Keeping it Real with Danny Trinh

0:00you need to divorce two brains if you're a product builder in the space one is like why you're building and what you're building what you're excited about and the second is like the generative greed t-gen greed on like trading and then making money because I'm like if you let the two brains come together it's gonna get very messy for you and your enthusiasm your motivation is going to be this like toxic mix of like why are you building you know um and so I think obviously for anyone that's in it for degenerative to DJ and greed uh they've lost a ton of enthusiasm as things pull down and then

0:31you gotta like you know like seek shelter but I think for a lot of people they're building it for well I would call the right reasons which are like The Primitives are changing and it's the promise of like a better future foreign

0:50of the where it happens podcast welcome welcome today's episode I want to start off by telling a little story when I was 21 I was working on a app called five by and it was this video discovery app that allowed you to find the most interesting videos on YouTube and I was living in Canada at the time but I had to make a trip to Silicon Valley I had to see like where all these big companies uh started and and Grew From so I went there for a few weeks and I got introduced to this entrepreneur who had started and sold a company uh to Google I was already following him on

1:33Twitter so someone who I knew about so I was really excited to meet him and I met him for coffee I remember it was super rainy out and I you know I walk in there wet a few minutes late and I was just so excited to be there um I apologize for being late and I asked him you know what are you up to what are you up to now and he told me about how he was starting a video discovery at how he had raised millions of dollars and I just I felt my stomach turn I was like oh my God is this is this my ideas he's is he working on

2:11my idea of course he couldn't be but I ended up asking him to tell me more about it and I said hey could you could you maybe show me what you're working on so he pulls up his laptop and he starts pulling up the mock-ups for this app and literally pixel for Pixel it was the same like we had the same idea and I cringe right I was just I was this early 20s uh you know not as much experience as him living in Canada he was this big shot raised millions of dollars had hired all these Google engineers uh and it was tough and at the time

2:57you know I left that coffee shop and I didn't really have um like a support network of entrepreneurs to to to to call and say like you know to to voice how I'm feeling and that's why this episode I wanted to bring on my good friend Danny Trin uh later I moved to San Francisco and Danny became one of those friends who I could definitely vent with and I think that it's really important for entrepreneurs Founders makers to have someone or ideally multiple people that they could be real with uh so during this episode there's tons of gems from Danny uh about the importance of having that support network

3:39um and you know I hope you really like the episode before we bring on Danny Trin I wanted to make an announcement the reason why we started the where it happens podcast was we wanted to give you an inside look into what happens behind closed doors there's so many conversations of well-known people happening behind closed doors what if these conversations we're open to everyone what if it was like a FaceTime basically um that you know two well-known entrepreneurs are having that was public and one of the things I realized you know we've done a ton of interviews is the most interesting conversations happen with makers they happen with

4:26builders and they happen in these three categories Community people Commerce people and creators and why well it's because those people are shaping the world and we're Shifting the format to only interview those types of people so if you're interested in those categories you are going to be so excited about the guests we have lined up uh the other quick announcement is my co-host sahil Bloom is no longer going to be co-hosting with me it's just going to be me um he's focusing on his book and I'm focusing on this podcast uh as well as my company late checkout so I'm excited uh for him and I'm I'm really excited

5:09about where the podcast is going and I know you're going to enjoy uh this conversation with Danny Tran and what we've got cooking for you because it is incredible thank you well well speaking of that by the way I remember the last time I was on it's crazy to think that it was six months ago so much has changed this year I feel like at the end you all were jokingly mentioning particle and I think I joked I was like are you all behind particle let me tell you part of full since that time good Lord I I feel like I see it everywhere and um it's just been uh it's been crazy

5:44to see good for them you know yeah so you want to do you want to describe what particle is for people who didn't listen to that episode and why why you might think it's interesting yeah I mean it's like it's a paperless posts uh brought into the new era for mobile uh or like you know for SMS and just the way people might do invites and as obviously things like Facebook events and other things have died uh there's been obviously a need for to make it really easy to organize um and at least here in New York I've been seeing particle go out but even some of those birthday party or or

6:16whatnot or dinner it is sent out a particle link um and it's really smart you know it's on SMS um it's like sorry it's a website that you can say text or snap to somebody um yeah I've just been genuinely surprised to see that it like has Consolidated and it's like the thing for sending out like a really quick impromptu invite you know yeah I think what's cool about it is like when I when I chatted with the founder she was like yeah it's basically like I don't know paperless post but for Gen Z and when I when I go to websites where it's like hey is this product for Gen Z or

6:52it's this product for Millennials like that never works like you can't say it's for that person you just kind of have to like when I go to I just went to the particle website and it's like it's not like it says gen Z anywhere on this website yeah just like I mean I I know nothing about the team behind it but uh I wish them all a success it's pretty cool uh especially in a space it's so crowded or it's full of so many uh it's me dead folks who've tried it out uh yeah wait who are the particle founders today's episode is brought to you by a

7:27company and product that has literally changed my life and one that I use every single day I started taking ag1 in 2011 because I wanted to feel great it's been a staple of my morning routine ever since yeah that's 10 years and 99 compliant I met the CEO when we were training at the same strength training facility way back in the day he had been creating an early version of the product to battle his own gut health issues when he realized how challenging and expensive it was to create an optimal routine on your own I started taking it during those college baseball years and was completely hooked

8:06over the years it has kept me feeling on point physically and mentally the best part it fits into whatever lifestyle or Diet I'm currently experimenting with from keto to paleo to vegan and more it's a tiny micro habit that you can execute daily that has large long-term and compounding benefits the product has over seven thousand five star reviews and is trusted by a long list of professional athletes and leading Health experts I love it they do and I know you will too to make it easy athletic greens is going to give you a free one-year supply of immune supporting vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first

