#982 Chris Adamo On How Miami Is Taking Over The Tech World

Chris Adamo is the Co-Founder of Flamingo Capital In this conversation, we talk about the growth in Miami that he's witnessed in the past 2 years, the capital and talent that has moved to Miami, and if the growth is sustainable. We also discuss how the NFT market is just getting started, new projects that are emerging, and what is Chris and his team at Flamingo Capital looking to invest in. ======================= This episode is sponsored by my favorite place to buy, trade, and stake crypto, Okcoin. They're the fastest growing US based exchange, serving over 190 countries globally with the easy onboarding and low fees. If you haven't tried them out yet, you should. They're on a mission to make learning about and buying crypto easier than ever, and they're all about bringing more financial literacy to everyone, something we can always use more of. From being the only exchange to integrate Lightning to contributing over $1M for Bitcoin core devs, they're doing incredible work to further the bitcoin ecosystem and they offer lots of other vetted utility assets from gaming to defi. With Okcoin, I feel confident that the future really will be ok. To get started, go to http://okcoin.com/pomp for some free bitcoin when you sign up. ======================= Fundrise is the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That’s right, Fundrise is making high-end private market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use, automated platform. See for yourself how over 190,000 investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10. Go to http://Fundrise.com/Pomp today and, for a limited time, get $10 when you place your first investment. That’s Fundrise.com/Pomp ======================= Crypto is all about giving the power back to the people and our sponsor, Pipe, is doing that in a big way. Pipe is the world’s first trading platform that allows you to trade recurring revenue streams for up-front capital. And with Pipe’s new API, companies with recurring revenue can build seamless, embedded financing options into their platforms. One of the most interesting uses for Pipe’s new API right now is Compass Mining’s “Mine Now, Pay Later” which powers payment plans on bitcoin mining hardware so more miners can start or scale with a smaller up-front investment. Whether you’re looking for mining hardware or scaling any business with recurring revenue, check out Pipe to access growth capital with: No loans. No dilution. No restrictive covenants or warrants. Just growth on your terms And right now, Pomp Podcast listeners can access tens of thousands of dollars even millions fee-free for 12 months. Whether you are a bitcoin mining company looking to enable financing for your customers or a SaaS, DTC, or any business that has recurring revenue, sign up at http://pipe.com/pomp to start trading today.

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

• 0:02Anthony 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. Now let's kick this thing off. Chris Adamo is the co-founder of Flamingo Capital. In this conversation, we talk about NFTs, the metaverse, and what the hell is going on in the digital universe that all these people on the internet are playing in. I really enjoyed this conversation with Chris, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Before we get into this episode, though, I first want to talk about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by OKCoin. They are my favorite place to buy, trade, and stake crypto. They're the fastest-growing US-based exchange, serving over 190 countries globally, with the easy onboarding and low fees. If you haven't tried them out yet,

• 0:44Anthony Pompliano?

  you should. They're on a mission to make learning about and buying crypto easier than ever, and they're all about bringing more financial literacy to everyone, something we can always use more of. From being the only exchange to integrate Lightning, to contributing over $1 million for Bitcoin core developers, they're doing incredible work to further the Bitcoin ecosystem, and they offer lots of other vetted utility assets, from gaming to DeFi. With OKCoin, I feel confident that the future really will be OK. To get started, go to okcoin.com/pomp for some free Bitcoin when you sign up. Again, if you want free Bitcoin, go to okcoin.com/pomp today. Today's episode is brought to you by Fundrise. You all know I believe that the best investors

• 1:26Anthony Pompliano?

  both understand and seek out extreme asymmetry. Fundrise is here to help you do just that. It's the largest direct-to-investor real estate investment platform out there, giving you the opportunity to achieve upside of an asset class previously reserved for institutions and high net worth individuals. That's right, Fundrise is making high-end, private-market real estate investing accessible to everyone via an easy-to-use automated platform. Its 1 million users already know that the investment with Fundrise is capable of producing strong appreciation returns and income generation while helping to stabilize a diversified portfolio. That's more important now than ever in our inflationary environment. See for yourself how over 190,000 other investors have built a better portfolio with private real estate. It takes just a few minutes to get started with as little as $10,000

• 2:10Anthony Pompliano?

  $10. Go to fundrise.com/pomp today and for a limited time you'll get $10 when you place your first investment. Again, that's fundrise.com/pomp. Go check it out and when you make your first investment, they'll give you $10 on top of it. Fundrise.com/pomp. Today's episode is brought to you by Pipe. Crypto is all about giving the power back to the people and our sponsor Pipe is doing that in a big way. Pipe is the world's first trading platform that allows you to trade recurring revenue streams for upfront capital. And with Pipe's new API, companies with recurring revenue can build seamless embedded financing options into their platforms. One of the most interesting uses for Pipe's new API right now is Compass Mining's Mine Now, Pay Later,

• 2:52Anthony Pompliano?

  which powers payment plans on Bitcoin mining hardware so more miners can start or scale with a smaller upfront investment. Whether you're looking for mining hardware or scaling any business with recurring revenue, check out Pipe to access growth capital with no loans, no dilution, no restrictive covenants or warrants, just growth on your terms. And right now, Pomp podcast listeners can access tens of thousands of dollars, even millions, fee-free for 12 months. Whether you are a Bitcoin mining company looking to enable financing for your customers, or a SaaS, DTC, or any business that has recurring revenue, sign up at pipe.com/pomp. Again, pipe.com/pomp to start trading today.

• 3:36Speaker 01

  Anthony Pompliano runs Pomp Investments. All views of him and the guests on his podcast are solely their opinions and do not reflect the opinions of Pomp Investments. You should not treat any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only.

• 3:59Anthony Pompliano?

  Chris is a, I'm gonna call you a Miami OG. Is that a fair title?

• 4:04Speaker 02

  Totally fair. Totally fair. 10 years in and get your card.

• 4:07Anthony Pompliano?

  10 years in. Where did you come from pre Miami?

• 4:10Speaker 02

  I'm a Queens kid from New York City, man.

• 4:12Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. And then what brought you to Miami?

• 4:14Speaker 02

  My wife. As most men are in the same boat.

• 4:17Anthony Pompliano?

  She was from Miami or she said, get our ass out of New York? We're going to Miami.

• 4:20Speaker 02

  She is an OG. She's what we call a unicorn in Miami.

• 4:23Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay.

• 4:23Speaker 02

  Born and raised, four generations of Miamians in Miami, building this city from like swampland to what it is today. This mecca of beautifulness.

• 4:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Wow. That is, that is like real. So you're no longer an OG. Now she's the OG.

• 4:34Speaker 02

  She'll always been the OG. I'm like, what is Miami? All I know about is like, you know, the beach. And she's like, no, no, no, it's, it's awesome. So I, I got the insights a long time ago.

• 4:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Now, just because I'm personally curious, did you guys meet in Miami or in New York? Or how did that play?

