#557: Joshua Browder on Automating Consumer Rights

Joshua Browder is the co-founder and CEO of DoNotPay, the world's first robot lawyer. He fundamentally believes in using the internet to empower the average consumer to defend their rights. In this conversation, we discuss DoNotPay’s product development, company growth, Robinhood of the Internet, regulatory pushback, credit dispute letters, HOA products, photo ninja, and angel investing. ======================= Choice is a new self-directed IRA product that I'm really excited about. If you are listening to this, you are likely part of the 7.1 million bitcoin owners who have retirement accounts with dollars in them, but not bitcoin. I was in that situation too. Now you can actually buy real Bitcoin in your retirement account. I'm talking about owning your private keys and using tax-advantaged dollars to do it too. Absolute game changer. https://www.retirewithchoice.com/pomp ======================= Gemini is a regulated cryptocurrency exchange, wallet, and custodian that makes it simple and secure to buy bitcoin, ether, and other cryptocurrencies: https://www.gemini.com/ =======================

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Joshua Browder is the co-founder and CEO of Do Not Pay, the world's first robot lawyer. He fundamentally believes in using the internet to empower the average consumer to defend their rights. In this conversation, we discuss Do Not Pay's product development, company growth, being the Robin Hood of the internet, any regulatory pushback, credit dispute letters, HOA products, photo ninja, and angel investing. I really enjoyed this conversation with Joshua, and I think you will as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:29Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:55Anthony Pompliano?

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• 3:33Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:57Anthony Pompliano?

  One quick technical note before we begin, for the first 30 seconds, Pomp's audio does not sound good, but after 30 seconds, it gets fixed and sounds great the rest of the episode. All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Joshua here with me in person in Miami. If you're not in Miami, where are you really? Goodness, man.

• 4:14Speaker 02

  Thank you for having me.

• 4:15Anthony Pompliano?

  He came in with the swag on too, with the nice white sweatshirt.

• 4:18Speaker 02

  It's way too hot for Miami, but I should still do shameless promotion, even if I'm hot for it.

• 4:24Anthony Pompliano?

  It's all right. I wear a sweatshirt in here. It's a little chilly, so it's fine. Um, let's just get started.

• 4:31Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you like Miami? Let's start there.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  I love it. It's like the land of the free. And I'm not just saying that. Everyone here is, um, I was at a coffee shop and uh, the barista was like, what do you do? And I was like, I work in tech. And she's like, oh, you work in tech? That's great. But in San Francisco, you get a very different attitude to that.

• 4:48Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the attitude in San Francisco?

• 4:50Speaker 02

  Just like dirty looks, wear a mask, that sort of thing.

• 4:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I, I laughed and uh, when I saw, I think it was Jason Calcanis tweeted the other day and he said, uh, he got yelled in San Francisco for not wearing a mask. And in Austin, Texas, he got yelled at for wearing a mask. And I was like, I don't know, you know, like if that's a good thing or a bad thing, but it very much highlights the difference of the attitudes. In terms of like individual sovereignty and their relationship with government and rules in those two places, right?

• 5:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, Miami's neutral. No one gets upset with you either way.

• 5:21Anthony Pompliano?

  I tend to think that's the right way to think about it. Um, all right. Do Not Pay is one of these companies where I feel like everyone loves what you guys are doing. Uh, let's just start with like your background. Where'd you grow up? Uh, you've got an incredible story and your family's been involved in a whole bunch of crazy stuff. Uh, before you started the company. So maybe just walk us through like your life before you started the company.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  So um, I was a high school student in England and um, it was my dream to come to Silicon Valley. I taught myself to code using like Stanford YouTube videos. And I thought if I can get there to this place, it's a dream come true. And so I got into Stanford and moved there six years ago now. Um, and when I went there, it lived up to my expectations. Um, I was in the center of Silicon Valley and it really changed my life and allowing me to start Do Not Pay.

• 6:04Anthony Pompliano?

  What, why do you say that it lived up to your expectations? Like what, what were the expectations? And then what were the parts of Stanford and Silicon Valley that you were like, wow, this is like the place I want to be?

• 6:13Speaker 02

  I think um, America is the land of opportunity. The most successful company in the UK is maybe Deliveroo. But the most successful company in the US is Stripe. I'd much rather be closer to Stripe than Deliveroo. And lots of the VCs and my friends starting companies have the same attitude.

• 6:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you get there, did you know you want to start a company? Was it more so just I want to be in the technology? Industry like what was your thought process going into Stanford and then the first you know couple of months or years that you're there?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  I always knew I wanted to tinker with projects as an engineer, but I fell into my company Do Not Pay by accident by getting all these parking tickets.

• 6:46Anthony Pompliano?

  We'll get to the parking tickets in a second. You told me the story before and it's absurd. Growing up though, your dad went to Russia and had this ridiculous kind of experience where basically he's an American in a foreign country, really understood how to invest capital in a very kind of, and compound that capital at a very aggressive pace, but it's Russia. And there's all kinds of crazy stuff that goes on there from a political standpoint, from a safety standpoint, and his experience ends up being written into a book, Red Notice. Bill Browder, for those that don't know. And what is your kind of like, understanding of this as you're growing up? Do you know what's going on? Are you kind of sheltered from a lot of this? Like, just what was it as a young kid first?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  It was very scary. I think the scariest aspect was when my father devoted everything to fight the Russians. And it's one thing to go after like, maybe like government bureaucrats or have legal problems, but it's another thing to go after the mafia. And so lots of scary things happened. He was deported. His lawyer was murdered. And it really taught me to be fearless in life. It puts everything in perspective. When something minor happens, I just think it could be a lot worse.

• 7:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when I read the book, I didn't know you, I obviously didn't know him. The thing that I took away from it was just like, you hear these stories of Eastern Europe or Russia, or you know, wherever around the world, and you're like, it can't really be that bad. It was really that bad, right? When you read the story, it's insane. Why do you think your dad actually like drew the line in the sand and said, I'm gonna go devote my life essentially to go and fight this? And obviously the Meneksky Act and a whole bunch of stuff that has come out of it, has been kind of the fruits of that labor. But what kind of drove that decision?

• 8:31Speaker 02

  I think for him, when, and I can't speak for him, but when his lawyer was murdered, he felt like he was a part of that. And so he wants to get justice for the lawyer. The lawyer gave his life for justice. And so the least he could do was give his life for justice for the lawyer.

• 8:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so for you, now that you're older and you kind of look back to that time, is there anything that you kind of? Take away now that maybe you didn't appreciate it at the time or didn't really understand that was happening?

• 8:58Speaker 02

  I think just how unjust the world can be. I think in Silicon Valley or even in the UK, people can tell themselves the world is so great. It's so great out there, but there are some really bad people and some really bad things going on.

• 9:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So that brings me to my favorite question always. It's cheating when I talk to a technologist, but technology net positive or net negative for the world?

• 9:19Speaker 02

  Strong net positive. I feel like anyone who says that is probably in San Francisco still, which is ironic that it's a net negative.

• 9:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I mean, it's when I worked at Facebook, people would always bring this up, right? Like Facebook is like, you know, ruining the world. And it's like, well, hold on a second. Like, sure, of course there's negative impacts when you connect a bunch of humans, but it's more so you're probably just allowing humans to be humans. But look at all of the positive impact, right? People can stay in touch with their families. They can share photos. They can learn things. They can communicate. Like all of this is a net positive. And so the negative side effects of technology seem to be very, very miniscule compared to the positive aspects.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  I think technology is being used for some very negative things, but in aggregate, it's very positive. And that's what I see with do not pay. We're trying to bring the positive aspects of technology to the legal system. It's already being used in the negative aspects like algorithmic sentencing and things. We want to give that power to the consumer.

• 10:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you think of like the negative aspects, is that mostly like big technology companies? Is it like nefarious or malicious actors? Or do you think a lot of it's just people are trying to use technology? And then there's negative side effects that they maybe didn't intend or didn't realize when they started?

• 10:28Speaker 02

  I think it's a weapon and the weapons in life immediately go to the rich and powerful big corporations. And then over time trickle down to consumers. And so I think it's just being used by the people that want to use it negatively at the moment.

• 10:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. You start do not pay and it all starts with parking tickets on Stanford's campus, from my understanding. Tell us that story of why were you getting so many parking tickets?

