#601 The Story Behind Bitcoin Pizza

Nick Sopchak and Rushir Parikh are the co-founders of PopChew, where creators launch their food brands. PopChew has developed a new drop-ship style of executing the launch and operations of a national food brand. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin Pizza, the origin story, how we launched it, metrics of success, what we are doing next, and why virtual food brands are the future. ======================= LMAX Digital - the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading & custodial services - offers clients a regulated, transparent and secure trading environment, together with the deepest pool of crypto liquidity. LMAX Digital is also a primary price discovery venue, streaming real-time market data to the industry’s leading analytics platforms. LMAX Digital - secure, liquid, trusted. Learn more at LMAXdigital.com/pomp ======================= NEAR, now listed on Okcoin.com, is an open-source platform that accelerates the development of decentralized applications overcoming high fees and slow speeds with its fast, scalable, low-cost, and climate-neutral blockchain protocol. This is why NEAR was recently awarded the Climate Neutral Product Label from South Pole. One transaction on NEAR consumes about 1300x less carbon than a similar transaction on other chains. Learn why NEAR is the infrastructure for innovation at NEAR.org (N-E-A-R [dot] O-R-G) today. ======================= Cosmos is building the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp =======================

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

• 0:02Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Now let's kick this thing off. Nick Sobcek and Rashir Parikh are the co-founders of PopChew, where creators launch their food brands. PopChew has developed a new dropship style of executing the launch and operations of a national food brand. They're also the infrastructure behind Bitcoin Pizza. In this conversation, we discuss Bitcoin Pizza, the origin story, how we launched it, the metrics of success, what we are doing next, and why virtual food brands are the future. I really enjoyed this conversation with both Nick and Rashir. I hope that you enjoy it as well. Before we get into the episode, though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.

• 0:46Anthony Pompliano?

  First up is LMAX Digital. They're the number one institutional crypto exchange. They offer clients the deepest pool of crypto liquidity on the planet, underscored by 100% uptime track record through volatility spikes. You can leverage LMAX Group's liquidity relationships and ultra-low latency technology. LMAX Digital is the market-leading solution for institutional crypto trading and custodial services. They feature this central limit order book, streaming spot Bitcoin, Ether, Litecoin, and Bitcoin Cash, and it's all paired with US Dollar, Euro, and Yen. LMAX Digital, it might not be known by the retail world, but every institution knows who LMAX Digital is. I've had the CEO and founder of LMAX Group

• 1:28Anthony Pompliano?

  on the podcast before. I'm super impressed with the business, and I think that they are going to continue to be a key piece of infrastructure. If you're an institution, you should be using LMAX Digital. They're secure, liquid, and trusted. You can learn more by going to LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Again, LMAXdigital.com/pomp. Next up is Near, an open-source platform that accelerates the development of decentralized applications, overcoming high fees and slow speeds with its fast, scalable, low-cost, and climate-neutral blockchain protocol. This is why Near was recently awarded the climate-neutral product label from South Pole. One transaction on Near consumes about 1,300x less carbon than a similar transaction.

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  transaction on other chains. Learn why NEAR is the infrastructure for innovation at NEAR.org today. N E A R dot O R G today. NEAR.org. Go check it out. Let me know what you think. Last but not least is Cosmos. They're building the Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability. The free flow of assets and data between blockchains with bridges to Ethereum and Bitcoin will unleash the potential of DeFi, NFTs, and much, much more. Dive into Cosmos at cosmos.network/pomp. Again, cosmos.network/pomp. Internet of Blockchains, marking a new era of interoperability, scalability, and usability.

• 2:52Anthony Pompliano?

  Cosmos.network/pomp. Alright, let's get in this episode with Nick and Rashir. I hope that you guys enjoyed this one.

• 2:59Speaker 01

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

• 3:27Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright guys, bang, bang. Very excited about this. I've got the founders of PopChew here. How are you guys?