• 4:48Speaker 02

  Old fashioned way, New York City dive bar, Lower East Side. I was like wandering around, bunch of blonde hair. I'm like, hey, hi, how are you?

• 4:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Did you have on the great, uh, kind of colorful shirts back then?

• 4:59Speaker 02

  I was, no, all black.

• 5:01Anthony Pompliano?

  All black.

• 5:02Speaker 02

  New York. I got to Miami in 2012. Three years ago, I met Shep Gordon and he's like, is that, I was wearing one of his shirts. He said, what is that? It's a jam. He's like, there's more. He's like, he has 10s, millions. I'm like, I gotta have these shirts. So I was like, instantaneously, like, uniform. That was seven years ago. Haven't missed a day since.

• 5:16Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. I love it. All right. So talk to me about the rise of, I'll call it Miami tech. I don't know if there's a better term for it, but uh, there's a group of OGs that were here pre, I'll call it 2020. Uh, and these are people who, um, were in the tech industry. Um, and it spans like a pretty big group of people. The, the folks that I probably would say that, uh, I'm the most aware of, spend the most time with, or, or talk to about this. Somebody like a Marcelo Chlor, who built a, you know, multi-billion dollar business here, uh, and, uh, then went on to do a number of big, large, uh, great things. All the way to somebody like an Austin Bunson, who's been here, but been putting on Miami Tech Week and, and, uh, that type of stuff.

• 5:56Anthony Pompliano?

  Uh, and then everyone in between. And, you know, even, uh, I'm gonna say his name, Jose, uh, he'll, uh, he'll probably give me shit for, uh, for talking about him. Who built a company here in Miami, sold it, right? And now has coworking space in Miami, et cetera. Like, what was the magic of Miami pre 2020, when all of the, uh, um, the immigrants, we can call them, to Miami showed up? But like, what, pre 2020, what was the magic?

• 6:23Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing. Like, we've always been like, we want everyone to come here. It's always been, I got here 20, 10 years ago. I didn't know anybody. I had to start from scratch. Everyone was so welcoming. I got to the lab Miami in 2014 and it was like 10 of us on like, you know, picking tables and that was like the only place in town. That was the first one we had. And it kind of grew from there. We work in like 2017 and that kind of put us on the map of like, all right, this startup's here. You know, we had some, we had a bunch of, you know, ones that were doing pretty well. We had the Medina's had their exit and that kind of started a bunch more people like, oh, I can build a company here. And then the last two years have been, you know, amazing rocket ship growth. We have the ship built. We were ready to do it and we got the fuel now. So it's been phenomenal. I've been so excited to see us like kind of mature.

• 7:02Anthony Pompliano?

  And so from 2020 to now, two years, rocket ship is an understatement. It feels like people moved from all over the world to Miami. What has that been like from the perspective of people who are already here? You wanted people to move here. They moved here. But as most of things go, a lot of positives, some negatives, like how do you look at like the pros and cons of finally getting a bunch of people to be like, oh shit, Miami's cool and it's not just South Beach. Like there's more to it.

• 7:32Speaker 02

  Well, now it's more competitive to find money, I guess. But you know what? We had a lot less of it before those last two years. So in net, net, it's way more positive. I mean, for years I would go raise money for our startups and go to like Silicon Valley in New York to like, listen, like, we're in Miami, like, we should move here. I'm like, oh, all right.

• 7:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Did they think everyone was like retired or just like partying the whole time?

• 7:52Speaker 02

  They didn't even want to talk to you if you're in Miami. And then the last two years, like, are you in Miami? You gotta be in Miami. And I'm investing in Miami investing you already. So I'm like total change of narrative there of like, you have to have money from Miami before you get money from anywhere else.

• 8:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Really? Why do you think that is?

• 8:06Speaker 02

  The folks here don't believe in you. This is the capital now. Like, then why, why should I invest in you? So it's like, you gotta start here now. If you live in Miami, especially.

• 8:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, that's a very fascinating thing of like, there's so much capital and so many decision makers here now that if you can't get somebody in Miami to invest, then other people are like, ah, that would be a red flag.

• 8:23Speaker 02

  Totally. I mean, we started our syndicate in August. I was like, man, this is such a good time to like get people involved in Miami companies. We invested in 23 companies since August, all Miami based.

• 8:33Anthony Pompliano?

  This is flamingo capital.

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Capital, yeah, our syndicate. It's been wild. That would not have happened two years ago.

• 8:37Anthony Pompliano?

  And what is the thesis from an investment?

• 8:40Speaker 02

  Well, we're pretty optimistic, mostly stuff web three blockchain based crypto based, but also stuff that's like revolutionizing SaaS industries and you know, stuff like health tech. So we're pretty wide ranging. Like we see what's the future of this industry going to look like and how is it going to be more digitally native? And that's what we're into.

• 8:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Give me an example of a non crypto company that you guys have invested in.

• 8:58Speaker 02

  We invested in this company called Harmony and they make this synthetic base. Well, it's actually based off of like the the breast milk genome and they basically reverse engineered that to make a shelf stable formula.

• 9:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, interesting.

• 9:08Speaker 02

  Really wild.

• 9:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Pretty timely right now, given the baby food shortage.

• 9:13Speaker 02

  Exactly. Like, I think that a lot of folks, my wife and we also struggle with breast feeding. So hard, so hard. And if you can get human milk into your babies, like, why are we drinking cow milk right now? It's crazy. Like, this is 2022. It's time to change.

• 9:25Anthony Pompliano?

  It is. It's pretty incredible. And those founders are here in Miami?

• 9:28Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, they've been here a while.

• 9:30Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And so when you think about the Miami scene, talk to me about the importance of Mayor Suarez and other just leaders, right? Whether they're political elected leaders or just other leaders in the community as to making this happen.

• 9:42Speaker 02

  I mean, Mayor Suarez is the go baby. That guy's been amazing, amazing. He just knows how to like get people to like pay attention.

• 9:49Anthony Pompliano?

  And that's chief marketing officer.

• 9:50Speaker 02

  He's our chief marketing officer. I mean, whatever you want to say about politics, he just gets them. I hired that guy in a second for my company. And we needed someone to like, say, hey, pay attention, you know, get, once you get here and you get involved, you see. But people who just weren't coming with the hat of like, I'm going to invest in this city. I'm going to do business here. They're coming just to like, you know, vacation and then they'd be out. So now it's like vacation and do business, which is a great place to kind of have that those two things happen at once. I just love to see his kind of trajectory of how he sees Miami and how we've all got behind him. You know, it's like, it was like Mayor Suarez and there's like 100 little maybe behind him doing the same thing. I feel like I'm like, you know, I'll step in forever. The mayor like wants to get behind them. I know he has our backs.

• 10:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. And then what about like what I'll call Silicon Valley veterans moving here? So we saw Jack Abraham, Keith Rabois, Sherwin Pichard actually came before 2020. Like, there's a couple of folks who I think within Silicon Valley circles, people were like, yep, like they did one or many things where it was like, they get it. They've been successful here. What was the importance of them moving?

