#434: Max Rofagha on Building Internet Communities

Max Rofagha is founder and CEO of Finimize, one of the world’s largest and most engaged finance communities. Max previously founded DeinDeal, an online retailer that was acquired by media conglomerate, Ringier. In this conversation, we discuss audience growth, monetization, copywriting, hiring for substance, the importance of community, and why Max is driven to increase financial education. ======================= LVL is a new crypto investing platform that I'm an investor in. They allow anyone to trade an unlimited number of times per month for only $9. If you buy or sell more than $500 in Bitcoin on any exchange, you're spending too much on trading fees. Use LVL to save money and trade as many times you want, but only pay $9/month. https://lvl.co/pomp ======================= Diginex is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the US. That exchange, EQUOS, has been built to institutional standards, but is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot, as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and get a 5% discount on all fees, by signing up using equos.com/pomp ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 80,000 investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy to understand language, while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://www.pompletter.com

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

• 0:00Anthony Pompliano?

  What's up everyone, this is Anthony Pompliano. Most of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, simply the best podcast out there. Let's kick this thing off. Max Rofaga is founder and CEO of Finimize, one of the world's largest and most engaged finance communities. Max previously founded D Deal, an online retailer that was acquired by media conglomerate Ringer. In this conversation, we discuss audience growth, monetization, copywriting, hiring for substance, the importance of community, and why Max is driven to increase financial education. I really enjoyed this conversation with Max, and I hope you do as well. Before we get into this episode though, I want to quickly talk about our sponsors.

• 0:42Anthony Pompliano?

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• 1:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Go to lvl.co/pomp or click on the link in the description. Lvl.co/pomp. Go get a Level account and sign up today. Lvl.co/pomp. Next up is Digenex. They are the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange to be listed in the United States. That exchange called EQOS, E-Q-U-O-S, EQOS, has been built to institutional standards, but it is available to everyone. You can trade Bitcoin and Ethereum spot as well as Bitcoin perpetuals, and you'll get a discount on all fees by signing up using equos.com/pomp. Again, Digenex has an exchange called EQOS. It is the first company with a cryptocurrency exchange

• 2:06Anthony Pompliano?

  to be listed in the United States. Go and check out equos.com/pomp or click on the link in the description. EQOS, E-Q-U-O-S, equos.com/pomp. Go check out EQOS.

• 2:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Lastly, don't forget that I write a daily letter to over 85,000 investors about business, technology and finance. I break down complex topics into easy to understand language while sharing my personal opinion on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at pompletter.com. Again, pompletter.com. Alright, let's get in this episode with Max. I hope you guys enjoy this one.

• 2:44Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano is a partner at Morgan Creek Digital. All opinions expressed by Pomp or his guests on this podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Morgan Creek Digital or Morgan Creek Capital Management. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:10Anthony Pompliano?

  Alright guys, bang, bang. I've got Max here with me. Dude, thank you so much for doing this.

• 3:16Speaker 02

  Thanks, awesome to be here.

• 3:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's jump right into your background. This is not the first company, Finimize, that you started. Tell us kind of where you grew up and what that first business was.

• 3:26Speaker 02

  Sure. So I grew up originally in Berlin and I grew up in the sector of Berlin that was American. That's why I have this weird German-American slang or dialect. And basically then studied in the UK, studied in the UK and the US, economics and international relations. And never really had a job. I've always been in the startup world. With the exception of one year, I did, right out of uni, of university, I did one year at a consulting firm for like media, sports, strategy. And what ended up happening is I tried to recruit one of the

• 4:08Speaker 02

  partners there to start a consulting firm with me and do a spin out, until I realized that actually this is, this is kind of boring. And then I started my first company. And that was an e-commerce business. And it was, it was a very random story. So I ended up in Zurich, in Switzerland, out of all places, because I had a couple of friends who had studied there and they were like starting a company. And we originally started off with a kind of Groupon daily deal kind of model, if you remember those days. And that was kind of the starting point that allowed us to get like super high growth rates and build up a user base really quickly. And then one day, we kind of looked at the data and we're like, all right, like we've

