# How to Leverage Nostalgia and Win at Marketing with Danny Trinh

Channel: Greg Isenberg
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6sTgoRqV2Q
Duration: 1 hr 2 min
Language: English
Words: 12661
Transcript page: https://viewrankai.com/tools/youtube-transcript/Z6sTgoRqV2Q

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[0:00] really just about surviving and taking your little idea legos or whatever you learned and molding them around but like yeah surviving another day and like making something interesting and like surviving the crucible of like that that idea maze of like i don't know if this is gonna work let's try some stuff you know

[0:20] dude did you see the pe ratio in chop i don't know we've we've had this discussion before right what is that 28 30 30 is that but like what does that mean actually you know like i worked in finance what does that mean what is that supposed to be like good to me or bad or like what's my reaction supposed to be to 30. all i know is that 26 is the p uh p ratio s p 500 and in the s p 500 there's a ton of value stocks so the question that i and by the way i'm not in finance so yeah but like the

[0:52] question i have is is basically like do i think shopify is going to outperform the s p in terms of growth like it's a growth stock like and i believe that it's going to like grow yeah so i'm like uh probably yeah we're recording by the way i think so yeah none of this is financial advice um but what like what is the bull and bear case i mean i guess the bear case that i could make for shopify would be like macro based it would be like interest rates are going to be rising inflation is terrible consumers are going to have to tighten the bootstraps

[1:28] all of the shopify stores that have thrived over the last two years and benefited from the fact that consumers have so much money and are flushed with cash are going to suffer because they're not and people aren't going to be spending money on like random [ __ ] that that you might buy on shopify and so like the the bear case to me is like macro consumer economy um struggles inflation's super high and people tighten their belts the bowl case is like pretty clear to me right i don't know ecommerce is going to continue eating the world shopify is like the elephant in the room um and enabling small e-commerce to work

[2:01] and thrive and they're going to continue to roll out feature sets that make it stickier and even better for people and toby and harley are like absolute master tacticians that um i would just put money on to win but if you believe if you're investing for the long term which you want to do like we're talking about five years or more like even if we even if it goes down another 100 200 300 bucks don't you think that it's it's in five years gonna you know be a lot worth a lot more than it is today yeah i mean this is all this is like an

[2:36] interesting general topic because it's like when people disagree on different investing stuff it's usually just that they're like risk tolerance or risk tolerance or time horizons are different and you don't really disagree when you like when you um align those things because like if my if my risk tolerance is super low because i'm a 65 year old person about to retire and i need this cash i might say like i don't know that this is the best bet but i'm 30 and i'm investing anything i buy right now i'm never planning to sell like i'm gonna borrow against it in the future i hope uh but i'm never gonna sell it and

[3:11] so yeah i'm perfectly comfortable just like you know buying more and more shopify as it goes from 640 where it is right now to like it could be at 350 and i'd still be buying on the way down right um because i believe it's going to be worth a whole lot more in the future just because i frankly because i trust and believe in toby and harley to lead a ship that's going to be doing really well but i think when you align time horizon and risk tolerance a lot of these disputes that people have around like different names and different stocks tend to just come into alignment or like

[3:42] go away totally agree i also think that as investors and also people we're just so focused on instant gratification that like when a stock goes down or it's not going as rising as fast as we think we're like we start to lose hope like we see it in a different light it you know what i mean yeah crypto did that to us by the way like the the idea that you like should like multiple x something very very quickly is so ludicrous outside of um you know in like mainstream finance traditionally but all of a sudden that's like what we're like desensitized to it right like a 20 gain

[4:16] in a year is incredible if you do it over and over and over again that's what warren buffett did he just had staying power on like 20 average annual returns but that sounds so boring to our generation to like generate 20 returns maybe in a week i want 20 returns on my like crypto portfolio but the longer term view is not one that people are familiar with the other thing that you hit on there is like everyone says they're not going to panic when stuff drops until stuff drops and then you're like you start to feel this terrible sensation in your body and you wanna sell um no matter what i mean

[4:49] like everyone is a steel man until they're actually put to the test on these things at which point i generally find that people just start to panic today's episode is brought to you by market or hire with marketer hire you can get expert marketers on demand it's easy and fast what's marketer hire simply put marketer hire is a marketplace for marketing talent they built a network of expert marketing professionals pre-vetted by top marketers from well-known and high-growth brands and then they use their proprietary marketer match technology to match clients with the best marketer for every single project and they match them fast typically within 48 hours or less there's zero

[5:36] risk you don't sign or pay anything unless you choose to work with someone many of my startups in the portfolio are using marketer hire and absolutely love it if you're a growing business you will too check them out today at marketerhire.com again that's marketerhire.com and tell them sahil sent you 93 of your life is spent indoors but so many of our best moments are outdoors that's why i'm so excited to share with you outer outer makes the world's most beautiful comfortable and durable outdoor furniture when i moved to new york last year and got a new place one of my priorities was finding an outdoor workspace

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[7:03] off plus free shipping only available to our podcast listeners you're going to absolutely love it um i agree well what are you not panicking about today what did you want to talk about i know we have a lot dude i've got a handful of things on my list um i did have just like a random [ __ ] and danny's joining soon i think um i i saw this really funny article which i do just oh there he is look at that hair man oh wow good morning gents how are you how are you now i feel really upset that i wore a hat because now i'm like getting

[7:42] shown up by both of you guys in the hair game i mean 90 of the reason why i invited danny was to just show off his vibe so if you're listening to this you need it on spotify or apple like that's why you need to watch youtube this is like it's worth it just to get a glimpse of it's for danny's hair and for your headset make sure to smash that like comment subscribe button down yes smash the button right here you can check it out i don't know where the button is but it's you know on mobile but dude my uh my only face-to-face interaction with danny so

