Fyre Festival's Billy McFarland Dishes On Social Media Marketing, VC, and Prison

Billy McFarland is the founder of Fyre Festival. He joins Big Technology Podcast to discuss what he learned about social media, investing, and prison during his ordeal at the helm at the world's most infamous music festival. Tune in for McFarland's clear-headed insights on what he did wrong, how social media sells a version of the world that is not there, how inflating his numbers changed investors' approach to his business, and what ten months on solitary confinement does to a man. Tune in for a fascinating, deep discussion covering the making and downfall of an internet phenomenon. ---- --- Enjoying Big Technology Podcast? Please rate us five stars ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ in your podcast app of choice. For weekly updates on the show, sign up for the pod newsletter on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/newsletters/6901970121829801984/ Want a discount for Big Technology on Substack? Here’s 40% off for the first year: https://tinyurl.com/bigtechnology Questions? Feedback? Write to: [email protected] 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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• 1:03Alex Kantrowitz?

  Billy McFarland, the man behind the Fire Festival, joins us to discuss what he learned about the power of social media, his time in prison, and whether there's going to be a Fire Festival 2. That's coming up right after this. This episode is brought to you by App Point. 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 App Point does. For 25 years, they've been the trusted layer beneath the world's most demanding data, now extended across your entire AI estate.

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• 2:16Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 3:01Alex Kantrowitz?

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• 3:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed nuanced conversation of the tech world and beyond. We're midsummer and we have a very fun show for you today because Billy McFarland is here. He's the man behind the FIRE Festival. And I don't think there are many people in the world with as much experience generating social media interests, speaking with investors and really being in the public eye in the way that Billy has has been. So Billy, it's great to see you. Welcome to the show.

• 3:43Speaker 01

  Alex, thank you so much. Great to be here. Very excited to chat tonight.

• 3:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, me too. Let's start for those who don't know about it, talking about what the FIRE Festival was. I basically wrote down that it was an event that generated a tremendous amount of interest, was supposed to be a lavish festival on a private island and fell apart, was canceled basically before it got a chance to get going and caused you a lot of trouble. Is that sort of an accurate description of what happened?

• 4:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the trouble is obviously the result, but I think let's start with the vision. So FIRE Festival was supposed to be three days where you would escape reality and connect with people from different industries on a remote island.

• 4:27Speaker 01

  The idea was this would be the three days that you would talk about for the rest of your lives. I think we succeeded in creating three days people spoke about for the rest of their lives, but just did it the exact opposite way. But FIRE is all about, the idea is the magic, the companies, the bonds that happen when people who don't ordinarily get to meet during their day-to-day professional lives all come together at an exotic location and embark on this weekend of adventure and coming together.

• 4:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  And now, you know, I was thinking a lot about the event and trying to put myself back into sort of like the, I guess, the mindset or sort of that moment. And, you know, I sort of expected to go back and like, I guess the perception I expected was like, oh, Billy did this thing and it really screwed over a lot of people. And, and that's why it resonated with folks. But actually, it like came away with like a different picture. When I started reading and watching some of the things that had happened and why it captivated people the way that it had. And my perception is that the reason why it drew so much interest was there was a feeling of like, people were enjoying the suffering of the elites.

• 5:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 5:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  And I'm curious if you could sort of reflect on that and, and let me know if you think that that's accurate.

• 5:43Speaker 01

  So FIRE came in, in like early 2017 and like most of the marketing was done in late 2016. And I think this era was important because it started to really kick off this shift of celebrity being a select number of people to where it is now where there are millions of micro influencers across all these social channels. And I think we kind of hit it at the exact time where the general public had gotten an inside glimpse due to social media into the lives of like the 0.01% of fame, of wealth, of access. And it created this sense of entitlement where you became so used to waking up and seeing what Kim Kardashian

• 6:24Speaker 01

  was doing every day, that you thought you deserved that too. So it created this weird surge of one, ticket buyers who like thought they deserved to live this life, but then two, when everything kind of failed. Almost a reassurance amongst the public where like, yes, I am as good as this person who I wake up and like and comment on every day. And they have mistakes also. And obviously I wasn't that person, but the guests or some of the expected guests were. And so I think it kind of created the sense of comfort and reassurance amongst, you know, social media users to, you know, find complacency where they stand in life.

• 6:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so then, I mean, basically what you're, it's interesting because it's a failure in many ways. Obviously you've paid the price for it. But it also, you led for this, the kind of a moment of catharsis, like your biggest failing was a moment of catharsis for so many people. How did that make you feel?

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Kind of weird, right? I think it's, it's still hard to look at that way. And it's like, very difficult to look past all of their wrong. And ultimately there were employees, there were families, there were investors who suffered due to the mistakes and the decisions that I made. So it's hard to look past that and like, see the larger change that happened because of fire, you know, until those mistakes are really fixed.

• 7:41Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. So are, so let's just talk about that for a moment. I mean, are you still intending to fix that? You owe a lot of money, I think, to people who helped put the festival on.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. So there's like something called restitution, which is essentially a court ordered payment back to the victims. And the victims in this case are considered to be the investors. So there certainly is this huge number and there's like this financial component of restitution. But I really think restitution is deeper than that. And it's probably more about trust than it is about money. There certainly are people who are suffering due to losing money, but I think most of my investors are more of the venture types. They take a lot of bets. And I think where I hurt them more was abusing and really taking advantage of their trust. Most of my larger investors had backed me for a number of years before fire. And they had spent five or six years with me, their intimate moments with their families, et cetera.

• 8:34Speaker 01

  And I took advantage of that. So I feel like repaying the trust is probably a harder task than repaying any kind of like ordered, you know, financial settlement.

• 8:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Isn't it a little messed up that the financial system or the legal system says restitution should go to the investors? And I don't know, does it cover also the the folks working in the Bahamas, for instance, that talked about not getting paid?

• 9:00Speaker 01

  Um, it's tough, right? Because, yeah, ultimately, I think there have been many times during this process where I felt like the wrong people were either getting punished or benefiting from it. There is a bankruptcy proceeding for Fyre Festival and the bankruptcy estate was going after various like talent who, in my opinion, successfully completed their contracts. They promoted the event, they did what they were supposed to do.

• 9:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  The influencers.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  The influencers, right? And like ultimately, I feel like the wrong people were targeted and we probably are ignoring the people who are actually owed funds. So it is a tough part of the process, but ultimately, you know, I am subject to the justice system and kind of have to go through with all that.

• 9:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And how much do you owe?

• 9:40Speaker 01

  The restitution number is in the mid 20 millions, 26 or 27 million.

• 9:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  And how are you going to pay that back?

