EP 2: Wordle, Wordcels & Shape Rotators, Miami Tech, and FB Earnings

(02:28) Last week updates (05:59) Wordle (14:27) Wordcels vs Shape Rotators (20:10) Miami Tech (30:58) Bolt/Ryan Breslow Update (36:00) Facebook earnings Hosted by Logan Bartlett, Zak Kukoff, and Nikita Bier Follow on Social: twitter.com/CartoonAvatars tiktok.com/@CartoonAvatars Instagram.com/CartoonAvatars Mixed and edited by Justin Hrabovsky Produced by Meg Lewis and Andrew Nadeau Executive Producer Josh Machiz Music by Griff Clawson Show Notes: NYT Acquires Wordle: https://www.nytco.com/press/wordle-new-york-times-games/ Roon’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/tszzl Rahul’s Twitter: https://mobile.twitter.com/BroductManager Roon’s breakdown of wordcels vs shape rotators: https://roonscape.substack.com/p/a-song-of-shapes-and-words Austin Reif/Morning Brew Bolt take: https://twitter.com/austin_rief/status/1488228915005042688 Executive Producer: Rashad Assir Producer: Leah Clapper Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA 🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1 Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow 🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow About the Show Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

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

• 0:18Logan Bartlett?

  Welcome to the second episode of Three Cartoon Avatars. I'm your host, Logan Bartlett, and I'm joined today by my esteemed co-hosts Nikita Bier and Zach Kukoff. Guys, we did it. We made it through the first episode.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  We did it. We did it, Joe.

• 0:34Logan Bartlett?

  Thanks to everyone for making it through with us. Hopefully, that was the worst episode we're ever going to do, and we'll only get better from here. I just want to say, we really appreciate all the feedback. Please do keep it coming. And I guess, based on the response that we got largely, it feels like the world might actually need another podcast of VC bros talking to each other. So, thanks, everyone that subscribed, and listened, and rated, and all that good stuff. Zach, Nikita, any comments from the first episode?

• 1:06Speaker 02

  I think a lot of people were upset that we took the last podcast spot that was available.

• 1:14Logan Bartlett?

  That was, yes, podcasts are infinitely scalable, so I would encourage anyone to potentially sign up if they want to start their own.

• 1:22Speaker 03

  No, no, no, no. This is a finite resource. There's only one podcast allowed a year, and it's ours, so sorry to anyone else.

• 1:29Logan Bartlett?

  Yes, well, no, I appreciate it. Nikita, how did it feel to come out as a Jewish white man and not an Indian woman for your Twitter followers?

• 1:38Speaker 02

  It wouldn't be the first time. In college, I actually got booked in a women's dorm because of my name. It was kind of an awkward first day.

• 1:48Logan Bartlett?

  Was that freshman year coming in? How did that happen?

• 1:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, freshman year at Berkeley. I guess they thought, Nikita, that must be an Indian woman.

• 2:00Logan Bartlett?

  How did that get unwound? Was that your dorm for all the freshman year, or did they realize the error of their ways?

• 2:06Speaker 02

  I just had to go talk to the person managing it, but it was an awkward first day.

• 2:15Logan Bartlett?

  That's good stuff. Well, Zach, what about you? Any funny things from last week's episode?

• 2:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, I had a lot of follow up on our chat about Calendly last week. I don't know if you guys heard anything from folks on Calendly, but weirdly, I had a lot of people come inbound. One of my buddies sent me what was like a saga of him trying to get something scheduled. So he was at another venture fund and he was chasing after a deal. And the context here is it's sort of a classic, super hot deal. Call it like 36 hours between first meeting the company and having to put in a term sheet. Right? Something that certainly Logan and I knew nothing about. He comes in, he meets the company once, great first meeting. He says, okay, I want you to meet a couple of my partners, my more senior partners, and come in and get to know more of our team.

• 3:04Speaker 03

  So the founder sends him a Calendly, fine, to like the most senior partners in the firm, which like, fine, whatever, I respect that power move. The Calendly has one time slot available and it's 15 minutes long, which I think is really incredible. Like, he's like, I want to get the whole partnership around to meet you. And he sends him one 15 minute time slot and that's it. Shockingly, they did not win the deal.

• 3:27Logan Bartlett?

  Was that intentional, you think? Or was that actually just like the default setting?

• 3:32Speaker 02

  That sounds like a flex to me.

• 3:33Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's a big flex.

• 3:35Logan Bartlett?

  Was this Nikita, actually?

• 3:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, Nikita's like, I was racing for my new company last week and weirdly, I also sent somebody one 15 minute Calendly slot.

• 3:45Speaker 02

  I mean, when we were ranked number one in the App Store and we were getting denial of service attack by like every VC in town,

• 3:55Speaker 02

  you know, there were VCs that were just like, we'll drive the whole partnership to your office and pitch in your office. And I just said, look, if you can wire money in 72 hours, then you're in.

• 4:10Speaker 02

  So, I mean... I raised the entire round, I think, over text message when, when, when, during that period of time.

• 4:17Logan Bartlett?

  That's wild. Yeah.

