EP 3: Razzlekhan and Crypto, Bored Ape Reveal, Binance and Forbes, and Peloton’s CEO

(04:02) Razzlekhan and Dutch Lichtenstein - stealing $4.5B in crypto. Surrealist rapper and husband facing 20 years in prison. (16:24) Bored Ape Yacht Club doxxing. Was it ok to reveal the team behind the phenomenon? (27:55) Brantley Milligan from ENS doubles down on old homophobic and transphobic Tweets and is ousted from DAO. (32:16) Shady crypto exchange invests $200M in Forbes ahead of planned SPAC. What’s the agenda here? (38:03) John Foley steps down as CEO of Peloton after a string of issues. Follow the show: https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars https://www.instagram.com/cartoonavatars/ https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars Follow the hosts: https://twitter.com/zck?s=21 https://twitter.com/nikitabier?s=21 https://twitter.com/loganbartlett?s=21 Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir Music: Griff Lawson Show notes: Nikita telling Keith Rabois wrong: https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1491444980035973121?s=20&t=v0BR_xyXPCd56OugD5AOfQ https://twitter.com/nikitabier/status/1491444980035973121?s=20&t=v0BR_xyXPCd56OugD5AOfQ Razzlekhan How the FBI cracked the case https://www.justice.gov/opa/press-release/file/1470186/downloadYouTube: Crocodile of Wall Street https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jlSHGAem6gTikTok: Where are my AirPods https://twitter.com/INVESTMENTSHULK/status/1491113799956328449?s=20&t=QkTylTw1FhWxA-lIFguMTQTikTok: Fluffy Pancake https://twitter.com/INVESTMENTSHULK/status/1491113539117133824?s=20&t=ZuNJClKHiItEzPVtaeAt5QTwitter: Beer Drinking with feet https://twitter.com/darealmilkbagz/status/1491127975429177344?s=21Twitter: Criminal Mastermind https://twitter.com/techemist/status/1491194783729356801?s=21Twitter: Crypto Heist https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FLGHj34XsAYNdur.pngTwitter: How to get away with crypto heist https://twitter.com/icebergy_/status/1491110412397715457 Buzzfeed doxxing of BAYC founders: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katienotopoulos/bored-ape-nft-founder-identity Brantly Milligan Tweet: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FK4USv8WUAEkN0z.jpg Bloomberg article on CZ's net worth: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2022-01-09/binance-ceo-cz-s-net-worth-billionaire-holds-world-s-biggest-crypto-fortune Amazon Films fueling Bezos' ego: https://logicmag.io/commons/inside-the-whale-an-interview-with-an-anonymous-amazonian/ Blackwells Capital teardown of Peloton: https://www.blackwellscap.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/BW_Peloton_Presentation_Feb072022.pdf Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

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

• 0:17Logan Bartlett?

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

• 0:27Speaker 01

  Good. Lot of travel so far this week. Well, Logan, where are you? That's a different background than I normally see.

• 0:32Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. I am currently in San Francisco. It's 78 degrees right now, record highs, and it's actually pretty pleasant. I don't know. Everyone talks about the impending apocalypse that's going on in San Francisco, but walking around right now, I've been able to mostly avoid the zombie land situation that is homeless people walking around and all that. And if you told me it was 78 degrees every time I came out here, I would definitely sign up for it.

• 0:57Speaker 02

  So it's a sunny hellscape?

• 1:00Logan Bartlett?

  Sunny hellscape, that's right. It's actually hell. It's warm and there's zombies. So yeah, it's actually hell itself.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Importantly, has the Red Point Office been broken into yet?

• 1:11Logan Bartlett?

  It hasn't, thankfully.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  So you haven't lived the full SF experience just yet.

• 1:15Logan Bartlett?

  Has that happened? I've heard a few venture firms that have gotten their office into, broken into.

• 1:19Speaker 01

  No, and that's probably why I'm so pro SF, is I've, both venture firms I've been at, I don't think have ever had break-ins in SF. That said, friends' homes, friends' cars, all the time.

• 1:31Speaker 02

  It's just the tax of living in San Francisco.

• 1:33Speaker 01

  But isn't that LA too, Nikita?

• 1:36Speaker 02

  I've never had my car broken into in LA. It happened

• 1:40Speaker 01

  Really?

• 1:41Speaker 02

  quarterly in San Francisco, so.

• 1:44Speaker 01

  But you're a pretty big LA fan. I think we all saw, pretty notably on Twitter this week, Nikita wading into the fray to defend Los Angeles.

• 1:52Speaker 02

  I think it's the best place in the world. I think it has the highest quality of life in the world, 70 degrees year-round, big houses, lots of space, amazing food. It's cheaper relative, I think, to New York and San Francisco. Miami might have us beat there, but...

• 2:10Speaker 02

  You know, I think the coolest part of LA, though, is that like people socialize, where they socialize, and it's at house parties, not at bars or clubs. And I think that makes it like a very intimate place to to kind of build relationships with people.

• 2:23Speaker 01

  Could I ask, do you always feel like, so we all saw on Twitter, the context here is Keith tweeting about how LA has no future as a tech hub. What like, whenever you see Keith make that point, do you feel like you have to wade in? What was the, what was the fight or flight there?

• 2:38Speaker 02

  So I had to respond in Keith fashion, but with one word response, wrong.

• 2:46Speaker 02

  Because I knew that it was engagement bait. I was being sarcastic, but because I think Miami has many redeeming merits, but.

• 2:57Logan Bartlett?

  Keith respects the game. When Keith sees just one wrong, one word back at him, he's like, touche. I recognize a similar foe.

• 3:09Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, it's interesting, Nikita, have there been a bunch of, did you move during the pandemic, before the pandemic? When was your move to LA?

• 3:16Speaker 02

  I moved two months before the pandemic, bought a house with like, perfect timing, and really lucked out. Yeah, it's been here two years now. But I grew up here. I mean, that's part of the reason I wanted to come back. But LA tech is growing. LA, a ton of engineers, ton of consumer companies.

