Building From Scratch with Ryan Hoover

0:00social products, community products, especially, it's not like you need everybody on there. You actually probably don't want everybody on there. You just want like a really tight-knit group of people who are really excited about what you built, and then that kernel can grow into something much bigger.

0:16Dude, it's it's great to finally have you on. I feel like this has been a long time coming, and we're excited to get a chance to to jam and and hopefully do some like kind of live ideation on some ideas and and different things along the way as well. Cool. Yeah, yeah. I've I've listened to a number of your podcasts. I am I think I'm a third of the way through the Tim Urban one from I think like a week ago

0:36or something. Um He's he's a he's a guy. Yeah. Tim is Tim is a fascinating guy and a a deep thinker on a wide, wide variety of things. I mean, that was like I was sitting there having that conversation with him, and none of those things were on my bingo card for the day. That was

0:51kind of how I felt coming away from it. Like, I never thought I would learn about Bootes Void, you know, the massive expanse of space that is unoccupied on a random Friday afternoon, but go figure. Yeah. Today's episode is brought to you by Element, a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means lots of salt with no sugar. It contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio, 1,000 mg sodium, 200 mg potassium, and 60 mg of magnesium, but none of the junk. No sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, no gluten, no fillers, no BS. I absolutely love it and how it fit into my

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3:49fundrise.com/room. Again, that's f u n d r i s e.com/room to get started today. Love that. Ryan, do you Do you listen to a lot of podcasts cuz I feel like I see you on Instagram posting stories of you listening to a lot of podcasts. I I think you're referring to my uh so, I have this this semi-new ritual. So, I've been lifting weights for a long time. Like, that's been my like exercise the kind of activity. And maybe a few months ago, I was like, I should do more

4:19cardio, but I really don't like running. And And so, I got a recumbent bike. Not not like a a Peloton where you have to like sit up. Got a recumbent bike where you get to sit back and email and tweet. And I have like my iPad set up here, so I watch podcasts. And so, I think that's what you're seeing is is my promotion of the recumbent bike multitasking podcast email

4:42routine. There's a powerful learning in there, by the way, of like pairing behaviors. You know, like pairing a behavior you dislike but you want to, you know, adopt with one that you like or find productive. I've I've always done the same thing. Like, whenever I need to try to get back into cardio, I'm the same as you. Like, I have always been a lifting nerd from back in the baseball days. And so, I'm still that way, but then I neglect cardio for long periods of time and realize like, hey, I'm 30-ish, probably, you know, take on more of this, whatever. And I've always paired it with listening to something, watching

5:14some show I've been wanting to watch, you know, like reading emails, whatever it is. Something where I'm like, okay, I just unlocked 30 minutes a day, make up the number of time that is now considered productive that I can like justify doing this thing that I generally hate. Yeah. There's a I'll give you a shout-out to Huberman podcast. I don't know if you you've seen his stuff. It's It's quite dense. It definitely feels like I'm in a lecture like back in college. But it's great. I mean, for those who don't know it, he basically goes into the science of in psychology around number of different things like how dopamine works or

5:49you know, anxiety, depression. And he talks He actually has one podcast on I forget the exact topic, but he talks a lot about that that same thing and how he actually recommends not listening to podcasts or music if you enjoy it at the gym every single time because you start to essentially your your brain starts to expect that and and

6:10it doesn't get as much joy over time. And this is the unfortunate reality of like how dopamine works. And I know very little about it, to be honest, but it's it's unfortunate that like what goes up must come down. And over time you start to acclimate. It's kind of like hit hit on kind of like treadmill that we're all on. Start to acclimate to those things. So, he sort of recommends that like actually don't don't always do all the things you enjoy. Maybe don't listen to podcast at the gym. Just like enjoy the gym as it is. And maybe the next time listen to your podcast that you enjoy. And I find

6:39that find that interesting cuz I'm a very habitual person. I do the same thing all the time. And make the same coffee in the morning. I I'm very very routine. But always listen to Where It Happens at the gym, please. He mentions that. Yeah, I know. He said something There's something about the Where It Happens podcast where think he did recommend that. Yeah, he's actually I have him coming on the show

6:59this summer. I want to do like a kind of layman's version of his podcast. Like, what are the 10 things that every person should try to adapt into, you know, adopt into their life to make them a healthier, happier person. And do like the takedown version of Huberman Lab on on our show. So, I've got him coming on this summer. He's supposed to be in New York a couple times. So, I'm going to try to try to get him live. Yeah. I think that'd be great. I I do I would like a TLDR Yeah, totally. Cuz I've listened to several of his. I mean, he's kind of the Lex Fridman

7:31you know, Joe Rogan. Like, it's that length sometimes and density. Or like, they'll do an episode on sleep that is, you know, unbelievable. Like, with Matthew Matthew Walker, I think is that sleep scientist's name. But like, you know, I'm sitting there for 3 hours learning about sleep. Like, I kind of want the, you know, what is the CliffNotes version of this that will get me 80% of the way there with, you know, 10% of the thought. Yes. Yeah. I I mean It's our It's our era of, you know, low attention spans. I'm actually amazed that people sit through and and listen

8:01to really long podcasts, but people do. You know, those long episodes, people love them. Yeah. I actually like I like conversational podcasts. I like Joe Rogan for the format in in part because it's it's one of those things you can kind of dip in and out of. You can multitask, too. I don't watch all of them, but there's

8:18sometimes there are interesting guests. And I don't know. It also feels like you're in the room with other people. And I think, you know, I think more and more people are understanding that that format and and kind of adopting that format more and more, but I don't know. It's It's better than like the the sterile like interview question-answer back and forth format in my mind. I agree. I mean, that was the original insight of Where It Happens, too, by the way. It was like, you know, it was the room where it happened. It was like, we know that these conversations are

8:43happening behind closed doors, though. And so, like, smart people or interesting people are having interesting conversations that generate insights that are then creating innovations in the future and changing the future. And so, how do we open the door to those type of conversations? And basically just bring guests on, you know, super smart people that think about the future for a living like you, and just jam on interesting things that are happening and and publicize that conversation. You know, and and go put it out so that other people can

9:08hopefully benefit from it in some way. So, that's kind of the spirit of it in general as we've thought about it. And selfishly, you know, both Sahil and I have Twitter Twitter audiences, and we were talking about like, how can we build affinity basically with our audiences? There's one thing about actually going and tweeting 200 200-some-odd characters, but, you know, being in people's ears all the time