• 3:33Speaker 02

  Doing great, right?

• 3:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Awesome. Let's just jump right into this. You guys are the masterminds behind Bitcoin Pizza with me. Let's just talk about, one, what was Bitcoin Pizza? And how did it go right out of the gate?

• 3:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, Bitcoin Pizza was our first launch for PopChew. It was really our take at can we leverage a community that's super engaged, super powerful, and build a food brand around it? That, again, just like further engages the community and audience in a really deep and really connecting way, right? Like, if you think about it, food is one of those things that's like super, super personal. It's like you're literally getting invited to Pomp's dinner table when you're taking a, you know, a slice of Bitcoin Pizza. So, yeah, super exciting.

• 4:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And Nick, how did it go from like a statistics standpoint?

• 4:22Speaker 03

  It was incredible. On launch day, we were trending on Twitter, like 15 million impressions, something like that, like 100,000 people at our website the first day. Almost 100K in sales over the course of the seven day event. Stoked restaurant partners. We raised $15,000 for the Human Rights Foundation, which is incredible.

• 4:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And I think part of what people don't realize is, you know, there's all this kind of traffic and eventually Stephen Colbert and folks covered it. But it was only available in 10 cities, right? And only in the United States. So talk a little bit about kind of operationally, when somebody orders a pizza through Bitcoin Pizza, what happens in terms of from that order to them actually receiving the pizza?

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. So what we're doing at Pop Tree is essentially building a network of independent mom and pop restaurants, right? And we're basically aggregating all these restaurants together, building a network. And then basically creating a platform for creators to launch brands on top of. And so with Bitcoin Pizza, we built a network of 44 independent mom and pop pizzerias across the country in 10 key cities, from New York to LA to San Francisco to Miami, and a handful of other cities. Put them all together, led the brand. And at the end of the day, like they were excited about it for a number of reasons, right? Like for one, they get extra demand through their, through the businesses, right? We're bringing more orders than they would normally get. And then two, they're getting more exposure as a restaurant, right?

• 5:49Speaker 02

  They had their logos listed on our landing page. People could go in person and visit these restaurants. And so it was really compelling to them to be a part of the Pop Tree platform.

• 5:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so one of the things that I think people didn't understand, but is important to me, and I think important to you guys, was we basically would go to these local pizzerias and we'd say, hey, you're going to make the normal pizza that you make. It's going to go into our box. So there's not a ton of like operational complexities that get created for the local business. But also two is we're going to bring you orders, but you're going to sell that pizza for the exact same price that you would normally sell it. And so we don't eat into the margin of the local pizzeria either. And so it's kind of this. This like win-win where we get to use their infrastructure and their years of hard work of building out kind of the operational excellence that they have as a local pizzeria and obviously great food.

• 6:39Anthony Pompliano?

  And in return, we're going to bring you a bunch of orders as well. And so I think that was kind of a key piece here was the capital that was being donated was really kind of profit on top of what a small business would normally make. And really that's where you know, you create this kind of unique situation where the local business wins, the Human Right Foundation wins, and then also the customer wins because they're able to get kind of this Bitcoin pizza. So it's pretty incredible model when you start to understand how this network that you guys are building at Pop2 is able to be leveraged for something like a Bitcoin pizza.

• 7:15Speaker 02

  Exactly. And I think like something that's super impressive, right, is we were covering about 10% of your audience geographically. Right? Like literally 10% and we did 100K in top line sales for all these restaurants. And so, you know, when we start adding more and more locations over time, right, like our goal is to eventually be able to cover you know, as close to 100% as possible, the business becomes extremely compelling. And you know, again, the other really, really powerful thing about it is we're working with restaurants that like already know how to do this, right? Like we're going to pizzerias and saying like, here's a pizza. We're going to burger restaurants and being like, here's a burger menu, right? It's like, it's food that they already know how to make. They're already excellent at doing it. And then through Pop2, through the creators, you know, we're, we're getting these people that are juggernauts

• 8:00Speaker 02

  literally at customer acquisition, at loyalty, at retention, and like doing what they do best to bring the demand to these small businesses.

