A Debate About NFTs — With Jason Stein

Jason Stein is the founder and managing partner at SC Holdings, a private equity and strategic advisory firm based in New York. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss the merits of NFTs, of which he is bullish and I am skeptical. This isn't a shouting match debate, but a reasonable back and forth between two people with different views on the issue. Stay tuned for the second half where we discuss how a struggling economy will impact risky assets. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 0:43Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 1:03Speaker 01

  LinkedIn Presents.

• 1:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hello and welcome to the Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. Well, today we are going to be talking about NFTs. They are a subject of endless controversy on the internet. And we have with us today someone really poised to talk about it, one of, I think, the most creative entrepreneurs and investors out there. And this is going to be a thrill. And I've been waiting to get him on the show since we started, but finally he's here. Jason Stein, welcome to the podcast.

• 1:57Speaker 02

  Thank you. I'm not sure I'm well poised to talk about NFTs, but I...

• 2:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're already slagging the show and we're about to get started.

• 2:07Speaker 02

  That makes me as well poised as anyone.

• 2:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's a great starting, really is a great starting point. So I think we should also introduce folks how you and I met, because I think it's a good backdrop for what's going to be another experimental area of technology. So I actually have the article back here. In 2013, I was writing about potential business models for Twitter. And the Associated Press started having its ads team sell sponsored tweets that it would write and post on its Twitter account. And I called you up, you were, you were working with your own social, you started your own social media agency. And I was like, Jason, what is this all about? And the headline ended up being why the AP selling its own sponsored tweets is good for Twitter.

• 2:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  And, you know, I think that like, back in the day, we were all trying to figure out like, what social media was about, whether it was a return on investment there. You were bullish. You're very bullish from the beginning. And I was a little bit, you know, it took me a little bit longer to come on board to that idea. And so here we are now talking about another experimental technology, but you did, you didn't know where, where the ball was going there.

• 3:18Speaker 02

  Look, there's a lot of similarities from today in Web three and social media, which I guess was

• 3:28Speaker 02

  peak Web two from, from back in, you know, the early 2010s. And one of the biggest common themes is skepticism, of course. But that's the case with any new technological platform advancement, large scale evolution or shift on the way people use the internet. And you can go back and find

• 3:57Speaker 02

  the same skeptical headlines from every era, right? Apple, social media.com.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  And in many cases, the skepticism is warranted because with any new paradigm and technology.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  There's a lot of failures along the way and a lot of people lose money, including consumers, more than than professional investors who are more diversified in their investments where they can afford to lose some. But to be clear, my my investment business doesn't do a lot of web three investing.

• 4:37Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 4:38Speaker 02

  It's a little too early stage and speculative for our strategies. I but I I personally an investor and collector of of crypto and NFTs respectively. And I think as as the space matures, it's it's something we will be more and more invested in.

• 4:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And the reason why we got started talking about this stuff, I can share the story, is I was giving this talk to Columbia Business School class just about tech. I tend to visit them frequently. And I was a little too provocative, I think, than, you know, and in one of these conversations, and I called NFTs business Q and on. And, you know, I don't think it's really parallel, but I did think that there and I I still believe that there were people that were deluding themselves in some of these NFT schemes. And so what happened was, let me know if we have to edit this out, but one of the people from the class was in your office, you know, talking

• 5:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  about how this guy came in and, you know, said all these things about NFTs. And then, next thing I know, I get a FaceTime from you being like, Alex, you got to think differently about this. He's one of our. Here we are. I was like, let's have this on on the on the pod. Sorry, go ahead.

• 5:50Speaker 02

  Totally. Yeah. So so he was one of he of our MBA interns last semester. And that's that's exactly what happened. And look, I I, like I said, I think you're right in that there are a lot of schemes and a lot of people will lose money in their NFT investments. But I don't think that's different than investing in startups broadly, right? Like they're speculative investments where you're betting on an idea and on entrepreneurs and a roadmap and a vision and but by, you know, it's very nature. That's exactly what NFTs are.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  And buying and buying an NFT just because it looks cool without understanding what is the utility of it? Who is the team behind it? What is the roadmap for it? And, um, and, and what is your view on what makes NFT successful more broadly? Right? Without all of that, you're throwing darts and there's a high likelihood you're going to lose money. So I think you're right, but I, but it, but it is hilarious that this MBA intern came in and said, this guy came to our office, we're all, you know, to our school and spoke and we're all, you know, big believers in crypto web three and he was just shitting on it the whole time. Does anyone know this guy? Cantor Wits? Has anyone heard of him? And a couple of us looked, looked up and smiled.

• 7:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 7:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Like, oh God, we gotta give this guy a dose of reality. So, but I'm glad we're doing it. I'm glad we're here. I'm glad we're talking about it. You know, I think it's clear. I'm skeptical that this thing is going to work and that there's going to be real returns to it. However, my mind is open, just like it was with the social media stuff. I have an open mind here and I want to hear from the people that believe in it because I don't want to miss it if, if it's, you know, true. And I also think that like, you're right, with any early stage technology, it's pretty easy to be skeptical and you know, you're going to be right most of the time if you're skeptical. So, um, but, but.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  You're going to be right if you're skeptical?

• 7:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  If you're skeptical, most of the time you're going to be right. Most startups don't work out.

• 7:57Speaker 02

  I disagree.

• 7:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Go ahead.

• 8:00Speaker 02

  I just.

• 8:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Don't buy.

• 8:01Speaker 02

  I think if you're skeptical, I think if you're skeptical, most of the time, you you end up being wrong in the long run.

• 8:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, I would say on an.

• 8:09Speaker 02

  You're skeptical about social media, right?

• 8:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think less so than less so than you believe. I I think that that I was mostly interested and bullish in social media because I actually saw real returns, real, like a real communities forming, real, uh, real momentum with social media.