• 10:48Speaker 02

  I mean, they basically got here and they saw. Talent coming here, the money and then the founders. And then what follows is the employees. It's kind of how it happens. And I mean, I've gotten to know Jack and Sherwin really well. I love those guys. They just really put in their money where their mouth is and where their feet are, which is in Miami. Jack especially, man, he's been leaning into Miami. It's been such beautiful to see that atomic kind of come and become this like behemoth now of like making businesses.

• 11:09Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't, I think people know this, but maybe not, like Jack convinced Keith.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right.

• 11:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Right?

• 11:14Speaker 02

  Yeah. Maybe Sherwin had the influence on Jack. I don't know.

• 11:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't actually know where the lineage is. I'm pretty sure Jack is either the like initiator or very, very early on in, in a lot of this happening. And then talk to me about Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies, NFTs. We're in a building right now that literally has a painting outside of a bunch of characters that I couldn't even name them all. Yeah, this JPEG Morgan, you actually, actually you are the person who gave me a sweatshirt at one point for JPEG Morgan, which hilarious, right? What is going on? What is this stuff?

• 11:49Speaker 02

  We're just an underground ragtag bunch of investors who buy stuff in the NFT space.

• 11:53Anthony Pompliano?

  Rewind, rewind, rewind. Hold on, hold on. You're an underground ragtag group of investors. You realize how ridiculous that sounds?

• 11:59Speaker 02

  They're actual celebrities. It's pretty crazy. It's really like, just like a WhatsApp group that hasn't been formalized, but we decided, hey, you know what? We're going to all do things. We're going to invest together in things and projects, build people up and it's taken off. Like we're probably close to making an NFT out of it.

• 12:12Anthony Pompliano?

  So is it like a, like a friend group? Is it like a, like a club? Like, explain more. Like when people hear this, they're like, what are these people talking about? Like you have a name JPEG Morgan?

• 12:21Speaker 02

  We do.

• 12:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And that is what? That's the name of a WhatsApp group?

• 12:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we just made it. We just made a funny name out of it.

• 12:25Anthony Pompliano?

  And just anyone can join or it's like a?

• 12:27Speaker 02

  No, we hit, we hit the WhatsApp gap. So we're at, we're at the top. So like, all right, now we got to expand. Brian Breslin started a little chat about a year and a half ago. It was like 10 of us in Miami. Like what's an NFT? Like, all right, let's just find the people who are at the top of the game in the NFT world to tell and teach us. Okay. Miami and, and we basically found the top person in every part of that industry to come join our chat.

• 12:45Anthony Pompliano?

  Who are some of the people that you're allowed to say?

• 12:47Speaker 02

  We have Steve Aoki. We have, we have Keith Rosen from Time Magazine, Farouk, Tanya Sam, Ja Rule's in there. We got.

• 12:54Anthony Pompliano?

  What's Ja Rule doing these days?

• 12:56Speaker 02

  He's amazing. That guy just gets it. He leans in heavy and like wants to learn. And just like be part of things. So I respect that guy so much for how he is just like roll with the punches and kind of take himself from like one to next to next.

• 13:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I would love, I would love to hear a conversation between a couple of the people you just mentioned.

• 13:13Speaker 02

  We could do it. Whenever you want, we're in Miami.

• 13:15Anthony Pompliano?

  See what they're talking about in there. All right. So you got that. And literally, the characters on the outside of the building. I see people stop out here all the time and take photos of it, etc. Is that the thought process was like, let's put up a JP Morgan or a JPEG Morgan? A JPEG Morgan, um, characters, uh, kind of lineup?

• 13:35Speaker 02

  It was Hutch's idea. He's like, I got a wall. We got some NFTs we own. Let's throw them on the wall. And he did it like it was before Basel and it kind of just took off. That was like the height of NFTs. Like NFT New York City was in November and then 2021 of Basel was like NFT Basel it felt like. It was like everywhere was a party for NFT communities. It was crazy.

• 13:52Anthony Pompliano?

  When I, uh, when I saw them painting it out there, I was like, should I go tell him like, does he know something? Is this like, is this like a proved activity? Are these guys like gonna do like a paint and run? I didn't know. Um, all right. So, uh, talk to me a little bit about, um, the Bitcoin and crypto community outside of NFT stuff.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:12Anthony Pompliano?

  In Miami.

• 14:12Speaker 02

  Well, it's, it's really the same, right? I mean, I feel like you can't have crypto without NFTs.

• 14:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, here, here's one of the things that I find fascinating is, uh, there's a lot of builders, but there's also a lot of fund managers that have moved down here, right? So, um, I don't want to say names. I don't know if people know that they've moved or not, or who's comfortable or not. But there's a lot of very well-known funds, whether the founding GPs or, you know, very important components of their funds, they've moved here. And then you have a lot of companies that are also being founded here. It's not like they got started somewhere else and then they moved here. Is this all part of, uh, like Suarez always talks about, uh, capital of capital? And like, that's a key component of it is like, we have to be, uh, the dominant, uh, player in that space?

• 14:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. A lot of founders who had exits moved here, which is phenomenal for the ecosystems, I guess, to start new projects and find people who are like on the low level tier of like getting started in their careers to bring them up. That's why Silicon Valley did so well. They did that right. They got people to have, have, have things that exited, reinvest in the people. That's what's happening here. And then like web three is kind of the narrow little like, kind of like have to like be hanging our hats on that because there's adopting a new way of doing business and organizing organizations, which before to raise money, you had to have a startup. Now you can raise money by having an NFT drop, which is a total like game changer for folks, you know? Again, it's not. Huge amount of money, you can do probably your first pre-seed by that way.

• 15:30Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, we're gonna talk about that in one second. Last thing I want to ask about Miami, if I'm looking at a map, give me a rundown, if somebody's coming to visit Miami, where should they look where business activity is going on, like tech and startup stuff? Where are people living and where are the places that people should make sure if they come to Miami, they should go visit?

• 15:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, we're a really interesting place, we're really sprawling the city. Like, you know, I live in Pinecrest, which is like a half hour south of here, and I drive every day to like Brickell, downtown, midtown, Wynwood, the beach. It's kind of where I kind of stick around a lot.

• 16:01Anthony Pompliano?

  How far is Pinecrest from the beach?

• 16:03Speaker 02

  I'd say it's like a 40 minute drive.

• 16:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, and then from Pinecrest?

• 16:06Speaker 02

  It's a commute, you know?

• 16:07Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, Pinecrest to Wynwood or Design District is what it's.

• 16:11Speaker 02

  25.

• 16:12Anthony Pompliano?

  25?

• 16:12Speaker 02

  30 minutes.

• 16:13Anthony Pompliano?

  Ah, that's not that bad.