8:46purchase all you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com wih again that is athleticgreens.com wih to take ownership over your health and pick up the ultimate daily nutritional Insurance you won't regret it for the last 10 years I've been building internal tools to help my sales teams or engineering teams work at blazing speeds but the catch with internal tools is it's really hard to build from scratch and maintaining them also requires a lot of engineering work and it's just frankly super tedious thankfully there's now a retool retool is a much faster way to build internal tools it has a complete library of a hundred plus fully featured accessible

9:36UI components that you can just drag and drop into any interface retools platform lets you build the custom internal tools your team needs 10 times faster it's a one platform to build your interface you can connect any data source any API and publish employee facing apps in record time it's also super flexible you can write custom code nearly anywhere to customize how your app looks and works and app environments SSO permissions and other critical app functionality are all available completely out of the box the result you can build production grade internal tools without the wasted effort of Googling component libraries debugging dependencies or rewriting boilerplate code

10:29thousands of teams at companies like Amazon doordash NBC late checkout collaborate around custom built retooled apps to operate faster operate better also teams of up to five can build retool apps for free so you shouldn't be surprised why we're big ritual fans at where it happens to learn more you just gotta go to retool.com um I only met one of them um I'm blanking on her name her name is let's see hold up [Music] um I think her name is Joy Tau oh no Shreya that's who I met um and and yeah she's probably in her mid-20s really product design or like Focus like you can see it in the product like it

11:22feels very much like I mean you get it it's like when you use the particle product it like it feels really good when you use Eventbrite like you want to take a shower um yeah well I don't remember the last movie was Eventbrite but uh yeah I guess and by the way it looks like you just used Eventbrite because you know that hair is looking looking real real real real clean you know oh yeah exactly yeah I just got it I just got out of an event right uh session that's why uh yeah for the listeners I just I just took a shower so yeah well yeah I guess uh what else what are

11:58you seeing these days do you see anything fun lately the the caught your eye um I'm curious like you know I've been seeing a lot of stuff you know we chatted a little bit about web3 um you know obviously a lot has changed in web 3 over the last six months um and it was just right before this uh in between shower and this call I was I was uh I was reading Koopa troopas uh newsletter around music nfts yeah um and I've just been fascinated with like web3 and music uh thinking about royalties thinking about like you know the role of the label um curious your perspective

12:45um on music nfts and then also just in web 3 in general like um yeah what is change are you still bullish you know talk to me yeah I mean it's two things a especially music entities definitely not my bag um I know a lot of people who were really kind of excited about it or and I know there's a lot of energy there I think obviously a lot remains to be seen so you know um I think it's also actually something randomly it was like it's called like sounds XYZ or something they released as like some protocol or something and anyways very excited for them or like

13:23whatever finding out visit they are there but I think that's the question is there they're there so I think you have all these people like kind of just telling each other it's going to be awesome or it's the future um without you know a ton behind it and but I but that's not to take away from um than them trying to change uh the foundation of it all I think web3 in general kind of reminds me of web 2 right now and that like I don't think a lot of people remember web 2 how web 2 at least from where I'm sitting ended and that you had this like oh the future

13:53the web is social and you had all these like microblogging competitors you're like oh web2 is so exciting it is Ajax we're gonna age it everything's gonna be alive and it's gonna be awesome but there was definitely a moment where like things got really tough and rough like 2008-ish or like things Consolidated a lot of that stuff is now dead you know and it's nothing wrong with those Founders or those people but just you know even though there was this generation you know the internet becoming more modern or things that we now accept to be table sticks a lot of stuff was cleared out and I think you

14:23know as we're in Winter we're so firmly in winter again uh you know there's there's a natural consolidation happening of like you know some of the less sturdy and frankly some of the more hypey noisy stuff uh is getting washed away um and it's yeah it's force and folks to go back and focus it's like you know it's Beyond Winter now it's like a nuclear winter it's like um I think it's bigger than any of the just web3 stuff it's like the world we live in today um where where it's just really really rough I mean one thing so I'll segue really quickly like I'm pretty excited

14:57about October 11th uh Japan's opening its borders for like non-business um excuse travel and it's like the US dollar versus the yen is an all-time crazy High um and it's like that's a bang got nothing to do with like crypto that's just the world we live in like the you know things are just getting crazy and hectic like they think that the Euros at a 20-year historic low against the dollar and whatever like all I'll say is um it's kind of a crazy time we live and so I think web3 yeah suffering or like that entire generation of companies right now but so many others are too

15:36um so it's uh it's interesting to watch because I I will say I think some of the best most resilient Founders and teams tend to get started or tend to survive improve themselves for surviving periods like this um and you know this period is far from even over or frankly even getting started I think we're still in the free fall into like in this is the depth of some Darkness so um yeah God wishing godspeed to all the folks out there trying to darndest to stay afloat and uh keep building and stay focused um yeah could you uh yeah could you talk like I want I want to come back to the web

16:13three thing but I want to actually jump to to web 2 for a second living in San Francisco during the Heyday our buddy Addison just sent us a uh who's also you know in that in that scene just sent us a text message of like a video of our buddy Jeff and a few other people just like being in San Francisco at that era and you know social era mobile was coming out it felt like really exciting um could you talk more about like and and you were in it too dude like you were yeah you were at dig which was like one of the most you know

16:49hottest startups in Social at the time path when the hottest mobile startups at the time talk like what was it like in your in your mind being in SF at that time yeah um because like we've got thousands of listeners who just like what weren't they what one thing one one thing I'd say is that okay definitely 2008 you know financial crash in its own right you know that's that's the year I got to SF um you know everyone now knows SF to be displaced for people like way overpaid like the minimum like salary out of college for a good CS degree is like something crazy you know like everyone

17:29basically has expense Lifestyles with like free mini kitchens and laundry and buses and stuff um and I think the one thing I'll say is like when you get to SF 2008 like there wasn't a ton of money floating around like it wasn't like every company that was alive was over funded and you know there was just cash everywhere it was kind of like this um is this place where you you went there because you just attracted to hanging out and seeing what other people were building you know and it wasn't because it was super lucrative I'd argue you know Facebook sorry Googled gone public but it really was probably until