• 8:27Speaker 02

  I saw the power of Facebook. But that's exactly what's happening in in Web three. There there are real communities forming. And it's it's in many ways, the evolution of community from social media and Web two, which was essentially happening, happening in public for everyone to watch to more focused communities that are are based very much around specific interests or NFTs or um, sectors of NFTs, whether that's art or, you know, profile pictures, access and membership based NFTs around restaurants and clubs. Or anything in between, uh, you know, gaming and all the technology uses. So

• 9:11Speaker 02

  look, I just think it's a more focused, more private version of of Web two communities where people are a little more aligned with with the incentives. Right? Everyone in a community around an NFT is usually invested in that NFT. Right? So all everyone has the same incentive, which is for that NFT to be successful and to help each other. Whereas on social media, there's there's no alignment of incentives amongst people other than to potentially tear each other apart 24/7 to get more to get more engagement. Right? So.

• 9:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  I don't know. As someone who was in social media early and saw all the merits of it and now has seen all the pros and cons of it. I I think any attempt at a healthier approach to community and and discourse is is exciting to me.

• 10:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so.

• 10:01Speaker 02

  But back to your point on being skeptical.

• 10:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  I mean, anything technological advancement that you're, that people have been skeptical of.

• 10:08Speaker 02

  I think you might be short term correct about one specific NFT or one specific app on an iPhone or one specific social media platform, right? There, there have been many that tried that, that failed. But broadly, if you're saying a sector or a space, or most importantly, a technological use case is, is going to fail, I think you end up being wrong more often than not.

• 10:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, I think that's a good way to look at it. On a case by case basis, basis, you'll be right. On a company by company, you'll be right more often than you're wrong. But on, on bigger trends, you'll be, you'll be wrong more often than you're right.

• 10:45Speaker 02

  No, I'm saying the opposite.

• 10:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, I'm saying what? Company by company, more often you're, you're right if you're skeptical. Trends you will miss if you're skeptical.

• 10:54Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think we're in agreement.

• 10:55Speaker 02

  Correct, correct, correct. Yes, same thing. Yep.

• 10:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Can you unpack some of the things that you've been talking about? Um, roadmaps and, you know, for, for a lot of folks, NFTs are just like, you know, these monkey images that you pay all your money for. And, you know, you have a URL that points to them. But you've talked a couple of times about roadmaps in communities, which is another side of NFTs that I don't think, you know, people spend a lot of time thinking about, at least those outside the space. So why are those so important? Why is that more interesting to you than the art if it is? Cause I don't know, it seems like the art's kind of ugly oftentimes. So, but like, let's hear a little bit more about like the stuff underneath the surface. And I think that that's actually what makes you believe in this space more than, you know, the art itself. So I'd love to hear your perspective on that.

• 11:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then also just like the definition of web two versus web three. Cause we oftentimes like get into this discussion and, you know, use those terms, but it's kind of tough to, everyone has their own definitions. I'd like to hear yours.

• 11:54Speaker 02

  So let's start with the idea that you just brought up, which is everyone thinks NFTs are just these monkey profile pictures, right? And really what you're referring to is Board Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and the ecosystem within that, right? Ugo Labs, right?

• 12:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's correct.

• 12:13Speaker 02

  Is that what you're talking about?

• 12:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  But yeah, but a lot of, a lot of NFT art is sort of like cheap rip offs of the ape stuff, too.

• 12:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 12:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that, or it's like you can get the McDonald's Whopper NFT, which is like the, an ad for a Whopper spinning in some Jif. I don't understand that.

• 12:30Speaker 02

  But let's start with

• 12:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Defend the art, Jason.

• 12:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm just kidding.

• 12:35Speaker 02

  Well, well, actually, I just want to point out a misunderstanding. So Ugo Labs, which makes Board Ape Yacht Club and all of the other sort of sister related NFTs in there, which, full disclosure, I'm, you know, I own an NFT, a Mutant Ape, and some of the land they just released last week, which is a whole other controversy. But

• 13:01Speaker 02

  look at the deck for Ugo Labs for the fundraise they just completed, which was a big raise. I don't remember. I'll look it up. But the entire concept for the company is predicated on building a, an interactive video game

• 13:20Speaker 02

  in which people play as their own NFT. It could be one of the Ugo Labs NFTs, it could be any other NFT they own. And it's effectively a world where 10,000 people can, can

• 13:34Speaker 02

  play in at once. So it's Fortnite at a much larger scale. Fortnite, 100 people play at it at any given time, right? In any one, one game, there's multiple games going on at once, of course. But in this case, they're saying everyone enters and they have some version of Fortnite meets Roblox, where you are your own NFT and enter and play. And so in that case, you're saying these, these monkey profile pictures. But really what they're trying to build, and we can debate whether it's, it's how plausible it is and what's the probability of success is, but They are trying to build a, a modern platform, right? The metaverse that everyone is, is referring to. And in the deck, they take a lot of shots at, at Facebook's point of view on the metaverse.

• 14:18Speaker 02

  And, and they say, nobody wants to, to, to spend their time in a 3D version of LinkedIn. Right. Which is, I, I think is funny and, and true. That's funny. But also, you know, in, in the business world, you know, there, there'll, there'll be applications.

• 14:33Speaker 02

  But the, the point is, A, you have to actually understand what you're investing in, understand what the roadmap is. And in this case, I'd encourage people who are skeptical of Board Ape, Mutant Ape, and, and others like it. Gutter cats, gutter dogs, et cetera, to actually understand the roadmaps and, and the vision. And then decide if you think that vision is achievable based on the people who work at the company. Based on the idea, whether it's something consumers would like, and if it could be a good business. And in this case, if they're

• 15:07Speaker 02

  even 50% as successful as the deck suggests they will be.

• 15:15Speaker 02

  It's a very, very, very successful gaming company. Right. It's, it's the next Epic Games if, if they're successful.

• 15:24Speaker 02

  So you can't just say art, right? If, if it's, if, if you look at a, an NFT and it looks cool. And the entire economy around it is based on hype and supply and demand of something that looks cool. I'd be very hesitant to buy an NFT.

