EP 15 Pt 1: VC Meme King @prayingforexits Comes on to Discuss a Host of Topics, Then a Group of Apes Talk BAYC

(00:00:00) Intro (00:02:35) A Message From Zak (00:05:02) @prayingforexits (00:53:39) Bored Ape Yacht Club Experts (00:27:13) Tiger Global (00:35:44) Facebook's Hiring Freeze (00:41:26) Two Things About Elon (00:47:10) Neeraj Arora's Twitter Thread on Selling WhatsApp (00:53:39) Intro to Conversation with BAYC Experts (00:57:08) Bored Ape Land Sale (01:05:40) Democratizing NFT Access (01:16:38) Metaverse Bored Ape Game (01:20:25) BAYC Founders (01:31:39) Metaverse Game Skepticism (01:38:33) Final Thoughts Follow the show: https://twitter.com/3cartoonavatars https://www.instagram.com/3cartoonavatars/ https://www.tiktok.com/@3cartoonavatars Follow the hosts: https://twitter.com/loganbartlett Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir Executive Producer: Josh Machiz Music: Griff Lawson Show Notes: Leaked Facebook Memo Details Hiring Freeze - https://www.businessinsider.com/leaked-facebook-memo-details-hiring-freeze-negative-business-impacts-2022-5 Elon Musk’s Twitter Financing Deal - https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-gets-7-billion-in-fresh-financing-for-twitter-deal-11651748316 Elon Musk Expected to Serve as Temporary Twitter CEO after deal closes - https://www.cnbc.com/2022/05/05/elon-musk-expected-to-serve-as-temporary-twitter-ceo-after-deal-closes.html https://rss2.flightcast.com/jlx9l0yn04wt3r710o051jtm.xml Bored Ape Land Sale - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-01/bored-ape-metaverse-frenzy-raises-millions-disrupts-ethereum https://rss2.flightcast.com/jlx9l0yn04wt3r710o051jtm.xml Tiger Global Sinks 15 In April - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-05-03/tiger-global-sinks-15-in-april-to-push-this-year-s-loss-to-44 https://rss2.flightcast.com/jlx9l0yn04wt3r710o051jtm.xml 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.

• 0:04Logan Bartlett?

  Welcome to the 15th episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. So I say 15th episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. This will be the last episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. We are shifting the name and the brand and all that stuff to just Cartoon Avatar. So what you're gonna hear is this is by far our longest single episode. And so we're gonna break it into, we're gonna break it into a few different parts. And so, one, you're gonna hear a conversation at the top with Zach and I talking about, he's actually going to take a step back from the podcast and I'll let him explain it. It was, yeah, the Machiavellian backstabbing that I did to Zach.

• 0:49Logan Bartlett?

  We'll talk through all of that. And then, and then second, you're gonna hear a conversation with praying for exits from Instagram in which we hit a bunch of different topics that were going on in the tech world this week. Then you'll hear a really interesting conversation about Board Ape Yacht Club in general, where NFTs are, all of that stuff with three special guests that I had on. A guy by the name of Tropo Farmer, who's on Twitter, as well as Alex, who is a big Board Ape Yacht Club, or a big holder of Board Apes, as well as a CEO of Upstream, which is building infrastructure for DAOs. And then Mags, who is a consumer venture investor, but also a holder of Board Ape Yacht Club. And so we sort of go into all the details of what's, what's happening there.

• 1:33Logan Bartlett?

  And then finally, you'll hear a conversation that we recorded earlier this week between Paki McCormick and Ben Thompson. We go through a bunch of different stuff about how they think about building their brand and their newsletters, podcasts, all of that stuff. The two of them actually had never spoken. They, they're kind of existing on outer ends of the ecosystem. One focused on subscription and paid, kind of Ben Thompson, the OG in this world. And then Paki as kind of a newer entrant and focused on advertising. And so that was a really fun conversation. So hopefully you're excited. Excited to have a lot of different listening here and bearing with us as as we go through this

• 2:15Logan Bartlett?

  evolution where it's going to be mostly me and having a host of friends on as well. I have a special guest next week that I think will be really exciting to to kind of talk through all of this stuff. And so yeah, excited, excited for you to hear, hear everything we have. So next up, you'll hear me and Zach talking about his official firing from the podcast.

• 2:35Speaker 01

  I think people have known we've now done, I mean, Logan's done, what 14 of these so far? And I've done 13 of these so far. Obviously, it's been a lot of fun, but the truth is that as we've done more and more of these, there are topics that, you know, are harder for me to comment on, given the seat that I'm in. And so ultimately, while I love being a part of the podcast, and I have a ton of fun doing it every week, it probably makes sense for me to take a step back, either into part-time or contributing on the topics that are the most accessible to me, given the seat that I'm in. And so going forward, I'm excited that you'll hear a lot of other voices from folks who can comment on a wide range of topics. And when I'm able to, you

• 3:17Speaker 01

  know, I'll be back certainly for the things that are in my wheelhouse. And hopefully, I can be a little funnier, a little smarter on. And also, you know, I'm more able to comment on freely, too.

• 3:26Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, Zach, that's a great way of saying I stabbed you in the back. And and like,

• 3:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, this is a whole Logan coup.

• 3:33Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. This is a great way of articulating the the coup. But I appreciate you putting some winded, no dressing on it. No, I it's been, it's been a lot of fun. And obviously, there's been different constraints. But yeah, I think, I think this makes the most sense. I'm bummed because it's been so much fun doing this with you. And now I'm sort of out on an island a little bit with Nikita doing part time, you doing part time. But I, it's good. I mean, we're gonna keep doing it. We'll keep having people on. I there'll definitely be opportunities for people that are far more qualified than than you and me and Nikita to come on and weigh in on subjects.

• 4:14Speaker 01

  Anyone who's more qualified than the three of us.

• 4:16Logan Bartlett?

  I know. They make you people. Career investors.

• 4:20Logan Bartlett?

  Just weighing in on on topics in general. Yeah, I believe it or not, there are people that actually have more expertise than the two of us, certainly. But yeah, obviously, thanks for doing doing this and bearing with all the different machinations we've gone through and look forward to. I mean, obviously, we're still still going to talk every day or whatever, every other day in some form. And and so, yeah, I I'm excited to still have you have you around and certainly input in all this and coming on as the as different situations present themselves.

• 4:51Speaker 01

  And I'll be a weekly listener. This is the only podcast I will ever consistently listen to now.

• 4:56Logan Bartlett?

  The best podcast.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  The best podcast ever created in history, probably ever.

• 5:02Logan Bartlett?

  Well, I am joined today by everyone's favorite Instagram account associated with the tech and VC world. A pseudonymous venture investor. You might know him as praying for exits on Instagram. And so happy to happy to have him on the podcast. Thanks for joining me today, Mr. Exits.

• 5:22Speaker 02

  And thank you for having me. Shout out to you and the rest of the Red Point family. Appreciate appreciate you having me.

• 5:28Logan Bartlett?

  Appreciate you doing this and hopefully this goes well and we can make this a a regular thing. So for for people that don't know your account, which I can't imagine too many of those are listening, but maybe give us a quick primer background on yourself, how the account started. And I guess in full disclosure, I actually we we've never met that I know. And so I you've you've told me there's nothing cancelable in your past that that's going to come back to haunt me at some point.

• 5:56Speaker 02

  Not yet, anyway.

• 5:57Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, not yet. So I am acting in good faith on that one, but maybe maybe level set on just how you started the account, who you are, all that stuff.

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I've been investing in the venture space for probably the last, I want to say, seven or eight years. And when I was, I started this page in 2018, so it's been about four years now. So about four or five years ago, I was basically at the point where I think a lot of people in venture get to, which is they start to the sort of patina of how cool it is, maybe begins to wear off a little bit and you get to see kind of the underbelly for for for all its its glory. And so I think I was at a point in my life where I kind of started it as a Sort of a journal for myself and just experiencing different things in the venture ecosystem.

• 6:46Speaker 02

  And back then it was like a really sort of wild time. It was sort of the height of like the WeWorks and the Ubers and Airbnbs and that kind of stuff. So there was a lot of like really good and interesting material that was coming out all the time and.

• 6:58Logan Bartlett?

  It's like people keep making documentaries or whatever, like shows about all that stuff. So.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, yeah, like right now we're starting to see more sophisticated version of content about that time period come out. But at the time there was nobody who really, um, that I felt was giving sort of like an honest shake about what's what was really going on. And, um, it, it like, I don't know about how many people who are listening were active in the space back then. But it was a very much so, um, it was a different experience in the sense that there was a lot more, um, sort of puff pieces and, uh, people just kind of like creating narratives that were, uh, just maybe the best versions of those narratives, not the most honest ones. And to me that kind of just sat the wrong way. Um, and I was actually really inspired, uh, a little bit before by, uh, what I saw with like Arab Spring and stuff.

• 7:46Speaker 02

  Um, not that this has like any overlap at all, but, uh, in the sense that it was really surprising to me how much um, ideas could be pushed through content and it doesn't really matter. It didn't really matter at the time, um, who in Arab Spring was spreading these ideas, just the fact that they reached a velocity where the ideas were so strong that, um, you know, they, they spoke for themselves. And in, in sort of a miniature way, I kind of wanted to, um, maybe use that as a framework to bring more honesty and a little bit more clarity to, to what was actually going on. And so, yeah, the long-winded way of saying, uh, I run a meme page.

• 8:20Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And you, uh, you polish it up very nicely. Uh, so what was the decision to be pseudonymous? In, you know, it, it, did it just give you the ability to talk more freely about what you were thinking and not risk backlash? Like, how did you think through that?

• 8:36Speaker 02

  Initially, it was just because in my own regular life, I'm like a very private person. I don't really like a lot of attention. But over time, I realized that the power was, um, there's a lot of power in letting ideas speak. And I think that venture is one of those places where we've been blinded a little bit by, um, who people are and maybe what they've accomplished in the past. And, um, we don't very often, um, we're doing it a lot more now, but in the past, um, people weren't really standing on ideas. They were kind of just standing on personas. And, um, I thought that the best way for you to stand on your ideas is to not have anything associative associative with you.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  Um, and so, yeah, that that was kind of the the start of it all.

• 9:22Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, it makes sense. Well, uh, doing this with you today, I think finally proves once and for all that, uh, I've been accused a number of times, uh, of of being, uh, running your account. And I, I, I, I've always said, like, you know, I, I, you see what I post normally. Why, why do you think like I'm, I'm holding some stuff back? But it is interesting. I, I, uh, I mean, the, the, the perspective that you have and the jokes that you're, you're able to make, um, especially going through that, like, hype cycle that we've had over the course of the last, whatever, uh, I mean, 12 years in some ways, two years in others. Um, it definitely, uh, was able to poke at some of the self-seriousness that I think exists in the industry. And so I think it's been a refreshing, um,

• 10:07Logan Bartlett?

  view on, you know, some of the things that we're all thinking, but can't actually, actually say. And so it's, it's definitely appreciated from that perspective. And I do think, I mean, at the end of the day, uh, I don't feel like you're coming from a malicious place on this stuff. Right? Like you're, you're never really punching down at people that don't deserve it. I know you've, you've, at times people have had beef with you, but, uh, I, I feel like it's always fair, right? You've made jokes at our expense, my expense, but it was all like well-meaning. Or I, I never took actually offense to it. It's like, if you're gonna be out there in public doing stuff, like you gotta be willing to roll with the punches, right?