• 16:13Speaker 02

  Traffic could be more, but traffic everywhere, it's not that bad. If you don't think it's crazy, it's extra 10 minutes on your commute, it's not a big deal.

• 16:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 16:19Speaker 02

  Really isn't.

• 16:20Anthony Pompliano?

  All right, and so where should people, when they come visit, where should they go check out?

• 16:24Speaker 02

  I mean, people have been flocking to Wynwood in the tech scene, for sure. There's lots of people have VC offices there and startup offices there, so go hang out there, lots of amazing food. I love Design District, I love Little Haiti, I love Upper East Side, I love downtown, I love Brickell, I love everything in Miami. Yeah, you love the beach. Like, there's so many things here, like hidden gems, and then you go on south, south of Miami, Coral Gables, you can go west, go to Doral. And it's like, it's crazy how much people are booming in different neighborhoods around town, people don't think about going to.

• 16:49Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  And there's huge amounts of people moving there, opening, building buildings, like you see cranes in every neighborhood now. You know, even in Hialeah is cranes, which was not a thing five, 10 years ago.

• 16:57Anthony Pompliano?

  I, um, I was driving this morning and Plin was with me, and she actually commented, she was like, look around right now. And we were, I don't know what they would call, but basically right over the bridge, heading towards like a Wynwood area. And literally, there was three different cranes on three different sites, and they were all building up, right?

• 17:16Speaker 02

  You see how high they are, right? They're gonna be pretty high.

• 17:18Anthony Pompliano?

  And I was like, those aren't strip malls they're gonna build there, right? So like, they definitely are building quite a bit, which is, which is pretty crazy.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  It is wild.

• 17:27Anthony Pompliano?

  One actually last, now, now I'm personally curious if you've been here. I'm gonna call it 95, but like the highway that's right out here on the, kind of west of Brickell, if you will. It seems like most of the economic development, gentrification, etc., has been to the east. Is the thought process from people who've been here in Miami for a decade or so, like, it's just going to keep going west further and further and further? And like, eventually, this whole thing will get built out into an even bigger city?

• 17:52Speaker 02

  Very much likely. Alapato is definitely on the up and up. People are buying up warehouses there and houses. And it's going to go up that corridor and then go down south and then down and go north from there. So 100%, it's happening.

• 18:03Anthony Pompliano?

  It's absolutely nuts to kind of watch this. All right, so talk to me about this idea. I got a lot of questions.

• 18:08Speaker 02

  I got answers.

• 18:09Anthony Pompliano?

  Some of them are optimistic questions. Some of them are complete critiques slash like, what the fuck is going on? You said that you don't have to raise money, you could do an NFT.

• 18:19Speaker 02

  You could.

• 18:20Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Can we, is there an example of a company that you've seen do this really well?

• 18:24Speaker 02

  The Bored Apes.

• 18:25Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, all right.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  Pretty easy, look at that.

• 18:27Anthony Pompliano?

  So let's talk about these folks. Like, walk folks through, what did they do first?

• 18:32Speaker 02

  So, A, they started as an art project, right? They didn't have any real crazy roadmap of like, you know, we're going to make an interesting members club that's an NFT, right? And then most people were trying to do the same thing. They built some art, they made it really like, kind of like, easy to understand, it's a fun project. It sold out, didn't sell out very fast, actually. It took them like a month to like get their stuff together. And then they just built around the community members. And that's the thing that people most don't get at NFTs. It's like the first thousand people that are in your community, again, same as startups. Those are your core people of influence, your ambassadors.

• 19:02Anthony Pompliano?

  How many Bored Apes are there?

• 19:04Speaker 02

  There is 10,000.

• 19:04Anthony Pompliano?

  10,000, okay.

• 19:05Speaker 02

  8,000.

• 19:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, thousands.

• 19:07Speaker 02

  There was thousands.

• 19:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay. And why do people buy these at first? Is it literally like, I'm going to buy it and get rich? Or is it like, I buy it because it looks cool? Is it, I buy it because like, there's some community? Like, what was the initial reason why people were doing this?

• 19:21Speaker 02

  It's a mix of reasons. It often is to belong with people that you want to be around. So usually there's like a focus around a project of like, it could be a nonprofit. It could be, you know, an environmental issue. It could be fun. It could be art, whatever it is. It could be just a members club, right? And after you've seen the now is take this technology and turn it into memberships. That's the real NFT open up now. People are turning their membership clubs into NFT membership clubs.

• 19:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Okay, explain that.

• 19:43Speaker 02

  So it's like your CVS card, right? But unlimited supply of them. So you all can get into this club, you buy your membership pass and you have it. And you can use it to use it to get into parties. You can use it to exchange for merchandise. You can use it to like, be available to get other drops. People are giving you gifts or maybe like a new collection or go on trips together. It's really endless possibilities to use that.

• 20:03Anthony Pompliano?

  Here's one of the things that...

• 20:06Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm gonna put myself in the seat of the most hardcore Bitcoin maximalist etc. crowd, which I think are the biggest critiques of this, right? And I want to go back and forth between the pro and the con argument is I actually think that, and I joke with a lot of the folks in Bitcoin community, they own memberships, right? They belong to a country club, they're a Prime, Amazon Prime member, they're a Netflix member, right? Like you have memberships to these things, I think, and hopefully I'm not misspeaking here, but I think their biggest critique is that there's a price associated with it. It goes up and down. If somebody buys it for economic gain, right, and it goes down, then obviously they get screwed. But let's put price stuff aside for a second. It sounds pretty similar, like if you're buying a Netflix membership, if you're buying an Amazon Prime membership, buying a country club membership, if you're joining something

• 20:51Anthony Pompliano?

  for the community and for the experience, like is that a fair, from like a usage standpoint, user experience standpoint, like that's really what the overlap is?

• 21:00Speaker 02

  Sort of, but those things aren't transferable and those things expire, they're timed. These are usually one time you buy, it's yours, and then you have a stake in ownership in that organization in some manner. You can have a voting share in their DAO, you can use it, maybe you're getting like, you know, maybe they're dropping you a token, maybe you're making a new currency as your focus of your NFT. So it's more of like the shared ownership that people love and they kind of feel that on part of this community, and I'm gonna do a lot of work to help it make, become it more, for me, entertaining or enjoyable or maybe valuable. You know, that's, people have different views on that, right? But like, that's the main difference between like, membership of a golf club, where you buy it one year, you got paid again every year, and it expires. This one usually is like, you buy it once and you're in, and then you make it hopefully worth more, sure, that's a thing that people do, but I wouldn't look at things as like, as an investment.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  To me, it's like, it's a membership club I want to be a part of, and I want to put a lot of effort into it.

• 21:48Anthony Pompliano?

  How many, how many clubs do you think you're a member? I feel like you've got like some crazy, like what do you, like 50?

• 21:53Speaker 02

  If you go on my public wallet, probably like 400.

• 21:59Anthony Pompliano?

  400?

• 22:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:00Anthony Pompliano?