• 4:53Speaker 02

  A, we've kind of hit a ceiling a little bit in the domestic market and B, the sustainability, because with this whole daily deal model, it's all about like the retention and the recurring bookings from merchants. And that was not super easy, and I think you're kind of seeing that all over the world. So I think the thing that we did pretty cleverly, if I may say so myself, is we kind of transitioned the entire business into becoming a full-on e-commerce business. And so we ended up having our own warehouse. We had like sixty people just working in a warehouse in the end. And we took our own inventory and everything. We essentially built a multi-category e-commerce shop.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  Ended up being the largest one, just Amazon was larger in Switzerland. And we were reaching like twenty-five percent of all households in a small but very, very wealthy country. And then we kind of hit the ceiling again, because you're kind of like, okay, we have super high brand recognition, more people knew us than British Airways within the country. And so if you haven't shopped with us at that point in time, then you probably just didn't care for what we did, and we couldn't really force it. And so then we basically reached this point where we said, okay, you know, it's probably time to either think about internationalization or about a sale. And we spoke to a few, to a few potential acquirers and ended up selling it

• 6:20Speaker 02

  to the largest e-commerce, sorry, to the largest media house in Switzerland. And this was at the end of 2015. And so that was really my first startup founder, venture building kind of experience. And that then led me to start Finimise. And those are two very, very different companies that I've built. The e-commerce business was a very mercenary business. So our number one goal was, how the hell do we get as much revenue as we possibly can? And I think we then sort of retroactively tried to create like a mission around it, but I think that was one of the learnings, and also you can't apply a mission in retrospect.

• 7:02Speaker 02

  And so with Finimize, it's been the complete opposite. It's been a it's been a personal experience living in such a company. We have a really strong mission, which I'm happy to dive into all that. But that's kind of the story that got me to where I am today.

• 7:15Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And what was like your one or two biggest takeaways from building that company at such a young age?

• 7:23Speaker 02

  So number one was, and I think I see this across the board with a bunch of younger founders is you totally underestimate the soft factor stuff. So when you're young and you're ambitious, you're like, you know, screw, screw like core values, like, let's just go, go, go, go, go. And and then you kind of realize as you mature and as you start recruiting people and you start sort of measuring what's the health of the culture, I think you start appreciating all these soft factors a lot more. And and that's been one of the key learnings that I've taken away, number one. So that's been actually some one of the things that I, the very first thing before I started Finimize was I wrote our culture manifest.

• 8:06Speaker 02

  And and you can find it on our website, finimize.com/culture. It's public. And again, that during this COVID time, that has been absolutely vital in getting us through this. So that's number one, I think, culture and the importance of soft soft factors. Number two, I think the importance of scale and then being able to try out new things. So like I said, back back there in a fairly small country, we had very large scale and that allowed us to just try out a bunch of different verticals. So we we sold you anything from from furniture to sports to fashion, all the way to sex toys. Like you, whatever you wanted, you could buy with us.

• 8:46Speaker 02

  And at the same time, though, we would start verticals and then we would see this isn't working and we would shut them down. And we had that ability to do this experimentation because we had that scale and the scale allowed us to actually get real signal from the market. I think that's number two. And then number three, at the end of the day, I think obviously, it always comes down to hiring the right people and having a good business. But I think the first two are the key things that really sort of got impressed into my mind.

• 9:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that. And what is Finimize? So how did you start Finimize? And what was kind of the idea for the business?

• 9:23Speaker 02

  Sure. So like I said, it's been a much more personal experience. I'll quickly tell you what happened to give you a bit of context. So what I did is I was in my mid to late twenties at the time. And everybody's like, hey, you need to start saving up some money, you know, as you approach thirty, all that stuff. And so I did that. And what I did is every month I took money from my salary and I just put it on to savings account. And I did that for a couple of months. And one day I woke up and I realized fantastic news. I've built up savings.

• 9:56Speaker 02

  Then the immediate follow up question was, what do I do with those savings? And because I saw, you know, interest rates were lower than inflation, etc. And so the very first thing that I went to go do is I went to go see a financial advisor. And what happened was I walked through the door. And there was a lovely lady, very friendly, etc. But I noticed she'd already laid out all the brochures onto the table. And I saw that each brochure had their logo on it. And I very quickly realized, okay, this is going to be a sales pitch for their products rather than them genuinely wanting to help me. And I knew straight away, that's not the right solution for me. And so I went back home and I started to inform myself as much as I could on investing and finance and all that stuff

• 10:41Speaker 02

  online, which frankly, wasn't an easy endeavor. And then in the evenings, I would meet friends and I was in a fortunate position that a lot of them were working in finance. And I would just bombard them with all the questions that I had about the stuff that I'd learned that day. And then at the same time, I kept bumping into people who were in the same boat as I was. So they were lacking the finance knowledge. But they weren't fortunate enough like I was that they had that community of people around them who could help empower them to make the right investing decisions. And that was the genesis moment for Finimise, where I started to dive in a bit deeper into the whole topic and realize a couple of things. Number one is, I certainly wasn't the only one with that experience and with that frustration.