• 10:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And to that point, I think that the person that I make fun of the most, if people actually knew who I was, is myself. Like half of the shit that I'm talking about is shit that happens to me or is directly affecting me in some way, shape or form.

• 10:58Logan Bartlett?

  I didn't. So you are Philippe Lefont. So we so you're you won co two. Got it.

• 11:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. If Philippe, if Philippe could just hand over the keys to the house, that'd be that'd be nice.

• 11:08Logan Bartlett?

  That's right. Yeah, exactly.

• 11:11Speaker 02

  Uh, but yeah, I mean, I think that, um, yeah, there's, there's a real benefit um to approaching it in that way. And um, I think that like, if you're not willing to be criticized, then there's something wrong with you as a person. Because every nobody's above it. And I especially believe that of myself. And so, um, yeah, I like really, I think that if you're living in like, uh, this fragmented reality where you're kind of like just picking and choosing what you want to believe is real. And you're only focused on the best versions of everything. And you're probably not a very good investor, because that's not a, a characteristic that works really well in any market. So.

• 11:47Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it is interesting. I mean, I, I sort of attribute the, the two thousand, late two thousands of blogging was kind of the first, I feel like foray. And, you know, Cal Canis obviously did it. Fred Wilson did it. Mark Suster, um, my partner Tomas was big and pretty early on it. And.

• 12:03Speaker 02

  My favorite legends.

• 12:04Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it started to peel back the, uh, the onion a little bit on some of these things, but, um, it's, you know, I, I think it's good that people are showing, uh, more elements of their personality, right? Now, I think what we found is a lot of venture capitalists are particularly funny, right? But at least they're trying to, you know, show a more holistic view and not just be polished up, polished and sort of silver spooned and everything's perfect at all times, right? They're trying to be more relatable to entrepreneurs. I think that's, I think that's healthy.

• 12:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I mean, at the end of the day, just like being a normal human being, there's nothing wrong with that. Like, to be somebody who like embraces the duality of your personality, the good and the bad. It's like the most honest thing that you can do. And the founders that I've worked with that have been the most successful are people who genuinely do that. Like, if you're just ignoring all the bad shit and you are, uh, you know, like permanently focused on these shreds of good that you're doing without really diving in deep. It's like, that's, that's a, a problem. That translates into a whole host of other issues as things go down the line. So I think it's really important that people like, nobody is too important in this industry to not have some level of accountability. And, you know, it's, I think it's just important that we all remember that because it's easy to forget.

• 13:21Logan Bartlett?

  You don't have self doubt or like crippling self doubt, but you do want to have self awareness, right about like where your shortcomings are and everything is a double edged sword, right? There is a, to be extroverted means that you're probably not as perceptive of like different things because you're out there, you know, not, not watching, you're talking more often or like to be analytical means you're not going to be as intuitive or whatever, like all these things kind of have another side of the coin. And so if you're not, if you're not aware of, of your shortcomings, I feel like I came up in venture and I, I kind of had two mentors and they had such gravitas when they spoke and they were so measured in their words because they had so many successes over the course of their career.

• 14:05Logan Bartlett?

  Neeraj Agarwal was my mentor at Battery Ventures and then Rob Ward is at Merit Tech and just an absolutely incredible investor, incredible person. And they had such heft and experience that they could draw on. And I just kind of realized I couldn't do that, right? Like I, I am never going to be, or it's going to take me another 15, 20 years of investing before I have like my words, just I can, I can silence the room and I can be the one that, that carries, you know, and draws on the past, past drawdown that happened or the past correction, right? I just can't do that. And so I had to find like a different way that I related entrepreneurs, a different way that I added value. And so, yeah, I mean, I feel like we're in this world of hyper personalization of the products that people offer to entrepreneurs.

• 14:49Logan Bartlett?

  And I think that's a good thing, right? The power, power balance has shifted from VCs to all the way to entrepreneurs and now we're like coming back a little bit to VCs, but it's healthy, right?

• 15:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that one thing that it seems like people forget is like, obviously this is a business and everything should be business oriented in, in some way, shape or form. But at the end of the day, this is also like life and life has very, is very multifaceted. And to like really get the most out of life and business and all the other things that are really important to people in their time here. I think that you have to have a much broader spectrum of understanding that isn't, you know, just limited to like. One, one specific thing that you can offer founders in this day and age, like if you're just the guy who can uh, figure out how to um, increase or decrease customer acquisition cost and that's your uh, secret sauce. I'm sure that's useful, but the guy who can

• 15:42Speaker 02

  kind of do that, but also just be like a normal, interesting person to work with is gonna get an equal chance to fight for an allocation or whatever it might be. So I think that, yeah, just like the humanization of the industry is something that I'm so fucking here for because it was, it was whack when we were all just robots. Um, yeah, so.

• 15:59Logan Bartlett?

  I'm sure it's nice for you as well for me. Like I, I, to some extent, I feel like Elon Musk has justified, uh, you know, it's kind of papered over any of the questions that people would have had about like, wait, why are you doing this? Or a- and now Mark Andreessen's doing it far more and like some of these just amazingly successful people are pushing the envelope of uh, y- you know, joking online and not taking themselves too seriously and uh, I think, you know, that, that's given me a nice halo and, and bubble. It's like, well, you know, that guy's the richest person in the world and that guy's like, you know, in- invented the web browser and has built one of the most iconic like venture firms, right? And so I think I get a little bit of leeway if I'm gonna joke around, right?

• 16:41Logan Bartlett?

  It is nice to have some of these art types pop up. That's not just me out there or you out there, you know, doing these things. It seemed kind of silly. I mean, uh, this, this started, all these things had to started as a joke and now, I don't know. I mean, there's, you know, there's, there's resonance with it, right? And I'm sure it's benefited you in a bunch of different ways.

• 16:56Speaker 02

  Uh, I think if you look at history in general, the power of jokes is actually pretty understated and the, the, the place that it exists within culture and society is very influential in a lot of ways. You can look at political cartoons. You can look at, you know, the advent of the sitcom and you, there, there's a variety of, like, the great part about comedy in general is because it's, it actually speaks truths. And I think that people are seeking truth more than ever in this day and age because there's very clear paradigms in which they've been lied to in, in a whole host from a whole host of different people. And so I think that if you are A, using comedy, but B, really what you're doing is, is, is seeking a level of truth and being more transparent and or more honest in a type of way.

• 17:40Speaker 02

  At the end of the day, that magnetizes people and that brings people closer to you because I think real is the high, like being real is the highest form of capital in um, this kind of market, right? Because you don't want the person that you Uh, are worried about like, oh shit, if they get audited, like what happens to this firm? Or like, you know, like you, you want somebody who's just dead fucking honest and that you, you can stand on behind that. And um, I think comedy is an amazing way to kind of like segue into that without being just like, somebody who's really sharp around the edges and, and, and hard to deal with, you know?

• 18:13Logan Bartlett?

  What's the funniest interaction? Uh, you can either say someone specifically or just in generalities of a type of person? That has reached out to you, DMs or whatever, being like, hey, what the fuck? You know, stop making fun of us or whatever. Is there anything uh, that you can point to like that?

• 18:31Speaker 02

  You like, you know, what's interesting is like not so much, um, and it's, this has actually been kind of a refreshing um, experience for me because it wasn't expected at all, but I get far more like, hey, I understand that I'm doing this. Well, how would you recommend me stopping or doing this in a way that's not as corny? Or a way that's um, a little bit cooler or like, I get a lot of people ask coming and being like, hey, can you give me advice? Because I didn't even realize that I looked like stupid doing this. What's the better way to do it?

• 18:58Logan Bartlett?

  This is a VC doing something cringey and you call him out on it and they send you a note being like, hey, can you help me not be cringey?

• 19:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, like, hey, like, okay, if I'm with what I'm doing is like really whack, like how do I not be whack? That's like been far more the experience than like, fuck you, stop doing this. Like, which I really appreciate because, you know, people, and, and I think that's indicative of like the kind of industry that we're in, thank God, which is that people are willing to learn and adjust and um, you know, like try new things out. Um, so, I, I, I'm all for it, but yeah, like I'm lucky. There have been some people who have just been so upset and angry and it's just like, uh, to me, that says a lot about, lot more about you than any other aspect, like aspect of this interaction, you know, so.

• 19:39Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it is funny. I, I saw someone uh, tweeted the other day, like, how can I, how can, can someone help me be funny? I want to be funnier. And I'm like, ah, it's so well intentioned. Like you're trying, you know, I know what you're going for here, but.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  It doesn't work like that, boss.

• 19:54Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, this is, this like right here is a base of problem, right? And I definitely see, I mean, uh, my partner Scott, I've talked about this before, uh, gives me a lot of shit that I've uh, perpetuated a uh, in part, like a cycle. Of people not uh trying to be funny that like aren't funny and he's like uh he'll send me a shitty tweet sometimes and be like this is on you like These blood is on your hands that this person is trying to be funny. I'm like dude, I didn't I didn't tell him to do it. Be clear like I don't deserve and he's like, no, no, no, this is your fault that I have to see this shitty content on my feed, right? It's pretty funny.

• 20:25Speaker 02

  But I would, I mean, to to that point at the end of the day, I would rather people try and fail than just be like, like weird, reclusive, Like uh this just the stereotypical cliche San Francisco Palo Alto guy like that to me. To me, generally, that's one of the worst people in like that archetype is one of the worst of all. Uh like anybody I know. So anytime the people are moving away from that, I'm all for it, even if uh you know, the landings aren't soft sometimes.

• 20:52Logan Bartlett?

  I think most people have to come like in this industry have to come from a perspective of like, hey, we don't know a- anything uh often. And so like I I I've made fun of crypto constantly uh for some and now Uh over the course of the last couple of years, I I've just seen how galvanized the industry is uh behind this. And I'm like, you know what? Actually, I might not, you know? Uh all the jokes that I made about this stuff and we'll see ultimately where all of it nets out and all the use cases. And I think like all all the people that have poked fun at it probably are right, but you In the industry, you have to be open to being wrong and changing your mind and learning and adapting, right? And I think that that is

• 21:31Logan Bartlett?

  Something that um I I don't know, I you people are obviously using in other ways as well to try to actually build a brand and figure out what resonates with them. And You can't go back to the like what Fred Wilson did uh or you know, Tomasz did back in two thousand nine, two thousand twelve, whatever it was. Uh like that that that market's cornered. You can't keep doing that, right? And so it's good to see people actually learning and trying. It was one of the things when I when we started doing this podcast. So many people were like mad and I was like, uh, these things are infinitely scalable, right? Like I'm not stealing anyone's podcast spot and you know what? Like it might work and might not, but, but try, right?

• 22:14Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 22:14Logan Bartlett?

  And, uh, and so I guess that's one of my messages. If anyone listens to this and actually wants to start a podcast, I'm happy to help you and, uh, figure this out. Cause like, who knows? It's just, you don't have to listen, uh, and try this stuff and maybe it'll work and maybe it won't.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  And at the end of the day, the only people that are hating are people that aren't like confident enough in the product that they're putting out to not be worried about it, right? Like Joe Rogan doesn't give a fuck if anyone starts a podcast because why would he? You know? It's like, if you, if you really believe in your self and your ideas and like have like a strong level of self-confidence and, and the stuff that you're putting out, it 100% shouldn't matter. And at the end of the day, my feeling is that like a, a, a rising tide lifts all ships. So, um, I think that the more people that you can get interested in, in this as a format, the better for everybody. So.