• 15:45Speaker 02

  Not saying that it will be unsuccessful, but it's just like buying art from an early, unknown artist. You might find the next Baskia, right? But 99 out of 100,

• 15:58Speaker 02

  you're going to have something that's not worth a lot at, at the end of the day. You're just, you're, you're picking art.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  And you're picking it off the street corner as opposed to going into a high-end gallery. Right. That, that's sort of what, what OpenSea is open to everyone. But if there's a use case and a utility that goes beyond just owning art and a profile picture.

• 16:22Speaker 02

  I think it gets very exciting. To me, it's a very interesting way to create a consumer brand today.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  Where you're allowing people who believe in the concept, the idea, the point of view, the aesthetics, the values of that brand, to effectively buy in at a very early stage by owning an NFT. It's very similar to owning equity in a company. And if that NFT and that platform and that idea are successful, the value of your NFT is going to go up. So those people become your biggest advocates. They become your community. Spend time in Discord and watch what the community talks about. Look at the suggestions they're making to the founders of that NFT and the operators and whether those operators are receptive and quick to iterate on it. And you learn a lot. It's basically like being in the slack of a company

• 17:15Speaker 02

  that you've invested in and seeing it operate in real time.

• 17:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so this is like one example of

• 17:21Speaker 02

  Like imagine, imagine you could, you could invest, imagine you could, you were an investor in, in Facebook before it IPO'd. And you had access to all of its biggest users, all of its biggest advocates. And its operating team and its founding team and Mark Zuckerberg. And they were interacting with people, giving feedback on where the, the community should go, where the product should go. You would learn a lot about whether that would make for a good company, for a good investment and what you thought about its future, right?

• 17:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  But don't, don't you think that Facebook was able to succeed not because of like listening to feedback? Like, let's take the news feed, for example, right? That was hated by all the enthusiasts of Facebook. It was, but it was the company's decision to press forward with the news feed despite the negative feedback, despite the community, that allowed it to be as successful as it is. So I'm curious, like this is goes to the fact that like, you know, a lot of companies that sell NFTs, you know, will have this community type decision-making apparatus like DAOs, decentralized autonomous organizations. It sounds good in principle, but don't you think that like some of the best technology companies

• 18:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  in the world got that way because of a vision of the founder, at least in the early days? And, and someone that would, would make decisions and press forward with a plan, no matter, you know, how angry a community might, might have been about it.

• 18:46Speaker 02

  Yes, and I would say that Facebook actually was listening to its its community at the largest scale and that's what made it successful, right? It had data on how people were using the newsfeed, right? And it was updating the newsfeed based on user engagement to give people what they what Facebook thought they wanted, right? Or and what they actually were were clicking on. I think in the case of that that we're talking about for NFTs, the first of all, just because the community suggests something doesn't mean that it has to be adhered to, right? But it's a data point. And those people are free to sell and and, you know, make money or lose money at any

• 19:29Speaker 02

  given time. But of course, I agree with you that some autonomy from a founder is is mission critical. And I also think that hearing the community and its biggest advocates engage and interact is very important. But one thing that's really critical to understand here is all the community members who own an NFT want the same thing, which is the value of that NFT to increase, right? And so the alignment amongst them and the founders is is the same, right? Whereas the majority of users of social media don't necessarily own stock and have a financial

• 20:10Speaker 02

  advance, you know, a financial incentive from the beginning of that platform's release to speak in the best interest of that platform's success.

• 20:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  But that gets to is sort of another contradiction that we brought up on the show in the past when Aaron Levy was here, which is that the interests of investors and the interest of users are actually going to be in in conflict oftentimes. An investor wants to get the most money out of a out of a product. A user might want to, you know, play for free or for, you know, or have experiences that aren't going to try to milk the asset and get them to part with as much money as possible. So how does that balance actually come into play when we have like the NFT holders influencing the decision? Because it's a completely different incentive structure than someone who's just coming and using it without equity in a in a product.

• 21:02Speaker 02

  Well, wouldn't you argue that that's the problem with Web 2.0 or then Web 3.0?

• 21:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Say more about that. And I'm still waiting for the decision to the definition.

• 21:14Speaker 02

  A lot of the challenges that exist today with social media and with Twitter, which is maybe the most relevant current example for investors as a public company. Twitter has always said the best thing they can do is increase engagement to increase ad revenue, right? And many decisions that it was making to increase engagement was actually fairly unhealthy for many users of the platform, potentially unhealthy for society, right? Agreed. And Jack has openly come out and said that, right? Yes, sir.

• 21:57Speaker 02

  That a lot of those decisions were driven by the wrong things. And I think if they were only making decisions for what was going to be best for the users, they would have acted very differently. And so I think the hope, right, for Web three is that from the very, very beginning, with everyone aligned, you would make some of these decisions together and set forth the plan for the company, right, where it wasn't driven by just one or two investors

• 22:40Speaker 02

  who sat on a board, right? And this is an interesting topic for me to discuss as someone who does that for a living, right? You know, investing. It can make you obsolete. Sit on boards, right? It could certainly make you obsolete if you didn't embrace these trends or believe in the merits of Web three. Right.

• 23:04Speaker 02

  I wouldn't go to the extremes and say, you know, it's going to make any investors obsolete. And there's many non-technological sort of sectors where this is fairly irrelevant, at least today.

• 23:18Speaker 02

  But in short, I agree with you that there is a conflict, potentially a healthy one, between the founders of web three companies and the community that will have to be hashed out. But this is why it's so important to understand the roadmap at the beginning, to actually go and read the contract that you get when you buy an NFT to go in and go on to the website and see how much the founders have disclosed about where they want to take this business. A lot of it is very, very clear in the NFTs and web three companies that I find compelling. Yeah. I also don't think we should enter web three sort of doe eyed, right?