  How do you have time to do all this stuff?

• 22:02Speaker 02

  I don't. I don't. I'm really curious.

• 22:04Anthony Pompliano?

  You could do one a day and you still wouldn't get to all of them this year?

• 22:07Speaker 02

  Projects. I want to see what they're up to. I want to learn. I think the best I learn is to get your hands involved in the community and see what's going on. You know, pop into a discord, listen to their spaces, see what they're using it for. And then that's where ideas come from. It's people trying things. Listen, 99% of things are going to go to nothing. They're going to fail. They're going to go away. But the 1% that thrive are going to be the next Nikes, the next Amazons. They're going to make amazing things happen. And there's so much crap out there anyway. DDC brands, most of them are garbage. You never even know about these things. They go away. So like, there's big power here in like, find the next gems for our universe.

• 22:38Anthony Pompliano?

  So when you think of 99% going to zero, I think that 99% of people will agree that 99% are going to go to zero, right? And for different reasons. So the biggest critics will just be like, oh, NFTs are bullshit. They're going, you know, they're going to zero because the whole sector is bullshit. There's a bunch of folks who may say, hey, the ideas are interesting, but you don't need a non-fungible token to be able to do it. Then there's people who are really deep into NFTs. Like, I'm super bullish, long term, short term. I just think that no one's figured out like, the right way to do it. There's no playbook, etc. And then there's people who just might be like, I'll call him a tech historian, which sounds crazy now that we're only talking 20 years ago, like, late 90s, was, all the ideas were right. It just took another decade or so till user

• 23:18Anthony Pompliano?

  experience, kind of interfaces changed, consumer behaviors changed, infrastructure was in place, etc. And then that's when we got music streaming, the real social network, etc. Like, regardless of the reason for it, when we think 99% are going to fail, let's say that 1% don't. How do you think about like, identifying is something in the 99% bucket or in the 1%? Is it similar to like, investor underwriting a startup? Is it similar to like, somebody who's like, I like this product, I don't like this product, you know, I like Netflix, I don't like Hulu? Or how do you think about it?

• 23:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's like a VC, right? Usually put 100 checks in, you get one or two amazing exits, right? That's probably what's going to happen to most people's wallets, right? You know, I pick and choose mine now much more carefully. I'm not as like, you know, willy-nilly just trying them.

• 24:00Anthony Pompliano?

  Were you gambling in the beginning?

• 24:01Speaker 02

  I mean, I was just having fun. It was really fun, like, to be part of these, like, kind of art drops.

• 24:05Anthony Pompliano?

  400, I'm still blown away by that.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  It was a lot of fun. I mean, I fancy up thousands. No, really, seriously.

• 24:09Anthony Pompliano?

  They have a thousand.

• 24:10Speaker 02

  Thousands of NFTs.

• 24:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Oh, thousands of NFTs.

• 24:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, they keep buying and joining.

• 24:15Anthony Pompliano?

  And each one is a different community?

• 24:15Speaker 02

  They could have multiple of some. Yeah, but yeah, pretty much. I mean, but now I've been trying to find folks that have existing brands that are trying to get into the, into the industry and like, how do I make my audience adapt to Web three and become more of a digital, like kind of transferable ownership based audience? So I did, uh, well, with Peter Tony, the artist in Women Walls recently for Tony Money. And it was really fun to see him take his entire, you know, membership base and say, hey, you know what? I'm going to take you guys into the future. We're going to drop an NFT. We're going to have some fun. We're going to have some really successful parties and it worked. He has a great, people love him so much and like, you know what, Peter? Let's try it out. And then I joined the team at Club 11. This little guy right here. We're dropping actually today, we're minting our pass and it's their VIP membership for life. When you think about that, like, wow, that's a big risk for this brand who's built a worldwide brand.

• 24:59Speaker 02

  They have condos, they have vodka brand, they have clubs, they're building new clubs. That's to say I'm doing NFT, that can go south so fast. So they have to invest in this nonstop now.

• 25:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, when you think of a brand or a club like that, doing a lifetime membership, right? What does that mean? Like, like I gotta go skip the line to walk into a club or how does it work?

• 25:19Speaker 02

  That is actually one of the perks. You get to go TSC pre-check for the club.

• 25:23Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm a genius.

• 25:26Speaker 02

  So yeah, TSA pre-check, skip the line.

• 25:27Anthony Pompliano?

  TSA pre-check for the club. Jesus Christ.

• 25:32Speaker 02

  All right. Go ahead. What else? One of the perks, I mean, the, the community actually is very small. It's only a thousand people in there. So we're going to have a very nice private tit nut chat group that people are going to build together. And, uh, we spent the last four, four weeks really talking to people one on one. Like, do you want to be part of this? Like, as you would sell a membership, not just an NFT to anybody. Like, we're basically hand creating. You want, should be part of this.

• 25:51Anthony Pompliano?

  And this may sound stupid, but like, is the NFT part almost secondary? Like, like it's just the technology of, uh, almost like, am I using one database over another database? And like, really the value, take 11, uh, as an example. So, uh, the guys who own 11, uh, real estate developers, they've done a fantastic job building out that brand as a traditional club business. I believe it's the highest grossing club per square foot in the world.

• 26:16Speaker 02

  It's insane.

• 26:16Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, it's just absolutely nuts.

• 26:20Anthony Pompliano?

  And really what they're doing is they're just selling memberships. They just happen to use this thing. So like whether it was a membership where you had a physical card, like there are some memberships where you walk in, you know, Costco card, right? Or if it was on my phone, or if it was in this NFT format, like basically it's just a membership.

• 26:37Speaker 02

  It is, but a lot of perks and allow us to build on top of it in a very much like a more of a direct streamlined way. Because they're going to probably do secondary like fun, you know, member programs maybe, or maybe they'll do trips together through this NFT, maybe they'll do like really cool merch drops through the NFT. So airdrop your things.

• 26:51Anthony Pompliano?

  So basically what it is, it's almost like a marker. Like if there's a shark in the ocean and somebody marks it, they always know where the shark is. Really with this, you basically always know where the wallet is that's holding it. And so you can airdrop them all kinds of stuff, whatever.

• 27:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. And it builds your brand, right? It builds your support. Like they put that part of your club now and it has a value and it's transferable. So you can sell it to somebody else saying, oh, here's my membership. It's yours now, right? For your life. Up to you to take that on. Right now, if you look at the price of Ethereum, it's down a lot and it's a good deal. You know, I think it's like 6K for the whole, for the life of membership. It's pretty good.

• 27:23Anthony Pompliano?

  $6,000 for a lifetime membership?

• 27:26Speaker 02

  And you're in to walk into the club. Just cut the line. That's for that alone. I'm like, wow, that's a, I'll do it for one night sometimes. You know?

• 27:32Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So basically every single night, somebody will be able to walk to the front of the club. Oh, people are gonna just, yeah, that's.

• 27:39Speaker 02

  People just don't know that, by the way. We haven't really marketed this.