18:01Facebook idea 2012 or so when things got kind of kind of crazy you know um and so I'd say what was great about that period that's around the same time you know Addison and what was out there and that we all you know so many friends friends that I keep to this day lifelong friends were made was it was just like hey uh what do you have to what do you build in uh my first apartment was in Hayes Valley because it was the place I could afford not because Hayes Valley which is now like the cool the cool kids little mid-market area like it's not

18:29just like you you would kind of just surviving and and and trying to build stuff and like again it wasn't this crazy like overvalued time it was just a lot of fun I think frankly there were so many people that had such bad terrible apocalyptic experiences with the first bubble like 2000s that they would almost like laugh about this idea web 2 or people doing startups again um and like trying to make businesses or whatnot figure it out and you know a lot of that was fair because a lot of those companies didn't make it uh what's funny is some of them are still still going

19:00strong today um yeah and I it was a fun time I think what was cool about SF in that time in or you know I don't know if your question is just about SF or web 2 but I think what was so cool about the time was you'd bump shoulders casually with some of the best Builders ever with like No Agenda and there was no ego it's just like hey whoa like oh you're working on that like oh tell me more uh and you're like do you want to get a burrito like you can walk around the mission like get a Fair leader or something or grab beer

19:29somewhere and and it was uh it was just a really I don't know it was it was just a really so yeah yeah a couple things so first of all I completely agree like the start like today like there's tons of startups that are like flush with cash back then like even the startups that were quote unquote flush with cash like when we we didn't there wasn't that much money there it was very much like us versus them like didn't path you know I don't know if yeah path was tried or Google tried to buy path at one time and I remember like I think it was like 100

20:06million dollars or more and I remember like everyone was kind of like no we can't do like path users were like no no way they can't do it like it it felt very us and them though I mean I guess it feels like that a little bit uh or sorry it felt very US versus them back then it still feels that way a little bit now but it's not it was way it felt way more of that back then back then do you agree yeah I think back then everything was just a little faster loose because you didn't know but you didn't know right like I think 2010 that that particular

20:40year things changed the iPhone 4 changed like it was like a seismic shift right finally the camera was good enough right and then in the following years as connections got better and like the mobile your Cellular Connection got better there's a seismic shift and so there was no like right or wrong way to do things right whereas I'd say like if you look at consumer now like I I think it's a pain cave for a Founder to go out without some angle or strategy on how they're going to get distribution you know like what advantage they're gonna have because say you make something great it's gonna get copied or snatched up by

21:13somebody so fast you know um and and so yeah I think especially around then it was a little bit of the wild west but you didn't know like you were undergoing the shift in Mobile a lot and I know there's that I'm tired so low-mo movement which made me cringe at the time it still makes me cringe to say it out loud today uh but like explain what that is yeah for people who don't know what that is well they're pillars that now sound really damn obvious which is like can you make social location mobile um experiences or companies and products and yeah at the time it was an entire

21:46wave right like it began with like the first bit I think it's you know South by 2009 where you had um Foursquare in guala you know and it's like it now seems so medieval and primitive to be like oh my phone knows where DPS I might be able to check in to a place where I'm at right and obviously so many people have built on that right um but I yeah it's there was this crazy Cambrian explosion of people you know taking different bits and Legos and assembling different ideas you know off of these like big new things that were unlocked right like gowala was the

22:24competitor and it's cool to see Josh Williams and Co and he's gotten like a lot of that original koala team back and they're out trying to do it again um but you know Google was the exact same time and was building some very different things with like these little collectibles uh and little like passports you know that you you could uh you could drop or leave for others you know and so those were just the first two like I didn't you know there were so many other companies that got going around that time you know obviously Instagram won it all at that time um you know but but there's so many

22:53others right like they're so again it's it's a yeah it's it kind of is a reminder that like at any given moment especially like when you talk about web3 or anything like next generation of companies yeah a ton of the things that sound great and awesome are probably gonna go you know be be like be you know erased or or or or or not make it but um yeah it was it was a fun time um yeah sorry my mind just randomly thought of Vine for a second and I was like oh I miss I miss Vine I don't know Vine it's firmly under the solo it was definitely

23:25a social and mobile um it's not a location stuff in there but uh yeah Vine mine is crazy um yeah yeah I mean I think like Vine had a magic moment for so many people when people downloaded it and it felt just so different like it was six seconds I think right those six second videos and um it was also so you know we're talking about particle like really well designed like Vine was also really well designed um totally right um yeah I think the other cool thing about it was you I mean it was the precursor to tick tock of course but like you could post

24:06something on Instagram get no love but post something on Vine and like you know yeah I have a friend you know I had random like my friend Jerome jarr who got like millions of followers on Vine was like this random french guy who just would have funny videos and then changed his life you know and I yeah I think that's the crazy the crazy part to me is that probably there's there's hundreds of millions there's a generation of tick tock um either users or creators who probably may not even remember Vine but uh yeah Vine is definitely in the DNA you know like the looping video the talent show

24:41like how how funny can you be within those constraints you know um even the idea of stitching things together right like obviously Bond wasn't the first to do that but they were the first really to bring that um you know that mechanic out there and yeah I miss it now yeah I don't think they they they die to slow and painful death um but you know it's just the nature of our industry right it's like everyone's kind of building on the shoulders of other people um yeah and that's uh what a good app I guess that's kind of where I want to shift gears a bit which is

25:12okay I figured it out I want to shift gears to we we lived in San Francisco in our 20s during the height of you know social and mobile and we we partook in that economy and we had some really high highs and some really low lows um right yeah I can picture them now and um there's a whole like we were the young kids then like we were the Gen Z back then right like we were we were the up and comers now and we're in our 30s like we're we've been there and done that and we're kind of older so what do you like what can we what do you