• 8:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely.

• 8:10Speaker 03

  Really crazy thing about Bitcoin pizza that was the restaurants that were selling Bitcoin pizzas were making more money selling Bitcoin pizzas than they were making, selling their own pizza. So we didn't use a third-party marketplace to sell Bitcoin pizzas. All the orders were direct. There's no DoorDash, no Reeds. Typically those platforms are taking 30% of the margin away from the restaurant. We charge a low flat fee per order and typically the restaurant is making four, five, six, eight dollars more per order selling a Bitcoin pizza than they were their own equivalent pizza on DoorDash.

• 8:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's pretty incredible when you start to realize that economically, they were actually incentivized to make the Bitcoin pizzas over other types of orders because they literally just put more money in their pocket at the end of each order.

• 8:50Speaker 02

  Right. Literally, I mean, we had a handful of pizzerias that were telling their customers like on Instagram or Twitter, like, hey, go order Bitcoin pizza, right? Like, they wanted them to go and order from just like third-party brand versus their own.

• 9:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And Nick, maybe talk a little bit about what's the plan now, moving forward with Bitcoin Pizza in terms of getting more locations and kind of moving it from more of a one-off type thing to something that'll be persistently available for folks.

• 9:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, so obviously, the response was insane. A ton of folks reaching out to us in Atlanta and Phoenix and all these different places where we weren't. And so right now, we're building that restaurant network. We're expanding into a bunch of new cities all across the US. We're looking at things like how do we go international? How do we go to Canada, which, you know, obviously, Palm's audience is global. But our plan is to bring the brand back shortly and launch in formal markets for a much more long-term run.

• 9:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And one of the things that I didn't understand until afterwards that you guys helped me get educated on, so maybe you can educate the audience here, is just compared to a traditional food brand, being able to go to kind of 40 locations, immediately have national coverage, even though it's only in those 10 cities, we still were in the kind of 10 major cities in the United States, that takes a really long time for kind of a traditional brand to do. So what are some of the comps that we can use to understand, you know, getting to 50-plus locations from a timeline perspective? And also like how difficult that is for a traditional mom and pop or brick and mortar type restaurant brand?

• 10:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think the direct comparison, right? Like, if you take a brand like Sweetgreen, it took them literally like 12 years to get to 100 locations. And you have to think about, like, there's a lot of these companies out there, whether it's traditional restaurants or even some of these like ghost kitchen companies, they're all building physical infrastructure. And that takes a lot of time, it takes a lot of permitting, you know, to be able to sell alcohol, to sell food. And I think like really what we're doing is sort of turning around, right? And if you look at a traditional restaurant, I think 30% Of a traditional restaurant's audience actually comes back a second time, right? So pretty, pretty low. And you know, best in class, take someone like Shake Shack, 55% of their customers come back a second time, repeat purchase.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  And for us, like really flipping that on the head and saying like, hey, let's go to creators. Let's go to the folks that know what they're doing on the customer demand side, know what they're doing on the loyalty side, customer retention. And basically build this like product that, you know, enables them to bring the demand side to the restaurants that are great at doing the food, right? Like, if you look at a lot of these restaurants today, they're like just now getting into like email marketing, right? Or like an app that displays a menu. But, you know, coming from obviously like tech, right? Like, we know that there's a lot more product experiences that we can build that are far beyond, you know, what these like restaurants are just now starting to do. And so we're sort of approaching this from the opposite side of traditional restaurants.

• 11:51Anthony Pompliano?

  What's crazy to me is, take Sweetgreen as the example there. It took them 12 years to get to 100 locations. And then they're able to kind of have a bunch of, you know, sales and throughput, but they also spent a bunch of money on marketing and to reach profitability is, is pretty difficult for a lot of those types of brands.