• 22:59Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. The, the all in guys were pretty funny. They'd been very gracious to me. Uh, and someone started like when we launched, they're like, oh, uh, you know, what is this? Just a shitty all in. And one of them responded, or maybe it was, uh, Nick, their producer responded like, yeah, I thought we had the, the market cornered for friends joking around and talking about tech stuff. He was like, I thought that was a, we had that trademarked or something, which I thought was pretty, you know, funny. It's like, who, who cares, right? It's infinitely scalable. I'm not stealing self, shelf space from some other product, right?

• 23:30Speaker 02

  Yep, totally.

• 23:31Logan Bartlett?

  It sounds like you're doing investing. Obviously you've, you've had to figure out how to obfuscate your, your identity in different ways. As we were talking about before you, before you hopped on, uh, tell us a little bit about like what you're doing with that and, uh, yeah, where people can reach you and all that stuff.

• 23:46Speaker 02

  For sure. So, um, you know, like I said, I've been investing for quite a while now. Probably done close to like a hundred plus companies. And so, you know, this is something that, um, I I'm very passionate about and feel like um I have a very unique angle on. And then that only got sort of exacerbated uh by the page. And what I found really interesting and you know, something that nobody was really doing is there's no um. There's no like investment funds in my opinion that run primarily on ideas. It's a lot of kind of what we were talking about earlier, which is these um. These personas and these egos uh that exist in the valley that drive a lot of like the interest in specific funds and um, you know, specific deals and so.

• 24:31Speaker 02

  To me, an experiment that I kind of tried um or that I thought was interesting was. Can you invest in companies just based on the strength of your ideas and not have it matter at all who you are, but just. That people resonate with your beliefs and so yeah, launched uh launched the exits fund um about a couple of months ago. Um and have been investing a bit out of it uh. Pretty heavily, we we've got five deals all over the world, a bunch of different um. Sectors and uh mainly doing seed and A and uh yeah, if if people are. Are interested in in in working together or or sending um interesting things you are working on um through uh.

• 25:12Speaker 02

  It's GP at praying for exits dot com and um yeah, I would I would love to to to see some decks and and hear from people.

• 25:18Logan Bartlett?

  How do you think about like uh obviously you're in the industry as well, is this just the stuff you're doing here just divorced from uh the stuff that you're focusing on in your in your uh full time uh not anonymous gig?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  No, what I think is interesting about it is that it uh it actually almost serves like a scout fund for myself in a weird way, so. I'm able to do much smaller and more flexible um investing through through that vehicle and then. Uh hopefully over time uh feed it up the chain and and do bigger checks out of maybe the day job.

• 25:48Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, got it. Okay, no, that's that's uh it's super cool. Do people like what do they? Get, we, have you done any promotion of companies you've invested in on the Instagram account?

• 25:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, but like to me, that's, to me, that's kind of like the most lowbrow thing that I can do for people. Um, like, of course, I could, yeah, like, of course, I could promote people in, in that way. But I think what's much more interesting is that, um, via the page and just via real life, like, uh, I've, I've accumulated a network and this is like the most cliche fucking thing to say possible that a VC could say. But like, I think that, I try to, I think that there are a lot of people who are good, um, VC connectors into purely the technology world. So they can introduce you to somebody at Oracle that can, uh, you know, sell your product through the entire fucking organization or whatever. And, and there's a lot of people like that. I think that there's a lot less people, um, that are like cultural connectors and able to, um,

• 26:44Speaker 02

  you know, like promote relevance in a wide variety of different things from software to consumer tech to, um, and that's kind of the space that I feel like, um, is the most interesting to play. Um, and so, yeah, uh, uh, I'm going to be launching, uh, a website soon where you can see all the portfolio companies. Uh, but I would really, you know, um, if, if you know any of the founders that I work with, please reach out to them and, and ask, um, how I've been helping them. Uh, I guarantee none of them will say, uh, Instagram promotion as, as one of the first things, so.

• 27:14Logan Bartlett?

  One of the topics we want to hit, so Tiger Global, uh, was, it was to disclose their returns from the month of April as well as their, uh, returns year to date. So, um, this, in the first four months of the year, their assets under management across their two funds have fallen, has fallen from 35 billion to 19 billion. Uh, their main hedge fund posted a 15% decline in April, uh, which put them at down 44% for the year. Uh, their long only fund was actually hit even worse in April, falling 25% in the month and is down 52% for the year. Uh, so, uh, Tiger declined to comment on all this, but obviously the numbers, uh, in some ways speak for themselves.

• 27:55Logan Bartlett?

  And, uh, I think when we look out on the market today, uh, we're recording this on a Thursday afternoon and I think, uh, stocks definitely got clapped, uh, today as well after a little bit of a rally yesterday. So, uh, I know Tiger is at the, uh, has been at the epicenter of, uh, a bunch of jokes as well as, uh, the industry, uh, over the course of the last, uh, two years. Um, what, what's your thoughts on, on these numbers? Where do you think Tiger goes from here with all this?

• 28:22Speaker 02

  I think what's unfortunate for Tiger is that they are, you know, just have so much of the public spotlight and attention, just due to how fast and how aggressively they were going over the last two or three years. And so it's kind of like a double edged sword, right? You know, in good times, you look kind of like genius for going so hard and allocating that hard. And then in sort of more humbling times, it's you also still have that same level of spotlight. And I think what's interesting, and this is not specific to Tiger in general, but if you were to probably get a true mark on all those private funds and you were to blend those together with the public funds, it'd probably look a lot more catastrophic than what we're seeing right now. And so what's interesting to me is like, especially

• 29:04Speaker 02

  all of these funds that have started to do a lot of the crossover stuff, it's, they don't really look too much to me like hedge funds anymore.

• 29:12Logan Bartlett?

  Well, there's not a lot of hedge.

• 29:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's not a lot of fund, but not a lot of hedge, right?

• 29:16Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 29:16Speaker 02

  So it's, to me, it seems interesting that they're, everyone seems to be straying away from like what really sort of this industry was built on, which is risk adjusted returns, not just like net returns. And so, I don't know, I think that it seemed like a lot of people thought that the musical chairs could never end, or they didn't really, they couldn't perceive what sort of macroeconomic event would really tip the scales in this way. And yeah, I think that there are a lot of positions on everybody's books, not just Tiger Global's, but small funds, big funds, that, you know, it'd be tough to sell those valuations

• 29:57Speaker 02

  in a real way right now. And so I think that realistically, a lot of people's books probably look like this. Maybe not because the public exposure is so high, but I think a lot of people's books probably look pretty ugly and Tiger is just has the unfortunate sort of title of being the most relevant venture investor right now. So they're getting especially bots.

• 30:20Logan Bartlett?

  It is interesting. I mean, this this felt like, uh, I don't, I mean, everyone for the longest time, when I've been, I've been in the industry at large for 12 years. I've been in venture for eight now. And at every point, there's always a firm that people point to and say, hey, this is crazy, right? And it was, uh, it was Andreessen Horowitz back in the, you know, whatever, 2011, 12, 13, and people forget, but they were made fun of for doing GitHub at the price that they did, right? And, uh, and doing Slack and, you know, there's, and then it was, um, you know, and then it was Co2 for a little while, and then Tiger, uh, definitely took that mantle, or SoftBank was in there as well, I guess. It's, it's interesting. I think, um, I guess it'll be

• 31:03Logan Bartlett?

  interesting to see, uh, they, their product is one that I think resonates, uh, with entrepreneurs, right? Obviously, who, who doesn't want, um, access to this capital and this scale and the efficient, uh, the efficiency at which they operate, right? And so I think there's a, a good need for this product of some type in the market. People obviously like that, but they were playing fast with, uh, diligence and prices and, and all of, all of those things. I think there, the thing that is, is, I, I imagine will be their saving grace in all of this is that they've made people a lot of money, right? And like that 19 billion, or going from 35 to 19, there's

• 31:46Logan Bartlett?

  probably a lot of people that came in at the end, uh, of all of this, and those people have only experienced losses. But there also are a lot of people that have made a ton of money being a part of Tiger, right? And so I think they're going to get a little bit more forgiveness than some of these groups over the course of the last two years that either started new or only started doing privates, right? And so I imagine Tiger's going to be able to weather this, but I do think that there's probably some other hedge funds that have gotten exposure to, uh, privates recently that haven't made people money. And they're going to have a lot of problems, right? And so I think this is something of a canary in the coal mine for honestly, a bunch of people to the adjacent of Tiger.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  I would say so too, and I just want to be perfectly clear that, you know, Scott and the rest of their team are some of the, you know, best investors that I know of, um, generally.

• 32:33Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, sure.

• 32:34Speaker 02

  And I don't, I don't think that, um, over, over a long period of time, that this is something that, you know, I'm not worried about Tiger, I'm not worried about their bonuses, I'm not worried about the Hamptons houses, like, I think that they're gonna be totally fine.

• 32:46Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, listen, I, I think, I think some of the houses they purchased have been disclosed. I don't think anyone should be particularly worried about, about that, but yes, I agree.

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, totally. So I think, um, you know, at the end of the day, what people need to remember is that this is a long game, and there are gonna be definitely moments in time where these little blips happen, and I'm not even calling this necessarily a little blip, but, you know, I, I believe in the integrity of their ability to invest over a long period of time. And so, um, while this is just a really unfortunate snapshot in time for their returns, I think over the long term, and to your point, like, in, in the past, they're probably gonna do just fine. So, um, yeah, but it is, again, uh, there's a lot of people that have probably invested in the last four years who thought, oh, you know what, I'm just gonna, uh, hop on this little train and, and, and see what happens. That, uh, like, I know a lot of hedge funds that, um, have no business in, in doing privates,

• 33:37Speaker 02

  or of course, doing privates. And so, um, yeah, there's, it could get ugly on that side for sure.

• 33:42Logan Bartlett?

  Where do you think the shakeout lands? Like, do you think, um, there ends up being, I don't know, three, four, five kind of broad hedge funds, and we've had fifteen, twenty that have been participating, and there's a pullback, and, you know, only a few survive? Or what's your, what's your thought on this crossover, uh, market in particular, and the people that have historically been very hedge fund oriented?

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that the ones that, um, have, to your point, been doing really well for the LPs over an extended period of time, will have a level of, um, trust that they'll probably be able to raise. You know, you, you looked at Melvin, um, Capital earlier this year, and even when they were like marked down, I don't even know what it was, like thirty fucking percent in a week, like, they still had LPs willing to come in and support, and, you know. So I think that if you have a really strong brand name, and you've been doing this for a really long time, I think that you're okay. But it's these sort of players who, um, you know, have been traditionally hedge funds for, like, a really long time, and then all of a sudden realize that, oh, the only alpha that, I can maybe juice my alpha a little bit by also doing privates and, and worry, not worrying about constant

• 34:46Speaker 02

  marks. I think for me, that, um, that kind of indicates that those guys are probably gonna get fucked over. And, um, The ones that are able to continuously, or not continuously, but but still able to maintain their stories with their LPs, which I feel like is, you know, a lot of the ones that we know and talk about often. Um, you know, i- in 10 years, things are probably going to be fine. It's just how how does it shake out over the short term?

• 35:09Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's amazing. I mean, everyone says be greedy when others are fearful or whatever, like all the standard platitudes. And then you just see the lemmings, uh, the mindset like it is. It is against human nature, right, to not be, uh, uh, fearful in this in this exact setting when the market's getting crushed the way it is.

• 35:25Speaker 02

  Sure. Oh, dude. Yeah, especially when it fucking hurts. Like, yeah, when it hurts, it's hard. Like when it's like, uh, physically or psychologically painful, like nobody wants to continuously put up with that. But, you know, that's that's where, I mean, according to Warren Buffett, all the alpha is. So we'll see.