• 27:40Anthony Pompliano?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 27:42Speaker 02

  So like, once it gets out, people are gonna be like, I gotta get that.

• 27:44Anthony Pompliano?

  I don't like lines, but outside of lines, I don't really like clubs either. So like, I'm probably not the, the target demo, but I've been at clubs with lines and I've seen, and there's some desperate ass dudes that they'll do, whatever you want them to do, they'll do.

• 28:02Speaker 02

  On the phone buying on OpenSea right now. Okay, I'm not gonna run this line.

• 28:06Anthony Pompliano?

  These dudes will do whatever you want if they're standing in line at a club.

• 28:09Speaker 02

  But I think what we want to do is build the backend for all clubs to use this. That's the real vision here is like, can we build, can we use, try this out, see how it works? And show the people how to build their own business.

• 28:18Anthony Pompliano?

  So this gets to the whole thing of like, how much of this is new versus this is the same? You're just building a membership, a SaaS platform for clubs in this example.

• 28:28Speaker 02

  In a way, but also in a way like who, how do you do entry? How do you do that? That's a whole technology to build for our own use cases, right? And then how do you do, how do you make your community actually like talk to each other? You know, Discord actually is a mess. Like, I want to make a new Discord because it's, it's just terrible out there.

• 28:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, how many times I heard somebody say that? And I'm always like, man, whoever cracks that, they own.

• 28:45Speaker 02

  I can't wait. And the answer isn't Telegram or WhatsApp either because they have their own set of problems.

• 28:50Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 28:51Speaker 02

  So I don't know. I don't know. I want to rethink that wholeheartedly.

• 28:55Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. What, what do you think is, of the critiques of NFTs? This is actually, I'd be fascinated to hear your answer. What do you think they got right of the critiques? Like, if you're like, okay, here's all the critiques of it. Like, this is the thing that I actually think is like a very fair critique.

• 29:08Speaker 02

  It's hard. It's hard to buy crypto, set up your wallet, transfer crypto to your wallet, mint the NFT, keep track of your NFTs, not lose your 12-word password. It's really insanely hard. So I think that we've gotten a lot of things wrong in the Web3 NFT technology that just doesn't really make it easy for anyone to onboard. So that has to be a better way. And the better way doesn't exist yet. It really just doesn't, you know? Maybe Moonpay will figure it out. Maybe OpenSea figures it out. Maybe a new one that doesn't exist yet will figure it out. But like, it's, it's hard.

• 29:38Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 02

  It's hard.

• 29:39Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, and then what is the thought process of, I'm going to call it the NFT community, but I would basically say maybe even the broader crypto world, views on Bitcoin? Because I think it's, you know, the Bitcoin crowd, they're, they don't.

• 29:50Speaker 02

  They don't like the other side, right?

• 29:51Anthony Pompliano?

  Well, no, no. They don't have any problem letting people know what their opinion is. Is maybe the best way to say it. What is the Web3 NFT crowds' views on Bitcoin?

• 30:03Speaker 02

  We all own it.

• 30:04Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 30:04Speaker 02

  I, I feel like diversified portfolio of things, in all things. Startups, cryptocurrency, friends, all the things. I think it's important to like have every, have your, your bases covered. And, you know, they're all kind of like tied together at this point still. So we haven't seen anything break away like, all right, no, this is a new thing. It's all, it's all in the same bucket still.

• 30:22Anthony Pompliano?

  Can I ask, this is a question that just people will freak out about, but I think is important. People who are in the Web3 community that own Bitcoin, are they Bitcoiners?

• 30:34Speaker 02

  I mean, everyone's a Bitcoiner. If you own Bitcoin, right?

• 30:37Anthony Pompliano?

  I would argue that, yes. I think there's some people who disagree.

• 30:39Speaker 02

  I want to do well, because Bitcoin does well, so does everything else.

• 30:42Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah.

• 30:43Speaker 02

  So it's like rooting against the, you know.

• 30:45Anthony Pompliano?

  It's an interesting question, because there's a lot of people who, I hear the term real Bitcoiner thrown around all the time, and I'm like, oh, okay. Because, you know, there are some people who do own fake Bitcoin, for sure.

• 30:54Speaker 02

  What is that?

• 30:54Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm not going to say the name for them, but they, uh, there's people who think that they're building the real Bitcoin. But when you think about this whole thing, one of the things that blew me away was you went to VCon.

• 31:08Speaker 02

  That was amazing.

• 31:08Anthony Pompliano?

  I saw you and a couple other people posting.

• 31:10Speaker 02

  What energy.

• 31:11Anthony Pompliano?

  How many people you think were there?

• 31:13Speaker 02

  10,000, and it was a really tight knit group, man. It was like really cool to be in the room.

• 31:16Anthony Pompliano?

  10,000 is about the same size as the Bitcoin conference was, not this year, last year, right? So 2021 Bitcoin conference was probably the size of this. What, give me kind of, what was the experience like? What were your takeaways?

• 31:30Speaker 02

  It was so positive in a very downtime in crypto and NFTs. And people are just there like, you know, we're focused on this community. And that's what you have to do is be focused on the community first. And that's what Gary's done so well. He's done onboarding so well. He has treated his community so well, keeps delivering the value for them in different ways. And a lot of in real life utility, which is important, because without that, you know, I think a lot of NFT creators may falter. And I think you got to build around these people in a very like intimate and direct way. And what Gary's done is just, he's basically shown the way, like, and people should be paying attention and copying. You know, make your community just like he's doing with his bigger community, you know? Not everyone has his influence, but you can really learn from how he does things with empathy and some real transparency.

• 32:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. When you think about where this is all going, fast forward me 20 years, like, what is the North Star? Like, what's the, the promised land, if you will? Shout out Rick Ross. What, what do you, yeah, what do you, what do you think is the, like, the end state of this?

• 32:26Speaker 02

  I think you see things get much smaller and localized and really more niche. And I think people try and be everything to everybody, and that's not the answer to anything. So I want to see people take things back and make them just not so scalable. Make them like for just a thousand people. And you can have a really nice life that way. You don't need to be a billionaire. You could be a millionaire. And be okay, you know, it's not.

• 32:45Anthony Pompliano?

  You should say that like a million more times so people actually understand.

• 32:48Speaker 02

  What is everyone like trying to get so crazy powerful rich like I don't want to be that rich. It's a lot of work, a lot of stress and responsibility. Like, no, like just let me be okay. And I think that people have got to be okay with each other and then and root for each other. Cause like that's the big thing is like people don't root for each other. They want to win and you want you to lose. And that's not the case. We all can win together if we just think of much like kind of like more of like a niche, smaller manner. And that's my takeaway for everyone. I think is like think for everyone else, like could do this all together. And it sounds like, you know, lovey dovey, but I think it's real.

• 33:17Anthony Pompliano?

  Dude, the world, the world is not zero sum.

