#566 Chris Zarou on Building An Engaged Fan Base

Chris Zarou is an entrepreneur and investor. He is the mastermind behind the legendary rise of artist Logic, along with a host of other incredibly talented individuals. In this conversation, we discuss the creator world, how to build an audience, intersection of entertainment and tech, fans vs listeners, music distribution, talent in startups, playing not to lose, and bitcoin. ======================= Did you know nearly 338 million dollars worth of NFTs were sent last year? And in 2021 that number is growing faster than ever. Looking to make your first NFT? Check out NEAR’s fast, scalable, low-cost, open-source platform. Learn why NEAR is the infrastructure for innovation at near.org: https://near.org/?utm_campaign=pomp ======================= Exodus is an absolute game changer in the crypto wallet space, and we’ve teamed up to offer an exclusive discount for you, as listeners of the podcast. Sign up for Exodus today using my promo code Exodus.com/pomp. This is a no brainer for both newcomers and crypto heavyweights - go sign up today. ======================= With 10M+ users, Crypto.com is the easiest place to buy, and sell 100+ cryptocurrencies. The Crypto.com Visa Card gives you up to 8% back instantly, and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, Crypto.com lets you earn up to 8.5% p.a. on BTC, and 14% p.a. on stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the Crypto.com App with code "pomp". Download the App now: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/pomppodcast2021 =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony 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. Chris Zerou is an entrepreneur and investor. He's the mastermind behind the legendary rise of Artist Logic, along with a host of other incredibly talented individuals. In this conversation, we discuss the creator world, how to build an audience, intersection of entertainment and tech, fans vs. listeners, music distribution, talent in startups, planning not to lose, and of course Bitcoin. I really enjoyed this conversation with Chris, and I hope you enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors. First up is NEAR. NEAR is an open source platform that accelerates

• 0:47Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:32Anthony Pompliano?

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• 2:16Anthony Pompliano?

  place to buy and sell 100-plus cryptocurrencies. The crypto.com Visa card gives you up to 8% back instantly and 100% back on Spotify and Netflix. Also, crypto.com lets you earn very high rates of interest on Bitcoin and stablecoins. Get $25 when you download the crypto.com app with code POP. Again, download the crypto.com app, use code POP, and you get $25 for free. Download the app today by clicking on the link in the description, crypto.com. All right, let's get into this episode with Chris. I hope you enjoy this one.

• 2:48Speaker 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.

• 3:16Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, guys. Bang, bang. I've got Chris here with me. Thanks for doing this, man.

• 3:19Speaker 02

  Of course, man. Thanks for having me.

• 3:21Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. You've got one of the craziest stories that I know, and there's a lot of similarities, I think, between what you started doing and what you're doing now in investing. But on the surface, most people wouldn't understand that. Let's just start from like the very beginning. You are how old before you start a talent management business?

• 3:39Speaker 02

  20. 20 years old.

• 3:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And at 20, you're trying to figure out like what you want to do, or you always knew you wanted to go into talent management?

• 3:45Speaker 02

  No, really had no idea. Stumbled into it. I was on the path to become an athlete, tried to become a professional athlete. I was a Division I soccer player. Learned really quickly that wasn't going to work out after my sophomore season. Kind of cold turkey, dropped it, and was like, okay, what's next, right? You go through that soul searching. For me, it was like, okay, what am I passionate about outside of this sport? It was music was the answer for me and okay, how do I get involved with music? Landed on talent management, I would go to Barnes and Noble, kind of just read music business books to learn about it. I landed on talent management because I was like, okay, there's no barrier to entry here. If I can find talent and break that talent, that's my foot in the door. So literally just stumbled into it.

• 4:26Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And so when you start understanding that, uh, was there things you learned by reading like the talent management books? Or the like business books that you were like, okay, here's like the two or three things I gotta do this. Or was it literally just like, just find the right person?

• 4:39Speaker 02

  It was more, for me, it was more about finding the right person and looking back now, if I had tried to educate myself on that current music business back in 2010, 2011, I think I would have been brainwashed, right? I think a, a piece of my success was not having the experience. So I got to, I understood the internet and I understood, okay, where audience was, where attention was, and I knew how to put my artists in front of them. That was kind of how we broke through and it was also a really unique time in the music business. The recorded piece of music was kind of dying. These labels were having a really rough time because that was the era where everybody was pirating music, right? And it allowed me and it really, because I understood the dynamics where I lived, that's how I found talent. There was this, these music blogs, right?

• 5:23Speaker 02

  It was this, we call it the blog era, it was a huge, uh, piece of the music business. People my age, I kind of came up with it.

• 5:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Is this like DatPiff and like a bunch of those sites?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  That's a great example, but it was more like college kids curated blogs, right? Where they identified talent, find talent and post the talent and you would just go to discover up and coming talent. That's where I found my artist and I had a relationship with these kids. That's how I marketed them. It was, it was that simple and executives didn't understand it, experienced managers didn't understand it.

• 5:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And so when you say they didn't understand it, they didn't know it existed?

• 5:53Speaker 02

  They didn't know it existed. I was getting calls in the early days of managing logic from executives that I had started building a relationship with. And I'd have a video and it'd have 500,000 views after 48 hours, like, yo, how are you doing this? They were dumbfounded.

• 6:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm-hmm. And what were you doing?

• 6:06Speaker 02

  I was using those websites. It was just relationships, right? It was that, because people were checking those websites and then again, word of mouth kicked in. This was, the internet wasn't as noisy then and I think that was a really special time. So if you discovered logic, right, you'd want to go deeper. You went through his entire discography, right? You told your friends about it. It's also the aux cord era. Everybody was sharing music, whether you're at a pregame, you're driving in your car. And I just noticed word of mouth, it spread so quickly.

• 6:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Talk me through when you first found Logic. Is that the first artist that you found?

• 6:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Or is that just the first major artist?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  That, the second artist I ever worked with. There's, rapper out of Philly prior to that, but it was the first success I ever had. Came across him on the internet, um, really didn't have much music out. It was like an a cappella video of him rapping on the University of Maryland campus. He lived in Maryland at the time. And I kind of cold reached out to him on Facebook and I was like,

• 6:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Just Facebook message, slide right in the DMs, like, what's up, man?

• 7:00Speaker 02

  He didn't even have an artist page. I had to find like his personal Facebook. That's how early it was.

• 7:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  Reached out to him and was like, hey, you know, I think you're talented. I'd love to manage you. And Logic's a funny guy.

• 7:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Did he know what that was?

• 7:11Speaker 02

  He did, but he called me and he was like, you don't have any experience. And I was like, I know that. Give me a shot. Like, just trust me. That's kind of the agreement that we had. I was like, don't worry about paperwork. Just give me a shot. And, and it, you know, fortunately worked out.

• 7:24Anthony Pompliano?

  So you see him, uh, was there anything that you were like, like this guy's a star in the making? Was it?

• 7:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 7:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Lyrics? Was it just like, kind of like stage presence, if you will? Or was it just literally intuition? Like, I don't know. I can't explain it, but like, this guy's real.

• 7:38Speaker 02

  It was more intuition from, I think, me being such a fan of hip hop. I was like, okay, this kid is a student of the game, right? This kid has worked at his craft. That, that's what stood out to me.

• 7:48Anthony Pompliano?

  You could tell that by watching?

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Right away.

• 7:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 7:49Speaker 02

  Right? And then obviously got to know him more and more and hear more music. I'm like, okay, that was very true. Um, so that kind of was what drew me to him.

• 7:56Anthony Pompliano?

  And once you guys decide like, all right, let's work together. This is 2011-ish?

• 8:01Speaker 02

  2011.

• 8:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. So in 2011, uh, social media is not huge, right? Like, like very, very different world that you've already described. What do you do? Because you basically take a kid that you find in Maryland who nobody knows.