• 35:43Logan Bartlett?

  I've heard he's a pretty smart guy, so. Another thing wanted to hit, um, so there's two different buckets of this. One, uh, Business Insider got their hands on an internal memo from Facebook's, uh, CFO, who said that there is a hiring freeze that's going to go on within the company for the rest of the year and, uh, reduced hiring targets that will affect almost every team in the company. Um, so that was, uh, that was reported by Business Insider. It sounds like they got their hands on the memo. And then also we've seen a few, uh, different, like 50 to 90 person layoffs that have happened this week from not, uh, huge companies, but ones that have raised a decent amount of capital. So Cameo, uh, disclosed that they were laying off 87 people. OnDeck was laying off 72. Uh, Main Street said that they were going to lay off a third of their workforce,

• 36:28Logan Bartlett?

  which looked to be, looked like they had about 200 people from what I can tell on LinkedIn. So that would be, uh, what about 65 or so? Um, so I guess, uh, we shouldn't be surprised that some of this stuff is happening. Um, what's interesting to me is while the broader market has pulled back for sure from a valuation standpoint, I've yet to see business fundamentals be impacted for the most part, right? It's like this is sort of a, a valuation centric question. And, uh, I assume it's going to flow through, like, especially if you sell to other startups inevitably. The this cut in spending and hiring, all that stuff will end up flowing through the economy. But it's interesting to see, I wonder to what extent these companies, these layoffs are

• 37:13Logan Bartlett?

  in the case of the private business businesses, it's just extending runway versus the the businesses are being impacted. But I I credit to these companies and for me to getting out in front of this, right? Obviously, we saw Fast didn't do that and ran headfirst in the wall. So I don't know, you're you're, uh, do you have any opinion about any of these companies specifically? Or just in general about like how much more carnage we're going to see here in the coming weeks and months for some of these startups?

• 37:40Speaker 02

  I think that we're going to probably see a lot of carnage. Some will be forced carnage and some will be carnage by choice. Um, it seems like these groups are um taking the carnage by choice option. Um, which I think is probably the most prudent option for most people because um from where I sit and from the people that I talk to. It seems like burn is probably one of the most important metrics um going right now and how people can manage burn. And so my just seeing these names and knowing where they are within their fundraising cycles. I would assume that this is a preempt, uh, like a preemptive um sort of action in order to say, hey, look, we're we're starting to manage burn.

• 38:22Speaker 02

  We're we're good for another round because look, we're like actually being um, you know, prudent stewards of capital here. Uh, and and, you know, before you guys even asked us, we were already, you know, tightening our belt a little bit. So I think what you're going to start to see is there's going to be some companies who am like, to be honest, like, I don't even know what 87 people at Cameo are doing or like 72, like, that's a lot of fucking people. And like, these businesses in a lot of senses don't really need that. I think that like, um, we've been, we've been tricked by COVID and a lot of other things into um letting these businesses bloat a lot. And I think it's almost like. One of those things where people were actually hiring more so that they could get a larger

• 39:04Speaker 02

  round because they could say, hey, listen, look at how big our team is. This is what it costs to run our team. We actually need X much, X much larger of a round because, uh, you know, if we want runway to keep this team and keep growing it, then we need X amount of money. And so I think people are finally being like, actually, what the fuck are all those people doing at your company? And, um, that is probably going to be one of the most poignant questions asked of a lot of late-stage companies, uh, moving forward. In my opinion is what the fuck are all these people doing here and why are they here?

• 39:35Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 39:36Speaker 02

  And if you don't have like a very good justifiable reason, then you're going to start to see the forced carnage. Um, so that's my, my take.

• 39:43Logan Bartlett?

  I mean, it's never easy to do this. I, I will say all of these companies specifically, I didn't see, uh, any blowback in the, in the, uh, like better.com way about how it was handled. Like I actually saw some anonymous compliments from people about the maturity of it. And this is always a hard thing to handle. I guess the Cameo guy did, um, uh, tweet out the thing using his, uh, his, uh, from his profile, uh, on Twitter and his PFP was a Bored Ape Yacht Club, uh, image, which, you know, is maybe a sign of excess. And so you might want to change that when you're, when you're, uh, when you're signing off.

• 40:20Speaker 02

  It's like firing someone with like a brand new protect fleabone.

• 40:23Logan Bartlett?

  That's right. Yeah, exactly. Pointing at them and saying this, this way to the door and you're, you're, you know, whatever.

• 40:28Speaker 02

  With your gold, uh, with your gold Nautilus.

• 40:30Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. 500,000 watches there as well. But, uh, yeah, it's a, it's, I mean, a credit to these. I'm sure it wasn't an easy decision to come to, but, uh, getting out in front of some of these things and just extending your runway. It's, it's, it's the fair thing to do to these employees or for these employees and for their investors and the companies as well. And so I, I'm sure it was really difficult, but, uh, credit to all of them for doing it.

• 40:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. And at the end of the day, it's, um, you know, it's, it's one, a hundred percent is a really tough thing to do. But if you're thinking about the company as a whole and the survival of a company, in, in some cases it's necessary. It's like cutting off like a frostbitten limb, you know? If you want to survive in general, you might have to make some sacrifices. And so, uh, it's definitely a hard thing to do and, and, you know, um, It's a shitty thing to do, but in some cases very necessary. So sucks to all the people that are affected by it. But hopefully, you know, all these things turn around and we get back to a place where there's more hiring than firing.

• 41:25Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, totally, totally. Well, I didn't want to lead with this because we've talked about this, I think, every week, and I imagine we'll continue to talk about it. But it was disclosed this week, two things about Elon Musk. So number one, it seems like he's going to act as the interim CEO when he takes over Twitter. And then also, he did get $7 billion in financing for the deal from a group of 19 different investors. And so this will decrease the amount that he needs to borrow against his Tesla stake. And so he won't need to put up as much. It was an interesting cast of characters. It was Prince Al-Walid bin Talal from Saudi Arabia, who was the number one most committed

• 42:09Logan Bartlett?

  to putting up the financing. So he was going to put in 1.9 billion. Then the other cast of characters, I guess there were 18 of them, but the notable ones from my perspective, Larry Ellison put up $1 billion. Sequoia put up 800 million. Andreessen Horowitz put up 400 million. Binance put up 500 million and DFJ Growth put up 100 million. There are a bunch of connections between those people and Elon. So Sequoia, I believe, was an investor in SpaceX, and they just recently announced an investment in The Boring Company. Larry Ellison sits on Tesla's board. DFJ Growth invested in The Boring Company, Tesla, SolarCity and SpaceX.

• 42:52Logan Bartlett?

  Steve Jervitson, their former partner and one of their namesakes, is very close with Elon, as I understand it. And then Binance developed some trading in tokenized version of Tesla's stock or something. That was maybe the weird one, but Binance seems like a weird company as well. So I'm a little surprised by the cast of characters here. We had only heard that there were big private equity firms kind of circling. It's not totally surprising that this is viewed a little bit more as a venture bet than it is a private equity one, given the cash dynamic to the business. Are you surprised to see this list of names and big venture firms participating in this?

• 43:37Speaker 02

  No, I'm surprised that there's honestly not more. I mean, if you um, if you really think about what they're buying into and what they're buying a piece of, you're buying a piece of global culture, right? And I don't know how to value that, but having influence on the nexus for where a hun- almost a hundred percent of the most important topics in the world are openly debated, seems to me like a very, very It seems to me like the, the value in that is going to extend far past a financial um, sort of return. Although, you know, if, if it is executed properly, I do think that Twitter has been a fantastically poorly run business. And there's a lot of opportunities to um, commercialize it and, and create um, revenue in ways that were

• 44:21Speaker 02

  just basically completely ignored for the last ten years. Um, and so, yeah, I think that I, I think that it's a great bet in the sense that there's obviously a chance that this could be very financially lucrative. But even more so, I think that the, everybody who participated in this is playing a 3D chess in the sense that you know, if you can control the public narrative, and not saying that everybody on the cap table is gonna have like their hands in this, this like Illuminati pot, just, you know, moving the algorithm around to uh, whatever benefits them. But I do think that being as close as possible, it's like to me, but like buying something like the fucking New York Times back in wh- whatever, nineteen fifties or sixties. It's your, it's, it's, you're, you're taking a bet on the fact that if you

• 45:05Speaker 02

  have some sort of uh, influence on the way that the platform is executed, then by some extension, you have an influence on culture. And I think that that's a very valuable thing and, and worth every cent, to be honest.

• 45:19Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it makes sense. Um, I, I guess some people were speculating that it was gonna be a venture bet. And I think the level of uh, uh, plan Elon's articulated about where the company is going to go feels very much like a venture uh, style investment, right? Where not all the details are fleshed out, but clearly this is a very strategic asset that's been under optimized that uh, is going to have a world-class uh, cast of characters probably around the table. Helping out and so it it's it's interesting as this is sort of played out in real time Elon started from the framework of hey this isn't a financial

• 45:56Logan Bartlett?

  thing for me which I actually believe that it wasn't when he when he did that on the the Ted Talk interview stage or whatever it was uh so I I believe that it wasn't thought through I think increasingly probably when he realized how much capital he was gonna have at stake uh he he recognized that um that that making it more of a financial investment and getting more financial oriented people involved is probably a good thing I guess my big question is how that's how that's gonna impact the uh the product decisions right because obviously he's been pretty vocal about um and Jack Dorsey has as well of how advertising has um somewhat held back what they can do with the platform and uh but that's uh ninety percent of the revenue today right and so

• 46:40Logan Bartlett?

  it'll be interesting where this like free speech dynamic that the public good that he was talking about originally where that where that stops and where the turning this into as good of a business as it actually can be starts and so yeah I I trust this is only gonna be uh you know the beginning of us talking about all of these things.

• 46:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I agree. I think that uh we're gonna see I I think that it it would be surprising to not see the influence of all of these people in in some way, shape or form and and however this turned out next.

• 47:10Logan Bartlett?

  One of the things that also popped up this week was uh Near Edge Aurora posted a long uh Twitter thread about uh selling he was the chief business officer at WhatsApp and he said that he helped sell it for twenty two billion dollars uh to Facebook and he went through and uh said how he regretted it and how a bunch of decisions that were made by uh Facebook um and some of the promises that were made at the time of acquisition were not kept and uh that includes no ads seems to be one of the big ones that they they uh said no mining of user data no cross-platform

• 47:47Logan Bartlett?

  tracking and he said that Facebook and their management team agreed and uh believed in their mission um ultimately I think people probably know how the WhatsApp Position has played out. There has been more, they have not held to all of those things all the way through. Brian Action, who was one of the co-founders of WhatsApp, came out and I think in 2018, spoke out pretty publicly about why it was time to delete Facebook. So it's, it's interesting that this comes out now. I'm not quite sure what Neeraj Arora's attentions are with it.

• 48:26Logan Bartlett?

  It does seem that he is launching a new app that is a privacy focused one. And so it is a serendipitous timing and some shameless self-promotion after selling this company for $22 billion to Facebook. A crying wolf at this point, but it's gotten a ton of traction, 34,000 likes as of the current recording. And it was published about 24 hours ago, so it's certainly going high and wide and seems to validate. It's one of these things that seems to validate what people's opinions are already. If you believe that Facebook is poorly intentioned and everything they're doing, then this seems to validate that.

• 49:05Logan Bartlett?