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Well, everyone drives on the other side of the road here and I was a terrible driver and. I would not have time to scratch a permit because I was going to class or park perfectly in the bay. And what I learned is in Stanford, but more so in San Francisco, the government issues tickets, not necessarily to punish people. I'm a very unsympathetic and terrible driver, but sometimes to raise money. And I couldn't afford to pay the tickets. They're like a hundred dollars a piece. And so I had to become an expert getting out of them. And there was this rumor among my friends that I was the parking ticket guy. And so all of a sudden, they all started asking me for my help as well. And I was spending maybe two hours a day on Microsoft Word back then, copying and pasting

• 11:39Speaker 02

  documents for my friends. And I thought, what am I doing with my life? Why isn't this automated? And more so, why do you have to pay a lawyer 50% of the cost of the ticket if you don't have the time to research for hours in the night like I do? So I created the first version of Do Not Pay, just for fun really, to impress my friends. And we went from one case on day one myself, to about a dozen cases on day two, all my friends, who I now no longer had to waste time on Microsoft Word for, to 30,000 cases on day three, because one of my friends was a blogger at the Huffington Post, and she wrote about it. And it went internationally viral, because it turns out everyone in the world hates parking tickets.

• 12:19Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, did it work on like every college campus? Did it work for any city? Or how did it work on day one?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  On day one, it worked for all of the UK and Stanford. So, no, it didn't. People were just submitting cases and it wouldn't actually work for them. And so I thought, I have to expand this thing really quickly.

• 12:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Like 30,000 people are showing up and I can't help them.

• 12:41Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 12:42Anthony Pompliano?

  They're gonna turn their anger and madness on me, rather than on the people giving the parking ticket.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I had like 12 followers on Twitter at the time. I had never gone viral, been contacted by anyone. And all of a sudden, I was getting like 300 angry emails a day, saying like, "By the way, can you help me with my Comcast dispute as well?"

• 13:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Really? And so after the parking ticket, kind of, I don't know, dispute, right, platform or product, what did you build next?

• 13:09Speaker 02

  I really used all these emails to go after corporations. So I started with airlines and then the next big product after that was helping people sue Equifax for the big data breach.

• 13:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And so all you're doing is you're basically creating almost a form to some degree, right? And it automates, hey, enter in your information around you specifically, whether it's your name, your claim number, whatever it is. And then you guys would do everything from generate demand letters or kind of dispute letters all the way to actually file things for folks. And so as you're doing this, it seems like you're almost like just listening to customers. They tell you, hey, I have a problem. You guys write some software. Okay, now we can solve that. You now have 200 of these.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 13:48Anthony Pompliano?

  At what point are you like, hey, this isn't like me impressing my friends anymore. Like this is gonna be a company. Like when does that kind of hit you?

• 13:54Speaker 02

  I think about a year in, I, um, one of the VC partners on Sand Hill Road actually used Do Not Pay successfully and he convinced me to make it into a company. And so I did the standard roadshow pitching to lots of VC firms and I was lucky Andreessen Horowitz believed in me and invested a million to get it off the ground.

• 14:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And did they have to like convince you? Like, did you not want to start a company and they had to like convince you to do it? Or what is that first conversation like?

• 14:21Speaker 02

  I will, I believe companies are the way that things get done in the world. And so I knew I wanted to start a company, but at the same time, I didn't have any business model. I was just like, I love this product. I hate the government. I want to build a product to fight the government. I didn't know how I would charge people or what would the business model be.

• 14:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so as you're starting to raise the money, uh, what are like the funny conversations like, right? Does every investor immediately get in there and say, yes, this is amazing? Or are there people who are just like, dude, what are you talking about? This is crazy and you know, I'm not funding a parking ticket dispute company.

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was like 90% of the conversations. But at that point, I, it was still parking tickets, but I had the vision of expanding to other areas and I was lucky they believed in that.

• 15:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you raised capital, what do you do next? Do you go hire a bunch of people? Do you just sit on the cash? What did you guys do?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  We rented the Mark Zucker, the house Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook in and was super lean and just stayed there for months on end, creating more bots. So we did the airlines, we did Equifax, landlord tenant disputes, and over time, we had enough bots that eventually we could charge a subscription.

• 15:30Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Why Mark Zuckerberg's first Facebook house? Is there like some element of specifically seeking that house out? Was it some kind of like message to the world? Why that house?

• 15:41Speaker 02

  It was great marketing because every other day, a bus of people would come and we could just give them do not pay app invites.

• 15:49Anthony Pompliano?

  What?

• 15:50Speaker 02

  And the landlord was a relic of a different era. And so he didn't really use Zillow or know how much the house was worth. So we actually got a great deal on it. And we didn't actually find it as Mark Zuckerberg's house. We just found it as a cheap house and later found out when we're signing the lease that we got a good deal.

• 16:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 16:06Anthony Pompliano?

  And so would people show up on like tours? Or like, how are they showing up?

• 16:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, they show up on tours because everyone comes from around the world to see this house that we were just living in. It's really not a very nice house.

• 16:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so then you guys would have like flyers? Or how would you like hand out the invites?

• 16:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. So usually they wouldn't expect to be let in. But we would say, come on in. However, you have to put your email down to enter the house.

• 16:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah, that's smart.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And then would you guys like give like a tour inside the house? Or just like let them wander around?

• 16:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'd have to waste some time with the tour and come up with some story.

• 16:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Right here, let me tell you what Mark did in the living room.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  Exactly. That's right. We were just trying to get emails for our initial users.

• 16:45Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the craziest story you think you guys made up about the house?

• 16:48Speaker 02

  I mean, we didn't make anything up, but we're like, this is Mark's bed. And it probably was Mark's bed, but still.

• 16:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So I've seen you describe do not pay as a compound startup. This whole idea of it kind of continues to grow, accelerate, build on top of itself. Just where does that terminology come from? Like, how do you think about a startup, kind of going from idea to a compound startup? And what does that take?

• 17:11Speaker 02

  Being a compound startup kind of goes against all the typical advice. It's more popular now, but when we started, it wasn't very popular. The typical advice is focus on one small thing and grow from there. The problem with Do Not Pay is that the average driver, unless you're a bad driver like me, only gets a parking ticket once a year. So they would forget about the service every time they use it. And you'd have to reacquire the customer and all this stuff. So I knew for Do Not Pay to be successful would have to help a consumer every month. And luckily, there are many disputes that a consumer has. People are being ripped off left, right and center. But one has to build that. So I actually spent four years building out the infrastructure to generate these letters,

• 17:54Speaker 02

  send it off to the right place before I felt comfortable even charging people.

• 17:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you think through kind of the product today, is it just automated lawyers essentially? Or like, how do you describe it to people?

• 18:07Speaker 02

  I like to think of it as the general counsel for the consumer. I don't tell consumers that because no one knows what a general counsel is, but a robot lawyer, general counsel, and they're sitting on their shoulders, watching their back. So when Comcast send a $1,000 debt collection letter, they can come to Do Not Pay and have some recourse to fight back.

• 18:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So there's a lot of similarities between your dad going and kind of seeking justice, right? And then you basically going up against these corporations, going up against, you know, local governments who, you know, are fundraising through parking tickets, et cetera. You've been called the Robin Hood of the internet, which is just one badass name to be called.

• 18:44Speaker 02

  Undeserved. Maybe in 20 years.

• 18:47Anthony Pompliano?

  But like, is there an element of we're using technology to kind of fight back against the system? Or is that just kind of happenstance? People like to spin that story?

• 18:55Speaker 02

  No, I really dislike authority and just love to live free, which is why I think Miami aligns with the Do Not Pay values.

• 19:04Speaker 02

  The legal system is very protectionist. To be a lawyer, you have to get the stamp of approval from a bar association. And if you're representing a consumer and you're not a lawyer, you can even spend time in prison. So they're very protective because they like to keep their $1,800 average fee for the top 50 law firms.

• 19:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so as you build this, is there a way that you guys like measure impact or dollars? Or like the... The severity of the problem when you say, hey, we've got 200 products today. We're going to add the 201st one. Like, how do you evaluate what's the next thing you go do?

• 19:35Speaker 02

  By the end of this year, we're looking to save around 100 million in aggregate for consumers. A lot of our products save people time, like cancelling subscriptions as well.

• 19:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you evaluate that new product, right? Let's say you have three different options to choose from. Like, what's the framework you use to say, like, we should launch this one before, you know, the other two?

• 19:55Speaker 02

  So we have three rules for ourselves. The first is it has to be truly mass market, 50 million Americans plus. Everyone gets robo calls, for example. And that precludes a lot of ideas like startup tax credits. That's not something we would ever do. The second rule is it has to be fully automated. We've built tools to phone up the DMV and do all the clicking. So automated is a big scope for us, but we can't have an army of people typing out these letters. And then the third is it has to be related to consumer rights. Yeah.

