re conflicted out right that’s a competitor of ours you’re our shareholder right exactly and i didn’t even you know consider ourselves a direct competitor at the time but i think they’re very guarded about anything in their periphery so i’ve heard the same story from companies you know doing card issuing i’ve heard the same stories from companies doing subscription payments and then striper brought their own product next so it’s almost as if they have these feelers out anything that’s tangential they make sure it doesn’t get off the ground and then they go and build it is there any is there any side of you so the way that you’re phrasing it and i would like to figure out what what my opinion is i don’t have an opinion is is like that’s unethical but one maybe could argue and be like well that was just a savvy strategic move to like get everyone on board and you know that’s just like that’s just that’s a that’s fair is do you do you see that side of it at all or do you think that like the way they went about it their intentions were the intentions matter here i’ve never pulled a single investor you can’t invest in somebody right and so to me like everything is fair competition and if someone wants to invest in a company tangential to me i tell them go for it we’ve even invested in tangential i invested in tangential i think you know innovation is good i have a very long-term perspective so when you’re calling investigate you can’t invest in this company like even if they’re not on the striped cap table it’s investors too that are not the striped cap table to me that’s just not how i would do and i also want found the next generation of founders to go into building within their eyes wide open because i invested eight years of my life into this business and not knowing about the games that go on right and so the most important thing i’m exposing here is if you’re coming to silicon valley you have an idea you’re quitting your job putting a lot on the line like get ready for war like it’s it’s it’s serious and there will be people who do not want you to exist and you’re gonna need to be ready to battle that and so one of the things you say is that which is they basically hurt our ability to fundraise by telling the first they they kind of played good good game theory right they they got every inve every big investor to get a little piece of stripe because every investor wants a piece of stripe and then they said cool now you’re conflicted out of investing our competitors okay some might say that’s that’s shady i personally just i’m an investor in you right i’m a fan of yours i personally would just say okay there’s nothing unethical about that you may not like it but that’s competing and it’s like a it’s a strategy it’s a harsh strategy okay fair enough in the same way that like i don’t think it’s cool that mark zuckerberg just copied stories or whatever i don’t think that’s like you don’t get bonus points of respect from me but i also don’t think you did anything illegal or crooked completely crooked right that’s that’s you copied something that was copyable okay fair enough the second thing you said is that they could that yc which has a huge stake in stripe um control they own hacker news and that on hacker news people would be posting about bolt it would get some play it would go up the ranks but that somehow there’s some you know editorial shenanigans behind the scenes where all of a sudden the post about bolt would disappear or get deranked and then a post about stripe would be up higher and so you posted some examples of that now that’s i think i think that’s the summary of what you said uh as that was happening did you is that a suspicion or you’re like i know that that’s what happened pretty sure that’s what happened um you know because we had some posts one in particular that you know i’d written catered to yc audience it was an unraveling of how we do fraud detection better and guarantee it with your payments which was radical and new at the time it had organically gotten to number one held there we had a ton of comments on it just like very active people very interested you can go read all my comments and then stripes post i don’t know if it was there before it seems like they said it got posted technically before but anyway afterwards got to number one there started to rise and ours just started to fall and then disappeared i don’t know if those editorial there’s also this down vote functionality and so you can also just have a bunch of your employees go and downvote or have a bunch of your friends so you know whatever it is they’re able to get us off of there pretty quickly the the guys who started stripe the carlson brothers i don’t know them but they seem um from the outside like good dudes do you think that is that do you know him and is that is that a character characterization that you’d challenge yeah i mean that’s exactly what i’m doing you know what’s they don’t meet my standards for good dudes uh you know good dudes is not what you say publicly it’s what you do privately yeah i i just think that like right now you’re like a loose cannon and i love it and i find it incredibly refreshing because from the outside you’ve raised money from amazing people at a 14 billion evaluation you are like the guy right now and i’m just i think it’s cool and i’m shocked but i think it’s cool that you’re that you’ve just said that i i think that that’s i’ve never heard that before me and sam both have uh definitely like a rebellious streak in us and we’ve told some stories