• 33:19Speaker 02

  It doesn't have to be.

• 33:20Anthony Pompliano?

  This is my biggest critique, and I say this all the time, is whether it's a founder, whether it is a community, whatever. The best people in the world that I know and what they do spend zero percent of their time attacking their competitors. Zero, zero. They spend their time solving problems, serving their customers, innovating and changing the world. Like that's their focus.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  That is beautiful.

• 33:47Anthony Pompliano?

  And the people who spend, and you see it across communities, you see it across all this stuff. I understand people are human. Everyone's gonna mess up here, there, whatever. But like, there are certain groups, certain people, certain companies where 99% of the time focused on building, serving customers, doing all this stuff, right? And sure, they're, they're, they're not infallible either. But then there are some people, companies, communities, et cetera, that just, that's what they spend all their time doing. It's just attack, attack, attack, attack. And what I've always thought is that like, that just distracts you from like what you're trying to accomplish. Like who cares what everyone else is doing? Knock yourselves out, right? By the way, like, that's what a free market is. It is, you can say whatever you want. People can do whatever they want.

• 34:31Anthony Pompliano?

  But that's what a free market is. And by the way, the free market is the most savage judge, jury and executioner in the world, right? And like, I think that gives credence to a lot of the critics of the NFT market. It's like, hey, there's a bunch of shit that people were talking about and cheering on and all stuff and like, didn't work. That's the free market at work. Like judge, jury, executioner. If you bought it and it didn't work, guess what? You felt the pain. Vice versa is if the NFT community ends up building certain things that work. That's the free market at work. People found value in something, et cetera. And so like, I just think that there's a lot of like pontificating and people pretend to know the future.

• 35:11Anthony Pompliano?

  And like, that doesn't mean if you see something that's risky or a scam or nefarious, whatever. Yeah, of course. What's the saying in New York? See something, say something.

• 35:22Anthony Pompliano?

  See something, say something.

• 35:23Speaker 02

  People do that all the time on Twitter, man.

• 35:24Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, of course. But I, but I think that like, it's even this thought process of like, certain language gets used so much. We were talking to a guy, Brent Johnson, earlier today, and he talks about how hyperinflation, a word that like, you hear thrown around all the time. And people are like, oh yeah, hyperinflation. It's talking about like 10% inflation in the United States. Like, that's not hyperinflation. Hyperinflation is like 50% month over month.

• 35:48Speaker 02

  Doubling.

• 35:49Anthony Pompliano?

  We're gone. It's over, right? Game over. And so his point is basically like, look, we can have high inflation without hyperinflation. By the way, if hyperinflation is coming, like, we should scream that from the rooftops. But like, let's make sure that we're actually using the right language here. And so I think that we see a lot of that in, in the Bitcoin and crypto world as well of just like, you know, I always laugh when people are like Ponzi scheme. And I'm like, okay, maybe, but like, what is a Ponzi scheme? What are you saying? And usually what it ends up being is like, that's not going to be valuable later in the future. Which by the way, is a lot of times the correct critique. It's just that if you say, yell everything Ponzi, Ponzi, Ponzi, Ponzi. But actually it was just like poorly designed or it was not valuable.

• 36:29Anthony Pompliano?

  Or in the startup world, like you build a problem, you build something that solves a problem nobody actually has, right? Or you never find product market fit or like whatever the thing is. The end result's the same. The Ponzi goes to zero and like the thing that nobody wanted goes to zero as well. But like, the language ends up being really important, I think.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  So true. Really is so true. It's wild that you put it that way. And like, that was a very beautiful kind of statement right there. Like, people don't remember that. They just, they just don't think about it.

• 36:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Just use the right language.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 36:59Anthony Pompliano?

  That's it. That's fine.

• 37:00Speaker 02

  Simple.

• 37:01Anthony Pompliano?

  At Flamingo Capital, what are you guys looking for?

• 37:04Speaker 02

  We're looking for people just disrupting this world right now of like how we're going to transfer from web two to web three. So all ideas are welcome at this point. And they're like, we're in a strange time of like venture capital. People pulling back, down rounds are happening. It's happening probably for the next few months. Who knows a year? We don't know. So, you know, people who also conservative in a way, hold your money. If you can get it, get it while you can.

• 37:26Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. What is the way that you guys work with founders?

• 37:29Speaker 02

  So we're really hands on. So usually we get in there really early, help them find the lead investors, raise the last money in. That's kind of how we work, which is really helpful with folks who can't, don't have those ends yet. That was me eight, nine years ago. I had no ends, no new buddy in venture capital. Kind of I had a startup, you know, started putting angel checks in and learning how to run the room is very hard in Miami because no one was here. You know, I was traveling. Actually, I give props to Calacanis. He invested in my company like five years ago and brought us to California and he showed us like this is how it works. I was like, thank you. And like, he kept coming back here after that to do more forward investments. And like, he was on that train a while ago of like, you know, diversify your money into all around the world. And I was like, yeah, Miami's on the same, same path. And now it's been, it happened.

• 38:10Anthony Pompliano?

  We're going to get him to move here.

• 38:11Speaker 02

  We broke right through it.

• 38:12Anthony Pompliano?

  We're going to get, Jason Calacanis is going to move to Miami at some point.

• 38:15Speaker 02

  I tried to give him my apartment. He was like, soon, but not yet.

• 38:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Jason Calacanis is going to move to Miami at some point. I don't know exactly when. I know he does. I've seen him talk about it. He has friends here. He is obviously not very bullish on California, which some people move to Miami because they're running from something. Some people move to Miami because they're running to something, but Miami doesn't care. It accepts all people.

• 38:39Speaker 02

  Really, it's true. It really, like, everyone I talk to has been like, man, I've found my people here. They let me in. It's like, it's good.

• 38:46Anthony Pompliano?

  One of the most important things that I hear people repeat over and over again when they come to Miami is there is such diversity of thought of where people come from, of language, of like all these different things. It doesn't feel like this in almost any other American city.

• 39:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:06Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? You're still in America. But to some degree, you know, what's the joke, but half-truth of like Miami's the capital of Latin America?

• 39:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true.

• 39:14Anthony Pompliano?

  Like, there's people from all over that entire region of the world, but you also get folks who are coming from Europe, you get people who are coming from other places in the United States, like it is this like big melting pot, and I think that's what makes it so special.

• 39:26Speaker 02

  And difference of views is a thing here, you know, we're pretty much half down the middle of like politics, I think, and everything in the whole world. So like, you have both sides of the coin, but the key is to like let people have their say and then be understanding of other person's viewpoint. You can't just yell at them saying they're wrong. And, you know, that's the biggest part, I think, that more people need to understand, like, all right, you know, we differ, but like, what do we agree on? You know, and like, you could be friends with someone who has different viewpoints sometimes.

• 39:48Anthony Pompliano?

  Shocking idea. Don't go, don't go too crazy over there, my friend.