25:53take away from your time doing Social Mobile SF that you can impart to the Next Generation in terms of how do you build products that are gonna they're you know that people are gonna love you you know one thing I'd say there's a lot to unpacked there but but it's funny when you said Ben there done that I I actually something I try to pride myself in is this notion of The Beginner's mind um but just because you know you maybe maybe learned a particularly painful lesson or you learned you tried something that didn't work um that you can like continue to like keep that freshness and that enthusiasm

26:31so it can keep exploring you know things you're interested in um it's funny how I said I would never work in consumer social again but look at where I am now um and it's like we end up back here um one one thing I'd say is with the benefit of hindsight on that time was the joy of beginning the joy of starting was a superpower right like something I tell all kinds of young people is when they get started especially designers and creatives our industry is like you may not be money rich but you're definitely time rich and when you have when you're time wealthy which means you have like a ton of times

27:06like work nights and weekends and like work ABF like uh on a schedule that it would be uncomfortable for a lot of other people who have other lifestyle whatever who have like kids or whatever um there's nothing wrong with having kids by the way um it's just that you you can try more things and you can be a beginner much more frequently um and that's something I think is super important you know like especially as our industry gets Fuller and Fuller people just like you and I who had a certain set of experiences and certain years out there because all these people want to tell you like how you should be

27:38doing things or how you should approach things or let me tell you about that time we were growing LinkedIn or let me tell you about that time we were making Tinder grow on you USC new UCLA's campus and it's like okay sure maybe it worked that way then but it may not work that way now and I I think that that was one thing in SF that really caught on I I if so my most painful memories are like and you're listening to The Experts they're listening to like the like you know the people who've been there done that tell you how you need to be growing or tell

28:06you how you need to be approaching a problem um you know it was it was uh it was often really bad advice um and so yeah there's one story that actually resonates really specifically with me which is we were you know all in on mobile and like building out apps for the iPhone and Android um and literally there was someone who insisted that because his grandmother didn't have a smartphone when you like dedicate Two web Engineers to sending out an email digest to her uh for her to like you know um be able to follow and in hindsight now the I would tell that person to [ __ ]

28:40off but in the moment you're like oh wow this is a very experienced smart person who's telling us about the total addressable whatever being about that and the other okay yes let's spend two of our four web Engineers if that makes sense right um and and yeah what I'd say I don't want to cherry pick on that person um but I'd say like in general SF I'll probably carry these values with me lifelong that there will always be some notion of like experts or like the right people telling you how things need to be and especially in consumer the way you would grow is constantly evolving

29:17right it's so Dynamic um yeah I'm curious for you but your Tech because I know that you we had we experience of the highest size and lowest lows together I'm very curious for you uh if you flip the question on you um you know what comes to mind well I mean going back to our earlier conversation about where the Pod is going like I I want to bring on Builders like I don't want to bring on VCS like and I I think that and this is kind of a hot take I think but just because you invest in a company doesn't mean it's your company so a lot

29:51of VCS what they'll say is oh one of our companies oh I am so they invested out of their fund which they invested from LPS so not even their own money yeah they're going and they invest and then they're saying oh particle yeah that's one of our companies yeah sorry sorry Chad um yeah but just because you wired the money does not you were not in the trenches and you were not in the trenches you play a meaningful role in your connection with the business and it wouldn't exist in its current state without you but but I still but I still think that you know I'd much rather when I when I'm

30:33training notes around building consumer products I want to talk to Shreya I don't want to talk to yeah the VC here yeah like I think yeah all perspectives are valuable that I I can agree with you that I know there's some sometimes folks like VCS well like it's almost like a claiming credit for the success of like a singular credit I mean it's like yeah of course you help him but like if it's yes it's a little dirty when when they it's almost like they're taking credit for for the success of this it was especially funny though is like when they take credit years after or like talk shade what's

31:06worse is not even taking credit when they talk when they talk shade on the founder who has been successful after them or whatever and I think that's the entire other tangent um but yeah man like uh Builders tend to be the most fun to hang out with you know shared misery and shared Joy you know uh of of the process and yeah I don't know I mean that's how that's how we bonded like we bonded I don't know if you remember but we it was right before you you know you had a trip out we went to what was that beer garden yeah yeah and I remember exactly where

31:44we were we were we were at the second level and you were just telling me about free which you should tell people what it was because it was like ahead of its time so like crazy ahead of its time and it was so right on so many levels and you were having a hard time frankly like in you know yeah and [Music] you know not because you weren't executing well just because startups are difficult and consumer social is difficult and teams are hard and and it and we were bonding over that shared misery I think um but yeah tell folks what we was the timing you know because I think it's relevant

32:29well so I'll give some context that basically a path one of my my last things that were done was our messenger and I remember I literally put like the Targaryen symbol the dragon symbol from Game of Thrones on the room when we ship that messenger and mind you this is before Facebook Messenger got their act together like Facebook Messenger like you suppose like a very basic thing at the time um and and we wanted to really build like what would be what would be paths take you know on a messenger and like kind of went crazy there and so I'll say is from building that messenger saw holy

32:59cow the numbers around a messenger are just different you know like we also technically have the same loop as stories but you now would consider stories where you could post a photo and someone like no post a photo once a day and like come back like five ten times a day to see who else has seen it because that's what we call them scene it's empath um but the numbers change for Messenger like the the amount of time someone uses that if the message are just like crazy right and so I was like okay I really want to go build a messenger but I want to build a messenger

33:26um with a purpose and the purpose is like it owns that first message in the conversation and the classic picture I'll tell everyone is it reminds me of like this season sorry joke where he says like if you look on my phone on a Sunday I was like a psycho because I'm texting all my friends hey I want to grab brunch hey want to grab Brown she want to grab brunch you know um I think our friend Nikita has a funny joke which is like every social founder at one point tries to make an app for like getting people to hang out together IRL um and it's it's so true I think free is