on the plot about situations where where we do kind of like not keep it muzzled uh and you know sometimes that works to our benefit sometimes there’s some you know um collateral damage or some you know it’s a blowback from it uh i gotta ask you news came out i don’t know yesterday today day before you’re stepping down to ceo of bolt okay did you get in trouble what happened here stepping up into executive chairman i like it i like it nice you know that was actually the truth you know it’s but yeah the stepping up worked well on twitter and i promoted module because this guy is like he schools me on execution every day of the week so he started off running tech and product they gave him col like sixty percent of company imports into and just like my it’s not my superpower right my superpower is it’s creativity it’s vision it’s culture it’s landing epic deals for the company so now i get to spend 100 of my time on that so this is something i’ve yeah but the timing is weird right everyone a lot of people online even though it’s not true they say ryan got fired because of what he said well our you know this is this is the start of our fiscal year and basically january 31st starts february 1st and so this was the timing we had planned on for a while and so then i had some people saying you don’t think we should wait people are going to think it’s related to the tweets or whatever and i used to have fear about those types of things in the past and i think this recent episode has just locked me into my fearlessness even more i’m like eff it like let’s just do it and as everyone’s gonna gossip and you know interpret in their own way and i actually think that’s great you’re crazy i like it yeah i respect that and also um i respect the move not the the ceo part right great that’s that’s fine i don’t know i don’t know anything about that but uh for the for the content that you’re putting out so um we’ve talked before about about how to pick a fight in fact there’s a there’s a passage from a book called rework called pick a fight it’s a marketing strategy and it’s like a two-page thing and i remember earlier on the pod i literally read it word for word because i was like this is a great idea and i think this is when um the guys from 37 signals were picking a fight with apple uh and saying you know this is not right or fortnite you know epic games from fortnight was picking a fight with apple and um and we talked about you know there’s a there’s an art to doing this like first you know you can’t just completely make something up right you gotta have actual reason to pick a fight but then you want to pick a fight not when you’re punching down you want to punch up at you know the the whoever is they sort of like the power um and when you do that you’re going to get this groundswell of a attention be support and see other stories will come out of the woodwork that’ll make you seem even more credible and um and you get your name out there so like you know i don’t know how many people knew about bolt before this because it’s like okay you know check out technology is not the most like in your face you know it’s not snapchat it’s not like a pup like like a product everybody uses um but a lot more people know about it now and so how conscious were you i mean how strategic was it that you were you’re thinking you know what like i think if we come out with this story yes i’ll be helping people understand how the game is played but i think this will be good for bolt too yeah i mean i i think doing what you believe to be will always pan out in the end i think this was i i stand by its decision i think it’s great for both it shows the world who we are as a company it shows that we’re going to stand up for what’s right no matter how controversial that may be um we’re going to stand up to the big guys which is literally what our entire product is about and what i wrote to my team you know when i was doing this i said just because our company is worth billions of dollars you know i’m not going to become a sellout founder like it’s worth way more financially for me to go become buddies with all these guys but every cell in my body my but my spirit won’t let me do that and so for me it was a way of telling the world who i am as a leader and i’m trying to you know set an example of fearless leadership for the next generation of founders because i think we lack it like i can’t point to too many leaders in this country who are truly fearless who stand up for what they believe in and i think a lot of leadership is fear-based and uh i think we have to kill that i i agree with you i i’m entirely on board with you um i think the i don’t i don’t actually think this is my stance but i in fact it’s not my stance but at first it was but it’s changed a bit and that’s that like i don’t know if what you’re saying is necessarily true and i saw a lot of people who used to have your position where they’re the underdogs like sam altman and gary tan they’re not anymore now they’re like the man you know the folks in charge but and they’re like this guy ryan is lying he’s false he’s just full of it and so it’s like really hard to take a side right now because of this he said she said even though i i totally agree with you that they are this like cool kid group and it’s always fun to stick it to that cool kid honestly the things you said that they did this is like actually credit to you the things that you said that they did are not even that bad like he said she said doesn’t even really matter because it’s if they did it