• 12:07Speaker 02

  Take a company like Yum Brands, right? Like Yum Brands has KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, maybe spent literally like hundreds of millions of dollars on marketing and like years and years and years to grow their brands into like what they are today, right? And again, with like PopChew, the entire idea is like, let's take these people that have the audience already and like just plug them right in, into the restaurant.

• 12:28Anthony Pompliano?

  So I'm not even really that big from an audience perspective compared to some of the people you could go do this with, right? I got a million people on Twitter, but a lot of the other audiences aren't really that big, I mean, 200,000 on YouTube, etc. I'm guessing that the plan from a PopChew perspective is just go get the biggest folks possible that have, you know, much, much larger audiences. You can imagine if somebody with 50, 100 million followers on a platform did this, it would be absolutely nuts.

• 12:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, absolutely. And so like our goal with Popchu is like really to build this as a platform, right? There's the food like works for a wide variety of creators, right? You can be a huge like fitness creator, right? And maybe a salad bowl or, um, you know, smoothie or something like that makes a ton of sense for you and your audience. Uh, maybe you're a gamer and a burger makes sense, right? There's like a lot of different avenues to get into food for a variety of different types of creators out there. And that's not even touching like all the food creators that are out there, right? Like if you go on Tik Tok or YouTube or Instagram, like food is literally everywhere. Um, right? Like we're talking to a wide variety of creators right now that are in our pipeline about launching their food brands coming up here.

• 13:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And Nick, talk a little bit about the advantages that you have, um, from a Popchu perspective of like no capex and no food costs and just like why this almost like asset light model makes so much more sense today if you want to start a restaurant versus going and actually doing the brick and mortar type strategy.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  Yeah. So, uh, you know, my thesis today is if you had a million dollars to build a restaurant, the first thing you wouldn't, the last thing you would do is plow it into real estate. The last thing you'd do is go build infrastructure, right? Like you would figure out a way to like build a brand and figure out distribution and get the product to people. Like, why would you put it into brick and mortar in New York City where I am, for example? Um, and so Popchu operates with no food costs, no capex, no labor, anything like that. We're leveraging the expertise and the infrastructure that exists with our restaurant partners. And some of those folks are in ghost kitchens, um, to, to create a revenue opportunity for these folks to, to drive our brands, to grow our brands very, very quickly, um, which allows us to get to a hundred locations. I think this year we'll be at a hundred locations by the end of this year, um,

• 14:34Speaker 03

  less than 12 months after starting, right? Again, compared to what we created in 12 years to do that. This is just a super capital efficient way to grow a food brand, um, and capitalize on the opportunities.

• 14:44Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And it feels like really you can replicate a lot of the same effort, right? In terms of building a brand, marketing, um, doing a lot of these various, uh, components that we know is, uh, important for the brick and mortars, but you're able to essentially borrow or rent somebody else's infrastructure without having to pay for it. Uh, and they make more money along the way, right? Like it's such a win-win type, uh, model that I think, you know, it's kind of a no-brainer as to why, uh, folks are going to flock to this.

• 15:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, especially on the restaurant side, right? Like, uh, we were, you know, Nick has, has been the ghost kitchen in virtual brand space for five years. And as we were calling up restaurants, pitching them on like, hey, like, let's work with Popchi, let's, you know, do Bitcoin pizza. Uh, we were actually surprised at how easily it was to get them on board. Uh, just because the pitch to the restaurant is so, so compelling, right? It's, it's purely incremental, uh, demand that we're driving, right? It's, you were already paying for the space, you already were paying for the staff. Uh, oftentimes you even had some ingredients laying around. Uh, and now we're just providing more demand for you to put all that to use and you're able to do it at a lower cost than you normally would. Um, and so the pitch to the restaurants was, was just super compelling.

