EP 4: State of Venture Market, Crypto Ads, ETHDenver, Razzlekhan Revisited and Nikita’s G-Wagon Disloyalty

(02:40) Razzlekhan Revisited - Still super uncool (04:10) State of Venture Market (20:00) Crypto Ads - Spending more on Larry David than Larry David would ever spend on crypto (28:29) ETHDenver - Band camp for tech wonks Follow the show: https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars https://www.instagram.com/cartoonavatars/ https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars Follow the hosts: https://twitter.com/zck?s=21 https://twitter.com/nikitabier?s=21 https://twitter.com/loganbartlett?s=21 Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir Executive Producer: Josh Machiz Music: Griff Lawson Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:15Logan Bartlett?

  Welcome to the fourth episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. I'm your host, Logan Bartlett, and I'm joined today by my esteemed co-hosts Nikita Beer and Zach Kukoff. How are we doing, guys?

• 0:26Speaker 01

  Not too good.

• 0:28Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, wow. Not too good already. A dour start to the pod. Where Nikita, you look like you're back in LA. Zach, where are you?

• 0:37Speaker 02

  I am in New York, but I will be in LA very soon, enjoying the warmth.

• 0:42Speaker 01

  I'll be ignoring your texts the entire time.

• 0:45Speaker 02

  I did just ask for listeners at home, I just asked Nikita before the pod started for a list of scenic restaurants, so I'm looking forward to being the worst person in the city of Los Angeles for the next seven days.

• 0:56Logan Bartlett?

  Well, I am actually down in Florida for a 90-year-old birthday party this weekend, which I've heard is, I heard can get pretty wild. Zach, you'll probably know some people here, given it's the geriatric crew you hang with, but...

• 1:13Speaker 02

  I love my old shoes in Florida. God's waiting room. I'm excited.

• 1:16Logan Bartlett?

  That's right. That's right. So I'm really looking forward to this 90th birthday party, but good. Well, I'm glad we're able to do this while on the road. Nikita, I think first, we have something important we want to discuss. For those that aren't aware, Nikita posted a picture on Twitter this week with a car that wasn't a G-Wagon. So Nikita, I think we need to hear the story. Are you cheating on G-Wagons? Or what's the backstory here?

• 1:44Speaker 01

  I did buy an Aston Martin. I've always wanted one. I got a great deal on it, but it might sound ridiculous, but both the G-Wagon and the Aston have been investments. You know, most people think of cars as something that totally depreciate, but there's two categories of cars that don't depreciate: recreational vehicles like a Jeep, or exotic cars. And if you just look at their depreciation... Curves, they flatten out way earlier than than other like other brands. So I mean, I got really lucky with the G-Wagon because the month after I bought it, Mercedes announced that they are not making them in the next year and the price went up 100 grand. So I mean, it's outperformed the S

• 2:29Speaker 01

  and P 500.

• 2:30Logan Bartlett?

  Yes, you're right. Cars as investments, it does sound a little ridiculous, but I'm glad to hear that it's actually outperforming the S and P. That's, you know, that's, that's great. Cool. All right. Well, let's do a quick update here on. So last week, a favorite topic of ours, Razalcon. So a quick update from, from what happened since we recorded. So a judge in Washington DC denied bail for Dutch Ilya Lichtenstein and actually allowed Heather Morgan out, I think, on about $3 million bail. The judge said, "The evidence strongly suggests that Mr. Lichtenstein has more facility and skill at the heist business." I don't know if you guys have any, any thoughts

• 3:15Logan Bartlett?

  or opinions on this. Another L delivered to Razalcon here this week.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, it really feels like the hits just keep on coming for Heather Morgan, right? Like, imagine you're this badass rapper, you're laundering billions of dollars, and the judge at the end of all of that is still like, "Actually, you're no threat to anybody. Just go home, get an ice cream, hang out."

• 3:33Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. And the biggest risk is that she gets to post another Forbes article. I think that was what they were actually concerned about.

• 3:40Speaker 01

  Honestly, I'm just disappointed that we got to wait longer for the Razalcon prison album.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  I would say, who's gonna have the better prison album? Do we think Razalcon or Wu-Tang?

• 3:50Logan Bartlett?

  Does Wu-Tang have a prison?

• 3:52Speaker 02

  I just kind of shot, I just kind of shot from the hip on that joke. I actually have no idea if there is a Wu-Tang prison album.

• 3:56Logan Bartlett?

  It's like, here's a rapper I know, yeah, Wu-Tang prison album. I think it plays actually well with your branding of like the, the 90s geriatric, like.

• 4:07Logan Bartlett?