[8:17] far has been looking at his twitter avatar and we've somehow failed to meet in new york even though we've overlapped several times so now i'm a little shocked and thrown off because you have this like clean cut look on your twitter avatar and now you come on and you look like a flowing vibe guy like like a hobo and and and i think i don't know were you i i don't know if you want to say it out loud but there was a friend who threw a birthday party in la with one republic uh i was there i i was there too but i was also i was wearing a beanie i was

[8:45] wearing a beanie and uh just i was not of sound mental state me maybe it's possible uh if if if if council is watching uh i was i may not have been a sound uh state either but uh i can't confirm more than i can just say that a great time and by the way one republic one republic um when that friend of ours said that one republic was playing at the birthday i was sort of like scratching my head um i was like man one republic like i haven't heard them in a long time and one republic was freaking amazing man i thought they were so good deep catalog

[9:22] also i mean i i forgot that he the one republic guy on his own made all that those like edm traps the lesso like uh what's his i don't know his name i feel really bad but i was like oh you know when you hear it and you're like yeah dude i mean like he's like a writer for all these other songs so he's saying those i i thought it was amazing i was really blown away by that i was like team one republic i told the guy i was like man i don't care what anyone else says about you i think you're great do you okay you know who i i recently

[9:50] came across mike posner oh have you been have you been following mike posner's journey since dude no since duke he was a dude since duke oh yeah uh so i i found you know i started just following him on uh tick tock actually and he's got a crazy story so he for for people who don't know he's the i took a pill and a visa guy no he's the you're cooler than me yeah man that was the jam but way before it took a pill and it became like no it was the giga mesh the gigamesh remix of cooler than me that i remember that popped it off as like the banger anyways

[10:27] the guy it was banger after banger after banger this is what we're talking 2006 maybe to 2011. i want to say 2009 2009 it was around anyways i remember he blew up also this is very internet nerd stuff but like of what community he blew up on there was a place called like fratmusic.com where like kids would choose the like top playlist so like whatever compete on like the top whatever and he blew up on fratmusic.com which is like people say oh you got big on soundcloud it was like no you blew up one and like there are modern producers today that blow up with the kids on tick tock on like college

[11:00] fatty tick tock or whatever that like whatever that guy disco lines there's one that did like a taylor swift remix anyways getting mad nerdy is this the guy yeah is this the walking meditation exactly so so basically the i think the pinnacle of his career was i mean i don't know you know pinnacle he's he's got a bright future but he he was super super popular you know i took a pill and ibiza with avicii that was you know he he did that and then i think he got really burnt out and he was like i'm out i'm like no longer doing music i'm done which takes a lot of courage to like

[11:35] basically be like at the top of your game and you know being tom brady and retiring at like 23 basically and he decided to walk all across america and it and the craziest part of the story is he got his leg bitten off or something did you hear about this you gotta not hear that wait what happened by like a gator or what so some reptile like went and like ate his foot or leg okay oh [ __ ] dude i'm seeing pictures of it oh my god yeah i know it's serious rattlesnake dude rattles my rattlesnake rattlesnake and he was in the hospital and the doctors

[12:19] like told him basically that like i don't know if he was gonna be able to walk again or he you know shouldn't be walking uh there's like a picture of him in a wheelchair but that did not stop mike posner that did not stop it he came and he walked to the end and there's this beautiful tick tock of him like at the pacific ocean and he's like you know tears are kind of coming down uh mike posner is like the inspiration of the week for me forget one direction this is like one republic you know when i when i signed up to do today's episode and we

[12:50] were coming on and like danny's gonna come on we're gonna jam on different business ideas i never thought we were gonna end up sharing a picture in the chat here of mike posner's swollen rattlesnake bitten foot but i did just share that around and we will add it to the show notes that is a remarkable story um before we get too derailed oh yeah before we get too derailed uh greg you want to dive into our list here i know we have uh a few things that we wanted to uh wanted to jam through today yeah let's do it and i think uh the reason i wanted danny to come today

[13:20] danny tran d trin d trizzy is dt ricky tan is because he he comes from consumer social um has been you know he's one of the in my opinion don't blush turn off your your video if you're watching on youtube if danny blushes but he's one of the uh if i've got a consumer social idea i'm calling dt's my first call um he's like literally og you know number one he knows his stuff inside out when it comes to consumer social social behavior and consumer social is the equivalent of mike posner basically walking from east coast to west coast like you're gonna get your rattlesnake you're gonna lose a limb and

[14:07] and dt is danny's you know here to tell the story so yeah i just thought we'd talk about some ideas with danny yeah well hell yeah man thank you and i feel like that that that's that's the truth of it is like anyone's consumer social for too long it's really just about surviving and taking your little idea legos or whatever you learned and and molding them around but like yeah surviving another day and like making something interesting and like surviving the crucible of like that that idea maze of like i don't know if this is gonna work let's try some stuff you know um so thank you speaking speaking of

[14:38] surviving or rather not surviving can we just spend a few brief minutes to do an r.i.p of fast so i i like this this is i don't want to say my favorite cause there's a lot of employees um who are really you know harmed by this whole situation and it's really sad but the the collapse of fast is one of the most fascinating things that's happened in the last couple of years to me and i i want to just like recap it and i want to get your guys reaction so basically fast for anyone that doesn't know was one of the one-click checkout companies you know you've probably seen

[15:14] it recently because um our friend ryan breslow at bolt waged the uh you know the war against yc and the stripe mob that he alleged existed fast was actually the company that he claimed you know kind of got propped up by by stripe and yc to take down bolt and um fast raised like 120 million dollars or something crazy from stripe from index from addition from all these amazing players um it also had one of the most outlandish ceos i think i've ever seen personally and now as of i think it was yesterday or april 5th they um they announced that they're closing their doors they were

[15:54] running out of money raining ran out of money rather and literally like on friday is the last day that they're going to be open all the employees have to go find another job all you know like a bunch of the employees got hired by a firm a bunch of the engineers and the ceo released this thing saying sometimes trailblazers don't make it all the way to the mountaintop um and i just i have to check receipts on this greg because you're in this group chat where literally i think it's almost a year ago like august of last year there was this product announcement that fast did