• 4:18Speaker 03

  That's impressive.

• 4:19Logan Bartlett?

  Well, I guess my biggest update was Big P Marka finally unblocked me. I don't know if it was related to our episode, or if it was, I'd heard he had been doing like a, a little bit of a purge, coming back for the people that he had blocked in the past. So I don't know causation correlation here, but yeah, podcast mission accomplished now. So all good on that front.

• 4:40Speaker 03

  I think we can shut it down. That's it. We're done.

• 4:42Logan Bartlett?

  So I guess one other piece of feedback, Zach, something we probably need to talk about is what, what is that noise you make when, when laughing at times on the podcast? I had, I had more than one person ask me who was, who was squealing at times with laughter.

• 5:00Speaker 03

  I had a former manager once called it my dolphin chirp, although I don't think that was, that was meant to be a compliment at all. It is, it is my go-to laugh, unfortunately. And it's, you know, it's a burden. It's my cross to bear that I can't laugh normally. But I appreciate that everyone now has come along for the ride.

• 5:17Logan Bartlett?

  We, we all have our things and yeah, I know. I mean, I feel like for the people that are, that are listening, hopefully they're committed to bearing with us in the, the occasional, the occasional dolphin noise. I, you know, I'm sorry.

• 5:29Speaker 03

  If you can't handle me at my dolphin, you don't deserve me at my thought leadership.

• 5:33Logan Bartlett?

  It's hard. Nikita's coming out as a, as a Jewish man. You're coming out as bald and a dolphin noise maker.

• 5:41Speaker 03

  I don't think I was ever hiding that I was a Jewish man, to be clear. I don't think I was hiding that I was bald either. I think that was public knowledge, just not Twitter public knowledge, perhaps.

• 5:49Logan Bartlett?

  I didn't even realize there were distinctions between those two, but yeah, Twitter actually is my entire world. So I guess that was my framing here. So news this week broke that Wordle, a game that's not playing has increasingly become a defining characteristic of my personality. Is being acquired by the New York Times. So just a little bit of background, if you've been living in a cave over the last few, few weeks. The game was released in October 2021. It's rocketed up usage in the last few weeks and now they have several million daily players. The acquisition price is rumored to be in the low seven figures, which is obviously a great payday for one guy. I guess first and foremost, guys, do you play Wordle?

• 6:35Speaker 02

  I do.

• 6:35Speaker 03

  Yeah. And Nikita, what's your typical score on Wordle?

• 6:40Speaker 02

  I got the last one in three guesses. I was pretty proud of it.

• 6:43Speaker 03

  Wow, that's pretty good.

• 6:45Speaker 02

  Sent it to everyone I knew.

• 6:47Speaker 03

  It feels like you've accomplished it, but it's so much more luck. Like, you could never get a crossword all in one try. But if I got Wordle in one try, even though it's totally luck, I'd probably just tell everybody in my contact list. I'd take the day off. I'd want a fucking ticker tape parade. I'd want a lot of, like, a huge achievement.

• 7:05Logan Bartlett?

  Hey, general catalyst, like, email all, "I got Wordle in two guesses," or whatever.

• 7:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm texting Hamad directly, like, "Hey, heads up. I just got Wordle one guess, so I'm not gonna come in today."

• 7:17Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I know we have that presentation tomorrow. The company's coming in, but I...

• 7:22Speaker 03

  But that's not gonna work for me. Yeah, I'm taking a lap today. I give up.

• 7:26Logan Bartlett?

  I'm sure he'd be probably an understanding guy about that type of stuff.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. We're all a famously relaxed group here.

• 7:34Logan Bartlett?

  Nikita, maybe take, I mean, you've gone through this moment of lightning in a bottle, kind of app taking off. Maybe take us through, like, what's actually interesting about Wordle that's made people identify with sharing this product over and over again? And then also, like, just what's going through this guy's mind?

• 7:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I think Wordle is a classic viral product story. It's products that build distribution into the product flow that really take off. And when you play it, you want to share it. Like, that's part of the game. Every time you finish, you want to give it another shot, because you either failed miserably, or you did well, and now you think you're some kind of genius. Those mechanics are similar to Fortnite, where round after round, you're getting roped back in. But they were pretty clever by staggering it out each game, day by day, so that you are seeing it constantly on a routine basis. And I've always told founders, like, the only way you can get habit formation

• 8:40Speaker 02

  is recurring exposure on third-party networks. And you're seeing it on Twitter and on Facebook News Feed daily. And it's really hard to forget about it. And they don't need push notifications, because, you know, it's there.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  And Nikita, don't you feel like it shows there's a pretty big market for these kind of games where you have, maybe you're not smart, but you have the appearance of feeling smart, right? Like, you don't actually have to be all that smart to get Wordle to work, but you do have to be pretty smart to do like a crossword puzzle, or to do Scrabble, or even like Bananagrams in some ways.

• 9:13Logan Bartlett?

  The appearance of feeling smart is basically like, that's the way I define myself in general. So it seems like a game that I actually should, should get into.

• 9:20Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's actually why I log on to Twitter every day is to feel smart.