  What about this hippity-hop music you got here? So a topic that we've touched on a little bit here, but it's just valuations generally in the private markets. Obviously, it's been impacted over the course of the last six weeks since the public market started selling off. And so we thought one thing that would be interesting to cover is a little bit of anecdotal data based on or anecdotal information based on what we're actually seeing at the stages that we invest. And I guess at the stage that people are trying to force-feed Nikita uncapped notes or whatever. I'm sure you have some interesting stories about being courted currently in this early stage environment. Zach, maybe you bat lead off on what you're seeing in the early-stage markets as this

• 4:52Logan Bartlett?

  happened over, I guess, six weeks ago. It probably started selling off. And have you seen any flow-through on the early-stage side of the house?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  You know, I feel like we expected to see so much more flow-through. But if you think about the dynamic on the early-stage for a second on the zoom out, right? You have basically every top fund who has raised more capital than ever before because you either had to stay boutique and stay at the 500 million mark or below, or you've had to get really big, really fast, right? We've grown index, Sequoia, obviously, and Juresin, goes without saying. Like, the platform funds have become bigger platforms, and all of them have raised, at this point, either dedicated seed or early-stage funds, or are effectively acting like they have dedicated seed or early-stage funds. So the net-net of all this is to say, like, you have a bunch of people who have a lot of dry powder.

• 5:44Speaker 02

  And most venture funds only have a few deals that are huge eggs out of your fund. And I think there are folks who are thinking to themselves, well, what does it matter if I get in at 70 or 150 pre if this is the one that goes to 10 billion, right?

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Are they accounting for risk, like, the uncertainty? Like, I mean, these are still Series A deals.

• 6:00Logan Bartlett?

  Who is day in this? The founders or the investors?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  The investors.

• 6:04Speaker 02

  This is the challenging thing, which is if you want to be in, it's like, let's say there are, you know, 15 or 20 deals every year that are competed for among like every tier-one fund, where they're all going to put in term sheets to the best of their ability, or they'd like to put in term sheets if they're able to, right? Those are founders who historically have named their price.

• 6:22Speaker 01

  I mean, does this also translate to the seed deals that are pre-launch?

• 6:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Specifically, the ones based in Culver City, Los Angeles, out of curiosity?

• 6:31Logan Bartlett?

  I mean, a lot of these funds from a structure standpoint are viewing Early-stage investing, in my mind, as out-of-the-money call options, right? And it's like, it's an optionality on future funding. And so the delta between what, the delta between 150 versus 130 versus 100, at the end of the day, like, you're trying to internalize all these probabilities of success and also wait what the outcome can be at the, at the backend, which are all pretty abstract concepts to figure out, right? And so, to some extent, what I've seen anchoring a lot of these prices is the founders having the discipline to say, "Hey, we have to keep our 409A down to recruit sophisticated engineers or to recruit executives."

• 7:15Logan Bartlett?

  It's actually not the discipline that exists on the private side. Like, I've seen deals where, I had a company that, that I know really well, that had an option from a tier 1A firm at like 2 billion, and they had an offer from a hedge fund at 6 billion. And then they had everyone in between, right? And so that spread was basically, "Hey, you know you're probably never going to touch this capital, right? If, if things go well." And so it's really just like, "Hey, let's fix the dilution and give you some 409A, right? Across this spectrum of prices. What do you want? What's the brand that you want? What's the partner that you want? What's the service you want?" And like, they get a Chinese menu of these options. And if you want the highest price, then that's out there, right? If you want the best brand, that's out there.

• 8:00Logan Bartlett?

  And if you want something in between, that's there. And so it's fascinating. This dynamic has existed for a while. Now, that was pre-this correction, right? And so, I think there is this kind of YOLO part in the market that goes up to a certain price. And it was, I was seeing deals at 1.5 billion, getting done with like, a ton of open source traction or whatever, but very little revenue, right? I remember having a conversation with a buddy, and I was like... What, how did you think about this on a, on our ARR basis? This is so astronomical. And he goes, ah, ARR, wrong metric to look at. And it's like, it's funny, I get it. Cause it's kind of like open source signups or open source downloads and all that.

• 8:44Logan Bartlett?

  But it was such a funny, it actually ended up being close to the top of the market. Right? And so that YOLO price had been pushed up from a billion to one and a half. And now I've seen it retrench back down where people are looking at revenue multiples again at a certain threshold of valuation. Right? And as you go lower and lower, it starts to be more and more of that YOLO mindset. And I don't know where that crossover point was. It was like five years ago, it was around a hundred. Then it got up to like 200. We've seen it go crazy up to one and a half ish. It feels like maybe it's settled out between 300 and 600 now, but we're definitely in this price discovery phase. I think that's why you're seeing these rounds take longer is because no one really knows

• 9:27Logan Bartlett?

  what a series A or B or C should be priced at.

