Why You Need to Forget Your "Mistakes" and Focus on Your Next Thing

In this episode of The GaryVee Audio Experience, I sit down with Ryan Chen, founder and CEO of CRWD, to talk about why I believe analog marketing is making a comeback. CRWD connects businesses with everyday people for paid gigs, from trying products and visiting stores to attending experiences and providing customer feedback. Ryan and I break down how technology can power old-school guerrilla marketing, help businesses attract their first customers, and turn real-world experiences into consumer insights. We also discuss opportunities to earn extra income without a large social media following, the role of product sampling in customer acquisition, and why offline marketing should complement (not replace) social media, SEO and email. In this episode: • How CRWD’s marketplace connects brands with everyday consumers • Why I’m excited about experiential marketing and in-person activations • Getting people to try a new product, restaurant or app • Using customer feedback and market research to improve your business • Ryan’s entrepreneurial journey and what past setbacks can teach founders My thesis: analog is coming back, and I hope this conversation inspires you to do something about this intuition I have.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  What do you think is holding back people to jump? What did you have to get over to go all in?

• 0:05Speaker 01

  I've had many times in this two, three, four year period where I just felt like giving up. It just seemed like there was so many operational challenges and so many hills to jump over.

• 0:14Speaker 00

  There was a point where you did the whole music thing and nothing materialized from it the way you thought. If I caught you on that night and be like, yo, how's the music thing? And you're like, I'm actually pivoting out. Thought you wasted those seven or eight years. You now in hindsight, understand all the data points and context actually was a foundational builder.

• 0:32Speaker 01

  I ate shit for 15 years in different industries, but doing that has created this whole vision for this company that I have now.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  Ultimately, the story is even though you see them as shortcomings today, don't spend your time dwelling on it. I'm telling you, there's a very high chance that some of those things are going to set you up nicely for your next thing. So just focus on your fucking next thing. This is the Gary V audio experience. Vayner Nation, what is good? Pretty excited about this. I, you're probably feeling it right now. I'm really focused on fresh, new, net new podcast content. It's a little a moose push appetizer to my hyper focus on podcasting. In 2027, you'll be seeing a lot more and hearing a lot more from me. So if you're not subscribed, you might want to do that right now because it's going to be bananas.

• 1:19Speaker 00

  I've been thinking about a lot of the kind of content I want to make, paying attention to a lot of the social media DMs and people that are texting me and different things of that nature. And one of the things I want to do is kind of feature, you know, young founders, startups, things that I'm paying attention to that are net new ideas. Sometimes I'm involved, sometimes I'm not. This time I am involved, I invest in this company. But, but more importantly, a little bit more of like other people's stories, kind of a lot of the stuff I did with up and coming music artists in the past, but more from an entrepreneurial swing. And then like how it ties into trends that I'm seeing. This one today will be a lot about my huge belief that analog is a huge opportunity in business right now.

• 2:02Speaker 00

  Like kind of going old school, non-digital, non-AI, but empowered by digital and AI. I think you'll get into it in a second. My guest today is a young dude I've met recently. And, and I think he's got a very interesting company, but more, yeah, more importantly, more importantly, I think he represents a lot of you out there. And I think there's certain things he's doing that I think separate him. In my opinion, that he's never heard from me that I'll get into in a minute. Really, not only will it be nice to give him some flowers, and I'm sure he'll appreciate a compliment. Who, because who doesn't fucking want one?

• 2:38Speaker 00

  But I think more importantly for me selfishly is I want the audience to hear it. So you can ask yourself, am I doing that and expecting results or am I not doing that? And that's why I'm not getting results and blah, blah, blah. So anyway, let's get into this podcast. I hope you enjoy it. Please hit me up on Twitter, DM everywhere, reply, subscribe. If, if you're excited about this refocus I have on original content on podcasts, instead of just being stripped from somewhere else, let me know and I appreciate it. And oh, thank you so much to everybody for the flowers on the Mel Robbins podcast that dropped on Labor Day. I'm getting a lot of people loving that one. And so if you're listening on my podcast, go check out Mel's podcast on Labor Day with us together. I think it's a worthwhile listen based on the feedback I'm getting.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Right. Tell everybody who you are, what you do, where you're from, and then we'll get into it.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Great to be here. Thanks for having me, Gary. My name is Ryan Chen. I am the CEO and founder of Crowd, which is a, you know, exciting new platform. Yeah, it's spelled C R W D, but pronounced like Crowd, you know, we just dropped the O to make it sound more techie. But yeah, you know, so it's a, it's a fun, exciting platform called Crowd that we've been building, you know, kind of in stealth for the last few years. And the premise of the platform is a brand or a CEO or CMO will come to Crowd or come to our platform, request a certain group of people or a certain type of output, right? A certain business objective. And then Crowd basically will go and identify these groups of people, find them and then activate them in the real world to do gigs, right? To show up to restaurants, to show up to stores, download mobile apps, show up to a new concert. You're just talking about the music industry, right?

• 4:09Speaker 01

  So I think the last 10 years have been dominated, as you know, Gary, by influencers and the creator economy and kind of these macro celebrities, which businesses just by default have gone to, to launch the new products. With Crowd, we're trying to flip that model completely where it's like, instead of starting with, you know, from the top to bottom and hiring big influencers, celebrities, let's start with a thousand normal, everyday people, get their feedback on a product. And let's see if that's a, you know, gives the business a higher ROI than then maybe hiring, you know, five influencers. So that's a platform. And then myself, you know, just really quick, I'm from the Bay Area, San Francisco Bay Area originally. Shout out Bay Area, but I live in Los Angeles now.

• 4:46Speaker 00

  When did this concept get hatched? How did it go down?

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the

• 4:52Speaker 00

  And then actually, before we even answer that, have you always wanted to be an entrepreneur?

• 4:55Speaker 01

  Always. So, you know, similar story to you guys, but like ever since I was young, I was popping up businesses. I was coming up with agencies type of things, right? When I came up and like my journey, I kind of dove into two, two career paths. One was like making and creating mobile apps. Another one was like the music industry, right? Both of those I learned after years of grinding out on both of them that they all, they both require large groups of just random, regular people for you to have success, right? If you're launching an app, you need a bunch of users. If you're launching a music career, you need a bunch of fans, listeners, right? And so I didn't start my journey wanting to build this crowd platform, but through my own personal experiences, the relevancy for something like this became more and more and more.