• 9:24Logan Bartlett?

  That's right.

• 9:24Speaker 02

  I think that's like a textbook reason people share on any social product, like either to be funny or to be smart. And Wordle, what they do is they make this like little one-minute task that can make you look smart. And I think that's, they've perfectly packaged it, similar to Twitter. You know, you write 140 characters, and then suddenly everyone thinks you're, you're, you know, a stand-up comedian, or, you know, the next Einstein. But they've done it in a way where anyone can do it in a very constrained manner, where you don't actually have to be that smart to, to get a high score.

• 9:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, I definitely don't feel smart, and yet my score would reflect that I'm a serious word sell.

• 10:06Logan Bartlett?

  Yes, yes. We'll get to that in a second, Zach. Nikita, if you're, if you're the Wordle guy, what's going through your mind right now? Why tap out? Why the decision to sell to the New York Times?

• 10:16Speaker 02

  I think this guy's probably experiencing like extreme like emotional trauma and stress right now. Like, he's probably sleeping like two hours a day. A one-man shop, running something of that scale. There's probably a crisis like every few hours. And so I think he, he wanted to tap out. I know I did. When we were adding 380,000 users a day, it was, you know, there was always something that I needed to deal with in the middle of the night. So, yeah, so I think he probably wanted out. But at the same time, you know, the, we did hear the price was in, you know, the, in the seven-figure range. That seemed low, but it, he probably signed that term sheet at the beginning of January. Because you announce

• 11:00Speaker 02

  an acquisition when the definitive merger agreement is signed. Then that's, that was just recently at the end of January. So I think that the bulk of the growth probably occurred during that closing process.

• 11:14Speaker 02

  And it didn't really, it didn't really price it into the price he was getting. But I'm sure he's certainly happy. Like it's game, like games are hits driven that you never know how long they're going to last. So I think for him, you know, one man thing with no investors. I mean, you could probably buy a house wherever he wants to live now.

• 11:36Speaker 03

  Yeah. To your point, do you think there's sort of a mirage baked into this sometimes, Nikita? Like to the point you just made, they bought, they, they signed this agreement, right? Before a lot of the growth, you sign it, you get the endorphin hit of like a ton of the growth coming on. And then three months later, four months later, maybe not in this case, because the times is a good mechanism for this, but three, four months later, a lot of the growth disappears, right? So you get sort of almost this head fake early.

• 11:59Logan Bartlett?

  Isn't that a case with a lot of these apps? Like you could have said the same thing with Instagram, right? And then they threw it within Facebook. Everyone made fun of it at that, at that, when they paid a billion dollars, right? And now it's whatever, it's worth 100 billion within the company. So sometimes you, you catch it on the right side. I, you know, Clubhouse certainly had its, its viral moment. And who knows? I mean, they seem like great people. I'm sure that are working hard to figure out what the next act is, is going to be for them. But like, you know, they did a round at whatever, $4 billion. It was rumored Twitter was going to buy them and they decided to go down the, the other path. And so, I don't know. I think sometimes you get this stuff right and sometimes you get the stuff wrong.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  And by the way, I do feel compelled to defend Clubhouse. They have a lot of international growth right now. So we'll see. I feel like I'm the contrarian here, but we'll see. There might be an act too.

• 12:47Logan Bartlett?

  Zach, last week you were giving me a hard time for simpin' for Andreessen and here you are on the podcast simpin' for Andreessen.

• 12:54Speaker 02

  I think with the case with Wordle is that it's a game. So they're definitely going to, they're spiking right now in terms of engagement, adoption, obsession, the mania is there. But it's definitely going to flatten out, I think at a certain point. And given that the New York, it's the New York Times is the buyer, I think they're going to treat it like the jumble or the crossword puzzle where you're going to eventually have this durable base of people who do it like every day as their routine. I would just be. Skeptical if people continue to share it in feeds after the next month.

• 13:26Logan Bartlett?

  I sure fucking hope not. Like, I cannot, I don't know if you can mute blocks or characters or whatever, I don't know how to do it, but I certainly, I certainly would. No, I'm waiting, I'm waiting for lib propaganda to be, start, start going through and people getting really, really anti-woke on, on the new words that are coming out.

• 13:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. And the last Wordle, the word was Jews. It was really, I was kind of offended, you know, as a Jew, it was.

• 13:51Speaker 03

  I actually think Jews are probably the best Wordle players. And just FYI for listeners, Nikita and I both are proud members of the tribe on this one. But I do feel like Jews probably overperform on Wordle.

• 14:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:01Speaker 03

  Logan doesn't get to laugh at any of these Jew jokes, by the way. Logan laughs, we know.

• 14:05Logan Bartlett?

  I laughed really hard and then caught myself right there. I, yeah.

• 14:09Speaker 02

  We already sent this clip to the American defamation league.

• 14:13Logan Bartlett?

  I was gonna say.

• 14:14Speaker 03

  That's right, ADL's on your ass.

• 14:15Logan Bartlett?