• 9:46Speaker 01

  So it's fairly simple. It it sounds crazy because the number is so massive, but it's it's just a percentage of income. So and like not just, it's very onerous and it certainly, you know, impacts my ability to live and to earn and, you know, and to to build a family. But if I make a dollar, if I make a million dollars, right, a percentage of that goes back to restitution. And I think the only way to approach it is to look at it in isolation like that and be like, okay, this month I made, you know, $10,000 making this up. So like, I'm giving a check back for X.

• 10:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  And are you able to share like what percentage?

• 10:17Speaker 01

  Uh, I don't think so. I mean, maybe I could. I just don't want to cause any attention to that. But it is a percentage and it also varies. Like, for example, if I have to travel to earn, the percentage can be higher than if I earn it, you know, from a computer in New York. So there are different factors that can make the number fluctuate.

• 10:31Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yep. And then, just going back to this moment, you know, it's so interesting. Like, you shouted out the year in the very beginning, 2016 was this moment where like, okay, a lot of people started to become micro influencers and, you know, we obviously had this uptake in social media. It was also a moment of anti-elite fever in the United States at least. And that was sort of, I would say, probably punctuated by the Trump victory in November.

• 11:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so that being said, you're you're working with Trump now. We're gonna get back to the festival, but it also is interesting that you're like, you know, some in some ways, like, looked at as these as the person who stuck it to the elites, but now you're working with the man who's sort of rose to power campaigning against them.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  I think there was a rumor going around that I'm working for the Trump campaign. I'm not working for the Trump campaign. I still work in music and entertainment. So I have helped artists connect, you know, with various Trump related events. I brought them out to certain rallies. I've worked on some media projects with the artists. I think my goal right now, and I really started thinking about this in jail, is how can I give more exposure to the communities that a lot of my friends in prison were from? And that came to be by working with a number of music artists from across the country. So yeah, very passionate about working in music and entertainment, and very passionate about bringing different people who just wouldn't meet together and seeing what comes of that.

• 11:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  So how did you? Okay, was it the music artist that asked you to get them in front of Trump, or Trump that asked you to get the music artists? Like, what's that relationship like?

• 12:09Speaker 01

  It really started one day in jail, when I was walking around the track with this former Harvard hedge fund guy, you know, kind of had it all in life and, you know, had way more than me, but like me, made some similarly terrible decisions. And he said to me one day, like, look at all these idiots. And I look at him and I'm like, no, we're the idiots, right? We're the ones that had the opportunities in life, you know, we we had jobs, we had careers, we had friends, family, positive role models. And a lot of my friends who was meeting in prison, they didn't know anybody who who had a job. They didn't know anybody who, you know, was a successful role model. And this became so obvious that it was like the lack of exposure that I think contributed to a lot of my close friends now in prison coming to prison. So I was always intrigued by like, how can we give?

• 12:55Speaker 01

  My friends a mouthpiece, right? How can we give their communities a mouthpiece, their families a mouthpiece? How can we give their situations and their circumstances like exposure to the world? So that's kind of where the genesis came from. And to have the opportunity to connect them with a former president, like, I think that's like the ultimate goal, right? Like, there is no better way to give exposure to my friends and their communities.

• 13:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And so then, how did Trump pick up the phone? Like, did you know somebody within the campaign, or?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's like having various friends, you know, throughout the years from living in New York and being in music and entertainment's fairly, fairly small world.

• 13:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. So, thanks for clearing that up, by the way.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, no problem.

• 13:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Let's talk about social media, right? So you mentioned that the Fyre Festival was a moment where people started to see into each other's lives with social media. And you obviously have learned how to wield a tremendous amount of influence through social media. So I'm just curious to hear your perspective on like, what did you learn about the power of social media through this whole experience?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  So I think the landscape certainly has changed in the past, you know, seven or eight years. But I think, once again, 2016 was such an interesting time where people had been consumers of the lives of celebrities for a couple of years. And it became this point where they're like, we can have this too. And I think that's why Fyre, without really understanding what nerve we were striking, really hit at the right time, where it, for the first time, kind of gave access, or gave three days, or gave an escape to be the people that you had followed for so long. And the shift was there, where why are we watching when we can also be doing? And I think we've seen that take permanent shape in this micro influencer shift, right? And like TikTok and everything that's come in the past seven

• 14:37Speaker 01

  or eight years. But, you know, Fyre was almost like the catalyst there, where we were turning people from being voyeurs into actual adventurers and doers themselves.

• 14:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Mm hmm. And do you think there's like a deeper lesson there, that they were basically chasing something that wasn't all that fulfilling?

• 14:53Speaker 01

  Interesting. I think for sure. I think people, I think people are starting to realize the lives they were watching had flaws that were either equal to or greater than their own lives. And I think kind of created this maybe this intrigue or this like yearn to maybe experience what it was like to have different sets of problems. So, and I think fire allowed, fire allowed it to happen, right? Like, we can go and be this person for three days and see the good, the bad, and bad that comes with it.

• 15:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  And to me, it was like, social media also has this ability to sell what isn't there. That was another thing that I like, thought was like, you know, okay, it looks one way on the surface, but on a deeper level, sometimes what's going on behind the camera isn't quite what it looks like.

• 15:44Speaker 01

  And that's why social media has changed the entertainment world so much. Like, entertainment by design has been built on smoke and mirrors, right? Where we put this wall up between our star and the rest of the world, and the rest of the world can't know the star is actually a human too. And we create a story, we create a narrative to make him or her, you know, more interesting, more desirable, you know, sexier, wilder than the rest of the world. And that creates that like one-to-many relationships that talent traditionally had. Social media started to break down that smoke and mirrors, and initially it provided a, you know, a filtered glimpse into their life, but ultimately provided a raw glimpse into their life. And that kind of created this mindset of like, we could be this too. So, yeah, I think it's

• 16:25Speaker 01

  interesting how social media initially was viewed as an amplifier for talent, but almost kind of became the undoing of the traditional entertainment model as well.

• 16:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, and it's wild, because like, I've spoken with influencers, and many of them are miserable. They look at the latest, you know, number of likes, and that's the way they gauge their self-worth, or latest brand deal, and it just is, it is a occupation that really just provokes a lot of anxiety.

• 16:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a game that's impossible to win because there's always someone new who's getting more views, who's getting more clicks, or who looks better, who's a little funnier, who's a little smarter. So yeah, I think like, once you immerse yourself in the attention business, it's, you know, it's a tough, it's a tough, never-ending battle.

• 17:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  I think you said something along the lines of like, it worked better than you expected. I mean, it is pretty crazy what happened when, I think you had like 400 influencers post this orange square, you sold out 95% of tickets, right, you know, basically immediately. What, what happened when it sort of went beyond what you expected?