• 11:26Speaker 02

  So eighty-six percent of millennials save each month, but they keep more than half of their savings in cash, just as I was doing, because there isn't a suitable way to get financial advice. And so that begs the question, then, why is that the case? And if you dive into the data, and there's been a bunch of different research papers on this, within the millennial demographic, and you know, I'm a millennial, seventy-five percent, roughly, I think seventy-two percent, say that they want to take direct control over their wealth, but they lack the know-how to doing so. And so it's all around that missing know-how piece. And then if you look at the remaining quarter who do take action, ninety percent of them

• 12:08Speaker 02

  say that they consult their friends and the media before they make a decision. And so it's really with that insight that we've been building Finimise. And so to answer your question in a very long-winded kind of way, what we're doing is we're building the world's most engaged and largest finance community. And there's really two tenets to that. Number one is, we want to give our members access to best-in-class content from a team of analysts that we've hired. And number two is, we want to give you access to your local and now virtual community, so that you can learn from the experiences of other people who've gone through exactly that financial journey that you're about to go through.

• 12:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And so let's talk about community first, right? That's kind of like the backbone of what you're trying to build here. Talk a little bit about how you've thought about building the community and then how that kind of plays out in the products and content that you guys are putting out in the world.

• 13:05Speaker 02

  Got it. So I have to admit that we never really set out to build a community. It happened very organically on the back of our content. And so what happened was that we, one day, so we started off with a newsletter product and since then have sort of launched other products and mediums as well. But that was like our starting point. And we would explain to people in three minutes every day, here's the main things that you need to care about in the world of finance. And most importantly, why you should care about it. So why you should care if interest rates go up or go down and how that might affect your person.

• 13:44Speaker 02

  And then what would happen is one day we're like, hey, let's go meet these people who read our content. And we met in London in a pub, as you do. And we were super surprised that I think like 50 people showed up. And we very quickly, Vittimize took over that pub. And we thought, hey, this is pretty cool. A, we get to meet all these people and B, they get to learn from each other. And so we did that over and over and over. And these things started getting larger and larger and larger. And so in London, we would have meetups of like three, sometimes even 400 people showing up. And then we would start getting emails because we would post it on our social media or say it in our newsletter of people in LA saying, hey, can you do this in LA?

• 14:29Speaker 02

  Or like people in Sydney being like, can you do this in Sydney? And we said, we'd love to do this because that would be an amazing life to have just to fly around the world and host meetups, but we can't. But why don't you do this in Sydney? And why don't you do this in LA? And here's our playbook and we trust you with the brand. And we empower you to host your own meetup. And that's really what gave birth to our sort of meetup community. And now, you know, last year, we connected around about 15,000 people in the physical world at meetups. Literally all over the world, there's not been a single continent where we haven't been.

• 15:09Speaker 02

  And there's a meetup happening pretty much every single day of the week, somewhere around the world. And it's all completely voluntary, which brings me back to the mission. And this year with virtual, we've completely shifted it to virtual. And we've actually, this year already doubled. So we've connected more than 30,000 people at our meetups. And that's really driving force for how we think about product, brand, et cetera. I'm happy to dive into that as well.