• 3:38Logan Bartlett?

  Do you think the reason it has been broken, your car hasn't been broken into, might be not the city, but the fact that it's a G-Wagon and people just assume that, you know, it's like an intimidating, this guy's, this guy's pretty serious, I wouldn't want to fuck with his car?

• 3:51Speaker 02

  They'd probably assume I'm a diplomat or something.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Diplomat's not the word I would use. I assume anybody with a G-Wagon is a different kind of foreigner, not necessarily a diplomat.

• 4:00Speaker 02

  Mafia, something like that.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what I was thinking.

• 4:02Speaker 02

  Maybe I worked at Stripe.

• 4:03Logan Bartlett?

  All right. Well, that's actually a great segue to my favorite topic this week. It felt like when, as it was happening, I wasn't really sure what was going on initially. And then as I dove deeper into it, I just got more and more excited, sort of felt like our Super Bowl here. So for those that don't know, a husband and wife combo, Ilya Dutch Lichtenstein and Heather Morgan were arrested on Tuesday for trying to launder $4.5 billion in cryptocurrency that was stolen from Bitfinex. It seems like the DOJ recovered about $3.6 billion worth. The couple's facing 20 years in prison. Lichtenstein actually had gone through Y Combinator, so he had mob ties and

• 4:48Logan Bartlett?

  presumably could have been better at laundering money. He passed their muster while Nikita did not. Hey, hey, hey, hey.

• 4:56Speaker 01

  In fairness, in fairness to Nikita, Nikita has not yet turned $70 million into $3.6 billion. So Y Combinator's judgment continues unchallenged.

• 5:05Logan Bartlett?

  I actually wonder if we, if we were to check the timestamps on it, Nikita, it might have been a similar time that they were accepting you, accepting Lichtenstein over you. I don't want to pour salt in a wound here. Well, I could, they clearly deserve the spot more than me.

• 5:18Speaker 01

  We should all hope to be as good pickers as Paul Graham one day. That's aspirational for all of us.

• 5:22Logan Bartlett?

  Honestly, talk about Midas-less investors. So they took $71 million of Bitcoin, which is now worth 4.5 billion. So they actually, at the time of the, the, the original heist, it was worth $592 of Bitcoin. The, the whole thing itself was fairly entertaining. These Brooklyn hipster-looking couple arrested for the largest seizure in federal government history. But what made it really A-plus humor was Heather Morgan was a surrealist rapper. Any of our hip-hop aficionados probably know her better through her, her stage name, Rosalcon. We'll, we'll link in the show notes some of her best rhymes. She had an amazing TikTok

• 6:06Logan Bartlett?

  that featured a, a bunch of, a bunch of different things about fluffy pancakes, why Apple doesn't, doesn't track AirPods. She, there were videos of her drinking beer with her feet. So not exactly the, the criminal mastermind.

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Hold on a second, hold on a second. I would say anyone who can successfully drink beer with their feet is a mastermind of some kind.

• 6:30Logan Bartlett?

  I didn't say she wasn't smart. I just said she wasn't a criminal mastermind. Honestly, that's a level of dexterity.

• 6:35Speaker 01

  Different kinds of intelligence, Logan, okay? It's time to be inclusive.

• 6:39Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The foot dexterity intelligence is like, you know, everyone has their own.

• 6:43Speaker 01

  Not everyone can be book smart, okay?

• 6:45Logan Bartlett?

  I had a really fun time linking through all the, all the different videos and spending time watching that. I don't know if you guys had a chance to, to go through and watch any of the, any of her videos.

• 6:55Speaker 02

  It was the cringiest thing I like I've ever seen. Like, you know, you have these, this view of these crypto hackers like Bonnie and Clyde, but they look like the most San Francisco couple ever. And then you have her making the, the most cringey TikToks ever. But, you know, she's now the wealthiest rapper in the world, or as of two days ago.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  She's also the most successful Forbes unpaid contributor probably in the world. By the way, I have to say, I feel like being an unpaid Forbes contributor is marginally worse than stealing billions of dollars in crypto and far worse than being a bad rapper in terms of like things I would never want to associate it with me.

• 7:34Logan Bartlett?

  So cringe list of this whole story, Zach, what's your, the most cringey of all of this is being a Forbes unpaid contributor?

• 7:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, cringe power ranking by far, Forbes unpaid contributor, then stealing $71 million, which now is worth billions, then being a rapper. Honestly, I can sort of get my head around surrealist rap. There's no world where I can ever get my head around being an unpaid Forbes contributor.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  I'm just a little shocked, like, if you had $4.6 billion, I think if I was to rank the things I would do with my time, the last thing would be a Forbes unpaid contributor.

• 8:12Speaker 01

  I think that's right.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  I'm just, like, what?

• 8:15Logan Bartlett?

  To be clear, it was only 71 million when she was posting those articles.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  If I had 71, if I had $71 million in cash, I still would not be, with much love to our friends at Forbes, I would still not be a Forbes unpaid contributor. Wouldn't be on my radar.

• 8:30Logan Bartlett?

  I will say, it was, the videos themselves, I couldn't tell, clearly there was some level of like in on the joke, but I actually couldn't really figure out to what extent she was laughing with us. Justin, maybe you can queue up this video of, it was called Crocodile of Wall Street. We can just play the first 15 seconds here for people to get a little bit of a flavor of what we're talking about.

• 9:18Logan Bartlett?

  So, yeah, that is a real, a real hit at all the hip hop shows I've been to.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  It's the number one most played rap song at the Battery in SF, by far.

• 9:29Logan Bartlett?

  I respect her surrealist rap. She's actually the number one surrealist rapper when I think of surrealist rappers. Razzle Khan's like immediately what comes to my mind.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  I think it's, I think this is a pretty inspiring story. You have the cringiest, most least self-aware people on the planet manage to steal 4.6 billion dollars worth of crypto. Honestly, it means all of us have an opportunity to make it.