okay even if they did it it’s not the worst thing in the world uh if they didn’t do it nobody’s gonna know how to prove it kind of doesn’t really matter i think you pointed out the overall power dynamic and that’s what was important and then you just like got your story out there about who you are your bolt what your point of view is whether people agree with you or not that’s their choice but uh but i think it’s actually it actually emphasizes how brilliant the the tactic was that it’s not even like the most scandalous you know theranose does this work is it a giant fraud is it deception at the highest levels no it’s not even if the accusation is true it’s not but it got so much play because of a you’re a good writer and b um everybody is so afraid to say a word against them like i got one of my my most viral tweets was that i came out and said the clubhouse is gonna fail and um here’s why i think here’s how i think it goes down and it’s because at the time clubhouse was the darling every vc was fighting to get into the deal everybody was on clubhouse every night talking about how great clubhouse is that was the only topic they knew what to talk about and that’s why it faded quickly because if you go on the product all you can talk about is the product it’s going to fail um and and so and i got privately i got a bunch of messages from high profile people who are like dude i could nev i can’t sorry i can’t retweet this to like show support for this just because of you know politics but dude i totally agree with you i like or like i’m glad somebody [ ] said it i don’t believe in the [ ] at all uh i had one person you know these are all blue check marks do people must be smoking crack if they think that this thing’s gonna work and so did you get like the the dm back channel support of people who are like look i can’t come out and i don’t want to get yc on my bad side but like dude you’re so right hundreds you know exactly if i if i was if i had any nervousness about doing it beforehand the outpouring that i got afterwards just gave me all the conviction in the world that this was the right thing to do because hundreds of founders reached out to me thanking me many of them sharing their stories with me about what encounters they’ve had and uh you know is this stuff is happening this stuff is rampant and so yeah i had all of those messages all you were missing you needed a movement people could uh could rally behind a hashtag yc has done this to me also the problem is why is everyone so afraid well why are you asking that question you know the answer right you already said the answer which is you’d be significantly more financially successful if you just were to shut up and so that’s why i asked you that question are you already very financially successful on paper just saw bolt you’re very you’re set uh that’s on paper but that’s why i was asking do you have this like crazy bitcoin stash do you did you have this other stuff i think even in this like tiny version of the interview you’ve actually heard four or five examples like dropped out of stanford uh that takes some guts to do that when you don’t have like something else that’s working amazing yeah but that’s what i was asking i dropped out just a note to focus on bitcoin when bitcoin was nothing at that time that’s fearlessness start payments company to compete with uh you know like one in one of the most like vicious fields uh where everybody tells you everybody everybody who’s smart that you respect tells you that this ain’t gonna work fearless number two going on the four day basically saying we’re going to only do for four day work weeks because i believe in xyz in terms of company culture coming out against yc right so that’s actually like several uh of these kind of like you know it’s like when i invest in something i’ve looked for like a breadcrumb trail it’s like oh actually i see a trail of this person doing you know really bold things or uh you know clever things or packing different systems i think they’re the next thing is just going to be more of that and so you know that’s i think that’s pretty cool i wanted to to switch gears a little bit and ask you um you uh you are an idea guy in fact and when we were uh driving home from the dinner you were telling me some different like i was like how did you get the idea for bolt how did you get the idea for eco and i just kind of got that got the sense that you’re an idea guy but you’re fully co you know you’ve been fully locked in for eight years doing one idea i want you to get out that little note sheet of uh other opportunities other things that you see that you don’t have the time to do or the energy to do or the interest in doing but you think that these are opportunities that exist did you bring any ideas for me i brought some okay oh fire them off and we will we will react to them so you give us the quick pitch and we’ll read it okay this is a big one i think a lot of people are going to do it if they hear this so i hope they do i think someone needs to start an investment bank for early stage companies where they help okay introduce you to a bunch of investors you know they sanity check your deck of materials they blast off a bunch of intros which is 99.9 of the value that yc has right and they don’t even do that they don’t even send personal intros you’re one of 400 companies right so now you’re you know the company that’s being introduced you’re a serial number literally um somebody needs to do so that’s what i do personally i’ve probably done that for 200 