• 15:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you think of this, how much of it is, I basically have created a playbook or infrastructure and I'm going to kind of arm the community to interact with each other. Right? Like, I'm going to give you the tools, I'm going to give you the playbook. And then you guys go and do it versus you guys are still, maybe not micromanaging, but definitely like, hey, there should be a meetup tomorrow in Dublin. And then the day after that, we're going to do one in Singapore. And you guys are kind of centrally planning this to some degree.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  Yeah. So this is the constant sort of swinging along the spectrum of like, completely giving up control and be having a very, very tight knit community. And so what we found works for us, and I think there's examples for either side of the spectrum. We kind of, for us, figured out that sitting in somewhere in the middle works best. So we are very strict in terms of who can actually host a meetup. So like in a quarter, we'll have a couple of thousand applications for people wanting to host a meetup. And we'll take in like maybe 50. So we, on that part, we're super strict so that we make sure that the, that the brand is represented well.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  Because what happens otherwise is that people attend these meetups and it's a shit experience and it looks bad on Finimise. And so that's obviously our brand is a huge asset that we need to maintain. But then, you know, at the end of the day, we say to them, you, you know, we have a very engaged community, for example, in Nigeria. And I have no idea what are the financial topics in Nigeria. And so we depend on them to surface the topics that are interesting to the local communities. And they get to pick it and they get to organize it, but we basically provide the platform and the playbook for them.

• 17:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And as part of this entire process, what would you say are the one or two things that you've learned that for those that are trying to figure out how to build community for their business or their products, what are those things that you're like, if I did this all over again, here's the two things that I would really double down on and focus on, and these are my learnings?

• 17:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think the reason for us why this works so well, and this is a manifest manifests itself also when we ask these, because I always have these friends who like work at top tier banks or like in private equity funds, and they're like, why the hell does someone host a meetup for you without getting paid and puts all this effort into it? Like, why do they do this? Like, is this fake? Or like, are you paying them? And I'm like, no, it's genuinely these people do this because they believe in the mission. And so the having this really strong mission, and our mission is we want to empower people to become their own financial advisors. And that really resonates with our audience. And that's what draws people in. So I think that's, that's absolutely crucial. And then

• 18:30Speaker 02

  I think, you know, having that, that really balanced approach of giving control, but also having very, very strict guidelines on what can and can't be done. I think those are the two main areas that are important.

• 18:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then let's talk about how you guys make money. Cause I think part of this is like, it's great to have, you know, content, which you guys do, and we'll talk about in a minute. It's great to have community, which you do, but at some point you got to make money. But you guys aren't just making money. You guys are doing very, very well in kind of the finance vertical across a number of countries. How the hell do you guys make money?

• 19:02Speaker 02

  Good question. So, so we have a, we're basically building a multi revenue stream business. The first revenue stream was pretty straightforward. We have an audience that's highly relevant to a lot of financial brands. And so we do advertising and we let them advertise through native advertising in our primarily in our newsletter, but also our website.

• 19:27Speaker 02

  Then we have a premium subscription or premium membership where the end consumer pays. So it's around about $60 a year and then you get access to a full content library. And you get access to premium meetups and a bunch of other things. And then the third piece, which is actually fairly nascent for us. And we never like thought about it until a bunch of people started approaching us. Is we have an API business as well. And so what happens is asset managers, investment platforms, et cetera. They come to us and they say, hey, we love your content. Can we have it? And now we can say, yes, you can have it.

• 20:11Speaker 02

  All you have to do is you have to plug into our API and you can immediately integrate it into your own user experience. And that gives them access to text and audio content, whatever they want. In order to then increase the engagement with their own user base. So those are the three revenue streams that we are pursuing.

• 20:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Let's start in reverse order. Let's start with the API. What are they using the content for? And then how do you think about pricing that or getting paid via that API and the licensing?

• 20:44Speaker 02

  Sure. So we basically offer today an out of the box solution. Which which lets you either get access to our daily news and insights. Or to our weekly news and insights. And then we we give you that either in text or in audio. And so the cheapest version that you can get is weekly text. And the most expensive version that you can get is daily audio. And so to give you an example without giving any specific brands. So we had a an investment platform come to us and they said, we have 10 million users. 2 million of them are active. We want to activate the remaining 8 million. And in order to do that, we believe content is the way to do it.

• 21:27Speaker 02

  And that was the pitch point for them. And so that's how that works. It's interesting for us also because obviously a lot of these apps and platforms don't have audio. And so they build media players just to integrate our audio content. And then in terms of pricing, you know, to be totally honest, we're like I said, it's very nascent. So we're still figuring out what's the right price point for each of them. And currently we're pitching it as a flat fee. But then obviously, sort of what's normal for licensing business is that you start also having a usage-based components in there. But currently, it's very simple. You come to us, pick what you want, and then you pay an annual license.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  And then what we're also doing is if you want to have custom content within that license and within that API, that's also something that we look at.