• 9:30Speaker 02

  Well, this feels like the difference to me in some ways between like the, the classic DNA difference of early stage and growth investors. Like even, even to have a sense of here's where we YOLO versus not YOLO on price feels like a growthy kind of thing to say versus the early stage. But like, I would wonder, there's, there's some portion of firms who started as late stage firms, right? Who have gone into privates and gone earlier. And there's some portion of firms who have started as early stage investors and have scaled up in size. Right? And like a lot of this, I think, I'd be curious how much of the difference here comes down to, hey, we started by doing small series A or seed checks and getting much bigger over time. And I wonder how much of it then instead is, uh, you know, traditionally late stage investors who are looking at it as a call option.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Cause the truth to your point earlier, like a lot of the funds who started early, I actually don't think are looking at these seed deals or series As as call options. Like they're trying to buy their ownership in those first two rounds, even if they have the dry powder to go later.

• 10:30Logan Bartlett?

  I think that's probably right. And I actually heard a crazy story. So we talked about re-trading and all the stuff that the hedge funds had done in the last like whatever, three weeks. And the information article that came out, I heard a crazy story about one of the hedge funds that had been mentioned as a reputation for re-trading. They had put in a term sheet recently and the founder called them out and said, hey, I've heard you've done this recently. Like, how are we going to know you're actually going to close? And the fund said, we'll wire this afternoon. That was their response. It was like, give us the wires and we'll send it this afternoon if that's actually a concern. And so it's interesting, like, it's crazy, right? And so it's interesting now that course correction of, you know, I feel like there's

• 11:14Logan Bartlett?

  some discovery going on in the hedge fund world that this was kind of a first correction from a price standpoint. And now it's actually a pretty compelling offer. Like, hey, if you don't believe us, we'll send you the money tonight. But it's, it's interesting to see like, how precious the brand protection was. And then now that it's swung back to re-trading, people are trying to paper over some of those mistakes.

• 11:36Speaker 02

  Well, to your point earlier about like, what do people pick on, right? And Nikita, like, actually, you're the one who should, who has probably the clearest point of view here, given you're the only one who is picking an investor out of the three of us. But like, Logan, to your point about what do people pick on, they're picking on, even later stage, they're picking still on brand and relationship in a lot of ways. If you assume that cost of capital is relatively equalized, certainly not equal. And so if you are somebody who's re-traded, even if it's totally standard in your world, right, you're, you are, I think, smart enough to know you have to judiciously protect your reputation, otherwise you're going to have a real problem.

• 12:12Logan Bartlett?

  Now, Nikita, what, I mean, to that point, like, what would you actually, if you were to, to raise at some point in the next little bit, besides like, friendly, friendly podcast hosts, like, what would you, as you're sort of thinking through all this, I mean, maybe take us through what the world was like when you originally raised, like, what, what your original round kind of construct came together. And then you've obviously had a ton of people beating down your door. You've had people starting podcasts, just trying to curry favor with you. And so, so like, maybe what would your priority or criteria be today versus what it was then?

• 12:50Speaker 02

  I'm sending Nikita every e-girl I know right now, just trying to get her around.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  When I was starting out, I mean, it took it took me about a year to close my first seed round.

• 13:00Logan Bartlett?

  How big was it?

• 13:01Speaker 01

  It was 700K at, I think it was like 3.5. I mean,

• 13:06Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, my God. And what year was this?

• 13:09Speaker 01

  This was 2013.

• 13:12Speaker 01

  And it was tons of tiny checks. It was a party round. It was it was terrible. I mean, a year later, we were able to close a round in like a month for 1.5.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  But I think today, what's crazy is like, you don't even need like back when I was raising those rounds, you needed a prototype or some kind of traction. But today, you really just need a Notion doc. You don't even need a deck. It's it's wild. And and you're also getting like 10 times as much money at way less dilution. And I see people closing rounds like in a weekend.

• 13:50Speaker 01

  And if they really don't want dilution, they can raise at whatever price they want from no name investors. But I think most people want to optimize for signaling long term. And so they pick strong names that either, you know, help them with hiring, help them with future investors, make it seem like they have like institutional buy in. So like they're a legitimate brand. So I think that's generally where where founders optimize for. I did hear like a good kind of breakdown was kind of older founders go for the partners that they have relationships with. Younger founders choose based on the firm brand. I think that makes a lot of sense.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  And I've seen it where you have like a seasoned founder who could raise from, you know, Sequoia Benchmark, but they they choose a maybe a lower.

• 14:41Logan Bartlett?

  Redpoint, General Catalyst.

• 14:45Speaker 01

  They go for a lower tier firm like General Catalyst.