• 5:38Speaker 00

  Right. It became, it became the medicine, the anecdote, the, the, the, the pill that you needed. You needed this to exist to make the shit you were trying to do.

• 5:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like the things, the ideas that I was bubbling up in my mind were not possible with the current set of tools that were available at the time, which are like influencer platforms, agencies, right? And I know we'll get into this, but the core issue with agencies is that, at least for what we're trying to do with something like this, right? Is that agencies usually represent a, you know, a finite group of people, like 30, 50, a hundred of the top creators or whatever. And then after that, you're pretty much stuck working with those same groups of people. With this model, we needed to make it so it wasn't any one group of people. It was kind of this continuous like machine of people that were, like they're hopping in the crowd, they're doing gigs. But every week we would have thousands of new people.

• 6:22Speaker 00

  It sounds like in a way that you described it, it's like, I'm going to do this for the, the crowd, pun intended. It sounds like the way you pitched the app and that is almost like super long tail, micro, micro, micro influencer to almost like non-influencer human, blended with like almost TaskRabbit like dynamics. Yes?

• 6:43Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Yeah. So this, yeah, that's a good way to capture it. I think when I first

• 6:47Speaker 00

  You could take that.

• 6:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I, when I first

• 6:48Speaker 00

  I do this for a living.

• 6:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. When I, when I first started this, I, the idea, remember when I first started this around, around, you know, COVID time, like, you know, micro influencer was kind of still a new term. Everyone was still hiring the Mr. Beast, right? The guys that you would, you would bring to the table, right? And so I had a, at least in my mind, I had a cool, like little time competitive advantage of like, oh, the market's all leaning towards these huge influencer celebrities. Let's build a platform where we can just hire a bunch of micro creators, right? And so this started originally as like a micro influencer platform.

• 7:17Speaker 00

  Even further downstream.

• 7:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then I went further downstream because then what happened was, right?

• 7:21Speaker 00

  AKA every single person listening right now, unlike most of the shit that I talk about, like everyone who's listening, who has zero followers, could consider themselves as someone who might want to learn about this if there's some financial upside for them.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  And that's, and for everybody, I'm just going to be like really blunt here. That's what like, listen, I have a billion things I'm involved in. A single post on LinkedIn is better than this podcast. For the texts to CMOs that I've been doing for you is better than this podcast.

• 7:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  I'm kind of pumped because I think there's a lot of people who are listening right now, who'd actually be happy to make an extra 50 bucks or 90 bucks a week, like a lot.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  What's really exciting about this

• 8:02Speaker 00

  I'm one of them, by the way. I might want to do that.

• 8:04Speaker 01

  But you, you hit on that. What's really exciting about this platform is that for the last 10 years, all of creator marketing and influencer marketing and advertising largely has been gate kept by the people that have a lot of followers, as you know, right? And so what we found out through these crowd campaigns.

• 8:18Speaker 00

  They earned it.

• 8:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. These guys were lucky. Yeah. But I'm saying just from a general like landscape, the majority of regular, everyday people don't have the, like the advantage of going out and making a post. Exactly. Right. And so what we learned through this process of a crowd of hiring normal people is that, oh, like there is a value to a real human that's wake up every day and they shop at a grocery store, right? And they buy clothes from a, from a retail store and then they go to a restaurant, right?

• 8:45Speaker 00

  And they drive on the highway, 700 businesses.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Exactly. And they drive their own car. Maybe they drive Uber, right? Like the, every single human has an ecosystem, like within their daily lives, that is a huge value add to businesses. What I've learned is that the businesses don't have a avenue or a channel to access these normal, everyday people because so far you have to be an influencer or creator for you to even think that you could do anything like this, right? So, so when we're working with brands that are in target.

• 9:11Speaker 00

  When he says, when he says, don't have access to people, it's not marketing to them. It's business developing with them to do an action.

• 9:20Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 9:21Speaker 00

  You know what I mean? When you say, like, that's an important thing that I don't think has been established on a podcast yet. This is a two-way marketplace where businesses are paying literally everyday humans.

• 9:32Speaker 00

  Paying them to do an action, which is a really, and I'll tell you why I got interested. You know this when I first saw it, there are versions of this in China and in Asia that I've always been obsessed with. It's like, there was a startup I always wanted to launch in America, I think I told you this story, where the whole court, you're gonna like this, the whole concept was, I wanted to start a business 15 years ago, AJ is probably laughing right now if he's listening to this podcast, where there would be like a head buyer, and you would use social media, MySpace at the time, to find like 50 to 100 people that all wanted the same thing, like a TV. And the, my website was gonna get all 100 people to meet at Best Buy with a head buyer,

• 10:14Speaker 00

  and you would literally walk into a Best Buy with 100 people, and I would be like, if I represented you two and 98 of the people, like, hello manager of Best Buy, us 101 people would like to buy this TV, but we want a discount. That was the business.

• 10:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:29Speaker 00

  And like, I've just always been fascinated by the crowd.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:33Speaker 00

  The long tail. I was very, very, I don't claim that I do a lot of things, there's a dark horse chance that I was the person that came up with, like, or was one of the earliest users of the term micro influencer, because I love going downstream. This is the ultimate downstream.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:49Speaker 00

  But what's interesting is, and now I want businesses to listen, I've been talking to all of you that need an extra 50 bucks every day, or every week, now I'm gonna talk to the small businesses. This is not, instead of social, instead of SEO, email, this is another and, another fucking tool in your Swiss Army knife. The opportunity to be able to put something out there, that if I can get 100 people to come to my store this weekend, or if I get 50 people to put out a flyer, I actually think the best way you could explain what you're up to, is by giving three examples of things, whether you can use the businesses' names or not, like a four instances.

• 11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:24Speaker 00

  But I, again, I think what's happening is analog is coming back, this is using technology to do analog things, and that's got me all fucked up and excited, and I hope this inspires people to do something about this intuition I have. Go ahead.

• 11:37Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. So, I mean, a few campaigns and recent examples of crowd right now, you know, the betting platform, CalShee.

• 11:42Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  They basically paid the night before the activation for a few thousand flyers to get posted around New York City for this new grocery store that was launching in the Lower East Side. And so they did a $50 grocery giveaway, and they activated Crowd to post up flyers all over the city the night before. The next morning, they had 4,500 people waiting outside the block to get free groceries. And then they hit national news, and if you go to all the national news, you just see our flyers posted up everywhere, right? And so, that's just a, that's an example of like an IRL, like guerrilla marketing tactic that brands can do, you know?