• 9:54Logan Bartlett?

  It's pretty impressive, honestly. I mean, just from an investment standpoint, that they bought Bitcoin at 592 and now it's worth $45,000. I don't know what the CAGR is there, but they would definitely be raising, raising some type of rolling fund or something on that at a minimum.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Don't you think it's sad that they turned 70 million into 4.6 billion and Logan and I, who go to work every day trying to make money multiply, have never gotten even close to that return on investment?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, FAANG has outperformed, FAANG has outperformed VC, right?

• 10:26Speaker 01

  Okay, well, fine, Nikita. It depends on which firm. Maybe.

• 10:30Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, Nikita, if you're looking at numbers, then maybe that's the case.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  There's different kinds of intelligence, Nikita, remember?

• 10:38Logan Bartlett?

  It is a generational return, 71 million to 4.6 billion. Like joking aside, a lot of firms would would kill to have that level of return. The one thing I sort of thought the whole point of this was like the whole point of the blockchain was being able to launder money through it, right? And so now I just have kind of lost my faith in all things blockchain related. If you can't even launder 4.6 billion dollars cleanly, like what's even the point?

• 11:05Speaker 01

  Are we hearing there's a Redpoint MD opportunity for Razalcon after she gets out of federal prison, Logan?

• 11:11Logan Bartlett?

  Listen, that's it's a no comment. I don't want a I don't want a recruiting frenzy for Razalcon, but we will take anyone that can consistently deliver 71 to 4.6 billion.

• 11:24Speaker 01

  It is true, though, Logan, like if you can't launder money and Bitcoin isn't anonymous, I don't know what the whole point of it is. I know, Nikita, you've been thinking about this a lot.

• 11:31Logan Bartlett?

  And to be clear, Nikita, you've been thinking about anonymity and not money laundering specifically, right? Like, we just want to clarify that's what you've been thinking about.

• 11:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I saw a tweet, actually, the other day, which was like, if you had stolen, you know, 4.6 billion dollars of Bitcoin, how would you how would you get it out? And there was quite a few interesting comments. I mean, back like seven years ago, there used to be tools called Bitcoin tumblers, and it was a great way to obfuscate if you were like a drug dealer on the Internet. It would obfuscate the source of the funds. But those don't really work anymore because there's so many forensic tools like Chainalysis to find out the source of where something came from. So it's starting to seem like, yeah, you like all these ransomware attacks, they're not going to be able to actually liquidate their money.

• 12:22Speaker 02

  So I think it's now starting to seem like this is a milestone in the crypto conversation because it certainly is going to deter hackers and ransomware attacks in the future. And I think it's starting to indicate that crypto might be safer. than we previously believed, or at least it's safer today than five years ago. And in that it's also a priority for law enforcement. Like, I thought if you go to the cops after your crypto gets stolen, they tell you to get lost, but not

• 12:50Logan Bartlett?

  That's only that's only crypto San Francisco where the cops tell you to get lost when you when a crime is being committed.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  But I it's it's cool that they also had the know how to like investigate these crimes when they publish that PDF explaining like where the money filtered through. I was actually kind of impressed. I was like, wow, like, this is more than this is better than I could do. But honestly, I it doesn't solve the more heinous crimes that we're seeing with NFTs, which is people, you know, right clicking and saving.

• 13:19Logan Bartlett?

  Oh, oh, man. Yeah, I'm surprised that you're not able like there's not a way to get through doing this here. And that they, I mean, they actually were fairly sophisticated. If you listen to the FBI press conference on this, the police were very, very proud of themselves. Like, she used the term good old fashioned police work helps solve this, right? And so it's they were clearly viewing this like criminal masterminds. I don't know to the extent they went down the TikTok rabbit hole like I did for Razzlekhan. But it was pretty impressive to see all the linkages and all the identity ties and all that stuff that they were actually able to pull off here.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Nikita, it does feel like there's sort of a Rubicon crossing moment here, right? Like, it probably was easier for them in some ways to solve this crime that was committed via crypto than perhaps like a lot of traditional money laundering schemes that are are involve actual cash in the real world. I wonder, you know, part of that probably was because they stored their private keys in Google Cloud or whatever. And that's not a genius move despite the beer drinking from your feet kind of intelligence that Razzlekhan displayed. But part of it also is that crypto as a whole is becoming safer and safer institutionally.

• 14:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think for law enforcement, like solving these crimes is might actually be easier now because they can just sit at their desk and just look at the blockchain records. And before they had to, you know, get in their car and interview people and do real investigative work. But yeah, so I think actually it's starting like I'm actually more comfortable now holding more crypto. Certainly, I'm not going to hold it on a hardware wallet where someone could rob me. But I think holding it in a centralized exchange is pretty safe these days.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Not in California.

• 15:05Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I actually saw the there was a funny tweet out there of like the a bunch of FBI investigators like standing there very proud of their loot at what would normally be like stacks and stacks of cash and bags and bags of drugs. And it was just like a little USB drive sitting on this huge table, right? For what they captured. We'll yeah, we'll link that in the show notes as well. But

• 15:29Speaker 02

  I mean, did you read her bio, though? Her expertise was fraud and

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 15:35Speaker 02

  and I was like, oh, my God.

• 15:38Speaker 01

  Do you remember in her bio, she said she went to the she went to Egypt during the Arab Spring as an economist? I was like, how many economists were instrumental in the Arab Spring? I don't remember that being a particular point of contention in that revolution.

• 15:49Logan Bartlett?

  Honestly, Zach, do not hate on Razul Khan in my presence right now. She is a legend taken before her time to jail.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Like all the best.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, honestly, I want one of the Draco the ruler style, like through the prison phone mixtapes that she's going to release. Basically, just, you know, drop it. Yeah.