33:54definitely my my uh my my version of that lesson um I think free yeah it was it was the the other way I would refer to it was like I grew up on ale and some messenger and I missed the Green Dot when you'd go home sign in and see your buddy let's see who's green and like for the green people you can chat with them and they were your friends and I wanted that for the real world and so I just wanted to see who was free at any given moment kind of like the hornagon door or like the bat signal whatever we built it I won't bore you with all

34:21the details or build more of the people your little details but um solve so many problems I think there are pieces of its new user experience and onboarding that still echo in a lot of apps today um you know I I made a ton of fun building it but also yeah a ton of Joy a ton of misery um and yeah I think when at the time I I also remember distinctly that they were in Southern Pacific I I think it was one of those moments where I was a Founder you kind of like you have you start to get a muscle for sketching out 9 12 and 18 months in advance even which

34:55at the time as a 22 23 year old I was not very good at you know um and I was like damn I think I think this isn't I don't know I don't know I don't know what's happening here um and and what I'll say is I think a lot of my conversation with other Founders today and I see myself and so many Founders I hang with today like it's that realization of like damn I don't know who else I can talk with like this you know because think about it with a team you have to give great you know you're trying to keep the inspiration like that that energy on

35:25Mondays and get through the week of like yeah here's the vision and like maybe your investor updates maybe you don't know truly how to be that candid like you know you know or to speak that bluntly because you also want to like Inspire confidence and faith in the team I think it's a very special type of like trusted relationship it can't be with investors too but or like other Founders or operators you you you you you trust but it's a very specific type of relationship where you can kind of share that you know um and and talk through it and really sketch out all the options you know for

35:54what they'll all look like um yeah and I remember that day it was it was a special day and a special weekend but we don't have to dive into that um you know I uh yeah but um that was that was a good that was that was a meaningful that was a really meaningful time for the last 10 years I've been building internal tools to help my sales teams or engineering teams work at blazing speeds but the catch with internal tools is it's really hard to build from scratch and maintaining them also requires a lot of engineering work and it's just frankly super tedious thankfully there's now a retool retool

36:33is a much faster way to build internal tools it has a complete library of a hundred plus fully featured accessible UI components that you can just drag and drop into any interface retools platform lets you build the custom internal tools your team needs 10 times faster it's a one platform to build your interface you can connect any data source any API and publish employee facing apps in record time it's also super flexible you can write custom code nearly anywhere to customize how your app looks and works and app environments SSO permissions and other critical app functionality are all available completely out of the box the result

37:22you can build production grade internal tools without the wasted effort of Googling component libraries debugging dependencies or rewriting boilerplate code thousands of teams at companies like Amazon doordash NBC late checkout collaborate around custom built retooled apps to operate faster operate better also teams of up to five can build retool apps for free so you shouldn't be surprised why we're big ritual fans at where it happens to learn more you just got to go to retool.com today's episode is brought to you by a company and product that has literally changed my life and one that I use every single day I started taking ag1 in 2011 because I

38:12wanted to feel great it's been a staple of my morning routine ever since yeah that's 10 years and 99 compliant I met the CEO when we were training at the same strength training facility way back in the day he had been creating an early version of the product to battle his own gut health issues when he realized how challenging and expensive it was to create an optimal routine on your own I started taking it during those college baseball years and was completely hooked over the years it has kept me feeling on point physically and mentally the best part it fits into whatever lifestyle or Diet I'm

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39:36nutritional Insurance you won't regret it yeah I think um you do have to put on a bit of a face when you're talking to your team or VCS or advisors like it's it's hard to be a hundred percent unfiltered but with other builders it's hard not to be it's hard to be anything but 100 unfiltered right so it's your time to be like okay here's what's really going down I'd really love your opinion on XYZ and I don't think I don't know if I've said this on the Pod yet but um every year me and a group of uh six or seven entrepreneurs used to rent a house

40:20in La um and it was like a mastermind basically of Founders and we actually hired a moderator and we hired like a chef and I know this is sound bougie as hell but like not you know initially not not a lot of us had money we just like poured it into this and we would sit there and we would all work on each you know work with each other unfiltered Mastermind Founders and like we had like Sean paulry was one of those Founders um Julian Smith who you know who's been on he's a guest friend of the Pod uh you know he came up with breather there

40:58um I came up with Islands there flow water Nicholas Reichenbach who create you know it's in every Whole Foods Across the Nation he came up with it there uh it's not publicly traded company and I've been thinking a lot about masterminds and I want people to hit me up if this is interesting to them um but like we gotta we gotta we gotta we gotta we gotta bring it back you know I think it'd be I think it'd be awesome to to bring it back yeah I think it's awesome also because like especially because so many of us live on Twitter and and places like that

41:31where it's just like you just okay there's a couple things so people are you know spend a lot of time on Twitter and you can't really get feedback really on places like that and then big events big conferences and stuff like that is just like you're not it's so hard to find your people there so like these smaller like six to eight ten high quality trusted people bring them together do you know do a proper um I feel like that first of all no I feel like that's a huge opportunity for Founders and also like I feel like it needs to exist and all like I also think you can build a

42:12business around that I I tell you I'm just a weird epiphany of the day not Epiphany but just like how I think of things I mean it's funny that we're talking about this is such a public or a semi-public uh a forum but it's like the more public a place is even if it's for discussion you know conversation the more judgment there is right and I think judgment like the level of judgment in an area is inversely uh correlated to how like actually meaningful the interactions are going to be you know like I think that on Twitter you're like oh it went viral with the 100 300 000 likes you know you

42:51feel this like dopamine rip of like wow all these awesome people may have liked it or a lot of people saw it but like how meaningful was that versus a room that's low judgment where someone can bring up some really deep [ __ ] or like some whatever's on their chest and like talk about it and know that like no this is not like something that's gonna be people like screenshot and share around and all that toxic you know whatever stuff is going to go there but it's a meaningful place and so yeah I I think about at least for Builders you thrive in low judgment zones