• 22:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And let's talk about subscriptions and advertising. Obviously, those two are sometimes at odds with each other, right? I think there's this like debate, should you do advertising? Should you do subscriptions? Everyone thinks it's a binary world. You guys are doing both. So maybe talk through just how you think about kind of when to put advertising somewhere versus when to go subscription and the pros and cons of that decision.

• 22:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, so to be totally honest, we actually started with with subscription and then kind of moved more into advertising because we don't necessarily. So we actually originally thought exactly what you were saying. So we thought you got to pick one or the other, and we picked subscription.

• 23:00Speaker 02

  But I think, you know, I think the best example of a company that's proven that both can work is the New York Times. I think they've done a phenomenal job in building up both. And obviously, subscription for them is something that's been, that's really, really been taking off alongside advertising. The way that we think about it is we have a free product and it's super high quality. You know, we have analysts who write all the content, so they're expensive. And we give out that that piece of content in our newsletter for free. And so we monetize that through through advertising. And for us, there's also a user benefit because we often find that users use our advertising, specifically with financial brands, as a discovery product.

• 23:43Speaker 02

  So they find out about new platforms like, oh, here's an investment platform that lets you invest into art, or here's an investment platform that lets you invest into sneakers and stuff like that, which they normally perhaps wouldn't come across. And so in the premium product, and I think this is where we're different to perhaps a New York Times or any of those guys, in the premium product, we have zero advertising. So, once you pay, it removes all of the ads. And that's how we, that's how we separate it.

• 24:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And when you think about growing the business from here, is this something where you'll continue to invest in all three of these revenue channels, right? So you'll continue to have advertising, subscription, and also the licensing business? Or do you see the business evolving as you get larger to kind of coalesce around one of those revenue streams?

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Right now, the plan is that to continue with, with all three. So I, so we have, we've built this internal funnel, I guess. So obviously, our, our main aim is to upgrade someone into a subscription. And if we fail to do that, then we obviously still can monetize our users through advertising. And so we're able to achieve really interesting unit economics that way. And then, like I said, the, the licensing business is super interesting because it's, it's essentially pure contribution margin for us. But it's very nascent. And so it's, it's, it's hard to, I would love for it to work, but, but it's, it's early days.

• 25:12Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Let's talk a little bit about new revenue streams. Are there other things that you have looked at that you think are interesting? Whether they're physical products or other types of things that could potentially become part of the business? Or do you think it's just these three that you'll stick with?

• 25:30Speaker 02

  So we have a lot of discussion around that with, within our board around, you know, I think there's different businesses who have different strategies when it comes to revenues. Some people say focus on one and, and, and more revenue streams you add, the less focused you are, and that's bad for the business. And then others say the opposite.

• 25:51Speaker 02

  I think for now, we're just going to focus on those three. And if we were to explore other ones, I think there's a bunch of things that we could do. You know, one thing that we could do is go further downstream and actually go into a transaction. So we know that a lot of our users want to take a transaction. So that's an avenue that we could take. Another one is the more classic media play, which is go into merchandise. That could be, that could be is probably a smaller one, but kind of a fun one to do.

• 26:26Speaker 02

  But to be honest, right now, we don't want to like spread it anymore thinly. One thing that we, that we do occasionally do is research. So obviously we have a lot of access to people and their investing behaviors and attitudes. That's something that we might explore a little bit further. But again, we don't want to get too distracted with, by spreading ourselves too thin.

• 26:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. And when you think about kind of the team, how does your team change based on these various monetization strategies? Do you have to go and kind of hire a completely new team with new skillset? Or do you continue just to kind of use the team that you have, maybe add some people, but you learn the skill as you guys go into the new monetization strategy?

• 27:12Speaker 02

  No, so we're very lean and we like that and we like being lean.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  And so we, we have one content team. That content team produces free and that same content team produces premium. Same with the licensing. And I think that's the way it has to be because that's the only way that you can ensure consistency across all the different products.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  And for us, really, it's all about the quality of the people who we hire who produce the content. That's the number one thing. It doesn't really matter what product they end up working on.

• 27:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. What is the thing that you're most excited about moving forward? Given the audience you have in finance? I know that obviously kind of the Robin Hood trader has become the topic de jour of a lot of the mainstream media. But how do you think about the pandemic impacting that audience? That kind of rise of the millennial investor or the Robin Hood investor? And how that will impact the business in the future?