• 15:53Speaker 02

  And the pitch to the creator is also like really compelling too, right? Like, um, I mean, you know this better than everyone, but, um, you know, there's not a ton of effort that goes in from the creator's side in order to launch this, right? Input on the brand, oftentimes like we're talking to creators now that already have a brand. Established and we're just like putting that on the packaging. And then it's up to them to go and engage their audience, or like literally doing what they do best already every single day. Um, to get people to go and, and eat from their restaurant. Um, and again, like food is one of those things that's just like so, so personal. Um, in a way that like merch, for example, um, just isn't.

• 16:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And so talk through a little bit, uh, maybe tell a story of like how you guys convinced me to do this. Uh, cause I think that's a, a pretty good example and, uh, you know, eventually not only did I enjoy working with you guys and it worked, but I ended up actually investing in Popchi, the business itself. Um, so I'm a pretty big believer in the model, but just kind of tell that story, uh, to help people understand. Um, really, you know, the, the effort level needed from the creator's side.

• 16:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think we like approached you, maybe it was like three or four months ago at this point. Um, and initially approached you as an investor, right? And the goal was like, hey, like Pop, you know, you know, a handful of creators, like would be great to have you on the cap table. Um, and I think you had come back to us and basically said like, hey, like this is super exciting. The creators I've talked to are really interested in food, but I think that this might be like too time consuming or too like time intensive for the creators to actually do. Um, and so Nick and I threw together like literally that night. Bang Bang Pizza, right? So like, obviously, like, we follow you, we watch your videos, we know that Bang Bang's tagline. Um, and so we threw together Bang Bang Pizza, sent it over to you. Um, and, you know, that was sort of off the races. I think you have something around like, uh,

• 17:36Speaker 02

  rewarding hustle, right? And I think like, that was a perfect example of, um, you know, showing you like, here's how easy it can be, uh, to launch it. How about you be our first creator? Uh, and so, yeah, from there, right? Like you, you said, um, let's actually do Bitcoin pizza. Let's make it even bigger. Let's launch on Bitcoin pizza day. Um, make a splash. So, uh, that's what we did. And I think like the great thing was like, in our initial proposition was like, let's launch in one city. Uh, and then we ended up launching in 10 cities across the US. So just again, it goes to show like the scale and how fast, uh, brands like this and can be spun up.

• 18:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I think what's so fascinating about it is as you, um, kind of showed me, hey, here's what the boxes would look like. Here's the menu. Like you start to understand like, oh, wait a second. The infrastructure provider is really important. You guys did a great job with it. Uh, but really the kind of responsibility I have in this scenario, uh, is to simply promote it, right? And, and to kind of be the marketing arm, if you will, the distribution arm, uh, for, uh, a brand that I obviously believe in and helped craft. Uh, and then you guys kind of take all that complex operational, uh, components and you bring it in the background. And so literally, I don't even know how you call the pizza place and get them signed up and like all the things that,

• 18:53Anthony Pompliano?

  uh, I would have thought would have been really difficult and, and, uh, uh, hard and I wouldn't personally have done. I think, you know, this model of you guys take care of that and it's really just asking the creator to be the, uh, kind of marketing arm of a food brand, uh, ends up being really interesting. And it goes back to this whole idea of, you know, you can go and try to strike a marketing deal with somebody, uh, for a food brand, or you can own the food brand, right? And always owning equity, if it's successful, it's going to be much, much more lucrative and much more rewarding, I think, than, uh, trying to go get, you know, somebody to sponsor you or sponsor your videos or whatever from there.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Hundred percent, right? Like if you look at Travis Scott, for example, right? Like he did a deal with McDonald's. Uh, it was a phenomenal deal, right? Like Travis Scott is like mega star guy. Uh, literally drove so much demand that McDonald's of all companies was literally running out of burger meat and lettuce at key locations. Uh, so sort of like insane. Um, but the thing is he got paid less than two percent of the revenue that he was responsible for generating. Right? And, you know, you, you look at what he's doing now, right? He's, he's sort of like been educated. He has his own water line. Um, right? He's starting to build his own brands because he, he understands now that like, hey, this is the actual way to build equity. Um, and you know, this is, this is the future of, of how brands are going to be established.