• 14:47Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Nikita, to that to that point, I mean, is this true of obviously for you, you've done this before, you have the credibility, you have an amazing Twitter following. But is that true for like all types of founders? What group are we talking about here? Obviously, the random person sitting on their couch in, you know, some city that hasn't had any tech experience isn't able to do that. Like, what caliber of person are we talking about that are seeing these Notion doc only rounds?

• 15:17Speaker 01

  So I mean, I have these seed rounds come in my DMs like all the time. And it seems like the people that are willing to just play the game and go on Twitter and generate the hype, make the connections.

• 15:30Speaker 02

  Do the pod.

• 15:31Speaker 01

  They can, they can get the hype train going and raise these seed rounds. I think capital has become much more accessible across the board, regardless of your pedigree. Certainly pedigree helps, but even my, my whole, you know, philosophy is pedigree could be an actual negative signal because I mean, if you've, if you've been kind of infanticized at Google for the last five years of your career. Are you really going to grind it out? So, and I think a lot of investors have sort of adopted a similar philosophy at the seed stage that you shouldn't discriminate based on like what school they went to or what,

• 16:14Speaker 01

  what a big tech company they worked at. And I mean, I, at the seed stage, I think it's critically important because going zero to one is a, is a painful like process.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think you're exactly right. By the way, much love to all of my Google APM friends, but the truth is that like, if you look at the distribution of where really successful startup founders come from, they're far more likely to be first generation immigrant, scrappy background, grew up in abject poverty, rather than like went to Stanford and then was an APM at Google and worked four hours a day and got a massage every Thursday on campus and yada, yada, yada. Like that is just not, like the Google APM program, it's just not produced multi-billion dollar plus outcomes with any sort of regularity. And that's not to knock on Google APM, which I think you're right. It's, it's sort of like the new McKinsey, right? Or the new sort of Goldman in a lot of ways.

• 17:07Speaker 02

  And the kind of folks who are drawn to doing an APM program, I think are actually not the kind of folks who want to work, you know, 20 hours a day for very little money for ultimate payoff.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the job of PM in big tech is so fundamentally different than being a founder. Because ultimately, you're operating in a system of so many constraints. And a startup is just pure uncertainty.

• 17:32Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 17:33Speaker 01

  There is no easy answers to every, to all your decisions with Google. Like, oh, I go to legal, then I go here, and then I do that. And it's just all charted out on how to solve problems. So I don't even see how it translates. And I'm actually generally shocked with how easy it is for those types of founders to get funded. Because essentially, they've, they've had their sort of experience for creating startups on pause during that period of their career.

• 18:00Logan Bartlett?

  And I think to some extent, like, we've seen a bunch of these guys and girls coming out of Google that have deep, unique infrastructure in L experience that you only get at the scale of operating at Google, right? And so I think it kind of comes down to how ubiquitous the insight is and what you're going after. Now, there is this level of grit that I think is universal. And like, is your default to fall back to a cushy job? Or is your default just to make this successful no matter what? I mean, Nikita, how many companies did you guys go through with TBH before that was a hit?

• 18:35Speaker 01

  I mean, we built 15 apps. It was like a five-year slog.

• 18:39Logan Bartlett?

  And if you, like, you would have quit if you had a default back job of like being a VC or being, you know, EVP or SVP at Google and making 500 grand a million in cash a year. Like, it's just, it's, it would have been a rational decision, right? But these people that have the default, this has to succeed. I think in most markets, that's going to be who's going to win.

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I agree.

• 19:05Logan Bartlett?

  Hey, so we also just want to take a break to say we thank everyone that's bared with us for, for four weeks here. We're, we're trying to get better, hopefully entertaining you guys along the way.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  Yes, thank you to all 12 listeners.

• 19:20Speaker 02

  The entire Kukov extended family. Thank you for tuning in. Don't forget to leave a review.

• 19:24Logan Bartlett?

  Yes. And so if you're enjoying this podcast and our ability to actually talk about the tech news, we really appreciate it if you could share with other people that you think might also find this interesting. And if you're so inclined rating on Apple and Spotify, I'm told that's important as well. And so, yeah, we definitely do this because we enjoy hopefully entertaining people. And so your ability or willingness to share is super appreciated.

• 19:53Speaker 02

  I do because I'm a masochist and like getting dunked on. But I think the other two definitely do because they enjoy entertaining. So please do review for them.

• 20:02Logan Bartlett?