• 8:12Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 8:13Anthony Pompliano?

  And it becomes Logic, right? And for all intents and purposes, that's like a zero to one type event. Uh, that doesn't happen overnight. Like, what are the steps, kind of from an execution standpoint, you guys did? To take Logic's talent and actually make it this household name?

• 8:30Speaker 02

  Sure. It, knowing what I understood, and I think, like I said a couple of minutes ago, I understood the internet. And I understood where attention was, right? And had the relationship with all these blogs. And again, at the time, you couldn't even really get behind the scene out of it. So I would just, again, it was all intuition. I was like, okay, I would reverse engineer other artists breaking. Okay, okay. YouTube seems to be playing a big role in this artist's career. So I would sit Logic down and be like, hey, we need to shoot a music video for almost every song on this project, right? Because that's really how we're gonna market you and we'd roll it out slowly as kind of singles, but there'd be five or six off a mixtape. Because YouTube was, that was really the only music streaming platform, if you think about it, right? This is pre Spotify, pre Apple Music. So it's a way for kids to easily share music.

• 9:14Speaker 02

  When you post on your Facebook at the time, it would clean embedded in Facebook, so you could watch it across your newsfeed. Twitter did the same thing at the time. So we shot a video for every single, single that we handpicked. And it was low budget. Like I, we would, I would bargain with directors. There's one director we worked with, his name was Gravity. I was like, hey, I'll let you put your logo at the beginning of the video, because we don't have a budget to pay you. And that was the trade-off.

• 9:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And so that was equal, because that person's betting my work plus Logic's talent is gonna be a viral video, right?

• 9:45Speaker 02

  And we started getting, you know, some great views at the time, so it was worth it to him at the point. And we ended up growing and building with that kid for a couple of years. So it was just figuring it out and think, you know, again, intuition, where I thought talent was gonna be, putting Logic there. And then word of mouth just did its thing and started to take off.

• 10:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, so word of mouth kind of did its thing, right? We've talked quite a bit about how you kind of methodically built a really, really rabid fanbase. And for those that aren't familiar with Logic's fanbase, there's like, I don't know, the Drakes and the Jay-Z's and like these massive, massive names. And yes, they have some subset that care a lot. But on a percentage basis, majority of their audience is more of a passive kind of listener, right? It's, hey, I like Jay-Z's music, but if Jay-Z comes to town, I'm not literally gonna not go to my brother's birthday party to go, right? Logic actually has a very high percentage of his audience that literally will do anything that he is doing or into or whatever, because it's almost like a measurement of engagement,

• 10:46Anthony Pompliano?

  right? It's not passive, it's much more kind of intentional. So, one of the things you told me before is, you guys would go on these city by city tours, and it sounds like it would start out really, really small, and then you basically would just like, okay, the next time we come, like, increase it, like, walk through, like, why did you go on the city tours? And like, how did you actually execute that?

• 11:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, the quick answer is a way to monetize his audience, because at the time, we were giving away free music, so we weren't making any money off of it. And I think, back to your prior question, it didn't happen overnight. It was, what we focused on, him and I talked about it every day, we'd say small wins. So, that's what kind of got me up in the morning, I was like, okay, let's get a small win today, right? Because I started to see it, day by day, it was compounding. And I'm like, okay, this is kind of really happening, right? So, you wouldn't have this major viral moment, but every single day, I'd refresh the video and have more views, I'd look at the streams, it'd be more streams, I'd look at his social followers, it'd be more, and then I realized, it started compounding at a higher growth rate as time went on. And then I was like, okay, I think, it was all intuition based. We didn't have data, like I said, the

• 11:49Speaker 02

  way you get like, Spotify has a backend that is just fucking incredible, it gives you so much information, where the listeners are coming from, the age of that listener, so you know your entire audience demographic, right? You know where they are, where they're consuming your music. We had no clue. So, it was an intuition thing where I'm like, I remember calling him, I'm like, I think we could probably tour, right? And again, learning as we went, throwing a tour together, I think we did 35 cities on that first run, rented a minivan, a Nissan Altima, and jammed them and toured the country, man.

• 12:20Anthony Pompliano?

  What does that mean when you go on a tour? Like, do you go to a park? Do you go to like, a bar? Like?

• 12:25Speaker 02

  We were doing, we were doing probably 250 to 350 cap rooms, very small rooms, right? We had no tour history, and it was all of us working with promoters, and we had an agent that we worked at the time, nobody would give us guarantees. So, the way touring business works, is you'll get a flat guarantee, you do really well, you'll get back end, right? Because Logic had no tour history, nobody wanted to give us guarantees.

• 12:46Anthony Pompliano?

  Guarantee would be like, hey, come here and play. We'll pay you, you know, $10,000 to play. And then, oh, by the way, if you hit some metric, then we'll cut you another check for 10K. So you can make up to $20,000 for playing tonight, but 10 is upfront guaranteed. The other 10 is you gotta, you gotta pull in the audience.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Exactly that. So we embarked on this tour, again, no guarantee. So like, it didn't work out. We lost, we lost literally everything. So to backtrack a little bit, the way we had the startup capital. So we bootstrapped the business. My management company never raised money. We had to sign a record deal in order to fund that first tour, right? So we literally raised, like, I was like, hey, Logic, I'll put my advance in. He put me, me and him split the money. We went on tour and it just worked out. And it was figuring it out as we went. I had never toured before, obviously. And, and, you know, even the accounting was just like, I look back at it, I'm embarrassed now.

• 13:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Tell them the cash story. The cash story is so good.

• 13:38Speaker 02

  So again, being a door deal, you'd settle the end of the night in cash, depending how the tour did. And we crushed. We ended up selling.

• 13:44Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So it was just so people understand, a door deal basically means no guarantee. People are coming into the.

• 13:48Speaker 02

  You'll get 85, 90% of every ticket sold.

• 13:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. So when people show up, they're literally paying cash. They're getting a ticket. They're walking inside, but that cash that they just paid is ultimately supposed to end up in your pocket. 80, 85%, 90%, whatever. But it's sitting in cash, which, you know, depending on who's at the door, depending on what the, the venue is, gets kind of sketchy if all of a sudden cash starts disappearing or whatever.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  So my accounting system at the time, right before we went on the tour, I, I had manila envelopes. I'm like, all right, 35 cities, Denver, Colorado. I'd write out and shoot, right? And I have it in a backpack and I was like, the end of the night, I'm going to settle and I'm going to literally, it was like a ledger and I would write everything. So if somebody needed $20 for weed, minus 20 for weed, right? And we finished the entire tour. When I say I look back, I'm embarrassed. It was in that one backpack, right? We'd be in a green room. I'd put it down in the corner and we'd all leave the room. It's 65, 70,000 dollars and it's just cash.

• 14:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And literally all of the expenses of Logic's tour is written on manila envelopes, just in a backpack together.

• 14:46Speaker 02

  Everything. And then post tour, right? We're at my house. I was working with Harrison Remler, who you know now, um, who's the CEO of my company at the time was an intern. He ended up tour Managing for me on that tour. I left. I did the first 10 shows, kind of showed him the ropes. So we're literally in my parents' basement at the time where we built the business out of. And we're trying to then input everything into like an Excel spreadsheet and have it neat because we had to bring the cash into the bank.

• 15:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they wanted to know where the hell did you guys get this cash? You're pulling out of a backpack.

• 15:13Speaker 02

  So, so we literally were sitting there. We're taking out the cash. We're putting the cash on top of the envelopes, right? I was working in full time. So it was all, it was all laid out on the floor. So you'd have Denver and it'd be cash on top of it. You have New York City cash on top of it. I was going to work. So I was in college, working full time and managing Logic at the time. And I was like, all right, Howard, finish up here. You got it. I leave, I come back. Okay? He tried to clean up, took all the envelopes, ripped them up, threw them out. I get back, there's just 35 piles of cash. So we had no idea. So we had no idea, no idea what went wrong. Just put it on the bank and just said, hey, we're going to split. I'll take my commission. You get the rest. And that was it.