  We'll figure out how to edit that, that, my laugh out, right? If anyone watches this on video, it'll just be my mouth open with no audio coming out. Well, okay, so Zach, you, you referenced this a, a second ago, but it's a decent segue, I guess, to the topic of shape rotators versus word cells. I was honestly hesitant to, to cover this as a, as a topic because I don't want our, our podcast to basically become us recapping whatever the hell Mark Andreessen's tweeting about in a given week. But it feels like it's become sort of ubiquitous in the, in Twitter over the last seven days or so. So for people that have seen this, and I've actually gotten questions, hey, are you gonna cover what the hell's going on with this at some point? Just because I think a lot

• 15:00Logan Bartlett?

  of people are confused. Basically, what, what has happened, I think, is in mid, late December, Rune on Twitter, we can put a link to his Twitter in the show notes, came up with this, these two terms, shape rotators and word cells. And basically roughly maps to engineering, math science on the shape rotator side, and liberal arts types on the word cell side. And so it's, it's basically gone viral. Marc Andreessen, as he's wont to do, has turned this into a bunch of memes. Rune went through and explained a lot of this in a post that we can also link in the show notes.

• 15:40Logan Bartlett?

  But I don't know your guys' reaction to, one, why has this taken off in the way that it has? Why has it gotten the curiosity of billionaires tweeting about this? Would love to get your guys' perspective.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  I think it's fucking hilarious. It really captures the animosity that I think technical people in tech feel towards non-technical people as like non-contributors.

• 16:04Speaker 02

  And it's also funny, it came from like, I think, one of the most interesting clusters of Twitter, which is the pseudonymous group of accounts. Because they actually tweet really funny shit. That's my favorite group.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  And it seems like they've become the most followed accounts by all the billionaires. And, I mean, what we're talking about is, these are likely your classic neckbeards in tech, like infrastructure engineers, machine learning experts. And it's just funny to see them co-opt the language of a bunch of anime avatars, and them to become like minor celebrities overnight.

• 16:40Speaker 03

  Hey, Rahul and Rune, if you're listening, I don't think you're a neckbeard, okay? Nikita might think you're a neckbeard, but I'm a big fan, genuinely, of the two of you.

• 16:47Speaker 02

  There is nothing wrong with being a neckbeard.

• 16:50Speaker 03

  That's what he's saying now, that you're not in the chat with us, Rahul and Rune. Know who your real friend on the podcast is, okay? It's not Nikita.

• 16:58Logan Bartlett?

  Zach and I will ride or die, especially if you guys are starting companies. You can send through us an email.

• 17:03Speaker 03

  If you want to start, Zach, he/him a company, feel free to send it my way.

• 17:07Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, exactly. Honestly, we won't even judge the hair on your neck.

• 17:15Logan Bartlett?

  I do think this is kind of a last bastion of Twitter coming together, of purity of not giving a fuck. It's basically the anonymous accounts that are making all these terms up or whatever, and then the billionaires who are kind of at the un-cancelable point. And the two of them coming together and basically ganging up on these terms. It's actually a fascinating sort of confluence. Of groups coming together.

• 17:42Speaker 03

  It's sort of the perfect us versus them narrative, right? To Nikita's point, like it's not just contributor versus non-contributors. It's also like the, as Andreessen put it, like it's the whole East Coast media elite who are, you know, perceived to be gatekeepers and better with language. Versus a whole world of people who build things. By the way, we should point out, shape rotators in this case is very literal. Have you guys done the shape rotation test?

• 18:04Speaker 02

  Yes, I have.

• 18:06Speaker 03

  Okay, so here's the question. Did you guys pass the shape rotation test? Are you a shape rotator or are you a word cell?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  I passed, but I still think I'm a word cell.

• 18:14Logan Bartlett?

  That's what Nikita, I actually disagree with that. I think you are a shape rotator. I also.

• 18:18Speaker 03

  Big shape rotator energy.

• 18:19Logan Bartlett?

  I also passed, but I, I, there is no question that I am a word cell. I went to, when I got a liberal arts degree, had, had this term existed, like it wouldn't have said liberal arts on it. It would have said word cell. Now I, I, I'm a self-loathing word cell. I, I, I wish I were a shape rotator. I, in another life.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  You know, I don't like you either, Logan.

• 18:41Logan Bartlett?

  That's, that's actually loathing. Self-loathing is me. Loathing is you.

• 18:46Speaker 03

  I'm about to reclaim the phrase word cell. I'm a word cell, but I'm proud of it. And by the way, I'm going to put it out there. I found that shape rotator test hard. I couldn't figure it out. I looked at it. I was like, I don't know. These all look the same to me. I can't figure out what any of these shapes are supposed to be. But I think it's not a bad thing to be a word cell. I don't think it's pejorative.

• 19:02Logan Bartlett?

  You know what? It's actually funny that this has now gone through this, uh, this Burning Man life cycle to some extent where it starts with this like niche cool group. And then slowly expands to billionaires that are coming in and maybe ruining the, the fun to some extent. I feel like Art Basel kind of went through this. And so the, we had, we had Burning Man originally, then we have Art Basel. Now we have, uh, word cells and shape rotators, all the very normal extensions here.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  Well, someone tweeted at me, there's no alpha left once the VCs get into it. And that was unfortunately before Mark jumped in.