[16:25] i actually have no clue what the product was that they were announcing but the ceo came in in a uh in like a stock racer car that was branded and fast came into the press conference doing like spin around [ __ ] in the in the parking lot and then got out in like a pink blazer and got up on stage with this whole like fireworks going off and [ __ ] and he came up and said this whole thing and i sent a text to our group chat saying is fasta fraud and i'm gonna i'm gonna post a picture of this because i think it's hilarious i said it's fast a

[16:55] fraud this has the most theranose vibes i've ever seen in my life and now i'm checking receipts on it greg i mean you caught that one as soon as i saw the news i was like sahil he definitely he got that right i mean i don't think it was a fraud by the way but like just a bad business yeah yeah i know i think uh your your spidey senses of like you know is this a real product or you know have they raised too much money is it like is this pets.com vibes was definitely on point well danny i'm curious for your take danny because

[17:27] um i see so first off fast is like a back end unsexy product like one click checkout should sit in a place where no one really sees it like it should blend into everything and then doing a press conference like that is like the most showy um like consumer socially type vibe and so i was like part of me the alarm bells were going off of like why are you doing this when your product should actually be seamless and in the back end with no one knowing it i feel like i get i always get really wary of just over funded hype announcements that have like

[18:00] details to them that have nothing to do really with the business of the announcement and i remember do you remember when airtime launched in like 2011 2012 and it was like just this cluster mess of like overspending on talent but it was like your snoop dogg and then jimmy fallon and it was almost like the title announcement actually where they got they they put everybody out on a line and you're like okay this is either going to be amazing or this is going to be like a really really tragic and so i didn't see that last year but if i imagine if i saw someone in a pink blazer get out of a

[18:30] car that was doing wheelies with the company logo on it i'd be like the spidey sense is dangling on oh yeah on where this is gonna go because there's nothing to do i'm sorry there's nothing to do you know then again okay maybe this is also a rest in peace with glass it's like remember when they're they're trying to launch google glass and they had two guys jump out of a weather balloon uh and like bike into moscone center it had nothing to do with google glass i think this is one excuse that people parachute and and go into moscone and you're like what does this have to do with google class

[18:59] at least it's like a consumer product and you can justify it as like okay hype is important but like a b2b sale of one click checkout like where is the hype necessary greg actually your friend parker klingerman uh is in that video because he was the guy that drove the car he must have gotten hired by them yeah i i saw that uh he graduated crypto college so he spent a bunch of time with him um but yeah he's uh i did see that i'm curious his take on it he's the best i mean he's the best he's a great great guy for me the lesson is um

[19:32] if your founder is uh is coming in to a press conference in a pink sport jacket and doing like tokyo drift style spin outs in the parking lot in like a rally car you should start polishing your resume i think yeah i think the question is like if you're a founder of a venture back startup how on a scale from like zero to fast like in terms of being like super public and super audacious and super like marketing stunt driven like where should the where do you two think uh a founder should sit i i don't know if it's my call i think one what the one asterisk worth uh

[20:16] putting down here is like the hindsight's 2020 right and i'm sure there have been some really crazy audacious consumer uh hype stunts that like worked out for really great products like uh like the super bowl ad for for the mac you know i'm like okay that's the craziest like one of the craziest ads of all time iconic but you're also like what does 1984 i mean okay i kind of get the message but this is over the top you know uh also the mac was it didn't work out so hot so maybe that's a bad example uh okay all i know is you know i think it comes down to the person it

[20:49] comes down to the founder of can they stomach it are they shameless enough to stomach it living with them for years like sam altman uh the double popped callers on stage wwdc when he did loops it was neon and neon green and neon pink i was like how are you going to be next to steve jobs in a double popped caller uh you know that's going to be etched into history you know maybe some people forget it but like most of us that have been around remember that forever and so yeah you can try to do this like revisionist like image polishing and like let enough time pass to like you

[21:18] know clean it up you know and become fresh it's just yeah if you're gonna go crazy uh you know just know that it's always gonna be on the record books you know uh in this case there was hot pink but also green on top of the hot pink so maybe that's the fast founder should have worn a green blazer over the uh over the pink you know they would have been fine i love it i love it well anyway i'm glad that we got to cover that because that has been uh grabbing at me for over a year now and uh hopefully those employees all land in a

[21:46] great place and honestly wish nothing but the best to the people that uh that were there but what a crazy situation to raise that much money and then also shows that just because you have a high valuation doesn't mean you might not go out of business literally tomorrow so what's happening to them like the are they just closed or like there's someone picking them up or like you know is there something like closing their doors on friday from what i can tell i mean it literally dropped yesterday all the news on it so i'm sure they're still developing but if you go to like the ceo's website it used to be this crazy

[22:15] website now it's a google doc of all of the employees names and like what that whether they're looking for work and what they were doing and stuff like that um so it seems like it's just shutting down maybe i don't know maybe the technology gets acquired by somebody but um it's pretty crazy let's um let's jump to the next step on the list man i know we have some some ideas too to uh to jam through i do want to get your guys take and greg especially yours um since we talked play to earn on the show uh quite frequently the the big news in the play

[22:46] to earn world over the last couple weeks was this massive hack that uh that hit axe infinity um you know two billion dollars plus in revenue that they've made over the last couple of years probably the predominant plate earned game at least the number one that people know about or hear about became huge when uh you know there was like the news article in the philippines that there were a bunch of people that were making a living wage off of it and um pretty amazing i mean massive hype cycle to danny's expertise around you know around consumer social and um they definitely wrote a massive hype wave and

[23:18] they've come down way off of it i mean i think daily active users are down 50 from the highs but then a week ago they get hit by i guess hack is actually a loose term here what really happened was that someone got access to the private keys that um stored the funds that existed in the like ronin bridge that was kind of between between currencies and into the game and someone took 625 million dollars worth of funds that were yeah customer funds you know like player funds and put it off into you know a bunch of a bunch of their own wallets literally just took it