• 20:27Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you think about kind of doing this, I think a lot of people look and say, hey, it's, you know, Joshua, the Do Not Pay team and the consumer versus the man, right? And it's very much kind of taking back rights, using technology to do this. But also, in many cases, you're actually just reducing friction. You're reducing barrier to things that people have a right to. So, for example, the pandemic relief, right? There was all kinds of programs created. There was all sorts of money or services that were available to folks. One, they may not know, or two, it may just suck to go and apply. And so you guys, it sounds like, created a whole bunch of products that could help them do that. Talk a little bit just about the pandemic and those types of products.

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, so at the height of the pandemic, we were at about 20% unemployment. And so all of the state unemployment systems built maybe during the 1960s completely crashed. And people were really upset by that. And so what Do Not Pay did is we found a workaround. It turns out that the US Mail is the API for the government. And although they had all these online systems, you could still send in the paper form. So we built a bot to fill in the form for unemployment benefits in all 50 states and mailed it in automatically with an API.

• 21:41Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you do that, like, I go online, right? I basically type in my information. What happens from there until a physical piece of paper is mailed?

• 21:49Speaker 02

  It will go through the questions and explain the questions to you because sometimes you don't even know you're giving up rights by saying yes or no to these questions. And once it does that, it generates all the paperwork in under 30 seconds and mails it off to the right place.

• 22:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so basically, it almost like takes the answer from a digital form. It then like prints out a piece of paper that has it. And then you just have a human who grabs that piece of paper, puts it into an envelope and mails it? Or do you even outsource that?

• 22:15Speaker 02

  There are APIs now to do that. It's a great time to be alive.

• 22:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's wild, right? So basically, you don't even have to deal with the physical mail. You're literally just hitting an API and some other company or product is taking care of actually printing this piece of paper, putting it in an envelope and mailing it.

• 22:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, we don't go outside. We're just coding.

• 22:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 22:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:33Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't go outside at all?

• 22:35Speaker 02

  No, but just metaphorically.

• 22:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you know, if you're in Miami, it's nice to go outside here, right?

• 22:42Anthony Pompliano?

  When you think about how many people use these services for the pandemic related stuff, like, how does that compare in popularity to your other products that weren't pandemic related?

• 22:52Speaker 02

  At the time, it was a few hundred thousand. Now it's died down. And as the world is opening up, all the typical bureaucracy is increasing again. So DMV bureaucracy, all of that.

• 23:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep. You're pushing back against government and institutional type overreach. I'm assuming that they don't like you. I'm also assuming that they don't just sit there and take it on the chin. So what is the pushback from either the credit companies that you guys are kind of pushing back against, you know, the Comcast of the world, the local governments, any of the tax organizations, etc.? Like, just what's kind of the pushback that you're receiving?

• 23:26Speaker 02

  It's an arms race. So they try and block do not pay from interacting with their systems completely. So for example, one product we have is called the Free Trial Credit Card. It's a credit card. You can sign up for any free trial and it does, it's not linked to you. It's not even linked to your bank account. And Netflix blocked our entire card network from that. So we have to switch it. And Keep innovating to stop them, but we're more motivated than them. So I'm not too worried about it.

• 23:53Anthony Pompliano?

  So you have a product where I can go, I can use this, it's essentially a virtual card, right? And then I can use that virtual card to sign up for a free trial on Netflix. And if I forget to cancel it at the end of the free trial, I basically can't get charged because it was never tied to me.

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's do not pay taking the risk.

• 24:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And so I'm assuming then at the end of the free trial, if they try to come back, you guys are canceling it, being able to dispute it or whatever, right?

• 24:17Speaker 02

  Yes. So they hate us.

• 24:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So you can take a lot of risk mitigation efforts. When they figure out what you're doing, they try to block you and then it's literally a cat and mouse game of can you figure another way in?

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we see this with the government too, them blocking our IPs. So we've built this workaround where when someone uses the do not pay app, the appeal is submitted from their IP address on the phone. So it's like very decentralized. So they have to block all the IPs, not just one do not pay IP.

• 24:46Anthony Pompliano?

  So really what you're doing here is you're essentially spending all day long figuring out not only one, how to build the automated systems and what products to build. But then you're also building this like almost anti-establishment decentralized technology stack that allows you guys to continue to do this without having a single point of failure.

• 25:04Speaker 02

  That's, that's exactly right. I feel like I have the best job in the world. I didn't know it's actually a real job to be doing that.

• 25:11Anthony Pompliano?

  When I say that they must not like you, maybe I underestimated, they must really fucking hate you.

• 25:16Speaker 02

  They really do. Yeah.

• 25:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Have they ever sent you like cease and desist letters or like, like what's like the worst thing that's ever happened in terms of the pushback?

• 25:23Speaker 02

  We've certainly got lots of cease and desist letters. We have a bot that lets us know whenever someone signs up with a .gov address and we get like three a day. It's very interesting. Everyone is signing up from the government across the US.

• 25:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And they want to see how it works or they want to use the service to get out of a parking ticket or something?

• 25:41Speaker 02

  Both, but they're trying to scope out.

• 25:43Anthony Pompliano?

  And what do you do if they sign up from a .gov address?

• 25:47Speaker 02

  We, we leave them alone, but we watch them very carefully.

• 25:51Anthony Pompliano?

  In some way, now they're on your turf, right?

• 25:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 25:54Anthony Pompliano?

  And so you you can pay attention.

• 25:56Speaker 02

  There is some positive, though. When we launched in Los Angeles, NPR asked the head of the Los Angeles Parking Ticket Bureau what he thought of Do Not Pay. And he said, I actually love it because people write such gibberish in their parking ticket appeals, at least when it comes from Do Not Pay. It's standardized. And that's better spin than I even I could have come up with.

• 26:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so really what they're saying is like, look, if people are gonna write in, then we'd rather it all be standardized and we know what it says. It has the information that we need, whatever, versus we have to read a bunch of handwriting or whatever.

• 26:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think bureaucracy holds us all back, even the government.

• 26:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, so in some weird way, even though you're fighting them by giving them a standardized letter or information or whatever, you can actually make them better at their job and just make it a more efficient process between the dispute and the government or the credit agency or whatever.

• 26:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and we're very humble. We know that in New York City, they make a billion dollars a year from tickets. And so even if we're appealing a few million dollars a year from New York, we're just a drop in the water. So we're actually saving them their biggest cost base, which is dealing with these appeals.

• 26:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. How bad is the government bureaucracy?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  I it's it's really, really bad, even worse than most people say. So for example, the federal government only stopped using floppy disks entirely in 2016. Floppy disks, so.

• 27:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And I'm assuming that the switching cost for them to go from floppy disks to whatever technology they're using now was not minuscule, right? Like, you see these bills, you see the budgets that they have for like stupid stuff.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I think in one of the pandemic relief bills, there was $25 million in the bill for cleaning supplies of the Capitol Building, which, by the way, I don't know how big it is, I don't know how much the cleaning supplies should cost, but that just seems like $25 million is not one gonna last forever, right? So like, what is that for a year or two of cleaning supplies? And that just seems like a lot.

• 27:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, um, there's a really big scandal. The TSA was trying to make an app that said, should passengers go left or right, just randomly, whether they should go left or right. It costs $1.4 million to just point an arrow in either direction in a random format.

• 28:03Anthony Pompliano?

  And why did it cost so much?

• 28:05Speaker 02

  They have these contractors that take advantage of the situation and are so entrenched with lobbyists and things like that and procurement processes that they get the contract.

• 28:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that a Do Not Pay potential product in the future? Is the TSA's left or right app that you could just go and help them out and buy some goodwill with them?

• 28:22Speaker 02

  It seems like they wouldn't like us very much.

• 28:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Are they scared that you may start confusing people on purpose to cause mass chaos in the TSA line?

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. All the Amex callers can go riot.

• 28:37Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. When you think about the company over the next like three, five, 10 years, what does this become? Is it just literally almost an army of like robot lawyers? And you just continue to knock out product after product feature? And eventually you can kind of eat into the everyday life, right? In terms of just every single thing you interface, Do Not Pay has a solution if you have a problem? Or is there some other vision?

• 29:00Speaker 02

  That's exactly right, but with the caveat that you shouldn't even have to know what Do Not Pay is. It should just be, hey, we've got you $500 in your bank account today. So right now, people come to Do Not Pay with a problem. We want to make it so that Do Not Pay just comes with a solution that you didn't even know about.

• 29:17Anthony Pompliano?

  And is this a purely subscription play where you just are going to continue to say, hey, pay us one price point? And then you're going to get all of these like army of robots that are on your side forever, just constantly working for you?

• 29:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's best that we work for our customers.