9:34definitely builds affinity. I'm wondering you know, would you ever start a podcast? Why or why not? And how do you think about that? Yeah, so early product and days, well, I've listened to podcasts like probably you as well like for many years, and I really enjoy them. And I used to mow my parents' lawn with gun muffs on with my like old school like uh you know, headphones underneath them um and listen to like stupid financial podcasts like I don't know. I just would love to soak up like information and insight and perspective. And so um I've listened to the podcast forever and then Product Hunt started and I was like,

10:13"Shoot, now I have an opportunity to actually start a podcast." Like it it makes sense. Like we have an audience, we have a brand, you know, it kind of wrote itself. Um the Product Hunt podcast was actually very similar format to kind of this to some extent. We bring on one or two people who are interesting, maybe they're investors, founders, someone in technology and we just talk about like what products do

10:32you love? What's on your home screen? Like what things have you seen recently that you're excited about? And um we did that for a while and then I stopped doing it just cuz it was it wasn't like the highest ROI thing. Um we never really cracked the the growth thing for for the podcast like you know, the people who were most engaged in Product Hunt would listen to it, but it wasn't anything that reached like hundreds of

10:51thousands of people let alone millions. So the growth part of podcasting is the hardest part. It's it's kind of like Twitter itself. Twitter's really hard to grow your audience um for most people. It takes many, many years in some cases to grow a a sizable following. And I feel like podcasts are that but even harder cuz you don't really have built-in like social um dynamics to to grow it and and um get those feedbacks feedback loops that you kind of get from from social

11:16media. Um but I thought about starting a new podcast and I'm just hesitant to commit to anything right now. I'm just like, "Do I really want to do that right now?" It's uh so Can we get into the um what you hit on is like an interesting insight more broadly around building products and it's like driving and creating these like incentives and referral loops that kind

11:37of create growth and create community. Um and it strikes me that like Product Hunt was a great example of that in the early days. Like how you built this incredibly fervent community of product lovers and product minds. You know, I imagine I I I don't know the whole story so I actually would love to hear it of like the earliest days of like planting that seed of growth that then sprouted and obviously it's become something

11:59really massive globally. Um I would love to just hear a little bit more about that. Like how did you think about creating those in you know, referral loops, incentive loops, getting people to share, getting people to interact and build that, you know, community fire that you could then kind of pour gasoline on. Yeah. Well, so I was talking to this uh founder yesterday um who's exploring some different social community ideas and uh so I'm going to sh I'm going to almost counter my own advice or or or experience. Um on one side he has a lot of really good ideas. He's brilliant kind of designer, product thinker and

12:34people like him um can be challenged with overthinking things cuz we like to think in systems, we like to think in flywheels, we like to think of like, "Oh, if we have this thing and it unlocks this thing and it unlocks that thing." And that's important I think very valuable to like dissect and try to understand. However, you can also become paralyzed and like over engineer a product if you think if you think you're too if you're like too clever basically. And what I mean by that is is um I've made mistakes in the past where we built new products within Product Hunt that were like way too

13:04complicated like because I thought I was so smart, I was so clever. I was like, "Oh, we can do all these things and what about this feature and that feature?" And we ended up spending way more time on it to bring out like the V1 than than we needed. So going back to Product Hunt in the very beginning um I wasn't actually trying to build a company or product. I just was like, "I like finding cool new products, you know, why do we have to like hunt for

13:24the link inside the TechCrunch articles? Why isn't there just a simple list of here's what's cool that launched today?" And I was also kind of weird that I was like browsing the App Store in like various countries and I was browsing AngelList looking at new companies just to see what people were building basically. And so the the initial idea was there was no systems thinking, there was no like grandmaster plan. It was just, "Oh, what if I started a newsletter?" Cuz that's easy to do first of products that launched or products that people find interesting. And that was sort of the spark that uh you know, proved out that okay, some

13:56people some other people not just me like this type of content. And then it sort of naturally fell into okay, well a newsletter's a great start but obviously we we don't have any place to like curate this uh you know, at scale. We have no place for comments. There's there's so many things missing that can make this better. And so a lot of the I'd say like first 12, 18 months of Product Hunt the the road map sort of just like fell out. It was just like almost obvious um based on what people were doing, the feedback we were receiving. And then over time we started thinking more in

14:25like systems sort of organically meaning I'll I'll use an example. Um so initially when the Product Hunt website launched, it was kind of like Reddit. We we're like, "Let's not reinvent the wheel. Let's have posts and comments and upvotes and keep it simple." And what we found was makers, the founders, the people that built those products would increasingly come to the site and be like, "Oh, I made this thing in the comments. Like if you have any feedback, if you have any like questions, let me know." And then it was like very obvious to us. It was like, "Okay, why don't we actually productize that and make it clear that this person

14:57made the thing or these people made this thing so that people in the community could identify those people." And now that might seem like obvious and kind of trivial, but actually what that unlocked is you think about it like a system, it unlocked a really interesting dynamic where okay, people follow these people, know these makers, maybe they want to know what their friends launched or people that they follow launched. So it led us to unlock sort of these engagement loops through email. So like if Greg launched, you know, his new like Islands back in the day, everyone that knows Greg or follows Greg on Product Hunt would now get notified. And those

15:30would have really high open rates and engagement rates. And then of course it the next part of the system is, "Oh, now you can build a profile. You can have this profile of things that you made and kind of show it off to other people." And for certain subset of people, especially like indie makers or like young entrepreneurs, they're like very proud of that. And and so all those things sort of like unfolded sort of naturally um in the road map, but but yeah, if I tried to like think of all those things from day zero um in some ways it might have been like paralyzing

16:02cuz it's like, "Okay, we have all these ideas." But like at the end of the day you have to just prove out like the core dynamic, the core like value prop early on. Yeah. Two things you hit on that I want to double click into. One, you know, you mentioned like overthinking and paralysis and and you guys are both builders and have built multiple different products and different things

16:20over your years. Um I've always thought that like overthinking tends to come from inaction and it's not that you're like not acting and so you start over. It it it it's sort of like when you're not acting and when you're not um you know, having that bias to just get things out, test, learn, iterate, etc. That's when you find yourself prone to overthinking and over analysis cuz you're just you're sitting there and you're like, "I'm not going to act. Let me just pause, wait, etc." And so you get caught in that. Um and so I'm I'm curious just for your guys' perspectives on that. Like have

16:50you found in general that overthinking results from inaction? So consumer social first of all is its own beast Mhm. in my opinion. And when you think about zero to one consumer social, it's probably 90% art, 10% science. Now once you actually build uh some level of product market fit, that changes over time and you know, if you think about like Facebook, like you know, they had Instagram and then they're like they bought Instagram and they're like, "Okay, let's just sort of like br bring what we learned on Facebook and