• 15:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  Dude, like it wasn't glamorous back then. And a lot of people think like, oh, it's entertainment. It's music business. And it was like really hard work, like just grit and, and like the tour, you're jammed body to body in the bed. Like I rode that minivan like this.

• 16:05Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And when we got back to New York, so we ended the tour in New York and we did everything like it wasn't by the book. I, the rentals were in my name. So I rented them from Long Island and

• 16:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Rentals, uh, the cars.

• 16:16Speaker 02

  The minivan in the San Antonio. Toured the country, went to California and came back and I was doing the paperwork and it's like, you can't leave New York State. We literally drove across the country and came back. I was like, well, I'm going to return them in New York. So who's going to know? Meanwhile, they're taking photos of our license plate, every EZ Pass and every, it was, uh, yeah.

• 16:33Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you do that, how much of the success of this first tour is because you guys didn't do what everyone else did? Versus no, if we had done what everyone else did, we would have been way more successful.

• 16:44Speaker 02

  No, I think it wasn't the tour. If we had done what everyone else had done, I don't think we would have got Logic's career off the ground.

• 16:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain that.

• 16:51Speaker 02

  It was doing things our way. That was kind of a little bit different. And that's why I was getting calls from executives going, yo, how are you doing this? How are you building this audience? It was just solely living on the internet. Like a lot of times I say Logic He's kind of a child of the internet. We built his entire career on the internet by giving away free product. Which again, record executives and labels looked at me like we were nuts. It's like, the one thing that you can monetize, you're giving away for free. And I would get frustrated because I'm like, you don't understand, I'm building an engaged audience. They're creating emotional connection with this artist. They're not going anywhere. When it's time to monetize, we'll monetize, right?

• 17:28Anthony Pompliano?

  How important is it, uh, building an audience on the internet's one thing, right? You can go, you can tweet, post on YouTube, whatever. Uh, versus actually going and seeing your 200 fans in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, right? And being able to either have them see you and, and, and can be there in person, or even signing things, or taking photos with them, or like, doing that type of in-person, right? Like, like, is that actually a really key ingredient here versus just, oh yeah, we were on the internet, we were good at the internet, but like, we could have done it without that in-person stuff?

• 17:57Speaker 02

  That's a great question. I think back then, it was so important. We were kind of in the dark on exactly who his audience was because we didn't have the data that you can get now, right? We didn't know kind of the, the age demo, we didn't know, you know, so that first tour was everything for me. I would go and generally be a balcony-er. I would just stare at these fans and I'd go, okay, this is who his audience is. Now let me try and go where they're gonna be, or where I think they're gonna be, and continue to market him. So that's kind of how we developed everything from the beginning. But now, you can build anything on the internet and you have that information, right? So you shouldn't be surprised when you do sell a show out to see who's there. But back then, it was like, I had to learn who was gonna be there.

• 18:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you think about, um, the idea of like, okay, I now understand who the actual demographic is, right? I'm assuming that it was like, hey, who's your demographic? I don't know, young, right? Like, or college, or whatever it was. Uh, but once you start to understand, all right, this is actually who these people are. What do you do to like, go figure out what else they like, or go and put him somewhere else, right? Because he doesn't have enough star power at this time, it sounds like, to like, walk in and do deals and do all this kind of crazy stuff. It's still a lot of like guerrilla marketing, but it's not just around music. It's really kind of building this like cultural, uh, kind of trend around an individual.

• 19:09Speaker 02

  Very much so. I think you had to try and really understand who that audience was, who else they'd listen to, what they consumed. You know, even lifestyle brands, we did a deal early on with Fila, right? Which was kind of an old, you know, sports brand that was trying to, you know, have a resurgence and it made a lot of sense for Logic's brand at the time. He's not a high-end, street fashion dude, right? It wouldn't have made sense back then to do a deal with Supreme, right? It was funny, as we started to see it, these kids also kind of lived vicariously through him. So in one of the tours when we did that deal, I started seeing kids show up in Fila gear every day. Right? So it was kind of cool and I realized, okay, this is more than just kind of a fanbase. This is kind of like, it's a lifestyle type thing for him.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  But yeah, I think understanding who your audience is the most important thing you can do. And then tripling and doubling down on over-delivering to that audience. And a lot of people can say they did that. We lived that. I think Logic, you know, as an artist, probably has some of the best examples of doing that. His sophomore album, it was literally, yeah, how can we continue to double down? How can we continue? And from the earliest days, right? Again, and where I keep saying future trends and predicting and putting him there, he was, he lived on Ustream, right? And this is a decade ago. Now you talk about Twitch, right? And we just did a Twitch deal a decade later. We were live streaming to his fans 10 years ago. He'd sit on Twitter, go on Ustream and engage with these kids. It'd be 35 kids there, right?

• 20:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, that's what people don't understand, right? Just real quickly, when we talk about streaming or building an audience, he's not turning on one of these platforms like, oh, there's 10,000 people here, right? You're talking about 35 fucking people on the other end of it. And it's day in, day out, day in, day out.

• 20:53Speaker 02

  Every day. He knew the early fans by their names. They still come to shows now. And I used to say to him at the time, I'm like, that kid is going to buy music, buy merch, buy tickets a decade from now. And we've seen it play out, right? So he lived on Ustream, he would engage with 35 kids, right? So identifying, you know, those trends and doing it, but also then saying, okay, as he started to get bigger where that wasn't really possible anymore, it was too big. How can we continue to double down? Then use social media as kind of a microphone, megaphone. So his sophomore album, it was- Kind of him and I brainstorming how we could do that. And I kind of came up with the idea, I was like, what if we just kind of bust you, he lived in LA at the time. Needed to be in New York for press and media when his album came out two weeks later.

• 21:36Speaker 02

  I was like, what if we did a 14 day bust tour where across the country, we literally stopped at fans' houses. Right, we ran a contest, stopped at fans' houses, knocked on their door. And you went inside and played them the album one on one, right, you had that experience before it came out, right? And we captured that content and we put that content out. That's exactly what we did and I've never seen an artist do something like that.

• 21:56Anthony Pompliano?

  How long was the album?

• 21:58Speaker 02

  That album was probably an hour and 20 minutes.

• 22:00Anthony Pompliano?

  So literally, I'm gonna go into somebody's house that I've never met before, but is a fan of me. I'm gonna play the album, I'm gonna interact with them, I'm gonna spend an hour and a half, two hours, whatever with them, and then I'm gonna go to the next one. And that was one person.

• 22:09Speaker 02

  One person.

• 22:10Anthony Pompliano?

  And then do it again, and again, and again, and again.

• 22:12Speaker 02

  And again, we did it for two weeks straight. And ended up in New York when the album came out. But it was such a cool moment, so then we documented. And Logic would kind of post on social media what that interaction was. Hey, this is Jacob from San Antonio, Texas, right? Jacob's 17 years old, he's this, and would tell a little bit story, they had an interaction. But that fan got a moment they're gonna remember for the rest of their life. Logic sat there, not only played the album one on one, gave him a little bit behind the scenes, hey, this is my inspiration for this song. So I was going through in my life when I made this song. And then kind of learning from that experience and taking for me and doing it again, but trying to perfect it even better with other clients. So like, my second client, John Bellion, who I'm still working with to this day. We did the same exact thing a year later, right?

• 22:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 22:56Speaker 02

  But stepped it up a notch. So he was playing live in the living room. We did an entire acoustic show for that person and their family in their living room. So it's like, really meaning it when we said doubling down and over delivering to your audience.