  The other thing this week was the crypto seems to dominate culture these days. And I didn't expect that we would start a pod that was somewhat focused on crypto and P. Marka and Ryan Breslow. But here we are. So on Sunday, the Super Bowl was played and a number of crypto ads ran. I think the irony wasn't lost that the same thing happened right before the dot com crash that pets.com and a bunch of other folks ran Super Bowl ads. So the three that stood out or the three big crypto ones were crypto.com. So that was Fortune favors the brave. And it was current LeBron talking to high schooler LeBron. There was FTX, which was Larry David's

• 20:46Logan Bartlett?

  skeptical of technologies over the years. So going through everything from the wheel to the fork to the toilet to the light bulb, but ultimately landing on crypto as something that he doesn't believe in. And the last one was Coinbase, which had the QR code bouncing around the screen like the old DVD icons way back in the day. So I don't know, guys, what did you have any favorites of these ads or anything that stood out among these three for you guys?

• 21:17Speaker 01

  I actually like, like at a content level, I thought Larry David's was, or FTX's was, was the funniest. Because, and I thought it had the most like impact because Larry David's probably the most like trusted guy for that 30 plus age cohort. Because you know, he's just this brutally honest character in Curb. And having him essentially concede that crypto might be the next big thing was a way to kind of buy trust in that older, older cohort that I think probably FTX is trying to win right now.

• 21:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, I am with you, Nikita. I thought that the FTX Larry David ad was by far my favorite. Now, admittedly, as the resident 95 year old on the podcast, that was exactly the target demographic for me. But I did really like it. That was super effective. And I was a little bit surprised, like, somebody had a great take on this, which was clearly there's no such thing as having too much money if Larry David is still shilling for crypto at the end of all of this. I was a little bit shocked that like he did it. I couldn't believe they got him.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  But to be fair, like Larry's commercial was pretty much on brand. And he never said that he supported crypto. It was like, he stayed a skeptic. So he never, he never really gave his sign off on it.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  It kind of feels like the new version of like 20 years ago, you would do the commercial in Japan and assume that nobody would see it. And now you're like, oh, I can do the crypto ad, although obviously people are going to see it. But there's still the same like laissez faire attitude to doing it despite the image consciousness that we know so many of these people have.

• 22:44Speaker 01

  Now it's like, all these crypto companies are hiring, are hiring like tier one celebrities to pump their coins or exchanges. I mean, last week, you guys probably saw on everyone's Instagram story was Justin Bieber and Drake performing in LA. That was from like an NFT company called Places. And then Tiesto is performing this week at ETH Denver. It's, it's kind of great. Like, I think it shows that, like, These crypto companies have a lot of money to spend and it's worth it to degrade, it's worth it to these celebrities to degrade their brand.

• 23:19Logan Bartlett?

  I think for Tiesto performing at East Denver, you know, he performs at so many different random events and so him going to, I don't think he was that discerning probably about what the actual event was, but it's fascinating just like, do you think Larry David and Tom Brady and Matt Damon and LeBron actually did work to understand like the nuances of these different brands? I can't imagine like even the most sophisticated person in crypto, you're kind of slicing hairs for what each of these companies stand for. And so it's just interesting how ethereal and potentially risky these brand propositions are to be diving in full on in that way like these guys have.

• 24:01Speaker 02

  I will say, what was the stat we all heard that like they had seven and a half hours of footage they had to record for effectively a one minute video, right? Like, I'll tell you, it's sort of crazy to me that they did 80 scripts, seven and a half hours of footage, by the way, for a guy who is best known for improvising a show. And at the end of it, they paid him whatever, five million bucks and he still didn't endorse crypto. Like, you would think at the end of all of that, the least he could do is say a nice thing about all the crypto he's being paid to do this.

• 24:31Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. And just a little backdrop on that. So seven and a half hours of footage on the Larry David, the Larry David shot. And so that was all distilled down into a minute long thing. I think online, maybe there's a two and a half minute thing. But yeah, it's wild. But I thought what was interesting in all of this is I don't really understand crypto.com's brand, right? I know they bought the Staples arenas branding there and I know they went through a name change at some point in the last two years. Like, I don't really understand where they fit into all of this. They obviously got roasted for that Matt Damon article and really marking the top of the crypto cycle with the original Fortune Favors the Brave. I actually liked at a literal level, like seeing old LeBron and young LeBron

• 25:14Logan Bartlett?

  together. It was actually just like kind of an interesting optical thing. But I thought what was really interesting was So the difference between FTX was clearly trying to do some top of funnel brand marketing, right? It's only a two-year-old company. They're trying to pull in the skeptics and get awareness. And they did very much the traditional style of advertising for the Super Bowl, right? Which is like you get a celebrity, you get some funny bits, you do a slow build to it, and then potentially a reveal at the end. And I thought, I actually really enjoyed it. I like Larry David. I thought it was clever, all the skepticism. And it got you believing, alright, so all these other things have been doubted at some