17:28apply it and optimize it on Instagram." Um so you then you end up just running experiments and it becomes 90% Mhm. science, 10% art. So I think what Ryan is saying um and correct me if I'm wrong, but I think what you're saying in the early days um it does feel a lot more organic when you're building community or social products and you kind of have to just uh go with your intuition a lot of the time. If you have a unique insight in a particular you know, field like you you understood um at the time like and I was there like SF tech products, makers,

18:07like you understood that and it was under it was underserved. And you're and correct me if I'm wrong. Like the first time I heard of Product Hunt was I think I was invited to a a brunch. And We did use some brunches. Yeah. Yeah. And some meetups. Yeah. Yeah. And and yeah, I'm wondering if you can talk a little bit about in the early days the importance of you know, the events and brunches cuz when you think about building a tech product, you know, you don't really

18:37think about over easy eggs that much. There you go. I don't know. I think of over easy eggs immediately, Greg. Yeah, that's a good like chapter title. That's a good chapter title for your next book. Um yeah, I I mean so a lot of this is organic too. Um so even before Product Hunt I was actually doing some brunches and that kind of meetups with like other founders and people and I don't know, I was just trying to build like, you know, relationships with people and learn and I was just basically trying to soak up as much as I could. Meeting people in person especially when you're in San

19:09Francisco was was enjoyable. And so when Product Hunt kind of like well, when we hit some level of product market fit, we we had just this it felt obvious to me like, "Oh, why don't we just meet up in person? We've been like talking about this tech, you know, online." And so we started our first meetups and then over time other people in the community were like, "Hey, can I do a meetup in Bangalore? Can I do a meetup in Berlin?" And so I don't know how many we've had, but maybe over a thousand meetups across the world um hosted by the community where, you know, we support but basically they

19:37they run it all. And and that's been just really effective in building more tight knit community. And it really is a almost like an IRL version of what's happening on Product Hunt in in some ways where people want to connect with the people, people want to learn about technology, they want to geek out about this thing and there was kind of a You mentioned this earlier, right? There was sort of that was missing to some extent on the internet. Yeah, there's subreddits for tech, there's Twitter, but there wasn't sort of this destination for new products and like this optimism that we were trying to to encourage. So, um

20:07I think it goes back to like the do things that don't scale component. Like I think social products, community products especially, it's not like you need everybody on there. You actually probably don't want everybody on there. You just want like a really tight-knit group of people who are really excited about what you build. And then that kernel can grow into

20:21something much bigger. Do you think And this is a question for both of you guys, I guess, just from your product building experience. Do you think that the best products feel extremely obvious? Like you said that, Ryan, in the early days of Product Hunt, like you were just letting customers guide you and like every, you know, the product roadmap was informed by things that just felt obvious. Like, oh, we definitely We obviously need to do this cuz all the customers are asking for it. We had um a discussion with with Craig's friend, this uh guy Nick Saltarelli from Mid Day Squares, and he was like, there was this

20:54change that I just had to make, which made no sense on paper as like a financial move, but it was just so abundantly obvious from the consumers and from the people that cared about the product that I needed to make this change. And it started getting me thinking about this loop of like is a good heuristic to just say like the new rollouts need to be the things that just feel so obvious to you when you're going and doing them. Do you think that's an effective heuristic or do you need to um you know, kind of be more

21:22dynamic than that? I'm curious to get Greg's take on this. I mean, I hindsight is always obvious is the challenge. Um Right. Cuz if you look back at at some ideas and you're like, you know, let's take Snapchat, you know, it's In hindsight, like, oh, I it makes a lot of sense why, you know, kids were were sending ephemeral photos. Um but in the moment, you know, most people didn't get it. Most people didn't realize that that opportunity. So, I think a lot of it is um there's another kind of like question to ask that's related to this in my mind, which which we ask a lot on the investing side,

21:53which is um you know, what's changed? Like what what is there a regulatory shift? Is there a consumer behavior shift? Is there a technology shift? What's changed in this world to enable this this new thing to emerge? And going back to Snapchat, like I I wasn't obviously like in the company and I I don't know every all the details about Snapchat, but a big shift, a big part of that was, you know, kids on, you know, Facebook just didn't want their parents and their teachers to see their posts. They were also concerned. I think this is also the rise of like cancel culture kind of

22:22emerging and and other things like that. And so the ephemerality um was very counter to like older generations who want to save everything and like go back to those things. Um that's really not what the younger generation, you know, wanted. Um So, I don't know. I think a lot about that. Like what's changed and especially in consumer products, there there's always even if you stick to generational shift, like people that grew up in different times, like grew up with smartphones, have very different expectations and ways of speaking and engaging that that maybe don't um adapt or align with like today's modern-day like giants. Like, you know,

23:00let's take Facebook as an example, facebook.com. Um So, I find that really interesting. I try to understand that when I'm speaking with founders. It's almost like, I guess the nuance or like the tweak I would make to what I said originally is like the initial insight if you want to build something huge, world-changing, etc., the initial insight has to be contrarian really. I mean, it has to be something that um no one really agrees with you at the time

23:25and then everyone agrees with you later. Then it's like, oh yeah, Snapchat, you know, you used that example, it's a great example. Like at the time, you're like, probably no one agreed with it. There was most people and cuz if everyone agreed with it, someone else would have built it. There would have been a thousand Snapchats already. And so, it was like an initial insight that was novel and contrarian that in the future everyone agreed with. And that's kind of as an investor or as a builder, that's what you want. You want to build things that everyone agrees with you on later um in the future. There's some

23:51great kind of quote investing adage around that. But maybe it's that that initial insight has to be contrarian and very different. Um but then as you get that flywheel going and like as product market fit exists, you're able to be led by the customers into things that feel very obvious. And so then like the next layer of rollouts, the next product, the roadmap starts to be informed in a way that feels really more obvious because your customers are kind of leading you

24:18directly there post PMF. Mhm. Yeah, I think uh the way people's brains work is uh everything seems audient obvious in in in hindsight. So, people will say, "Oh my god, I obviously that product would fail because of XYZ in hindsight." Or obviously that product would work because of XYZ in hindsight. And I think the truth is when you're building consumer product, it's all about having some key insight in a particular niche and being like weird. Basically being weird and and building a product that's weird. And weird that's in a good way for the