• 23:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, and so when you start to think about this, uh, like, let's go back to Logic for a second. I think everyone thinks of him initially as a musician, right? As a rapper, however you want to say it, but a performer. There's a lot of different facets to his life. There's that aspect, there's chess, right? You start getting into the various personalities or kind of pseudonyms, if you will, right? Or kind of brands around him. Talk about just, it's one thing to say, okay, you as a performer, I'm gonna take you, I'm gonna take you city to city. We're gonna use the internet, we're gonna build an audience. And if we have audience and fans, then we can figure out how to build a business around you as a performer. But you guys built an entire franchise, right? And there's multiple ways to look at this. So like, where did that come from?

• 23:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that you saying, hey, we should go build a whole franchise? Is that just naturally kind of, okay, here's the next kind of step we take? Like, how does that come together?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  It was a learning experience as we kind of went. I think his early days of Logic, if you look at a lot of that first album, it was 2014, it was called Under Pressure. Even if you look, he was on the Double X L freshman cover, which is, you know, for an up and coming artist, it's the biggest thing you can get. It's basically predicting, it's a who's next list, right? And you go and you do that big photo shoot for the cover. And if you look at what Logic's wearing, he's got, you know, a big jacket on, three, four gold chains. And it so wasn't who he is. Right now, we all know who Logic is, he's not that guy. We had a stylist for the shoot. We thought we needed to fit in the box of hip-hop. When Logic really lived on the outside of it.

• 24:41Speaker 02

  And once I realized that, I just started nudging him to be more and more of himself. The more human and himself he became, those personas started getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And we were able to kind of build these different brands around him, because they were all part of him, right? I think because he's a versatile artist, Bobby Tarantino, one of his personas, is like a little bit more fun, right? I think Young Sinatra's boom bap hip-hop, which originally is what drew me when I reached out to him. And then we also built merchandise brands around those personas. And we're able to really expand. You brought up him playing chess. He had an era where he kind of perfected a Rubik's Cube. So he's going to do press and he's going to freestyle at these radio stations. I'm like, yo, just bring a Rubik's Cube. He started freestyling and doing it with his eyes closed.

• 25:25Speaker 02

  You know, his sophomore album, we did a panel at Comic-Con, because like, we started realizing some of his audience, it was Kind of this nerd culture thing. It's like, let's lean into it, right? And looking back now, I think he kind of grew what hip hop was and what's acceptable in hip hop. Because he didn't fit in that box. And if we had continuously tried to put him in that box, I think we would have failed miserably. So I think the biggest thing was identifying that, learning from and saying, listen, let's triple down on who you are.

• 25:51Anthony Pompliano?

  How important is it to have the right person to do this with?

• 25:55Speaker 02

  Oh, it's so important, right? Because if you're not authentic and genuine, that's the biggest thing about Logic. He's just such a genuine guy. Um, I think it would be impossible because I think audience can see through that and a fanbase can see right through that. And I think they realize how genuine he was. Like this dude's doing Rubiskew because he loves it. This dude is playing chess on Twitch now versus grandmasters because he loves it, you know?

• 26:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, what you've done is you've basically built a talent management business, right? And, uh, not once, you've done it many times with multiple artists. Uh, but you started to do more investing.

• 26:29Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 26:29Anthony Pompliano?

  And I think when we first started talking, uh, at first it's like, okay, anyone who's successful at anything, like they want to have some investments. But the more that we've gotten to know each other, it feels like there's a really, really strong connection between talent management and startup investing. Cause ultimately what you're doing is you're picking talent.

• 26:45Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 26:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? So talk a little bit just about like, how do you see those similarities? And like, is it literally the same way I pick Logic out of a crowd? I can go pick the next startup founder that I think will have like a higher probability of success? Or is that not really a great comparison?

• 27:01Speaker 02

  I wouldn't say picking a startup founder out of a crowd, but I think when you work with successful people, right? Like identifying Logic and then doing it several times over and building, you know, a talent management company. You're like, okay, well, maybe I have a unique ability to identify talent, right? And then the second aspect of that, it's not only identifying talent, it's having an all unique worldview and knowing where the world is going to be and putting that artist there. Cause that's how we did everything. When you're bootstrapping a company and you don't have hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars in marketing costs, you just had to outsmart everyone and put that artist where the world was gonna be, right? They'd be a first mover. Anytime a social media application came out, Logic was the first. He built a massive audience in the early days of Snapchat, right?

• 27:44Speaker 02

  So it's it's using those two things and as I grew over the course of the decade, I started realizing about three years ago that there's a lot of comparisons. As it was organic, right? People would start introducing me to, you know, startups and founders and having the ability to say, okay, this person kind of has those, you know, qualities of what some of the artists that I invested in have. And then also, you know, as they're pitching me, listening to that and going, well, well, I know where the world is moving. I'm going to bet on this. So it's kind of both those things. When it was kind of one of those moments like, wow, there is really a lot of similarities between these two things.

• 28:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Once you find talent from a music standpoint, you do a lot of work in terms of what I'll call kind of behind the scenes. Really kind of helping them plot, what are the intentional steps we're going to take to get the ultimate goal, right? How does that play into then helping a startup founder or a company? Right? Because it's very similar. A lot of investors, you have to help from a strategic standpoint. You're not there every day doing stuff. But just like, how do you see the experience you have for music porting over?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think I can help in in where I think I understand the world the best. And that's kind of living in the entertainment and tech space for a decade. Building an audience, right? And I think any startup at a certain point needs to needs to get users. So it's over a decade of experience and also I grew a business, right? I bootstrapped the business and I think it's it's trying to add value in in the world that I know, right? If something as I really can't add value in, I tend not to invest in it. Because I don't see the point. I was like, I can't add you value.

• 29:17Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the areas of investing, I think that people are super interested in today is this like creator economy, right? We've talked previously about this idea of like, what's the difference between logic, the musician, versus somebody who's a Twitch streamer, versus somebody who's on TikTok, versus somebody who's got an email newsletter, versus a podcast, versus somebody who gets a Netflix deal. They're all creating content. They're all trying to build fans, right? They're trying to have engagement, like all this stuff. So how do you look at the evolution over the last 10 years or so, since you started to today, of like what a creator is and and kind of all the tools and analytics and stuff that are available to them?

• 29:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think most creators have always been there, but I don't think there was the distribution channels for them to kind of build an audience, right? And now what you're seeing is kind of this middle class emerge, right? And one of the themes I've been obsessed with the past couple of years is niche, right? Because Story about, it was actually the day, I was always, I always knew Logic was a niche artist, right? And we didn't care about having the big pop culture moment. Ultimately, that came, right? But it was like, let's just triple down on this audience that you have. He, he sold out the garden, right? And that was a big deal. I'm a New York guy. And like any other morning, I'm on my run. I lived in the East Village at the time. I was in the East River Run. And I was running through the city and I had a thought. I was like,

• 30:36Speaker 02

  99.9% of people right now have no idea Logic's playing MSG tonight, right? And I was like, so that is the pinnacle as an entertainer, selling out that arena, right? But I realized like, the eight million people in the city, there's only going to be 15,000 people in that room tonight. That's a niche business, right? So it started getting me to think more and more about niche. And then as kind of the internet evolved, tech evolved, like what you're seeing now is the middle-class economy just boom. I use an example as an analogy, like Betty Sue in North Dakota, who bakes cookies on YouTube with her daughter and right? And other moms with their daughters watch them and they use the same recipes. She can actually have a real business, like doing that now and can live off YouTube ad revenue and maybe sell recipes.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  So I think if you have a, but again, the one thing that I try to remind people, you have to be talented. You can't just turn on a microphone and start a podcast. You have, you have to be, there's gotta be some talent there. You have to be adding value to an audience or else I don't, I don't think it'll, it'll work.