• 20:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. What, uh, what's next from a Poptoo perspective? How are you guys thinking about, um, kind of where you go next and how you continue to grow the business?

• 20:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So there's a couple of key things. Um, so, so one key thesis that we have is that it's not just about what you, uh, food is a lot more about the experience that you have, right? Um, there's restaurants that like I personally go to just because like the music is good. Um, and no one is like touching this in the food delivery world. If you look at DoorDash or Ureats or any of these players, you scroll through a list of restaurants, you scroll through a menu, you place your order and it shows up in a brown paper bag. That's where the end of the day, right? Um, and so for us, we really think about like, what, what does this experiential component look like? Um, and that's the thing that like, we're going to be advancing on the product side. And that's looking at things like drops, integrating merch, integrating content, integrating community, right? So think about,

• 21:04Speaker 02

  right now, like you have all these kids who, you know, eat dinner, sometimes alone, like in their bedroom, right? Like playing video games. What if you could also just like eat with a community that you're in? Um, and this is like, this is like a really powerful sort of example. Um, and so that's what we're going to be focused on the product side. And then on the sort of like launch operation side, uh, we have a slew of creators that we're talking to right now that are in our pipeline that we're working on food brands with. And we'll be launching those across the network of restaurants that were, as Nick mentioned, growing to a hundred by the end of the year.

• 21:35Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. It, uh, it feels like. Somebody is going to win this category and going to build the infrastructure and kind of the marketplace. It's just a matter of execution, right? It's very clear that there's a market opportunity. It just comes down to the execution piece.

• 21:48Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. I think like, you know, being fast is super, super important in this space. I think like, that's what Nick and I sort of like specialize in. You know, I've spent the last really like four or five years working in marketplace operations businesses. You know, dropped out of school and just like needed to like get going and fired up to, to start working. Nick, you know, has spent again, like last four or five years working in ghost kitchens and virtual brands, knows that space like the back of his hand. We just made our first offer to a guy who's been the GM at Speakerian at Chipotle and, you know, totally understands like sourcing and restaurant acquisition and how to train staff. And so, you know, we're all geared up to get going.

• 22:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Nick, before we, we go to wrap up, what's the one thing that you learned during the virtual kind of brand or ghost kitchen experience? What's like the biggest takeaway that you had or the most surprising thing?

• 22:38Speaker 03

  I think we kind of talked about it, right? I think this idea that a single brick and mortar location can be a hub, a, a, a business with multiple revenue opportunities, a business with, with multiple brands underneath it. This idea that like you don't have to be a business owner who's like struggling to get by because you're only selling like this one brand. Like you can leverage the expertise and experience of folks like Rashir and I, folks like, you know, Pomp, if you want to take on Pizza Red. And you can create this like new economic paradigm for yourself as a restaurant owner by leveraging these, these different opportunities. And I think for me, as someone who spent a ton of time working with restaurateurs, chefs, owners, things like that, like that's what really excites me about this opportunity is that I think we can really create value for restaurant

• 23:23Speaker 03

  owners.

• 23:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I completely agree. I ask everyone the same three questions. So I'm not letting you two get out of here without asking the same questions. What is the most important book that each one of you have, have read?

• 23:37Speaker 02

  Oh, interesting. Nick, I'll let you go first.

• 23:39Speaker 03

  Um, Why We Sleep, uh, by, um, the guy's name.

• 23:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Matthew. Matthew. I forget his last name, but yeah, yeah.

• 23:49Speaker 03

  That's a great one. And just, the only thing your body needs is to sleep. If you don't sleep, you're gonna get all these crazy diseases. Like, just, just rest your body and like, get your body ready.

