[upbeat music] We're looking for true business ventures.
At the end of the day, those are what are the investable assets that come out of these creators, whether they're e-commerce stores, whether they're sustainable subscription businesses, like, that's where the value gets created.
[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I'm Brian Morrissey. I'm gonna try different formats with the podcast in the weeks and months to come. I wanna mix up the approach, feel like it'll keep it fresh.
And I wanna do different types of shows.
But this week, I am speaking to Brian Hanley, CEO of Bullish Studios, someone who I got to know during the blissful days of twenty twenty-one when everything was a lot cheerier and frankly easier.
Brian has started and runs a fascinating media business, takes popular meme accounts in particular, in order to build out media brands around them.
Former Rebooting show guest Liquidity partnered with Bullish in building out its newsletter offshoot, Exec Sum. Bullish has also partnered with Mark Moran to establish a new kind of investor relations service.
I regularly say there's no one future of the media business, and I think what Bullish is doing with individual brands, and particularly in the finance space, is a pretty good template, though, as we enter into what's sure to be another crazy cycle in the media business.
Hope you enjoy the podcast, and if you do, please leave it a rating and review on Spotify or Apple. And while you're there, check out another podcast I do called People vs. Algorithms.
Each week, I'm joined by longtime media exec and investor Troy Young and former head of design at Airbnb and CEO of Universal Entities, Alex Schleifer.
For a more wide-ranging discussion on the interplay of media, technology, and culture, check out People vs. Algorithms wherever you get your podcasts. And please email me feedback on either or both podcasts.
My email is brian@therebooting.com. Now here's my conversation with Brian. [upbeat music] All right, Brian, thank you so much for doing this conversation. I've been, I've been looking forward to doing this with you.
Same here, man. Thanks for having me. All right. I think we, we met definitely during, like, the Zerp era. It was down in Miami. I think we're... I think... Where did we go? Maybe the Freehand or something like this.
And you were telling me about making all this money off these meme accounts, that I was like, "Oh, my God, this is crazy." For those people who do not know, what exactly is Bullish Studio?
Bullish Studio is a conversation about money. Yeah. Basically, we're an interesting company. We like to say that we create some of the most entertaining and informative business, investing, and culture content.
And the way in which we do it is a bit unique compared to, I think, a lot of other traditional publishers, but we can get more into that based on my experience, advice, and being a media buyer.
But at the end of the day, we help make money off of content on the internet. I know, but let's get into the meme stuff. The way you guys do it, you're, you're much more buttoned up than during the Zerp era in Miami.
But I mean, you got [chuckles] you've got, like, some very interesting properties.
And, like, so explain exactly how you do that, particularly, like, I had, like, Liquidity on, like, I forget, several months ago, and we disguised, and we disguised his voice. It was kinda fun. And the whole...
I, I'm old, so, like, this meme world was totally new to me.
And from what you were saying, like, when you think about, like, what's going on in digital media, like, there's a tremendous amount of attention that goes into places that have not been monetized to some degree.
What did you end up seeing? Because you've been in this game for a while. What did you end up seeing as the opening that ended up leading to Bullish? Yeah. There was a few openings, I'd say.
I think the first one that I really... You know what, what opened my eyes was when I was over at Vice Media, where we were loo- we were in a...
This was during a time where we were launching a ton of these different passion point-led verticals, Munchies, Vice News, Noisey- Yeah... all around different passion points.
And we were kicking around this idea for doing Vice for finance. And there's a, a bunch of different reasons why.
Obviously, there was a ton of audience that, as the millennials got older, they had to care more and more about their finances, having kids.
We're in the midst of a thirty trillion dollar wealth transfer that's happening from our parents' generation down to ours, which is a ton of money and a ton of weird stuff happening.
And ultimately, COVID was the gasoline to the fire. Before COVID, I would say that there weren't a whole lot of millennials that were- that cared about the stock market or cared about investing. It just wasn't cool.
But then ultimately, with stimulus checks and people sitting around at home, the rise of the day trader came back, and it just lit a fire onto this, onto this excite- exciting little thing called the stock market.
WallStreetBets with Reddit bubbled up and took over with GameStop. That was...
When that all was happening, you were seeing every conversation on social media had to do with stocks, investing, making money, and that really was the impetus.
And we started Bullish in February of twenty twenty, right before COVID, and that was kinda the best time to launch it. Yeah. And yeah.
So what I saw was that you're having memes that are helping articulate s- what's going on. And ultimately, these memes were circulating. People like Liquidity, Parik Patel on Twitter, Ramp Capital. Their...
When we looked at their numbers, they were doing hundreds of millions of impressions a month, in some cases a day, and that ultimately was like, wow, like, we are in the attention economy. We've been in it for a while.
If we're... If these memes are reaching some of the most high-value audiences, Bill Ackman on Twitter, we've got Chamath Palihapitiya, these are big, big investors. Where's the money?
These are kids in their basements that are meme-ing. How, how can they get paid for this? 'Cause ultimately, we have to monet- help monetize attention.
So there was a lot that was going on, and ultimately you have to weed through the bad actors and see who's gonna be in this for the long run.