25:08people in that niche. And weird that the people outside that niche are kind of like, "Well, that's weird. Why would I ever use that?" And that basically buys you time to iterate on a product in that particular niche and really really serve them in a in a remarkable way. And like Snapchat, you know, Snapchat was a product for Los Angeles high school students

25:34to send nudes basically um initially. And it was for them like the best product in the world for a period of time and then they expanded that and expanded that and expanded that. Um so much so to the point where now there's, you know, hundreds of millions of daily active users. So, um you know, I'm not uh recommending, you know, create products that send nudes to people, but what I am recommending is is going, you know, pick a niche, go into that niche niche and serve them serve them well. Mhm. I mean, Nikita did this, right? Like um with with TBH and with any like, you know, new stuff he's

26:12working on. It's like he even if it's not some like amazing in, you know, insight about people. It's like, you know what high schoolers are already doing. They're gossiping about each other. They're talking about each other behind their backs. They're saying things about each other. And so like, what is a product that you can build around that natural human instinct for gossip? And there's there's a ton, right? There's just like um having a small insight or being willing to kind of like play to a natural human instinct or desire, it can be a really powerful building insight if you're going to go create things. And the truth is, you need

26:47y- as a as a maker, you need one small insight, which could absolutely transform your life. Mhm. That's a good point. Yeah. Like if you come up with one small insight in a particular niche, it could literally literally change your life. Just like, you know, you can have one tweet that gets 100,000 likes or 500,000 likes and then all of a sudden you have this new audience and it it might transform your

27:14life. Um So, just changing gears a little bit cuz I do want to get into some like ideation stuff. Ryan, what are you What are you working on now? Like I I know you're not formally working on Product Hunt stuff anymore. What's What's your focus day-to-day? What are you What are you thinking about

27:32or getting excited about? Yeah, um so I'm investing full-time now. Um And we're investing early stage, pre-seed, you know, seed stage companies across everything. Um so we we do love weird consumer stuff. Uh we're investing in web3 stuff. We're investing in boring SaaS stuff. Like really a lot of our our through-line there is like, what is what is changed? What's the consumer behavior shift? What's technology shift? Um And part of that thinking is obviously startups are not private market startups are not 100% like efficient, but they're getting more efficient because more and more people are building and trying new things. So, that's why we think so much

28:09about the why now like what's changed kind of question um on the investing side. So, um so Vedika and I are working on on the fund side. We're also constantly trying to experiment with different things. I would say like we we kind of break up the fund in like one is um uh how do you say it? Um business as usual, meaning you meet founders, you evaluate founders, you do due diligence, you support founders. Sort of like the table stakes of investing. And then there's another thread, which is like experimentation. And we're always experimenting with different ideas. Um we've had I don't know how many experiments we've done. But but

28:41basically we we try to build things, not necessarily products, but build um different different products not in the software sense. So, the most recent one is Operator LPs um is what we're calling it. I don't know if it's a great name, but that's what we're calling it for now. And the idea is we're seeing a lot of our friends, uh a lot of people that we know, raise funds. And a lot of them, of course, like raising a fund from LPs

29:02is very difficult for a lot of people. Uh furthermore, we also have a strong belief that investing is increasingly customer-driven, community-driven, network-driven. And that's why we raised from 370 LPs in our latest fund. So, we raised from tons of operators, like some top designers, data scientists, engineers, sales people. We have hundreds and hundreds of LPs who are financially invested in our success and

29:24therefore the portfolio's success. So, we started this experiment called Operator LPs. Basically like a GP demo day to connect operator LPs. So, not necessarily the fund of funds and the endowments, but really these are people that might write 10K checks, 100K checks into funds who are excited to get involved and back these these GPs. Mostly smaller funds is what we focused on. Like mostly like sub $20 funds. And our selfish goal is well, our selfish goal is really to build a stronger network with LPs and with GPs to to sort of help, but we're not taking we're not charging for this, we're not getting economics, we're just

29:59experimenting to see kind of where this can play out. And so far we've run two GP demo days um with three people in each uh demo day. First one got about a $1.1 million in interest. Um second one was $1.5 million in interest. So, you know, we're still kind of gathering data points to see like is this valuable? Do people like this? Um and sort of the next step is to figure out okay, what does V2 look like? Um how do we expand this to more GPs, to more

30:25LPs? Uh just to really decrease the friction for from the fundraising side and what we really want to do is push push the industry forward towards more collaborative, more community investing um beyond just the investor uh founder side, but GP and LP side as well. If you're anything like me, your portfolio is a mix of the usual suspects, stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Maybe you've even dabbled in some alternative assets like crypto. But those investments can be incredibly unpredictable. You know what typically isn't unpredictable? Apartment buildings, rental homes, industrial facilities, places we go every day to

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31:52fundrise.com/room. Again, that's f u n d r i s e.com/room to get started today. Today's episode is brought to you by Element, a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything you need and nothing you don't. That means lots of salt with no sugar. It contains a science-backed electrolyte ratio, 1,000 mg sodium, 200 mg potassium, and 60 mg of magnesium, but none of the junk. No sugar, no coloring, no artificial ingredients, no gluten, no fillers, no BS. I absolutely love it and how it's fit into my lifestyle. Whether you're keto, low-carb, paleo, or just want to feel better and more active, Element is the drink for you. I drink it after an

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33:12packets free with any Element order. It's a great way to try all eight flavors or share Element with a salty friend. Get yours at drinkelement.com/happens. This deal is only available through my link. You must go to d r i n k.com/happens to take advantage of this special offer. Try Element. You won't regret it. So, this is kind of a question for both of you that's um a a a branch off of that, Ryan, because I think it's an amazing initiative. You know, I know more and more people are interested in investing, you know, want you know, have some unique network or some unique angle, value add, etc., but don't have

33:57the LP relationships or don't really know how to go about like sourcing deals or deploying capital at scale. Like if you were for either one of you, and I'm happy to weigh in on it as well, if you were kind of like dropped with nothing um and wanted to begin angel investing or begin investing in earlier stage companies, what what some of the advice or what actions would you take in order to kind of establish yourself and start

34:20to execute against that? Mhm. I'll jump in real quick. Um so, I'm going to speak on Vedika's behalf. So, her and I are the the two on the fund. Met her over 3 years ago. And she she was uh a product manager working at a company, but she was writing fantasy memos is what she called them. So, she's looking at companies um like I remember Retool was one of them way back in the day and writing up a memo as if she was investing, almost like an analyst would, like as if she was proposing an investment in this particular company. And she wasn't sharing that with anyone. It actually