[23:52] and it took six days for anyone to realize which is wild to me um so reactions thoughts here i mean look we're as as an industry and as a space for people to build you know we're still in the earliest earliest innings right like 10 years from now we're going to look back and be like damn that things got crazy back then huh but you know and and obviously we're in the wild west and it's like yeah if you do anything in the wild west you got to be comfortable with some growing pains and i think it's it's a little tragic because you know i think

[24:20] they they really blazed some pretty crazy norms and like cut like really kind of validated a space that other people were quick to laugh and brew at you know um yeah i don't know too much about the hack all i saw was that it was they they claimed it was a combo of social engineering plus they did this thing they took over the majority of the validators and then like washed away i saw something yesterday that was pretty sad which was like they only announced 150 million dollar recovery fund for the 640. that's sad which is like no like if you're going to do it you got to go

[24:48] one-to-one on recovery like find like in this space you can find the people to do it you know um like that's sad i hadn't seen that yet and i don't want to boo at that because look finding 620 to like is a large amount of cash to cover but it's just like you kind of lose a lot of that player loyalty and that player trust uh when you know when you get compromised you don't actually fix it you kind of say like here's 20 cents on the dollar back you know um yeah because yeah it's like you know now no player can really it's it has

[25:18] that like little tarnished reputation which is sad because i think you know that's such a killer team and i think it's a killer space and you only hope that people continue to build more and that players more and more players adopt it and what's sad about the hack is now everyone that ever tries this stuff is gonna be like oh but you don't you know be careful there's that one time where you lost the house you know um yeah and so it's uh it's a step back but i i i i have a lot of faith or i really like a lot about that team um and i hope they

[25:47] continue to go forward i think there was a point in which like more people in singapore had wallets than credit cards for axi and it's like holy like they're on to something so yeah the other thing that i saw that was interesting with it was um right after the hack happened someone took a massive short position against the um against the currency um against the ronin currency and it was like you know it didn't get discovered for six days so it was funny because someone took a massive short position so it was like are the hackers trying to like double dip assuming that um this was

[26:26] gonna come out and it was gonna drop but then it backfired because no one found out for six days and so the short position actually got liquidated because currency went up i mean these are some truly degenerate hackers i mean like this is like there's levels of degeneracy and it's one thing to like punch punch a man that's another to like then trade on beating that man you know like totally it's like oh god it's just like levels but i think you know did you see recently there was another wallet there was something where someone stole 150 million dollars or something and they actually created an

[26:59] anonymous recovery service where users could apply to get their money back if it was under 100 000 or whatever i need to find this i'm like totally blanking out what it was but i'm like the hackers these days are just getting degenerate and weirder you know which is also the space that we're in like it's it's just crazy degeneres you know um it is really hard though like now if you're these hackers i mean everyone like crypto has this reputation of being the place where like criminals go and this is like degenerates and all these hacks and stuff but it's really freaking hard for them to actually do

[27:30] anything with this money because you can see exactly where it came out what wallets it went to and where it is now so like they can now you know do some like elaborate laundering you know through little exchanges and tiny amounts of money but with like a 600 million dollar hat it's really hard i mean it's the equivalent of like you go steal a hundred million dollars from a bank vault and now you have a hundred million dollars of cash and you need to figure out how to use that it's not easy like it's actually quite difficult with 100 i'm looking forward like 30 years from

[28:02] now when when narcos on netflix is covering crypto uh and they're they're like you know we have pablo escobar now but like it's gonna be whatever it's gonna be some combo of like showing off tornado cash plus this like 17 year old at home being like i think i should take a short on this game you know and they're like oh [ __ ] like they're at dinner and they're like oh i got liquidated you know there's that great netflix documentary that just came out about the um uh about the canadian guy that had the exchange that like yeah you know was died in india uh of some like crohn's

[28:35] disease related thing but now people are like is he actually dead it's called trust no one it's on netflix it's actually awesome i started watching it with my wife it's so good um and it's like as wild and crazy of a story as you can imagine yeah i mean so that's uh that's the player in space yeah it's uh listen don't don't uh don't go to the wild west for uh for a spa weekend that's the lesson i mean i i think what what's exciting to me is if you look at axi i mean with all due respect to the people behind it and the folks who make that game it's it's

[29:13] okay game it's a you know there's a lot of stuff that is really pi that they pioneered i just hope that better games come along you know and i know there are many many more coming along and i hope that yeah that they um that they make things are interesting personally for me not my cup of tea but it's really interesting as an example to point you yeah i don't know if anything they were advancing it yeah they're working at it right like their whole plan and the road map was really to make the game more immersive over time because i do i mean they they readily

[29:39] acknowledge that like if the game is not an immersive playing experience it's very hard to have durable sustainable financialization within a play during game yeah and i think they know that there's really smart team um greg and i both know jiho there yeah who's great um but it's a challenge man and now this is like a new thing i personally think of all of this as like the the other edge of the return sword you know like everyone gets so excited about crypto and they're like yo i 10x my portfolio i did this and that well that doesn't come with no risk right and so every now and then you're

[30:10] gonna get your [ __ ] stolen or like something crazy is gonna happen that you didn't expect like that risk or that uh that return you got was not free it wasn't like you uh you know you found some world where you could get 100x plus returns with no additional risk the other piece is just expect volatility to go both ways it doesn't only go up you know i mean i mean we love up only energy but like uh like sometimes it goes to zero real fast you know and like just with the nature of literally playing in this if you play player and like you just expect things

[30:42] to get spicy though uh yeah that said i'm i'm a huge maxi i'm just hoping pokemon wakes up and if anyone the pokemon company is listening out there i just really hope that they get into this space because that's when that's when the fireworks start you know um let's let's talk about that for a second like if you if you were the the ceo of pokemon like what sort of what sort of ideas trends concepts would you be thinking about like what would you be doing i i got into this debate the other day with someone they're like oh you know pokemon has niantic whatever and i'm like no pokemon owns the pokemon