• 24:00Speaker 02

  And thinking this is all going to be great. This is all awesome. It's all going to work out perfectly. It solves all the problems in the world and web two point O, because as we've seen from social media, as amazing as we thought it was in the early days, there was so much that we could not have even contemplated, right? If if social media was as successful as Vegas Bull thought it would be in 2012, what will be the implications on the entire world, on the political ecosystem in America, on the relationship between people in America

• 24:41Speaker 02

  on different sides of the political spectrum, right? Instead of being skeptical, I think it's more more productive to say, if this works out, what should we be thinking about? What should we be prepared for? Right? Because if it doesn't work, it doesn't work, it's gone. Okay, on to the next one, right? But if if web three is as successful as people think it could be, what are the implications of that? What needs to change in the world? How do governments need to be prepared? How do financial institutions need to be prepared? How do consumers need to be prepared? That's what's exciting to me about this topic, more so than will this work or not? Because I think the probability of

• 25:25Speaker 02

  Cryptocurrencies, NFTs and Web3-based businesses and technologies going to zero. I think the probability of that has is a low number. It's not non-zero, but there's so much money in it now and so many users and active in Web3 and so many corporations betting on Web3 and putting a lot of money into it. That it's hard to see a scenario where it's not a relevant platform. I'm not saying it replaces Web2 entirely. I'm not saying it's the only way people use money.

• 26:06Speaker 02

  I'm not saying it's the only way people interact with brands. I'm saying it is a piece of a consumer and business and technological ecosystem.

• 26:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  And can we just say, so just to just set the set the definition. So Web2 is sort of like a technology that's built, you know, and users can participate, but it's owned by central entities. Web3 is more decentralized, built on the blockchain. Does that sound right to you? Okay, with more community ownership. Right. All right, sorry.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  I think the biggest thing or one of the big things to think about within that is that in Web3, you can basically sell any asset you have. Whereas in Web2, you can't really sell anything. You can buy things, right? And let me just give you an example. Fortnite, incredible innovation and very popular game. My son loves it. He plays it. I play it with him last December. He's, you know, for Hanukkah, he told me he wanted V bucks, which is the currency in Fortnite.

• 27:27Speaker 02

  That allows you to buy attire for your character to play in. So it's the only way that the game makes money. It's a free game and you wear this attire and it doesn't give you any powers. It's just, just like wearing clothes, right? It makes you look cool. And so you meet your friends in the game and you have your different outfits on and. It's a vanity component, but no different than where, you know, how you decide what you wear in the real world when you're seeing your friends. Except that you can't, when you buy the clothes, you don't own them, you can't resell them. There's not a marketplace for them if you wanted to resell them. And so, you know, one night we said, okay, it's digital products night for Hanukkah.

• 28:12Speaker 02

  And he goes and he buys the Christmas Spider-Man outfit. And it was cool and he wore it for a few days and then we went away over December break. We came back in, in January and I guess he spent like 40 bucks on the outfit. And, you know, it's, it's January 3rd or 4th and he goes, Dad, Dad, uh, could you get me a new outfit for Fortnite, some new skins? I was like, you just spent $40 on, on your Spider-Man? And he was like, yeah, but it's Christmas theme and Christmas is over. It's, it's, it's the new year now.

• 28:57Speaker 02

  Like I can't meet my friends wearing Christmas clothes. And in that moment, I realized like, well, it would be cool if he could sell that skin, right, to, to back into the marketplace or he could hold it and it was limited edition and, and sell it and wear it again in a year and be, have a retro or sell it ahead of Christmas next year. I'm not even sure what the license is, you know, on, you know, for some of these sort of IP-based costumes like Star Wars that they have in Fortnite. Uh, and if, if it'll be around even where you're, even though you bought it next Christmas.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  And so, so the concept would be if this were built on Web 3 and, and, um, if you owned a limited edition number of, of those skins, you could then go back and sell it at any time to any other Fortnite player, right? And, and to me, that's just a microcosm of what you would hope, uh, gets addressed in.

• 29:58Speaker 02

  Web three.

• 29:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Isn't that a design choice that Fortnite makes versus like the need to have like a new technology? Like can't Fortnite just say, okay, we're going to build a marketplace for these skins? Versus like with web three, so you basically have to build a video game as good as Fortnite that you know, your son would want to hang out with his friends. And you know, of course it would have this added commerce capability, but can't Fortnite simply solve that just by building a marketplace?

• 30:22Speaker 02

  I think people who are the biggest proponents of web three solve and believe that web three is a better technological solution to that marketplace. Because you understand exactly how many versions of any specific skin were made, anyhow, how many of them were made, how many have been purchased? What is the value of each of them? What are they trading for? What is the floor? What is the volume? In a marketplace that you're describing, you have no idea how many of those skins were ever created, how many have been sold, what they've been sold for.

• 31:03Speaker 02

  And there's no um, open decentralized place to transact with other people in it. Right? And so, yes, sure, could they create some version of eBay within Fortnite to buy and sell them? Absolutely. I think the question for technologists is, is web three the best platform to build that on today?

• 31:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Jason Stein is with us. He's the founder and managing partner of SC Holdings. We're talking NFTs. We're going to keep doing it after the break. I've got some more questions. Maybe we can also talk a little bit about the market downturn, given that this is all being impacted.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  I was about, I was about to say the, we're talking about a highly volatile, highly speculative asset class on a day where the market is absolutely getting crushed after a week of getting crushed and.

• 31:59Speaker 02

  The probability of a recession has continued to increase by the minute today. So I think it is worth talking about.

• 32:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, why don't we do that when we come back from this break? We'll be back with Jason Stein right after this. This episode is brought to you by Avpoint. Everyone's racing to roll out AI right now. Co-pilots, chatbots, agents doing real work. But here's the part nobody loves talking about. All that AI runs on your data and most teams have no single way to see it, secure it, and prove it's under control. That's exactly what Avpoint does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate. Your data, your cloud, and the agents acting on your behalf. It's how more than 28,000 organizations deploy AI with confidence.

• 32:50Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 33:33Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 34:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Jason Stein, founder and managing partner at SC Holdings. You can find him on Twitter at Jason W. Stein. I recommend the follow. Jason's been one of the most important voices that I have listened to as I've gotten to learn about technology and he always seems to be ahead of the curve with anything new.