• 17:31Speaker 01

  So the one risk that we took, which, you know, paid off and ultimately became our, our biggest failure, was that the diversity of the talent advertising the orange tile was really, really important. I think if we just had DJs post an orange square, nobody would have cared. We just would have been another like EDM music festival, you know, just like there are every day around the world. I think the fact that we had the comedians, the models, the athletes, you know, the artists, all posting at the exact same time, it created this confusion amongst the consumer where they may have followed these different people, but they didn't see any common thread between them. And they're like, so why are all these people I admire from so many different walks of life and so many different industries, all doing this at exactly the same time? And that kind of led them to want to investigate

• 18:16Speaker 01

  by themselves and to almost be like, hey, I figured this out. It's actually a music festival and I want to be there. So I think we, we took that gamble and it paid off in the short term, but obviously ultimately created a world that we couldn't live up to.

• 18:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And when you, when it happened, were you just like, oh shit, what's happening here? Or were you like, we played this like a fiddle? Like, what was your reaction as it was going down?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  So there was a delay. Like, we expected, you know, with the talent that we had on board and like with the, the marketing videos we had made, tickets were going to sell, right? So we launched the orange tile, we dropped the trailer and nothing happened for the first like hour and a half or two hours. And I was really confused. I spent, you know, the last two million bucks I had to get this video out the door, right? And like literally, my balance is at nothing. I had a hundred people on the island and probably needed a million dollars to get everybody home. And we're all sitting there and no tickets are selling. And I kind of go to bed all depressed. And I get woken up earlier in the morning and it's like, Billy, we, we've sold millions and millions and millions of dollars worth of tickets. And it kind of created this like lag factor where people weren't really sure what it was.

• 19:17Speaker 01

  But as it started to figure out, it let the excitement almost like bubble over and it's created this really wild sales effect.

• 19:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. And was that a moment to pause and be like, can we deliver this? Or why, how did that end up going from this like wild moment to something that grew beyond your control?

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I think we expected to probably sell a couple hundred of expensive ticket packages. And we'd been doing, at that point, we'd probably done two dozen mini FIRE festivals on these islands where we brought anywhere from 20 to 200 people. So we thought it would just be a paid for extension of what we had been doing. You know, we always had in the back of our head, hey, we can do this with a few thousand people, but we never thought we would actually be able to move that many tickets. So when that sold, we had to realign the vision and redefine what it was. And obviously, reality caught up with us over the next four months.

• 20:08Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And then you also used that excitement to sort of become a master fundraiser. Like you mentioned, you raised, I think, 27 million or something in that range. Talk a little bit about like what made investors so interested in continuing to fund this? And clearly, they didn't do enough due diligence. Why do you think that was?

• 20:28Speaker 01

  I think the dilemma of FIRE Festival and the fundraiser around it was that by default, doing a festival on a remote island in four months presented dozens of insane challenges. And we kept solving these insane challenges. So I think where, you know, the vast majority of entrepreneurs would have failed, we kept finding all these miraculous solutions to prolong the disaster. So every time we solved a problem, whether it was, you know, our reverse osmosis system to turn salt water into drinking water, or finding two 737s and setting up a terminal Miami International Airport to bring the guests over. We kept figuring out ways to solve what seemed to be impossible.

• 21:12Speaker 01

  So those like micro wins just created such a level of excitement and such a level of delusion that we couldn't be stopped, that the fundraising became, I would say, like easier or smoother. When in reality, it was my fault for not understanding how to zoom out and to realize that even if we solved 50 of these micro, you know, problems, I still couldn't solve the bigger overall issue.

• 21:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And it's like in Silicon Valley, like this story really resonates because whenever we've seen something like this, it's a Silicon Valley, there's like almost a fake it till you make it mentality. Like a lot of startups go through something similar, I would imagine, where they like raise money based off of a concept and then whatever they either build it or they can't build it and investors sort of write it off as a loss. Did you see any parallels there between what you did with Fyre Festival and sort of like the typical Silicon Valley Silicon Valley process, even though of course, like you don't end up, if your startup fails, you don't end up with like hundreds of people on a Bahamas island.

• 22:12Speaker 01

  I think what's weird is that like most, most Silicon Valley startups, they will, they will fake it until they find product market fit, right? And like, most of these early stage companies are on that journey to find like the ever elusive product market fit. Fyre Festival had product market fit from the first hour, like our first 90 minutes, right? We launched tickets, nothing happens for the first hour, hour and a half, and then it goes crazy. So there clearly was a demand and there were customers who wanted to buy what we were building. So it was kind of this weird dilemma where like, we solved the challenge that most companies wish they could solve a day one and most of the time it ends up taking like years to solve. But we just set unrealistic expectations for what we could actually build during that time. And, and the real problem became when I committed fraud by lying to

• 22:57Speaker 01

  investors to try to make it easier to raise the capital I thought I needed.

• 23:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Why, I mean, what lies did you tell investors and why did you lie to them?

• 23:05Speaker 01

  I was like the world's worst criminal. It was like very straightforward, just lies about how much money we have, lies about our revenue and you know, just was giving false numbers, tried to raise more capital. And as I look back on it, I think like ultimately, this is probably really important for entrepreneurs listening. I think I actually scared away. A significant, you know, portion of the capital with the lies. The investors who kept investing in me were investing in me because they had known me for so long and they were probably overlooking my, you know, lies about the numbers. Whereas new investors who probably would have invested in FIRE thought this sounded too good to be true and didn't invest because the lies were too ridiculous. So ultimately, I think the lies probably actually made it harder to raise the capital

• 23:50Speaker 01

  and probably scared away support that could have actually made FIRE work. So in some weird way, the lies not only hurt people and sent me to jail, they probably actually killed FIRE Festival.

• 24:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. I mean, so let's say you would have told the truth. I mean, you probably wouldn't have gotten any more money, though, or would you?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  I think so. I think more investors would have actually invested because it was clear there was massive demand for the product. It was clear we could execute, you know, massive marketing campaigns. It was clear we can get talent together. Like, we had done so many things well that that was more than enough to raise capital. And then just the lies made it seem like it was too good to be true and too much. So I actually think we stopped, you know, funds from giving us the capital we needed by lying.

• 24:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  What you would have, what would you have done with that extra money? Because you got lots of money and still didn't work out.

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the, like, putting away the fraud, the number one goal was setting an unrealistic timeframe, right? We needed a year and we gave ourselves four months to the FIRE Festival. And with a condensed period of time, you know, costs increase, you know, labor intensifies, everything becomes like way harder to actually execute. So ultimately, we needed to push the festival back. And I don't know if an extra five or six million dollars would have saved us like in that time period, but hopefully, had we taken on more capital, more people, we would have had the wherewithal to extend the timeline.