And, yeah, our whole approach was let's partner with as many of them as we can. Yeah. Building a media company this day and age from the ground up is, uh, is a tough, tough business. Yeah. [chuckles] It's...
We'll, we'll get into that, because, like, twenty twenty-one was, like, basically, like, a million years ago from twenty twenty-three.
But I think what's interesting is that you saw, like, the attention was going, and there was a delta, obviously, between the attention and, and the money, but also more than the attention, like, the cultural sort of relevance and stuff.
And I think what's interesting to me is finance was, like, hardly the area you would think of as, like, media innovation. It's kind of like how, like, Washington, D.C.
is now, like, the place where, like, there's a lot of, like, really, like, interesting media businesses for a bunch of different reasons. Whereas, like, I always thought of it as, like, a backwater of the media business.
No offense, Washington.But finance was always, like, dry and boring and stuff like this. And then there was this, like, explosion of these accounts. So maybe it was just happening that I didn't know.
I remember, like, talking to you, like, and let's, like, use Parikh Patel. Let's go into, like- Yeah... for those who do not know- Let's roll... Doctor... I think he's a doctor, right? Dr. Parikh. Dr.
Parikh Patel- Parikh Patel, CFA... CFA. Yeah. This is not a real person, correct? No. It's an avatar. His image is a, a few different AIs smushed together.
He first used a stock photo that he found, and then the stock photo model came back and was like, "Can you not use my face?" So he had to, he had to change it up.
But yeah, we, we've got put in touch with him when he had, like, 5,000, 10,000 followers, and he's- And it basically- He's a unique individual... he tweets, like, joking stuff- Yes... about finance. Correct.
I could speak high level about who he is as a person, but he, he's studied in the financial category, interned in the financial industry, and has- Okay...
has a deep understanding of it, which allows him to go and actually create content that resonates with a more high finance audience.
And his voice enabled, uh, his ability to speak openly is what allows his content to travel.
Going back to the point you made about, like, innovation in finance, if you look at Edelman's, like, Trust survey, which looks at each of these different industries of, like, how typical Americans, like, trust different categories, finance is one of the least trusted categories compared to everything else.
And the reason for that is that you've got websites and marketing departments that are literally run by compliance teams.
If you're in the industry and you work at a Robinhood or a Charles Schwab, you cannot speak publicly about the company, about the industry, unless it's being approved by compliance.
So it's really held back a lot of the, like, open conversations in finance, and it's really been held by the Bloombergs and the Wall Street Journals of the world.
So this ability to have people that are able to speak openly and from a place of experience is really where we're helping unlock a lot of that and change the financial media industry. Yeah.
And so, I mean, you've run ads on these accounts, but you're not an ad network. Yeah. Right. Your friend Troy Young has said that we are a very large niche ad network. Is that what he says? Yeah. 'Cause we're scaling...
The, a- and I think this gets into, like, what Bullish does as a business is that it's not worth it for a company to go to one creator or one email newsletter and do a deal with, right?
'Cause, like, that is just, it doesn't make any sense for, from a time spent standpoint.
So we help basically work with hundreds and thousands of these different independent content creators and media owners, and essentially represent them to the advertisers- Yeah...
so that we can say, "Hey, look, if you're going after this particular audience, we have creators that reach that audience, and we're creating that monetization layer between the brands and these creators." Yeah.
But it also, it reminds me of Federated Media, though. Totally. Just in a different era. Yeah.
And now, talk to me about that, because, like, I always thought, like, Federated, which for those who don't, don't know, back in the old days, it was all these ad networks before the programmatic stuff.
But, like, Federated came in and they saw a lot what was going on with the blogs. And at the time, the blog explosion was happening, Web2 and stuff like this. Places like Mashable and TechCrunch were, like, taking off.
GigaOm and... And they came in and they said, "Look, we're gonna be your outsource publishing solution," more than an ad network. N- not like ValueClick and stuff like this.
You could always plug in those ad networks, advertising.com. But they said, "Well, we're gonna, like, serve the publishing function," which is from your experience, is more than just trafficking ads, right?
So explain, first of all, is that, like, a fair comparison? And then, and then secondly, like, what do you do beyond, quote-unquote, just ad demand? Don't get me wrong, like, ad demand is very important.
[gentle music] Yeah.
Ads keep the lights on here. Like, we're an ad-supported business. We're a bootstrapped business, and that's- Hey, here too... that's, that's it. Here too. Independent media, yeah.
And we could talk more about VCs investing in media businesses. But ultimately, like, I saw a lot of advice. I watched that go from low valuation to a high one, and it's like, you, you gotta keep it lean and mean.
So ads keep the lights on. And ultimately, that was our entry point to working with a lot of these creators. But to your point, that's, that's fine, but we're not really building equity.
We're not building, like, long-term value for ourselves or for these creators.
But what we found is that we have a lot of experience in how to build media properties and basically compounding asset, and that's ultimately what led into email newsletters. Yeah.
So we actually helped Liquidity, who I know you've had on, take his Instagram account and then basically bring that audience into an email newsletter. Which is very different. Right.