• 12:12Speaker 00

  It is really, the thing is, is definitely grounded in old guerrilla marketing.

• 12:16Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. I mean, if like, if you think about new, like, let's take restaurant marketing, for example, right, in restaurants, 90%, let's say, of an entire restaurant's new budget, and you know this too, right, like, for most businesses, I would guess, is getting the customer into, the diner into the table for the first time, right, to try the food. Now, if the food's crappy, then, you know, you're SOL, but if the food's good, your biggest roadblock is how do I get the first 500 people to sit here, try the meals, and then that's it. Right? And so, if the campaign and the crowds are targeted enough, right, so we're not just getting a bunch of random people, we say, hey, do you like sushi? If you love sushi, we've got a crowd of 10,000 people in New York City, their favorite food is sushi. You send those guys into the local restaurant, and that basically solves your cold start problem, where you have hundreds of people that are leaving reviews, they're trying the food, but most importantly, if the food's good, they're coming back now.

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Of course.

• 13:02Speaker 01

  Next weekend, right, and the week after that. The same for retail products. Another example is we're working with Junie, which is, you know, Kim Perrow and Jay Shetty's drink that they have at Target, it's a great, you know, growing viral nationwide. We basically are getting thousands of people to try the Junie can for the very first time, because Junie knows, as long as like, they try for the first time, they're gonna get a strong percentage of people are gonna come back and buy it, you know? And so, in tech, we call this like the cold start problem. I believe this is the same thing for retail businesses, for restaurants, for mobile apps, right, for consumer dating apps. How do you get that targeted first group of 1,000 people to just interact with the product, to be in the grocery store, to be in the restaurant? And then you worry separately about, hey, who are the best creators?

• 13:41Speaker 00

  If people, if people are trying to make money right now, like, how does, like, literally, again, this gig economy, like, thing that I'm obsessed with, this analog economy, if someone right now is listening, and they're like, yes, Gary, like, you're exactly right, like, I do really need 50 more dollars a week. Paint me a complete picture from start to finish right now, on the people that are doing the actions, the incentivized actions that businesses are doing. Give me a for instance, they go to Crowd.

• 14:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you have to go.

• 14:08Speaker 00

  How do you go to Crowd?

• 14:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we have a website, we have a phone, which is like, so the website's joincrowd.com, so joincrwd.com.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  So they go to joincrwd.

• 14:16Speaker 01

  C-R-W-D.com.

• 14:18Speaker 00

  And what happens there? They sign up to be an activator?

• 14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, well, they sign up to be, to basically to create a crowd, right? So you're coming as like a crowd member, and then you have the option to invite like, up to five to 10 of your friends.

• 14:28Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 14:29Speaker 01

  So the idea here is that like, one person comes in, like their crowd leader, they'll bring like five to 10 of their friends.

• 14:33Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  And that's the group of homies that you're going around town and doing these things with, okay?

• 14:37Speaker 00

  What happens next?

• 14:38Speaker 01

  So you sign up to the platform, we vet you, we approve you, once you're opted in, you'll basically get access to our marketplace, which I'll show you in a bit, it's basically like, you know, a marketplace of different gigs and restaurants and stores you can go to. So you basically just sign up, you get the instructions, a lot of times we'll front the money, like, you know, a reimbursement for you to go get something at Target or whatever, and then after you're done with that gig, you simply just upload your receipt, and then you get paid out by Crowd.

• 14:58Speaker 00

  How are you making sure people aren't using fake receipts?

• 15:00Speaker 01

  So we have, well, we have multiple days, so we built in our own like AI receipt, you know, auditor, basically, so, and then we're also matching actual order numbers to back ends, right? A lot of people are trying like fake AR receipts, they're trying to turn products, so.

• 15:12Speaker 00

  People are trying to gap you.

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like, that's, that's part, like, when you're building a new gig marketplace, when you're building an Uber or something like that, right, it's like, a lot of that initial, you know, like, yeah, is like, hey, how do you build a trustworthy group of people? In the same way that Postmates and DoorDash and Uber and Fiverr and TaskRabbit had to build up a trustworthy database of users, that's where we're at now, so.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  So you spent more time vetting people, probably more energy on that vetting process than ever, right?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, now, now is insane, because now it's like, like, when we first started launching this, we had, we had hundreds of thousands of people texting us, and I was like, I don't know what the hell to do with these people, you know what I'm saying? So luckily for us, we were so new that like, a lot of the businesses that we had at the time just wanted a bunch of heads, right? Like, but now, you know, we're working with American Eagle, we're working with some of the biggest companies in the world, like.

• 15:53Speaker 00

  It's getting sophisticated.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  They want, hey, we don't want just a random crowd, we want a very targeted group of Gen Z girls that go to school in these 20 universities and live in these 10 cities, you know? And so, for the bigger brands, it's somewhat of the same concept, but they just want way targeted.

• 16:06Speaker 00

  How do you, if I'm hearing this right, I know that some marketers, because I have a feeling this is gonna be for the LinkedIn and Substack and business Twitter crowd, this podcast. How about the brands that are like, so wait a minute, you're paying, I'm as a brand, paying someone to go buy my product in the store, like, is that like, is that good for me? Like, like, like, I'm paying, like, give me an example, I'm paying $15 for someone to buy a bag of chips?

• 16:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if you think about what the businesses are doing now, they're like paying for a lot of influencers, they're paying for sampling tables, right, they'll come in and they'll sample a bunch of random people. We're finding out that.

• 16:39Speaker 00

  But wouldn't you argue that someone who has been inspired to do something because of the relevance of someone who's cosigning it, is potentially a better customer than someone who's getting paid to buy it?

• 16:50Speaker 01

  No, a hundred percent. And so, we have, we actually have two different type of campaigns set up. We have campaigns that like literally require, you know, some sort of funds, so that like, we get it done in a really quick amount of time, and then we have other gigs that are solely for them to get free products, like the products that they love, right? The model of Crowd is, we wanna build this up, where eventually, the only thing that are gonna be like paid type of gigs are for things that they're not, like, maybe they're not getting a, you know, a free product, or a pair of jeans, or they're not getting a hundred dollar credit at a restaurant, that's what we'll pay for. But the long-term vision of this is that you have, you know, millions of people that have a, first, like, they know the types of food they like, they know the products they like to shop at, and so for Crowd, we're basically gonna be servicing them with products and experiences that they already enjoy.