• 29:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Are there corporations or any types of products or things that you can do with non retail or consumer type customers? Or is it just continue to serve the individual people and everything else is a distraction?

• 29:45Speaker 02

  I think as long as it helps 50 million people, it doesn't matter who they are. So we've got small business products, finance products. So we're looking to be more sophisticated, but it has to impact everyone.

• 29:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, what is like a small business product example?

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Responding to DMCA takedown requests. A lot of websites get harassed with these requests and Do Not Pay can just deal with them, deal for you.

• 30:07Anthony Pompliano?

  What about patents? Anything in the patents space that you guys have looked at? That seems like the patent trolls are having a field day these days.

• 30:14Speaker 02

  It's not something we can do. You probably have to go into court. And also patents are being unwinded in the US as we speak.

• 30:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yes. What is it? Is it the vaccines? They're saying that they're going to take away all the patents or like kind of like de-teeth them, I guess? So that now people can...

• 30:30Speaker 02

  As a first step.

• 30:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Do we think that's a good idea?

• 30:35Speaker 02

  I think whenever you have inconsistency where some rules are being applied differently, I've seen firsthand how that can go snowball in the wrong direction. So I think that maybe the mission could be good, but treating things inconsistently is never a good idea in the legal system.

• 30:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it feels like we got a crash course in that over the last 12 months of local, state and federal governments picking and choosing when to implement certain rules and actually enforce them or not. And the other part I think that we learned is like, there's a very big difference between like law on the books or rules in the book and then actually enforcing them. And it feels like what you guys really do is you essentially are looking at what are the actual rules on the book versus how are they being enforced? And there's some exploitation that you can do there in the name of the consumer to basically fight back, right?

• 31:18Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 31:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And how much of the products that you guys build is pure technicality based? Like, hey, we just know that if you do, you know, send a letter, ask for this and, you know, I don't know, pay 20 bucks, then you get out of the parking ticket that was $300 versus it's more so, you know, actually the merit of the case, right? Where it's like the individual details really matter.

• 31:38Speaker 02

  We are strongly focused on the law. So there have been companies in the past, I call them loophole companies, where they automate credit card policies, for example. The problem is that the big companies only offer these loopholes because they think no one will use them. All of a sudden, AI comes along and ultimates the price protection on your credit card and the credit card company says, we're losing too much money, we're going to stop this overnight. And so do not pay as entirely US laws. Admittedly, there are some areas where if you're sending this long note to Unite's legal department, they're probably so scared that they rule in your favor, but at least it's based in law rather than just some loophole.

• 32:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so really it's just a sustainability play, right? It allows you to build products that aren't going to disappear overnight.

• 32:23Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 32:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Global launch or global markets, I want to ask for people for questions, that seems to be like one of the big areas, that and Android. So I don't know just all iOS and desktop right now, or what's the platforms?

• 32:36Speaker 02

  Everyone always says, complains about Android, but do not pay.com works perfectly on all devices.

• 32:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And so, do you have a iOS app as well?

• 32:45Speaker 02

  We do.

• 32:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, do you have an Android app?

• 32:46Speaker 02

  No.

• 32:47Anthony Pompliano?

  No, but the website works, so just like the mobile web?

• 32:50Speaker 02

  Yes, and it's really good.

• 32:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, so Android users go use the mobile web and you should be okay.

• 32:56Speaker 02

  And you can add it to your home screen as well.

• 32:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, so it's basically like an app, it's just like a DIY app, right? Like, just do it yourself, put it on your homepage.

• 33:04Speaker 02

  My thesis is I want to rely on as few gatekeepers as possible. I accidentally relied on Apple in the past and I've had my issues with them. I'm not looking to expand to more gatekeepers.

• 33:14Anthony Pompliano?

  What were the issues and why do you say accidentally relied on them?

• 33:18Speaker 02

  Well, as a naive, like Stanford, former Stanford student, I thought, "An app is great." But then I launched on the App Store and it was good for a few years and one day, Apple said, "We want 30%." And also, you have too many, your app is too App Store-like, and so you have 30 days. And so on election night, they actually removed us and only when there was public uproar and we changed it a bit, did they change their mind.

• 33:42Anthony Pompliano?

  And they wanted 30% of the subscription?

• 33:44Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 33:44Anthony Pompliano?

  But there was a point in time where they didn't take 30%?

• 33:47Speaker 02

  That's right. And they just changed their policies every day. It's worse than the government. At least the government is transparent and there are different judges, but if there's one corporation, they act in their own interests.

• 33:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, is it Monopoly?

• 33:59Speaker 02

  A hundred percent.

• 34:00Anthony Pompliano?

  You think so?

• 34:01Speaker 02

  I'm following the Epic Games. That's my one regret about leaving the Bay Area. I'd probably go to one, take a day off and go to the trial with Tim Sweeney.

• 34:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think they're gonna win?

• 34:10Speaker 02

  I, I think that 50/50. The law is not so strong, it should be made stronger, but it's so egregious, some of these emails, what Apple are doing, like, "We will crush the competition in emails that something's going to happen."

• 34:25Anthony Pompliano?

  It is pretty crazy. I haven't paid a ton of attention, but the things that I've read, I think on both sides frankly, right? It's like, whoa, this is way worse than we thought, both in terms of the egregious and kind of the overreach of the App Store and the fees and all the stuff.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, but then also, like, what some of the companies are doing, right? Where they explicitly know that it's against the App Store rules, but they're trying to do it to intentionally kind of elicit the response and all of that. Uh, but the other thing that I think was the most surprising out of everything I read was, there's this belief that, hey, we always charge the same thing to every app. And then you find out, like, well, actually that's not true, because there are some applications that are allowed to, whether it's trials, percentage- Users own payment processors within their applications. And I think that like my takeaway from all of it is like, hey, we all kind of knew you were doing this. So just don't say that you're not doing it, right? Like if you just said, hey, look, by the way, yeah. If you're fucking Amazon, like you get to use your payment processor inside the app. If you're not Amazon, you don't get to do that.

• 35:23Anthony Pompliano?

  People won't like it, but they'll just be like, okay, like I'm not Amazon, right? Instead, when you're like, oh, everyone has to play by the same rules. And then it comes out that you're not doing that. That's what it seems like is almost like you're, uh. It's somebody once told me, uh, the crime's not the worst part is the cover up. Like that feels like in this case, that's true.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. And in the Amazon example, they, they covered it up by saying, oh no, they didn't get a special deal. That was part of the premium video subscription program, which they invented just to cover up.

• 35:49Speaker 02

  This is a real, real story.

• 35:52Anthony Pompliano?

  What about global markets? Uh, you're in the U S and the UK. What other markets are you in? And are there certain markets that you're thinking about going to that you're not in today?

• 36:01Speaker 02

  I think Do Not Pay will work anywhere that has a rule of law. So Canada, South Africa, Europe. With that said though, the U S is stuck in the 1980s. So we have too much work here before we expand more.

• 36:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you say it's stuck in the 1980s?

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Um, several courts still require you to fax documents. We have a list of 40 different products coming up this year, just in the U S. So our work is cut out for us.

• 36:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you, can I make a product suggestion, which means that it'll probably be stupid, but you'll, uh,

• 36:30Speaker 02

  No, we'll do it next week.

• 36:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. So, uh, I got married last year and my wife went to change her name. And there, I think there are companies where you can like mail all your documents in, right? And try to change all this. Uh, it's a nightmare, but the thing that blew my mind was in some states, you have to get it written into the newspaper in order to have it recognized as a legal name change. And I literally, when I got told this, I was like, excuse me, like, I didn't even know some newspapers still existed, let alone that the law requires you to write your name in the newspaper.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, you'll be happy to know that we are actually doing that, uh, in the next few weeks. We're on it. We know where the problems are.

• 37:08Anthony Pompliano?

  When you launch it, you know that people will be like, wow, that is the fastest product development cycle in the world. What are products that people have suggested that you're like, man, we really want to do that, but there's some sort of obstacle between where you are today and being able to actually do it?

• 37:21Speaker 02

  I think divorce is the biggest one.

• 37:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Interesting.

• 37:24Speaker 02

  So a majority of Americans have negative net worth. And so when they want to do an uncontested divorce, there's no assets to split. It should be very simple. With that said, it still costs $3,000 around on average.

• 37:36Anthony Pompliano?

  And so where's that cost coming from?

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Filing $1,000 in filing fees, $2,000 to hire a lawyer to make sure you fill out the paperwork right. And do not pay can't do that because there's lots of human involvement built into the system. And there will be one day when people will have their AirPods on and do not pay is whispering into their AirPods, but not yet.