34:53wasn't even online, which maybe she should have shared it online, but she wrote it for herself as like almost like practice, like an exercise. And anyone can do that today. You don't need money, you don't need connections, you don't need any of that, but what it will do is help you, I think, refine your thinking if you were to invest and furthermore, it creates a paper trail. When when I interviewed her for the role, she just sent me the these fantasy memos. I was like, "Oh my gosh, you're basically doing the job already and I can see your work, I can see how you think." So, I

35:23think that's, you know, obvious, like brilliant step. But and and if you don't want to do that, then maybe you shouldn't be investing. Like like that's the job to some extent, at least that's part of it. So, um that's my my strong recommendation. That's such a cool example, too, because there are real case studies of people doing that now in like um you know, in a very public setting. Like I think of both Packy and Mario at The Generalist as like two examples of people who built a, you know, owned audience via their newsletters through writing and dissecting and deconstructing businesses and trends and principles. Um and then

35:58on the back of that are able to go and say like, "You know how I think about businesses." Like to LPs or to people at scale, you can go say like, "You know how I analyze businesses, you know how I think about bull cases, bear cases, etc." cuz here look, here are like the 10 cases where I've written about it in a in a specific context. And so, you can go on the back of that and like leverage the information you've generated at scale to go and raise capital and deploy it. Um the other one I always think of that I think is just an untapped

36:25opportunity for I it's mostly like for um you know, people that I think have a lot of ambition or like a hustler mentality is just the opportunity to be a scout for some of these like emerging managers that have come out. Um you know, I think about like I think Sahil Lavingia has like a scout program more formally, um which is great. It's like a formal construct. But this whole idea of like, you know, for people that don't know it, it's like you're a scout. Like you kind of go out and search and hunt for deals and when you find one, you kind of like bring the deal to some

36:54manager and if they do it, you get economics in that deal, i.e., you know, future profits if it goes really well, a portion of the carry. And things like AngelList make it amazingly easy to do that on a deal-by-deal basis, which is to your point earlier, Ryan, on like what has changed um in an industry that enables some great thing to happen, that is something that has changed. 10 years ago, it was super complex. Like you had to go hire lawyers and pay them $25,000 probably to like dock up some like simple thing like carry um and splitting it on a deal-by-deal basis within a fund, it would have been too hairy. Like

37:27as a manager, I would have been like, "Ooh, no, it doesn't make sense for me to do that." Now, if a kid comes to me and says like, "Hey, I have this deal, it's a close friend of mine, he's starting this, he's at, you know, MIT, he's building this, this, and this um pre-seed, you know, like you split the carry with them in one click on AngelList. It's freaking amazing. Um and I don't think enough people are thinking about that as just like honestly like a little side hobby. If you're just if you have networks, um if you're, you know, getting out of school or you're um a

37:56builder, you're like in internet communities, wherever, and you have these networks of people that are building cool and you have a good eye for it and you have those ins, you can go you I mean, if you sent me a blurb, you sent 10 other people a blurb on these companies, someone would probably take you up on the intros, on the opportunities, and all of a sudden you're like building carry in a bunch of interesting future companies. That's kind of a um you know, a massive hack or unlock from a from a wealth creation standpoint when you don't have to raise any money to do it. Mhm. And a name for

38:27yourself. You can say like, "I brought you know, Notion to to Sahil or I brought this deal." You know, I think that that helps add a lot of credibility. I think my biggest, you know, advice here would be to you know, if you do want to get more into investing is to become the XYZ person. So, you know, for example, like some people called me the community person or Ryan, you know, the the product person and stuff like that. And I think if you develop that niche, then people just start coming to you. Um and you become

39:05the center of gravity for your vertical. So, I think like Naval Naval has that like uh what is it like type four luck or something like that, Greg? Have you seen this? No. Uh you or Ryan, like Naval has this whole concept of like four kinds of luck. Um and I think it was like type four that was this exact thing, Greg, where it's um you're just like the person in a given space. And so, people come to you. Like if you are the world's best, I think he used the example of like scuba diver, um like buried treasure diver, then when there's some like weird buried treasure

39:39that gets found in some place, like you're the person they have to call because you're known as that guy. And so, now you're getting lucky cuz you're getting a cut of certain things by just being the guy in that space. Yeah, I think you know, and I think with like Twitter and stuff like that, you know, building the audience on those platforms, but also like owning these email addresses. So, what I would be doing if I was put on an island is like picking picking a vertical, being really different and weird, um and just putting out content that uh is is unique in that space. And then

40:13doing like um maybe weekly Luma um video sessions. So, for those of you don't know, Luma basically it allows you to uh RSVP to different events. So, you maybe you do a weekly like, you know, if it's me, I'm doing like weekly community social Web3 stuff or whatever. And then I get people's email addresses and then you know, after I get 5,000, I'm like, "Okay, everyone, like big announcement, like I'm launching a fund." And you know, that's what I did basically with, you know, the Late Checkout rolling fund. Like, we raised seven figures yearly of a fund in a matter of days. And I never even took one meeting,

40:53and I've never raised a fund in my life. And it was all through the magic of of of being weird and you know, standing on the the shoulders of giants of platforms like AngelList and Twitter. Yeah. I Well, one one note on that actually or one comment. Um So, that that's the similar advice in terms of like if you're starting to to invest, you should probably just be like an expert in one thing and just like own it. Um ironically, that's not what we do. Uh but uh like my dad says, like do as do as I say, not as I do. Um but I think that's

41:28the ideal advice. However, the only caveat like asterisks I'll put on that is I think it's super important to figure out what what it is what you choose cuz let's let's take an example. Let's say you're like the chatbot guy from like 2016. You don't want to be the chatbot investor because once you brand yourself as that and then, you know, people realize, "Oh, this isn't a hot space. This actually isn't as big of an opportunity as we thought." You're now actually, you know, you're starting from behind the starting line, basically. You have to like rebrand yourself. So, I think I would choose something that you have extremely

42:01high conviction in that's authentic to you, that's sustainable. And that that can be hard to figure out like what is sustainable. Um Yeah. People also do that. To be fair, like how many um This is one that I just crack up about still. Like, every single VC in the world was a creator economy VC in 2020, and every single one of them is a Web3 investor in 2021. And it's like there was this hilarious meme. I think it was Josh Fabian Greg, our our friend from Metafy posted that was like the Woody from Toy Story being thrown on the ground, and it was like creator economy

42:37was Woody, and it was like, "I don't want to play with you no more." Whatever, and throwing the creator economy on the ground. But like, I don't know. I mean, I I I do think you can, you know, on the margins you can shift. Obviously, to your example on chatbot, it then becomes very difficult to not be branded as like, "Oh, that's