43:21um look I've never been to Burning Man and I think everyone has a there say it's now actually a high judgment Zone from the from the the Peta gallery of like what actually happened to burning man these days but I think the idea of a place where people can actually kind of let their hair down and be themselves amongst the similar all you know amongst other people whether they know them well or not and into and to share ideas and talk through their [ __ ] sounds kind of awesome so anyways your masterminds sound dope I mean I love the I'd love to join the the one that you the first one

43:50you do when you bring them back you know yeah I mean maybe we can even share this like I think it needs to be sort of like it also needs to be fun right like so we would do you know 50 like structured okay everyone has a certain amount of time these are the questions you can ask like I think the structure is really important that's why the moderator is key here the whole thing and then we would have fun at like night times like dinners going out I don't know if we can show this image I I saw like on a like you know one time the only time

44:23I've shot a gun was in LA at one of these events um oh and uh yeah maybe we can like post the like in the show notes I'll I'll find the the picture it was like 12 years ago by the way non-sponsored uh plug if you ever want a cool place to shoot guns in a place that isn't about shooting guns drivetanks.com uh I don't even know if it's still around but it's in the mid it's like two hours outside of Austin you can literally Drive tanks and then the belt it's like it's very safe to take care of it for you and should you desire to you

44:59know build like a used car like they'll let you aim the cannon and shoot it also you let you shoot a Howitzer I actually now remember you can also shoot actual guns like like decals like miniguns it's very safe very supervised very like team off-site e energy but uh it's a great place to you know like go blow off some steam you know it's pretty cool yeah I mean listen I'm uh I think uh if you're gonna do an off-site Mastermind type thing like that like put it around something like that so you also have these like new experience like how many times have you driven a tank like for me like never

45:33right so then like not that I really want to drive a tank at all or shoot a gun but like the fact that I'm gonna do this with this group is like a bonding experience yeah I I'm sorry I just open drivetanks.com and look at their Sizzle reel on their front page and uh it's it's pretty it's pretty awesome you know I I kind of oh man this is a literally amazing first of all wow so what I'm looking at is I can't I can't believe this exists it looks like dude it's a tank literally going over a fully like tank that could be in Iraq or whatever

46:13like going over a car and like shooting missiles from it I look I've done this I've done the like crush a car underneath it I've definitely done the shot and I actually like this website's pretty good um you know like when they talk about like it was conversion like front page conversions I'm like it's so simple it's called drytanks.com the three offerings or drive a tank shoot a tank shoot big guns uh you know uh they they got to the point really quickly so it's um it's pretty good okay I'm pulling up the price list I'm curious how much this cost wow okay so there's a bunch of Tanks they've got

46:53like 12 different types of Tanks I gotta be real with you all I have no idea what the different tanks are but the the cheapest tank to drive is gonna cost you uh 600 bucks um yeah which is totally doable the most expensive like baller you came up with a billion dollar idea today at the end of The Mastermind is the stug three it's twenty two hundred dollars you know some good and then yeah it's uh I you know I'm not I'm really not here to plug them I think they have some packages too but you know hey uh for what people spend on like bottle service

47:29in the club versus uh a once in a lifetime memory driving a tank you know I think they're they're you know um yeah cool no I'm happy you made it I'm happy you talked about that so no I think yeah I think it's really important to to drive tanks at your at your at your Mastermind and I think like um yeah just do do things that are that are going to open you up both on on the structured piece of it of coming up with ideas but also on the bonding piece of it too yeah um yeah cool um going back we talked a little bit about you know

48:11sort of web 2 SF and but before that we talked about web3 and I wanna I wanna understand what what Danny Trends current state you know lay of the land of how you're feeling about web3 and and right now oh gosh I I think uh my my short answer would be you know it is it is definitely absurdly winter I think there's a lot of really cool people that I'm seeing charging forward and continuing to build um and I think it's it's it's kind of poetic that one of them is is Kevin you know I think he recently just moved down to LA and like there's really building

48:46out the proof team for my understanding there and like really going for it um yeah and it's yeah and it's it's um excuse me last week yeah I just realized that a bunch of other great people uh in that same in the same crew and family are all there and kind of pushing and so I'll say like it's kind of awesome to see you know um yeah there's that same kind of uh what's the right word for it um yeah the the perseverance and also the conviction to keep going like it's awesome to see now overall web3 a lot of other crazy [ __ ] like Del Quan you know

49:19he's got Interpol he's got a code red on out for him uh that's kind of awesome uh sorry I don't want to I don't wanna laugh at other people's Misfortune I think it's just you know there's all kinds of Corrections on the good and bad um and yeah it's it's it's it's it's a spicy time I mean it's it's absolutely winter so you know a lot of the Jokers are gonna leave a lot of the tourists they're gonna leave um and it's it's Pro it's definitely for the best I think this time last year you're probably at Peak hype Mania uh just blew up like a dad uh not and

49:55okay I wanted probably some fun not bad that like it was all bad just that there was just a lot of noise that probably wasn't healthy absolutely is not healthy um yeah we're back to Winter uh if you believe in the space you believe in the space if you're someone who was talking [ __ ] about it all for the last 18 months or years you feel very right you feel very like uh validated uh I don't think this will be the last winter I I think that there will absolutely be a future here um and yeah I I'm excited to see how it all goes down

50:27um but yeah I think if anything it's it's good that teams can be quiet less distracted like thinking about if you had a team in this space over the last 18 months especially on the run-up you're probably dealing with a bunch of more than 18 months years you're doing a bunch of crazy distractions or probably everyone's trying to hire their other other people constantly wondering like am I working on the bright thing am I missing out on like life-changing opportunity working on something else or trading something else or whatever and now that things are more quiet like there's going to be a ton more folks who