• 16:07Speaker 01

  I can't wait for the surrealist rap. I actually think certainly, it's always sad when there are victims of a crime like this. But I think if anything, the upside here is we are going to have years and years of post federal prison Razul Khan rap. And I just can't wait to see the artistic leap that we know she's about to make.

• 16:25Speaker 02

  This feels relatively like a victimless crime. And sometimes the like universe just throws us a bone every now and again. I'm sure someone actually lost these Bitcoin and but they moved on. It was five years ago. Like, I'm sure it was a big group. It was only $592 a Bitcoin at the time. This feels like something after the last two years of stuff we've been through, this feels like something we really deserved. Like this was earned by all of us collectively.

• 16:49Speaker 01

  We all suffered and now we're being rewarded by so much Razzlekhan contents.

• 16:54Logan Bartlett?

  Well, our second crypto topic this week, Board Ape Yacht Club. I don't know if you guys, I assume you guys saw this, but a BuzzFeed article came out last week that revealed the founders of Board Ape Yacht Club. It turned out to be two pretty normal looking white guys. Honestly, you know, could have got them involved in our podcast as well. They would have fit right in.

• 17:16Speaker 02

  So wait, the guys who started Board Ape Yacht Club are exactly the guys who you'd think started Board Ape Yacht Club?

• 17:22Logan Bartlett?

  That's right, yeah. They are the exact, and they're also from Florida, which I honestly, if you had given me like any chance to bet on where they're from, 100% of my guesses would have gone to being from Florida.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 17:36Logan Bartlett?

  A lot of people were debating though, I don't know if you guys have an opinion on this, like whether or not, I mean, these guys obviously wanted to be anonymous. They were outed against their will by BuzzFeed. And I don't know if you guys have a take on whether or not they have the right to remain private in this type of situation. Is this notable? Something that should be reported on? I saw a bunch of backlash on both sides, both from people saying BuzzFeed shouldn't have done this, people saying, hey, this is in public interest to do this. I don't know your guys' opinions.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  When I skimmed through the comments, it really seemed like sentiment was against BuzzFeed, that like this was a breach, this was unethical. But I don't think it's so black and white, you know, anonymity is core to the crypto ethos, but this was like one of the largest scale web three companies out there. I mean, billions are being transacted in these NFTs. I mean, they aren't like Daft Punk or something, where they're just musicians, you know, wearing helmets. So this is a massive business, and I mean, how long were they going to stay anonymous? Like until IPO? I mean, I don't feel strongly that like either way, but I just like, I think they should have been a little more realistic about like when this would happen.

• 18:49Speaker 01

  Why not until IPO? Like, this is the thing that kills me, right? You're making, when you say that the billions of dollars are being transacted, yeah. Billions of dollars are being transacted across JPEGs of apes, right? Sorry, this isn't healthcare, it's not defense tech, it doesn't impact people's lives in a substantial way. Nikita, ultimately, I'm with you, they should have expected to get doxxed well ahead of time. But does it really matter who's in charge of creating the JPEGs that people buy or sell? Like, do you care who the people are behind fucking Pokemon cards? Like, this just feels like a, perhaps, an overblown thing to me.

• 19:23Logan Bartlett?

  But, but doesn't, I mean, the fact that people, like, the response to it, isn't that evidence that people do care? Like, no one gives a shit about the government contractor and who the CEO of that business is.

• 19:35Speaker 01

  But they should, that's what matters.

• 19:36Logan Bartlett?

  I don't know if Gunna's getting a government contractor company tattooed on his arm, or like, I just, I, I mean, maybe, maybe we should have more, uh, public interest in what defense contracts are, are being, being passed around. But this was like, you know, Jimmy Fallon's promoting it on his television show, Paris Hilton has one, Steph Curry has one, Gunna gets it tattooed on him. Like, this is, it's culturally relevant, and so I think the fact that it is newsworthy and, and was interesting to people, this isn't like some random blog. This is like a cultural zeitgeist, and so it's sort of like, doesn't meet the threshold of relevance to be reported on. And I think that the response to it shows that it did, in my mind.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Sorry, so, if, listen, if two random guys from Florida who were going under, uh, pseudonyms online were starting the next Blackwater, right? And were just building a mercenary firm, I think I would be all for going out and doxxing them as early as possible, right? That, like, we have a, we have an obligation, we ought to know who those people are. If the big thing that makes these people relevant and newsworthy is that some random celebrities have a tattoo of them on their arm, and CAA has orchestrated, like, 15 people buying these things and doing wash trades on them, I, I don't know. Like, listen, fine, they got doxxed, it's not the end of the world, it is what it is. But was it new, newsworthy? I, it's hard for me to really get my head around that.

• 20:55Logan Bartlett?

  Isn't that, isn't this kind of true of anything? Like, if, you know, this is almost like- Saying, hey, we shouldn't have reporters focused on reality shows. We should have them all like in Washington focused on government. Like the fact that people are interested in this just shows that it's that it's relevant. And therefore it meets some materiality threshold that it can be reported on. Right. And so I'm not saying like it totally makes sense or that. But the fact that there's interest in this, when if there was an anonymous defense contractor building Blackwater, like sure, I think as a civic good, some reporter should run that to ground and run that story. But this is it's not substantive for sure, but it's pop culture. It's interesting.

• 21:37Logan Bartlett?

  It seems like people care and I think it met a level of materiality to be reported on.

• 21:41Speaker 01

  I guess the I guess the thing that's that's jumping out to me is that there's a norm of tolerance of pseudonyms in this community. And it feels, I would say not to me personally, but to people who I've spoken to in the crowd. It feels almost disrespectful in some ways, like in the same way that, you know, when you have reporters years ago from Occupy Wall Street, right? Who were going up and being respectful of not reporting on protesters' last names. Right. Like it almost feels as though there's an element of a lack of regard for the norms of this community that somebody is coming in and doing it. Now, listen, I'm not making the argument that somebody has to respect the norms of the community they're reporting on, but to not respect those norms, it's not then surprising to me you get a backlash from that crowd.