[31:18] game literally every few years they introduce a new pokemon set of games and like add another 150 pokemon to the universe like they it's almost like star wars like they they have a storytelling engine and they control the ip right and so to me it's like pokemon has been no stranger to like all kinds of experiments with like bad games like they don't have to be these crazy franchise like these crazy you know like hulk triple a quad quadruple aaa game releases like they can do a ton of experiments and i'd say like if i'm pokemon company or now i i would be fast tracking a few parallel tracking a few

[31:50] experiments you know like remember they made that like pokemon picture game for nintendo 64 where you hit like you could talk about snap yeah pokemon snap and you know like you know do i remember what do you mean do i remember yeah of course and then pokemon pinball on gameboy with like the actual they introduced the rumble cartridge you know and like it was like the only you know one of one rumble cartridge whatever and it's like yeah pokemon has been no stranger to like experimenting with new technologies that may go bust and they go to zero but i'm like if you're pokemon like you're sitting on some of

[32:20] the craziest ip like i think it's the third largest media franchise ever um don't call me on that but i think it's like they're ahead of hello kitty or but there i know i think the crazy thing is they're ahead of mickey mouse and i'm like yeah like go experiment you know um and i'm sure they are so well all i'm saying is i'm just adding more gucci out there to hope that they do it faster what do they do you guys might know this so i've never really like researched the pokemon company um and the fact that it's an independent company is interesting to me um

[32:50] and the fact that like disney hasn't gone and just tried to acquire it i'm actually shocked that i mean maybe now it's just too big and it'd be too much of a big swallow for them but like what are they doing greg on the ip front like we've had the discussion on the show before around um you know companies like disney and how they police their ip you know with an army of lawyers and lobbyists etc and like mickey mouse keeps coming up for um for coming into the uh into the public realm public domain and they keep changing copyright laws in america so that it doesn't reach the public domain

[33:23] um so there's companies on that end of the spectrum then there's this whole thing around like cco that a bunch of you know the nft projects have have pushed out and focused on like is pokemon on one end or the other of the spectrum are they like policing their ip really tightly the the pokemon company is a joint venture between pokemon i believe game freak and creatures game freaking creatures are video game development studios um nintendo also is involved there um so nintendo oh so nintendo game freak and creatures have a joint venture that oh yeah sorry exactly so they it's an interesting model um that they're basically like okay

[34:13] here's like three really big companies who have you know different skill sets let's come together create some like incredible ip use that ip you know in the case of nintendo use it in in you know video games but also license it license it out for movies for collectibles for xyz um from what i understand they're very uh cagey with who they license their stuff to um but they're very entrepreneurial in the sense of like like what's the relationship between um what's it called uh uh megan quinn's company yeah so what's the relationship between pokemon and the antic i mean i i don't know the exact terms

[34:59] but it's not like they have an exclusive i mean i'm sure they have some super forms of experience right yeah it's almost like a branch they have a branch they're just a branch of the pokemon universe you know um and like i think that's something that's been really been on my mind i know greg like it's actually something that i've been obsessed with recently is like storytelling engines and like these dynasties of storytelling which is like if you look at disney you look at like like you know having pixar lucasfilm uh marvel you know like the dynasties that like create more and more and more and

[35:30] like as their surface areas bounce off each other they make even more possible like i think another good example that people don't think of as a storytelling engine is like lvmh where like whenever they they're doing it right now where they're trying to rehabilitate tiffany and co and they acquired it they tried to dump it then they had to like buy it fully but if you watch what tiffany cohen is doing it's like 4d chess you know they have jay-z and beyonce rocking crazy jewels from the vault whatever it's a storytelling engine to like make it relevant and cool again you know and so i think of the pokemon company i'm

[35:58] like yeah like they're this this this storytelling ip universe that is endured and found all kinds of ways to come to you like not just and games not just digital games like the cards themselves are like that's its own crazy fan base that's like just out of control you know uh into it and so yeah like you know they have the ar stuff niantic you know but like you know in this in this day and age like there's so many more places that they can go you know like i grew up on the pokemon tv show you know movies the movie remember the movie where you got the

[36:30] the mew card that was like yeah can you talk about that like explain explain that moment explain that moment in time explain the card explain because i feel like some people there's a lot like gen z yeah and older generation watching but for us millennials that was like yeah that was monumental well it and this is the same air as harry potter but like the coolest thing about pokemon was it hit multiple surface areas at once like i literally begged my mom for a game boy color because i needed to play and it was almost like choosing a gang of like oh you chose either pokemon

[37:03] red or pokemon blue same game-ish but you were definitely like gang colors like i'm red or you're blue right then same time every day you're coming home from school there's the pokemon show and they would teach you the pokemon like they would show with the outline of a pokemon like who's that pokemon before the commercial break and you'd be like i think it's uh that's to be clefairy i think you know and then bam after the commercial like i got him that was clefairy you know and then the cards it was like this like status ladder of like okay can your family afford a lot of cards

[37:32] because if you get a holographic charizard you're basically a local warlord you're like yo i roll i roll i move differently i have a holographic charizard and then it culminated in this moment that was such a status flex by the way that was like the modern day lamborghini like if you rolled with the holographic charizard you were such a badass in your little clan you're like no prove it like if somebody can't be like prove it and they'd show it and you'd be like oh my like that kid is different that kid oh damn you know just built different you know and then it culminated in this moment though the

[38:00] movie came out and it was like yo okay hey and like this is like there was like they were there were 40 chests they were like if you go to this movie we'll give you the pokemon mew you know i think you know i'm gonna it's you know there's mum youtube but like maybe this crazy holographic car that looks like it's an ancient ruins you know like whatever and everyone that shows up gets it and i remember they did the the for the full court press it's like mcdonald's or burger king or whatever like you could like get the happy meals with the pokemon and it was like this