• 17:30Speaker 00

  I see.

• 17:31Speaker 01

  You know what I'm saying?

• 17:32Speaker 00

  So as your data gets better, if Courtney is someone who is like, into like pasta sauce.

• 17:36Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:37Speaker 00

  And she's just like, that's just like her life, right? That's her receipt life, that's her data, and like, she's gonna get pinged and be like, hey, when, like, if this week, if you go to Whole Foods, and you could buy Johnny's pasta sauce, like.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, because we have all of our.

• 17:52Speaker 00

  You already know she's a higher value pasta sauce, and she'll do it, because she's gonna get 15 bucks to try out this pasta sauce, and.

• 17:59Speaker 01

  Or maybe she just saves the 15 bucks on not buying another pasta sauce.

• 18:01Speaker 00

  That's right. And then the brand, because that's what I'm going to care about is VaynerMedia. Our hope is that like through that, instead of spending money on billboards or TV commercials or social media, that's going to get the direct action we want Courtney to do. And hopefully our product stands up and our LTV justifies the CAC that we did there.

• 18:19Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. And there also is this crazy thing, like this crazy brand loyalty that happens with regular, everyday people because they're not influencers, right? And so this is a little bit of it, but the fact that, you know, the fact that

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Courtney's like, yo, no one else ever gave me money. Paul's fucking sauce gave me money and it's good. That was nice. I'm in.

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, a hundred percent. I like to think about a thousand kids right now are working for like American Eagle or Target or Walmart and they've never done a brand deal in their life before, right? So for those guys, it's like, oh crap. Like I, you know, they feel that importance. They feel, um, they feel more.

• 18:50Speaker 00

  What about, I'm going to use Courtney again because she's really into emerging artists. I've got a question. I got an idea that I've never thought of before with Crowd.

• 18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:57Speaker 00

  I'm an emerging, you know, artist, Jaybird, right? And I'm going to shoot a music video like tonight. And like, we've seen this, we've all seen this, like I'm in culture and you guys are kids that know shit. Like they're going to post on our Instagram story and be like, yo, 74th and third tonight. Like, you know, like da, da, da. With Crowd, I could go there, like, especially if I'm smaller, like if my social media is like, I'm a artist that has 6,000 followers and I'm in one city, I might only get like, like nine people to show up. But I, but I, if I want 500 people going crazy in the hood, by the way, 73rd and third is not the hood. Like, like, but that's the Upper East Side

• 19:37Speaker 00

  non hood. But if I like really want this to look proper, shouldn't emerging music artists maybe potentially use this and get 400 people to randomly show up because they're paying them 20 bucks, 30 bucks? What are the averages? How much would I, if I was like your friend and I'm like a music artist and I'm like, I need fucking 800 people in this field for my country music fucking thing. Like what would you recommend the number I would pay people to show up for that? What do you, what's your gut tell you?

• 20:03Speaker 01

  Like 20 bucks and a free drink or maybe, you know, somewhere in there. Or maybe just the free drinks for a group of friends or maybe it's like 25, you know, it's like, uh, what's funny is that?

• 20:12Speaker 00

  15 to 30 is a sweet spot for average Joe and Jane.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's like, how we equate is like, okay, how much is the everyday average person making on a, just the normal average, you know, hourly wage in America? And like, how much time does this take you through Crowd to do that gig? And how much do you get paid for it? So like, our thing is that like, you should, if you spend 30 minutes on this thing, the payout or the compensation of that should be lucrative enough where it's not like you're, you know?

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Courtney, if you were just laying in bed and you got the ping, because you're texting too, people, right? If you got like a ping and like, you're like, and you're into music, whatever. And it was like, get 30, like you're literally laying in bed, just like working or watching TV. It's like 9:45 PM. It's like ping two miles away, 30 bucks to show up in the next hour. Like one out of every four or five times you'll do that, won't you? Hey everybody, uh, I hope you're enjoying the podcast right now. Make sure you follow the podcast. That's why I'm interrupting. Let's keep going on this show, but follow the podcast. It'll make my mom super happy. Train, if, if you, if you got pinged on your phone right now because you signed up for Crowd and it was like, hey, four blocks away tomorrow at 5:00 PM, show up to this

• 21:14Speaker 00

  restaurant. Well, you know, we're going to give you, we're going to give you 20 bucks to try this pizza, pizza. That's like a better version of what Groupon was 20 years ago, right?

• 21:26Speaker 01

  Love eating. Free food and love eating. Yeah. But to your point, there's groups of people, right? Like students versus let's say like, you know, professionals that have been working for 40 years that are willing to do things that other groups of people aren't willing to do, which is what I really get excited about is like, oh, if you take a thousand college girls and you send them on this mission, you can get them to do so many different things that if I sent that to the same, like, you know, 50 guys in New York who are loaded, they're not going to do any of it, right? And so part of, part of the

• 21:51Speaker 00

  It's opportunity costs.

• 21:53Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 21:53Speaker 00

  It's how valuable is your time? Bro, do you know how much money you would have to pay me to do anything? Like, like anything? Like, you know, like, but, but, but to your point, when I was like playing fucking Madden 95 with my buddies on Comm Ave in Boston, like it wouldn't have cost a whole lot for me to do a lot of things.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  And, and the crowd aspect of you're texting five friends.

• 22:13Speaker 00

  It's actually, it's actually the two ends, right? It's the youth and the elderly. That's six, that's 60, that's 70 to 90 year old crowd is going to be a monster for you once this gets mature.

• 22:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  They want to do shit.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Like you're just chilling. Like, you know, like you only play pickleball so much. Like, you know, like you're 81 and you're vibrant.

• 22:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And they love to go shopping. They love to go out, you know?

• 22:33Speaker 00

  Like, it's really the people in the middle that are in family life, in building their fucking financial empires life. Like that middle gets a little bit busy, but, but that's why they're valuable too. Like maybe it won't cost 30 bucks, a mom with two, has a full time job, but you give her 150 bucks to do something. And by the way, that shopper, that 48 year old mom, for certain brands, it is worth 150 bucks, whatever the X, Y, Z is.

• 22:58Speaker 01

  If a mom has six kids and you're selling a kid snack or a toy, you know, that's insane, right? And so I think

• 23:04Speaker 00

  What surprised you in building the business so far?