42:53the chatbot guy." Um but I Yeah. Anyway, just like one caveat to it. Yeah. There's also one one small thing. I'm trying to understand this better. So, I this is like a um me me kind of shower thoughting. Some of the people that have um in the investing world that have have made the strongest name in this respect in terms of being known for this particular thing and an expert in this thing, they actually create language around this

43:17thing. Usually, they're emerging trends. Um I would say like Andreessen Horowitz as a firm is probably maybe one of the most exceptional at this. Like, Chris Dixon especially with with regards to Web3 related things. Like, there's there's certain words he has like skeuomorphism is being one. Like, skeuomorphism is is sort of reflecting back to like the Steve Job days in that this product is too much it's too much

43:37of a derivative of like a Web2 thing. Like, Web3 social isn't maybe just like Twitter on the blockchain, for example. And so, the ability to create language that then everybody adopts is actually really powerful signal because now you become sort of indirectly known as the person who's like pushing the language forward, which pushes

43:57thought forward and an industry forward. Um So, I think it's like a really fascinating thing to think about. Like, what language can you introduce that isn't like cheesy or isn't forced? That's the hard part. It has to feel it has to be something that people can like grasp onto and understand and and is valuable, not you know, something that's like um

44:17selfish in a way. It's also interesting to think about whether you can brand yourself around your lever of value creation. So, we've been talking about it from like one end of it where you're branding yourself around, you know, the the industry or the focus area, like your area of expertise from an investing standpoint. Um but you've kind of you could flip it, you can invert it and say like, "I'm going to brand myself as, you know, um like Julian Shapiro, you know, like, "Oh, I'm like the, you know, product-led growth or growth guy." And so, like I know I can help you on growth. And so,

44:48when people need to think about that for whatever reason cuz it's a key part of their story of their company, and in that case growth is in general in everyone's company, you think of that person. And when they're, you know, asking like, "Oh, who should I talk to for smaller checks? Um here are some of the core competencies we need on our cap table." You get brought up a lot because that's your core lever of value creation. I think about it for myself around like distribution and and um and uh you know, kind of getting access to, you know, large numbers of customers, etc. And so, it's um it's

45:18just interesting to think about whether you can flip it on its head and do it that way. Yeah, that's a really good point. That that might be that's a safer way of going about it, too. And arguably more valuable um to founders that you back. Yeah, especially with small checks, too. I mean, I think like it's a different game if, you know, it's like you, Ryan, and you're trying to more like lead seed or pre-seed deals, and you're writing a bigger check, and you need to really be able to offer something comprehensive in terms of an understanding, you know, helping them navigate the idea maze, etc. But if you're going to be a small

45:48check at the kind of tail end of a cap table, it's much more about like what is the one, you know, one vector that I'm going to help you with, you know, one tiny thing. You don't need to offer the whole, you know, buffet menu. It's just like, what is that one thing? Mhm. I mean, I think about investing as a founder kind of like a product. So, you're selling equity, and you know, different investors cost different amounts of equity, essentially. And they help in different ways. And um Harry Hurst from Pipe has this this concept called the check size to

46:17helpfulness ratio. Yeah, I saw that. That was good. Yeah, it's a good it's a good way to articulate, I think, um different tradeoffs, I suppose, when you're fundraising. And essentially, what he's saying is, you know, some of the people who write the largest checks may not be the most helpful. Um some of the people who write the tiniest like 10K angel checks might be way more helpful than your lead investor who wrote a, you know, $5 million check in some cases. And so, if you actually compare it like Harry in this case, he would have sold a lot more of his company's equity to the $5 million

46:44investor versus the 10K check angel investor. And I think that's important for for founders to acknowledge and think about. And it's one of the reasons why I'm such a big fan and supporter of like small funds and angels. And how do you enable how do you enable founders to bring on a lot of really helpful people who can can really roll up their sleeves and get involved without taking the entire

47:03round? Yeah, there's a lot to think about there. Um Well, before we run out of time, Greg, I know you you or Ryan had one or two ideas that I wanted to wanted to jam through. Um one of you guys want to want to throw something out that we can riff on? I'll I'll start cuz I've been thinking about this the last

47:26last few days. Um it's one of those me and my co-founder have this uh text thread. It's called um bad bad idea of the day. And uh it's it's basically I think I know where you're going. Yeah, it's kind of, you know, 97% of the ideas are bad, but like sometimes they're so bad, it's like maybe good. So, just that's the context. Okay. So, um I was watching or I have a friend or friend of a friend who um was in a boxing match with other influencers. So, I'm sure you're all familiar with Jake Paul and and the Paul brothers becoming, you know, transitioning from almost influencer to

48:19boxers um and taking it professionally. There was this event that happened uh a few weeks ago that was not, you know, Paul level um of fame. Uh you know, not tens of millions of subscribers, but from the 100,000 subscribers to, you know, couple million subscribers. And it was a boxing match that um they rented out a university in um in Tampa and sold out and had this league um where um you know, I knew some people who were boxing in it. And and some friends of friends who were boxing in it. And it was like the most fun I had had in a

49:03Saturday night in a really long time. Mhm. So, it got me thinking like, is there an opportunity to create, you know, boxing is cool and everything, but like an NBA league, but for influencers? Or a hockey league, but for influencers? Um so, curious your your thoughts here. And there's a lot of directions we can go. It could be maybe Web3. It could be um it could be plain just like, "Hey, like uh I think there was a show called um

49:35Joes versus Pros or something like that. Like, you know, maybe you do like NBA type people versus influencer people. So, just yeah, I want to get your perspective there. I went to I don't know, maybe 6 months ago I went to the Tik Tok versus YouTube boxing thing which sounds similar to me what you're describing. It was like basically Tik Tok famous people, YouTube famous people going head to head and it was I think I was like me and me and Susie are probably the oldest people there I feel

50:03like. It was It was a lot of people I didn't even recognize. But it was really fun and the energy was like insane. I think there's there's what you're touching on is sort of reminds me of like reality TV in in a sense. Like reality TV made um well, it it created an opportunity for regular people out the pet near quotes to to be famous and it made it more accessible. It made it made it for for the viewers for the audience be like, oh, I'm I'm kind of like that person. I could be like that person. It made it

50:31more relatable. Um you're also touching on like, you know, people who are already famous doing something abnormal that they don't normally do. So, maybe there's something there. I guess the only thing is would it be would it be a one-off thing that or would it be like a you said league which kind of implies like an ongoing