• 37:58Anthony Pompliano?

  So I'm assuming that you get blowback if you say, hey, we want to automate divorce. People are like, oh, you shouldn't let, you know, do that. That shouldn't be easy. There should be a lot of friction, whatever. How do you just think about, you know, in these situations where there's going to be blowback, whether it's right or wrong, just around if you automate something and make it easier, of course, more people are going to do it. Is that just a, hey, let the free market decide if they want to do this or not? Or like, what's the thought process you use to kind of think through that?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. So we have this product sue corporations at the press of a button. And that sounds very dangerous because people could abuse it. But what I've noticed over the past six years, working on do not pay is the crazies already know how to abuse the system. If it really takes them downloading an app or going on a website, signing up, paying for a subscription and going through this long flow, they're probably not crazy in the first place. And so we've had very little, I mean, I think we've banned about a dozen users over the past six years. So very little abuse.

• 38:52Anthony Pompliano?

  What were the banned users doing?

• 38:55Speaker 02

  Like 1,000 cases. We have systems in place that if it gets too much.

• 39:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, like try to sue 1,000 corporations.

• 39:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:05Anthony Pompliano?

  I only, do you have an example? Or do you remember what they were trying to sue for?

• 39:09Speaker 02

  I'm not sure I should talk about that for legal reasons, but.

• 39:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. So it sounds like it was pretty ridiculous. One of the new products that you have is an HOA product, which I think anyone who is anywhere remotely near an HOA hates it, right?

• 39:21Speaker 02

  Everyone.

• 39:22Anthony Pompliano?

  What is the product do? And kind of how did that come about?

• 39:26Speaker 02

  I lived in an HOA in San Francisco. Three Do Not Pay employees hate their HOAs. Everyone I've spoken to hates their HOAs. And there are all these rights that people have regarding this. So they can't just find you without any like kind of recourse. So Do Not Pay gives you that recourse, stops them from finding you. You can complain, have reviews, see documents, because it's very secretive sometimes. They hold these secretive meetings and they're like, oh yeah, we fined you $1,000.

• 39:57Anthony Pompliano?

  The building that I live in here in Miami, literally, they have a board. I don't know who's on the board. Nobody knows who's on the board. And when people want to move into the building, you have to apply. And like in the application process, they're literally like, well, it could take one day or 14. Right. And you're just like, okay, this whole thing's rigged somehow. Like, I don't know how, right? Because I don't even know who it is. I don't know what the process is, but they basically get a packet and they make the decision. And I have this theory that it's actually just one person, right? Who's making all the decisions and it's like the person who owns the building or something.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, has to change.

• 40:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So how many, what percentage of the products you guys build are internally thought of? And it's just like a personal pain point or an employee versus external? Like whether it's customers writing in, asking for something, or just like you talk to a friend and they give you an idea?

• 40:42Speaker 02

  I'd say they combine together. So the customers come up with the general problem, like I hate robocallers. And then we use our internal hacks to solve that problem. So with robocallers, the biggest challenge is knowing who they are. You can actually sue robocallers for up to 1.5K per call. But they hide behind these spoof numbers and they don't give you their real name. So one of the things I personally did was I realized you can track them down by giving them a credit card number. And when the declined transaction hits, you find out the business name, phone number, address through the payment network.

• 41:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And then sue them.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  And then sue them. So we've built a honey trap credit card for that product, for example. So the problem came from our users, but the solution came from Do Not Pay internally.

• 41:28Anthony Pompliano?

  So right now I can go on Do Not Pay. I can basically come up with a credit card. I can answer a robocall. I give them the credit card number. They try to charge the number. Now all of a sudden I know who it is.

• 41:37Speaker 02

  And then you send them the demand letter and go through the suing process.

• 41:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And do people get money for this?

• 41:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, up to 1.5K per call. And what's, these robo callers are really scared of a class action lawsuit. And so they were actually settled quickly. They settle on the highest percentage out of anything, even more than like a security deposit.

• 41:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 41:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:55Anthony Pompliano?

  How much money do you think Do Not Pay customers have gotten from suing the robo callers with this honey pot credit card?

• 42:00Speaker 02

  So it does take some time. So maybe like 400K so far.

• 42:04Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a lot.

• 42:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, not compared to our other products, but the people that do it love it. There's this one guy, it's his full-time job. He just answers the phone seriously and he like bought a like new roof for his house with all the money he's made from this.

• 42:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And he just answers all the robo callers, give them the fake number and then he's ready to rock and roll.

• 42:19Speaker 02

  And rolls with it, yeah.

• 42:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow. I literally get the spam risk, you know, on the iPhone.

• 42:24Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Five, six times a day, I'm gonna sign up for the product and I'm literally gonna do it. And then I'm gonna have you come back and we're gonna talk about whether I got my 1.5K or not.

• 42:33Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 42:33Anthony Pompliano?

  If I'm going after these people.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Uh, give you a free subscription.

• 42:37Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, I wanna pay. I wanna pay. Cause I wanna document the process.

• 42:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, Photo Ninja is one of my favorites, just because I was telling you before, I feel like some of the products you guys have are proactive. And people don't even know that it's a problem. So explain what Photo Ninja does and kind of what the problem you guys solved there was.

• 42:55Speaker 02

  So we're fighting facial recognition and stalking.

• 42:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  What Photo Ninja does is it will take any photo of you, um, like that one. And, um, make it so that it's undetectable to facial recognition and reverse image search, but it won't change the look of the photo. So your friend will still say it looks the same, but it will look completely different with this adversarial AI changing the details. And practically why this is important is if someone wants to sign up online, maybe for a dating app.

• 43:26Speaker 02

  A stalker can go in, reverse image search and find out their true identity. So it protects privacy and it also stops data from being sold. Especially with these Apple privacy changes over the past few weeks. You now can't identify devices as easily. So the data brokers are going to other techniques like facial recognition to find out who you are.

• 43:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And how did this product come up?

• 43:50Speaker 02

  The same, this is something that I've done myself and I've thought about and I thought, why doesn't everyone have access to this?

• 43:57Anthony Pompliano?

  And so then you're just like, let's just productize it.

• 43:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 43:59Anthony Pompliano?

  What do you do during your free time? Like, do you just sit and think of like, how do I push back against something? Like, what do you spend your free time doing?

• 44:05Speaker 02

  Just like, uh, fighting back against companies. I'm the type of person to wait on hold for like four hours for $12.

• 44:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 44:13Speaker 02

  It's about the principle and having, winning, you know?

• 44:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So, so this is very much like, there's an element of can I figure it out? And when you figure it out, then you give it to everyone and you're kind of, you know, the virtual middle finger to the institution.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, I want to scale myself because not everyone is as passionate about these issues or they don't have the time to do it. And so, technology is great for that.

• 44:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So like, let's take Photo Ninja, HOA, uh, Parking Ticket, like, how long does it take you guys to build one of these?

• 44:38Speaker 02

  Parking Ticket, uh, took about three weeks to build, but we've gotten the product development time. If we know exactly what we're going to do to about four days.

• 44:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Really? So you can basically, that's how you're able to build 200 plus products is just you can very quickly knock these out?

• 44:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, like one a week.

• 44:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And how big is the team working on this?

• 44:56Speaker 02

  It's just 13 people.

• 44:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Just 13 people who are not only building, but also managing 200 plus features or products, right? Uh, and then how much of that is customer service versus actual like product development?

• 45:09Speaker 02

  We have two full-time customer service, 24/7. We're very, we, we always respond very quickly and then everyone else is engineering.

• 45:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's it? That's literally it?

• 45:17Speaker 02

  It's very simple. We don't have sales. It's all self-service.

• 45:21Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, what about like a business person or are you the business person?

• 45:24Speaker 02

  Um, in terms of, uh, like partnerships, I, I don't think it works. I think it's better to just be on the side of the consumer. So we don't do any biz dev.

• 45:33Anthony Pompliano?

  And then managing the actual business itself, it's all you?

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we have a accounting firm and all of that.

• 45:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Uh, how much money have you raised total?

• 45:41Speaker 02

  16.6 million and we're profitable now.

• 45:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Uh, and what's? Like the long term thing here, do you want to like just build it forever and never sell? Do you want to take it public? Do you not know what's kind of thought process?

• 45:53Speaker 02

  I think everyone in America can benefit from do not pay from we unfortunately, we have homeless people using our product because they get parking tickets in their cars. We have crypto investors using our product and everyone in between. And so I want to take it public and have everyone in America and one day the world using it.