[38:30] thing where pokemon they told their story on every surface possible all at once and it was like it was impossible to be alive and a kid and not like know 150 pokemon which is like that's pretty crazy though you basically talk like a bunch of kids like all these all these like an entire like species you know uh so anyways yeah it goes to i mean it goes to just this like broader point of storytelling and the power of and i think brands are finally starting to realize it again like it's sort of i think like the the era of like ads and like social you know buying ads on

[39:04] facebook and google and all these places sort of like put um sort of put storytelling on the back burner for a while where people were like dude the arbitrage on just buying ads is insane so we're just going to say screw it and just spend money to acquire customers and it's such a good return who cares and now you can't do that and so the businesses that are thriving that are going to continue to thrive in the coming years are going to be the ones that actually have a story to tell and tell it really effectively like i saw toby from shopify tweeted out this really funny thing recently where he was

[39:33] like um you know it used to be that you could go type something in and like basically have no one competing against you for those ads like and google adwords and he's like now i'm pretty sure you could like smash your face into the keyboard and roll it around a little bit and have like a hundred people betting you know bidding against you on those adwords um and it's just a sign of the times but it now creates this massive opportunity for companies that storytell effectively and pokemon you bring up as an example of it i do have to shout out by the way on pokemon cards the most

[40:04] hilarious thing on pokemon cards is greg our friend josh fabian the founder of medify his sons are ranked like top 30 in the world at pokemon cards they're like nine and and there's no age restrictions on those things so like the kid is like top his older son is like 12 or something and he's top 50 in the world in pokemon and he goes to these competitions and like pokemon cards against like some 45 year old who clearly has like a different level of mental faculties because he's a grown man and so josh was recently at a tournament watching his son play and some guy sat down in front of his son to

[40:41] play him in like the championship and was like oh this should be easy and now this like 11 year old kid dismantles him it's amazing and at the end of the match like threw down the gauntlet card and literally looked at him like crossed his arms and was like guess it won't be so easy huh yeah it's so good man i want to see but one like weird like linking multiple threads of the conversation together like this is maybe my my big takeaway is that like the ability to storytell meaningfully is what separates to me the companies that endure or like especially consumers like the things that endear

[41:14] the things that don't like if you think about it like look at youtubers like competing on youtube like if you're mr beast or any of these people they story tell so well and they do it with persistently weekly like crazy and like if you compare that to like the fast guy doing like i'm gonna do pop wheelies and wear a pink blazer that's like a cheap story it's like like oh look at me look at me well like the story doesn't endure it doesn't really resonate it's just like this like flash in a pan you know you don't really you like you yeah it's like memorable but like it doesn't touch

[41:40] you you know and it's like these other things like these pokemon like youtubers whatever like the the things that really endure the ones that can do it consistently and like leave something with you you know um and so yeah i think if you look at consumer founders today like the ones that are killing it the best are the ones that are really really leaving you with something um i also i also think they uh when i think of brands like pokemon nintendo etc they do such a good job at storytelling from like an ecosystem perspective like everything kind of like uh you know a is connected to b and b is

[42:15] connected to c and c is connected to d and it's all like intertwined like i think like to your point around like what pokemon was doing around basically onboarding people to the game via questions and teaching them is like it wasn't like it was very deliberate so i think like deliberate storytelling um in addition to deep storytelling are like way underrated 93 of your life is spent indoors but so many of our best moments are outdoors that's why i'm so excited to share with you outer outer makes the world's most beautiful comfortable and durable outdoor furniture when i moved to new york last year and got a new place one of my priorities was

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[43:45] r dot com slash room and get three hundred dollars off plus free shipping only available to our podcast listeners you're going to absolutely love it today's episode is brought to you by market or hire with marketer hire you can get expert marketers on demand it's easy and fast what's marketer hire simply put marketer hire is a marketplace for marketing talent they built a network of expert marketing professionals pre-vetted by top marketers from well-known and high-growth brands and then they use their proprietary marketer match technology to match clients with the best marketer for every single project and they match them fast typically within 48 hours or less there's zero

[44:35] risk you don't sign or pay anything unless you choose to work with someone many of my startups in the portfolio are using marketer hire and absolutely love it if you're a growing business you will too check them out today at marketer marketerhire.com again that's marketerhire.com and tell them sahil sent you yeah and it just has to be woven into the dna of what you're doing like if you're a company and you're growing and you're not thinking about storytelling if you have any sort of consumer facing angle you're going to struggle long term because at the end of the day you just cannot like even just like mechanically when you're

[45:12] starting as a company your first customers are your lowest customer acquisition cost that's like the people that you get early the true believers and over time you have to find a way that your customer acquisition cost doesn't go nuts and doesn't go through the roof and for most companies it does and they don't go out of business that's why they're not around 10 years from now because it it you get further and further away from your core and it becomes more and more challenging to acquire customers storytelling is how you cut through that and storytelling is actually how you find dynamic where your customer acquisition cost either stays

[45:40] flat or comes down over time yeah um you know it's like network effects with a consumer business you know similar dynamics but storytelling is so powerful for that type of thing and any company that's not thinking about it and thinking about it in the context of the community they're building and the ecosystem they're building to greg's point i would just be short the one thing i add is you know toys are like the prelude to big ideas and like you know i think a lot of folks mistake youtubers being really silly to the point about stunts being like flash in the pan i'd like to actually

[46:10] add like a little riff that like if you do do stunts make sure they have a story behind them that's repeatable and consistent like some of my favorite youtubers there's this guy named arak who like literally i feel like we watched go from zero to a million and his big stunt was that he could sneak into anything and so he began as a fanboy he would like sneak into logan paul fights whatever but he would keep doing it like he'd sneak into the super bowl he'd sneak into the floyd mayweather like crazier bigger and bigger bigger things like with people that followed his story are like oh my