  But it does seem a little self-serving to me. Do you have any opinions about, about what Neeraj's take is here?

• 49:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it's, I think it's a completely self-promotive in the sense that it's just great timing that he has a new app launching. Nothing wrong with that, I guess, but I think what, I think the heartstring that it might be pulling on a lot of people is, I'm sure a lot of people in our industry have had that experience where they've poured their heart and soul into a product that they really love and that they really believed in, and that they believe that the mission that they were focused on initially was the one that best served that product. But I think that everybody should be aware of, and I don't know how people aren't, that when you sell your company to another company. You're kind of making a deal with the devil in the sense that that's no longer your company.

• 49:51Speaker 02

  Like all of the love and the, it's like when you, I don't know, um, sell a car and someone goes and puts like a god awful, ugly body kit on it. Even though it was like a beautiful Ferrari when you started with it. It's like, yeah, understandable. Like every, everybody was kind of playing for the same team at one point, but it's the owner of the actual thing that gets to decide what they do with it. And with twenty two billion dollars in your pocket, it's one of those things where it's like, if you're actually complaining about how that all shifted, then I understand that you really believed in your mission, but at this point, it just seems like you're complaining from like a mansion somewhere. Um, while uh, you're about to launch a new product that'll make you potentially even richer. So.

• 50:31Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. It's like, it's like, it's like that Woody Harrelson cry, uh, where he's crying and wiping money with his tears, right? Uh, using dollar bills to wipe his tears away. It's kind of like, dude, cry me a river. You sold your business, uh, for twenty two billion dollars. Like one of the biggest acquisitions in history. And now because you're, you're being opportunistic about your launch of this app, you're coming out with the story. And so it's, uh, uh, everyone's going to be self-serving in all this and, uh, it's, it's, it's, I think our job and it's incumbent on people that read news in general to assume what different people's intentions or biases are in this.

• 51:08Logan Bartlett?

  And it, it's, this is so explicitly convenient for him to be coming out with this story now that it's, it's like, what, what did you think was going to happen after this? Uh, and thankfully I was scrolling through the comments and it seems like most people are calling him out on this, but it spread virally and most people, uh, that see that thread probably aren't going to unpack, you know, uh, uh, how self-serving this whole thing is.

• 51:31Speaker 02

  But it's also really easy to hate meta right now. So, I mean, like, I can't really say how much of that is just like fuck Mark Zuckerberg, you know?

• 51:38Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I, it, it, this, I, I assume the virality is just like, this is, this is, uh, chum for the people that want to hate on Facebook, right? And it's like, look at this founder.

• 51:47Speaker 02

  For sure. It's just another thing that Mark fucked up on. Yeah.

• 51:50Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Look at this founder that, that, or whatever, chief business officer that helped negotiate the sale to WhatsApp. And now he too is coming out against it, right? And it's like, give me a break.

• 52:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. And like also the founders seem to be very quiet on their yachts, just enjoying their life. So. I mean, who's really angry here?

• 52:08Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, totally. Yeah, that's exactly right. They uh, they're, they're, they're crying while they're shoveling uh, more money for gas into their yacht right now. So I, I think everyone's doing okay. And again,

• 52:18Speaker 02

  Totally. Especially with oil prices. It's about, yeah.

• 52:21Logan Bartlett?

  It's a goo- it's a good lesson in general. Like if you're selling your house, right? You don't get a say on, back to your car example. Like you don't get a say if someone knocks down one of the walls or something, right? And changes it. You walked away, you made a financial deal with someone and like,

• 52:35Speaker 02

  Even if they loved the house at the time, it's their house, like.

• 52:38Logan Bartlett?

  It's their house now, right? And they might've said always, uh, you know, uh, like, uh, we will always do something and then they change their mind. And you know what? That's their prerogative. They own it. And you, you have 22 billion reasons to walk away and not cry about it. And, you know, so it is.

• 52:53Speaker 02

  For sure. And a whole new company to focus on. So I don't know what like, yeah.

• 52:57Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But amazing promotion. I assume, uh, this is going to get more attention on his app. So here we are, right?

• 53:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, look at us. We're promoting right now.

• 53:08Logan Bartlett?

  All right. Well, that concludes the final episode of Three Cartoon Avatars and the first episode of Cartoon Avatars. Uh, Mr. Exits, thank you for joining. Hopefully this was fun for you. And maybe we can make this a, uh, regular guest appearance where we, we knock out some of this stuff.

• 53:24Speaker 02

  For sure. Happy, happy to do that. And, uh, thank you guys so much for having me. It was an honor. And, uh, yeah, always, always down to come, uh, talk some shit. So hit me up.

• 53:32Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Where can people find you? Find you on Instagram and Twitter?

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, at PrayingForExits. Um, yeah, come say hi.

• 53:38Logan Bartlett?

  Good deal. What you're about to hear is a, uh, conversation that I had with, uh, three different Board Ape Yacht Club experts. I had posted to Twitter, uh, who knows the most about Board Ape Yacht Club? And I had gotten a number of recommendations. And so I decided I have three of them on to talk about, uh, talk about what's going on with Board Ape Yacht Club, Other Side, Yuga Labs, all of that stuff. So excited for you to hear it now. So, uh, special topic, uh, panel we got here. So, uh, over the weekend, one of the big things that happened that I was interested in was, uh, we've talked about board apes in the past and Yuga Labs, the company behind, uh, board apes. And so I am not

• 54:16Logan Bartlett?

  Particularly well versed in weighing in on this subject. I've made, I guess I've moved past the slope of enlightenment where I was making a bunch of jokes about crypto to now believing that there's stuff actually going on here, but I'm not at the point of actually understanding what's going on. So I figured I would get people that actually do understand what's going on on this, this topic to kind of talk through what happened over the weekend. I am joined today by three special guests. I'm going to do a round the horn for people to introduce themselves and maybe give a little bit of context of why you were suggested to me and my Twitter mentions as someone that could weigh in on the subject. So I'm just going to go in order as they appear on my screen, but Alex, do you want to give a kind of a quick background on yourself and your affiliation with Board Apes and Yuga?

• 55:01Speaker 03

  Sure. So Alex Taub, based in Miami. I'm the co-founder and CEO of a company called Upstream. We build like DAO infrastructure. So it's sort of like a DAO in the box. Been a holders for a long time, over a year now for, for Yuga. So I think that's a, we've crossed the, the long-term capital gains. And a little small investor in Yuga, the company, participated in the round. And own two OG Apes, two mutants, a dog, a bunch of land.

• 55:38Logan Bartlett?

  That's great. Well, we'll get into Apes, mutants, dog and land. I imagine people know what all those words mean, but probably not in the context that you were using them. So next up, Tropo Farmer. Please give us a little bit of context yourself.

• 55:54Speaker 04

  How's it going, Tropo Farmer? OG Apes fan, been there since day zero, like one of the first 50 people in the Discord, very strong early supporter and just big proponent of the community and Yuga Labs and the Board API Club in general. One OG ape, three mutants, four dogs, some land and a bunch of merch. Aside from that, I'm just kind of a general Twitter shitposter and also do advising and investing as well.

• 56:25Speaker 04

  And I'm also a Yuga investor, very, very small.

• 56:29Logan Bartlett?

  Good. Okay. Well, two clearly biased people here as you're weighing in on the subject. Everyone, please recognize the conflicts that exist here. Okay. Last, but certainly not least, Mags.

• 56:43Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Mags. I'm a consumer venture investor, kind of at the intersection of culture and crypto. One OG ape holder, one mutant holder, not an investor in Yuga the company. And I'm here probably because I'm a queen of hot takes and like one of five women in the entire Yuga ecosystem. So.

• 57:02Logan Bartlett?

  Good. Well, we could talk about that. Maybe that'll come up, maybe it won't. But yes, Mags, thanks for, thanks for joining us. So over the weekend, Yuga Labs, the creators of Board Ape Yacht Club, launched a sale of their virtual land for their highly anticipated metaverse project. That raised $320 million worth of cryptocurrency, but it was in their native ape coin, which we'll, we'll talk about what that actually means. The bottom, the criticism or the, the reason that this was interesting is that it also resulted in about $180 million of transaction fees in Ether that went to people that were actually

• 57:43Logan Bartlett?

  staking Ethereum. So from the, for the transaction. So I guess, did I get that version right? Our second outtake in trying to do this, is that closer to accurate?

• 57:54Speaker 04

  I think you're good.

• 57:55Logan Bartlett?

  Alex, maybe, maybe weigh in a little bit. There's some question about, basically, is, is this a feature or a bug that all this transaction fees existed? Some people have equated it to an app, an Apple release, right? Where people line up around the block and the opportunity to skip the line from, from the apps to get access to this. Was this actually, did this work as intended? Or is this actually a bug that exists, you know, in their approach?

• 58:24Speaker 03

  I don't think, you know, there's a lot of people who think there's like conspiracy theory that they like wanna create their own chain and they did it on purpose and that doesn't really line up with how I think of them. And then it's not because I'm a, I'm a tiny, tiny, tiny investor. They basically went to all the board eight owners and they just said, hey, if you want to participate in the round, you can't, which I thought was a nice thing. So it's not, I'm not, I've already, I don't expect any profit or any return from that. I just wanted to support because I, I love being part of it. But in terms of this specific thing, I mean, they could have done the drop better. There's a lot of different examples of ways that people have done drops recently that did

• 59:05Speaker 03

  not lead to all this, you know, these mining fees. So they could have done a raffle, they could have done, they could have given one, one spot to people. And then they could have given people a longer time to go, everyone has a spot. And once everyone gets a spot, then we could do a little bit of a gas war. So having two hours of, you know, elevated gas was probably not something that they wanted. And I don't think that anyone really felt good about it. So it was, I think, I think it is and was an issue.

• 59:41Logan Bartlett?

  It seemed like a little bit like some of the criticism related to it was obviously some of the points that you made about they could have done this better, thought through different stuff. And it sounds like you don't think this was a hype building exercise, right? Like intentionally creating mania behind something to draw more attention to the project?

• 59:59Speaker 03

  I mean, it's really tough. You're trying to sell 55,000 plots of land. You know what I mean? People keep forgetting like, or like people who've never been involved in like a product launch or like, like you're trying to sell 55,000 plots of land for about two ETH each. Like you don't know what's gonna happen.

• 1:00:16Logan Bartlett?

  And two ETH is right now about $5,000 roughly, right?

• 1:00:20Speaker 03

  Uh, well, he said over more like $6,000, but it was two, but it was equivalent of uh 305 ape coin, which at the time was about 20 bucks right when the mint happened. So I'm interchangeably using different currencies across, but, but about, about, about six grand. So you just don't know what's going to happen. So I don't think there was some like massive conspiracy. Also historically, Yuga, Board Ape, they just have not been great at launches. They're great at a lot of things, but like, if you actually look back, it took like a week for them to sell out the original project, which I'm not saying, you know, good, bad, you sell out in two seconds versus a week. It was also a different time.

• 1:01:01Speaker 03

  But Mutant Apes, nobody knew what was happening when, when the mint was happening for Mutant Apes. People forget that like, they just put it out there and they've just, they've never been great at communication on like what's going on. And that's also part of the game. You know what I mean? Like right now, we don't really know like what the value of different things, or we don't know what the value of the coda is, which is something we'll probably talk about in a few minutes. We don't know the value of the resources. We don't know the value of the artifacts that are on this land. Nobody knows. They're not, and they could tomorrow just explain it all. But part of the game is figuring that out.

• 1:01:35Logan Bartlett?