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Uh, one, how many different things regular people are willing to do, right? For like, um, you know, a minimal amount of money is crazy, right? Um, uh, but more importantly, like I, I think, I don't know, like what I've learned, but like the most challenging thing is like how to safely like acquire and deploy these people by like the hundreds or the thousands. Like really, that's just

• 23:26Speaker 00

  Operational challenge.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  It's an operational challenge. You know, I think from, I think from the consumer side, from the marketing challenge, like I think that's all exciting things. I think there's things that we're going to dive in deep. I think that we should have crowds of people that are just making content every single day. Like when I think about this company, the reason, you know, and I know you're a big seller. I'm like, hey, like founder of like content, founder of like content. The more that I build this thing, the more that I like, want to kind of be in the background and have like this crowd of people take over the brand. You know what I'm saying? Like I want our marketing to be a crowd of people that are doing a bunch of different things.

• 23:55Speaker 00

  For crowd.

• 23:56Speaker 01

  For crowd. So it's like

• 23:57Speaker 00

  You're getting high on your own supply.

• 23:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Like if you know, if you've seen on TikTok, you've probably seen the videos of the people that hire like the fake Michael Jackson impersonator or like, you know, hiring of someone to serenade my girlfriend or whatever. And then they're like, they're getting 10, 20 million views. This is like, our content machine is, hey, I hired a crowd of people to go help with my proposal.

• 24:11Speaker 00

  What's been the most clever thing you've seen a company do in the last 60 days? Fresh in your mind? Cause again, I'm, I'm, I have you on this podcast because I'm trying to inspire small business.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:19Speaker 00

  A founder or an everyday person that can use an extra 20 bucks every day to like do something with their life. Hence why I fell in love with this. And like, I was like, fuck, I'm going to put this on the podcast. Fuck it. Like people are going to like, both sides can win, right? Founder making a T-shirt brand, artist trying to get famous, uh, creator trying to get famous that needs 50 people to show up to do their skit. Or again, I'll say it again, fucking single dad, like does have six to eight PM because the kids are at sports and they get home from work and like that 50 bucks matters. And he'll like go to fucking Walmart and buy the fucking thing. Like I'm, I'm passionate about this one. This feels real to me. Main street, long tail. Everybody can benefit from this. Give me, give me, I, I think examples will help because it's a new concept. I think

• 25:01Speaker 00

  some people are, might be confused. Give me an example of something really clever. You've seen a brand or business do in the last 60 days.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:08Speaker 00

  And then the result. Tell us the full, I like stories.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. So we have a dating app that's signed up. It's about to launch. Basically their, uh, project through Crowd was to go into Los Angeles, build up a database of like 5,000 single guys and single girls. And then, and then through a schedule, activate groups of them to log onto the app, conversate and message the other side, basically to jumpstart their, their dating app.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  Just like fully like app arbitrage, huh?

• 25:31Speaker 01

  App arbitrage.

• 25:32Speaker 00

  But not app mission.

• 25:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the mission basically is like with through Crowd is like, hey, download this dating app, right? We want you to do like a little survey, whatever. But part of the gig is to create and hold conversations with 10 people that you find interesting, right? And so with this one

• 25:44Speaker 00

  And that's how you would get fully paid.

• 25:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, from the crowd. So the

• 25:48Speaker 00

  And how much was the, the bounty?

• 25:51Speaker 01

  Uh, 50 bucks, basically.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  That's awesome. Like I just think a lot of people in LA, like, right? Like that's an easy one. Fuck it all. Especially if you're single, like fuck it. I want to see another new dating app. Anyway, I might see some new faces.

• 26:02Speaker 02

  Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident. The only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them. So Progressive is here to help when you can't. So get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response. Learn more at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Limited availability in California. Driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy. Coverage subject to policy terms and conditions.

• 26:32Speaker 01

  I mean, that's, that's the thing that's really interesting about this is that you don't need to, like for the dating app example, right? These are real people that are really single, right? And so it's like, you might pay them 50 bucks, but now they're talking to 10 people and they're going on a date tomorrow, you know? And like, that has nothing to do with the crowd gig, you know?

• 26:45Speaker 00

  It's a really fucking interesting brain fuck, which is like, a lot of people who are listening right now are like, wait a minute, but like financial incentives to do the thing makes the thing not authentic. And my point of view is you're right for certain people, but enough of a percentage of the people, the thing that you want it to happen happens, thus rendering the marketing valuable.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Same thing when you're trying products in the store. If you, if you really love it, you'll come back and you'll buy it again. You don't know and you try it for the first time.

• 27:12Speaker 00

  People that used to be really down on sampling.

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 00

  They're like, well, you're giving away free food to people that would never buy it anyway. But all you needed was 8% of the people in Costco that tasted the fucking sausage to buy the sausage to make it worth it. And that was good for them and that was good for the brand. And it was good for the 92% that got free sausage with no intent to ever buy the sausage. Plenty of people in LA got 50 bucks. They're doing some shit that they'll never do. The brand, the dating app doesn't love that. They wish everyone would do it. But the percentage that it works out for was enough of a viable thing as a marketing play.

• 27:44Speaker 01

  Because it's targeted, right? If you're going to send like a thousand people that are married to a dating app, you're probably not going to have great success.

• 27:49Speaker 00

  Well, I don't know if you know how scandalous the world is, but

• 27:51Speaker 01

  Maybe wrong here for that, but I get it. Um, but the other, the other, so you made it, you made a comment about like the music label, right? And like, hey, can I get, if I'm a new music artist, going to get 500 people. Our very first projects, like a couple of years post-COVID, like for example, there was a Canadian music label that booked this artist a nationwide USA tour and like he sold no tickets, right? Not only, not only because he was like, you know, he was unknown to the US, but he was bubbling in Canada. But this is a post-COVID world. And so they literally just hired Crowd to fill up

• 28:18Speaker 00

  They basically, wait, let me get this. I just want to know, I just want to talk about how not smart a music label can be. Let me make sure I heard that.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  Your music label, you have someone who's kind of sort of bubbling a little bit in Canada, and you decide to book a massive US tour, already crazy, B, right on the heels of COVID, when everyone was still a little kind of like trepidatious.

• 28:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:42Speaker 00

  Epic.

• 28:42Speaker 01

  And so they just wanted to fill the venue and everybody got a free drink as well, right? So it was like, hey, we're gonna pay you.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  And how'd it go?