• 31:37Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you're doing that, that is again, like more from the creator seat. What about the tools, right? How has that stuff changed? Whereas, you know, now if you had the tools you have today, back in 2011, my guess is you guys would be even bigger, right? You were already super successful, but like you'd be even bigger because it's just leverage on the ideas that you had.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  Sure. There's so many more ways now because of tools that you can monetize and also build an audience. You just said like, whether it's an email, paid email newsletter, whether it's a podcast, right? When we started out a decade ago, there was very few ways you can do that. And now what I say to artists, like unfortunately you can't just make music anymore. I think music is just, it's an extension of your brand. You have to build your brand, right? And again, it's easier for some people based off their personalities than it is with others. Like I think Logic, that became natural, right? Pandemic happens and we're sitting there, go, how do we generate revenue, right? We're going to lose X number of dollars in touring income. I knew the Twitch executives. We started having conversations organically. It turned into a Twitch deal, right?

• 32:42Speaker 02

  And that was groundbreaking for Twitch at the time. They'd never done a deal with an artist before. And because of who Logic is, he can interact with his audience that way. He's playing chess on there. He'll go and make beats for an hour and kids love that, right? I've been going to studio with him for 10 years. I don't find it that interesting anymore. Kids love that, right? That's perspective they don't normally get. So I think now there's just so many ways that if you're not... But again, a piece of advice, do what's natural to you, right? If you're not a good writer, don't do a paid newsletter, right? If you're better speaking and on camera, do YouTube vlogs. And we were doing all this stuff 10 years ago. From that first tour I mentioned, a decade ago, we have vlogs all on YouTube. You go back and watch that entire tour, right? Like, it's stuff, we were doing it 10 years ago.

• 33:26Anthony Pompliano?

  And when you were doing it, were you measuring any of this? Like, in terms of analytics or success? Or like, why keep doing it? It's one thing to say, "Oh, this should be a good idea." What gives you the confidence to keep doing it?

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Because it was growing, so we saw it. And it was like, small W, right? Okay, this vlog this week did better than last week's vlog. That's positive, let's do it again. And it was, like I said, the small wins adding up on a daily basis. Again, when you're first starting out, to this day, it's no different. You have to see growth and just let that keep you going, give the motivation to continue doing what you're doing.

• 34:00Anthony Pompliano?

  If you go back, what are the tools today that you're like, "This was a game changer for artists," whether they're musicians or otherwise? Is it just streaming? For example, like, hey, whether it's Twitch, streaming video, streaming music on the Spotify's, Apple Musics? Is it something else? Like, what are those inflection points now, kind of looking back, that you're like, "Man, maybe people didn't understand it at the time, but this really changed the game."

• 34:26Speaker 02

  Social media.

• 34:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Social media is a big one.

• 34:28Speaker 02

  Why you can take... A kid from Maryland and me building out of my parents basement, we're both 20 years old and you know, completely get it off the ground to where every single record company is calling us, asking us how we were doing what we're doing.

• 34:41Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:42Speaker 02

  Starting and you know, selling on a national tour. He, he sold out three and a half national tours in Europe twice before he even put out his debut album.

• 34:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:50Speaker 02

  Everybody was heads, they're like, how did you do this?

• 34:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 34:52Speaker 02

  It was social media. That was completely game changing for, for us.

• 34:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there a corollary in like the startup world to mixtapes? Like mixtapes almost feel like a half R and D, half customer acquisition and then like half practice to some degree, right? Like

• 35:10Speaker 02

  Really well said. Yeah, I agree. I think

• 35:12Anthony Pompliano?

  I guess that was three halves. So you can't really get a whole, but go ahead.

• 35:14Speaker 02

  No, but it was, it was a way for us to see what his audience liked.

• 35:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Right? Those mixtapes are, we had 22, 23 songs. They were big mixtapes and we got to see what performed better, um, what his audience engaged with. And I think as he developed, he was also like, it's a talent, right? That's him in the gym, working on his free throw, but he's doing it publicly. I think learning in public is, is something that I advise a lot of people to do. Um, that's what that, to me, that's what mixtapes is, learning in public, right? You're trying things, you're figuring it out. He was perfecting, you know, his skill. Um, and by the time it was ready for his debut album, I think it was because of all of the, the mixtapes and music we had put out.

• 35:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you start to think through, uh, investing, are there certain things you're looking for, or is it just, I'm looking for the founder?

• 35:58Speaker 02

  More, more often than not, for me, it's the founder. They have that, again, it's intuition based, right? And this is learning a lot, how I've grown. So as an investor, especially over the course of the past three years, right? I had took a bunch of early bets in my life, right? You know, I bet my life on Logic and, and John, my first two clients and had just a massive level of conviction in their talent. And then as I kind of had some success, I started taking smaller bets and this is in the investing space, not necessarily all in the startup world, betting in the public markets. And I was like, okay, I was right a lot, right? But my upside wasn't tremendous because I was taking these small bets, right? And it was something, and we talked about this right before that Chamath.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  Polly Hapatia had talked about slugging percentage versus batting average, right? I had a really high batting average, but a lower slugging percentage because I wasn't taking these high conviction bets.

• 36:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Playing not to lose.

• 36:55Speaker 02

  Correct. I was playing not to lose instead of to win. And I was funny because I was thinking on it recently. I was like, why did I do that? Right? In my early days, I took these massive outsized bets, right? And had these massive outsized wins. But once I had some level of success, I was more timid and wasn't willing to do that. It was, I don't know, it's something about kind of human nature. I think I fell into that. So I have to remind myself, the next time you feel that level of conviction, bet on that founder, bet on that startup, bet on that, right? So that's something I constantly remind myself.

• 37:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And when that happens in startups, there's one check size, right? That you can write.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 37:31Anthony Pompliano?

  But two is it feels like you can be really, really helpful outside of just the check. Because you've got a very different kind of Rolodex, right? You've got very different experiences than kind of cookie cutter venture capitalists who, hey, you know, they're great people. They work hard. They're doing what they're good at. But a lot of them have the same skill sets. A lot of them have the same networks. And so you bring something differentiated to the table. And that's really where you can leverage that on these big bets.

• 37:53Speaker 02

  Sure. So again, that's, it's super important to me to add value. I speak to the founders that I invest in. I try to speak to them every two weeks, if not more. And again, it's how much the founder wants to speak to you and how much they're looking for advice. But yeah, it's back to your previous question. If it's the founder, that same intuition I got in some of my early clients, if I have that same feeling, I'll take a big bet.

• 38:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you start thinking about how the startup ecosystem is changing, crypto is one piece of that. There's also just traditional technology, early stage private markets. And then there's like everything else. And I'll put everything else in like this legacy bucket. So there's real estate, there's public markets, all this stuff. It feels like you're much, much more focused on like early stage venture and crypto more so than the other stuff.

• 38:35Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 38:35Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So walk me through like, where does that come from? And like, how do you think about, okay, I've got all these opportunities that I could invest in across all these different asset classes. Like why those two?

• 38:46Speaker 02

  For me, and this is gonna sound like a, you know, funny answer, but the asymmetrical upside, right? I could take my money and I could stick it in S and P 500, a DEX fund and make 6% a year for the rest of my life, right? I enjoy kind of betting on my gut and betting on my worldview, because there's no better feeling in the world to me than that. And the closest example I have it is how you and I started building a relationship was kind of the Bitcoin bet, right? And it was kind of the beginning of COVID. I'm watching, well, public equities are now at an all time high, bond yields are at an all time low. Where can I put capital to work, right? And me understanding,

• 39:30Speaker 02

  again, my worldview, I'm like, okay, there's going to be an outcome from the Fed printing this much money. What I think that's gonna be is that's gonna create inflation. Where can I put my money as an inflation hedge? And then I started going down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, right? And I went to school, consuming all of your content and just literally from reading the white paper to just going deep. And then the final step for me was reaching into my network, getting introduced to people like yourself, getting introduced to Fred Ursom, co-founder of Coinbase, getting you guys on the phone, meeting with you for a beer in New York and going, hey, here's my thesis. Do you think I'm right? And once I heard yes enough, I was like, okay, I'm gonna push all my chips in, right? And that's that level of conviction. And then kind

• 40:11Speaker 02

  of seeing the run that Bitcoin has had since, it's a great feeling, right? I use kind of investing in business. I'm a competitor, right? Back to my original, from the beginning, athlete, a soccer player. So it's a way for me to kind of get that competition out a little bit.