• 22:24Speaker 02

  I wonder if the norms are changing though, because I don't know if you guys saw the meme web two me versus web three me where they compare, where they post their own profile photo and then post their NFT or their own actual photo. And it seems like there's this, the, the whole culture is starting to actually dox themselves. So anonymity, I think, is remnants of the Bitcoin community, which is your classic neckbeard redditor. But as I think we're, the community is evolving with web three, with Ethereum, and you're seeing actually people being okay identifying. A lot of people's security or their info, like their security for protecting their wallets has improved.

• 23:07Speaker 02

  So there's not that looming threat of someone coming in and, you know, taking hostage of your, of your wallet. So I think that like this might be an inflection point for that, that norm.

• 23:19Logan Bartlett?

  I don't know if anyone's ever come at like I've ever thought someone was cooler when they they went from like an anonymous account to their real account. I I imagine like when we went from these cartoons to real people, Nikita, when you came out as not an Indian woman, you know, it's fascinating when when that happens. But anytime an anonymous Twitter account or whatever decides to go from cartoon and no name to like revealing themselves, it's never been like, oh, this person I think is cooler now because like I actually know them, right? And it's interesting. It's like sort of the crowd that you're gonna the the reason people follow you if you make such a big step change, you might lose the intrigue or the mystery of those people.

• 24:01Speaker 01

  It kind of feels like that show. Do you guys know the show The Masked Singer? I can't say I've ever watched it, but I've seen the ads enough to understand it.

• 24:08Logan Bartlett?

  It seems like it's targeting middle aged women in middle America. But yeah, so right up your alley.

• 24:12Speaker 01

  That's right. I actually am. People can't see, but I'm wearing a 55 year old sweater. And so I am aspiring to my middle age.

• 24:21Logan Bartlett?

  We weren't gonna we weren't gonna say anything. If they're watching on YouTube, I guess they can see it. We weren't gonna say anything. But yes, your mom's sweater is nice.

• 24:27Speaker 01

  I had a little Pretty Woman moment, except instead of Hooker with a Heart of Gold getting a nice wardrobe, it was me walking in and out, walking out like I'm dressed like a GP. The point of this is all to say, like, okay, The Masked Singer, the whole kind of thing that I think the works about that show, I can't say I've seen it outside of being very tired on airplane once, is they get the people on there to to put on their masks and sing and perform. And the judges are like, oh, is it is it, you know, they're speculating who could be under the mask. And it's always like outrageous people. And if you think about it logically, you're like, no, actually, you know, A-Rod isn't going on a like 6pm singing show on Fox, right? Or no, actually, it's not like Barack Obama, who's underneath the

• 25:08Speaker 01

  mask on The Masked Singer. But because they could, it could be anybody, right? The audience gets swept up along with it. And there's the same sort of effect for these pseudonyms, right? Where you're like, oh, maybe this account that's tweeting like dumb bits on Twitter that I love could be anyone. But actually, it's like some random, you know, ICAPM, who's like 22, fresh out of undergrad.

• 25:28Logan Bartlett?

  Have you guys ever been accused of running one of these like venture Instagram account or like making fun of tech accounts?

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally every day, all the time.

• 25:36Logan Bartlett?

  Someone is and I'm like, One, have you seen my like, public feed? Do you really think I'm like, saving some stuff and putting it like anonymously up there? Second, it's like, it's never, it's never like, someone, it always seems more random than, whenever I find out like, who X person is behind Y account, and it's happened probably five times, it's never like, oh my gosh, this is, you know, some Elon Musk's account that he's running on the side. It's always like, yes, it's some IC at some random tech company or something.

• 26:08Speaker 02

  I actually went to a party in LA, was for all the fintech, or fintwit meme accounts, and surprisingly, all of them were consultants at like, Ernst & Young. They were all like, 21 and 22. And it was kind of funny, like, I thought, like, I had the same idea, these are like, people like, a MD at Goldman Sachs or something. But in reality, the people that have the time for it, you know, are generally these kind of entry-level, first-years at a consultancy. And it's kind of like a labor of love, because you can't really monetize these accounts.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  That was one thing that I learned, was that all meme accounts, like, they barely break even.

• 26:56Logan Bartlett?

  Is that right?

• 26:56Speaker 02

  Really?

• 26:57Speaker 01

  I actually think that's sort of a hot take and a wrong take. Like, you can't monetize them directly, but having like, okay, here's an example of this, right? We all find out there's some new, like, hot meme account in venture, and there's a million group chats happening about, oh, who's behind @suchandsuch, right? On Twitter or Instagram? Like, that sort of feverish Nancy Drew-esque sleuthing, trying to figure out who's behind the account, yeah, it's not monetizable in true sense, but I guarantee you, there's career acceleration that happens from people, senior people at firms, knowing who you are or caring who you are, because you're good at posting jokes online.

• 27:32Logan Bartlett?

  So I actually have a story about this. One account that most people that listen to this probably will know, I had a conversation with recently, and they actually had gotten an internship. They started with their meme account, that is big, and they actually got an internship into a full-time opportunity from the meme account, which is fascinating. I, Nikita, I want you to know, though, just backing up a second, no matter what, we're not clipping the fact that you were at a FinTwit happy hour in LA. Like, that is staying in the podcast regardless.

• 28:06Speaker 01

  Sorry, the worst part of that is that they're not even Big Three consultants. The worst part is you were at a FinTwit meme account happy hour with Ernst & Young consultants. At least McKinsey would have made it okay.

• 28:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, they were funny dudes, but it was definitely, everyone had some social defect, unfortunately.

• 28:24Logan Bartlett?