• 25:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. The investors that had known you for a while, what's your relationship with them like today, if there is any?

• 25:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's all different. It's like, it's very, very hot and cold. Some are like, F off, and that probably won't change for a long time. And some are the total opposite where it's like, hey, we get it, you know, how can we support you behind the scenes to get you back at it? And that support doesn't mean money, but like, how can we be here for you, right? To help you kind of get back to life.

• 25:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. Okay, so let's talk about some of your troubles after the festival. So you don't really get in trouble for having all these people come out to the island and then not being able to deliver the festival? It is more the lying to the investors that... Caused you to spend time in prison, is that right?

• 25:50Speaker 01

  Correct, yep. So I was charged for lying to investors to raise the capital. We spent the money properly. The money was spent towards executing the festival and that was like a lack of lack of experience on my part, but the actual crime was lying to the investors.

• 26:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so if you would have put on a fire festival and effectively had all these people come out,

• 26:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  there would be no crime, even though you weren't able to deliver it.

• 26:13Speaker 01

  So if the festival was great and if the festival was as advertised, I still would have gone to jail because the crime occurred prior to the festival, lying to the investors. So like the biggest misconception is that Fyre Festival was a scam. The festival itself was not a scam. The scam was the lies that were told to investors to attempt to raise capital for it.

• 26:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  But the festival never really ended up happening?

• 26:34Speaker 01

  No, no, yeah, it was canceled on the first day, yeah.

• 26:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that's not illegal, though?

• 26:38Speaker 01

  I mean, we failed, we failed to deliver a concert, but that's not creating a crime if you try to do a concert and it gets canceled, so.

• 26:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  What did you, so you got convicted of this fraud and sentenced to six years in prison?

• 26:50Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 26:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  What did you think when you got sentenced?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  I think I was living in this do or die mentality where like literally I'd wake up in the morning, need to, needed $2 million, $1 million, $3 million by 2 o'clock that day to pay the bills or else the Fyre Festival would be canceled and the whole world would know that it's a failure. So I was like literally living by the day and living by the hour for so many months that I couldn't fathom six years in the future. Like at that point, like two weeks in the future sounded like a lifetime away. So when I heard that six year number, I just didn't know how to reconcile it, you know, with the lifestyle that I had been living and it just seemed like decades.

• 27:33Alex Kantrowitz?

  And there's a scene in one of the documentaries, I think, where someone who knows you said you had asked them what jail was like and you said basically like, I'm not going to jail. That happened like, why did that happen?

• 27:45Speaker 01

  I've heard about the scene. I've never seen the documentaries. So yeah, I don't recall that exact moment. Yeah.

• 27:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Were you, once you got sentenced or even before, still trying to like, use the Fyre Festival email list to try to get people to sign up for like VIP tickets that weren't going to be delivered?

• 28:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. So I was on bail for a year and I received, it all basically started the day we canceled Fyre Festival. I got a call from one of my investors saying, I need this amount of money, but this time, or else quote, you're going to be on the cover of the Walsh Journal in handcuffs. And while I know I'd committed a crime, I didn't, I couldn't really fathom I had broken the law. I knew what I did was wrong. I'd never anticipated this would mean jail. And that was like the wake up call where it's like, oh shit, this is real. And out of desperation to try to raise capital, I was trying to do everything and anything, you know, while on bail to make good by that and continued to make stupid decisions that ultimately resulted probably in a longer jail sentence. And yeah, and making the overall punishment way worse.

• 28:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's crazy. Okay. Want to talk about your time in prison? So why don't we do that right after this?

• 28:52Speaker 02

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• 29:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  And we're back here on Big Technology Podcast with Billy McFarlane. Billy, it's so great to speak with you. I appreciate you spending the time and speaking so candidly about what happened and sort of we'll get into some of the things you're going to be doing in the future. But thanks for being here. And it seems like you're like sort of genuinely remorseful and like you've you have come to terms with what happened.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, thank you. I think serving four years in jail and 10 months of that in solitary was was a wake up call. And I think ultimately, I needed a punishment and I needed a timeout. So there are some positives to take out of all this mess.

• 30:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so let's talk a little bit about your time, prison or jail, or is it you use it interchangeably?

• 30:25Speaker 01

  I still think I say it wrong. Every time I say it, someone corrects me. I really don't know.

• 30:30Alex Kantrowitz?

  So let's talk about your time in prison. Like, what was the day that you reported like? And where did you serve the time?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  So I was, I believe I spent time at five facilities total for various reasons of basically me causing problems.

• 30:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my God. What were you doing?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  Most notably, I tried to do a podcast interview over the jail payphone.

• 30:53Alex Kantrowitz?

  That I empathize with. I mean, doing podcasts at all costs.

• 30:56Speaker 01

  There you go. I'm glad you can feel behind that one. But they did not take too kindly to that. So.

• 31:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  Why did you do a podcast from prison?

• 31:04Speaker 01

  So I had an offer to do it and to get paid. And the deal was that all of my payment will be sent directly to restitution. I think I was I was in this phase, obviously wasn't going to be $26 million, right? It was.

• 31:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  How much did they want to pay you?

• 31:17Speaker 01

  It probably would have been like $50,000 if I'd actually done it. So it was something. I think it was more about, I was so desperate to prove that I wasn't incompetent. And I think like, even like, family and friends after the documentaries came out, they're like, Billy, you can't do anything. And like, they'd come and visit me and like, hey, what do you want to do in the future? And I give them an idea or give them a plan like, Billy, you're like, we don't even think you can work at an ice cream truck. And like, they were like, dead serious. And like, they just kept putting me down and belittling me. And I was so desperate to prove that I could do something with my life. And I felt like, hey, this is my chance to show like, I am capable. I can pay people back. I can work. So I think there's like, the desperation to be heard and to be useful in the world, you know, made me want to do it so badly.

• 32:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so we'll get to the podcast situation in the minute in a minute. But what was yeah, what was day one reporting to prison like for you?

• 32:10Speaker 01

  I think the big that we're in like a long line is like, remember, you know, vividly, we're in a long line and like they're asking us all these questions like, you know, you know, what drugs are you on? Like, what's this? What's that? And like the guy and I couldn't hear the people who are multiple spots ahead of me, just like I could hear the guy in front of me and he just like lists every drug I'd ever read in every textbook in my entire life. And he's like, and they're like, oh, so like, how long has it been since you've taken it? And they like, he big looks around, he's like, you know, like, you know, three hours?