• 25:53Logan Bartlett?

  point, right? The Coinbase one was was super interesting because it actually drove a CTA, right? It was kind of like a growth engagement hack. And they didn't spend, I mean, if Larry David cost $5 million for that footage, right? Like, getting a bouncing QR code couldn't have cost more than $10,000, $100,000. And it actually drove a tangible outcome, right? And so, Nikita, I don't know your perspective on like, thinking through what the growth hacking mechanisms are to really drive engagement installs. Did you guys do anything like that at TBH? Do you have any perspective? Obviously Coinbase crashed as well. So that's, you know, it can't be the best outcome for them. But any thoughts?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the, you know, the site crashing certainly hurt its impact. I mean, contrary to all the chatter that we heard on Twitter, which is like, oh, it was a good thing. Now everyone's talking about it. I mean, because their whole brand is like, you can trust us with your digital money. And then here they run this ad, the $7 million ad spend that says this website doesn't work. But I think, to be fair to them, the concept was smarter than people give them credit for, the actual QR code. Because like, as like a product developer, your aim is to like minimize friction for the signup funnel as much as possible. And scanning a QR code is like much easier than typing in a URL.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  And having nothing else on the screen, like minimize any distractions. And second, the problem often with marketing that isn't digital is the biggest drop off is always that step where people need to take out their phones. And I think all of us, after two years of looking at QR codes, like our gut instinct is to pull out our phones when we see them. And so I think they actually closed the gap in that IRL to phone gap as tight as possible. And they did it in a way where they didn't have to spend for a celebrity appearance or some high production video.

• 27:54Logan Bartlett?

  I don't know if you guys saw, though, after it was done, FTX quickly launched a bouncing head of SPF. Their CEO has like a big fro, and they did it in the DVD bouncing thing, and they had his, it was like a Super Bowl ad they ran after, which I thought was pretty clever, being able to respond that quickly.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  They actually ran an ad in that same two hours?

• 28:17Logan Bartlett?

  I think they pulled it together for like a YouTube promo or something. Like, obviously, they had done all the buys, but they posted an outline of SPF's head bouncing around the screen on YouTube, which I thought was a pretty clever response between the two of them.

• 28:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:31Logan Bartlett?

  Okay, so what has taken over my Twitter feed this week, as well as some Instagram, is ETH Denver. So I don't know if you guys have anyone at your employer, Zach or Nikita, anyone that you know that's there, but it was the first time I had ever heard of it. We actually have four people on the ground in Denver right now for it. It's apparently the longest running Ethereum event in the world. For people that don't know, Ethereum's the second most popular cryptocurrency. It's a community-run event in Denver. That's one of the blue-chip crypto conferences, along with NFT NYC, MainNet, and then a bunch of other ecosystem-specific ones like NearCon, Breakpoint. I think FTX is doing a big one

• 29:12Logan Bartlett?

  this year. Deadmau5 performed last night. Tiesto is performing at some point this week. I don't know if you guys have any people that are there that you know, or any opinions on the conference itself?

• 29:25Speaker 01

  I'm just surprised how much the crypto community parties. It's like you have, they bring together like the, the smartest people and the dumbest people bonding on this common interest of wanting to rage. And it's funny because it also like you have a lot of whales showing up with huge amounts of money and then like 19 year olds who are like solidity engineers. So I saw like someone posted a McLaren that had the Doge face painted all over it.

• 30:00Speaker 01

  It's, it's a crazy time to be alive.

• 30:03Speaker 02

  It kind of has big, I don't know if you guys ever did like band or whatever growing up, it has like big band camp energy to me. You know what I mean? Like, just like the nerdiest people who like maybe grew up not partying a ton now just like want to recapture and kind of let loose a little bit when they're able to do so.

• 30:20Logan Bartlett?

  I don't know how much of this is the people that are actually interested in this community, right? Versus, it's actually been the most persistent group to continue to have events through the pandemic. And so I, I, you know, when, when Art Basel was going on, like that was just totally a party for everyone that had an excuse or wanted an excuse to go to Miami. And so crypto, it feels like is just kind of powering ahead with conferences over the last year. And it's hard for me to say like, is this just they're ahead of the curve on, on people's desires to get back out and, and go to these events and party and all of that? Or if it's unique to this community? It feels like maybe it's a mix of both?

• 31:04Speaker 02

  There was some great tweet that was like, women of Denver, sorry, you're about to have the worst week on dating apps of your entire life. Like it, it does feel like there's something specific about this community that loves to party. And I, I'm coming back to my band camp thesis. Like I think this is the delayed band camp crowd coming out.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  When I was in Miami, everyone was asking me, are you going to ETH Denver? As if it's like, you know, going to Burning Man where everyone like it's all on their calendars and they all see each other at these, the next conference.