• 19:36Speaker 02

  But I, I think the, the ones that are like Toby from Shopify, Mark Andreessen, I, I think they, you know, they have the shape rotator vibe to them. The alpha is still there because, uh, I mean, it hasn't crossed into, uh, into Patagonia vest VC yet.

• 19:53Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, and of course, obviously Logan and I are way cooler than that crowd.

• 19:57Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, way, way cooler. It's only with the cool VCs right now and not with the, the Patagonia vest VCs. Guys, another topic that is near and dear, I think, to all of our worlds is the Miami tech scene. So inevitably, we were going to hit this as a topic at some point. It felt topical because Nikita, you were there this past weekend. Zach, you were there for Hereticon, what was it, 10 days ago or whatever. So maybe for a little bit of background, I assume anyone that's listening to this kind of understands what's going on. But just to give the short version, Keith Herboy, an investor at Founders Fund, they were actually going

• 20:37Logan Bartlett?

  out and looking at a place him and his husband were frustrated with San Francisco and California. And so they went out looking for a place. Interestingly, Keith told me their first option that they considered was Nashville, which is actually where I was born, where my family is from, where I actually was this weekend. And so it's a shame, I think, for the Nashville tech ecosystem that they didn't end up landing there. I think it was that the airport wasn't big enough to support flights that they wanted out to San Francisco on a regular basis or whatever. I forget the details of it. But now Miami has been sort of willed into this thing. It's become something of a meme, you know, to let me know if I can be helpful with Francis Suarez, the mayor. So I would love to hear from you

• 21:22Logan Bartlett?

  guys, having been there in the last two weeks, where you stand on the very polarizing topic of Miami tech.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  I had an amazing time there. I was out until 5:00 AM, three nights in a row. It was quite a bender. It was for Miami Hack Week. I gave a talk on a panel on Web3 with Mike Arrington. I certainly wasn't qualified to be on that panel. But what I think is interesting about Miami is that the pecking order, like the status pecking order for people in tech, hasn't been established yet. So if you're new in tech, you can actually hang out with relatively successful people. And like, I saw interns having conversations with, like, literally sent to millionaires and going to high-profile events on yachts. You know, if you were in San Francisco, you're, you know, and you're just coming as a new

• 22:10Speaker 02

  grad, you're at the bottom of the totem pole. You know, tech is a meritocracy, but in a mature city that like has its, you know, status order defined already, it's going to be an uphill battle. So I think it's actually like a really great place if you're just starting out. And there's enough people there that I think it has a lot of potential, like... But it's very crypto. I think people don't realize like, like 90% of the companies I met were doing something in crypto.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, Nikita, your comment is my problem with it, right? You're saying you were out till 5 a.m. three nights in a row. That's exactly my, I like Miami, by the way, in short stints. I have a good time in Miami in short stints. The idea of living in Miami full time, knowing that so much of it is around, as you said, Nikita, staying out really late all the time. And by the way, in a world where outside of crypto, you basically don't have critical mass of founders, you have critical mass of VCs and finance guys, that to me is sort of a harder sell.

• 23:09Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, Zach Kukoff, a 27-year-old in a, with a 55-year-old mindset here. I-

• 23:16Speaker 03

  A 55-year-old's hairline, too. Thanks.

• 23:18Logan Bartlett?

  55-year-old's hairline and mindset and-

• 23:21Speaker 03

  That's right. I'm going for the George Costanza lane here.

• 23:23Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, the George Costanza VC, Zach Kukoff here. No, I will say Miami definitely has this big freshman college dorm energy where like everyone's out partying, everyone's like sleeping with each other. It feels like, you know, everyone's just excited to be here. It has this like energy of when you first move into a college dorm and it's like so nice to meet you. It's great. Like a very equalizing sort of playing field of all the people that have moved there. And I will say, everyone's been very accessible, right? I know for a long time, Keith, if anyone DM'd him, he would get together with them for a meeting, right? And I think everyone's like trying to court you into the Miami tech mindset. I feel like

• 24:03Logan Bartlett?

  I have to come clean. This is something I've kept to my family and, and close friends only. I wasn't comfortable enough sharing broadly, but it feels like the appropriate forum to say this. I, I'm a Miami enthusiast.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Jesus.

• 24:24Logan Bartlett?

  I felt it felt like something that I've kept to myself for a long enough time. I started Miami curious and now after having spent a lot of time there, I am I am a full on Miami enthusiast.

• 24:34Speaker 02

  You know, I still will accept you for who you are, but this this has been a really disappointing moment for me.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, Logan, we love you. We accept you. We honor your experience, wrong as it may be, but still honor your experience nonetheless.

• 24:49Logan Bartlett?

  You know, I am still a New Yorker, like, and that's where I really consider home for me, but it's it's it's such a good like energy. I love the warm weather. It feels like there's an optimism there that other cities don't have. I don't know. I there's going to be mistakes and it's going to take a long time for it to actually get to the the point that it is an ecosystem. Anything more than just like loud people on Twitter, but I think it's going to get there like I really do. And I think people are going to will this into an existence. And so it is a bummer that like, you know, where I was born in Nashville, Tennessee, isn't going to benefit from this, but I feel like Miami has really embraced it and everyone's kind of leaned into it.