• 32:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my God.

• 32:42Speaker 01

  The guy, they spent like 10 minutes like asking the guy about, you know, all those drug addictions. And then, you know, they it comes to me and it's like, what did you do? I'm like, oh, how do I describe my crime? And like, that was like the big wake up call where like, you know, what's gonna happen here? And they walked me in, I had a Spanish cellmate. He didn't speak a word of English and he kept asking me like, what did you do? What did you do? I didn't know how to describe my crime in in Spanish. So, right, I was, you know, super, super scared. And it was like, this is a different world.

• 33:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Were you like, holy shit, I'm I'm in prison on like, day one? Was it just like?

• 33:10Speaker 01

  I loved, I loved the TV show Prison Break when I was a kid. So.

• 33:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Was there like a sense of excitement there for you to be there or?

• 33:17Speaker 01

  When I walked in and saw like the clothes that like my cellmate, like washing his clothes in the toilet and then hanging them up on like, on his bed. I'm like, this is like, this is real. And, you know, I I got super scared, obviously.

• 33:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. And then, so, okay, you you get there. There's intake, they ask these questions, you have your cellmate. Did anybody in the prison recognize you?

• 33:39Speaker 01

  So, for better or worse, people in jail watch a lot of TV.

• 33:43Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. No way. Was the Fyre Festival documentaries like playing in the yard?

• 33:48Speaker 01

  Yes, they did play those. Someone someone snuck in a USB drive and played those. That was six months after I got arrested.

• 33:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you didn't watch it?

• 33:55Speaker 01

  I didn't watch it.

• 33:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, why not?

• 33:59Speaker 01

  I think I was trying to protect myself from myself. I I just knew that I would nitpick it and be like, oh, I don't know this person, or I didn't say that, or she didn't say that. And like, that would have missed the real point. Where the real point was, I committed a crime and I hurt people who I probably didn't know. But I was too caught up like at that moment, like, oh, that's not true. Or like, this person wasn't really around. I was like, losing sight of what was important.

• 34:20Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then how did you? Did you make friends?

• 34:22Speaker 01

  For sure. I probably met four or five people that I'll be close with for the rest of my life, and that was definitely the bright side of it. And I think you just get, you get naturally get close with people when you're just going through terrible circumstances, right? Like, you know, guys on like football teams, and they're going through like super hard games, super hard seasons, they become close. Like, guys who kind of go through these hard life experiences often become, I think, close friends.

• 34:46Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so what was your day to day like in prison?

• 34:49Speaker 01

  It's tough, and there isn't much to do, and I think the boredom probably is the hardest factor of all of it, especially for, you know, an entrepreneur who's so used to like having to work to solve my own problems or to create my own problems, not being able to impact my, my life on a day to day basis was really weird.

• 35:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Like, how did you feel that?

• 35:10Speaker 01

  I think it was like, it's time out, right? And it's hard, it's hard realizing that you have very little control over life. And I kept like, I would sit there and be like, okay, I caused these problems because of these mistakes, or I caused these good moments in life because of these positive actions I took, and now any action I take can only hurt me. And that was kind of this weird like mental barrier to come to understand, where like, this is literal time out for a grown man.

• 35:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so what sort of decisions are made on your behalf within the prison?

• 35:41Speaker 01

  I think everything. It's like, what time you wake up, what time you go to bed, you know, what time you can call your family, like what you can say to your family, you know, what you have to wear, how do you tuck your shirt in? It's like, there's very little, I think it's, it's designed intelligently to kill ambition. And I think that makes sense, right? Because like, if you have a really bad person, if there's a rapist or a murderer, you want to suck the ambition out of them so they don't commit those crimes in the future. And I kept saying like, my goal here is to not lose like ambition for like life, because the system is designed to just make you a robot.

• 36:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  But if it's supposed to make you a robot, I'm curious what you think about this. Why do you, why is recidivism so high? People go back in society and they go right back.

• 36:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is so hard. And, you know, I've lived this and I like to think that I probably had 10 times the opportunities of my four or five closest friends walking out of prison, and it is fucking difficult. It's very, very hard to get back to society. It's hard to have any real work opportunities. And the reality is, most people go to jail because they didn't have an opportunity, so they did something wrong. I think like 70% of the federal system are in there for, you know, various drug violations. Either selling drugs or using drugs. And they're often doing that because like, that's, that's all they know. So if you punish somebody for selling drugs because they have no exposure to other opportunities, you put them in jail for 10 years and let them out, it's not like they're

• 37:01Speaker 01

  gonna miraculously have an opportunity 10 years later after being removed if they didn't have before. So I don't have the answer, and I think that's much bigger than me, right? But I think it's like a really, really hard way to punish somebody and expect them to be able to kind of go back to something they never had before.

• 37:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so you're, you're in general population, you have a cellmate, you're eating lunch with folks in the lunchroom, I imagine.

• 37:25Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you say, hey, let me do this podcast. I understand for your reasons. So you got, how did you get busted for doing the show? I mean, I guess the judge must have listened or how did you do it? Did you do it over the phone or?

• 37:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, there are these payphones and you were allowed, I think, 20, 15 minute calls a month. But you can use them in any order, as long as you wait, I think it was 30 minutes between each call. So we had a podcast host basically book a studio for two days, and I would call in every 30 minutes for four or five hours one day and did it again the second day. And like, basically use all my monthly like minutes, as I said, during those two days. They created a YouTube trailer out of my interview, and they posted the YouTube trailer online. And an hour after that came out, you know, the guard cams like, yo, McFarlane, come with me. And just took me to solitary.

• 38:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 38:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:16Alex Kantrowitz?

  But you're not the first prisoner to do a podcast. I mean, one of the most famous, or if not the most famous show is, is the serial show where

• 38:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 38:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  The guy talks about his innocence. So what do you think was different here?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  It's tough and like this is like, I think this is probably resulted in the biggest, you know, paranoia post jail where for FIRE Festival and around that time period, I fully understand like what I did wrong, right? And it's easy to be like, okay, I'm sitting in jail because I did X and I deserve to be here. I hurt people and now I'm here. The podcast is a weird one for me because it didn't hurt anybody and it didn't break any rules. But the punishment for that was arguably harsher than it was for committing a $26 million fraud. So I think that probably left the biggest confusion for me about the system. It's like, this isn't fair, right? I committed a $26 million fraud. Yes, I deserve six years, but now I didn't break the rules and I'm doing seven months straight in a hole. And like, that got me

• 39:17Speaker 01

  really scared. And it's like, wow, like, you know, there are powers out there that could snap their fingers and literally like, put me, Billy, in a concrete box the rest of my life. And I think that probably had terrible effects on me.