companies half the size of a yc batch i’ve done this for personally so for founders it doesn’t take very much time you know if you have the contact list if those people trust you right you can do it with one email and then a bunch of follow-up intros if the investors are interested and you know maybe half an hour 60 minutes with the founder making sure their materials are good giving them some feedback so i think there needs to be an investment bank for all stages of company building that’s actually a really good idea how would you uh where would you what would be the business model for it so would you take a percentage of the raise would you take equity would you take a referral fee from the vcs who want this deal flow yeah i mean you take far less than seven percent of the you maybe take a certain percent of the amount raised right and then maybe a little equity so that’s what i do for earlier stages i take you know anywhere from a few percent to high single digit percent of of the capital raised and then i would take a little bit of equity and that’s you do this ryan does i do this how much how how how much money have you raised for other companies a ton of money i mean i don’t know what that means a hundred million or a billion or 10 million one company can be yeah i mean through intros that i’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars maybe upwards and they’ve given you a percentage of that account i know i don’t take a percentage of capital raised so i used to i sometimes do this voluntarily for free if i like a founder i don’t take anything and then for some i take a little bit in advisor shares it’s usually less than a percent it’s usually less than half exactly it’s actually a great idea this is actually a great idea yeah i think it’s a good idea too but here’s the thing so i used to run this conference business and it was fun and everything but the crappy part was the more successful the conference got meaning the more and i mean you go you either do more events or you have more people come or you charge more money but me the more people who came and the more successful my event got the worse it got and it sucked and so would this if you were doing this would this be like that where the bigger it got the less your like oh man he promotes everything or this brand promotes everything you know what i mean yeah totally you have to be picky with who you know who you work with right you can’t work with 400 companies every quarter um so sure and and a company could do this you could start your own firm could team up with people you can do it as an individual founder you can do this so i think there’s many ways to skin this cat and many different models here so this is just a seed of a thought how did you build that reputation as both a the guy who knows the investors and the investors trust and b the guy that gets his fingers in the has his fingers on the pulse of early stage companies so much so that you’re helping them raise money well the secret that i’d share with any investors is treat founders really well and they’ll refer other founders right and so some do that early on then they have a brand and then they you know form an ego right and they forget how that brand was generated in the first place the the firm that continues with that ethos and holds onto that ethos forever is going to build one of the greatest next generation firms there is and so i i developed a reputation from founders for being somebody they could call about literally anything that they don’t have to mince their words that they could trust that has their back completely um and so you know my only wishes i had more time uh which that’s kind of the challenge but i every ounce of available time i’ve tried to dedicate to the next generation and uh it’s you know it’s the most rewarding thing i could possibly do i like it so let’s give i like that idea i think that’s a good one i’ve i’ve said this for a while which is that uh like venture investing is going into like couple big categories i think i think there’s like the big brands that are like you know their their stamp of approval means like a lot for you whether they’re good or bad investors don’t really matter they’re like the harvard stanfords of the world that’s sequoia yc andreessen whoever else uh benchmark whatever and then there’s niche specialists that are like oh i know robotics better than anybody and so i’m gonna see all the robotics companies i’m gonna help them and even if they get a sequoia to invest in them they’ll also want the robotics expert in the deal and then the last one is basically like venture services which is can you serve the founder in some way so if you could help them raise their next round i think that’s a smart way to basically get yourself into the right companies as long as you’re as long as your filter is pretty good uh all right what else you got give us another idea well i think daos are going to change the world and continuation of of the spirit of investing in vcs there need to be more vc dows where you invest in things as a dao and why is a vc dow better than a normal you know either individually investing or starting a traditional fund why is it vc doubt better it relies on the collective intelligence of a group i think it’s transparent in terms of how it makes decisions i think you can raise capital uh more publicly and i think your actions are more kind of on a public record you know and frankly the best reason is i think if you’re up and coming aspiring investor or vc it’s way easier