• 46:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I literally think you're gonna do that. So that's pretty cool. You mentioned crypto. I know that you've been tweeting a bunch saying that crypto investors are getting ripped off. I think I saw IRS crypto exchanges like you. I mean, you pretty much laid it all out pretty clearly. What what's the problem first that you see with a lot of because a lot of people watching that are crypto investors. So where are they getting ripped off whether they know it or not?

• 46:33Speaker 02

  So three main areas, which I'm sure you're very familiar with this space. So freezing of funds, this like if you make a mistake on the form or they just get suspicious, they'll freeze millions or hundreds of thousands of dollars. And we will get that unfrozen for you.

• 46:49Anthony Pompliano?

  How quickly?

• 46:50Speaker 02

  Much more quickly than if you're talking to the customer service department.

• 46:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 46:54Speaker 02

  The second is hacked funds. And so we're building a tracing product. And what the tracing product will do is it will force any exchange, we'll send it to every single exchange. If they have an address where it is, they have to freeze it and they have a responsibility to check. We found a law that says that.

• 47:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 47:13Speaker 02

  And then finally, any sort of ICO or misrepresentation getting your money back.

• 47:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Fascinating. And so basically that's just like the equivalent of like a class action. But basically, hey, I gave you money. This was illegal. Give me my money back.

• 47:26Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 47:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you fear that the crypto exchanges and others will be similar like the credit companies and the cable companies? And they won't like you as well? Or do you feel like this is actually welcomed from them?

• 47:38Speaker 02

  They're definitely not gonna like it, but my expression in life is the squeaky wheel gets the grease. The majority of people do not send these things into the legal department. And so when it gets sent to the legal department, it's a much more expedited process.

• 47:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So basically what you're doing is you are making it a better experience for the user. And usually it's the organization that's doing something that they shouldn't be doing.

• 47:59Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 48:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So it's almost like a, in some crazy way, like a check and balance in the system.

• 48:04Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 48:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Fighting fire with fire.

• 48:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And you just happen to have the legal letter, which most people don't understand how to do that, but you guys understand.

• 48:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Uh, when you think of crypto, is this, it seems very aligned in terms of the ethos that you guys have, right? The decentralized infrastructure, kind of the pushing back against the institutions and the system.

• 48:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 48:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, you know, all the digital kind of automation, like it just feels like you guys are so well lined up to really go serve that. Is that a single product line? Or is that something that'll become a bigger part? Like, how do you just think about a whole new industry in terms of what's going on there? Is that something that you say, hey, I'm gonna go put somebody in charge of like, go win in crypto and build crypto products? Or is it just, nope, we have 200 plus products and like, this is just one of many others?

• 48:47Speaker 02

  No, we really want to double down. Um, I, as an engineer, I see like the law as code and like society's operating system and crypto is the perfect complement to that.

• 48:57Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about the fact that a lot of the products you have send legal letters, right? But in crypto and decentralized products or decentralized systems, there's nobody to like, receive it, right? There's no address to send it to. Like, how do you get around that?

• 49:11Speaker 02

  I think, um, rather than convincing, um, a guy to help you appeal your parking to, like in the city to approve the appeal, you can convince the public and the public is much more reasonable than a entrenched bureaucrat.

• 49:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Explain that further.

• 49:28Speaker 02

  So an ideal world would be legal disputes are decided by a group of decentralized people. And if you can convince them rather than someone with an interest to deny the appeal, then of course it's more advantageous.

• 49:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so basically, if you can somehow get your case or your dispute out into the public in front of some decentralized group of people, almost like a jury, right, to some degree, and do it in an automated, quick, efficient, low-cost way, then that would be the ideal outcome from a process standpoint. And then basically, based on the merit of each case, you'd get the kind of end result of the conclusion.

• 50:03Speaker 02

  Yeah. And there is a legal framework to assign decisions to crypto. In the same way that these big corporations require arbitration with this arbitrator, you can require that the token holders decide.

• 50:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Everything in your life, I enjoy talking to you because it's what you're doing from a professional standpoint, the crypto ethos, Miami, etc. Like, there's a lot of these layers that are laid on top of each other. It's actually very similar, right? And I think that the way that like Miami politics and kind of South Florida and the leaning towards more freedom rather than less, the ability for people to think for themselves and kind of operate their life and make decisions for themselves, but also be responsible and accountable for the decisions they make, is very much aligned with the geography, the industries, right, and the work that you do. Where does that come from? Like, why do you think that that's the stuff that you're drawn towards?

• 50:56Speaker 02

  I think I'm drawn to it because it's the better approach.

• 51:01Anthony Pompliano?

  You're not allowed to say that. You're not allowed to say that.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  It's objectively the better approach.

• 51:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Anyone who disagrees, they can go kick rocks.

• 51:08Speaker 02

  I think that it's not even about punishing people or fairness. I think that the approach in some other areas is anti-innovation. There are products that do not pay us, like paying people's DMV fees, where we just pay, you don't have to send a check, do not pay, you pay do not pay, and we pay and don't charge anything more. In San Francisco, you can't do that because San Francisco says money's flowing through you, you have to pay 0.5% to us, not even on profit, on revenue. Called the new gross receipts tax. I don't know, but and that

• 51:42Anthony Pompliano?

  So literally because you're a company that is processing a payment, even though you make no money.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 51:48Anthony Pompliano?

  They say you make no money, but we as a city, we're going to make money.

• 51:51Speaker 02

  We'll make 0.5% just for you to be here. And it's not 0.5% of the San Francisco tickets. It's 0.5% of everywhere. Even if we were operating in Cape Town, South Africa, we'd have to pay 0.5% to San Francisco.

• 52:05Anthony Pompliano?

  So if a user in Cape Town, South Africa wants to basically pay a parking ticket in Cape Town, South Africa, San Francisco believes that they have a right to 0.5% of that transaction.

• 52:16Speaker 02

  That's right. And this was the last move for us. I was trying to justify being in San Francisco. But when we got this big tax bill from 2020 for gross receipts, I was like, okay, enough is enough.

• 52:28Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fucking nuts.

• 52:29Speaker 02

  It really is.

• 52:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you gonna pay it?

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Well, uh, we're discussing that. I think to be honest, reluctantly, we'll pay it, but we'll never give them a single dollar again.

• 52:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I mean, that's like, to me, I've heard some pretty egregious things that these cities do. That may be up there as one of the most egregious things.

• 52:46Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it's not just do not pay. Anything related to fintech has these problems. So it holds back innovation.

• 52:52Anthony Pompliano?

  And so Stripe being based in San Francisco, around San Francisco, wherever their headquarters is, do they have to do a similar thing where they have to pay 0.5% to the city of San Francisco for every single transaction that they process?

• 53:04Speaker 02

  Um, so there are exemptions for credit card companies. So if you're truly an incumbent industry, like maybe they've come up with an exemption. But even Stripe has moved out of San Francisco to Daly City or somewhere because of this tax.

• 53:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Really? So they basically, they levy a tax, which they think is going to lead to more revenue. But what it's done instead is it's driven one of the most valuable private technology companies in the world out of their city. Drove you out of the city. I can't begin to imagine how many other companies have left the city all because of this stupid tax.

• 53:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And fair enough on profits, but revenue is ridiculous and it is only increasing.

• 53:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that's, I think that's the egregious part, right? It's, it's not so much that there is a tax. It's that the taxes on gross revenue, not on any profit. And therefore they want to get paid even if you don't make money.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the question we ask is what do we get in return? And the only thing we get in return is restrictions. Right? Last year, we couldn't open our business because of COVID restrictions where Miami is completely open. So not only is it not a net positive, it's actually a net benefit, a net negative.

• 54:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Agreed. Uh, are you guys going to go back into like a central office or are you remote?

• 54:10Speaker 02

  I'm a big believer in in-person work, especially for these product driven companies.

• 54:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 54:16Speaker 02

  There's a magic that happens when we're all like trying to figure out how to stop the robo coolers. And you can't really replicate that remote. Some functions can be remote, but not everything.

• 54:26Anthony Pompliano?

  So it almost feels like you got like a little pirate ship going here and you need to all be together to like really kind of the small group take on the big organization.

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And several of my team members are in Miami and they're thrilled. They'll get a raise from the taxes as well. So.

• 54:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, they basically get an implicit, right? Like this is amazing.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Do not pay.

• 54:44Anthony Pompliano?

  And now they're going to go outside, so it's even better.

• 54:48Speaker 02

  Well, we're working on that.

• 54:51Anthony Pompliano?

  We can't wear sweatshirts outside, right? Only in, only in the building.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  Okay, that's good to know.

• 54:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, let's talk about investing. I know that you started to do a lot of investing. Why are you interested in investing? Kind of how did this come up?