  And you're saying game in a literal sense. So, so maybe we can back up to the, to the top about Board Ape. So how did you guys originally get exposed to this? Uh, how did it come to be? When did you get involved? And like, what's the relationship between Board Ape, the actual, uh, Board Ape, the actual uh NFT versus the company versus the, the land and all that? I guess maybe, maybe zooming out a bit, like, what are we even talking about here? So obviously people understand at a high level what NFTs are and uh, and what that concept is. And I, we've walked through what Yuga is versus Board Apes. But Tropa, it sounds like you're kind of an OG here. Can you take us back to like, what even is this thing that we're talking about?

• 1:02:16Speaker 04

  I mean, at its core, like this is a community, uh, the Board Ape Club is based on ownership of this NFT. Um, that's where it all started. That's where it all sprung from. That's where it continues to be focused on. You know, he had the, the community that started last spring with the, the drop there that flowed into their airdrop, which was given to holders with their dogs. And then at the end of the summer, he had the sale of mutants, which is what Alex talked about. And and now you've got OtherSide, which again was like given as a free claim for holders of the BAYC apes and mutants. So in terms of like how those are related, you you know,

• 1:03:01Speaker 04

  you guys, the company that's created both of those, but BAYC and OtherSide don't necessarily have a direct connection. Legally, they're separated, the communities are separated, but there's a ton of overlap between the participants in both ecosystems.

• 1:03:17Logan Bartlett?

  The NFT launched originally last spring, right? Whenever that was, and it took a week to sell out. And then there was a big focus and it became kind of a cultural phenomenon, and they launched subsequent things after that. So then there was mutants and it sounds like-

• 1:03:32Speaker 04

  Yeah, mutants was kind of the next collection to expand the ecosystem. So you had 10,000 bored apes, now you have 20,000 mutants. 10,000 of those were given to bored apes. So conceivably, you've kind of doubled the size of the community with that launch.

• 1:03:48Logan Bartlett?

  And and the community is about ballpark 10,000 people? What's, you know, as you guys are in these Discord servers?

• 1:03:56Speaker 04

  I think in terms of unique holders of of a mutant or an ape, it's probably about 10, 10 to 15,000.

• 1:04:03Logan Bartlett?

  So this is a community of 10 to 15,000 people that all have different NFTs. And now you go raise money, whatever, a couple, couple months ago, from Andreessen Horowitz and Thrive and a handful of other people. And so now that is with the objective of building this OtherSide game, right?

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  Correct, yeah.

• 1:04:24Logan Bartlett?

  Great.

• 1:04:24Speaker 04

  That is, in my, in my opinion, like the next way that they can expand this ecosystem is by having this drop that so many new people can participate in that have been priced out of mutants and apes. And granted, $6,000 is still like, that's still a lot of money. And when you put on these gas fees on top of that, it basically has doubled the cost. So you're still excluding a lot of folks who wanted this to be their first entry into this ecosystem, just by virtue of price and really just knowledge, like-

• 1:05:00Speaker 04

  It wasn't enough to just have money. You needed to also know how to kind of play the game to get to be able to buy this thing. So in terms of like, has this succeeded in expanding the ecosystem? Like, yeah, kind of, but like it, in my opinion, like it could have been done much, much better.

• 1:05:19Logan Bartlett?

  Well, it's, it sounds like you and Alex both agree that like this could have been orchestrated better and all that. But Max, we were talking before and you, it feels like you might disagree a little bit about just how, how involved the community is and or how, how well they're able to handle the community and whether or not this is actually democratizing access for other people to come in.

• 1:05:40Speaker 05

  Well, a lot of different ideas and thoughts there, right? So one, I think when you look at this drop, there's like three elements to it. There is the who was the target audience? What was the objective for the drop? And what is the long-term vision for other side and Yuga and all of that, right? And like I, I'm only guessing of like what the team was thinking, what the team was solving for. If it was about expanding access to the ecosystem, this was like a very complicated way to do it. That ended up being like having a poor results. I don't think it was malicious intent. I think it was just an underestimating how much demand there was going to be. And all the kind of issues came out of that, right?

• 1:06:21Speaker 05

  If it was about not that and actually just deepening the ecosystem and to current holders. And, you know, you got your free claim, but you also could get more, um, more, uh, piece of land by buying them, et cetera. Like this is not how you treat your customers in your community, right? Like this was also not a good experience for those people because you wouldn't expect to get that level of treatment from people who were like supporting you day one. So regardless of like which objective you pick, it wasn't a great outcome, but not because of malicious intent. It was just probably some level of underestimating demand, thoughtlessness, some hubris, where like.

• 1:07:00Speaker 05

  Combination of things that were not, you know, intentionally trying to like get people. I think like there are three types of archetype of buyers, right? There was the super active NFT trader. And if you lost money on gas, like I don't feel sorry for you because it was a greed driven behavior, right? Like if you're a super big trader and you're like, you pumped up gas for a reason because you wanted to like, get your allocation. Like if you lost money on it, like I don't actually feel that bad because if you didn't think it was worth it, you wouldn't do it. Then there's the like, the second archetype, which is relatively frequent NFT trader who just isn't part in the ecosystem. Because they are priced out, they cannot afford a mutant, they cannot afford an ape at current prices, right? And they wanted to be part of the ecosystem.

• 1:07:46Speaker 05

  And with those folks, like I do feel kind of bad because that is like their introduction to the Yuga ecosystem. And it was a poor experience, right? Like they were not trying to buy 10 or 20 or whatever. Like they just wanted like their one piece of land to be part of the community. And then there is the like, the third customer archetype that like, I feel really bad about. And it's people for whom it might have been their first NFT. It was a horrible drop to be a part of if that was like one of your first purchases. But if you think of like that customer profile, and I use the customer very intentionally here. It's people who've been scared of the NFT game. And Yuga has consistently been the one thing that like, almost guaranteed that you would make money.

• 1:08:26Speaker 05

  And so if you were going to like, finally put some money on the line and try to participate, like, it felt like one of those things, you know what, like I'm gonna make money here. This is a good project with a good team, with good investors. Like, why not, like, you know, take, take a shot here? And those I feel particularly bad about because I think it turned a lot of people off, kind of playing the game and trying to learn more and participate.

• 1:08:52Logan Bartlett?

  As you think about those three different buckets, like what, what number of people that, I assume the people from left or from first to last, the people that got access to it versus not, probably the first group you talked about are probably the ones that got the most access, right? And the last group probably is the one that paid most of the gas fees. But as you think about this, from a, from a user standpoint, not from a number of apes or mutants or that, like, do you think it's, it's 50% the first, 25, 25? What do you think the split is?

• 1:09:20Speaker 05

  I haven't looked at the data and you can kind of tell the data, right? Because you can just analyze the wallets that participated. So I don't want to speculate because I literally haven't taken a look at it. I would guess that the AD20 of it was the kind of the active NFT ecosystem. And but you probably don't have a lot of other NFCs from Yuga. Because those are the people who are like most excited about participating and joining, right? But because if you are already a holder, like you were going to get your free claim, you probably wanted to add some like Alex here did. So it's definitely much heavier on kind of the the more active in the NFT game you are,

• 1:10:00Speaker 05

  the more likely you were to actually benefit, which again rewards kind of expertise and being deep in the weeds as opposed to expanding the ecosystem to more general users. And like that, to me, is a big issue, right? It's like, how do you think about that in context of the vision? Because if the vision is to be a kind of the mainstream platform, ala Sandbox, where you get mass market to kind of participate and play and then be part of it, like you can't run drops like this. But if this is supposed to be for this like very passionate community subculture within the space with like this complicated game within a game within a game, like maybe that's okay and then just communicate that accordingly.

• 1:10:41Logan Bartlett?

  You touched on a bunch of interesting things there. But one of the ones, I guess, at a fundamental level, Alex, or I would love to get your thoughts on, Ark, what like what has caused this level of intrigue into this? Mags made the point that like this might be the introduction into the NFT ecosystem for a lot of people. I would imagine this is, you know, maybe the only one a lot. If you ask someone, a random person on the street, if they could come up with an NFT, this is probably the one they can come up with. What is it fundamentally that has caused this level of intrigue? Is it the art itself? Is it the community? Is it the speculation? Like, what is it that has made this such a center of the cultural zeitgeist?

• 1:11:21Speaker 03

  It's a great question. I think it's different for different people, you know? Going back to like why I got in, I host a weekly event every Friday at 1 o'clock with a gun. Drew Austin and we talk about NFTs and we've been doing this for basically a year. And the mint on that like that Friday, we were talking about it, a bunch of us bought. And I remember, because I remember I looked back and I saw the text I sent to Drew, I was like, I really like this. Because of the, like, this is the first NFT that I'm seeing that like explicitly says, like, if you own an ape, you are part of this community. It was like a membership gate to this yacht club. And I thought that was really cool because CryptoPunks were before and they were sort of like,

• 1:12:05Speaker 03

  never explicitly saying like, you're either a whale or an OG and you're part of this special community. Um, but like the community sort of came around, it's like, oh, if you have a CryptoPunk, you're part of this special community. Um, the board ape was the first one to do that.

• 1:12:20Speaker 03

  So that, that was what initially interested me. I think what, what now, you know, at least what, why this was exciting is historically, you know, board ape is the safest bet in the entire NFT ecosystem, like,

• 1:12:38Speaker 03

  right before the drop, everything was all 10 highs, you know? And I just, I think that, um, you know, this was, this was like, everyone says like, don't fade Yuga, like, just because like, you know, you've historically been wrong anytime you wanted to sell. I, I, I owned with Drew, we owned like four or six apes, like we sold them on the way up. And, um, yeah, I mean, listen, I, I like that I brought new people into the community. But like, I didn't like selling an ape at 10 each. That's, that doesn't feel good.

• 1:13:07Logan Bartlett?

  That's a good way of, uh, of, uh, justifying the, the loss is it's really, you know, it's about, I, I, I democratized access to it. I'm gonna, I'm gonna remember that next time I sell a stock, uh, way too, way too low on the rise up. It's like, no, I just wanted to get someone else into the, you know, owning those shares. I like that. Uh, Tropo, what, what, um, what, uh, in terms of like the brand of Bored Ape Yacht Club, you got? Clearly, we're talking about this, right? And like, I think my average listener is probably a not as deep in all of this. But I look and people are definitely intrigued about this. And here we are doing a special segment about which I've never actually done before. So clearly, this is in some ways magnifying the lens of bored apes that, you know, all publicity is good publicity, right?

• 1:13:53Logan Bartlett?

  To some extent, but on the other hand, there's people that are actually pissed off and lost money. Right? Is this, is this whole thing net negative for bored ape because of the backlash? Or hey, here we are talking about it and it's staying relevant in the cultural zeitgeist?

• 1:14:08Speaker 04

  Yeah, I don't, I don't think it's net negative for NFTs for Yuga. It's, it's obviously net negative for those people who wanted to participate and couldn't.

• 1:14:19Speaker 04

  But, you know, with this space, what happens is people move on very, very quickly. You know, things move so rapidly that like it's only been not even a week since that drop. And it feels like the sentiment has kind of already evaporated. Like we're, we've moved on like, let's focus on what's coming next. Let's see what they can deliver. But to, to make this point, like a lot of people, this was their first experience with NFTs.