• 34:34Speaker 02

  I wouldn't recommend the follow. I barely tweet anymore. I used to.

• 34:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you just, you're just waiting for, you're just waiting for web three, social media to come in? So you can return and are you going to go back with when Elon, when Elon buys Twitter? What's, what made you decide to stay away and, and when can you go back?

• 34:55Speaker 02

  I thought about that.

• 34:57Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, go ahead.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Go ahead. No reason.

• 34:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, if people, I guess like I'm trying to shout out where people could follow your stuff. Is it just going to be this, this one, this one show and we'll, we'll just, you know, drop it here? Or do you have a place where you like to communicate with the masses?

• 35:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  I'm glad if it's this one show, let's put your, your knowledge into this thing and.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Oh, they can reach, if someone wants to communicate, reach, speak to me, they can read, they can reach out however they want. Twitter, email or whatever. You know, I, I, one of the reasons I stopped, there's a few reasons I stopped tweeting a lot. Right. One is just, it's time consuming and I, and I work 24/7 and I have three young kids. And, and one of the things to not spend time on for me to make more room for those was, was tweeting a lot. The other, maybe more importantly is if you're going to tweet, you're, you're usually doing it because you want to have a following and, and there's a business use case for it. And if you have a big following, there's obviously a ton of advantages to tweeting a lot.

• 36:03Speaker 02

  And, and having a big following, right? Gary Vaynerchuk's a great example of that, right? But there, there's many, many, many, right? My, my issue was in order to be very successful on Twitter is you have to have fairly extreme points of view to get the most engagement, right? Doesn't necessarily matter what, what that point of view is because the internet seems to be 50/50 on, on every topic, right? And, and so you, you take an extreme point of view, you get a lot of engagement, you get a lot of negativity, you get a lot of support.

• 36:39Speaker 02

  And I I found that, and this is, you know, going back a few years now, I found that I was forcing myself to take a strong point of view

• 36:50Speaker 02

  on on topics to get more engagement. And it was actually, i- it it shapes your view on things, right? You get yourself worked up to think you believe something and then you have to support it and then you have to fight with people and there's no nuance and and most most big business business issues are are not binary, right? And and not um

• 37:15Speaker 02

  not as simple and as that. And I think it's important to be open minded and understand both sides and be able to argue both sides and be prepared for both sides, right? Like, when I say is is, you know, are NFTs going to zero or I think the probability is low that they go to zero. Is it possible? Yes. And and so as someone who thinks in probabilities and thinks in bets for for as an investor, it's just I find Twitter became, it was incentivizing incentivizing

• 37:46Speaker 02

  behavior that was a little too extreme for for me to feel to feel comfortable.

• 37:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, this is why I love the podcast, you know, so I like, I just, I just tweeted, uh, well, well, that's the last time I put my life savings into a monkey JPEG. And that's my like Twitter, you know, point of view, but actually.

• 38:04Speaker 02

  That is pure trolling.

• 38:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  Exactly. Okay. I'm just saying that like, no, I'm just saying, yeah, I'm trying to say I much more appreciate. This is why I think that like publishing media that is, you know, subscription and and has room for nuances is a platform. So for me, you know, in terms of the type of media I enjoy being in, podcast, A, you know, newsletter, B, you know, and then Facebook, Twitter, you know, way distant after that. I just think that this is a place where you can actually go to to make progress versus a place like Twitter, which you're right, it does incentivize these extreme outcomes.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  I think social media is relevant for for businesses. I think it's for for celebrities, for professional athletes, right? Who who people.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  Want to follow and have some sort of, you know, deeper relationship with where sure, then you need to speak to people at scale, right? And people who aspire to that. So I, I, I think I spend time on it consuming to, to some regard, but I, I'm not sure. It's, it doesn't mean everyone needs to, to be a prolific poster on social media. I got excited when Twitter announced that they, last week that they might be, they might add a feature where you can pick up to 175 people to see your tweets and only those people.

• 39:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  That exists now. It's called circles.

• 39:31Speaker 02

  No, well, is that, is that the name of the feature?

• 39:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  The product.

• 39:35Speaker 02

  But it's, it's not, it's not in my account. I don't, I don't have access to it. Um, even though I pay for Twitter Blue to get access to new features on Twitter, uh, mostly just so I can change the design of the icon on my home screen.

• 39:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  Which I actually enjoy. I don't know.

• 39:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Me too. That's, that's the one thing I enjoyed with Twitter Blue before I canceled it. I did like the icon thing.

• 39:56Speaker 02

  I like it too. Uh, you'll, you'll be happy to know that there is no new seasonal icon right now. I don't know if that's Elon.

• 40:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 40:03Speaker 02

  Um, cut, cutting unnecessary design.

• 40:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  You have to imagine, no, everybody I'm sure gave up, you know, inside Twitter. They're, they're not going to do any work from now until that deal closes.

• 40:13Speaker 02

  I wouldn't, I, I mean, I can't, you can't generalize. I don't, maybe some people, I'm sure, I hope there's some people who are inspired by, by Elon getting involved.

• 40:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, of course, no, there can be people that will work for him, but like, he's going to change the product in a way that like your roadmap on, you know, and from now until the deal closes is somewhat obsolete.

• 40:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wouldn't you say?

• 40:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  I personally, if I was in that company, would not be doing it.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  Depends what you work, depends what you're working on there, right?

• 40:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Product, no, I'm not doing anything. Ad sales, yeah, I'm selling those ads.

• 40:41Speaker 02

  Well, what if you work on Twitter Blue?

• 40:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, you don't know what he's, he's, Elon's already said that he doesn't like the direction of Twitter Blue. He's.

• 40:48Speaker 02

  He also said that, that.

• 40:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now he wants to change it. So maybe you come up with new ideas, um, but I would be hesitant to, to crush myself to ship in that product.