because you don’t have to spend five years building relationships with lps you can start a public track record investing within your dow and that track record will you know talk for itself and attract more and more capital right what have you have you heard of orange dow no what is orange tao so orange dow is basically is what ryan’s describing uh but against you know his uh his enemy uh of the month which is uh yc so basically what it is is it’s a dao which means it’s like a people don’t know it’s a decentralized autonomous organization basically in the crypto it’s the crypto version of a and um so what it is is basically they made it where only a yc alumni can and enter and only yc companies can get funded so it’s a it’s an organization whose mission is to fund yc companies and the all of the investors are yc alumni so basically it started off with like 10 or 20. now there’s a thousand yc alumni that are in this they provide the capital they also provide the deal flow and the diligence and the filtering and whatever else and then they fund yc companies and um and so if you’re a co for a yc company you could take money from orange dow in addition to these other traditional funds and with it you’re getting these thousand people and the i think the dow votes on the deal so so somebody proposes i think we should vote i think we should invest in this company and then the dow holds a vote and it’ll come back you know 70 percent say yes 30 say no let’s invest and it’s like a group group investment fund like that so i actually i like y combinator i think that the like the paul graham i love reading paul graham’s work i like a lot of that guys but when you’re describing this sean i understand i am also frustrated i’m like oh so the rich get richer even more and more like it’s just a it’s just a it’s a circle jerk that that is never ending and i that frustrates me i don’t want to i feel like i guess it’s definitely part envy of like well i’m not in that crowd therefore i miss out and it’s also part like david vs goliath type of thing yeah i can’t stand clubs it’s yeah i have that same feeling sam it just something about it doesn’t feel and even if i was inside of it you know i’ve had the opportunity to join a lot of these clubs and i won’t do it you it’s also in your self-interest not to do it you know i could have obviously gotten the benefits of them but you know now look at where i am like i’m i’m free to do what i want um and to speak up how i want and i don’t owe any favors to anybody and so people but you are are you free though why why are you free to do this because because he’s not in a tribe he didn’t he didn’t basically go into a tribe which has certain like rules yeah but you’ve got he has 600 employees who he doesn’t want to completely screw over you know like some if something bad happens to ryan that could negatively impact some of his people he’s got some investors i mean i don’t i have accountability maybe you’re single though to my employees and my shareholders right to make make them successful and better off and i think that’s enough like i don’t need i don’t have all these other groups that i’m accountable to in addition to that that you know basically makes impossible to say anything and so i i i consider myself fairly free where were you raised miami florida and what did your parents do for work my mom was worked a local secretarial job my dad at a small business so i grew up very middle class i went to you know very lucky to get into stanford on you know almost entirely financial aid so grew up without much money went to a big public high school in miami 4 000 kids grew up in a very diverse environment so i got into break dancing and stuff like that so when i came to silicon valley and stanford it was like the biggest culture shock ever because miami and silicon valley it’s like it couldn’t be more opposite not anymore that’s true all right did you have any other ideas you wanted to share with the uh the audience man i so here’s my general theme is and i’ll reference bolt for a second then i’ll talk about it broadly everything’s getting decentralized so do you think about commerce amazon was phase one right network effects economies of scale data everything but on one domain amazon.com and then phase two is you have shopify which is all of that power network effects economies of scale tech scale but on one end-to-end enclosed platform renzo both is the network effect and the data and the tech economies of scale in a fully decentralized way completely unbundled completely headless completely tech stack agnostic and that’s why we’re such a powerful force for commerce right that’s why modu who’s our new ceo he centralized commerce to amazon for eight years when all the logistics came to us because he saw it getting decentralized and thinks we have the best approach to decentralizing commerce so i think every industry is getting decentralized i think purchasing you’re gonna see a tidal wave of purchasing uh platforms that help you purchase from your neighbors purchase food locally the consciousness of our society is raising i think we want buy and purchase things that are good for society that are sustainable that are recycled more than things that are flashy you know i think more people are going to start wearing t-shirts and so i know it wasn’t a specific idea but those are those how i think about things and with your with this whole new like with you kind of coming out and doing this twitter thing and accusing these people it like a a smart move and you seem