I mean, what Li- what Liquidity does, like, on Instagram and stuff like this- Mm-hmm... is, like, it's very meme. It's very- Right... jokey and funny and stuff like this. Exact Sum, the newsletter, I get it.
I read it most days. It's very bullet point, and it's very made for a finance person who is looking to quickly scan and know what the heck is going on in the morning. It's not all, like, ha-ha. Right.
And, and then I think when you look at Liquidity as an entire media entity, that is one component of- Yeah... the flywheel, right?
So that that's a way for him to diversify not only his audience, but also the way in which he speaks to his audience so that, you know, it, it's another spoke on the, on the hub and wheel.
And I think that's what we're helping creators do.
So whether they're a video-focused creator and, and helping them take that next step into being more of an operator to say, "Hey, look, like, you're doing all this great video.
There's a ton of other areas to exploit- Yeah... to help expand the reach of that video content," whether it's opening up more distribution channels or helping with a partnership to get them on a bigger distributor.
So we're basically able to use all of these different creators and represent them to these bigger distributors, these other types of avenues to explore to help them make money and build businesses.
So we're, we're excited about creators who are committed to building businesses around what they're doing. But also, as I saw advice, and you've spoken a lot on this podcast about, is, like, you gotta be diversified.
I watched 20 people get laid off because Mark Zuckerberg had the pivot to more friends and family connections in the feed and watched short form video on Facebook just get gutted. Yeah.
And that's where it's like you can't put too many eggs in one basket with these different platforms, so you're always having to diversify. And I like to say you gotta run towards the CPMs.
I mean, you look at the, the creator funds that are out there, there is nothing there. And I think it's, it's hilarious to see, like, Instagram's, like, brand, like, brand collaboration marketplace just fail.
Like, it's, it's a tough business. 80% of creators' business comes from brand deals. So we're, we're helping really open up that 20% and diversify that away from- Yeah... just being brand deals or...
But, but you wanna, like, do more, 'cause I think, to go back to the Federated- Yeah... like, example, and it's different. It's a different era and different blah, blah, blah. Mm-hmm.
But at the same time-I remember at, when, when Federated was starting, at the time, like, I, I was like, in a WeWork, right? And a, and WeWork was just starting to take off, and I was like, "I don't get this."
I was like, "Why does our office building have a manifesto out front? I don't get this."
And then, like, any time I would, like, overstay, like, by a minute in the, in the conference room, somebody would be irate and, like, banging on the door. I'm like, "This isn't a community.
[laughs] What the hell are they talking about?" And I was like, "I cannot wait until the day we get rid of this and get our own office."
I'm like, and I was like, this doesn't make sense as a business that their customers would celebrate the day they fired, like, WeWork.
And I'm like, Federated in some way to me was victim of the same thing, in that, like, Mashable and TechCrunch and Giga, they used Federated to get to the point where they could just hire their own sales team, and instead of giving 50% or 40% or whatever the cut was to Federated, they would just say, "Hey, we're gonna keep 100%."
Totally. And that's a bad business.
And look, I think that touches on a very important component here, where you're seeing a lot of other businesses that are in our world pop up where they're acquiring or buying creators.
I do not believe that that is a way to be able to build long-term sustainable businesses.
And look, our model is built where people can come and go, but ultimately if we see a breakout success, we really try to understand where can we as a company participate in the upside there.
And I think an example of that is working with Mark Moran- Yeah...
on building Equity Animal, which is a, a services-based company in the investor relations world that was built off of that, and that's something where we're participating in that.
And I think as other creators, we're, we're helping launch their businesses, that's where we take our more of a financial stake in them.
Because you've got the big VC money coming in trying to say, "How do we invest in creators?" But that's a fallacy. You gotta really... You're investing in businesses.
So we're identifying some creators just don't wanna build big businesses, which is fine, so let's help them make money in the, in the short term, and if that keeps going, great.
If they leave, it's no harm, no foul to either side, and we don't really lose anything, 'cause that's what's keeping our lights on on a day-to-day. So we, we s- I think we sent 100...
We sent 300 1099s out to, to independent contractors last year. Obviously, there's millions- Okay... of dollars there. So it's like- So you've churned. You, you churn through- Totally... different...
I mean, that's just the reality- Yeah. Totally... of a network business. But like with- It's all built off trust. Right... with things like Equity Animal and Mark, that's a totally different situation. I mean- Totally...
Mark was working with Liquidity, I don't know. Mm-hmm. He was, like, employee one- Yep... or something like this, then they split up. I don't know. Yep. There was some kinda divorce.
I'm not gonna get into, like, the, the sort of mean dirty laundry. But [laughs] you know, it's a whole different world. Mm-hmm.
But, um, with Equity Animal, I mean, [laughs] I remember you guys were doing some, like, I don't know, Twitter spaces for, like, a pub- there's apparently a publicly traded adult club- Yeah... operator.
RCA Hospitality I don't know what, I don't know. What do they call strip clubs these days? [laughs] Yeah. What do they call them? Adult entertainment. [laughs] Okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
But that's, that's different in that, like, that is, like, a true, like, business venture. Yeah? That's what we're looking for. We're looking for true business ventures.