• 41:00Speaker 02

  Totally. So

• 41:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  We're talking about the market down too.

• 41:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 41:06Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's, let's, I'm kind of curious what your perspective is. Yeah. Why don't you tell me your perspective and then I'm going to ask you some questions about NFTs in context of market crashing. I mean, it's brutal right now.

• 41:19Speaker 02

  Yes. This is what was supposed to happen when the government raised interest rates in order to slow down the economic growth, right?

• 41:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 41:32Speaker 02

  So let's not pretend that we woke up one day and all of a sudden some unknown force was causing this insane market crash like in the 1920s, right, 1930s. And instead, you know, at least realize that this is exactly what was intended, right? To slow down the economy. Multiples were very high in public and private markets. And that was caused by the government as well, right?

• 42:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes.

• 42:03Speaker 02

  Interest rates were slash zero, right? A lot of, of buying of assets as well by the government.

• 42:13Speaker 02

  Tons of liquidity and they need to slow that down. So maybe it's working. Maybe now's a good time to buy. Who knows where the bottom is? I'm not going to guess. Might be here, you know, it might be 10, 15% down is what a lot of sort of the more bearish market.

• 42:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Further 10, 10 to 15%.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, it's amazing because the S and P has already dropped like 15% on the year. So down 20%. It's possible.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Yes, but, but I mean, where would that be relative to where?

• 42:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Pre-COVID?

• 42:50Speaker 02

  Yes, and people, yes.

• 42:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, just basically a full correction to like normal 6, 6% growth.

• 42:59Speaker 02

  Many people believed prior to COVID that the markets were already too high, right? They had run up for 10 years, right? 12 years since the last recession.

• 43:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 43:13Speaker 02

  From, right, so.

• 43:17Speaker 02

  Maybe that's where things should restart. And by the way, I think if, you know, I don't even think you're actually hitting if the S and P got down to thirty five hundred, I don't actually think that was the peak prior to COVID. I think.

• 43:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  No, February twenty twenty was thirty three hundred.

• 43:36Speaker 02

  Right. So you're not, you're not even all the way there. Right. So, so maybe this is healthy. But what's interesting to me is that

• 43:46Speaker 02

  the, the problem being created was, or the problem that's trying to be solved is too much demand in the economy, right?

• 43:56Speaker 02

  And, and so inflation

• 44:00Speaker 02

  caused by not enough supply to meet demand is too high. Prices are going up to meet demand. And so, so there, the government, the Fed are, is specifically is trying to slow down demand. I would like to understand what measures can be taken at the same time to increase supply. Because it seems like that would also be a healthy approach to solving this problem in tandem, right?

• 44:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  Supply, like fix the supply chain.

• 44:33Speaker 02

  Yeah. What, what could be done to, to help loosen up the, the, the supply chain? So that prices don't have to be so high and that, that consumer demand could be met.

• 44:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what's the solution?

• 44:46Speaker 02

  This is above my pay grade. It's not, I'm not, I don't, this is not what I do for a living. I invest in, in, you know, we, we make private equity, growth equity investments. And we can talk about what we're seeing on, on the private side relative to the public markets. But I don't know. I think that, that's the question. That, that's what I would like to understand better. Do, does, does Biden and the government reduce tariffs, right? So that, at least for a time being. While while prices go up and costs go up to make more product and get more supply into the country, there's lower tariffs being paid so that costs aren't passed on to the

• 45:30Speaker 02

  consumer so that inflation isn't as high, right?

• 45:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  We also have so much of our economy tied up in China and China right now is really struggling with COVID and it seems like that's going to be the case for a while. So we have to anticipate there are going to be serious shutdowns there for a country that really hasn't gone through a wave of COVID yet.

• 45:46Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. And of course, there's the war in Ukraine.

• 45:52Alex Kantrowitz?

  No doubt.

• 45:53Speaker 02

  But those are not things we can necessarily control as it relates to economic measures to help fight inflation, right?

• 46:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 46:02Speaker 02

  Those are going to happen and they are happening. And so what my, the question I have are what are, what are ways to improve supply while reducing demand so that measures don't have to go so far? And I'm not, again, this is

• 46:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 46:19Speaker 02

  not my day job, but it's, it's an interesting question to think about. Like, a lot of demand isn't the worst thing in the world, right? Not enough supplies is, is the actual root.

• 46:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  A issue. Yeah. Well, shout out to anybody listening in the government who might have a solution to that. Come on, we should, we should talk about it. So Jason, I want to ask you again, supply and demand, right? Zero interest rate policy also created a demand for much more risky assets. When you just couldn't make money on cash, you were going to move your money into places like equities and, and I think crypto. And we also had a moment where, I mean, this is from the Wall Street Journal story about NFTs last week where they said that the daily average of NFTs being transacted last week was 19,000 per day. That's a 92% decline from the peak of 22, 225,000 in September last year.

• 47:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  So where do you, do you think that like some of the market for NFTs has also been fueled by sort of speculative investing that basically came from zero interest rate policy? And a desire for people to find riskier bets and that's sort of where they landed. Now the Fed has, you know, signaled it's going to increase rates. It started to increase rates and you have a flood away from that. So I'm curious if you think that's related and what are the implications for NFTs?

• 47:46Speaker 02

  I have no idea is the answer to those questions, but, but, but what I will say is people have been seeking out speculative assets that give you outsized returns forever, right? From the gold rush to dot com era, to web three today, to public equities that were trading at outrageous valuations, right? Peloton Shopify is, you know, was at 1500, it's, it's 500 today.

• 48:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  Down 70% on the year Shopify.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  Coinbase similar, right? It's now trading at seven, six, I think six and a half times earnings last time I looked. I mean, if you believe in crypto, right? Long-term owning Coinbase at six and a half times earnings is pretty fucking compelling, right? But you could also say that about buying, buying crypto.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  And so my, my point is, of course, people were looking for speculative assets. And of course, sitting home during COVID and having a little extra cash may have impacted that and low interest rates may have impacted that, not just for NFTs, but for the meme stocks and for any other stocks. You know, the, the private markets where I spend 98% of my time have been less, slightly less impacted by that because there's not as many retail investors playing there, right? I think maybe that, that NFTs and crypto became that for, you know, the equivalent of the private markets for, for a lot of the retail investors.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  And those markets have not been hit as much yet by this, this correction, early stage venture.