• 31:37Logan Bartlett?

  I mean, I had to ask internally, I was asking what this was. You know, we were planning and there was four people on our team that were going to be there. And I kept asking what it was and I was like, no, no, no. It's like, I kept going back to more like, I'm sorry, I need more detail. They're like, oh, it's the longest running ETH conference in the world. I'm like, okay, let's, let's go a higher level. So Ethereum, got that. And who's going to be there, right? I just needed it very elementarily explained to me, like everyone backing up to the kernel of, of truth. But Nikita, were you actually at Art Basel or was this when you were there two weeks ago or whatever?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  It was when I was there two weeks ago. But I mean, I've, I've always thought of conferences as like the, the summer camp for adults. But it seems like the, the crypto conference is really taken seriously. Like this is when like, we've all been grinding away, you know, doing DGEN stuff in Discord chat rooms and now it's our, our time to actually let loose.

• 32:32Speaker 02

  Now it's our time to grind away and do DGEN stuff in real life. I think Nikita's point was, was really apt, right? There is a group of people for whom this does replace their social life and they go from NFT NYC to Basel to ETH Denver to Burning Man and probably mix in like some actual festivals, Coachella, Sundance, whatever, kind of sprinkled all throughout that too. And you could really replace having an active social life with just going to a conference every month and being exhausted, I suppose, all the time.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  I think it's like binging social, you know? It's, they, they work hard and they play hard.

• 33:08Speaker 02

  A friend of mine in Miami described it that way, actually. He was like, in Miami, there are weeks where no one is around and I get a ton of work done. And there's like a four day period where everybody I know is in town and I see all of my friends that I'm like sated for another six weeks.

• 33:21Logan Bartlett?

  It is interesting, like, to some extent, in defense of these conferences and also these festivals and all that, like, I'm going to be the one really grandstanding on behalf of these days.

• 33:34Speaker 02

  The oppressed people.

• 33:35Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 33:36Speaker 02

  The Google APMs and conference attendees of the world.

• 33:38Logan Bartlett?

  These day-long just benders that everyone goes on. But it's interesting, like, as people have kind of fettered out from cities, right? And a bunch of people have moved into different towns and at different distances from wherever they lived, right? You, one, still have a lot of friends that maybe you made in San Francisco or New York, but now they've moved to some other suburban area, or, you know, they're living in Montana or something. And so those people have left. And, two, you're making more and more friends online than ever before, right? And so you're meeting people and you're in these Discord groups, or you're in group chats or whatever. And so, and all those people are going to be spread across the United States.

• 34:21Logan Bartlett?

  And so these do kind of serve as a way, like a nexus of, hey, let's all get together and go to this one thing, right? Rather than saying, hey, I'm going to host people in New York, Zach's in Boston, Nikita's in LA. Like, let's find a weekend that all of us are going to go somewhere where one of us lives. Instead, it's like, okay, around one of these events, we'll be there and you'll get to kill a bunch of birds with one stone. And so, I don't know, I feel like this is maybe the social dynamic, the in-person social dynamic that we're going to have going forward.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  And obviously, that's so much more true even for crypto.

• 34:54Speaker 01

  You could say it's decentralized.

• 34:57Logan Bartlett?

  Yes, yes.

• 34:59Speaker 02

  But like, if all of your friends are on Discord, and that's where your community is, right, then you have to go to these conferences to see folks. And even, you know, for probably the three of us, like, when I was at Hereticom, that was a huge portion of my SF friend group, who I haven't seen, in some cases, since COVID started, who got back together again.

• 35:16Logan Bartlett?

  Well, I will say, I mean, all these pseudonymous, pseudonymous.

• 35:20Speaker 02

  Pseudonymus?

• 35:21Logan Bartlett?

  Pseudonymus. And I will say, all these pseudonymous people.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  I don't think that's how you say that word.

• 35:27Logan Bartlett?

  How do you say it?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Well, now I'm not confident.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  Pseudonymus.

• 35:30Speaker 02

  That's definitely not it. It's definitely not pseudonymus.

• 35:33Logan Bartlett?

  Pseudonymus?

• 35:35Speaker 01

  Pseudo-

• 35:35Speaker 02

  Pseud- pseudonym- pseudonymus? Like anonymous?

• 35:40Logan Bartlett?

  Why, can I just say anonymous?

• 35:42Speaker 02

  Just say anonymous.

• 35:43Logan Bartlett?