• 28:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, so I think what's interesting, and I know that you're big into crypto. So in 2018, we saw a really interesting surge in people actually being interested in finance in general, and I think crypto was a big driver there. Then now we're seeing a big surge again in people being interested through this whole sort of Robin Hood surge. And so I think what you're seeing is these drivers or these triggers that lead people to enter the world of finance, which perhaps typically would have been something that would have been a bit too mystic and a bit too dull for them, and these triggers allow them to sort of peek into that world.

• 28:53Speaker 02

  The way that we always have positioned ourselves is we are not for the day trader. We are for people who want to have a sophisticated, more refined, more thoughtful trading strategy or investing strategy. And the way that we describe our persona of a customer is the casual investor. And I think you're starting to get many, many more casual investors as a result of all the things that are happening. And what a casual investor is someone who wants to actively invest because they don't just want to be passive, completely passive, they might be partially passive, but they also don't want to be a day trader. And so these are the kind of people who might spend a couple of hours a week on investing, not every single day.

• 29:37Speaker 02

  And that's really who we are catering to.

• 29:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. One of the things that you said previously is like the importance of copywriting. So the way that you communicate with your customer or your audience, talk a little bit about what you mean, why that is such an important skill set.

• 29:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I think copywriting is one of the most overlooked skill sets that you can have, and people really just take it for granted. And I think for us, sort of taking a step back, the sort of secret sauce that we have or that we like to think we have is we manage to synthesize two things that are typically not synthesized very easily or very well. On the one side is we take substance, so that's why we hire ex-analysts who really, really know what they're talking about. And on the other side, we have simplicity. And that's why we hire copywriters. And so typically what you have is you have people with substance who produce these really complicated, convoluted reports that nobody really understands.

• 30:37Speaker 02

  And on the other side, you have people who produce pretty shallow, but very easy to understand financial content. But it's so shallow that it actually doesn't really add any value to you. And so what we really focus on is combining those two things. And so copy, I think for us is the crucial piece that grabs someone's attention. And the way that we think about that is, and we've always been picturing this user is, imagine someone standing at the subway station. It's loud, they have their headphones plugged in, they're reading what you've been writing. And they probably have 50% of their attention span is with you. And as soon as they have to reread a sentence, we've lost them.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  And so we need to be able to write in a way that A, conveys the substance, but B, has a nice flow, is conversational, et cetera. And I think that's one of those things that's way easier said than done and is a real craft. And you see that both on the actual content side, but also, you know, more recently, we've started doing paid acquisition for the first time, really. And that's a big, big driver. At the end of the day, paid acquisition is all about how good is your copy and your ad creative? And so hugely important skillset.

• 31:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Have you seen an impact on the cost of acquisition by simply changing the ad copy, but kind of same target, same audience, same platform?

• 31:57Speaker 02

  I mean, I'm a firm believer that the people who win in paid acquisition are the people who win with ad creatives. I mean, that's also the way that we've been structuring our own organization, is as much testing as you can do with ad creatives. And typically what we find is the copy, in our experience, the copy is more important even than the visual. So again, copy is everything.

• 32:20Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Makes a lot of sense. You've hired tons of analysts, but not journalists. Explain that decision.

• 32:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, so like I said, we really, really focus on the substance part. And you know, when we started with our newsletter product,

• 32:41Speaker 02

  we've always been answering three questions for our users. Number one is, what's going on here? Number two is, what does this mean? And number three, why should you care? And the why should you care question, what we found is not something that a financial journalist, and I don't mean to offend anybody out there, in our experience is not something that they are able to answer very well. Because they don't have that deep understanding that someone from the industry has. And so when we did the hiring, you know, we interviewed a range of candidates with journalism background, because that's kind of the obvious profile that you want to hire for someone.

• 33:21Speaker 02

  And we just figured, or we just found that the quality of the insights that they provide just isn't strong enough. And so that's then what, you know, ended up leading us to the analysts. And so we've hired people, you know, we more most recent hire is someone who was at Goldman Sachs for 10 years. And we only hire analysts right now. We have one exception, and he kind of sits at the intersection of product and content. And he was a managing editor at Bloomberg for 10 years. And so he's the one exception that we've made. But other than that, we've always hired analysts because the insights that they provide is what we're really looking after.