  I do not, I do not doubt that. I, yeah, no, that's, I believe it 100%. Okay, so Brantley Milligan, I don't know if this story is broadly something that people followed, but I'll give a quick primer for the folks that know, just to get everyone, or folks that don't know, just to get everyone up to speed. So, sorry to be a little elementary, but bear with me. So Brantley Milligan was a member of a decentralized autonomous organization, a DAO. A DAO is basically a company with an encoded set of rules, it's transparent, there's no centralized decision-making authority, and decisions are made based on the token holders. They collectively vote and make decisions.

• 29:03Logan Bartlett?

  So Brantley was Director of Operations at Ethereum Name Service, ENS. ENS is a DAO that, if you ever see in Twitter someone that dot ETH, loganbartlett dot ETH, I don't know if you guys have your dot ETH, I've never gotten around to doing it, but they're the service that runs-

• 29:21Speaker 01

  By the way, if you're listening at home, please go register loganbartlett dot ETH right now and redirect it to somewhere funny.

• 29:25Logan Bartlett?

  You know, one of my friends, I was having this exact conversation, and one of my friends bought, it was, it was about websites, and they bought loganbartlett dot com, so I don't own that, and he renews it every year.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Please, please go home and buy loganbartlett dot XXX and redirect that somewhere funny as well, just for anyone listening.

• 29:42Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. I'm gonna need to go buy all derivatives of Logan Bartlett here. So the dot ETH basically makes it easier to transfer assets between people, organizations, websites. It's also kind of a crypto flex because people can go in and see what you own. Hey, I have all these expensive NFTs or whatever it is. And so basically what happened, Brantley was at this organization and an old tweet came to light from him, 2016, that said, "Homosexual acts are evil. Transgenderism doesn't exist. Abortion is murder. Contraception is perversion. So is masturbation and porn." So that came to light, it kind of blew up, I think on Saturday night, and everyone was sending it around. Milligan didn't delete

• 30:26Logan Bartlett?

  it, didn't retract it. Instead, he doubled down and he said something to the effect of, "I guess you guys finally saw the first words in my Twitter bio, which were Catholic." And so basically saying, "Hey, I believe these things and I'm going to be inclusive of other groups. I don't discriminate against other groups, but these are the things I believe." So the ENS DAO voted to remove Milligan and he was subsequently fired from his position as Director of Operations for ENS. So kind of a calamity situation based on one tweet, one person ironically being canceled, if you will, because they wouldn't

• 31:06Logan Bartlett?

  back off of their religious beliefs, "religious" in air quotes here. So, guys, I don't know any thoughts on this whole situation, reaction, response?

• 31:16Speaker 02

  I think it was an interesting demonstration of DAOs. I think like, people were kind of panicking that he still today has the most voting power of any member in the organization.

• 31:27Logan Bartlett?

  And that's because he owns the most tokens, right? Or people pledged their tokens to him?

• 31:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, so people delegated their votes to him. But it's been dropping fast. I was looking at the chart as of this recording and a lot of people are converging over to and delegating to Coinbase. They're the other, they're the second largest voting bloc.

• 31:51Logan Bartlett?

  Coinbase are notoriously progressive in their views and...

• 31:58Speaker 02

  You know, I think it's, it's, this is a really interesting moment because it is showing how Web 3 is becoming more mainstream because these scandals and cancel, this is not the first one. This is, there's like the third one this year where someone has said something, you know, horribly offensive. But it's ironic because of where crypto started. Crypto is like started from the darkest areas of the internet, like 4chan and the dark web. And I think this is like that, that moment where it's becoming less neck bearded and, because I think they would have tolerated those opinions, maybe just, maybe even three years ago. So

• 32:37Speaker 02

  I think that that's what's kind of interesting. And overall, it's a good thing. But I think it's shown that the culture has changed.

• 32:45Logan Bartlett?

  So another thing that happened this week, Binance invested in Forbes. They invested $200 million in Forbes and Forbes with the, had these, has the intent to SPAC in Q1. So for folks that don't know, Binance is the world's largest crypto exchange by volume. They process the majority of derivatives trading, which are largely illegal in the US because, quote unquote, "the danger they present to retail investors due to market abuse, financial crimes, and the inherent nature of underlying assets which have no basis for valuation." Binance is actually one of the biggest, when you see FTX, when you see Coinbase, like Binance is, is just as big, if not bigger than those folks internationally.

• 33:29Logan Bartlett?

  Now, the CEO, CZ, was pegged by Bloomberg earlier this month, we can link in the show notes, to have a net worth of $96 billion. It's actually likely far larger because it didn't include an estimate of his personal crypto holdings. And so, basically, the reason Binance is a little shady is they're being investigated by the DOJ, the IRS, the CFTC in the US, and a number of European and Asian regulators as well. They're being investigated for Repeatedly withholding information about internal finances, misleading the public about their headquarters and compliance, conducting weak background checks on customers, actively recruiting customers who are known to be extreme money laundering risks from

• 34:14Logan Bartlett?

  Russia and the Ukraine. They're accused by 30 German citizens that they were defrauded, and they process transactions that are linked to an operation assisting an Islamic gunman who killed four people in Vienna. So I don't know your guys' opinions or takes on this whole situation. Forbes, one of these revered business media companies, now taking money from, at a minimum, a shady organization, or at least a dubious one?

• 34:43Speaker 01

  I can't wait to see the Forbes contributor headlines, like, maybe money laundering through Ukrainian hackers is a good thing. Which, by the way, would still only be the second worst Forbes contributor that we've seen in this episode so far.

• 34:55Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's been a tough week for Forbes, between Razzlekhan and taking money from Binance.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Is there any speculation on why they're doing this?

• 35:06Logan Bartlett?

  I think they just need the capital and their ability to go public.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  No, no, why is Binance doing it?

• 35:13Speaker 01

  That's my question.

• 35:14Logan Bartlett?