• 39:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  Was it just discretionary then from the jail to be like, or the prison to be like, well, you did a podcast, we don't like that. Now go to solitary?

• 39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, they just said they were investigating and they could investigate for as long as they want.

• 39:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you went right to solitary?

• 39:41Speaker 01

  Right, immediately, yeah.

• 39:42Alex Kantrowitz?

  What is solitary like?

• 39:46Speaker 01

  I think the hardest part of solitary is you're behind this like a metal door and like the rest of the cell is concrete. And there's maybe like a half an inch underneath the door. So you can still hear, you can't see anybody else, but they're like, it's like a long, you know, concrete hallway of different cells. Hearing people go crazy and losing their minds is kind of wild. So they're like, everybody has their breaking point, right? And like, hearing these grown men who maybe look intimidating or who, you know, were certainly tough people and talked a big game, all of a sudden they're down there for one month, two months, three months, six months, whatever it was, and just kind of seeing them lose their mind and banging their cells and screaming and crying. Like, that was really eerie.

• 40:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Did you lose your mind?

• 40:26Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I guess I'll let the audience judge that. I think there's, everybody kind of hits their point. And I don't think I hit mine. And like, I don't know when that point is, right? Would it be nine months? Would it be two years? Like, who really knows? That's kind of the scary thing where like, you're sitting in there and it's like, okay, I haven't gotten there yet. But like, you know, now this guy did, and I respect this guy. Like, am I next? That kind of freaked you out.

• 40:47Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you knew the other people in the cells?

• 40:50Speaker 01

  Not all of them, but some of them. Like, you know, you'd see them around the prison before they went to solitary, right? So you have some kind of relationship.

• 40:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what did you do all day long there?

• 40:59Speaker 01

  Meditate and try to write. And I think the funny thing was, everybody was always trying to sneak drugs into solitary. And my thing was, I always wanted like a bic pen. So I could actually like, write, write on paper. So I was trying to get, you know, pen smuggled in, and everybody else smuggling in drugs, kind of funny.

• 41:13Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really? Were you, could you read inside?

• 41:16Speaker 01

  You could, but they limited it to two books a week. And it sounds like a lot when you have nothing else to do, it really is nothing.

• 41:22Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 41:22Speaker 01

  So yeah, it wasn't much. Like, when, like, literally, that's what you do for 18 hours a day, you're gonna go through it pretty quickly.

• 41:27Alex Kantrowitz?

  So you're just sitting there?

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Reading, meditating, doing pushups, you know, listening to people scream, cry, sing, yell. It is always some kind of entertainment.

• 41:39Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you're not allowed to talk to the other people through there, or can you?

• 41:42Speaker 01

  Oh, you are, but you have to scream, because like, you're behind this metal door. So you have to kind of go up to the hole underneath your door and yell and scream.

• 41:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  And what did it feel like when you were eventually let out? Or why were you eventually let out of there?

• 41:53Speaker 01

  I think after enough period of time, they, the investigation ended, you know, I was found not guilty of, I'm not really sure what I was accused of doing, but I was found not guilty of breaking a rule. And they ship, had to ship me to a different prison. So they sent me on Con Air, to a holding center. And then after the holding center, they put me on a bus from Oklahoma City to Michigan, shackled for 17 hours on a bus.

• 42:19Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my God.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  That's kind of insane.

• 42:21Alex Kantrowitz?

  That's crazy. These were federal systems.

• 42:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, so couldn't use the bathroom, couldn't do anything for 17 hours, seven, literally shackled on the bus.

• 42:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. I mean, they're talking about what's happening to Sam Bankman-Fried also, and he's been transferred like this.

• 42:33Speaker 01

  Oh, I didn't see that. Okay.

• 42:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  In the same way.

• 42:35Speaker 01

  Oh, really? Yeah. It's all the same way for everybody. So the bus ride was particularly long.

• 42:40Alex Kantrowitz?

  They say it's very long. What happens on these bus rides?

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Not people screaming, like they play music. So I think that was the first time I heard music in seven months.

• 42:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, my God.

• 42:51Speaker 01

  So like the first, like first two hours of the bus ride is kind of sensory overload. And they're they're blasting, they're blasting music. And it's like, literally, I hadn't heard any, any radio, any music, any TV in seven months. So I was like, I was a little bit like, that was a little bit of a shock.

• 43:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  What level of security were these prisons that you were at?

• 43:06Speaker 01

  Um, I did it all. I was in Brooklyn detention center, which is like all levels.

• 43:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. That's on Atlantic Ave?

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yep. So technically, like technically, get max, right? But

• 43:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  That that place is supposed to be pretty bad. What was that like?

• 43:17Speaker 01

  That place is rough. That was like, that was the only place where it's like, you know, you legitimately could get stabbed for no reason.

• 43:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  So that was certainly the roughest place. And then I went to a minimum and then kind of went up the ranks from there, based on my various behavior.

• 43:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  So what else, what else did you get into trouble for doing in the other places?

• 43:35Speaker 01

  At the first place I was post Brooklyn, like my first, you know, real facility was minimum security, and I had a USB device. And that's against the rules. So

• 43:44Alex Kantrowitz?

  Had and they busted you?

• 43:46Speaker 01

  I got in trouble for that. Went to solitary for three months for that. And then

• 43:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  You did a total of 10 months of solitary?

• 43:52Speaker 01

  But ironically, the time I actually broke the rules, I only did three months. And I didn't break the rules, I did sevens. It doesn't make sense, right? It just doesn't, it's a little confusing.

• 44:00Alex Kantrowitz?

  When you were ever, when you were in there, did you ever think, man, like I was on a beach in the Bahamas, partying with supermodels like a year and a half ago? And now I'm in solitary confinement? How did this happen?

• 44:10Speaker 01

  It's like, all the guards would always be like, oh, you know, penthouse to the outhouse, and like, trying to make fun of me like that. But it's, I think what people don't understand, like, I never missed, I didn't miss any, like, nice things, right? I didn't miss a nice apartment. I didn't miss a nice vacation. I miss people. And I miss like connection. Like, when you have nothing, you don't think about, oh, I want my, like, beautiful home. It's like, no, I want a friend to talk to. I need like, you know, I want a woman to touch. I want like, family to talk to. Like, you just want like the most basic things. So I think like the, just like, a cool beach just seems so far from reality at that point, that like, my desires were way more, you know, simplistic.

• 44:45Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, it really tells you a little bit about like what matters in life.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, literally, literally. It's like I would have traded anything for like, you know, a night with friends like in that cell, you know, before I thought about like going to a great apartment or a great house or a beautiful restaurant.