like you definitely are incredibly smart is you know i’m mad at that this system exists and it just so happens i’m working on a solution um is that what you’ve got up your sleeve just might be uh so what are you gonna do to be announced i’ve been working on ideas for a while i think there are much better systems that could be created if you think creatively about incentive alignment and i have confidence that you know better systems will be created not just by myself but for others who may see this as an opportunity to go build well you realize i agree with what you’re i think what you’re doing is smart but like if i was a hater if i was sam altman or whoever’s like disagrees with you i would say oh well he’s talking [ ] because he’s launching a competitor so what what percentage what motiv how are they each playing into this of like i genuinely feel this way and also i i have something up my sleeve i wouldn’t be doing this if i wasn’t so distraught with how they operate you know if they were like a bastion of positivity good advice and you know if they were super pro founder i wouldn’t be doing this but i fundamentally do not think they are you know and they being y combinator and are you are you happy right now or do you have like a nervous energy in the morning because of what’s going on i mean like i know sometimes when i do something that i like i’m happy that i did i wake up in the morning i’m like man i’m getting a lot of hate though like this type of energy just bothers me where’s your energy right now like shawn’s thing about clubhouse it kind of it wasn’t like a career maker but like it wasn’t that far from that but like he was getting a ton of hate and like i i don’t know i didn’t ask him but maybe there was some nervous energy in the morning i didn’t like how much i started looking at my mentions that next 24-48 hours because i was like oh man like that’s two days of my life i kind of let my main focus be what are people’s reactions to this it was very hard to look away from that for me personally and i’m pretty like strong-minded about this sort of thing and very like uh i treated this out the other day i want my attention to be very expensive but i know once you get you know 20 million impressions on some tweet and you’re getting 50 000 you know replies or whatever or the heart likes or whatever you know that’s a flood of stuff you can go look at about people talking about me people saying things to me what are they saying people hating me do i need to defend myself it it was a bit of a distraction for me yeah so where’s your energy right now are you nervous are you happy are you uptight where are you well i’d be lying if i said i don’t care what people think i mean i obviously do in fact i’m doing this because i care people think so much that i want the right you know i want my opinions out there in you know people can update how they think about these things and uh i’d say i’m fair with it pretty well like the yoga and meditate every day every morning and i stay pretty calm and grounded you know i think that uh i feel more more empowered than ever just like i’ve gotten so much love the last few days it’s been you know 95 love and then it’s all the people i expected to blast on the hate who came out of the woodworks right it was like sequoia vc uh what you know paul sam y.c and so that was unexpected i was actually kind of surprised at how just like crazy their messages were and how hostile they were like you know generally older like i think they’d be wiser what what did they say or they say like i’m gonna i’m gonna i’m gonna [ ] you up are they gonna fight you or what do they say i mean like what would they say paul nitpicked on a tweet of mine about strike publishing which basically said because i focused on that that this is mania you know i was manic or something like that and then sam just come like said something and then he like corrected my spelling which is like you know what someone is yeah i saw that why he he well not even your spelling he’s a y combinator it’s two words not one right yeah yeah but most most arrogant the most arrogant that’s like i thought it proved my point right it’s like that’s what you do in middle school and then like they might as well have just said i know you are but what am i yeah exactly and then sean was just like you know called it like use just horrifying words and just you know this this guy the god the guy from sequoia he basically was like uh this you know he’s making it sound like everybody was against them but the truth was their numbers just went yeah yeah he started commenting on my metrics like just like you know it’s the only thing you know he could point like first of all vc’s aren’t supposed to comment on metrics second off what he said was ablated and lie about our metrics and so another just complete low blow and so everybody who messaged me was like all of those comments validated what you were saying like these are the people you’re putting on your cap table imagine when you’d have a disagreement with them as a founder how they’re going to treat you you um i actually think this is going to be a net net win for you i think that like there’s definitely fear if i was you of like man is anyone going to work with me again but i think like being a good natured loose cannon is actually a typically a loose cannon i like a good name yeah because intentions matter intentions matter a lot so like if you’re a lose cannon but you just want to hurt people that’s one thing if you’re a lose cannon and you generally