  Honestly, it just shows how, I mean, I honestly think these crypto businesses right now are just printing so much cash. I think I saw an estimate that these guys, Binance, were generating $20 billion in revenue last year. And so I think they just all have so much cash pouring off their business. You look, FTX is sponsoring every arena, every jersey, you see Coinbase all over NBA games, like, all these businesses are just trying to buy attention and licensing and all that. And so I assume this is a pretty direct play to set some crypto-related agenda by Binance.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  How much do you think it's his ego, right? Like, if I had billions and billions of dollars in crypto, but it was all earned in a way that gave me no social status or cachet whatsoever, which effectively is the situation we're looking at right now. Traditional media is like the inverse of that, right? Very little in the way of profit, but tremendous social cachet, social prestige, social status. It's like almost a like reputation laundering opportunity. Not that I, not that I think they're doing that with Forbes per se, but like associating yourself with legacy media when you've earned money in an unscrupulous way is a really effective way, short of like donating a wing to the Met or something. It's about the best way of rehabbing your reputation that I could think of.

• 36:32Logan Bartlett?

  CZ, Forbes, Bezos, Washington Post, basically.

• 36:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. Who is the, who is the billionaire in LA who bought the LA Times too, right? Like same thing. It's, it's a lot of folks who I would imagine, you know, like the kind of people who, who made their money in, in ways outside of perhaps the East Coast mainstream, who now like gets to go to the fun cocktail parties and whatever.

• 36:54Speaker 02

  Did anyone tell him that Forbes is the worst publication out there? Or like?

• 36:59Logan Bartlett?

  I have, I have, I have many, one friend that works at Forbes. So I will, I will defend. Yeah. Alex Conrad, you made it this far into this episode. I just want you to know I defended your honor there.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Just want you to know we love Forbes. Nikita, he was turned down for buying BuzzFeed.

• 37:18Logan Bartlett?

  Basically pleading to be on the Midas list at some point. This is our like shilling to get on it.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  Please do not keep me from the Midas brink list, Alex Conrad.

• 37:26Speaker 02

  I mean, if he wanted to get invited to like cocktail part, why didn't he like buy The Economist or something? I don't know, like, like an actual respectable publication.

• 37:33Logan Bartlett?

  Well, I think he actually went through, I read something, I, I read something a few, that they, they, they evaluated all the options. I actually think they did look at BuzzFeed, joking aside, and they looked at Forbes and they, they were trying to find their play in all of this. So I think that was the case. And I have to assume, I mean, if this guy's worth $96 billion, like he could do this at a personal level theoretically, right? But this was actually Binance as an entity doing it. And so I have to think this wasn't like a total civic good. It wasn't Amazon investing in the Washington Post. It was, it was, you know, Binance doing it. And so I have to think there's some strategic agenda behind it, or at least they, they pulled enough.

• 38:13Speaker 01

  I don't know. Do you guys remember that information article that came out a while ago that basically said that Amazon Studios is like an expensive loss leader for Jeff Bezos's sex life? Like in some ways, this sort of feels like a similar bit, right? It's like, I don't know that there is any strategy outside of inflating the ego of somebody whose ego is presumably already quite large.

• 38:32Logan Bartlett?

  So the other big news item of the week was John Foley announced that he was stepping down from Peloton. So John Foley was the founder and CEO and now he's stepping up into the executive chairman role. Barry McCarthy, the former CEO of Spotify and Netflix is taking over as CEO. In addition to this, the company is laying off 2,800 employees. Blackwell's Capital actually released a pretty eviscerating takedown on Foley's leadership. We can link to in the show notes, but there were definitely some pretty bad takes. Now, a little bit of inside baseball here. I've heard Foley's like a fantastic guy. And so I wonder, these, the quotes we're about to read sound really, really bad. I assume

• 39:17Logan Bartlett?

  there was probably some level of deprecation in the comments when he actually said him. I didn't go back and link to the source, but in Blackwell's teardown, so on September 22nd of this year, he said, or last year, he said, "We think we are playing chess while others are, to be honest, they aren't even playing checkers." He also said, "I think I'm not a very..." What's that?

• 39:36Speaker 01

  That's a good line. That's funny.

• 39:37Logan Bartlett?

  It's, it's, it's funny if your stock doesn't trade down 70% subsequent to saying that. So next, he said, "I think I'm not a very good manager. I interview almost nobody." In response to a question of if there's anything he doesn't like about being a CEO in that he delegates to others, he said, "Finance, our CFO does 99% of finance. I engage because I want to know how we're doing. But to say I don't add value to her operation is an understatement. You can also say the same with technology. I'll go sometimes months without talking to our CTO," which as a CEO of a technology company, that's kind of rare. Also notably, there was a child that died in a tragic treadmill accident. It was

• 40:20Logan Bartlett?

  really poorly handled after it happened. And they also pointed to his wife running the Peloton apparel's business, which hasn't been a, hasn't been a particular success. So I don't know your guys' thoughts on all this.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  Let's put aside for a second the horrible tragedy of the child, which certainly goes without saying, like... My pro- I feel very sympathetic. Not only do I think, by the way, it's impressive that he built this incredible business, basically invented this category, right, on his own fully, but I have to say, like, any of us could have the same compilation of self-deprecating dry humor weaponized against us by some activist investor. I mean, probably not, because I don't know any activist investors are going after VC firms, but point being, like, anybody who has a "yes" one day when a VC firm goes public. But I can't imagine, like, having a what seems like a relatively good sense of humor and being self-deprecating, and then having, you know, a business falter after building it in less than a decade and

• 41:15Speaker 01

  creating a category, and having that completely weaponized. That makes me feel very sympathetic as somebody who says a lot of self-deprecating quotes.

• 41:22Logan Bartlett?

  It's bold of you to come out in support of founders, Zach. I, it's impressive that you're willing to take such a strong stance here.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  I'm the only VC, in fact, the rare VC who just really loves-

• 41:32Logan Bartlett?

  The rare VC willing to grandstand on behalf of founders. No, I, I, I agree with the overall point, though. I mean, now, to say, I've been so perplexed by Peloton's operations over the last two years. Do you guys have a Peloton?