At the end of the day, those are what are the investable assets that come out of these creators, whether they're e-commerce stores, whether they're sustainable subscription businesses, like, that's where the value gets created.
It's not in the actual account. You need the account operator behind the keyboard every day and motivated to keep creating.
And the second that you let them de-risk by selling off an account, that's when the voice kind of fades away. And you saw that with Goldman Sachs Elevator. You, you see that- Yeah...
in, in a lot of other examples where it's just like it's the, the creative brains are what ultimately pushes that forward. And if they wanna check out, we're not gonna be the buyer holding that.
Like, we, we need that operator. I do wonder about that because like you said with Goldman Sachs Elevator, I think we're in this era of, like, disposable media brands. 100%.
And like, before in social media, I think it, it... I thought of it as, like, a weakness of some brands. Now I'm starting to, to think, like, this, this is a feature of just the world we live in. Totally.
And, like, maybe, maybe that's just how it is, that most brands are gonna be to some degree ephemeral. Like, in the same way- 100%... that, like,
yeah, fine, Bruce Springsteen's still playing, like, Madison Square Garden. But most, [laughs] most musical acts, they, they have a couple of good albums and then- That's it... they fade.
We started a podcast called 25 Months, and it's this whole concept around the average creator only lasts about 25 months at creating. Before they burn out, they go, they get a full-time job, they do something else.
And I think that's media. I mean, you see the ri- Oh, sure... like, media's on, like, a five, seven-year cycle around media brands.
And unless they can truly reinvent themselves, I think Barstool's a good example, but, like, it is tough, and they fade away. And- Yeah...
our business model is built assuming that that's gonna happen, and that's why we're, we're- we've been going on for three years now, and I've seen accounts that we've paid a lot of money to, but the creator just wants to check out.
They're- Yeah... they have a family with kids and a full-time job, and this was a side gig for them, and that's fine. So it's, i- it's...
But yeah, the, the cost of creating content is coming down significantly, and it has to just be profitable, too.
I mean, I remember at Vice we'd spend tons of money on creating content, but I would scratch my head around where does that money come back in? And that's where you have to always...
The, the cost of content has to make sense for the monetization strategy that's built around it. Yeah.
Well, I mean, the good thing about memes is I think they're pretty efficient ways to create- Oh, yeah I mean- Very efficient... I don't, I follow the meme theft account that calls out [laughs] people for- Oh, yeah.
I don't know what the ethics of memeing are. I mean, look, Elon steals a ton of memes. Yeah.
There, there was actually something interesting that I saw the other day about, I think it was Reformation or one of those brands, where they were going out to a bunch of TikTokers that had viral videos, and they solely had the, the creator remake that viral video to word for word, but wearing the Reformation clothing.
And then those videos went and took off. And the whole concept was, like, it's just copying the same stuff that works, but hey, the creator's getting paid and everybody's getting taken care of.
But it's the same that you see on YouTube. Everybody's following MrBeast. If you look at the stages of- Yeah... YouTube over the years, the content all molds with itself to the platform.
Everybody's optimizing for what grows on the platform at that time, and if you're not keeping up with those trends- Yeah...
it's tough toBut that's also, it's like something even like with MrBeast, like, I wonder how lasting is this brand? Because he's obviously nailed this specific area. He's not the first person to be like...
I mean, I'm, I'm getting, like, David Blaine flashbacks, right? [laughs] Like, remember David Blaine, like, you know, he was, like, a magician, and I was like, "Okay, that's, you know, yeah, some good magic."
We don't have a lot of magicians around these days, and they're, most of them are, like, corny, and this guy was, like, quote unquote cool back in the '90s.
And then pretty soon, he's, like, in a coffin underwater for a couple days or something or, or he was, like, being suspended in a glass box at one point in London, and there, they got no time for this shit.
So, like, I remember one of the tabloids had hired a miniature helicopter and was, like, flying, like, a cheeseburger, like, in front of his, [laughs] like, glass booth where he wasn't eating for 36 hours.
[laughs] Anyway. True. I don't know what my point is. My point is basically these things do have a shelf life a lot of times. They do.
And that's where I think when you look at MrBeast, I mean, if you look at the backing of him, he's got Night Media behind him, which he helped co-found, so he's obviously participating- Yeah... in that.
And then Night Ventures, they got Feastables. They're launching businesses, CPG businesses off the back of that, and I think that's where you're gonna start to see those exits.
You see it with the Nelk Boys and Happy Dad Seltzer. Like, they need to get into other businesses to build that long-term equity that can be their own standalone businesses.
They can use their channels to promote it, and then at some point there's a really juicy exit. Because the value of MrBeast's YouTube account, there's something there, but without MrBeast, there's nothing.
And if he gets hurt- Yeah... if something happens to him, it's done. Like, it's a single-person risk. Yeah, talk about a risk.
I mean, and you also just, you have to, it's, like, kind of like the Jay-Z thing of, like, exiting to get in the background.
And I think Bill Simmons actually had a profound influence on digital media and was right about a lot of different things, right? I'm very impressed at his staying power.
Because I like him, but then, like, sometimes I need to take, like, a year or two off. Like, at some point I'm like, are we gonna grow old together?