want to help that’s another thing that’s lovable so i actually think this is going to be a big benefit for you do you um are you single do you live alone or do you have a girlfriend or whatever you’re into um what are they saying um well i have people close with and uh like everyone’s super supportive they’re like dude you’re doing what no one else but everyone was afraid of doing and i find if you’re doing things that other people are afraid to do you’re generally in the right you know it’s a for me that’s a marker of like i’m on the right track and yeah they’re very supportive have you read the book 48 laws of power i haven’t but i want to i heard it’s epic you are doing it so maybe you should go read it and try to get it all done pretty soon because you are in the middle of a lot of like different strategies that the author discussed you’re saying all right i’ll go pick it up yeah and the author his name is robert green he’s got another one called the 33 strategies of war of which you are also doing some of that but this is very interesting that you’re like involved in this what do you read on a what have you read that’s made an influence on this whole process of yours well i read a lot of spiritual texts and that has given me the fearlessness to make first principle decisions because when you’re grounded in spiritual reasoning you’re not grounded in mainstream reasoning and so that drove conscious culture that you’re a four-day work week i’m like why are we working people to death that’s not healthy our health spiritually is very important sustainability it’s important spiritual concept we have to push four-day work week and you know monks uh certain monks the more uh higher on the spec on wiser they are more ascended they are the longer their sleeves and people are like oh wow it’s because they’re more docile and it’s not the case it’s because they’re actually you know more combative when they see something wrong in the world for me like i’ve found that kind of the further i’ve gone and kind of healing myself and healing those around me and going inward the more fearlessness i’ve had externally and this is one manifestation of that you are so strange it is awesome you are so cool i i’ve become a fan sean i understand what you what you saw in this guy when you had dinner with him yeah exactly um dude thanks thanks for coming on 28 right 29. 27. you are the weirdest 27 year old i’ve met that is what a unique what a unique perspective it just you’re interesting tbd if if if this battle i hope i hope you win this battle but like you’re definitely going to win some big war that’s for sure we’re looking forward to it fight the war cool let’s go all right so people people should go follow you on on twitter i think that’s the best spot uh what’s your handle it’s like king ryan or the ryan king the ryan king why why is that your name i think it’s fitting oh my gosh this is awesome okay there’s a great meme i don’t know if you saw it but you posted another you posted the thread about the mob and the yc mafia then he puts another friend why why she isn’t worth it and like one of the first replies i saw was this meme of like this wife asleep and the husband’s like like reaching over to her and he goes honey wake up the bolt guy did another thread and i thought it was so funny so people should follow you that handle actually my grandparents always used to call me the ryan king so call me that growing up and i’ll just like oh it’s a great handle let’s go for i love it dude thanks for coming on appreciate it and uh good luck with all the uh old stuff thanks guys thanks sam sean such a pleasure see ya see ya all right ryan just left all right what’d you think that guy’s so like let’s separate this current do i think he’s right or wrong i i i don’t i haven’t investigated i think he’s right maybe but i’ve been i don’t hold that that strongly but as a person this guy is a killer i’m team ryan uh just in life this guy is so unique unique yeah he uh he’s a very unique guy he’s got a very unique style of speaking um yes like i i usually have a bias against people who speak slowly talk so slow but i loved it and so um and i’ve noticed that about myself that i’ll like i’ll instantly kind of okay this person’s talking slowly uh if they don’t like have something super interesting to say right away i find myself tuning out but when i met ryan he was talking really slowly but that he would say one thing that would just grip me and i’d be like wait what and then he would say the next then it would like be another minute and he’d get me with another one and another one i was like wait i think this guy might be one of the more i was like how old are you he’s like i’m i think i bet him when he’s 26 or 27 and i was like you’re one of the weirdest and you said it perfectly you you are the strangest 27 year old i’ve ever met and it’s awesome and that was my exact takeaway and then i was like i was leaving the dinner and i was like um you want to just hang more you want to how about i drive here where are you going and he’s like oh it’d be great and it canceled his uber and hopped in the car and i just drove him around we just talked some more because i found him to just be a very uh interesting person and um you know i like the stuff that he stands for um which is great in our text group ahead of this people were saying oh yeah you know he probably has sold a ton of secondary he probably made all this money on bitcoin and maybe that’s one of the reasons why he’s able to kind of be this like loose cannon