  So, all these anonymous, all these people that are like going behind usernames, right? That are actually pretty influential in the crypto community. Like, I don't know how, do they just sit this one out, right? When everyone's getting together that like is willing to reveal their identity. But the Bored Ape Yacht Club guys don't want to be revealed. Do they just go in, blend in the scene? But then you've earned all this social clout. And so, isn't being cool and influential like sort of what you've, you've done this for? And so, I don't know how that's going to play out with, with live events and stuff. Is it going to be like, uh, is it going to be like the guys from, uh, who are the guys with the helmets?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  Oh, Daft Punk.

• 36:21Logan Bartlett?

  Daft Punk. Is it going to be like Daft Punk? Where people are just walking around with like their Bored Ape, uh, on their head or something?

• 36:28Speaker 01

  I, I went to a party in LA. Uh, there's a guy who owns a famous Crypto Punk. Uh, his username is Seedphrase. And he actually got a light up NFT, uh, of the Crypto Punk for his head. Uh, and the NFT, uh, of the Crypto Punk had a cigarette coming from it. And smoke came out of the helmet. It was, it was pretty cool, actually. And he was DJing while wearing the helmet.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Oh, my god.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Uh, I, but he said it got really hot in there. He eventually took it off, so his identity was, uh, revealed.

• 37:01Logan Bartlett?

  That was how he was doxed, was, uh, was the, the cigarette smoke in the helmet just ended up being too much for him.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Do you guys feel like you have the same problem with being anonymous? Like, first of all, we've all discussed the fact that Nikita and I, not exactly doppelgangers, uh, for our cartoon pictures. And even Logan, I don't know how much credit I'll give you for being an accurate representation either. Like, before I was a cartoon, I used to go to stuff and people would be like, oh, we've talked online. I recognize you. And I would say hi. And now that I'm a cartoon, uh, no one knows I'm a dog online. But like, now that I'm a cartoon, people don't do that quite as much. Maybe I will have an NFT made of my cartoon face that I'll wear as a helmet at upfront.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  I've actually preferred not to use my real face, you know, on Twitter. Because I know eventually I'm gonna get like quote tweeted in the New York Times and they're gonna say, "Look at this terrible thing Nikita said." But, and then it'll just be this avatar and I'll be like, "No one's gonna take that seriously."

• 37:58Speaker 02

  "Look at this terrible Aston Martin Nikita's just bought on the New York Times." That's gonna be part of the style section or roundup of like, you know, they have like Jay Leno's garage of cars. There's gonna be like, the Twitter version of that is Nikita's garage of G-Wagons and Aston Martins.

• 38:11Logan Bartlett?

  I will say, Zach, to your point on this, like, it is, it's an interesting thing, like, the identification with this PFP thing, like, we don't have, we don't have NFTs, right? But it is a representation of ourselves that people know it. And so when I switch across different, when I switch across different mediums, right, from Instagram to Twitter to whatever, and having that consistency, there is some like subtle recognition that people have of like who you are. And so whenever I've switched, I switched at one point my Twitter profile picture and everyone just immediately, like, all my comments were like, "Hey, what, you know, what are you doing? This is weird."

• 38:56Logan Bartlett?

  And so now it's, I changed my shirt at one point just to make it like a little less WASP-y looking and still, it was like more subtle, but people were like, "Wait, this is off? Like, what's off?" And Nikita, I know at one point you actually changed your, to your face and that lasted like 12 hours or something.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I immediately changed it back because I was looking at my tweets and I'm like, "I look so much dumber with my illustrated photo that the tweets just look funnier." So I immediately went back.

• 39:27Speaker 02

  I still need to update mine. Like, I am a little bit egregious. There's, I would say perhaps a little bit of false advertising on the hair/no hair situation, the Costanza/no Costanza situation on Twitter.

• 39:40Logan Bartlett?

  Could you ease into it a little bit? Like, we could go through some like six-month progression? Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's like, yeah. Do you remember Chia Pets? It's like a reverse Chia Pet where we just have like your hair disappearing down as you go.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  He'll go through the same thing I went through in real life, which was it started his normal hair and then it got sort of like a Jufro right before it all went out. And so maybe I'll give him like a little bit of aggressive Jufro before I cut it off fully.

• 40:07Logan Bartlett?

  I like that. Maybe we can do like a time lapse over time of like your little cartoon going bald over the years.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  Poor guy. Somebody recently said to me, they were like, why'd you shave your head? And I was like, really?

• 40:22Logan Bartlett?

  Well, thank you for joining our fourth episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. We'll be here next Saturday morning as well. And Nikita, as usual, I think we need, we need to let the listeners hear what you're actually building. We can't keep dragging this out.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  I mean, eventually they're gonna find out, but I did actually let it slip and Zach found out.

• 40:43Speaker 02

  I'm excited to tell everybody that what Nikita's building is.