Like, I, I sort of sometimes think that is why I want, like, a kind of, part of me wants Twitter to go away 'cause I'm like, am I gonna be, like, tweeting at, like, 85? [laughs] I really don't want to be.
AI will be doing it at that point. [laughs] And I feel like the only way I'm not gonna be, if Twitter goes away. It'll be an AI ghost version of you at the rate that all this is coming.
I know you've been writing a lot about that. It's, it's wild. [laughs] But yeah. Look, it's, it's funny to see, like, it's the, the platforms, they rise and they fall, and creators and media personalities go with them.
It's a cyclical business, and if you could stick around, you're the breakout, especially for multi-decades. Yeah, exactly.
[gentle music] So let's talk a little bit about, like, the customer base, because, like, again, like, I joke that, like, we were, we were at the Broken Shaker during a totally different era, right?
And, like, crypto was going crazy down in Miami, and I remember I did, like, a, a conference presentation at the time, and one of my slides was just money everywhere.
It was just like, I'm like, there's money- It was silly... everywhere. Silly. And crypto money was everywhere. And you benefited from that. A lot of people benefited from that.
I mean, there was just so much money getting pumped into the system. I remember, it was liquidity. They started, like, I don't know if you guys were this.
They started a podcast and were like, "Yeah, we s-" I remember getting a email from Mark like, "Yeah, we struck this deal for like, I don't know, like, seven figures for a..." I'm like, "For a podcast?"
I was like, "Can you introduce them to the Rebooting show?" Money was wild. It was a wild time.
I mean, look, I think one thing that we like to always say is, like, we're, we sell pickaxes- How much of your business was crypto in 2021? We, we had a good portion of it. Look, I, I'm not gonna be shy.
FTX was one of our larger clients last year. Ah, shit. Thankfully, all of the work that we did was, was above bar, but it was...
And, and to, to be able to sit here and say that we could've done more due diligence is bullshit, because nobody could've done due diligence. When you see Tom Brady doing that, it's just, it's the nature of the beast.
But I think what we've always done is that we are grounding ourselves in being a bootstrap business. Every deal that we're doing has to make money and has to make sense.
We've said no to 95% of the deals that we got that come across our desk. Because ultimately, the only thing that our creators have, that we have with our creators and the audience is trust.
So, you know, we only focused on a lot of the entry points into crypto, the exchanges, and some of the hardware security devices. We didn't touch any of that other funky stuff.
But it was, I mean, you see the amount of money that was floating around. It was insane.
As it's dried up a lot, you're starting to see companies just go under because they ultimately could not get the economics of their business to work.
Their acquisition costs were just way out of control compared to what they thought they could get by doing these affiliate schemes, and they read about how great Robinhood was able to grow, and it's like those days were over.
And they had a ton of free money, and it was a, it was a wild time. We benefited from it, but for sure. Yeah. So well, the comedown must have sucked. It was.
I mean, look, every, every business, every media business that was the re- re- received that. I mean, Semaphor's investment from FTX was a big, like, oh, shit- Yeah... kinda moment. But yeah.
Look, it, the business contracted, for sure.
But that's why we're bootstrapped, and we don't have investors to have to answer to, because when times are hot in certain industries, they get hot, great, let's take the money, and, and we're able to live another day instead of, like, taking on leverage at that point.
And I think a lot of companies love that leverage of taking on VC money, but then at the end of the day, the bill comes due.
And I, I just get really worried about the amount of VC money that got pumped into media businesses, 'cause then it's like, you know, what, what's, where's the ex- I mean, there's exits obviously, but just gotta be very careful about that.
Yeah, and it also just makes you do weird stuff. Oh, totally.
Like, I mean, we've seen this so many times a- and, like-Just think about like what Refinery could have been or would have been if it didn't like have all that VC money.
Now it's gonna get like passed off to some either private equity firm or some sort of vampire situation where they just milk it for the SEO value, which is like...
I always joke, to me, it's the hospice care of like publishing. You enter into your like SEO harvesting phase where you're just sort of like hooked up and drained. Rest in peace, CNET.
[laughs] CNET, Money.com, I mean, like it's the way- Brands don't die. That's the thing is like brands do not die. Until ChatGPT wipes away SEO, a digital brand that's been around for a while will not technically die.
People- Mashable's a good example of like, man, Mashable's still fighting the good fight. What, what's going on there? [laughs] Mashable right now,
I'm pretty sure Mashable is the most profitable it has ever been in its existence, and like there's a lot of people listening this like, "Mashable still exists?" I'm like, "It absolutely exists."
It is using all that SEO juice in order to do a lot of affiliate, and it's just you milk the SEO and away you go. So what are the kinds of like, how has your client base though changed?
Because what I end up wondering, I guess there's two, two, two sides of it, right? So there's how the client base has changed because crypto was the apes and stuff like this. I know all of us like...
I was crypto curious, so I'm not gonna like throw too many stones. I didn't buy an ape or anything like that. I'm crazy. But I was in Miami. I'm not perfect. There's that, right?
So like the client base totally changes, but also like a lot of this meme stuff, like was this like a zero interest rate phenomenon too? Because like, look, everyone's into the stock market when it's up.