• 49:31Speaker 02

  Typically doesn't really get impacted a lot by this. It's a 10 year bet, maybe 15 year, depending on what you invest in, whether it IPOs or exits. We don't, we don't, we also don't make early stage venture investments. We're sort of middle stage between venture and, and, and exit. And those companies haven't really been hit. We also haven't seen companies that are feeling the pain of the consumer yet. Right? Most of the companies are, are continuing to grow that we're invested in. And I'm, I'm curious if and when that, that starts to slow

• 50:10Speaker 02

  down. But, but to date, the demand and, and spending is, is pretty high across the board at all of our companies. And so I try to use that as a gauge for are things going to slow down? Are they going to pick up? Is, is this sort of all, um, a lot of, a lot of talk and not as much data? And my hope is that the markets have had a healthy correction. Facebook trading at 12 times earnings, Blackstone trading at 11 times, paying a 4% dividend, right? Those are names I own. Um, but then there's also companies that, that, you know, potentially have, have a long way down. And I think just like NFTs, just like private

• 50:54Speaker 02

  companies and just like public companies, it's very hard to generalize about the potential upside or potential downside of an asset class or a sector, right? Without talking about the specific companies, because in a shakeout, many companies will go under, right? But if you believe in web three, there will be some really good companies that come out of that, right? Right. The same thing goes for the private markets and the same thing goes for the public markets.

• 51:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Now, that's the big argument. Every time we go through this wave of technology is that things will shake out and you end up with the good use cases and it might be one 10th of the first wave, but eventually that becomes the foundation of the next wave of technology. So you look at me making the case for NFTs and web.

• 51:45Speaker 02

  So my work here, my work here is done.

• 51:48Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think we made progress here. I got you to admit some things. You got me to admit some things. You know.

• 51:53Speaker 02

  A hundred percent. This is like, this is how discourse, this is intended to occur, right?

• 51:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, sir. So, um. Uh, you know, one of the interesting, I want to just, maybe we end here. One of the interesting things that happened, I think, at the beginning of the pandemic is I gave you a call. I was like freaking out and Jason, what's gonna happen? The markets are dead. And you told me that you, you were ready and you're ready to thrive in the chaos. So. We're back in chaos now. Where do you think the opportunities are? And do you have the same sunny perspective as you did? Back in March 2020?

• 52:31Speaker 02

  Well, I don't, let's be clear. I didn't have a sunny perspective in either case, but. You know, I, I'm, I'm an optimist by nature and I, I, um, I like to believe things will work out and I like to, to bet and invest, um, my time and money in, for this scenario that things work out, because if they don't, we're all fucked anyway, right? And I think a lot of opportunity comes anytime there are challenges in, in the marketplace, right? This is not a, I'm not the, I didn't come up with this concept, right? Well, I guess it was Warren Buffett or Charlie Munger are always saying,

• 53:09Speaker 02

  be fearful when others are greedy and be greedy when others are fearful. And for whatever reason, I've always, I've, I've, I've gravitated toward that and tried to, to act on it and. You know, if, if you bought. Apple when, you know, in 2007, 2008, when it was, you know, pre-split, you know, at nine, 70, 80, $90 a share. You're, you're up, I think, over a thousand percent, 100% by now. If you bought Facebook and when, you know, it, it's, it's share price after IPO got cut in half. And everyone said it was doomed, right? And, and social media doesn't work and social media advertising doesn't work and.

• 53:51Speaker 02

  Teens don't use Facebook and, and, and all that. Then, you know, you, you've done incredibly, incredibly well. I think you're, you're up. 10x.

• 54:06Speaker 02

  If you bought at, uh, at the bottom in March of 2020 or in and around that bottom,

• 54:15Speaker 02

  you're still up.

• 54:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  You're sitting pretty. You're up a lot.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  A wild amount, right?

• 54:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 54:20Speaker 02

  Whether you bought crypto or, you know, real estate holdings.

• 54:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Market indexes.

• 54:27Speaker 02

  Starwood, like, any, any one of these is, is right, S and P. You're, you're in, you're in good shape. You've given a lot back, but to me, that's, that's an exciting time and on, on the private side, these are times where companies need support from people who've been through this before, who've built companies during downturns, right? I started my last, my first business

• 54:51Speaker 02

  in, in, during a recession because I had graduated from school and, and there couldn't get a job anywhere, right? Lehman Brothers had, had just gone under, Bear Stearns had gone under, Madoff had just happened, right? It's not like you, you were walking around New York City, like people were trying, trying to hire like they are today. Uh, and, and so it was an opportunity. And then at the same time, that opportunity led, led to brands saying, hey, maybe we should, we should move some ad spend to social media, right? And, uh, and so some, you know, traditional advertising, uh, started moving from print to, to social and more, more digital uh, because of that. And so it was, again, it's another opportunity.

• 55:29Speaker 02

  I would never look at these times and, and say, um, I'm happy, but I, uh, you have to be prepared for them. They're part of business and you can't get flustered when they happen and, um, for me, I like, I like to act on it. I feel best making investments now than I do at the, you know, the peak of, of, of the market.

• 55:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. I mean, I'm with you. Like the idea that in a recession, you invest is, makes a lot of sense to me. I started my company in the middle of, you know, the last, in 2020, like right as the coronavirus started to get bad. Just seemed like the right time to do it. So do you, do you have like two more minutes? I feel like, uh, I'd love to hear your, uh, story. If you could just tell folks the story of how you started the social media company, it's one of my favorite stories.

• 56:16Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 56:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  We'll let you out there.