50:56are just focusing like you know kind of really pure about things and and doing and you know making the moves they want to make and I think we'll see where it all nips out who even knows how the rest of the world Nets out you know um right now like I think we're probably another six to nine months of a minimum of like sliding into finding where the bottom and darkness is um so something like definitely you know I don't think about every day it's not my it's not my day job uh but it's definitely something I'm keeping keeping tabs on you know yeah how do you um

51:28like I know I know you've got a day job but I do know that you're also like a lot of web 2 Founders in that era like we talked about Josh Williams like he's in web3 now Kevin Rose web 2 you know prolific web 2 founder yeah he's in web3 yeah I've been doing a lot of web3 stuff and a lot of our friends in that you know Donnie denge web3 now um what do you like why do you think were attracted to web3 and why do you think that we're still excited about it um and do you have like are you less or more excited about it

52:10than let's say a year ago so there's something that there's some advice I gave about this stuff to believe this time last year to someone that was just getting into it I was like you need to divorce two brains if you're a product builder in this space one is like why you're building and what you're building what you're excited about and the second is like the generative greed DJ and greed on like trading and then making money because I'm like if you let the two brains come together it's gonna get very messy for you and your enthusiasm your motivation is going to be this like toxic mix of like why are

52:43you building you know um and so I think obviously for anyone that's in it for degenerative to DJ and greed uh they've lost a ton of enthusiasm as things pull down and then you gotta like you know uh seek shelter but I think for a lot of people they're building it for well I would call the right reasons which are like The Primitives are changing and it's the promise of like a better future um yeah I think a lot of those people and everyone I talk to is it's almost like business as usual like they're continuing on amidst the challenge right and this is not the first or last time

53:12that the people in this space have dealt with crazy challenges or being told are completely wrong and silly like it's funny to me I actually remember probably around that time 2016 when you and I were hanging out in Southern Pacific where like I feel like it was chat Bots Ai and crypto we're like the three like laughing like you could like the butt end of every joke right like oh remember that person worked on chatbots another person worked on crypto stuff remember that person who worked on AI and it's kind of funny now at least in 2022 that I'm like AI like nothing to joke about

53:40with AI like some of the crazy truly like crazy [ __ ] is happening before our eyes like making it into a very like into the mainstream right crypto like and no one's laughing about I mean you may laugh at the collapse like if you're laughing at that collapse laughing at the economies collapse which is you know um but you know that's your prerogative and maybe yeah Chef bats yeah like if anyone's working on a chatbot now I'd still be like what are you doing there uh folks um but so what I did is like what are you doing there like uh that's probably my PC uh it's my

54:15like PC yeah uh whatever but like but you know Cycles right and like I think the thing about people who are generally excited about these things like their enthusiasm gets tested and retested and the ones that tended to last through multiple Winters and do the best are the ones that keep persisting right like if you're a conviction in some of these spaces is so low that you get you know you you can drop this quickly you probably aren't working in the right space you know um and if anything I think one thing you can't deny is that the the conversations change right like the conversation on

54:49the types of people are interested in this stuff and the types of things they're building is is now like we we've opened we've gone through a one-way door right because so many major companies so many major like universes of Ip are are into this now it's gonna be really exciting to see what happens um I I think that's the one thing about right now you're like oh are you so excited about it like well whether I am or not excited about it I'm absolutely not going to ignore it you know like the the thing about it right now is like it's it's typically the people that ignore shifts like these are

55:22the ones who are the cautionary tales it's like the Nokia guy talking [ __ ] about the iPhone you know or or like uh ever or like all the like the big consumer web apps that were like they're kind of [ __ ] on like the move to Mobile in general you know um and yeah it's I think typically the folks who record default dismissive of of of interesting new things technically take years to bore out those are the ones that like uh you know history always remembers as the fools and so I think right now look tough times like guess what been here before multiple times you know and so I I think

55:57it's um it's interesting to see you know so who knows who knows what the solvers what are your thoughts uh on web free loyalty I saw a few weeks ago Starbucks obviously launched uh a really big push into loyalty I'm curious uh what you think I think around that that that's in the I I hope that a recording of This podcast hasn't become like a cautionary tale me sounded like an idiot a few years from now um I think my immediate reaction is like it's cool to see them build it's cool to see an experiment that's where you're talking about like sf2008 it's like when I was a

56:35teenager still I'm a youngster and a beginner's Mind At Art I'm like it's awesome to see people experimenting if it doesn't work out I'm like net net something they did when in that experiment will probably be a building block that someone else grabs and uses and takes off I think Starbucks is probably going nowhere maybe this is like the funny quote for like two years from now Starbucks implodes um but like I don't think Starbucks is going anywhere so cool on them to experiment with some stuff maybe they'll change and approach maybe they won't you know it's kind of like motor before the iPhone Motorola made The Rocker with

57:03apple which is a 99 song limit on it and everyone thought like this if this is the iPhone this is not the future I'm like okay I think people will experience with loyalty stuff just as like music entities are trying to figure out what the pardon like yeah what the [ __ ] that actually all means you know uh but yeah I think that's essential to getting there um there's a book I really love about like you know like a good model for Innovation is like you have artists and soldiers right and like if they're defined by their relationship with risk right it's like soldiers are

57:36fundamentally about low risk because you don't want to kill everybody and artists are fundamentally about high risk you're rewarded to take lots of risks and to fail a lot fail a lot and typically soldiers and artists hate each other's guts because they misunderstand each other like soldiers look at artists and like you don't do any work you don't have any discipline you're just trying a bunch of stuff that goes nowhere and artists look at soldiers are like you're so like like unafraid of trying anything new and like you're so you're like you're gonna be like left behind and I would say that's the moment where we are

58:03right now like in one of these like like you know Winters where the artists and the soldiers look at each other and and and think the other one is the fool right like the the there are many artists like you're talking about some great friends they're going to continue to push on and try things Starbucks what not like I think there's a ton of other companies trying stuff and the soldiers who are like trying to survive you know in economic recession or Worse are looking at them like you idiots I can't believe you're continuing to move on you know and that's my take of right now is that it's it's artists