• 55:03Speaker 02

  I am unlucky to have lots of smart friends from Stanford and also the Thiel Fellowship. And it would be irrational not to invest in them because um, they asked me for that, my help. And they may be like four years behind where I was with do not pay. And so I want to help them and as friends. And when I see them succeed, I've had a few cases where I've helped a lot and I didn't invest. And I'm like, why didn't I invest? So I want to have a financial incentive to help them.

• 55:30Anthony Pompliano?

  You don't have to give an example, but do you have an example of like, hey, this is the? Type of kind of access or like special, you know, advantage that you have? Is there like one thing that you can be like, oh, you know, this was a friend? Here's how I met them and then here's kind of what happened?

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Um, yeah, so I really like to find companies before they hit the circuit. If you're finding them after they hit the circuit, then it's just too competitive or too higher price. So one example is my friend Marcus from Stanford. He started a computer chip AI company called luminous computing. It's a truly amazing company and I invested in the first round and now it's, um, they've raised over a hundred million.

• 56:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  From Bill Gates and others.

• 56:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you find this person, really you're finding them as a friend, right? And you get to know them and it feels like in that situation, like you almost know them better than any other investor will, because it's literally your friend that you know. It's not so much you're meeting them for the first time as they pitch you a company.

• 56:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, I like to think of this as creating my own deal flow. Sometimes I convince them to start the company in the first place. And then I'll like, I'll pay your incorporation, just let me invest tomorrow before it gets too hot.

• 56:38Anthony Pompliano?

  So I've done this once or twice.

• 56:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Always the best deals.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 56:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, like, I don't understand why it isn't focused on more, maybe because it's hard. Maybe because like you literally have to go meet a bunch of people and then they have not started the companies, whatever. But by far, some of the best deals are either you convince them to raise capital, start the business, uh, take it more seriously, whatever. And I don't know why though. I haven't figured out like, what's the psychological, uh, or kind of repeatable pattern there? Because it just feels like each one is so different, right? There's, there's such wild cards, but maybe that is the pattern, right? Is that they don't fit the normal narrative or they're not looking to start a business?

• 57:15Speaker 02

  I, I think it's a really great business model because sometimes even three weeks later, a big firm comes in and, and then they do all the work.

• 57:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely.

• 57:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, when you're doing this, are there specific focuses that you have or are you just investing in the person?

• 57:27Speaker 02

  Anything promising based on the person. I've done, uh, SaaS, hardware, whatever, environment.

• 57:35Anthony Pompliano?

  What's the craziest thing you've done?

• 57:38Speaker 02

  It's still in stealth.

• 57:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. Can you say what industry or space it is? Like, is it something that people would just like, oh, that's weird?

• 57:46Speaker 02

  I know it's AI consumer.

• 57:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, got it. When you think about what's happening in the investing world, especially in the earliest stages, I think you and I see eye to eye on a lot of things in terms of like these individual GPs or kind of investors being able to move faster, being able to go earlier, being able to build a very different relationship with the founder and also being able to provide different type of help. It feels like that's the future, right?

• 58:10Speaker 02

  It definitely is. I think it's commonly said that we're seeing power shift to individuals. And it makes sense. When I was a founder pitching my pre-seed round, there would be these big committees of people and they take weeks to decide. I have unilateral decision-making authority on a phone call. And if I think it's promising, I can invest there and then and be much more helpful per dollar invested as well.

• 58:32Anthony Pompliano?

  So my perspective is top five, maybe top 10 venture funds. They're protected, they're great, they've built great reputations. The reason why they have great reputations is because they've been doing this a very long time at the highest level. And so whether it's benchmarks, Sequoia, you know, Andreessen, whoever, name your firm, they've been able to kind of repeatedly compound money very aggressively, be helpful to founders and build their reputation. Once you get outside of the top 10, is everyone else screwed? Like, is every tier two and below firm just screwed?

• 59:02Speaker 02

  I think it will be commoditized outside of that, so.

• 59:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And so when you say commoditized, like it literally is just capital and therefore when a founder picks, it's not necessarily they're picking between differentiation of the partner or the firm.

• 59:13Speaker 02

  That's exactly right.

• 59:14Anthony Pompliano?

  It's just you're taking the money.

• 59:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:16Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's the opportunity for the individual GPs to step in and say, hey, I've got some sort of differentiation that all the commoditized tier two and below don't have and therefore take my money versus theirs.

• 59:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the differentiation could be pre-investment or post-investment, like pre-investment may be an easier process or things like that.

• 59:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And then post-investment, what do you see? Biggest differentiations being?

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Some firms, the differentiation is we leave you alone. We don't destroy the company like Tiger Global. I think that and others do a lot of media. They help with recruiting and A16Z model.

• 59:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think that these later stage firms that are deploying literally billions and billions of dollars? And then like, hey, we're going to leave you alone.

• 59:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 59:55Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that a sustainable strategy? Is that attractive as a founder? Do you want like you personally, do you want investors more involved, less involved? Like, how do you just think through who you would take money from? Cause I'm assuming that goes a lot that feeds into how you think about yourself as an investor.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  I honestly, I'm such an easy, I'm very easygoing, so I don't mind either approach. I think that everyone will do well at the moment because I've seen firsthand just how backwards the government and society is and technology is creating massive new opportunities. And so although we might be overvalued in the short term, in the long term, we're undervalued.

• 1:00:33Anthony Pompliano?

  In the short term, we're overvalued potentially.

• 1:00:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:36Anthony Pompliano?

  But in the long term, we're drastically undervalued.

• 1:00:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:38Anthony Pompliano?

  And is that just technology in general or is that venture capital investing? Like, how do you think about breaking that down?

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Like VC investing, because anything below like 10 billion is probably worthwhile.

• 1:00:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 1:00:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 1:00:54Speaker 02

  Because the world is so stuck that these new companies are changing everything. I come from a suburb in England and everything is so backwards there. They could really use some of these companies and it really creates a lot of value.

• 1:01:09Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the things I keep thinking about is when my parents were kids, everyone wanted to be a millionaire.

• 1:01:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Now it feels like everyone wants to be a billionaire, right? It used to be that everyone wanted to build a billion dollar company. Now it almost feels like the goalpost had moved there to 10 billion or 100 billion, right? Like, getting to a billion, it's not easy, but it happens way more often than it used to happen. And so some of that may be just macroeconomic, you know, inflationary type stuff. But some of it also is like, people are just understanding the value of some of these companies. So it feels like the, there's been a shift in terms of a $250 million valuation doesn't seem as high as it once felt. Right? Like, it's kind of on the path to go there. How do you see the dynamics as you're building a company as a tech entrepreneur? Like, how do you see the, the various dynamics around valuations and amount of capital? Will you raise all that stuff changing?

• 1:02:01Speaker 02

  I, I think it's really to do with the competition between all the firms. Maybe five years ago, when I was just starting Do Not Pay, they would all, uh, there were very much fewer venture firms. So the collusion would be higher. I'm not saying there was any, but there was more collusion. But now everyone is so worried, even as a solo GP, there are like dozens and dozens of solo GPs. So I know that I have to commit quickly if I want to invest.

• 1:02:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Does that make the investors better investors or worse investors? Like all the pressure and competition?

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  I think efficiency is always a good thing.

• 1:02:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So even if you're having to make decisions faster over the long run, that should make you a better investor.

• 1:02:38Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:02:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:39Speaker 02

  Because it weeds out the people more quickly.

• 1:02:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I always remind people that, uh, Warren Buffett has this quote where he's like, you know, even if I'm doing a multi-billion dollar deal, I basically know within the first five minutes of the phone call, whether we're going to do it or not.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think that scares the hell out of people, right? Cause they want the, uh, safety and the confidence of we did the work, right? We went and we looked at all the numbers, like all the stuff. Uh, and so to me, it, there, there's a balance, right? Like, yes, of course you gotta do diligence, you gotta do some work as you get later, later in the stage of a business. But there is this element of just like, if you're investing in people, you very quickly kind of have a feeling like, yes, this person is smart. This person is going to be persistent. This person is likely to have a higher probability of success versus not.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I often know very quickly and I also know the reverse. I know if someone will invest within five minutes, even if they don't tell me.

• 1:03:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 1:03:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:03:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Why? Like, like, how do you know? Is it just a, an intuition feeling?

• 1:03:27Speaker 02

  I, I think it's a mutual, mutual feeling for sure.

• 1:03:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So it's, it's, uh, just, hey, they're not as excited as they should be. I'm not as excited. So therefore this isn't going to work.

• 1:03:35Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yeah.