• 39:51Speaker 02

  I have friends who are on the side of the fence in a lot of issues and we're still cool. As long as you don't be like, you know, a little too rabid about it.

• 39:58Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, I do think the world is realizing like, all right, I don't care where you stand, but like, center-left, center-right, center-independent, like, maybe there's like a little triangle there. Like, everyone's like, we're all cool. We may disagree, you know, whatever.

• 40:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:18Anthony Pompliano?

  But then there's like the extremes, and those people are just yelling at each other over the center-right-left-center-independent folks. And everyone, you know, if you're center-right, you think the extreme-left and extreme-right is crazy.

• 40:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:31Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so it's just like, the extremes where everyone got polled, I think people are like, all right, let's come back to a little bit of a rational viewpoint, which I think is healthy.

• 40:40Speaker 02

  Very, we need it. We need it.

• 40:42Anthony Pompliano?

  That's fine. If we all thought alike, then we'd have bigger problems in the world than...

• 40:47Speaker 02

  Well, then we can't innovate, you know? If everyone's like, everything's great, and everything's the same, then it gets kind of boring.

• 40:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah, of course. And also, I think you need, you need the healthy debate. Like, there's places in the world where everyone thinks the same way, because they have to think the same way. And like from coming from the United States, we look at those places. We're like, that is not a place we'd want to live.

• 41:10Speaker 02

  No.

• 41:11Anthony Pompliano?

  Right? And so like the diversity of opinions and thoughts is crucial. And so in some way, even though people disagree with you, you actually want to encourage them.

• 41:20Speaker 02

  You have to. That's where you get the new ideas from. You see like same people saying, oh, this is wrong, well, your thing. And you don't, wouldn't you ever hear from your friends who are like, just believe in what you're doing. So you gotta have, you'll have both sides of the defense and tell you, and find opportunities to make new improvements on everything from civics to startups to tech to just family. So, you know, that's the way to really, Miami is progressing, I think. It feels like it at least.

• 41:41Anthony Pompliano?

  I think that's exactly how it works. All right. Where can we send people to find you on the internet?

• 41:46Speaker 02

  Chris Adamo, at Chris Adamo, I think on every platform, underscore on Twitter, and then on Instagram as well, and then LinkedIn. Hit me up, DM me. Come to Happy Hour on Wednesdays at the Freehold.

• 41:56Anthony Pompliano?

  What is Happy Hour?

• 41:58Speaker 02

  So we started this Miami Tech Happy Hour about a year and a half ago, just when the COVID was kind of like getting a little looser in Miami, about 2020, December. Five people, wine, a wine bar. I mean, it's basically during Tech Week last year, we had a thousand people show up at a line yap. I got too big for line yap, so we said, let's go to the Freehold. So now we have like 500 folks every Wednesday show up and at the Freehold in Wynwood. It's just every person in tech who was, who's new, who wants to understand what's Miami like, you know? I'm a founder, I'm an investor, I'm a tech employee. So it's a cool vibe.

• 42:26Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Freehold on Wednesdays. What time usually?

• 42:29Speaker 02

  6:00 PM.

• 42:29Anthony Pompliano?

  6:00 PM?

• 42:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, come through.

• 42:31Anthony Pompliano?

  And anybody who's here. If you ain't got no friends, but you're in Miami, go to the Freehold at 6:00 PM on Wednesday. Yeah, there you go. You can't miss it with the shirt.

• 42:39Anthony Pompliano?

  One other Miami company is actually a sponsor of ours, Eight Sleep.

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Love them.

• 42:43Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. Do you have Eight Sleep?

• 42:45Speaker 02

  I want one.

• 42:45Anthony Pompliano?

  You want one?

• 42:46Speaker 02

  I do want one.

• 42:46Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. What is your sleep schedule right now?

• 42:48Speaker 02

  I have two babies on our two. So it's pretty crazy. Like maybe like 1:00 AM to 6:00 AM.

• 42:54Anthony Pompliano?

  Whoa.

• 42:54Speaker 02

  Not good. Sometimes, sometimes 10:00 PM to 8:00 and 7:00, it's great. But then, you know, I'm running a couple businesses and the babies are a business as well.

• 43:02Anthony Pompliano?

  Yeah. So the, the whole thing that I don't, I didn't realize before the baby showed up was that like there was, you know, the rough couple, six weeks or whatever, eight weeks. But then once they start to learn to sleep, like now she sleeps through the night. So 7:00 PM.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  You can go.

• 43:17Anthony Pompliano?

  I'm like, yo, game on. Baby's sleeping.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  It's really wonderful.

• 43:22Anthony Pompliano?

  And then it's like seven to seven, you're like, that's 12 hours.

• 43:25Speaker 02

  But you get busy.

• 43:26Anthony Pompliano?

  If I went to sleep when the baby went to sleep, I wouldn't make it. I'd be waking up at four o'clock in the morning. Like, I couldn't sleep as much as the baby.

• 43:37Anthony Pompliano?

  All right. Well, I appreciate you coming and doing this. We definitely need to do it again.

• 43:40Speaker 02

  This has been great.

• 43:40Anthony Pompliano?

  And the JPG Morgan WhatsApp group. Now, I feel like you guys are gonna be a bunch of requests. People, hey, man, get, let me group.

• 43:48Speaker 02

  We have thousands of folks on the waiting list, so it's really crazy. It's really crazy. I don't know what's, my DMs are like, get me in, get me, give me merch, get me. I mean, you have the, you have OG merch, that, that painted one I made for you. That's a cool one. That's gonna be worth my money one day.

• 44:01Anthony Pompliano?

  That's a fantastic one. It's sitting right over there.

• 44:03Speaker 02

  Oh, nice. There it is. I love it.

• 44:04Anthony Pompliano?

  It's sitting right there.

• 44:06Speaker 02

  On top of the, on top of the pile.

• 44:08Anthony Pompliano?

  Of course. I mean, that's the one if, if I need a go to. Cause I wear it sometimes and people are like, what the hell has he got on?

• 44:14Speaker 02

  That's your AMT Basel outfit, right? If you go into a conference that has AMT guys there, you rock that, they'd be like, respect.

• 44:19Anthony Pompliano?

  Respect.

• 44:22Anthony Pompliano?

  I love it. All right. Well, listen, thank you so much for coming on.

• 44:25Speaker 02

  It's been great, man.

• 44:25Anthony Pompliano?

  We definitely have to do this again in the future.

• 44:27Speaker 02

  Pump anytime, baby.

• 44:28Anthony Pompliano?

  Thanks so much for listening to today's episode. I really hope you guys enjoyed this one. Make sure you subscribe on Apple, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. And if you're looking to try to transition to get a new job in the Bitcoin or crypto industry, we've got you covered. Head over to pompscryptocourse.com. We've developed a curriculum with the top teams across the industry. It's a three-week intensive training program with over 50 events packed into that three-week time period. Go to pompscryptocourse.com to learn more and I'll meet you guys for the next episode.