• 40:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Is competition what drives you? Like, what would you rather? Would you rather win and say, like, yes, I bet on this and I was right? Or would you rather actually make money on something you were wrong on?

• 40:36Speaker 02

  That's a tough question.

• 40:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Right, like, but I think that's all time. Like, what is the right answer there?

• 40:41Speaker 02

  At this stage, I'm just competing with myself, right? I would...

• 40:48Speaker 02

  Did you ask me if I want, if I, would I feel better betting on something being right and winning? Betting on something being wrong and winning? What would I feel better? Definitely being right, I think. Um, have I won off something that I was unsure of, but took that bet? Sure. Um, but yeah, I think I'm competing with myself. When I was younger, I would like, you know, I think it's part of what drove me. I want to compete with other managers and executives.

• 41:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Is there a lot of shit talking that goes on in the?

• 41:15Speaker 02

  No, but I think behind the scenes, you kind of like, no, we're gonna, you know, wait till next year.

• 41:19Anthony Pompliano?

  We see that guy, what he's doing. We see that woman, what she's doing, like, okay.

• 41:22Speaker 02

  And that was the young, that was the younger entrepreneur in me and I realized, you know, a little, a little bit later that it's not a zero sum game. And when I, once I kind of that, that switch had flipped for me, I started winning much more.

• 41:36Anthony Pompliano?

  What are one or two ideas that you have now that you're like, if I'm a founder, if I'm an artist, I want to build an audience. Given all the tools, given the world we live in today, whatever. What are one or two things where you're like, man, I would go spend a lot more time on A or B, but most people don't think about those things, right? Like, like, it's almost like a, a counterintuitive thing to go spend your time on, but that you think that there's a lot of payoff there.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  I think the best way I could answer that is understanding where your audience is. It may not be the biggest platform in the world, like so many artists want to run to TikTok, right? That is the thing right now. And it's been like that for a couple of years. But it's like, well, maybe your music isn't right for TikTok. Maybe you yourself as a brand, as an artist, isn't right for TikTok. Why not spend a lot of your time on Discord? I think that's where your audience is. You should spend time on Discord, right?

• 42:27Anthony Pompliano?

  What does that mean? Like spend time on Discord? Is that like, start your own, uh, kind of Discord, uh?

• 42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, based, based around your interests, maybe, right? And then be, be the, the subject matter expert in that. And then also then pull people into your music, right? Again, music is just now an extension of an artist's brand, right? Like maybe Logic is the chess guy and his music is just, uh, you know, extension of his brand, right? Obviously he was a bigger musician first, but I'm, you can reverse engineer that and say, well, no, I can be the this guy in this space and then kind of just, and again, the bad example of it is a lot of these TikTok kids putting out music. It's not what I mean. Like it has to be.

• 43:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it not good?

• 43:05Speaker 02

  No comment. It has to be authentic and genuine to who you are, but there's just so many ways that like, and what I'm realizing now, right, is people want to go deep. Not the same way they used to go deep back when I was starting out a decade ago, because the internet wasn't as noisy, right? So what I challenge myself and I challenge my team, where can we put our talent to where people are going to want to go deeper? TikTok, you just scroll. Next, next, next, next, next. It's so hard for you to stop, click on that artist's profile, go a little deeper, then go to their Spotify page. Now 10 years ago, that's all you really did. And I really, that's where I say word of mouth, right? It's something that I focus on a lot because people don't talk about it because you can't, it's a metric you can't measure.

• 43:47Speaker 02

  But I'm like, where can I put talent to where word of mouth is going to kick in? Right? Where it's not as noisy, it's not as cluttered. Um, and I think you have to start looking, you know, in different places. So even micro communities, right? That's something that we focus on, on Instagram, on TikTok, on Twitter, right? Marketing to those micro communities because we think this artist-specific audience lives in that community. So it's just reverse engineering stuff.

• 44:13Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you know it's working outside the analytics? Are there little things that you look for in the way that a customer talks about a product? Or talks about a musician, uh, something they do? Like, like, what are the little things that you look for, right? So let's say you're evaluating a startup, uh, to invest in, and the product's already out in the market. It's got a consumer-facing element to it. Are there things that you're looking for in that customer base where you're like, oh, when I see this, like, that tells me there's really that like product-market fit and people really need this or really, really want it?

• 44:43Speaker 02

  It's a great, great question. And I didn't realize this until the past 18 months, right? During COVID, was selling tickets. That was always a metric for us to know what we were doing was really working. And when we lost that, I was like, fuck, we've, I relied on that a lot. I didn't realize that. It's such a commitment to buy a ticket to see an artist live that people don't realize, right? You're maybe getting a babysitter that night. Maybe you're taking off work the next day. Maybe you're getting a ride there. Maybe you gotta work out your public transportation, right? How like? Did you buy tickets three months in advance? Did you buy it right before to see if the tickets dropped? It's the ultimate commitment that a fan can make is seeing a live show. So that is the number one thing that kept us going that we knew was working.

• 45:27Speaker 02

  Every time we put out an album, you put up a tour. Tour crushes, we did a good job. Move on, right? Losing that for 18 months was really what made me realize, wow, I didn't realize how much that metric of ticket sales was important to us.

• 45:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And it feels like that is very similar for a startup. Like you're actually selling the product. Like are there sales, right? Just like are people willing to take their, although you can say the depreciating fiat currency, right?

• 45:51Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 45:51Anthony Pompliano?

  You can actually trade that for this good or service. You're willing to give up your hard earned money for this. And that's the ultimate sign that like, yes, I want this.

• 45:58Speaker 02

  Correct. And again, it's also the similarity between like, you want to look at Logic's career in a startup. Giving away free music was us, it was pre-revenue, right? We weren't making any money. So everyone wants us to talk about that in the venture world. Oh, they're pre-revenue. So were we, right? I was living in my parents' basement, giving out album after album for free because I knew we were building this audience that we'd monetize later. So that's where like, there's so many similarities between the space of venture investing and talent management.

• 46:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Were you guys burning CDs?

• 46:26Speaker 02

  We were not at that point. It's a little bit later. It's like when Apple, you bought a MacBook, they didn't have CD drives in them. So yeah.

• 46:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. So you guys would basically be giving them out all digitally.

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Uh, like you brought up Dapiff.

• 46:37Anthony Pompliano?

  I was gonna say, remind me what Dapiff was. I remember I used to go on there for like, I don't know, like Lil Wayne would drop a mixtape.

• 46:42Speaker 02

  A mixtape marketplace. That's what it was. And that's what we did. You pay 50 bucks, uploaded a mixtape and they had a chart. You did well, your chart, and that was it. Obviously, we had to market the music and it was all those things where the audience was and putting the music there.

• 46:54Anthony Pompliano?

  But the artist paid and then it was free for everybody else.

• 46:57Speaker 02

  50 bucks.

• 46:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, 50 bucks is nothing, right? But with music, it's just a massive market opportunity and people willing to pay.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  And you have to believe in what you're building because you're giving away all your product for free. You had to believe in it and say, well, no, this is going to pay off, right? We're monetizing when the time is right. And that's what his first album was. That's what the first tour was. And it compounded from there.

• 47:13Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you think about Bitcoin, the community versus like a Logic fanbase, right? Like to me, Bitcoin is probably one of, if not the most rabid engaged, large audiences on the internet, right? Logic's audience is pretty similar, right? You've done this for multiple artists now, right? What is that a sign of anything? Is that like, hey, look, like, people can look at all the prices and the fundamentals and everything, but like the community is like a much bigger sign than people realize? Or how do you think about that?