• 56:18Speaker 02

  So I, I graduated from NYU. The, the world was, was in a good amount of, of chaos. And I was very interested in, in the internet and the advent of, of social media and. There were two things happening that excited excited me. One was people were running around the streets of New York City with with digital cameras, HD video cameras that you could rent for a hundred fifty bucks a day. And they were making these beautiful videos and films in in New York City as a backdrop. It looked a little bit like Woody Allen film without the dolly and um and the fancy camera work and um but but beautiful. And then they were they were uploading the the footage on to the hard drives on to their

• 57:01Speaker 02

  I don't know, Cup Pro on their their Mac laptops and and editing it. And and that was a democratization of content creation. And obviously, you know, iPhone cameras became better and better, and that that only went further. And HD cameras, you know, Red cameras and Canon's got DSLRs got better and better and cheaper and cheaper. And at the same time, um, I'd been working on Wall Street when I was over the summer in college and programmatic trading had started to become more and more popular and um, the same thing was that the same concept was beginning to apply to to advertising on on Google. Right? That that um, anyone could buy ads or sell ads on their website or

• 57:46Speaker 02

  um, or eventually apps. And so the democratization of content distribution was occurring where previously if you had made a TV spot or or a digital video, you had to have a relationship with a big TV network and um, you know, buy an ad well in advance and spend hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars to have that TV ad space or those big billboards. And and so it just dawned on me that, you know, it would be a good idea to start a company that that made content uh, good high-end content inexpensively and was able to distribute it, you know, relatively inexpensively versus how it had been up previously and I didn't know anyone. I'd never worked in in digital media or content or advertising

• 58:28Speaker 02

  or or programming of any kind at networks. And I I went on Craigslist and um went to the TV film video section and just started applying for jobs. And, you know, there were things like need viral video, need YouTube, like celebrity video and, you know, would apply to a hundred jobs a day and up and down the East Coast and and get, you know, one out of a hundred would respond. And and then out of all those, you know, one out of every thirty or forty would become a job and ended up getting uh so some some real brands hiring uh uh that way. Uh and and ended up getting to a million dollars of

• 59:10Speaker 02

  revenue doing that. And and then, you know, from there, a hundred million of revenue and six hundred employees and and six offices over five years and and then so sold the business to uh to, you know, big conglomerate and then, you know, was excited to get to start an investment business, which had always been my passion from a young age, following the stock market. Um, and uh and loving private investing where it combined my operating experience with um the the investing uh passion. Right. So we've got, we've got fifteen people here in the financial district now every

• 59:51Speaker 02

  day and are invested in companies like the Spring Hill Company, which is Maverick Carter and LeBron James Entertainment Studio in Hollywood, who who we've been working with closely for, you know, since the beginning of this company uh in twenty nineteen and um Athletic Greens, which is a direct to consumer subscription health and wellness product. Um, I take every day now and uh we're investors in Certified Collectibles Group with Blackstone, where where we participated in their buyout and they grade memorabilia, so coins, paper money and comic books, huge business and that that's thrived throughout COVID and continues to today. Um, you know, and maybe there's some NFT play there in in the future.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  But yeah, we've made about 15 of those investments. We invest between $10 million and $50 million per deal and actively help these growing companies continue to scale in a healthy way. And it's a lot of fun.

• 1:00:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Amazing. Well, look, Jason.

• 1:00:57Speaker 02

  It's a fun journey.

• 1:00:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, that's great. I love the Craigslist thing. I mean, there's sourcefulness there. You know, that's where the demand is.

• 1:01:03Speaker 02

  Can you imagine? I'm not even going to go get into the details, but can you imagine some of the interactions that were going on at the time, Jesus?

• 1:01:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  I would love to hear those details.

• 1:01:14Speaker 02

  One day.

• 1:01:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, maybe one day. All right. Well, I'm not going to put a board A profile picture on my Twitter yet, but you know, I appreciate the conversation.

• 1:01:24Speaker 02

  You have to make me one promise.

• 1:01:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Well, it depends what it is. Let's hear.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  If you're going to be skeptical or even open-minded and analytical,

• 1:01:36Speaker 02

  you have a responsibility as a journalist to participate in some of the NFT communities. You have to buy some NFTs. You have to go into Discord. You have to sell. You have to interact. You have to understand how it works. You have to play some of the NFT-based games. And then tell me what you think.

• 1:01:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Then I have a right to.

• 1:01:57Speaker 02

  You'll have new, I promise you, you have much newer and potentially sharper criticisms when you start, when you start experiencing gas fees.

• 1:02:05Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes, I was about to say I'll do it, but I don't want to spend $3,000 for a $20 NFT. So.

• 1:02:11Speaker 02

  Nor should you.

• 1:02:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yes. Okay, it's a deal. It's a deal. I will report back on the podcast based off of what I find. Jason, thank you so much for joining us. Great to chat with you as always.

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  My pleasure. Thanks, bud.

• 1:02:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Thank you.

• 1:02:26Speaker 02

  Talk to you soon.

• 1:02:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Speak to you then. We will have another episode next week with Packy McCormick and Austin Reeve of Morning Brew. Packy of Not Boring. Just want to say a quick thank you to Nate Quatney for doing the edits, LinkedIn for having me a part of your podcast network, and all of you, the listeners. If this is your first time, please hit subscribe. If you're here from the This Week in Tech podcast, appreciate you joining. Love to hear your feedback. Longtime listeners or first timers, if you want to hit the rating button, that would be terrific. And that will do it for us here this week. We'll see you next time on Big Technology Podcast.

• 1:03:08Speaker 03

  Now, more than ever, we need someone on our side. But Rob Whitman? Whitman's votes drove up costs, cut Medicaid, and risked 350,000 Virginians' health care to pay for tax breaks for himself and his donors. He's not on our side. Shannon Taylor will fight corruption, cut taxes, and bring down costs. This November, vote for Shannon Taylor. She's for us. Paid for by HMP, the House Majority PAC dot com. Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

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• 1:03:41Speaker 04

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• 1:03:51Alex Kantrowitz?

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