• 1:03:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you ever preempt telling them no? Like, will you ever talk to an investor and they'd be like, ah, you know what? I don't think this is a fit.

• 1:03:44Speaker 02

  I think so, because it's very intense sometimes.

• 1:03:47Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Intense in what? In what way?

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  You have to open yourself up, like intellectual property wise. So it might not be worth it if you don't think they're worthwhile.

• 1:03:55Anthony Pompliano?

  So you just, hey, this doesn't make sense. All right. What's been the biggest surprise over the last 12 months for you personally?

• 1:04:01Speaker 02

  I thought COVID meant that the death of startups and businesses and tech companies or, or it would be very difficult. But the, the opposite is true. Tech has thrived and I didn't see that coming.

• 1:04:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Why, why do you think, uh, it's thrived? Is there like something that you can point at or is it just simply? Everyone went home and the only way to actually communicate and do business and stuff was through technology.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  I think that there are lots of these rules that the government and courts and institutions made that were anti-technology. Like lots of courts said that you have to come into the courtroom, but then all of a sudden they were forced to accept technology. Like Zoom court hearings, even on the Supreme Court. So that has moved things forward and across many industries.

• 1:04:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And I'm assuming you saw a massive uptick in usage or things like parking tickets because people aren't driving anymore during that time. There was a loss in terms of usage.

• 1:04:56Speaker 02

  We saw a huge uptick. The biggest was cancellations. Gyms were refusing to cancel people, which I thought was unjust.

• 1:05:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Gyms, airlines, like all of these folks and to some degree you feel for them, right? You're like, hey, look, we get that you're under pressure, but at the same time, you're basically keeping people, you're stealing from them, right? Like you're not giving them a service and you're trying to keep the money. We get that you're in pain, but that doesn't mean that you should pass that pain on to the consumer.

• 1:05:20Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. Businesses passing it on.

• 1:05:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it felt a little bit like that is what people are trying to do with canceling student debt, canceling rent, like all this stuff. It's not so much you solve the problem, you just simply pass it on to somebody else and somebody that you think can handle it, but most likely can't.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Will you guys do anything in kind of the student loan space or have you done anything there before?

• 1:05:46Speaker 02

  These loan contracts are the most predatory. They can't even be discharged in bankruptcy. So there are actually very few laws that protect people from getting rid of their student debt and hopefully that changes.

• 1:05:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So it's just really, really hard to kind of get around. Yeah. It feels like that's intentional.

• 1:06:03Speaker 02

  Yes, it is. There's huge regulatory capture.

• 1:06:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Are you bullish on the United States from a regulation and kind of legal and government standpoint? Or are you pretty bearish compared to the rest of the world?

• 1:06:15Speaker 02

  I hate to say this, but I'm actually very bearish. I have three citizenships. And I don't know how long it will last.

• 1:06:24Anthony Pompliano?

  I think I'm with you. Like, it just feels like we're headed in the wrong direction on a macro basis for the country. It can be reversed, right? Hopefully it will be. I think that there's a lot of people working on important work to do that. But it does feel like we've kind of lost the plot in many ways.

• 1:06:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think lawmakers just don't understand what they're regulating. There are these Zoom hearings where the lawmakers don't understand technology at all. So I think we need like a technical oath of office as well. Anyone who's a lawmaker should be required to like, understand the iPhone.

• 1:07:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Can we put you in charge of that?

• 1:07:02Speaker 02

  I don't think they'll have me.

• 1:07:05Anthony Pompliano?

  You're on the not friends list?

• 1:07:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I got three questions for you before we wrap up. First one is, what's the most important book you've ever read?

• 1:07:14Speaker 02

  That's a great question.

• 1:07:17Speaker 02

  What's the next question while I think about that?

• 1:07:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Second question is your sleep schedule. So our friends over at Eight Sleep, they gave me this bed that is thermo regulated. I can put it really cold. Okay, you got, do you have one?

• 1:07:28Speaker 02

  In San Francisco.

• 1:07:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I swear by it as well. I sleep like eight, nine hours. How, how did your sleep change once you started using Eight Sleep? I'll say it that way.

• 1:07:36Speaker 02

  I didn't realize like just how cool I need the bed, but it's changed my life. It's like the most important thing. You spend more time sleeping than anything else.

• 1:07:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Completely agree. What temperature do you put on? I'm minus five when I go to sleep and it goes to minus six, which I didn't realize was actually way colder than most people do it.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  I think around that.

• 1:07:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, yeah. There's somebody who I know who is a pretty well-known investor and he said the first night he got it, he's like, I didn't know what he's doing. He just put it minus 10. He woke up the next day, he had a cold for like 48 hours. So I was like, I didn't do that, but I do like it very cold. Third question is aliens. Are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 1:08:13Speaker 02

  I would say I am.

• 1:08:16Speaker 02

  That's a great question. I believe in aliens. Yeah, I've looked into the Fermi paradox a lot.

• 1:08:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:22Speaker 02

  It makes sense.

• 1:08:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Why do you believe in them? Like, what is the thing that drives you? I'm with you, right? I think they're out there. I don't think that we've seen them. I don't think that we're going to see them. Like, it's more of like, they're probably out there too far away for us to actually come in contact. But what's the thing that you point to and you're like, this is like the biggest data point or the biggest thing that makes me half-believe?

• 1:08:42Speaker 02

  I'm a engineer and a geek and just probabilistically, it's a certainty. I mean, the universe is so big, of course, there'll be a replicant of Earth somewhere.

• 1:08:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's generally the way that I think about it. A book? You have one?

• 1:08:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would say, Trust Me, I'm Lying. I don't know if you've read that book.

• 1:09:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Ryan Holiday.

• 1:09:02Speaker 02

  It's a very good book and it's taught me about all the deception that big companies kind of go to.

• 1:09:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you study the deception so that then you can, like, almost like in a judo move, use it against them?

• 1:09:14Speaker 02

  I don't know, perhaps. I wouldn't say it's the most important. I'd have to think about that, but it's certainly a good book.

• 1:09:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a great answer. You get to ask me one question to finish up. What do you have for me?

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  What does the world look like in 10 years?

• 1:09:29Anthony Pompliano?

  I think it looks a lot like it does now, unfortunately. Like, I think we make a lot of progress, right? But at the same time, many of the things that are true today are still true then, unfortunately, right? And so what I mean by unfortunately is there's the Bill Gates quote, "We overestimate what we can do in one year, underestimate what we can do in 10." So I do think that we're likely undervaluing technology, progress, you know, the improvement, make the world safer, wealthier, you know, all that kind of stuff, healthier, all that stuff. At the same time, I still think that there will be incumbents.

• 1:09:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:59Anthony Pompliano?

  I still think that there will be startups. I still think there will be innovation and I still think there will be plenty of people fighting the innovation. Like, you know, like, all the structural things will remain the same. They may look different, there may be different players, but the world, if you go all the way back to literally the ancient Roman times, is very similar to how it was today. It just happens that, you know, now we have superphones and then we didn't, right? And so I'm one of these people who tries to separate out, like, kind of the micro progress and movement from just like the macro situation. And it feels like, even if we were to move to, let's say, you know, the most outrageous thing some people could think of is like Bitcoin as a global reserve currency.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, we would still have incumbent firms, right? We would still have startup, like, like you still have a lot of the same structural things. Yeah, yeah, you still have to pay rent, right? You may use a different currency to do it, right? I still need food to eat, right? We're still gonna be trying to, you know, go accomplish certain things. And so, um, I, I like to say all the time that like, I'm agnostic on a macro basis, just because like, we have no control over that and we're unlikely to change it. Uh, but on a micro basis, I'm very, very bullish because I think that the technology will improve. People will actually get better lives over time. And so it's, you know, it's kind of this weird thing of just don't focus on the macro stuff and just focus on the micro stuff and that's ends up being where, uh, where all the progress gets made.

• 1:11:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree with that incremental changes.

• 1:11:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Exactly. Uh, how can people go find you on the internet or find more about Do Not Pay?

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Um, it's do not pay.com or I'm Jay Browder on Twitter.

• 1:11:23Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Uh, and are we gonna get more Miami tweets out of you?

• 1:11:27Speaker 02

  I think I'm.

• 1:11:28Anthony Pompliano?

  We need a do not pay bot that is a Miami like marketing machine.

• 1:11:32Speaker 02

  I think people don't like it, so I don't want to upset anyone. I like to be like political, you know, just keep everyone happy.

• 1:11:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Like Switzerland?

• 1:11:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:41Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, well, people gotta go follow you on Twitter then.

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:43Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, do not pay.com, thanks so much for doing this.

• 1:11:45Speaker 02

  Thank you.