• 25:28Speaker 03

  I don't know if I agree with your take 100%. Like, here's my problem with Miami. Well, besides the going to 11 until 5 a.m. that Nikita apparently experienced. My other problem with Miami is it feels like everybody who moves down there only hangs out with other people who moved down there recently. It's like moving to Paris and only going to the American Bar, hang out with expats all the time. I had dinner with somebody down there and who is a classic, you know, finance guy who moved down with his much younger girlfriend. The nice thing is, by the way, that describes like 80% of the people who I met down there. So that's actually so broadly applicable. It could be anybody. They all just hang out with each other. Like, none of them have friends outside of the tech crypto world.

• 26:04Logan Bartlett?

  This isn't so specific. They're going to be like, Zach's talking about me. There's like 15 people that are like.

• 26:08Speaker 03

  There's like my entire itinerary is going to be like Zach's talking about me. And I'm like, maybe, maybe I am.

• 26:12Speaker 02

  I was in Miami 10 years ago and the tech scene was like 10 people. It was Austin Bunson and that was it. Like really, that was like the entirety of the tech scene. And I hadn't gone since and I totally realized why everyone there is an expat because it was it was basically non-existent. So I think, you know, even if you hung out with everybody in an equal representation, you're probably still going to talk to like 90% expats.

• 26:42Speaker 03

  But then at that point, why not stay somewhere else? Like this is the thing that was a head scratcher for me. If you if really all you want is to save on taxes, which hey, I'd be the last person to throw stones out of the glass house here. It sounds great. But if really all you want is to save taxes, it doesn't have to be a crusade to go save taxes, right? Just go down there. At least the guys in finance have the decency to move down there quietly, not make a big deal out of it and just save their money. What I don't love is like the elevation of moving down there as a moral good thing when it's, you know, maybe a tax play.

• 27:14Logan Bartlett?

  Well, to be clear, the tax thing, like you have to at least give wonderful warm weather in the winter and the tax benefit. But I'll go a step further and there is just like a, there is an optimism there, right? And like people are moving there and they're enthusiastic about it. And it's not the cynicism that you see in in San Francisco or on Twitter or whatever. Like there's just a friendly, much more welcoming vibe to it. And so I hear your point on not like embracing the tech or the existing ecosystem. And that certainly has elements of truth, I'm sure. But to Nikita's point, one, there wasn't really one there. So it's like, how do you ingratiate yourself with something that doesn't totally exist?

• 27:58Logan Bartlett?

  And two, it's hard for me to throw too many stones at this when there's so many other really cynical cities that aren't appreciative of having, you know, smart people move in, create jobs, all that stuff.

• 28:11Speaker 03

  Who cares about the ecosystem? My point is they don't have friends who are outside of tech or outside of finance. Like if everybody you are, like, maybe you both have this, I don't know. But if everybody you're friends with also works in tech or also works in VC or also works in finance, and then you move to a city where everyone you meet also works in those fields, I think I would miss having normal people.

• 28:32Speaker 02

  Wait, hold up, hold up, Zach. Are there other people?

• 28:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's the point. Right. This is like. There are.

• 28:38Logan Bartlett?

  I had, I have plenty of friends from high school. I don't really know what you're talking about.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  What are you going on about?

• 28:43Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 28:44Speaker 02

  I mean, I understand, like in LA, you have people in entertainment, you have people in real estate that mingle with the same groups. In Miami, it's like, yeah, it's like tech summer camp.

• 28:56Logan Bartlett?

  We've all seen Selling Sunset, Nikita. We know, we know the two different buckets of people in LA. No, I will say, one of the things that I do enjoy about New York, and Zach, I guess to your point, is like, I remember one time I was at a holiday party for a venture firm like five or six years ago, and Mark Pincus from Zynga and Al Gore were there. And everyone was like, oh, my gosh, and maybe Reid Hoffman or something. And everyone's like, oh, my gosh, Reid Hoffman and Mark Pincus and Al Gore. And I'm like, those aren't like, cool people, you know? I mean, I'm sure they're wonderful.

• 29:26Speaker 03

  Speak for yourself, man. I love Al Gore. He invented the internet. Maybe you've heard of that.

• 29:30Logan Bartlett?

  But, you know, being in New York, you get with, like, you go to a bar and people are excited because Leonardo DiCaprio's there, Derek Jeter's there, or Lorne Michaels is there, or whatever. It's just like a much higher level of perspective of what like, cool is. It's not in this little bubble. And so, I hear that point, but I think that is to discredit, like, there are a lot of other industries that exist in Miami. It is insular, I think, the tech scene a little bit. And that will, hopefully, brings along, you know, the different industries that are already there, the different people that are already there. I think there's a nice opportunity to marry those two together. So I guess updating from a topic of last week, Bolt founder Ryan Breslow announced that he's transitioning to an executive chairman role, which I've never exactly known what

• 30:15Logan Bartlett?

  an executive chairman does. It feels like kind of a role exclusively reserved for when you don't know what to do with a founder. I saw a bunch of conspiracy theories out there about what he is, was he planning and all this stuff. I assume this didn't, there's kind of only one, one of two paths in my mind. Like, one was, this was all pre-planned, and this is some guerrilla marketing to some end, right? Or the other one of the board saying... What the fuck? Like dude, we cannot have you doing this right now. Those were kind of the only two options there.