• 28:48Speaker 01

  I went great. Like, the one in LA was like solely, was fully packed out. It was like, you know, that's what I'm, that's what I'm saying. So for the music thing, like, I want to go a step further, right? Not right now, but later on, where it's like, imagine not just, let's say you're a country artist, with crowds AI targeting, right? It's like, we want to send you 500 country fans to your very first concert. You know what I'm saying? And so it's like, the music labels, they break artists with money. The crowd model is like, hey, we can break creatives with, with people, right? It was like, let's get a thousand people, you know?

• 29:14Speaker 00

  Give me another creative left field thing. Just want to inspire the crowd a little bit. Anything else really caught your eye that someone did in the last six months?

• 29:20Speaker 01

  Um, in the last six months?

• 29:22Speaker 00

  And do people, like, if, can businesses just go on crowd right now and create their bounty?

• 29:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you like, right?

• 29:27Speaker 00

  The platform's like fully two-way?

• 29:28Speaker 01

  Right now, it's like, uh, you, it's, it's, it's live in beta, so you can request the crowd and we'll like, we'll accept you, right? But, um, you know, we're, we're in that special growth phase where it's like, we need to roll. So, I mean, if you go to the website, you can request a crowd and then get a demo.

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Back to you, like, because I know you're a psycho looking at all of them. Anything else was, you were like, holy shit, I never thought of that. And I want to keep an eye on this to see if this works.

• 29:47Speaker 01

  I mean, uh, iHeartMedia was another good example, or like, the VP, like, of iHeartMedia, was like, that I know, he was gonna go in and like, do a test drive in a bunch of EV cars, like Teslas, basically, like fake test drives, so that he could see how hard it was to find their iHeartMedia button. And it was like, hey, why don't we get a crowd of a couple hundred people to go to Tesla dealerships across the country? And so if you look at our post-campaign report, it's like hundreds of dashboard videos of different models of EV cars, how long it took them to find the SiriusXM, you know?

• 30:14Speaker 00

  Fascinating.

• 30:15Speaker 01

  So for me-

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Consumer insights.

• 30:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, so for me, that goes, it's like, how many market research gigs does this apply to, right? How many companies need 5,000 people to do a certain task that has nothing to do with-

• 30:24Speaker 00

  That just made me think of Wine Library. I could pay people 30 bucks to go to Wine Library and record themselves walking around the store for five minutes, just to see what their natural traffic patterns are, so that I could do better merchandising. Literally, that's it.

• 30:37Speaker 01

  What, what I will-

• 30:38Speaker 00

  I will pay 30 bucks to walk in the store for five minutes with camera to chest facing out? I just want to see which aisles you naturally go down.

• 30:47Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. A real-life example that we're doing right now is a campaign with True Fruit in Walmart. Okay, this is coming out in Q4. Basically, True Fruit, Walmart wants to utilize Crowd to activate, you know, thousands of shoppers that shop at Walmart already, that don't normally shop in the frozen food aisle, and they want to send them to the frozen food aisle to buy True Fruit for the first time. Walmart wants to see, hey, out of this cohort of people, are people gonna now start buying other things from the frozen aisle? And so for Walmart, they're saying, this could be an insane tool on our own consumer insights.

• 31:16Speaker 00

  Our shopping cart percentage can go up if we can get people to buy more things from us or change their own habits within our store. Now their average cart goes up from $71 to $83, because now we've got them in frozen food behavior as well. That's just smart business.

• 31:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so the way that this business is scaling right now is like, kind of on two, two fronts. There's the consumer, like, public-facing side, like, send 50 people to your restaurant, and then there's something totally different going on behind the scenes.

• 31:41Speaker 00

  Let's, let's wrap up this podcast for more value.

• 31:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  You've always dreamed about being an entrepreneur. Now you got this company that kind of like, is starting to happen. What's been the biggest challenge of being a young founder? How old are you?

• 31:53Speaker 01

  I'm 34.

• 31:54Speaker 00

  What's the biggest challenge of being such a young founder? And like, like, you, you know, it's like, kind of like, be careful what you wish for. What has like, been harder for you than you anticipated? Obviously, you had confidence, like, you've been doing a lot of hustling, like, now that you actually have a winning horse-

• 32:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:11Speaker 00

  That's a young winning horse.

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:12Speaker 00

  What have you struggled with that you didn't anticipate struggling with?

• 32:16Speaker 01

  I just think, uh, like, for me, I don't know if this is the right answer, but I've had many times in this, like, two, three, four-year period where I just felt like giving up because the, it just seemed like there was so many operational challenges and like, so many, uh, hills to jump over. But what I've learned through this thing is that because of the-

• 32:34Speaker 00

  Everything's solvable?

• 32:35Speaker 01

  Everything's solvable, one, but like, if you have something of real value, right? Then like, you'll win in the end, but you can work, like, basically, I've, I've, you probably do this too, but like, I take all of the company problems, my stress, and I just break them up into individual problems that need to be solved. And we just like, knock them out one at a time.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  How many employees do you have right now?

• 32:51Speaker 01

  15.

• 32:52Speaker 00

  And how's that been? Going from one, your shelf to one to 15?

• 32:57Speaker 01

  That's been, um, that's, you probably answered. That's probably the second most difficult thing for me, has been hiring and-

• 33:01Speaker 00

  Have you had to fire someone you were friendly with?

• 33:03Speaker 01

  Of course, that's-

• 33:04Speaker 00

  How's that been?

• 33:04Speaker 01

  Horrible. And, uh, you know, I have, uh, I've hired too quick and I've fired too slow, as, as you know, is the number one done thing. And my, my-

• 33:12Speaker 00

  Are you candorous, or have you struggled with that? Like, you're kind of friendly with, whether you knew them before, for whatever reason, or you hired them, and the first month, you're just such a small startup. I don't know if you're a lover boy like me, but like, the third day someone works for me, I'm like, we're family, right? Like, like, I get a little get crazy, like, like, it's just my demeanor as a human being, and it trickles and bleeds into my business. I've had to find a better balance in my later years. Are you, are you, have, are you, have you captured, have you solved the thing I struggled with? Which is like, you haven't been candorous, and then like, the, the firing's a little sloppy? Or have you been solid at giving feedback?

• 33:46Speaker 01

  Uh, I would say, like, both are happening. Like, I've, I've gotten better at like, letting people go, like, uh, but it's still, like, right now, where the company is right now, like, you, you nailed it. It's like, we all started as a small team. Now, like, we're all super, super busy, super swamped, but like, we all kind of have to step up, and there's-

• 34:03Speaker 00

  Are you thinking about raising capital to hire more? Or are you trying to make the dollars so you don't, you don't have that liquidity and like, dilution, excuse me? Like, where are you at with raising capital versus making money so you don't have to dilute?