• 44:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then you got let out two years early.

• 45:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, so everybody gets in the federal system, everybody gets 15% off for what they call a good time. So, you know, I lost a month of that for the USB device. I did not lose any of that for the podcast. And then there was a law passed by Trump called the First Step Act, which gave nonviolent offenders a year off. And that came as a surprise. We had been hearing about it for years, thought it was bullshit. And then, you know, I was woken up one morning at 5:00 AM saying, hey, you know, McFarland, your date changed. And the rest is history.

• 45:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then you got to walk out?

• 45:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 45:36Alex Kantrowitz?

  What did you do when you walked out for the first time?

• 45:38Speaker 01

  I had to go to the halfway house in Brooklyn. So I was basically had a four month, four months left in my sentence to be served at a halfway house, which essentially is like a open prison where you can, you know, leave during the day and come back and sleep at night. So I just drove in a car from Detroit, Michigan to Brooklyn. And I'm like, how am I turning myself back into jail after all this?

• 45:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 45:58Speaker 01

  So it's kind of a weird experience. But yeah, that was, it was way better, you know, than in real prison, for sure.

• 46:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Where's the Brooklyn halfway house?

• 46:05Speaker 01

  It was on Gold Street.

• 46:07Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 46:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was fine, unremarkable.

• 46:11Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so how did you feel coming out, just being done with it?

• 46:16Speaker 01

  It felt so, it still didn't feel real. And I think like when, when I was woken up and told my date had changed, I had maybe a month and a half left before I would go to the halfway house.

• 46:26Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  And those 45 days became the hardest 45 days of the entire sentence. Where I was convinced that one morning, just like they called me to give me good news one day, they're going to call and tell me, hey, just, just, we're joking, you know, you have 20 more years, you're never leaving. And it's like that anxiety, I never really had anxiety in my life until that last 45 days where you just like knew something bad was going to happen and it wasn't going to be real. So that was super stressful.

• 46:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. Did you, you never got into any fights in the prison or anything like that?

• 46:54Speaker 01

  I had, had a couple of issues early on that were, you know, solved, but I never, never got hurt, no.

• 46:59Alex Kantrowitz?

  What happened there?

• 47:00Speaker 01

  I had a cellmate in Brooklyn who, you know, told me that someone was trying to extort me for $150. And he offered to pay them on my behalf or to fight them with me. And I said, I wasn't going to pay. And he anticipated that response. And when I wasn't paying attention, he basically went and fought the guys for me. He got stabbed and I came back to my cell and he was bleeding everywhere. And he had literally like, you know,

• 47:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh my god.

• 47:24Speaker 01

  taken one for me. So.

• 47:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  What made this guy want to fight on your behalf?

• 47:28Speaker 01

  He was a really nice guy. He was also in for a financial crime. He had a 14 year sentence. He was six years in on a sentence. And he was back in Brooklyn to appeal his crime. And he just lost his appeal. So he's waiting to get sent back to his permanent facility. And this is before my sentencing. And he's like, if you get in any trouble before your sentencing, you know, the judges look really down upon that. If you can't keep yourself out of trouble in here, you'll get more time. And I already have mine. So he went and did it.

• 47:54Alex Kantrowitz?

  He was ready to fight.

• 47:54Speaker 01

  He was ready to go. He was ready to go.

• 47:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah.

• 47:57Speaker 01

  It's probably a mix of being super mad that he lost his appeal and like also just being a really, really good guy.

• 48:02Alex Kantrowitz?

  And there was another one, you said?

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Nothing, nothing too serious. Like, nothing, nothing bad. It was, you know, like, when there's 2,000 men locked in a recreation center together. Yeah, exactly. It's pretty, you know, people get upset.

• 48:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, so you get out and then it's like, all right, you gotta try to build your life back up again. But I imagine you can't get a job. Like, I imagine most people who speak with you are also just like, is Billy telling the truth to me? Like, is he trying to con me now? Like, so what did you do?

• 48:34Speaker 01

  It's, I think I kind of had this idea that I'd walk out and all the people who had seen me, I want to say like, work or operate or live for the past 12 years would all be there. Like, oh, you served your time. Like, you're back. Like, you know, and kind of have open arms. And the reality was, it just like, it wasn't like that. And it took probably six to 12 months to really get back a group of people who could, who could really trust me. Yeah. So it's hard. And yeah, so it's been, it's been a tough, tough ride.

• 49:04Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. And then I said, well, You couldn't possibly try to create another festival? And then I looked at your Twitter, it looks like you're trying to do Fyre Festival 2?

• 49:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 49:15Alex Kantrowitz?

  Billy, for real? Why?

• 49:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Fire's just been the most talked about music festival in the world since 2016. Obviously, the majority of that is bad, but as an entrepreneur, I think this is an incredible challenge. And if someone executes Fire successfully, the brand value is there. I think the desire for the experience is as strong as ever. So ultimately, I have partnered with professional festival people. So I'm not the one building Fyre Festival 2. Those are third-party companies. And I think when they do Fire correctly, there's a real opportunity for that new Fire brand to pay back a lot of what is owed from Fyre Festival 1.

• 49:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Wait, so are some of the same investors that invested in Fyre Festival 1 investing in Fyre Festival 2?

• 50:00Speaker 01

  No, it's a new group. So there's two professional festival companies who are actually doing it. And they're in charge of everything, whether it's budgets, money, 10 stages, like they do it all. But I think incredible opportunity to fulfill the dream of Fire, but also to fulfill the new dream, which is paying back people who are legitimately owed.

• 50:17Alex Kantrowitz?

  Right. So wait, are you just licensing the name? Or what's your role in it?

• 50:21Speaker 01

  I'm helping with the marketing. So it's not a straight licensing deal, but they're in charge.

• 50:25Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay, I see.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:29Alex Kantrowitz?

  And so your priority for the payment will be to the investors first and then the people in the Bahamas second? Or, because I was looking at the Bahamas, they say that you're a fugitive or something like that?

• 50:40Speaker 01

  I saw that. That came out of nowhere, almost two years ago now, maybe a year and a half ago. So that was kind of, that was kind of hard. Yeah, some of my best friends in the world live in the Bahamas. When I was released, I had two people from the Bahamas who had never been to America. They flew up that day to come and see me.

• 50:55Alex Kantrowitz?

  Really?

• 50:56Speaker 01

  That's really cool.

• 50:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  It's interesting. So I mean, you didn't watch the documentaries, but I did. And I mean, the people in the Bahamas, some of them are like speaking, you know, they had already been through this whole experience and they couldn't speak highly enough of you. Like, in fact, there's one scene where somebody calls you. You call somebody while they're on camera and they're like, yeah, Billy, I'm saying the good word. Or something like that. Yeah, I'm saying nice things.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:23Alex Kantrowitz?