• 30:50Speaker 02

  I mean, he went on the My First Million podcast and his explanation was that he was stepping up to executive chairman, not stepping down. I love that spin.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's me saying I'm no longer scooping ice cream. I'm stepping up to eating ice cream. As a matter of fact, I got fired.

• 31:09Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, exactly. It's like, it's like when a toddler comes over and asks you, can they help with whatever you're doing? So you give them a piece of paper and just like have them draw in the corner. It's like, sure, yeah, you're helping. Yeah, you're doing a, you're doing a great job over there. Yeah, I don't, I don't know exactly what the intent of all this was, but it's interesting. There was some speculation. Austin Reeve from Morning Brew tweeted out some links to some of the stuff that he had posted previously that Ryan is maybe going to start a incubator and that he was kind of laying breadcrumbs to, to that, that he was going to start a YC competitor. I don't know what your guys' perspective on that is.

• 31:48Speaker 03

  How, how much of that do you think is him after the fact saying, oh God, I have all this attention. Now I can do something with it versus how much do you guys think was pre-planned and premeditated?

• 31:58Logan Bartlett?

  I don't think it was after the, like, whatever this was, was either very pre-planned and this was a methodical, like, he was buying ads on his name, right? And like all this stuff. And so it's, it's either very pre-planned or, or like, it's just a total disaster. And so I don't think he would have been leaving breadcrumbs of like, you know, inspiring up against YC or whatever, and then also been ousted momentarily, like at a moment's notice.

• 32:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, I totally agree. I feel like my, my guess is the most likely outcome here is the, the firing was perhaps not premeditated. The YC part was also perhaps not premeditated. And he caught a tiger by the tail a little bit, some extent, and felt like, okay, what can I do with this now?

• 32:40Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, no, that totally, totally makes sense.

• 32:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I think that like with the, this new incubator that he's creating, I can't see any incubator really taking off in 2022. I think the whole funding of

• 32:53Speaker 02

  Like pre-seed has, the funding landscape has changed where applying to YC is now just showing what you're building on Twitter, showcasing it, getting people's attention, getting in the DMs. And then instead of giving up 7% of your company, there's a host of like tier one VCs who will invest at a 30 million valuation for, on a pre-seed deal, as long as you're competent and you can generate enough hype. So I, I think it like it's, things have become a lot more implicit in that, that inception state of a company versus this formal, like almost college application process.

• 33:29Logan Bartlett?

  You're kind of implying there though, that there's no lessons learned or camaraderie in a batch or network around selling into this group that, that comes from it, right? Is it really an either or thing? I mean, I understand as a repeat founder, you like wouldn't go through it, right? But it feels like there, there is more than just the capital and the visibility to it, or am I being naive?

• 33:54Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I didn't get into YC, but I did go through Techstars and the biggest value add was just the volume of meetings that they booked. So like the first, you know, 30 days, I think I met 90 investors and they front load all the worst investors. So you could get the kinks out of your pitch. So by the end, when you're, you know, pitching general catalyst, you're, you know, you're.

• 34:16Speaker 03

  Notably, notably not Redpoint included there, by the way. I like that. That was nice. I like that. That was good.

• 34:21Logan Bartlett?

  The beginning is when there's general catalyst and then at the end Redpoint. Your words got mixed up.

• 34:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's funny. As, as a Techstars alum myself, I can tell you, Logan, it was certainly Redpoint first and then.

• 34:34Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure.

• 34:36Speaker 02

  In Boston, actually, general catalyst was the last day of meetings. And so, uh, but I, I just remember how terrible I was at pitching at the beginning. And then, you know, at the end, it was just like, I was getting it check after check after check. And I think you can actually get that experience today in like the post-COVID world where you're just doing all the pitches over Zoom because you could stack meetings and meet with like 20 VCs in a single day.

• 35:00Speaker 03

  For all of our listeners at home, just note that Nikita said General Catalyst was the single best investor by that metric of all the people who came in for Techstars.

• 35:08Speaker 02

  In Boston.

• 35:08Speaker 03

  Just note that for yourself.

• 35:09Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, I was about to say, what I heard in that whole thing was, I heard Boston and actually I think Zach Kukoff maybe is the last venture investor left in Boston. So it totally makes sense that in the Boston patch.

• 35:21Speaker 03

  I like to think I'm just the best venture investor, not the last venture investor, but it's, it's, you know, maybe the best venture investor.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  You're a big fish in a small pond, Zach, and we're really proud of you.

• 35:31Speaker 03

  Can we cut me saying the best venture investor in Boston because that's going to play like I'm a huge fucking asshole.