Dave Portnoy was doing his Davey Day Trader. I haven't seen Davey Day Trader. He seems like he's retreated to doing his pizza reviews and taking potshots at like women's college basketball players. Yeah.
There's a component of it being a zero interest rate phenomenon, COVID and the stimulus checks and sitting around and people being bored and having more access than ever to ideas to be able to invest in.
I mean, you're seeing the legalization of sports betting come across the country, so I think it is a component. But look, memes are here to stay.
I think the, the scale in which they're able to affect all of America, obviously that contracts and grows, but I think even as you look at Q1 of this year, you're seeing a ton of retail inflows into the stock market.
You have to remember that unfortunately for the f-folks who have jobs, I mean, obviously there's been a lot of layoffs recently, but even if you- Yeah...
look back to pre-2018 area, like people are getting paid every two weeks, they're putting money into the market, and they need help on where to put that money into the market.
So there's always gonna be that, that flow into, into investing. So that's where there's... This stuff is here to stay. Robinhood has twenty million active brokerage accounts.
There's a hundred and fifty million active brokerage accounts open in America right now, and that's growing. So like people are still investing a lot.
Now, how they get their information and, and how they're persuaded to invest in different i-ideas has changed and evolves every day. But it, I think the craziness...
L-Look, uh, there's this saying, so there's, in the stock market, there's this, there's, there's a, a thing called the VIX, which shows how much, how volatile- Yeah... the stock market is.
They say a rising VIX drives clicks. When you see the CNBC markets in turmoil, that's when you know- Oh, yeah... there's, it is- Blood bath. Sure... lets go 'cause then it's...
M-Michael Burry sent out this thing the other day saying that like all, after all this banking crisis, retail's there to buy it. Retail's buying Bed Bath & Beyond right before they're on the brink of bankruptcy.
Like they're, people are looking for the action. So when markets are moving, that's when there's the most amount of excitement.
But still, every day there are people that are investing in ideas, and that's where we're really looking at where the, the base that's there. Yeah.
And then when we have those big blowup moments, that's when our business does really well. So the, the clients that we have will always kinda come and go 'cause they're also the byproduct of VC investments.
So we, we have a ton of fi- uh, VC-backed fintech companies that are actively spending with us to acquire new customers, and the types of those companies come and go.
Some stick around for a while, some don't, but that's the nature of the beast. Yeah.
And then we also have since expanded into other ancillary type client categories, anybody that's looking to reach affluent people, right?
And that's where I think these people have a lot of liquid dollars to spend, and that's where you open up the apparel and high value e-com, and there's a lot of that.
[upbeat music] When it's a bull market, you're gonna go for the endemics. Exactly. Right.
And like, and I, and particularly when there's a land grab going on in crypto, like people can talk about like sustainability and stuff like this. Let me tell you, if you didn't run to the crypto and you're like [laughs]
That's like, that's like an IQ test. Yeah. Like there's a shit ton of money available, and it's very motivated money because it, it's all about like trying to establish, you know, it's a land grab. Yep.
And picks and shovels are always good during land grabs. So you're now going into like non-endemic categories, obviously with just basically this is high net worth.
But how is the mix of the work that you're doing different? 'Cause like- Yeah...
I remember back in those days, like it was like, okay, you can like just run like some Instagram stories ads and stuff like this, and FTX would-Yeah. Like, that's great. Totally.
And it, and it, and it would just work too. The thing is- Yeah...
that when, when there's a lot of excitement in the market, the cost to open up a new brokerage account is, is in the single dollars, and then all of a sudden it's the bear market and everybody doesn't trust anything, and then the, the price is 10X.
So what we've seen and, and what we've done as a business is it is beautiful to have the transactional advertising revenue that comes in from newsletters and other creator sponsorships 'cause we get a ton of deal flow and we see the performance on what's working, what's not, who's renewing, who's not, and why.
And what we've been able to do is then identify the people who are doing really well as a business and then go deeper with them.
So what we've done is half of our business has b- has turned into production and other types of consulting where we're actually helping companies produce their, their YouTube content and strategy, which then spits off all the short form content, which establishes trust for their brand.
It allows them to take advantage of all of the organic channels that are blowing up.
We have a, we have a very kind of old school B2B company that we do all their production for, and we're seeing, we'll put out a, a, an Instagram reel that'll do 100,000 views organically without any paid, and we're showing them that there's a ton of value in that while also being able to run direct advertising.
And you, you have to build your funnel. So much of the last two, three years of all of the VC money running into crypto or fintech has been on cheap cost per acquisition costs. Yeah.
All these companies were run by engineers, and they think they can hack marketing. They think, "I give you $100, I'm gonna get $300 back on, on that email newsletter." And the reality is, is that doesn't work.
And if it does, it's a lightning in a bottle, and then you're gonna hit saturation level with that newsletter, so you have to keep finding more.
And at a certain point you have to take a step back and realize there's only so far that your affiliate programs and direct response are gonna get you as a brand.
And I think you start to so- see, like FTX and Robinhood, then all of a sudden the, the television ads come in. And then you start to see, hey, we should go and do bigger, more brand-building. We need people to trust us.