• 1:14:51Speaker 04

  I've heard, I've heard other apes say like, I got my friends together. We hung out that night. We, we did the drop together, like it was exciting. And then when you push that buy button and you see the cost like go up and up and up. And so you're like, oh, I didn't, I didn't pay enough. Like, I'm not going to get this thing. And there's, there was like a couple of hours where you're just kind of on edge, waiting to see if this thing that you just agreed to spend $10,000 on is actually going to sell to you, which is just, it's a weird idea for that to be your, your first, first experience. So those people for sure negative. Hopefully they.

• 1:15:37Speaker 04

  Understand kind of what happened, why, why that situation happened.

• 1:15:42Logan Bartlett?

  It's an interesting point. So we've used colloquially game, right? Like we've said, we've referred to the literal game itself, right? They're coming out with a game and the mags you made a reference to the the game within the game and all this intrigue and, and you know, it's almost like I've made this analogy with Elon Musk before. You're not sure what's intentional, like what part of it is eight dimensional chess that he's playing versus what part of it's like accidental, right? And some of that leads to intrigue and speculation. You're like, how much is he moving eight steps ahead of where I am versus making stuff up as they go along, right? So maybe when you, you were the one that originally made the reference to game within the game and all that.

• 1:16:24Logan Bartlett?

  Can you talk a little bit about like, what is the game at a meta level? I guess that's a bad term because they're actually creating a meta game, but at a zoomed out level, what is the game? And then at a zoomed in level, what is the game?

• 1:16:39Speaker 05

  Well, I think there's like three levels of the game if we are going to get complicated here, right? Like there's the actual game with the land, which, you know, you can call it a meta version, you can call it a virtual world. You can call it a game, but like there it will be a playable ecosystem.

• 1:16:54Logan Bartlett?

  They're working with a game studio to build that out and we don't know exactly what it's going to be, but they've released a trailer that shows, you know, some cool imagery around it, right? And so we know some, the game's on the come, that, that was what the, the, the fundraise was about. That's what they've talked about publicly.

• 1:17:09Speaker 05

  Yes. And the land that we just discussed is very much a core part of that product and kind of participation in that ecosystem, right? Then the second layer of game is like just the NFT game and how you think about, um, you know, how the company thinks about launching the, the, the product, how they think about managing their community, how they think about their role in the larger like NFT ecosystem. And then there is the like, the game outside of that, which is like the NFTs within the world overall and kind of the consumer attention and consumer economy where like Tim Swing at Epic has a very different view.

• 1:17:47Speaker 05

  Of like where all of that is going versus some of us, you know, I mean, all of us in the web three space where fundamentally believe in kind of the model as deployed by Yuga. But you're kind of like, you know, you keep stepping up and stepping out and stepping out. I do think that in many ways, like to Alex's point, Yuga has done everything right with the products and delivering value to the holders. And they haven't been so good with a bunch of other things like communication, like some of these drops, et cetera. Like, we have to remember, this is a less than a one-year-old startup. And so it's one of those things where you're just truly drinking from the fire hose and like growing really fast and have a lot of expectations associated with that.

• 1:18:28Speaker 05

  And at the same time, like I do have the take of, you know, with power and stature comes responsibility and like what you get away with as a five-person team, just experimenting in the space. It's very different than like what you can get away with as the dominant player with like hundreds of millions in venture funding, right? It's like you have to deal with those challenges differently. And so I think the, the game within the game, the aspect there is also like their meta has changed. Like they're no longer this crappy little startup that gets to experiment and fuck up and like keep going. Like they have to take responsibility and they have to think differently about it going forward.

• 1:19:06Logan Bartlett?

  Did your sympathies change for, uh, in level of forgiveness you would have for mistakes? Did that change as the, the hype behind it went up and the value of the NFTs went up and all that? Did it change when they took outside capital? Or is it, is this just kind of like you, the expectations have always been high since the, the original launch?

• 1:19:30Speaker 05

  I wouldn't say it was like a high from the initial launch, but like the more dominance you have in the ecosystem and that manifests itself in a bunch of different ways, right? The, like, how much people take your actions as signaling of the larger NFT ecosystem? How many resources you have to fix issues or like do drops? And then how many like amazing people around the table you have to help you think through those problems where like? They just score like 10 out of 10 on every single one of those dimensions. Like there is no other project that comes close right now. And so like it, they unfortunately, they might not like it, but their actions and their kind of activities like reflect on the larger NFT ecosystem in the web three space, especially.

• 1:20:14Speaker 05

  When then it becomes this fodder for news stories that scare like regular people from participating and engaging because it kind of feeds a certain level of narrative.

• 1:20:25Logan Bartlett?

  Chroppa, do you think, I mean, you've been involved in this, the group that's behind Yuga, one, are these the OGs that actually launched? I know they were doxed and whatever. Like, is that actually them? And do you think they appreciate the magnitude of their actions? And how much of a lens is on them? And that, you know, at large, people are going to judge NFTs rightly or wrongly on some of the mistakes that they maybe make?

• 1:20:53Speaker 04

  I think that's kind of the question is like, how much are they involved in other side? You know, I think there's, there's no question that those founders and the vision that they have for BAYC is still being executed. But now that they've taken in all this money and they have partners like Anamoka, the question being asked is like, how much of this is being driven by people other than them? And how strongly do those people believe in the foundations of the community and the company? And how are they executing that with other side? So hopefully, and I think we've seen that with at least the art and the trailers produced, like, I still do feel like those founders and their vision and

• 1:21:38Speaker 04

  creativity are still coming through. If you actually take a dive into the project and look at the depth of what's been created so far, it's, it's very clear that they are passionate about it. And I, I, I hope that that doesn't get lost. Back when BAYC launched, like, I was having like just DMs with Gordon, one of the founders. And this was back when NFT projects were, people were kind of jaded with them last spring. Which is so weird to think about, but like, you know, it was kind of like these somewhat fly by night projects.

• 1:22:19Speaker 04

  You'd have a community that sprang up around the hype and the sale happened. And people either vibed with it and it kind of grew a little bit, or they sold and exited and things just dissipated. So the joke was like, you know, I can't wait to not talk to any of you in a month, right? And he's like, no, man, like we're different, like we're gonna, we're gonna do this right. We have a vision, we're gonna execute, like people will, uh, people will want to participate in this. We're here for the long run and I believed it and they've still proven that to be true. So hopefully, uh, hopefully that that's not lost with the expansion, with all this money that's coming in,

• 1:23:02Speaker 04

  with all the outside influences, as long as those people have, uh, respect for what was established back then and continues to be, uh, proliferated by the community, then I think we'll be fine.

• 1:23:17Logan Bartlett?

  Anaboka is the game studio they're working with, right? Uh, that to help develop other side, is that right?

• 1:23:22Speaker 04

  Yeah, them and, and actually there's another company too called Improbable that I think is handling actual the, the, um, engine itself and the actual game development, so.

• 1:23:32Logan Bartlett?

  Okay, no, that makes sense. Alex, do you, do you agree with, uh, with that assessment of like where they are right now? And what, what are like the actionable takeaways for both them and the community at large from? I mean, clearly they're, they're blazing new ground, right? Uh, with, with everything they're doing at this scale, like CryptoPunks was the, the OG that was sort of held up in this venerable light. Uh, but now we're, we're well beyond that in terms of their, the ambitions for Board Ape Yacht Club, uh, and UGA Labs and all of that. Do you agree with Tropo's assessment there and like, what are the lessons in this?

• 1:24:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, you know, I, I sort of, uh, mentioned this a little bit before, but, um, I, I think when I see people tweeting out like, the game's not coming for another year or two, like what are you all doing? I'm like, the game's already begun, the game, this is the game. And it's very clear that the founders, uh, and the team there, uh, like could, could clear it all up in five seconds. They could drop a video, explain everything. They probably have everything written up in a Google Doc somewhere like they could just do it. Uh, but that's this is already part of the game. Part of the game is figuring out what is a coda? What is an artifact? What is resources on your land? What's valuable? Maybe we all have

• 1:24:49Speaker 03

  it wrong in that if you don't have any resources on your land, it's actually really valuable because then you could build stuff on your land. Like, I don't know. But that's a theory that some people have.

• 1:24:58Logan Bartlett?

  I guess is an interesting detail is that some of this stuff isn't.

• 1:25:02Speaker 03

  No, none of it is. None of that. Some of it. It's none of it is.

• 1:25:06Logan Bartlett?

  You're sort of you're you're diving in headfirst without fully knowing what you're diving into, right?

• 1:25:12Speaker 03

  They made people KYC without telling them what it was for. I mean, that was a big mistake in and of itself. But the the people have no idea. Is it valuable to be very close to the yacht club? Seems some people think that in their buying tons of land because if you look at the map on uh, on on um, on the website, uh, the closest stuff to the yacht club is going for insane prices. So it's like, maybe that's valuable. But does anyone know that for a fact? I don't think so. Like, I don't. There's never been an announcement that like the closer you are to the actual yacht club, it's more valuable.

• 1:25:50Logan Bartlett?

  Packy McCormick, a friend of our, uh, the podcast who also, I guess, will be added on as a interview with Ben Thompson and he that I did to this episode. But, uh, Packy, uh, wrote a, uh, great piece about the great online game and, uh, sort of talking about how everything we're doing to some extent is some version of this game. But is all of this like this intriguing game that's going on in this? Like, it it seems seems as if that's a, uh, a feature of of all of this. And people enjoy that. I use the lost analogy, uh, of the television show, right? Where you're not really sure what's purposeful or not in the whole thing. And some of that's fun. If it all ties together in the end, if they're all just making ship shit up as they go along, you're

• 1:26:33Logan Bartlett?

  gonna be pretty disappointed at the end. Is that a fair analogy for kind of what we're living through?

• 1:26:37Speaker 03

  Yes, because you have to believe that they actually have a larger plan. And I think the the attention to detail. Means that they do, like for example, every pile of land has a little like entrance area like codas, which are these little like um these beings that there's 10,000 of them on randomly on the 100,000 plots. Um, we don't really know what they do, but in the trailer they fly. So maybe and and in the deck that was, you know, that was like distributed in uh for Yuga, like it's it says cart coda. So maybe that means the coda could be on a different land. You can move your coda. For example, I happened to get very lucky and I minted the most rare thing out of all things. I I I minted Chaos Land. Oh. Which is only a hundred and

• 1:27:22Speaker 03

  You lucky son of a bitch. Yeah, I got very lucky. The floor is like 108.

• 1:27:27Logan Bartlett?

  I don't even know what that means. So so that's worth, that is worth uh 3,000 or sorry, $300,000 or something?

• 1:27:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, uh, yeah, about. I mean, that's the floor for it. So I luckily minted that. And there's theories going around that like Chaos Land will let you teleport in the, you know, Yuga universe. And people will pay you to use your teleport. There's only 108 of them. You know, I have I have standing offers for 60 to 90 ETH on it almost every single day. I'm not selling it because I don't know what it really is. I don't know if it's more valuable than that. Maybe it goes to zero. Maybe it's maybe it's worth millions of dollars. I have no idea. But that's that's what I'm saying. Like that's sort of the game, which the so the people who are saying the game's not coming for year two. They're missing the point that the game's already begun. And if you can figure out what it is, whether you find out information

• 1:28:17Speaker 03

  uh or you know, you you speculate on something, uh you could be rewarded. And that's why the expertise here really comes to play. Like, for example, I'm in a DAO. There's 15 of us. Um, no, sorry, there's 29 of us. Some people didn't have enough money to afford the mint. Some people did. We all banned together. We put together about $100,000 and we ended up buying 15 plots of land during the mint. And we were coordinating and we realized you need to up the gas if you really want to get this. We end up going fifteen for fifteen. We got all fifteen spots and it's because a bunch of us were knowledgeable. We understood how to up the gas. We understood if we didn't up the gas, how many people were waiting and how much they were paying.