• 35:35Logan Bartlett?

  No, I think it's. Sure, we can cut it, we can cut it. So I guess another topic to hit, kind of a mixed bag of earnings over the last few days. So Meta, Facebook took quite a bloodbath, down 26% after hours, which I think translates to something like $250 billion of equity value just wiped out. Snapchat smoked earnings, they were up 55% after hours. Pinterest blew out earnings, 25%. Amazon was up 18%. Some of these are the lag of days factored in because Facebook was the one to go first and then so pulled down some of these other businesses. And then obviously all these businesses are impacted differently in some ways. So Zach,

• 36:19Logan Bartlett?

  I don't know if you have any perspective on any of these companies specifically. Facebook and Snapchat seem to dominate the earnings. So any thoughts from you would be awesome.

• 36:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, it's not a huge shock to me that Facebook's earnings are down. You know, we all know that Apple struck a pretty big blow to Facebook by restricting the IDFA that Facebook uses. Actually, the more, the funnier point here is in some ways, you know, Snap's targeting has never been all that great. And so it's not a huge shock that Snap has done pretty well in a world where Facebook now has to move from hyper-specific, hyper-targeted advertising to more general advertising. The bigger question I think is what's going to happen to all the small businesses who are reliant upon Facebook, both venture-backed and not, for access to a really cheap, really high-quality source of customers?

• 37:04Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, it's so interesting. People frame this as like a privacy thing without the trade offs and considerations of who the beneficiaries are of this. And so, yeah, to your point, like Snapchat's never been great at direct response advertising while where Facebook has built all the infrastructure, both with Instagram and and Facebook, the blue app, to really target in a micro level. And so people always think about Cambridge Analytica and like, oh, this is all this political targeting and manipulation. But like, in truth, the big beneficiaries of this are small businesses that can reach their customers in a way that wasn't possible in the past. And so it's interesting to see in consecutive days, like Snapchat as a beneficiary of shitty ad targeting and Facebook getting crushed

• 37:47Logan Bartlett?

  with it. Nikita, as a former employee of Facebook, would be super interesting to hear your perspective on kind of what's going on inside the machine.

• 37:57Speaker 02

  I mean, Facebook's in a pretty tough position, and I felt this for a while. I mean, they've built this well oiled machine to grow products, but not create them. And at the current stage, like all their existing products have been fully monetized. And now we're actually now at the end of that lifecycle where the mature products are actually experiencing a lot of churn from coastal wealthy users who bring in the bulk of the revenue. So and this was the first, this was the second quarter that had a consecutive user loss. And in parallel to the churn happening in coastal areas, engagement's dropping too because competition is coming in fast. Like TikTok is now like the primary place where

• 38:42Speaker 02

  people get entertainment. But I think what's even more threatening is iMessage, because they have close friends. And that's a serious competitive threat to like what Facebook has. Facebook has has never really owned close friends. They've tried to with Messenger. It's always been a loose tie network. But iMessage is a crazy wedge. And this sounds crazy, but I think one day if they ever had stories, it would like it would really tank Facebook stock.

• 39:11Speaker 02

  And the other challenging thing here is that they can't acquire anymore. I mean, the FTC and the antitrust scrutiny they're experiencing. So of course, they'd want to acquire a product like Discord, but the regulators aren't going to allow it. So not only can they not acquire, they have, they experience this kind of decay on their products. It's tough for them to build too, because I mean, very few big tech companies have done zero to one product development. So I think it's like a perfect storm that they're in. But like, having said that, I still think Zuck is like one of the greatest operators of all time. And maybe this metaverse play will play out sooner than people think, but I think realistically,

• 39:56Speaker 02

  like, we're about 10 years out before face computers are things that, you know, the normies start using.

• 40:02Logan Bartlett?

  You left out like all their best talent, their former acquired products, the best talent walking out the door and leaving threads of all the lessons that they've learned like you did when you left Nikita.

• 40:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean.

• 40:14Speaker 03

  Logan, who, yeah, who do you, who do you mean by that, Logan? That was unclear to me. It could be any, anybody who left Facebook, huh?

• 40:19Speaker 02

  I mean, this was the first quarter I wasn't there on the roof, so.

• 40:23Logan Bartlett?

  Yeah, causation, correlation. Who's to say which one this was?

• 40:28Speaker 03

  Nikita resting investing was the only thing stopping Facebook from getting decimated by earnings.

• 40:33Logan Bartlett?

  The glue holding the org together was Nikita's feet on the desk. All right, well, that's a wrap. Thank you for joining the second episode of Three Cartoon Avatars.

• 40:46Speaker 03

  All right, we will be here next week, probably, unless we get canceled this week, covering news, drama, et cetera, et cetera. So if you're on tech Twitter, try to create some problems for us to discuss.

• 40:57Speaker 02

  See you next week.

• 40:58Logan Bartlett?

  And Nikita, are you going to tease, tease your app for everyone? Give it, give it, give a preview of what you're actually building?

• 41:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I felt like I let everyone hanging, so I do want to say what I'm building. I'm currently working on.