• 23:58Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm, I'm a complete convert. It's funny that you said this, uh, because the next question is usually, what is, uh, everyone's sleep schedule? Cause, uh, the folks over at Eight Sleep, uh, I started sleeping on their thermo-regulated bed. And not only do I now sleep like a baby eight or nine hours a night, uh, but I literally begged them to let me invest in the business afterwards. So I, uh, I'm a big, big believer of, uh, of sleep for sure. Rashir, what is, uh, what's your book?

• 24:25Speaker 02

  Uh, my book? This is probably a bad answer, but, uh, I, I actually really enjoyed the Steve Jobs book, uh, by Walter Isaacson. And I think like,

• 24:33Anthony Pompliano?

  Why would that be a bad answer?

• 24:35Speaker 02

  I don't know. It's, it's not one of the popular answers, I guess. Uh, but that, but that's okay. Um, I think for me, it was really about like, uh, you know, finding someone who, um, is really like dedicated to their craft. Um, you know, really like understands really like what they're building and why they're building it and like really understands the customer. Um, in a, in a really deep way, right? I think that's like one of the things that's really, Apple differentiated themselves on. Um, I think that really stands out to me.

• 25:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a great answer. Uh, last question. Aliens, are you guys believers or non-believers?

• 25:08Speaker 02

  Hundred percent real. Uh, hundred percent. The universe is so huge. Like it's, it's stupid to think that we're the only ones here.

• 25:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I agree. I absolutely agree. It's all right. The NASA chief. Yeah, the NASA chief. He, uh, he recently came out. He said he thinks that there's gonna be intelligent life as well. So I think we're, uh, we're, we're getting more allies on this side of the, uh, the debate. What one question do you guys have for me to, uh, to finish up?

• 25:34Speaker 02

  Um, interesting. Okay. Uh, what is the most exciting part of your day every day?

• 25:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Waking up easily. I'm like a big, I think a lot of people forget that life is finite and just getting to wake up every day is in some crazy way like you're very, you know, kind of further ahead than some other people. And so when that's like the, the bar of quality for the day is like, did I get to wake up today, then everything else kinda, you know, seems pretty miniscule and not that important. It's pretty easy to be happy. So easily that's, that's the thing.

• 26:15Speaker 02

  Makes sense. Yeah. I, uh, those, uh, those like good morning texts or good morning tweets that you do, those are great.

• 26:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Did. I get, uh, I'm a big believer that like, uh, you, you create the energy of the day by, uh, by just bringing the energy. So I don't know. It's just, uh, that's my way of living my life. Worked out so far and I'll keep doing it.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  Nice.

• 26:39Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Where can we send people? Uh, let's send them to two places. One, uh, maybe let's send them to, uh, follow you guys on Twitter, uh, for PopChew. And then what's the website for Bitcoin Pizza for, uh, for them to, uh, to go check that out before we relaunch it?

• 26:54Speaker 02

  Yep. So the website for Bitcoin Pizza is eatbitcoinpizza.com. So pretty sure for it.

• 27:01Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And then Twitter?

• 27:02Speaker 02

  Yep. On Twitter, uh, you can find us at eatpopchew.com or sorry, eat, just eatpopchew, the handle. Uh, and then my personal Twitter is Rasheed, R U S H I K H.

• 27:13Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Nick?

• 27:15Speaker 03

  I'm Nicky Sop, N I C K Y S O P. Uh, and we're hiring. So folks that are interested, shoot us an email.

• 27:23Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a great plug. They're hiring. If you want to go help build Bitcoin Pizza, go apply. All right, fellows. Thank you guys so much for, uh, for doing this. I'm excited to, uh, to keep going. And, uh, and then it's not only going to be a Bitcoin Pizza show. Obviously we got plenty more people to, uh, to onboard and keep building the business. So thanks for so much for coming on and we'll do it again in the future.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  Sounds good. Thanks for having us.