• 41:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:48Logan Bartlett?

  No. Okay, so I mean-

• 41:50Speaker 01

  Logan, nobody here works out regularly, okay? Let's not pretend like this is some athletic crowd.

• 41:55Logan Bartlett?

  So, I have a Peloton, and I enjoy it. I use it fairly regularly, and it's hard for me to believe, I always thought it was like, kind of, the perfect business in some ways, that it had this big upfront capex spend that covered all the cost of acquisition of the customers. It was actually, I think, profitable at first acquisition, and so that was like, a big upfront cash flow payment, and then there was a subscription to go after it, right? And so you had the best of, like, perpetual licensed SaaS, where it's like, these big upfront cash flow payments, and then the subscription and the annuity. And so, and then the pandemic hits, and you think it's going to accelerate all these aspects of their business, and the stock's actually down from where it was prior to the pandemic.

• 42:39Logan Bartlett?

  And so, it's actually just been baffling to me, all the management issues that they've clearly had with supply chain, and not to say this is easy, no one saw a global- Pandemic coming, but it's always been super perplexing to me, always. The last six months have been super perplexing to me that the stock has gone through all these issues. So in some ways, I think like my understanding is Foley had the voting structure to totally block this and to keep it from happening. And so to some extent, I appreciate the self-awareness. Who knows what's going on behind the scenes, but for him to say, hey, you know, I got it here. It's really special what he built into this iconic company that's still worth whatever eight to $10 billion. But to say, hey, I might not be the person to take it from here.

• 43:23Logan Bartlett?

  I'm sure that was incredibly painful and incredibly difficult, but it kind of kudos to him for at least the recognition that maybe he wasn't the right person from here.

• 43:33Speaker 02

  I mean, relative to all the other COVID stocks, it wasn't, he didn't perform that much worse. I mean, you look at Zoom, it has the same drawdown. I mean, the guys, I mean, aside from his crazy Adam Newman quotes, I think, you know, he has a storied history in tech. He ran a bunch of dot coms back in the day, headed Barnes and Nobles like consumer business. So I, yeah, I think, you know, he's probably getting a short end of the stick for building this company. Like he did, I mean, he did a lot of work here.

• 44:04Speaker 01

  I will say the thing that I'm impressed by is Logan, to your point, we don't often talk about the fact that the founder who starts the company and builds the company, even who takes it to IPO, like may not be the best person to go from IPO for the next 20 years afterwards. And so I think you're right, like I, I don't know, I will continue to grandstand for founders, but this founder in particular, I have a lot of respect for him having the either self-awareness or at least awareness to step back and say, hey, even though I could keep doing this, perhaps I'm not the right person to do so.

• 44:35Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, well, once upon a time, I mean, that narrative has shifted in the last 10, 12 years. Like once upon a time, that was a pretty commonplace narrative in VC that, hey, the person that starts the business might not be the long-term CEO. And so founders lived in, you know, paranoia of, of having this situation play out in the private markets, not the public markets, like famously Sequoia and Cisco is, is one example of this way back when. More recently, I mean, everyone sort of knows the Travis Kalanick Uber situation, right? And so VCs have had a reputation for this. I just feel like the dial has shifted to so founder friendly and founder should be the only CEO. That's interesting to see the counter narrative or actually play out. The other thing that I found fascinating in this whole situation now, there were some self,

• 45:18Logan Bartlett?

  there were some Ls that they took that were probably unnecessary. One of the things when they laid off the 2,800 people, they gave them a year long subscription to Peloton, which just, it's like breaking up with someone and giving them a picture of you as you walk out the door. It's like, hey, you might want to keep this. Like, I'm sure it was very well intentioned, but probably was avoidable.

• 45:42Speaker 01

  I mean, you can't even use your, like, if, you know, if you're getting fired from Peloton, you don't have a job, you're probably going to go then sell your Peloton. So I know what you're going to do with a one-year subscription afterwards.

• 45:52Logan Bartlett?

  Well, I remain a happy Peloton user and hopefully this next journey will actually work together fully and the new CEO. And so hopefully there's a, there's a future path here that leads to some share price appreciation. I, my concern would be that CEOs are going to be worried about these types of things being weaponized against them in the future and that we're going to end up with people that are humorless like once upon a time we had, so.

• 46:21Speaker 02

  Wait, wait, one last question for you guys. How many of your friends were bag holders of Peloton stock?

• 46:28Logan Bartlett?

  I didn't hear from many, so if they were, they were not willing to profess it.

• 46:32Speaker 01

  A lot of my friends.

• 46:33Speaker 02

  Half my group chats are down like six figures.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  I mean, honestly.

• 46:39Logan Bartlett?

  Is that because they were, they were owners and loved the product and, and just bought the stock as well?

• 46:45Speaker 02

  They were just mindlessly buying meme stocks and they, they went all in on Peloton. For some of them, I think it was like 30% of their portfolio.

• 46:53Logan Bartlett?

  Wow.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  Oh, my gosh. Wow.

• 46:55Logan Bartlett?

  Well, yeah, it was, is the operative word.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  I was like iPad on a bike. No, thank you.

• 47:01Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, was is doing a lot of work in that sentence for, for their 30%.

• 47:06Speaker 01

  Nikita, once again, preserving his ability to buy G wagons where others have failed.

• 47:15Logan Bartlett?

  Well, that'll do it for our third episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. Thanks for joining us and making it through this episode with us. Zach, any parting thoughts?

• 47:26Speaker 01

  We'll be back next week. If you happen to launder billions and billions of dollars, please post some raps now so we can just get those out ahead of next week.

• 47:35Logan Bartlett?

  Nikita, the listeners are anxiously awaiting. At least give one clue. We can't keep teasing that you're going to announce your app here on the show and people are going to listen all the way through.

• 47:46Speaker 02

  I feel like this has been really unfair and I shouldn't keep teasing the audience. So I'm going to do the big reveal. What I'm actually building right now is...