So we're helping bra- educate brands on the value of going further up funnel.
And it might not have a direct ROI tomorrow, but they're starting to see month over month, wow, this is a compounding asset of building our own audience.
And I think you saw Josh Topolsky recently, who is the founder of The Verge and, and Vox Media, recently tied up with Robinhood to help take Robinhood Snacks and build more of a media company around Robinhood. Yeah.
'Cause at the end of the day, Robinhood makes their money when more people are trading stocks, and they need media to drive that engagement. 'Cause you can only have your app and push notifications help you out- Right...
so much. You have to develop- Yeah... a real relationship.
Although I think, like, the opportunity, I, I sort of, like, did this a little bit today 'cause I, I do think I'm, like, obsessed with zero interest rate phenomenons, but I do think, like, one of them was this idea of go direct, like, from tech firms.
Because, like, I, I'm, I'm eagerly awaiting the second installment of the DGEN trilogy from Coinbase Studios. I, I, I don't know when that's dropping. My guess is never.
And all of us, I don't think culture [laughs] is going to suffer because the second and third installments of the DGEN trilogy based on the Bored Apes is, is, is never gonna see the light of day. I think that's- Wow...
I think that's probably a good thing. Yeah. But I think what, what the opportunity provides is like you're saying, like, a lot of these companies to me got over their skis with, "Oh, we're gonna build media.
We're gonna go direct. We don't need the blah, blah, blah." You know what? Media seems so easy when you're not in it. I mean, I, I... Look, I'm, I don't say that I'm gonna build some sort of fintech company.
I don't know why they, they think that media is so easy. I guess because they can tweet and, and do some Clubhouses. But, like, are you... So you're gonna end up being, like, providing a lot more agency services though.
I mean, that's, like, both good and, like, also risky at the end of the day. It is. Look, we're, we're here to make money every day. We have to look at- Sure... our P&L.
I have to make payroll every two weeks, and it keeps me up at night.
But ultimately, yes, it's, it's doing that, and then where we see opportunity to make investments in content, we just launched a show called This Week in Money with myself, Mark Moran, and a comedian, Sharina Shahidi, that's a owned- Yeah...
and operated asset. And then we're able to put those through the distribution pipes that we have and then make a return on the investment there.
So as we start to see traction for those shows, we can double down on them, invest more in them so that we can create our owned and operated media.
And then furthermore, an area that we've been excited about is also making some small investments off our balance sheet, so when we do have extra money that's, that's there, we've made investments in technology that...
'Cause we know we're not developers. We don't have engineers on staff.
But then when Tyler from Beehive, who is engineer number one at Morning Brew, comes along and says, "Hey, I wanna build this platform to help creators launch ne- email newsletters," we, we put one of the first checks into that, and then ultimately helped introduce him to our network of investors, who then ultimately, Howard Lindzon from Social Leverage, who led the round there.
And that's, I think, part of our entire company's flywheel where we've got the transactional email newsletter creator work, and we know what the needs of the creators are and the advertisers.
When we see success, we can then double down and either go deeper with the brand or go deeper with a potential technology partner and make an investment.
And I think that'll start to compound over time, and it already is. And we're, we're in this for the long haul. This is not like... This, this business is not getting set up for a quick sell.
It is, i- it's very much like, I don't wanna say a lifestyle business, but we wanna be in control of our destiny and pu- Yeah... and pursue ideas as they come, come our way.
And look, when you're, when you're bootstrapping a business, you just gotta make a different, different set of decisions, and you, you have a different set of trade-offs than, than other companies.
There's a lot, there's a ton of upsides. But at the, at the end of the day, you have some constraints. And sometimes those constraints are good, and sometimes those constraints are not. Oh, yeah.
And- But we're reality... we have to stay focused 'cause we're, we're already in so many different areas to monetize our content that we're already spread so thin. And I, I battle with this a lot.
Are we staying focused enough on what we're doing? Yeah. But it's like if I had VC money, oh man, I would be fucking all over the place doing stuff that I don't even know why I would be doing them.
But it keeps us grounded. You'd be doing parts two of three of the DGEN trilogy probably. Yeah, I'd have fucking 10 NFT projects that are all zeros and my family asking why, w- where their investment is.
[laughs] Just like since we're on this, like, I find so fu- Like, they just had the Metaverse Fashion Week, and what's hilarious to me is all these brandsThe cycles are so long for getting anything done at brands is that they're stuck with these Web3 projects that their sunk cost is like, "Oh, shit, we put so much money into this," and like, "God, I wish we didn't have to go through with this."
But, like, at least that's the way I'm looking at it 'cause I see, like, GQ coming out with their Web3 thing, and I'm like, "Oh, my God, it's so brands to arrive at the party, like, not, like, a day late, but, like, six months late."
Months. It's, it's wild. And I saw that cycle at Vice. I mean, our sales cycle for big deals was six-plus months, and it's like we made content six months ago that are finally going live.
But I was in Miami for Art Basel, and I was on a... I, I sat in, in... on a panel talking about loyalty and, and the intersection of Web3 with a bunch of big brands. And it was, like- Yeah...
comical because the brands that are on the stage, some of them were publicly traded companies, and they're talking about how they can start to use Web3 and all this loyalty mechanism.