[46:34] god this guy's hilarious and now he's diversified his channel and this does a lot of other stuff i like that's what his thing there's another really funny youtuber this guy gideon like one of my favorite pranksters he like has no shame and like you feel the second hand awkwardness when you watch him do these hilarious stunts but he has a storyline through it where he when people ask him for his name when he's like getting arrested or kicked out he'll be like i'm demarcus cousins and he has this video where he actually ends up like his star has blown up and like he's cool with carl anthony towns he actually meets

[47:03] demarcus cousins and all these kids at like a rockets game are like losing their [ __ ] watching him meet like demarcus cousins and it's like this story where you're like what you feel like you're with him even though he's like a prankster and that's doing like like flashy hilarious stuff to grab attention and so like yeah i think it's even if even if the way you tell your story is like loud pranks find a way to keep it consistent and not just like look at me i'm in a pink blazer you know uh which like doesn't really last again i don't mean to beat up on the

[47:32] fast guy because i think also you know great team whatever like unless unless you're maybe in like the blazer business though you know like yeah there you go that was that yeah that would be how you do it totally i mean it was kind of it was kind of a sick blazer i'll give him credit for it i wouldn't pull it off but some people can um i want to spend we've got like 15 minutes left i um i want to do a little bit of like rapid fire on a handful of ideas um so maybe we can just open it up but like random ideas we've been thinking about

[48:03] jamming on would love to like just kind of bat him around can i can i bring up an idea that i s an app that i hear is trending in the new york area that i'd like danny's opinion on um okay danny have you heard of a app called particle i know let's put it chat i just pulled it up too this feels like a really good like if particle turns out to be an app that you're working on this is a really beautiful segway what do you mean you haven't heard of that particle's the top app in the game greater than the tri-state area so what is it i've got the website up

[48:46] it's get getpartiful.com p-a-r-t-i-f-u-l a friend of mine told me about it basically um as you know people are trying to get back into events now with kovitz subsiding a little bit um and you know facebook events used to be the sort of de facto way to organize um around events um but you know gen z and millennials don't really use facebook that much there's been a thousand attempts at social events um but this particular company um which basically is a mix of kind of like a facebook type event but you can also see photos from the party too and they also have payments so they manage the payment so let's say i want

[49:34] to create a house party and i want to invite 50 of my friends and i want to charge 20 they handle all the payments and then people can take photos and then they can share it so it's like a group camera roll um and it's starting to take off um in like the 18 to 24 year old demographic in new york city um so curious if you think you know a what do you think about the idea b what do you think about social events is this a a big business or you know what do you think i feel like i i i'm looking at their

[50:08] instagram right now and it's being it's followed by a bunch of younger folks i know and so that's always a good signal i feel like it's always negative signal if you go to a company's page and it's followed by like old vcs and you're just like yeah they would like to have like a hype round going but like no kids actually [ __ ] with them you know so it's cool that like a bunch of young kids i know in new york that aren't necessarily so techy or like you know following them you know um yeah and i mean also a killer idea right it's just like what's the atomic unit

[50:32] like truly don't you don't need to build an app it could just be a basic website that's super that's easy to share and has to mess you know um i like the vibes on their their little uh you know on their page i i did i just hit on when you just said that atomic unit thing can you just explain what you mean by that well i think typically like look maybe this space also i like i've hacked in this space quite a bit uh of like how do you get people to hang out together in person a bunch people try to build everything right they think if i'm gonna make a

[51:01] party app i need to rebuild facebook pages which means a website with like sign in or like sorry like an app that like has all the stuff and like bam bam bamboo it's like no maybe what you only really need is just what will the end recipient see which you know if you're if i'm inviting you a party i'm probably doing it on on text you know if i actually like you uh you know and and so yeah it's like okay the atomic unit of what you're the the recipient is going to need here is just a link to click on you know because this other competitor

[51:29] is just a flat text it's like greg i'm having a party tonight here's the address can you make it which is like you know a ton of stress to manage once that party gets out of control you know um and so you know i think it's cool i i i think i've seen a bunch of folks try this where they like make really high party pages or even like really cool stories for instagram or snap to like make a really cool graphic that like has all the details on it um so i'd be like look they might be in a semi-crowded space so it's really going

[51:57] to come down to the network right of like literally who or like what parties are on particle you know like yeah and and if i'm them like i saw they're messing around like the dyspo energy of like disposable cameras that like they send out and mailers prepaid mailers it's cool um if i'm them i'd find a way to like maybe bankroll some really cool parties or unlock some really cool venues but but also hey look god speed to them like i'm talking like an old man who's like haggard and like just you know would not touch this space with a you know with a 20-foot pole ever again uh but

[52:32] but yeah i wish them all the best though so like truly i'm like good sheet of them like i hope i hope it works out there's a couple things that are interesting about it that you hit on like one it's kind of like a it's like an infrastructure rails bet on the like return to normal too like it's been so in vogue to do like remote this hybrid that like we're all gonna spend time apart we're never gonna live together and this is like the ultimate everyone's gonna be back in new york city this summer and it's gonna be lit and we're gonna you know create

[53:01] structure around that that enables people to go and kind of have the best experiences and then like document those incredible experiences and i generally think that's really interesting the other thing you said there at the end is like consumer social is such a graveyard um but if you do it and you win you're like a god um you know the people that have succeeded in consumer social um even on a small scale and like reached exit and had that you know number one in the app store moment it's incredible it's got to be the most incredible thing in the world have have they blown up or is it

[53:32] it's still like young like you got it it's actually like young non-tech new yorkers who are using it but to me like your intuition like that's a really good signal um yeah yeah the um did you guys ever read do you know sarah table um she's a benchmark um i think she's still at benchmark like an investor writer etc and she had this amazing piece on like the hype cycle in consumer which we should link to in the show notes that i thought was so good as a mental model for evaluating these things where basically if the hype cycle outpaces the kind of features and capabilities of the platform you're dead