50:46like recurring thing. Like would it get old? I guess would it get stale? It is sort of my biggest question. I mean you have to create storylines around it for sure. Like to the reality TV point, you'd have to create, you know, good storylines that kind of like ran through it if you were going to make it a series. But the I mean like I just like if it's sports, I think it has to be a sport that's individual enough that you kind of have, you know, real faces and personalities coming out. Like you couldn't do a football, you know, team or something where it's like they're passing it to I

51:17don't know. It just It wouldn't It wouldn't put the focus enough on these like individual personalities that have the, you know, name cachet and brand. You could do probably like three on three basketball or like one on one basketball. Golf could be a really fun one actually of like They kind of did that with like Tom Brady, Aaron Rodgers with Phil Mickelson and Tiger I think it was which was like really fun entertaining to watch cuz you can even the playing field from pros versus Joes with with

51:42handicaps. But I don't know. I mean I think there's probably something to it cuz you do have like owned audience. These people are entertaining to watch. Hopefully like kind of funny or have some personality around like sucking at the thing that they're doing. It could be kind of interesting. Yeah, and I think uh what was also interesting is like you can do it you can also do it like direct to consumer. Like there's like software out there that you can basically

52:06do a pay-per-view sort of experience. Like I think we paid $30 or $40 to watch this thing for a few hours. Um you know, if you sell I mean you you you do the math. Um you know, if you can sell 50,000, 100,000 at $50 or $30, like it adds up. And I think I'm not sure that if it's a, you know, venture scalable business, but it might be something where um you know, someone who's listening might be able to like reach out to a few influencers and and and sort of bring

52:39this together. And do something small in their local area and start and then start proving out the model. I think it could be I think it could be pretty cool. I really enjoyed I don't know if you you know the YouTube creator Graham Stephan. He's a personal finance Finance, yeah. He has like two or three million YouTube

53:02subscribers. And watching him get like punched in the face um and I'm I don't even like UFC or boxing, but I just like it was it was so interesting to watch and I think like influ a lot of these influencers are so they're entertainers. So, they understand like um how to get the crowd going, how to like, you know, wear wear really fun costumes. It was you know, it was more interesting than a professional

53:33boxing match. And then they had the audience to, you know, build up the hype and the story kind of leading into it and everything. Um I mean it is something that you could like theoretically um uh apply to multiple communities. Like I'm thinking even thinking like could we do this in the tech community? Can we do like the most famous investors and founders to like punch each other in the face just for a night? Um and obviously like different communities. It's like a broadly appealing like concept that can be applied to different people in different communities around the

54:01world I think. I mean we've talked about that Sahil I think, right? In our group chat we often say like you know, there's a lot there's always uh there's always drama in tech Twitter and and people fighting back at each other. So, it would be kind of fun to put like you know, an Aaron Levie versus Chris Dixon in in in the ring and and You

54:28could raise a lot of money for charity. Yeah. It'd be pretty fun. Maybe that's how they fight for their allocations, you know, in these hot deals. It's like forget forget the pitches. It's just whoever can like makes it out of the ring gets to write the check. You actually have to fight. It's a legitimate fight for the allocation in

54:43the deals. Yeah. Yeah. I would watch it. I don't hate it. I don't hate it. All right. Well, one more. We've got time for one more here. Ryan. One more. Um setting compared with anything, but I'll I'll share one idea that I'm this is actually be me asking for feedback and and uh All right. So, I thought about this for years um with zero action. So, I'm I'm uh anyway, not a not a good trait to talk about something for so many years and not do anything about it. But the reason why I haven't is because it's commitment and I'm scared of commitments. So, I I

55:16don't I don't really vibe with any of the co-working spaces I've been to anywhere. So, I've had this idea when I lived in San Francisco. I had this idea when I was in LA. I'm now in Miami and especially Miami seems like a good place for this. And essentially what I'm what I'm imagining is how do we how do we create a small intimate co-working space with good music um it's not too cold, you know, the AC's not too high and just good people. Like first degree second second degree kind of connections. And um I've worked out of WeWork. There's There's a lot of value in WeWork, but

55:45it's not my vibe. It feels very cold. It's not where I want to hang out and like be productive. And so I thought a lot about, okay, what would, you know, I'm calling it Weekend Cafe kind of naming it after like weekend fun in my head. What would Weekend Cafe look like? And obviously there's some like basics, you know, maybe an open space with a bunch of phone booths so you can like take calls especially as more people are working remotely. But now more recently I've been thinking, well, how could you actually innovate on the business model? And of course my mind goes to NFTs and Web3 as kind of one one

56:16kind of thread to pull on. And what we're seeing more and more of is people releasing a utility NFTs or subscription kind of membership based NFTs. And you know, the most obvious and basic kind of like application of that is now you actually have better price discovery theoretically for these NFTs. So, an example could be Weekend Cafe has 100 seats, 100 100 membership slots available. It's really small. It's intimate. And the people that own the NFT, one of the 100 NFTs, get access to

56:45this space. But you can resell it and you can of course have like on the secondary market the actual business itself in this case like let's say me gets like secondary transactions like 10% of of those cuts. That actually is interesting because you might find that actually Weekend Cafe is very valuable and actually it it initially was sold for $100 per membership. Now it's $10,000 for some

57:06reason. It's just interesting to kind of think through, okay, what would that look like? So, I'm curious if you have any thoughts on this or other innovations in that model. So, I like I've seen and talked to a few people that are kind of doing variations of something like this. Like social club or, you know, like the Soho House of Web3 type vibe or like Gary Vee has this Hunt and Fish Club I think it's called and similar

57:32stuff. My concern with it fundamentally is always like how do you prevent this from just being, you know, the wealthiest people buy into the coolest things and you like prevent it like it it actually goes to being less cool because suddenly it's like not the curated environment group. It becomes more like business and capital and money in the same way that like Soho House was super cool when it started and they were very careful about who was in and it was more artists and designers and then it became really finance-y and like all of a sudden every banker in the world was a member at Soho House and it

58:04probably got less cool because they got more corporate trying to make money to go be a public company. So, my question is always like my pushback on this is always how do you avoid it just becoming you know, that like rich people kind of buy these NFTs and are able to go to it when they become, you know, one, two, three, four, five ETH

58:23to go to go purchase. Two thoughts. Yeah. So, first thought on that piece, Sahil. I think what you can do is just make a make it the initial batch free to mint. And you could have something like some level of like, you know, maybe you want to keep the the first batch diverse in some in some in some way. So, there is some, you know, asking some questions up front, but ultimately you know, people think that, you know, you know, getting an NFT is always, you know, they in their minds they think of Bored Apes and stuff like that, but it doesn't always need to be that case. For