• 34:15Speaker 01

  So, we are raising capital. We have to do a raise just because of, like, what I've, what I've learned is that this type of operation, like, it is a negative for us not to raise funding and to build out our processes.

• 34:25Speaker 00

  You feel like you're there.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  I feel like I'm there, right? I feel like, okay, we have, we have some of the biggest companies in the world that want to use our service and are using our service, like, we need to be-

• 34:32Speaker 00

  Walmart doesn't want to hear about, you're like, I don't have money for another-

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, Walmart's like, they don't want to hear that I'm a small startup and I need to go do another raise, right? Like, they're putting dollars towards us right now. And so, part of it is that, the other part of it is like, we're kind of at that one to 10, how do we take it from 10 to 100 level, is obviously why you're, you're here, right? But like, from the team perspective, we have great team members, um, you know, that started with us from the beginning. And I, I learned that I just have to keep everybody accountable, based off of our company, like, situation, right? So they see that we're super busy, they see that I'm working, you know, 16 hours a day as other people. And I'm, it makes it easier for me to now have the conversation, say, hey, I know you started this job doing something very much simpler, but we are in a totally different ballgame now, and I'm trying to balance the cash flow, where it's like, half the team is working 16 hours, the other half is like, part-time, you know?

• 35:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 35:21Speaker 01

  And so, yeah, it's a fun challenge. I think now is like, uh, aside from like, operational help, is kind of finding those key team members that can, like, from a C-suite level, that can really, you know, help on different things. But as far, as far as operational, that'll just be a journey, you know?

• 35:34Speaker 00

  Just to take advantage of the time. Any questions you have for me?

• 35:37Speaker 01

  Oh, that's a good one. Um, any follow-up?

• 35:43Speaker 01

  Thoughts on activations campaigns for Crowd and Vayner for Q4, Q1?

• 35:47Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, I'm all, I mean, we, we, you know, that's how I got to you. Like, I just believe in this. Like, I think there's an, I, I always think that marketing is like a mutation. You know, like, like, there's new things, live shopping hosts on my mind, incentivized analog real-life behavior. I mean, like, to me, we are very big into experiential. And, and that's what I'm betting the farm on next year. And like, being able to activate Crowd to get humans to whatever these experiences are, whether it's for production, you know, optics and things that I want to do for like, from a production standpoint, or if it's just for sampling, or curiosity, or learning from them even experiencing the experience. So I'm very into that whole, like, getting crowds there to give you insights of what it is.

• 36:32Speaker 00

  And then look, the trial of products is just so fascinating, or of apps, or of websites. I'm thinking a lot about it for V Friends, to be honest with you.

• 36:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, hundred percent.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  Do I use Crowd to get people to buy their first comic book and read it? And like, you've got to film yourself reading it. Like, that's one way I can make sure, like, sometimes, like, I really need people to read the comic. I'm like, fuck it, let's pay them 30 bucks to film themselves reading it.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  No AI, no AI reports of it.

• 36:54Speaker 00

  And then I'll, and then I'll use the video in marketing of people reading the comic for people that, you know, so, yeah, we're thinking about it a lot, but, you know, I know JT at Vayner was like, okay, off the first thing we did, like, there's something there, like, let's keep building. So there's some meetings coming up on that.

• 37:08Speaker 01

  I think, I think it fits very nicely into everything you've preached over the last 10 years, which, especially now, right? Where you're preaching kind of organic social first, and then you run ads on top of organic social. I think where Crowd fits in is like, in that conversation completely, but a totally different lever.

• 37:21Speaker 00

  A hundred percent.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  So it's like, you need to go to the organic social, you need to find the right creators. But if you fill up, if you do that with an empty restaurant or empty store, or a product shelf where nothing, nothing's sold out, right? Like, the optics definitely change, so.

• 37:32Speaker 00

  It's just so interesting. It's like, you kind of get to ask yourself as a business, what would I like someone to do? And then like you could throw enough money at it and you know and then the creativity and the learnings and the insights become the justification like just like any marketing there'll be many crowd missions that ended up not working for the business in hindsight to the way they thought but I just like the opportunity to even learn that that's how I think about shit.

• 37:58Speaker 01

  I sell the business all the time like the flip side of your product not being good is like is also positive through crowd because you need to know if something's wrong with your product right you need to know if like I felt like think about how many projects are launched with billions of dollars invested before they even ask the consumer.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  That's what that's what this is I think a lot of people can use crowd for R and D.

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:16Speaker 00

  Like hey we need 50 people to show up to the office right now and tell us like when we get samples here of like scratching stiff stickers or of gummies like yeah I got my team but like you know that's like grading your own homework or like is your kid like hey is your kid cute like you're a child yes my child is cute like meanwhile like being able to like blast it out actually to that point how fat at scale I assume this thing could be very fast right?

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Super fast.

• 38:41Speaker 00

  Right like like my dream is like I'm sitting in a meeting I'm like and then like literally 50 fucking random humans in Manhattan or at my door of my office and I'm like eat this cereal what do you think?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  Yeah dude when I first started is I literally had dudes fly to me because they were like dude I had never seen that thousand random people like show up to my accounts my pages and like it's like the shock factor.

• 39:01Speaker 00

  You were doing like social media.

• 39:02Speaker 01

  I was I started this like with social media pushes like you know all the entrepreneurs in the game like like they didn't really have many options for real like real attraction and real followers so when they see like a thousand real girls and you know coming in common and sharing posts on Instagram they're like what is going on here you know?

• 39:16Speaker 00

  The fine line right like with crowd that you'll probably continue to tune like to your point as it hits scale it becomes more pure and more real and less kind of like manipulated.

• 39:26Speaker 01

  A hundred percent.

• 39:27Speaker 00

  You know like getting a thousand comments on a social media post that to me is like less exciting of like an execution than getting a thousand than.

• 39:36Speaker 01

  No we don't yeah we don't.

• 39:37Speaker 00

  Courtney Courtney didn't intend to buy this tomato sauce but I paid her to do it and now she might really I mean look she could throw it out but she might actually like it um you know leaving a comment on someone's post that gets into the fake followers and things of that nature.

• 39:53Speaker 01

  We don't even like.

• 39:54Speaker 00

  I get it I get it I get it that's what I'm excited about like the evolution of like how platforms grow.