[54:11] and you can almost never come back um and i'm sure you have a long list of companies you've seen where like it got so cool and everyone loved it i mean clubhouse candidly it's sort of like that where it was like so cool so much energy but it wasn't quite there yet from a product standpoint and now they have a really tall task at coming back and being cool again when everyone has already left um and so i just like i think about that constantly when i look at these consumer social businesses of like where are they on that hype cycle curve and are they building out enough

[54:40] so that when they do have their moment hit if they do they're ready for it and can kind of capture it and also like have that value accrue to the platform into the users and it's especially in clubhouse it's actually worth highlighting you know twitter for the first time like it gets like spaces is doing quite well you know um and it's it's cool to see cause remember like vine era like it's cool to see twitter finally be like hey like hey like we're gonna take something awesome to like apply our network effects to it and same for like i'm looking at a particle i'm like okay the switching

[55:09] costs like you could go like i do wonder like truly if someone said me a particle link versus another link like what's my you know you know like what's the real difference to me you know um like like a party's a party if greg's telling me there's a party i'm like well greg i'm in my guy like you know it's not like oh greg i'm only in if you house in a particle you know right like you know it's uh and so i do i do wonder like how you know uh you know how how defensible some of this stuff is but but you know godspeed yeah it has to be i mean

[55:40] app fatigue is very real and it has to be like incrementally multiple times as beneficial to use that new thing than it is to just do the janky equivalent with the incumbents and like it's not ten percent better it's not twenty percent better it literally has to be like multiples better in order i remember yeah i remember nicholas reichenbach i don't know if you know him but he started a company called flow water and do you know flow water is like a boxed water um publicly traded company oh yeah probably in like every whole foods and stuff like that doing really really well and he invited me it's actually really

[56:18] interesting he basically had the idea and then he invited like the his like smartest friends for like to brainstorm the idea which is something like is it actually i know i got invited but it was like i i shouldn't i should stand there i couldn't resist like the other guy who was there was like the president of fiji water you know and i was like i don't even know anything about water um this is many years ago and one of the things that we came out with was um and this all relate this back to particle but one of the things that uh we came out of that weekend was

[56:55] if we could make bottled water like walking around with like a plastic bottle of water like be a negative signal to others then flow water will win so it was all about you know that like crunchy sound like crunch um that you you do when you you know with a bottle of water yeah a lot of water it was all about like making people feel bad that that crunch existed and it was about this environmentally friendly choice that you could make with flow water and it got me thinking about like the signal that you have with all products so if you know particle if sending a particle

[57:32] link is a signal that like you know a certain signal then there might be longevity there you you just made me think of greg like this uh this article from last year actually almost like a year yeah literally last year about how and runyon the like the cool swag is like designer water bottles i remember reading this last year thinking this is ridiculous and then like turning it turns out like there's a little bit of truth to this piece and it's crazy to me what people buy for designer water bottle just to signal to other people like yeah i you know just ripping the charizard hologram man you gotta flex on

[58:11] the the consumer product i mean not to bring it all together but if they made a water bottle that had a like an original charizard in it i mean that sounds like something mischief would make that that would be kind of you know or black my favorite yeah my favorite new sweatshirt that i have is a crew neck with a large popeye the sailor man on the front like you know with his muscles and that rowing blazing growing blazers make that wonder it's um it's noah no one no no yeah noah did like a popeyes like yeah yeah they did the public collection and i was like the

[58:41] nostalgia effect in consumer is so real man like i want anything like that and i want to get my son's born in about a month and i was like guys can you make me a baby version of this so that i can be matching in my little popeye crew neck with my son that would be the dopest thing ever that's awesome or you could be a little can of spinach although yeah yeah that's pretty good too um guys last couple minutes um let's just do a quick rundown of takeaways um from uh from the episode i feel like we covered a lot i guess mine would be

[59:13] um don't wear a uh a pink blazer to to a press conference no but in all seriousness with that one you know i it's a sad story with fast it's also one where it's like if you're a b2b product company and you're kind of in the background you know match the hype cycle of what you're doing and you know the hype around what you're doing to what you need to be doing right it's like kind of an execution focused back office thing and so there's a little bit of like red flags that go off with that um what else did you guys have i think you know maybe my takeaway is the way

[59:46] you tell your story is everything and if you're gonna do it to be flashy do it consistently you know um and the best of the best whether or not it's pokemon uh find ways to do it and reinvent it continually and you hope that you hope they do it especially in this new era um yeah and then some of the ones that tell their story really poorly history remembers too and uh it's sad to see my other big takeaway is be like mike posner you know be that honey badger that that can walk across the nation step by step day by day and if in the reptile i don't know what happened

[1:00:18] who bit him but even if a snake gets in your way you will make it to the pacific ocean you know uh be mike poser so that's my i'm going to listen to cooler than me after this you know i think i'm gonna i got uh i've actually never heard the term storytelling engine so just you know create your storytelling engine and create your storytelling map to me is like biggest takeaway yeah i love that one actually and i thought it wove into almost everything we talked about actually the importance of storytelling as it relates to business building as and as it relates to creating durable value over the long

[1:00:56] term um so i love that dude this was awesome this was a blast thank you guys for uh for taking the time danny thank you yeah i have to have you back on for more of these yeah come back if people if people like danny as much as i like danny let us know and uh yeah just get that like and if you don't and if you don't like that exactly if you didn't like him on the show on twitter that's the best place to find him yeah yeah and if particle wants to throw any parties now that we hooked it up i'm in new york man so hit me up wait i'm in

[1:01:28] new york i'm in new orleans right now i'm flying to new york tonight we got to kick it maybe i'll send you oh it's kicking man i'm around man i'm not traveling i've got the baby due next month so i'm uh i'm around greg you have to fly and you'll go to raul link yeah this i'll look for it you know get particle dot co slash let's do it where it happens i want to thank our sponsors get if particle.com sign up today uh referral code d trend you get one one each for your party so get particle.com thank you exactly exactly right thank you guys i

[1:02:02] appreciate cause they just it you in that same old predicament misery love the company think on it prey on it sip a cup of tea

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