58:36and soldiers I use this same model actually like for people who are working teams where you have an office still you know the people who come in super early and we also leave early until we come in super late and leave late and I'm like oh there's those two people judge each other just at different times of the day like those early people come in they're like oh I can't believe so-and-so is not here yet and then those people that come in late see those early people leaving earlier like oh I can't believe you're calling it you're throwing in the towel so early you know and and so you know

59:04fleshing out my answer here I I think when I look at stuff like Starbucks or I see people trying out stuff I'm like okay I think I net buys towards the artist lens which is I love seeing people try stuff even if it goes you know to zero and fails because that's what gives me energy you know like uh seeing people like take take a shot now yeah I do I advise the artist's lifestyle for soldiers or the soldier lifestyle for artists no um and so you know I think especially when you look at something that's polarizing as web 3 right now it's like really easy for folks on both sides to

59:36really entrench in their positions um and so maybe my last thing on this long ramble I'd say is like I would ask someone where they think they are like deep down on it and if they could empathize for a second for a little bit with the other side um and and that that's my my take on what three is like it's it's a look in the mirror for how you feel about these things in general um and so someone who's a soldier by day works a big company life and like only like scales things looks like two to five to ten percent God forbid gains uh

1:00:07looks at some of these moves as like really risky or like like rear ending and I'm like okay that's that's just it's cool that people are experimenting like it's like and I think you know I'm I'm happy that on on the start you know from a startup of one to a startup of Starbucks or a company of Starbucks like that we're kind of we're not taking the status quo as like okay this is the world we live in and like these are the products that exist now we're gonna like push the envelope over here push the envelope over here try different things and we'll find out

1:00:46what what is going to resonate with with folks um yeah but I think I think um I think it's cool that first of all I love the soldier um artist like kind of way of thinking about it and I also think it's cool that I happen to be on your camp like I love I like when I see people um on Twitter for example like seeing the launch of a startup and being like but actually you know like the but actually guy um but actually this is a bad idea because XYZ and it's like no like we need to celebrate peep builders yeah yeah I I mean if anything think about

1:01:26like I look at like this like if you're a meme account that loves to like trade on being like you know making hilarious jokes but other people and God knows I love a good Meme and I love I love there's so many accounts I find very hilarious but net net I think a lot of those meme accounts Pander to like the soldier type who likes to be you know like yeah duh look at that failure like oh so clearly bad or like oh got him you know got em yeah I got him and you know like oh and I'm like okay go back to your like whatever life you know like

1:01:56they chuckle at the meme they heart it and they move on with their like whatever the [ __ ] they're doing for the rest of the day and it's like okay you know the it is it's it's what makes this account successful and like uh it's it's what gets their engagement up you know and I can't knock that hustle either because they're slowly trying to like get EX like blow up and make a business I'm sure whatever they're doing like it can be hilarious um it's just not you know I I'd like to think in my pure heart that I I'm not I'm not there even though I know I'm

1:02:26probably very guilty of that same type of uh dunking sometimes but yeah like I think that that it's uh on the on the spectrum of like soldiered artists like the audience of the people like getting giving all that like feedback of I got them are just like it said not to be artists you know like that's and that's fine it's totally fine um yeah cool let's uh that's a mic drop I think that's a lot for people to to digest and think about where they sit on the Spectrum and um artists versus versus Soldier and um D Trin you're you're you're you're your family you know you're not just a

1:03:05friend of the Pod you're you're in the family so thanks for coming back on and uh where could people find you on the internet yeah just teaching is my my Twitter and what I'd say is I I hope you stay safe with hurricane Ian I hope that maybe when this comes out there hopefully a hurricane is well passed you know um or else your hair is gonna get a lot more wet you know what I mean you're gonna you're gonna require a podcast like in the middle of a little hurricane uh but yeah it's it's always a lot of uh Eventbrite RSVPs you know hurricane Ian

1:03:34it's just hidden hidden that of Emperor at RSVP a few times yeah um but yeah wishing you all the best man and and candidly I think if anything this is just like a semi-public face time with you so I I'm like I'm glad to catch up and then see yeah and hear your voice it's great to see you it's great to hear you and then that's like that's the new vision of of the where it happens pod is just like catching up with friends basically publicly who are interesting in creators Commerce and community and and then people listen to this and you're gonna be smarter because

1:04:07you're gonna listen you know you might not agree with anything you say oh [ __ ] yeah go for it Danny no I have a crazy idea for your format I mean if you call it like based on with friends it could be literally like your screen recording and like you're actually it's like it's about that so they keep it authentic it's like you kind of tell maybe you tell it's almost like remember like Who Wants To Be A Millionaire you would tell the fellow friend people roughly to be available in case their friend was on the show and they're being called but like you could show literally you're

1:04:33FaceTiming some people and they're not there they hang up or like they say like they don't answer the call and then finally someone picks up and you're like Yahtzee you know um and like and that's who we got this week you know uh but like you're just keeping it real they're like hey yeah we tried a few people like uh you know and then bam like right now we're just gonna FaceTime with friends and keep it super chill um I like it I mean dude there's enough interview podcast like where it's like okay hey like so tell me about tell me your story and it's like okay I went to

1:05:01here and went to there it's like no I think that's you know going back to like the trenches and stories and the trenches I think people that's I think that's what people want to hear yeah yeah so so yeah so thank you thank you for coming on and being uh episode number one of the V2 of where it happens uh and and you know folks uh stick with us because it's gonna be it's gonna be a good time and uh you're not going to want to miss it so thank you so much subscribe subscribe yeah make sure yeah make sure you smash that like comment subscribe button you know it you

1:05:40know YouTube Spotify Apple podcast tell your friends where it happens is what's happening thank you foreign