• 34:01Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. Do you think that other media companies could benefit from kind of taking a similar strategy of almost hiring people who are either, one, have skin in the game, so actually the investors themselves, or the kind of analysts who have spent years and years kind of more focused on analysis rather than just journalism?

• 34:22Speaker 02

  I mean, I think it really depends on what the publication wants to do. So when we define internally what we care about is we care all about providing insights. And so in order to provide insights, you need people to understand it, and that's what led us there. If your thing is, hey, I just want to have breaking news and I want to be the first one to break that, I don't think you necessarily need that. You probably actually, or if you want to have investigative pieces, you probably want to have a journalist because that's their skill set. But I think as soon as you start really digging into something and providing those insights, I think it makes a lot of sense.

• 34:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Absolutely. What's the biggest challenge for you guys moving forward?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Good question. We always have a bunch of challenges that we're thinking about. I think for us, it's all about, when we think about what we're doing is we essentially are creating a new kind of product category. A product where people are paying to get financial insights. There isn't really a product out there that exists yet. Similar to what maybe like a Headspace and a Calm did in the meditation space, you know, getting people into this space where they're paying for meditation was something new, was category defining.

• 35:43Speaker 02

  And we believe that we are doing something similar in the financial news analysis insights space. So the challenge that that brings is you're constantly having to educate the market on what you're doing, why this is worth paying for, why you can't Google this. So I think it's all about customer and market education and development. That's really what we're focusing on.

• 36:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. And then for you personally, like, we talked a little bit about what you've learned in your first company. What have you learned in this company so far that other founders could benefit from hearing?

• 36:20Speaker 02

  I think I applied the thing that I learned from my previous company with the culture manifest and defining that early on. I think that's been an absolute winner and I would definitely do that again. So really focusing on getting the soft factors and the soft values, right? I think importance of brand again is something that's super crucial and that's something that you just build up every single day by providing value to your end users.

• 36:49Speaker 02

  And then I think monetization. So when we started out, we had a very different business plan in place. And I would probably next time, I guess, try to put a little bit more emphasis on business plan from day one rather than building great product that you're proud of and building a good brand because you need both. And I think we kind of did a lot of experimentation and figured it out along the way. Which maybe that's the natural way to do it. And I know a lot of companies have done it, but it's probably easier if you really nail it from day one.

• 37:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Got it. Before I wrap up, I always ask everyone the same two questions and then you'll get a chance to ask me one. The first is, what's the most important book that you've ever read?

• 37:35Speaker 02

  That's a good question. The most important, I mean, I guess, I guess I'll give you two answers. One is sort of on the business side. I love reading business books. So I love stuff like Shoe Dog. And I love stuff like, I just read Michael Obitz's autobiography, which was, which was super entertaining and really interesting. But I think in terms of the book that I really love, because I think it's a really interesting perspective on life. It's The Little Prince from Saint Exupéry. I don't know if you've ever heard of it, but

• 38:18Anthony Pompliano?

  I have been. Why that one?

• 38:22Speaker 02

  It's, I guess it's a, it's a, it's a French book from, from a French author, The Little Prince. It's a very simple book. It's, it's sort of intended to be for, for children. Um, but it's an adult book with really, really important life lessons. If you sort of uncover it a little bit and go a little bit below the surface. And it just, you know, gives you lessons and perspectives on, you know, what matters in life, what matters with relationships, what matters with love. All, all the stuff that I think in our world of business and finance, you kind of lose. And I think that book does, is, is just a really refreshing read to sort of open your mind again.

• 39:04Anthony Pompliano?

  I love that answer. Second question is more fun. Aliens, are you a believer or a non-believer?

• 39:12Speaker 02

  Uh, I'm not a, I'm not a believer today, but I'm open to being convinced. So I'm not categorically against it.

• 39:18Anthony Pompliano?

  Why not a believer yet?

• 39:21Speaker 02

  I guess, uh, I haven't really seen any, any indication of it. Um, I know that there's, you know, that you always read these studies that are coming out from different planets, but I don't know, I probably believe in ghosts more than I believe in aliens. Uh, but yeah.

• 39:40Anthony Pompliano?

  Why believe in ghosts? You're like the third, you're like the third person ever to say that. Why do you believe in ghosts?

• 39:47Speaker 02

  Uh, I don't think I believe in ghosts per se, but I, I think I probably believe in ghosts a little bit more than I believe in aliens, just because sometimes things happen and you're, there's, isn't really a good explanation for it. And you're kind of in this, um, old historic place or something like that. And you're like, oh, I guess it could, could have been a ghost.