59:01example, the number one project right now on OpenSea is a free to mint project, Goblin Town. Um so, I think having free to a free to mint component is very interesting in in this. So, it By the way, Ryan, it could also be hybrid. Like maybe you sell if you do 100, maybe you do 50 free to mint and

59:20you sell 50. The second piece of feedback I would have is I So, first of all, I love this concept. I think Miami needs it more than any any place that I've been to. Um and I think what would be really cool is if you could reward long-term holders and good actors of the NFT. So, one of my favorite projects in the NFT space is a project by Dom called

59:48Corruptions. Corruptions is basically this NFT that the longer you hold it, the more it changes. And and and it basically evolves. And in the smart contract, there's basically this like it's it's basically built into it. So, I wonder if you can do something similar where um if I become a good actor, if I you know, I hold it, it change the NFT changes, I get certain privileges because of that. Um and the other sort of analog um that I also would love to implement in something like this is uh the last week I've been really into

1:00:25bowling. Don't ask why. Uh but and the bowling alley I've been going to has this uh leaderboard of people who have bowled three hundred perfect games, three hundred. I wonder if there's stuff like that you can do where it's like imagine you bought a coffee for someone every day and for 30 days, maybe you're on some sort of leaderboard. So, I will also wonder if there's like fun gamification type things that you can do. Yeah. Actually, one note on the the Corruptions concept. Um so, the Moonbirds project I've been in the Proof uh Collective project I've been following from the beginning. Moonbirds has this nesting concept. So, I have a

1:01:06couple Moonbirds. I got them because I have a Proof Collective pass from the beginning. And when you nest them, every 30 days it like levels up into I think it goes from like bronze to maybe silver to gold to diamond or something like that. And what what's kind of interesting is um as you sort of level it up, um the the actual NFT itself um

1:01:26carries its attributes going forward. So, once you un-nest it, it stops that that leveling kind of progression, but you still maintain like the the status of of that particular NFT. And so, as you sort of hold on to the NFT longer, it gains in more value and has more abilities or uh prestige in the community over time that you can then sell. So, it it's kind of like in a video game when you level up like a World of Warcraft character, you know, to level whatever 100, it it's it's a level 100 when you want to like give it to somebody else still. And I find that concept compelling cuz it

1:01:59really rewards people for holding, but it also rewards people financially theoretically um in the future if they want to sell or or liquidate in some way to the buyer. So, yeah, I think there's a lot to play with there. Um and I think video games can be a great place source of inspiration for all those ideas, too. Basically, how do you how do you take like what we do in video games and apply it to to these types of

1:02:19dynamics? So, if you want to start a weekend cafe together, let me know. I know, I was kind of like, hmm maybe there's actually something to it. There's what There was one that this guy started, it's called Maxwell Social, I think, and in New York that I saw recently that looked like it was going to be pretty cool. We'll see if the buildout happens. And then I saw another one that's sort of around like an athlete former athlete community network that's a former NFL player that I know that's he's starting, but some cool stuff going to happen in the space, for sure. I just want to see it actually play out and not

1:02:49become like a you know, highly um uh you know, like I don't know, exclusive community that just like wedges people out. Mhm. Any final thoughts, guys, before we wrap? I know we've taken we've taken up our hour of time here. This was awesome. I feel like we hit on a bunch of really interesting things and and threads within a single

1:03:10conversation. Yeah, what about anything on your mind, Greg? Any anything? I don't know. I I didn't I didn't come really prepared with with anything formal, so just wanted to jam and chat. That's the best way. Yeah. I mean, the last thing my last question for you while I have you is are you happy are you happy you made the Miami move cuz you were you know, almost the poster child for San Francisco at one point and and uh we and you know, I moved from San Francisco also to Miami and I'm I'm just wondering, are you happy um

1:03:49are you happy you made the move? I I am. So, I grew up in Oregon, then lived in San Francisco for 10 years, LA for two, and then Miami for a year now. And uh I am. It's The thing is um I mean, I've always worked remotely, probably was distributed. So, for me, even though I live in Miami, I'll be in New York later this week. I'll be in LA in July. I'll be in Tulum for a wedding the next month. And so, for me, it's Miami just it's just one of many places I live in, I suppose. I'm here most of the time, but it's good. I mean, there's certainly

1:04:18some downsides, you know, the summer hurricanes are a little rough. We had a lot of rain a few days ago. It was insane. Um but you know, waking up in the morning without like the pressure of you know, West Coast like rush is nice. Um some of the nightlife here is is amazing. I love the warm weather. So, I'm I'm a fan. Um what is interesting though is I I I to be honest, I think more investors are

1:04:41here than founders. There's a lot of talk about like people from tech coming here, and I don't have any hard evidence or data on this, but there aren't a lot of founders here, which is fine cuz I don't meet founders in person. I just go over video, but I don't know if you've noticed that, Greg, but it doesn't feel like there's a substantial number of founders

1:04:57you know, in the tech circles over here. I agree. I'd love to do more like we should do some sort of like event or something. And when I say event, I don't mean like a thousand person event, but like 10, 15, 20 builders in a room jamming on ideas. Um That'd be fun. Yeah. I just feel like This is this is why we need a like a cafe, a space cuz there's no shelling point right now, I think, that I'm aware of. Maybe I'm just not invited to one that exists. Um but we don't have like a space to just meet up and jam and co-work and and that kind of thing. So,

1:05:31yeah. You wonder whether it'll be like an if you build it, they will come type thing with the founders. Like now that more of the investors are there, you know, and as things go back to in real life, which hopefully they do cuz I think it's a good thing in a lot of cases, you know, you wonder whether more founders will choose to build there cuz it's just the proximity and your access to capital will be very

1:05:49real. Mhm. Yeah. So, I guess we'll find out. It's great. I will I will absolutely. I know I'll be back down there come I'm going to wait until it gets a little less muggy, probably, but I will be back down there you know, maybe in September. I'll look forward to it. Well, thank you so much, Ryan. This was awesome. Really enjoyed the chat, and we will talk to

1:06:09you soon. Yeah, thanks for having me. See you guys. Later. Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. If you have any questions that you want featured in a future episode, email us at hi@trwi.h.com. Leave us a review at Apple or Spotify to help us grow the reach of this podcast. Until next time, we will see you soon.

1:06:39Don't let them get in the borders.