say whatever he wants he said that that’s not true yeah i don’t think that that’s true i don’t think he’s a liar i mean but i obviously i’m sure he’s doing fine right bolt’s a 14 billion dollar company now uh i think he knows that that’s right he’s gonna get fired and his equity will still be there for him you know that’s okay like that wouldn’t be you know i think that that’s the safety net but like i had said in the thing he’s got a track record of just kind of doing things his own way so i’m not really surprised and i also think he didn’t say anything bad and all i think actually it’s a whole bunch about nothing he did say something bad on the pod though he said i am saying that the stripe brothers are bad uh i said they’re good dudes and he goes no i don’t think they’re good i don’t think they’re good yeah but that’s i don’t think that’s that bad you’re allowed to say i you know i don’t think these are these are good dudes i think that’s bad man i think that’s bad i think that that that is a it’s a very simple word bad and good but like what’s it’s like to say something i don’t think he’s i don’t think this person’s a good person that’s a really strong thing to say i feel like we say stronger than that every episode about people we know half as much about but like i text you that all the time i’m like hey this person messaged me i might work with them on x y z are they a good person right and if the answer is yes that’s it right if the answer is no that’s it as well now i would say i think the things that he said that they did i don’t think are that bad at all and again i’m an investor in bolt i like ryan or friends so you know like i’m i’m not agreeing with him that they’re that bad even if they did it but that’s okay like he he’s totally allowed to think that those are [ __ ] up things uh i think that those are pretty much fair play uh but i think it’s really funny the way that people reacted to it and i think it’s really good for him and good for their brand the way people reacted to it good on him for for uh using them in a way to build the brand of what he’s doing and also put his stake in the ground and say this is what i think is right and wrong i think they did wrong uh you know he’s fair to say that even if my steak would have been 10 feet over to the left i i this guy’s interesting that was a good find so i don’t know where in the episode this little segment’s gonna go in the beginning in the end but that’s what we think about that guy that guy was fascinating i could talk to him for a long time yeah i’m older than him but i would like look up to him and i think that in his like you know when he was on here i think he was you know trying to do a good job kind of representing what he stands for like i think most people do if you go i think most people’s default if i get invited onto a podcast i’m gonna go on i’m gonna try to like you know say all the right things so i think he was definitely doing a little bit of say the right things it stuff but actually having talked to him in private he actually was very similar where he’s you know i believe in this i think it’s going to be awesome i think we’re going to win and i’d be like yeah but like you know we’re just shooting this is late night dinner over two drinks like but he was just like i said what i said and i meant what i said you know like i think this is awesome i think i’m you know this is the best i think this is totally gonna work i think blah blah so like i think he has a very uh singular mindedness about what he believes in and i think that’s cool to uh to to interact with because i think most people a don’t believe anything b when they believe they’ll hedge uh or c they’ll kind of be wishy-washy about it or they believe when the lights are on and then when the lights are not on they’re you know why are you applying for a job i thought you just said this is the company that’s going to win oh yeah yeah just in case you know like there’s a wishy-washy to a lot of people i’ve he has zero wishy-washiness so uh you know for better for women and i i’m upset at myself i judged him as being far different just by looking off his profile picture uh would you think he was not just that he was this like i thought he was what people accused me of being of this like blonde hair white bro who had everything in life handed to them who um is going to be kind of um maybe not as intellectual kind of a uh an alpha right you know like this this stereotype that it’s not an insult necessarily but i wouldn’t be proud of that i just think i’m just like a good looking strong muscular successful guy and i just feel like it’s unfair well i’m not talking about myself but like with him i’m like well because he went to stanford he dropped out of stanford was in bitcoin forever so it was like crazy rich at a young age he said he’s from miami so in my head i’m like yeah oh okay yeah this is like the this is this thing that you’re calling life is a game for you and in reality he was incredibly intellectual very intriguing i believe him that he that like i understand that you can be very wealthy on paper but like he hasn’t sold a lot of stuff so like that’s an interesting perspective so i thought he was cool different than what i thought it was gonna be i enjoyed it yeah uh cool let us know what you think if you want us to do kind of more of these or less of these uh you can tweet at us and uh you know we take it into consideration we don’t necessarily listen but we we like to know what you think and then we may or may not do it you