• 1:28:57Speaker 03

  Like we basically had all that analysis going on, but like some newbie had no chance against us because we knew what we were doing.

• 1:29:04Logan Bartlett?

  Alex, I, I, I, the fact you're getting offered two hundred and seventy thousand dollars, if I, I, or ninety ETH, which is two hundred and seventy thousand dollars. I would, uh, if, if I were in the position and there's a reason I'm not, but I would, I would feel the need to, uh, give access to those people to also be a part of the community. Uh, I, I think I would be very tempted to, uh, to sell, to allow other people to come in.

• 1:29:26Speaker 03

  Here's one thing that I think none of us have mentioned and that I think is really core to Bored Ape is that everyone here is crazy. Like every person who owns a Bored Ape is absolutely bananas, like diamond holding crazy person.

• 1:29:40Logan Bartlett?

  It's just, that's the community mindset, like, like all in, you know, whatever, diamond hands.

• 1:29:46Speaker 03

  It's like Wall Street Bets, like on steroids to some degree. And like, there's no reason, I, I spent eight hundred dollars on my first ape. I bought it for point three two. There's no reason I should not sell it right now. The floor is like one ten. Like there's no reason, but like, listen, I've made enough money from the, the serums and the mutants and the other, and the, and the ape coin that we all got. Like, I made enough that like, I don't know, if it goes to zero, like it'll be a fun post on Wall Street Bets, you know? Um, like at this point, and that, that's like the mentality. So these people are just absolutely like not rational. And that's what you're dealing with a little bit.

• 1:30:24Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah. Well, at some point, right? Like if you could live your life and it, what else, it, it passed a certain standard of living and ability to do what you want and all of that. And especially if people have gotten, uh, rich along the way in a bunch of other derivatives, it's kind of like, hey, why not? Right? And I think we're seeing, uh, at least in the public markets today, we're recording this on a Friday. This, uh, the last two weeks, I think a lot of people that had this mindset in tech are, are, uh, getting, uh, getting awoken to the, to the change in this. But at the end of the day, right? Like, You know, the Tiger guys, Scott Schiefer still has $122 million house in Palm Beach, right? I think he's gonna be, he's gonna be okay. Alex, I realize that's an investor,

• 1:31:07Logan Bartlett?

  so not, God bless him, but you know, I, I, I think they're gonna sleep okay regardless of playing the long game and all of this stuff, right? So, Max, I, my, I sense that you're the, because you're consumer first and venture first and not Bored Ape first or whatever, Crypto DJ first, you might have a little more skepticism about like all elements of this game or where it's going from here? Is that, is that a fair characterization?

• 1:31:39Speaker 05

  I don't know if I would describe it as skepticism, but I think it informs a lot how I think about what this ultimately becomes. Like, everything that Alex just described, it requires so much expertise and time and like the D-Gen, like D-Gen-ness about yourself, right? And so, like, that is not a mass market product, like, that you cannot expect, like, this is not Fortnite. You cannot just, like, plop down and play. This requires, like, a serious commitment to it. Not that different from the, you know, Wall Street bets. Like, I guess you can YOLO, but that's not really playing the game. You, like, have a strategy and community and kind of like aspect to that. And so, I do think that it

• 1:32:21Speaker 05

  informs who the target audience is, what is the ultimate product, and kind of how does that play. I think I'm less and less convinced that this is going to be like your general market, your, you know, 50-year-olds are going to be like playing in their free time. Like, it is just like a very different vibe and a very different vision in my mind. I might be wrong, and there might be kind of, you know, down-market products on, coming up that are more approachable, but this financial game, and it is a financial game right now, this is not a, you know, entertainment-driven game, this is a financial-driven game, is such that it is only speaking to a very particular type of customer who, who this is for.

• 1:33:05Logan Bartlett?

  I mean, it takes a rare person. We've talked about like Reed Hastings at Netflix's ability to go from selling DVDs to building the the subscription digital product to then with syndicated content to building original content, right? And like, most people aren't good. You you kind of catch lightning in a bottle once, right? And the ability to up level to other things, I think, you know, Zuckerberg's done pretty well doing that, but taking inspiration from other companies along the way. I think Evan Spiegel's probably done an interesting job of that. But it it takes a very unique person, especially in consumer, to be able to not just have a second act, but then also have a third act and have a fourth act, right? And it seems like this community gives a lot more forgiveness around

• 1:33:50Logan Bartlett?

  the edges here where they can make mistakes and it's not going to be catastrophic because there are so many people that are that are dyed in the wool behind this. But the difference between launching a cool, you know, initial NFT versus building this huge game, right? And obviously, they have people helping them out that know what they're doing. But those could be very different skill sets.

• 1:34:12Speaker 05

  For sure. And I think it also depends on how you define the community, right? And then and I that's the one where to me, the definition of community is that people who are going to be there no matter how poorly things go. Like, it's kind of like being a Knicks fan, you know, like Alex, like you're going

• 1:34:30Logan Bartlett?

  Me too, Alex. We have that. I've had season tickets for the last seven years or something. So I'm familiar. It's a painful existence. Max, I understand you're a Celtics fan, so I have no sympathy with you right now.

• 1:34:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, no, no comment. But right, like, but that's community. Like, you're going to be there no matter what. And like, quite frankly, I don't think you got had that moment yet, because the numbers still go up. All the people who are the vocal members of community, who are vocal members of the ecosystem, like, the number goes up. We all keep making money. The drops keep happening. We keep like making more and more money. And so like, that, to me, is like, we haven't had a true test of community here in my mind. Right? Like, right now, we're more like shareholders. Like shareholders are there when things are going well, and we expect them to keep going well.

• 1:35:15Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, we haven't had the James Dolan years yet of Board Ape Yacht Club, kind of dragging through the last 20 years of mistakes that the Knicks have had.

• 1:35:24Speaker 03

  What do you guys have to do is to make today? Come on.

• 1:35:26Logan Bartlett?

  You and me both, man. I'm, you know, look at me, I've got a Tennessee hat on. My last 20 years have been miserable fandom, so I, yeah, I'm very familiar. This is, I'm really punching at myself here. So I guess, I mean, that's an interesting analogy and to think about of this really is like, this is a fandom, right? And it's a, it's a year old fandom and community and all the elements of it. But Alex, I don't know how you got roped into being a Knicks fan. I, you know, I grew up in, my dad wasn't one. My dad was, we've been Tennessee fans for 75 years in my family or something. And so that was one that was like actually in my blood and I, as much as I've tried to kick it, I couldn't. Knicks is a more recent, like last 15 years that I've cared about it.

• 1:36:11Logan Bartlett?

  But Tennessee goes back to a reason for me, right? And I have all the memories of Peyton Manning and, and watching it with my dad when I'm like eight years old or whatever, like I have all that. And so that's really died in the wool. This is a year old community. And so do you think like, how much, how many of the people do you think are in this for the financial gain versus this community means so much to them at this point?

• 1:36:33Speaker 03

  Well, so first of all, I've been Nick fan my whole life, grew up in, and so, you know, 90s Knicks, a lot of great memories, a lot of bad memories too. So my thoughts are, yeah, I think there's definitely a lot, I'd like to see like if Apes dropped to five or less or one, how many people would still be active? I don't know.

• 1:36:55Logan Bartlett?

  Which is, which is again, to do the translation math, but $3,000 versus 30,000 or five would be $15,000, right?

• 1:37:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, like I'm just wondering what would, what would happen?

• 1:37:05Logan Bartlett?

  What's the floor right now?

• 1:37:06Speaker 03

  Like 110, 106 or something like that, some, some big number.

• 1:37:13Speaker 03

  But here's my thought process is that like they did all these things. You know, they, I mean, just the hits. It's like the, the dogs, the mutants, the game, the actual, the mobile game is super fun. Um, that we didn't even talk about that ape coin, the land now. And this was like before, like any money was like raised properly, like a venture round. The people are like, oh, the good times are over. Like, I think that the rewards are going to be even crazier going forward. I think the, the things that they're going to be doing to holders and like ape fest that's coming in New York. And I think it's going to be just like whatever we thought it was, it's going to be over here. So.

• 1:37:53Logan Bartlett?

  When is ape fest? By the way, I don't know if I, do I need to be in New York for this? Or do I need to get out of New York for this?

• 1:37:59Speaker 03

  Well, you need to have an ape and then you need to be in New York.

• 1:38:01Logan Bartlett?

  Got it. Okay.

• 1:38:02Speaker 03

  But it's at NFT NYC, which is at end of June. But I, I think, I think that things are going to get crazier. I could be wrong, but that's my rationale. And people ask in the community that like, should I sell? Well, what am I doing? I'm like, listen, if you need the money. You know, get it. But if you don't like, I think long-term, this is, this is what everyone thought the crypto punks hold should be. You know, everyone's like the OGs and, and the, um, and the whales. That's what, that's what apes have become.

• 1:38:33Logan Bartlett?

  Thank you guys for doing this. Any, any last thoughts? Real quick, we can do a quick, quick round. A year from now, where are we in all this? Like, do we think that, uh, is the game launched? Do we, uh, is the community larger than it is? Do you think this will continue to go up? I realize it's hard to speculate, but maybe we can just send there. Alex, what are your thoughts?

• 1:38:52Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, yes, community is bigger. I think they launch like mini games as time goes on, like little fun games that don't require. Um, I think they start to give some more clarity and just like bananas activity, just because they start to explain stuff. Um, I think they're going to, they're going to drip, drip as time goes on. But I think, I think there's the big game, which is like a triple A game that's going to take like a year or two. Then I think there's like mini games. Cause if you actually look at the SDK and what they're asking for, they're looking for skins. They're looking for avatars. They're looking for like people who want to build these things using their SDK. And they're looking for mini games, casual games. So I think there's going to be a lot of different little games before the big, the big, the big one comes.

• 1:39:31Logan Bartlett?

  Got it. Troppo?

• 1:39:33Speaker 04

  Yeah, I agree. There's gonna be, as far as the other side, something dripping just to keep interest, just to keep hype going, just to keep secondary going, which is really super important. At the same time, I think the BAYC continues to grow its influence. It continues to reward its fans. They just got a shitload of money and they're not afraid to spend it on those people. And I think it's gonna be another crazy year.

• 1:39:58Logan Bartlett?

  Max?

• 1:39:59Speaker 05

  I have no idea what's going to happen in the next 10 days and I have no idea what's going to happen in 10 years. But in between, I feel pretty optimistic because of what Alex described, which is resources, right? They've raised so much money. They raised even more money through these drops. They're going to have probably more drops. There's just a lot of resources to keep building with a team that is oriented towards building. And that is how you ultimately, you know, drive returns and then kind of the shareholder interest and therefore more interest and more community members, etc.

• 1:40:32Logan Bartlett?

  Good deal. Well, thanks, everyone, for joining. This was, this was super fun to do and educational for me. So this was, this was fun. Have a good weekend, everybody.

• 1:40:41Speaker 04

  All right. Thanks.

• 1:40:42Logan Bartlett?

  Thank you.

• 1:40:42Speaker 05

  Thanks so much.

• 1:40:48Logan Bartlett?

  So that concludes part one of episode 15 of Three Cartoon Avatars, or episode one of Cartoon Avatars, however you want to score it. We're gonna do a separate release of part two, where you'll hear the conversation between Ben Thompson and Paddy McCormick and I. So keep an eye out for that as well.