• 40:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. What's the one question you got for me to, to wrap us up?

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Uh, I actually have a quick one. Number one was, so the, so my favorite part of your podcast is when you open up and you say bang, bang. What's the, what's the background there?

• 40:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, literally there is none. I just did it one day and then I was like, I'm gonna do it again. And then, uh, about the third time, uh, I was like, well, I probably can't stop now. Like in a couple hundred episodes later, I just bang, bang. What's up?

• 40:36Speaker 02

  I love that. It's a, that's the energy tone, right? And then the second question is, so Bitcoin on a rise, where do you think it's gonna go this time?

• 40:48Anthony Pompliano?

  I think we see 100K by the end of next year for sure.

• 40:51Speaker 02

  Really?

• 40:52Anthony Pompliano?

  End of 2021.

• 40:55Anthony Pompliano?

  You know, how much higher than that? I have no clue. Could it not go to 100? Absolutely. Like, I kind of just think of it as

• 41:07Anthony Pompliano?

  the thesis is there, like, there's a fixed supply. Demand's only going to continue to increase over time. How long does that take? What are the price targets? All that is debatable, but like, you know, it's going to be worth more, you know, 10 years from now than it is today type thing, right?

• 41:24Speaker 02

  And you think last time we hit this sort of 18K mark, then afterwards it all sort of tripling down again? You're convinced that, or you're bullish it's not going to happen this time?

• 41:34Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, no, I think that we get another kind of parabolic run. Let's say, you know, say 100K, right? Or whatever the number ends up being. And then from there, you get a pretty nasty, like 80% drawdown again. So I kind of, you know, if you put a gun to my head and said, what do I think is going to happen? 100K or more by the end of next year? And then after that kind of blow off top, you'll then get a pretty nasty drawdown. You know, 80% probably somewhere in that range. Then you'll go through a multi-year kind of bear market like we did already. And then you'll basically, you know, kind of get another parabolic run again. So it's, you know, over the last 11 years, this game has been played, right?

• 42:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And it's kind of done this a number of times. I tend to think that, you know, this is no different. We're just in the next cycle of it.

• 42:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, awesome.

• 42:30Anthony Pompliano?

  So we'll, we'll see. Max, thank you so much for doing this. Where can we send people to find you on the internet? Or find out more about Finimise?

• 42:38Speaker 02

  Sure. So you can find me personally on Twitter. I have a bizarre Twitter handle, which is WholeEarthWeb. Which has a whole story to it, but Whole Earth

• 42:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, you're gonna have to tell us what the story is.

• 42:51Speaker 02

  Um, so I was, uh, when I really got in, so I was like one of those kids in, in, in, in school. I was like the first kid in my high school to have a website. So I've always been really into the web. And I kind of went down this really sort of rabbit hole for a year or something, uh, understanding where the world wide web came from. And I, and I found out about the Whole Earth Catalog from Stuart Brand. And I bought one and everything and I looked at that. And then I was like, oh, I guess, you know, those guys who were sort of the hippies of that generation, they actually helped create the world wide web. So I thought I was going to be smart and just combine the terms Whole Earth Catalog with web, which led me to Whole Earth Web. And now I have to stick with it.

• 43:35Anthony Pompliano?

  And, and you've been using that as, uh, as kind of the, uh, the name on the internet since?

• 43:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I kind of stuck, I, I, one day I signed up for Twitter and like ever since I've been having it, I kind of like it. It's not great for like personal recognition, but I'll stick with it.

• 43:51Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. All right. So they can find you there on, on Twitter. And then what about Finimize?

• 43:56Speaker 02

  Well, Finimize, uh, you can find us, uh, on, on Twitter, just Finimize. You can go to our website, finimize.com, F I N I M I Z E, Instagram, social media, et cetera, and in, um, all the app stores. So, uh, Apple and Android.

• 44:13Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it, man. You are, uh, you're a legend. I appreciate you, uh, taking the time to do this. And, uh, obviously you've built a very, very large engaged audience, uh, and community, uh, and are figuring out how to kind of in a win-win way monetize it. So thank you so much for coming on and we'll definitely have to do this again in the future.

• 44:30Speaker 02

  Thank you. Awesome.