• 40:01Speaker 01

  I think I want like I see the long scale vision of this like just like a Google Ads where it's like right now crowd is doing you know tons of activations physical activations I see this in the future where we have so many like active people that CMOs and brand owners are just gonna come to crowd ads and if they need 500 people to do a Q and A if they need 100 people to show up to the restaurant right now they're just.

• 40:19Speaker 00

  They need a thousand people to A B to be beta users of their app.

• 40:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Everybody who's listening is about to be a vibe covert like vibe coder like literally every single person that's listening to this in the next five years is going to probably build an app the same way that I said 20 years ago everyone is going to have a social media account and everyone laughed it's going to get so easy with AI that you're gonna literally voice memo I wish there was an app that counted my steps but also did this and also did that and make it pretty in pink and have it do this and ping me on this and you hit enter and a fucking app exists you know fucking crazy that is?

• 40:58Speaker 01

  But right now that's where the journey stops right with crowd is okay I wanna I'm voice noting that app and now I'm gonna go to crowd and get a thousand people to test this this vibe coded and you know and then and then from those results maybe you decide if it's worth your time.

• 41:08Speaker 00

  And by the way that's one of the pieces of your repertoire I'm gonna make original content I'm gonna start a podcast I'm gonna do that it makes sense it makes sense any final thoughts anything we didn't talk about in this podcast before we bounce out of here?

• 41:19Speaker 01

  Uh super excited to build this out I think it's gonna be a crazy journey and uh yeah.

• 41:23Speaker 00

  What's your advice to someone that like wants to be in your spot they're like I have I've had ideas I also was like him always had side hustles apps music selling blow pops trading cards like what do you think was in you and what do you see in others that you looked up when you looked up guys like me that were older or even when you look down actually you're in a fun spot 34 you know 22 24 year old entrepreneurs that I'm sure you've met through having this company what do you think the what do you think the thing that is holding back people to jump like what did you not struggle with or what what did you have to get over to like go all in?

• 41:59Speaker 01

  I didn't.

• 42:00Speaker 02

  Progressive's Accident Response can contact emergency services if you're in a major accident the only thing worse than someone you love being in an accident is not being able to help them so Progressive is here to help when you can't so get peace of mind knowing your loved ones are protected with Progressive's Accident Response learn more at progressive.com Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates Limited Availability in California driver is responsible for emergency and towing charges not covered by the policy coverage subject to policy terms and conditions.

• 42:30Speaker 01

  Struggle with going after like absurd visions and dreams right whether that's like that came natural to me now like did I do no did I take the smartest routes and are feeding those dreams and maybe not but I back then if you would ask me 10 years ago like hey um you know would do you regret doing this do you you know regret choosing this career going to music or whatever I would have said maybe yeah I regret that 10 years ago now I definitely don't because for like.

• 42:52Speaker 00

  Realize what it brought you.

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Literally it brought me uh like insights and experience that only those things would have been able to give me to build what I am what to build crowd right like so I view I view this like the startup game as a as a giant chess game right I think I think it's really easy to wanna give up really early in the chess game but you'll realize later on that all of those things that you did like gives you.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  The adversities built up to the success.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yeah like.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  You're basically saying if I may because I think this is pretty powerful I like it there was a point where you did the whole music thing and you were like 27 26 29 I don't know.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  18 or whatever.

• 43:31Speaker 00

  You were doing it then but there was a point after you did it all and nothing materialized from it the way you thought that if I caught you on that night and be like yo how's the music thing and you're like I'm actually pivoting out like but you don't regret it because you love music and you're like no I actually regret it because you thought you wasted those seven or eight years you now in hindsight understand all the data points and context actually was a foundation a foundational builder to what you're building with crowd now.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  A hundred percent and I wouldn't even know I wouldn't had that urge to find a bunch of groups of random people if like you know what I'm saying if I didn't do that myself um but yeah.

• 44:02Speaker 00

  So ultimately the the story is even though you see them as shortcomings today don't spend your time dwelling on it if I can as Ryan I'm telling you there's a very high propensity likelihood chance that some of those things are gonna set you up nicely for your next thing so just focus on your fucking next thing.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  Exactly and it's like it's like uh in a room full of guys that are all trying to compete for something it's like what you know what credentials what have you done in the last 10 years to like to make it so that you deserve this this opportunity and like now I'm saying oh shit I ate shit for 15 years in different industries but doing that has created this whole vision for this company that I have now and so as long as the passion to what you're doing is super super real then how you do it or how you get there like you know everyone goes through different journeys I say I say go all in on that and then if it doesn't work out the takeaway from that might just be that it's not over right like that it didn't work out but some you might get a big win.

• 44:54Speaker 00

  Or this thing's over but it's setting up the next thing.

• 44:56Speaker 01

  A hundred percent after after the music thing I I built mobile apps I stayed up from 12 midnight until 5am managing Indian development team and I did that for like four years building like social apps for like 5k and flipping them here for like 30k like that so I I messed up my sleep schedule for years building apps right and learning how to manage a team that also played a massive part in building crowd because I didn't have to go find some random CD you know what I'm saying so it's like.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Right how do how do people find crowd how they find you as we wrap up?

• 45:21Speaker 01

  Uh yeah so find crowd on the website www.joincrwd.com on socials at join crowd as well um you can find me on LinkedIn on Instagram it's R Chen West.

• 45:33Speaker 00

  Just straight?

• 45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah just straight like you're talking about LinkedIn or?

• 45:37Speaker 00

  Just like you know I don't know if there's an underscore or fucking dash in.

• 45:39Speaker 01

  I know so Instagram is just R Chen West no no.

• 45:42Speaker 00

  West isn't like you're from the west coast.

• 45:44Speaker 01

  Like from the west coast.

• 45:45Speaker 00

  Yeah you really fucking about the Bay area.

• 45:46Speaker 01

  I mean.

• 45:47Speaker 00

  I'm from the.

• 45:48Speaker 01

  I'm from the area you know what I'm saying you know what I'm saying?

• 45:49Speaker 00

  Awesome bro.

• 45:50Speaker 01

  Thank you bro.

• 45:51Speaker 00

  Bye everyone I hope you enjoyed this we start doing much more original podcast content let me know if that's a good idea.

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Tune in.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  Everybody if you enjoyed this podcast please go back and look at the prior episodes they're loaded I appreciate your attention and uh thanks for being part of this journey see you later.

• 46:07Speaker 02

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