• 47:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, people wanna, this may be a weird comparison. People wanna talk about Bitcoin failing, Bitcoin going to zero, right? I think you and I know that's never gonna happen, just based off of the rabid people who are believers in it.

• 47:59Anthony Pompliano?

  It won't go to zero because I'll buy them all at a dollar.

• 48:02Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. And then you have the same thing of like, so much of like, being a fan of someone, you get into barber shop debates, and that's so much of what hip hop was, and I think Logic's audience will defend him to the death, right? It's a lot of that same belief. And what that tells me is, he's gonna have a career for life. We're 10 years in now, right? That audience is gonna be there. They're passionate, they're engaged, and that's what that tells me. It gives you a little bit of confidence and security, I think.

• 48:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And Bitcoin has that, you know, times a thousand, just given the larger audience and stuff, yeah. And also, I think that there's this weird sense of, they feel like in music, they're protecting the artist.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 48:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Here, they're protecting the network, right? And the network actually can't quote-unquote fuck up, right? Like, Logic could go out and get a DUI, right? Or an artist could go out and do something stupid, and next thing you know, everyone's like, ah, you know, I don't know. Conor McGregor's probably the best example, actually. Loved by so many. Does a couple of dumb things, and all of a sudden, people are like, ah, I don't know how I feel. Does a couple more dumb things, people may just be like, alright, fine, like, we're done with that guy, right?

• 49:06Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 49:06Anthony Pompliano?

  A network that is just a computer system that has no ability to do anything other than what it's created to do, you don't have to worry about that, right? Like, there's this almost clinical nature to it, and so there's no humanity there, which I've never really thought about, but like, that's an interesting way to look at like, why people will be so loyal for so long.

• 49:26Speaker 02

  Correct. Like, you and I were joking off camera, but like, Elon could tweet whatever he wants to tweet, I shrug my shoulders at it. It's fine.

• 49:33Anthony Pompliano?

  He's testing it, by the way. He wants to tweet whatever he wants to tweet and he's gonna do it.

• 49:37Speaker 02

  And I keep shrugging my shoulders. It's fine.

• 49:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I mean, he hit us with a, what is it? Tesla has diamond hands? I mean, like, the guy, uh, he understands the internet pretty damn well, right?

• 49:48Speaker 02

  He's genius, right? But, um...

• 49:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it genius or is it evil genius? Or are those two things the same?

• 49:54Speaker 02

  I think he's having fun. I think the guy's a genius and what he's done for society and is doing, um, is incredible, but I don't know if I had that megaphone, if I would manipulate and move markets, so...

• 50:08Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fair. Uh, in crypto, all Bitcoin or do you look at other stuff, DeFi, all that?

• 50:14Speaker 02

  I have only invested in Bitcoin.

• 50:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Just Bitcoin. And, uh, is it a thing where Bitcoin is, um, the core of a portfolio because you're looking at more from like a wealth preservation standpoint or like, how do you think about the actual portfolio construction?

• 50:28Speaker 02

  It was a whole, it was a whole bunch of things that led up to my conviction in Bitcoin. Um, COVID played a massive role in what the Fed did and what happened. And then I realized like, everything is just going to live on the internet eventually. Everything is gonna be digitized. So if you don't think a store of value is gonna be digitized, you're out of your mind, right? Like, I'm not buying gold. I don't wanna buy gold, but I-

• 50:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you ever bought gold? I've never bought gold.

• 50:53Speaker 02

  I've never bought gold.

• 50:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, neither have I.

• 50:55Speaker 02

  But I wanna be able to put some money where it's gonna be an inflation hedge and be protected and my belief is that that's Bitcoin.

• 51:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Um, now that you are into Bitcoin, uh, other people in your life have sort of come into Bitcoin.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Um, friends, family, uh, logic, et cetera. What are those conversations like, right? Like, come, because you have a very unique position in that, uh, you aren't necessarily, uh, full-time, like my day job is in finance, uh, or in venture capital or whatever. But I think when people talk to you like, oh, this guy really knows what he's talking about, right? He did the work. He's gone to school, as you say. Um, and then you're talking to people who their full-time job's not investing either, in most cases. So is that a thing where like, oh, they just trust you and they're like, okay, hey, you know, what are you doing? I'll kind of mirror that? Or do you find yourself like really doing more education on kind of a granular level, uh, with kind of people outside of the finance world?

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, I would never tell anyone to blindly trust me, so I try to do some education, but again, it's- Surface level because some of it's really complex, especially if you don't really understand the financial world or how markets work. So yeah, logic was knowledgeable on it. We have another buddy of ours. That's been around for years who was early in the space. By no means am I trying to say I'm super early. I think timing worked out. So yeah, I try to educate and a lot of it, yeah, it is, especially with clients is trust me. That's worked for me and you know, I don't say that often. So, um, yeah.

• 52:29Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Last thing I gotta ask you and then we'll get into rapid fire. The Charizard card or whatever, what, what, what is going on here? Were you involved in this at all?

• 52:37Speaker 02

  He called me and told me he was doing it.

• 52:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Charizard.

• 52:40Speaker 02

  Charizard, he spent a quarter million dollars on.

• 52:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And so just a regular Pokemon card?

• 52:44Speaker 02

  He called me, I remember it was, I don't know, it was 5:30 PM, whatever. He's like, yo, I'm just letting you know. He's like, you're not gonna talk me out of it. I'm buying a Charizard card for $250,000. I was like, all right, cool. I was like, rocket. Cause again, when, when he starts out the phone call, I'm like.

• 52:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, the decision's already been made.

• 53:00Speaker 02

  And I was like, call, I was like, call Josh, Josh's accountant. I was like, call Josh. And listen, what's funny is he's gonna win off that.

• 53:06Anthony Pompliano?

  It worked, right?

• 53:06Speaker 02

  He know, he knows that world and I, his intuition is phenomenal. He knows that space. He knows that world. He, and he's invested much more, he hasn't been as public about in, in, in the collectible trading.

• 53:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So you, you've been able to help a bunch of other people understand Bitcoin and stuff like that. Did he convince you to go buy some Pokemon cards?

• 53:24Speaker 02

  He has not yet. He has not yet.

• 53:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Has he tried?

• 53:27Speaker 02

  I'm a little bit more stubborn than.

• 53:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Has he tried?

• 53:29Speaker 02

  He has tried, yeah.

• 53:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, and you're just not into it?

• 53:32Speaker 02

  Not having it.

• 53:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, what is?

• 53:33Speaker 02

  I'm very bullish on the space. I've made, so I've made a bunch of angel investments in the space. I did, I did whatnot. I think I introduced you to Grant. I did alt. Alongside Alexis Ohanian, who's kind enough to let me in with him. Those, those are two perfect examples. So I am.

• 53:48Anthony Pompliano?

  More infrastructure than hey, let me go try to figure out what cards to buy.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Super bullish on the space instead of me investing in actual cards myself.

• 53:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. I tend to think that that's a, I'm with you. Uh, I've got a lot of friends who are very big into it and they're like, you know, not so much Pokemon, but more like the sports cards, like, you know, PSA 9, but.

• 54:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I did, I had a little, I don't even know the difference, right? So like, how could I possibly outcompete you if you, you know, all this stuff, you're an expert and I can't figure it out?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  For me to be willing to learn, I have to have some level of passion. So when I went to school, I say I went to school on Bitcoin. I'm kind of a nerd with that kind of stuff and it was super interesting to me. I don't have that with with collectibles. I don't really have that. So I wouldn't have took the time to learn what cards to buy.

• 54:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 54:29Speaker 02

  So.

• 54:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Makes sense. Uh, three questions to wrap up and you get to ask me one. Uh, your most important book you've ever read?