  But then there's also the other side of like all the workers that were at the festival and didn't get paid. And there's one restaurant owner who will, you know, sort of like when you think about the event, her image is like really... Sort of prominent who just, you know, had to dig into her savings to pay for the workers and all the supplies and stuff that she had to to lay out for the festival and never got reimbursed.

• 51:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's tough. And so, once again, the Bahamian vendors and like, just to give numbers here, I think we probably spent four million on, you know, Bahamian vendors over four months. And there's approximately 250,000 still owed to them. Unfortunately, that's not covered under restitution. However, it's something that I do want to pay back. We've actually submitted a request to the Bahamian government to pay that back. So waiting for approval on that. But, you know, my goal is for it to be done this year.

• 52:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, wow. And so are you, you're not going to host the second Fyre Festival in the Bahamas? It doesn't seem like you're allowed there.

• 52:26Speaker 01

  I don't think so. I think it would be a nice, a nice, like, you know, recap of the story, but maybe they'll have us for Fire 3.

• 52:32Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So, and how do you anticipate? I mean, you know, it's so interesting hearing you talk about the brand. Like, I don't know. I guess like, there would be, there's an element that's like, let me see what this is all about. Like, I want to experience it. But also like, an element of just like, I don't know if I would pay a lot of money for the chance that this would happen again.

• 52:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's gonna be interesting. I think like, Fire was always pitched, like, we create moments that you never forget, right? And that was like our tagline. And we created a moment that you never forgot. It was obviously the wrong moment. So I think my goal this time is just getting the proper help to create that moment in the right way. We'd also been talking, and I truly believe that the people who attend the next iteration of Fire are going to be far more interesting than people who attend, you know, Fire 3 or Fire 4, once everything is proven out. I think we're attracting a certain kind of adventurer. A maniac adventurer, someone open to anything, right, for Fire 2? So, yeah, I'm really interested in meeting the people who are actually buying tickets and coming to Fire 2. I think they're going to be. Interesting group of people.

• 53:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  What percentage of your Fire One attendees do you think would have been just totally fine? Like, living in those emergency tents and like going through with the weekend?

• 53:46Speaker 01

  Good question. I, like, once again, this doesn't take away from the fraud that was committed. I think there were two or three bad, like, game time decisions that I made the day of the festival that ultimately made it to be canceled.

• 53:58Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah, what were those decisions?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  So, there, there was a storm the night before the festival. And it, you know, I would say deteriorator our preparations by a significant amount. So when planes started arriving at 7:00 AM the next morning, instead of having people come to their tents and get like situated right away, we directed them all to a beach on the other side of the island. And we sent over, you know, boats, jet skis, booze, and allowed them to essentially have a party all day long and had them come back to the tents at sunset that night. So by the time everybody arrived, instead of it being one plane load at a time, it was probably a thousand people all at once.

• 54:34Alex Kantrowitz?

  They were drunk.

• 54:35Speaker 01

  A lot of them drunk. Our lights weren't working, so it just became completely, you know, unmanageable. And yes, the tents were nowhere near as good as they needed to be, but it probably would have survived how we had people come, you know, sober and manageable group sizes, starting first thing in the morning.

• 54:50Alex Kantrowitz?

  Yeah. So are you gonna, are you gonna market Fire Two the same way you marketed Fire One with these? Are you gonna get influencers again?

• 54:57Speaker 01

  No, we've, we've a really funny, like, 180 take on how to market it. So.

• 55:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay.

• 55:01Speaker 01

  I'm excited to roll it out. Yeah, we can't, can't release it yet, but it's not gonna be, it's not gonna be glossy like supermodels. We're gonna make, make fun of myself a little bit.

• 55:10Alex Kantrowitz?

  And that's in 2025?

• 55:11Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 55:12Alex Kantrowitz?

  And you're also boxing?

• 55:15Speaker 01

  I did one, uh, one, one, like, kickboxing fight. I fought on May 30th, so a couple of months ago. Uh, I think top 10 life experience for sure.

• 55:24Alex Kantrowitz?

  Oh, talk about it. You knocked some guy out.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  I fought a, I fought for a promotion called Karate Combat. Uh, they're doing really well. They're like a startup fighting league. I think they're like a crypto backed or crypto focused fighting league. And I fought a crypto influencer on May 30th. But that was really, really cool. I mean, made a couple of dollars back toward restitution. It wasn't crazy, right? But I think it was more about taking on that life challenge and I am very, very happy I did it.

• 55:51Alex Kantrowitz?

  How much do you have left to pay? Is it still 27 million?

• 55:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I have not paid that much yet. I pay every month. So I paid like maybe like 60 grand or something like that.

• 56:01Alex Kantrowitz?

  Where are you making money from today?

• 56:03Speaker 01

  So do a lot of marketing work. So I consult for a number of venture-backed startups, you know, helping them create these viral moments for their brand.

• 56:09Alex Kantrowitz?

  And then that's one thing we know you're good at.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  Yeah. So like that's, that's the bread and butter. And that kind of keeps the lights on and pays the bills. And then I have a couple of other fire related projects, obviously, you know, doing a deal with festival companies for Fire 2. Did a licensing deal for a third party to produce a fire musical, which, which I think is interesting.

• 56:28Alex Kantrowitz?

  What? There's a musical? Where's that gonna be?

• 56:32Speaker 01

  Hopefully Broadway, but it just takes a few years. So there, I think they're making their announcement in September, October. So.

• 56:38Alex Kantrowitz?

  Are you gonna do more political work?

• 56:41Speaker 01

  I don't know. So I've really focused on, on doing projects in the music space right now and we'll kind of see where that goes and open to, to everything and anything.

• 56:49Alex Kantrowitz?

  Hmm. Okay. Last question for you. What's your relationship like with Ja Rule?

• 56:55Speaker 01

  There is none.

• 56:56Alex Kantrowitz?

  What happened there?

• 56:57Speaker 01

  There is none. Yeah, I think he had, he had a lot of really admirable traits. I think he was a, he was, he was a very charismatic guy. I think he was a great salesperson and you know, we were certainly close friends for a number of years, but you know, shit happens and I think we're on different paths now.

• 57:14Alex Kantrowitz?

  Okay. Billy McFarlane, thanks so much for joining. Great speaking with you.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.

• 57:18Alex Kantrowitz?

  All right, everybody. Thanks so much for listening. We'll be back on Friday breaking down the week's news. Until next time, we'll see you then on Big Technology Podcast.

• 57:57Speaker 04

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