• 54:37Speaker 02

  Never Eat Alone.

• 54:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Ooh.

• 54:39Speaker 02

  By Keith Farazzi.

• 54:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 54:40Speaker 02

  It completely changed my mind on.

• 54:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 54:42Speaker 02

  Networking. It's all about networking.

• 54:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  I had, I was a young kid and I thought business was a zero sum game. That book taught me otherwise. It changed my life.

• 54:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm. What, what is just the like high level premise of the book?

• 54:55Speaker 02

  Give and expect nothing in return.

• 54:57Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Okay. And so never eat alone means like if you're gonna eat, make sure everyone else eats around you.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 55:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Uh, no one's ever suggested that before. That's a great one. Um, second question, Eight Sleep. Uh, what is your sleep schedule? And for those that don't know, Eight Sleep is basically a thermo-regulated bed. Um, I sleep on it. It's fucking freezing cold, uh, but I sleep like a baby. Do you sleep a lot? Not a lot? Has that changed through the pandemic?

• 55:21Speaker 02

  As I've gotten older, I prioritize my sleep. Speaking of, I just bought an Eight Sleep.

• 55:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, nice.

• 55:26Speaker 02

  Two weeks in.

• 55:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Let's go.

• 55:28Speaker 02

  I'm two weeks in. It's great. Um, I prioritize it now. Did not for, for the early days and I don't advise it. I didn't sleep a lot. Um, I don't sleep a lot now. I'm get, trying to get better.

• 55:40Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. So wait, two weeks in. This is, this is my two questions. Uh, did you or did you not get woken up by the, uh, vibration on the bed?

• 55:50Speaker 02

  I did.

• 55:50Anthony Pompliano?

  The first morning, right?

• 55:51Speaker 02

  It was great. I leave it on.

• 55:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you, oh, you use it?

• 55:54Speaker 02

  I use it.

• 55:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, I had to shut it off. It scares the shit out of me.

• 55:56Speaker 02

  I leave it.

• 55:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Like I wake up and I'm like, uh, whatever. All right. So you like that?

• 55:59Speaker 02

  It's the thermal regulation, the cooling for me.

• 56:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 56:01Speaker 02

  I'm a hot sleeper. Game changer.

• 56:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yep.

• 56:03Speaker 02

  Absolute game changer.

• 56:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Second thing is, uh, do you, are you like fanatical about, hey, you know, a certain time every night I go to sleep? Or are you more so I go to sleep when I'm tired, but I just want to make sure I get, you know, eight hours or whatever?

• 56:15Speaker 02

  Now I'm trying to put a time to it.

• 56:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 56:17Speaker 02

  Um, because I can get distracted. Um, so midnight, I try to get in a bed at midnight. Um, get up at 7:30.

• 56:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Mm hmm. That's not bad. Right. And, and, uh, if your body just gets into it and used to it, then like you're golden.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. And again, what got me more into trying to pay more attention to is the, the not traveling as often.

• 56:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Hmm.

• 56:36Speaker 02

  Traveling throws me out of whack and I spent a decade traveling. So.

• 56:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I, I hear you. Uh, third question, aliens believer or non-believer?

• 56:43Speaker 02

  Big believer.

• 56:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Why?

• 56:45Speaker 02

  I think the universe is too big for us to be here by ourselves. That's simple.

• 56:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Do you think that they're close enough where we'll ever come in contact? Or it's just like, oh yeah, they're probably out there, but we'll just never talk to them?

• 56:55Speaker 02

  I think eventually.

• 56:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, you did?

• 56:57Speaker 02

  Eventually.

• 56:58Anthony Pompliano?

  During our lifetime?

• 56:59Speaker 02

  No.

• 56:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, alright. But just like during humanity's lifetime?

• 57:02Speaker 02

  Hundred percent.

• 57:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Uh, big question then, it's just like, do we find them or do they find us?

• 57:08Speaker 02

  They find us.

• 57:09Anthony Pompliano?

  You think so?

• 57:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Is it like Independence Day where they're like flying down and?

• 57:14Speaker 02

  I don't know. I haven't thought, I haven't thought that deep into it. What do you think?

• 57:19Anthony Pompliano?

  In our lifetime, we don't come in contact.

• 57:22Anthony Pompliano?

  But I don't know, there's a lot of UFO garbage that's flying around and uh, maybe some of it's real. Who knows? I also have to remind people that UFOs and aliens are not the same thing.

• 57:32Speaker 02

  Good point.

• 57:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? Like, like we just immediately when you hear UFO, you're like, oh aliens.

• 57:36Speaker 02

  I just watched this clip from 60 Minutes about two uh, Air Force pilots who swear they saw a UFO.

• 57:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Really?

• 57:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 57:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, but like, see here's my, so like, I've seen a couple of these. I haven't seen this specific one, so I want to be careful that I'm not talking about them specifically. But like, a UFO is an unidentified flying object. So they're like, I swear that I saw a UFO. And you're like, okay. Did you see a alien spaceship? Or did you just see something in the sky that you don't know what it was?

• 58:04Speaker 02

  They were literally sent out to go find out what it was because their radar was picking it up.

• 58:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, interesting.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:10Anthony Pompliano?

  So like, hey, we see something out there. We don't know what it is. You guys fly out there. They flew out and now they're like, yo.

• 58:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 58:16Anthony Pompliano?

  It was not normal.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  It was a five minute segment. It was really interesting.

• 58:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright, I'm gonna have to watch it now.

• 58:20Speaker 02

  I'll send it to you.

• 58:21Anthony Pompliano?

  You could ask me one question to finish up.

• 58:25Speaker 02

  Where does Bitcoin end the year?

• 58:30Anthony Pompliano?

  End the year is hard. How about I pick what's the highest it hits this year?

• 58:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 58:36Anthony Pompliano?

  I should just say a hundred K because then I'll uh, I'll stick with my thing. Um, so I definitely think it hits a hundred.

• 58:46Anthony Pompliano?

  If you told me sometime next year that Bitcoin hit $250,000 this year,

• 58:53Anthony Pompliano?

  it wouldn't surprise me. I don't know if I've got enough confidence where I'm like, it's gonna do this, right? With 100K since 2019, I've been like, this is hap- like, this is going to happen. And that's just based off havings and kind of all that.

• 59:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Anything over that, I think it's literally just like, how frothy is it at the time? And how quickly do we go from, let's call it like 100K to whatever, right? And so is that number $125,000 or $500,000? Like such like a big range in there. And so, I don't know, just pick the middle, I got somewhere around like 250. So we'll see. Where can we send people to find you on the internet?

• 59:30Speaker 02

  Twitter, Chris Zarou. Yeah, that's where I am.

• 59:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Is that the easiest place?

• 59:36Speaker 02

  Easiest place.

• 59:36Anthony Pompliano?

  Founders too?

• 59:37Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 59:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. All right, well, listen, thank you for doing this.

• 59:40Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 59:40Anthony Pompliano?

  I appreciate it. Since I've gotten to know you, I think the, uh, the two things that by far have like blown me away is like, one, the level of effort and work that goes into just like building a fan base that's actually engaged. And like, people are like, yo, I fucking love like whatever this thing is. And then two, uh, there's not very many people who like start in that world and like, hey, I'm gonna go learn this other world, right? There's a lot of people who start out here, they have success in the music world or whatever. And then they're like, oh yeah, well, like I'm successful. Like, of course, I just, you just tell me what to do. I think you started out and you said, look, I don't know that much, right? And over the last couple of years, you've like really built yourself up in terms of like now you could go and you could sit down and talk to anybody. And like, oh, this guy knows what he's doing. So kudos to you.

• 1:00:23Speaker 02

  Appreciate that.

• 1:00:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, I appreciate everyone listening and we will do this again in the future.

• 1:00:27Speaker 02

  Thank you.