And I'm like, "Why are you guys not looking at the fact that you're a publicly traded company that have h- in some cases hundreds of thousands of individual retail investors that they have no idea who they are?"
Which is where on the Equity Animal side, an area that we're so excited about is really starting to unpack the technology of the stock market.
People can go and buy a share of Disney right now, but Disney does not really know who that person is. Yeah.
And that is the start of true loyalty versus getting involved in these, like, financially driven Web3 art, weird non-core part of their business, where it's like, what department is that helping?
'Cause I, I always struggled with that. Like, what... Is this just an innovation budget gone rogue or like- Yeah... you, like, I get worried about that for big brands. Yeah.
I, I find that actually interesting about the Equity Animal project because if you think about it, like, you look at, like, what happened with...
And I think about obviously GameStop and, and then also with WallStreetBets, and also it's what went on with AMC. But then also you look at, like, Substack and this crowdfunding campaign, which I didn't...
Uh, we, we're both fellow investors in, in Beehive. Mine, mine's a little small. But, like, I didn't invest in, in the Substack crowdfunding- Good...
mostly because I'm like, I don't invest in something where they don't [chuckles] show the financials. Like, I'm not that... Like, my God, I'm not that much of a mark. But I think you...
What, what that shows, because they, they raised a lot of money, and, i- is that there needs...
There, there's, there is an opportunity, I feel like, for companies to, to collapse that, that thing between their, like, customers and their owners and stuff like this. Like- I'll... Yes. Just makes sense.
And there's a big... There was a big legislation passed during the Obama era called the Jobs Act, which basically started to look at the definition of what it means to be an accredited investor.
For the longest time, it was straight-up illegal for a regular- Yeah... American to invest in a private company.
And what they were able to do is launch something called a Regulation A, and then there's a couple other versions of it, Reg CF and others, which allow companies, startup companies, to solicit investment from retail investors that are not accredited, so regular people m-making regular amounts of money, and invest in these companies, which is so exciting.
Because anybody can go to Vegas and gamble as much as they want, but you couldn't invest in companies.
So that regulation has paved the way for a lot of exciting companies to pop up, such as StartEngine, Republic, and Wefunder, and then have companies be able to open up access to invest in them via these regulated portals.
And Substack is taking advantage of Regulation CF, which allows them to raise up to $5 million from regular people. I have a lot of thoughts about that, that strategy for them at that valuation.
[gentle music] You're in favor of it?
[chuckles] I am absolutely not in favor of it. Look- Shit... at the end of the day, when you're investing, valuation matters, and I think you really need to understand the entry point that you're getting in at.
And I was running some- Yeah... numbers the other day. So they're raising at basically a 10% discount from what the last round, which Andreessen Horowitz came in at.
[chuckles] I, I, I saw a ton of- That was like, what, like 650? 650 million? 650 or something. Oh, that was pre-IPOs. And they're raising it 585.
And I was looking back, I was like, there's so many, like, intersections of Substack and, like, Medium.com. And Medium last raised, I think, at a half a billion dollar valuation a couple years ago, and, like- Yeah...
that was a big L. And, uh, look, the... I think the, the comp that everybody looks at is Mailchimp getting acquired for, what, like $20 billion by Intuit, which I think that entire business was, eh, bootstrapped.
I mean- It was bootstrapped [chuckles] by- It was, it was wild. They became, I think, two of the most wealthy people in America. Amazing.
But then there was a ton of pushback about how they didn't get, you know, anybody- Well, yeah, they sold it for 20 billion. They had, like, employees there for, like, 30 years or something like this. I know.
They didn't get anything. And then Intuit had to issue, like, some stock a-after the fact. But on the- Yeah... Substack front, it's just you look at these VC-backed businesses that are down.
Like, they're, they're raising rounds at less than 50, in some cases 90% decreases in their valuations, and they're not- Yeah... showing any numbers.
And it's just they're, they're basically asking for donations from their, from- Right... from their audience. Yeah. And I-it's- I just did... This was gonna come out a week after- Yeah...
a podcast I, I did with, with Chris Best, and, like, we talked a little bit about it. I'm not less... I'm more interested in how it will change their, their roadmap rather than anything.
'Cause, like, what I think about, I'm, I'm selfish, so I think about it as someone who publishes on Substack, and I'm like, "This is gonna force them to make bad decisions that are against my interests."
[chuckles] That's, that's basically my... That was my message on this- Yeah... front. Yeah. That's if they're also still around. Nobody knows what their burn is. Like, I... Like, are they gonna be in business in a year?
Like, I, that's where I'm like, why do they need this money? And it's only 5 million bucks, but they're... Yeah, I don't know.
And also, I think when you look at the actual core product, like, some of their bigger c- writers are churning. When, when... Like, they, they were...
When they took on all that VC money from Andreessen, they were writing all those Substack Pro checks. Yeah.
I think a lot of these early investors that are very loud on Twitter talking about them investing it, I think they're just taking part of that check that they got and investing it back in the company, and they're just giving it back to them.
And it's just like, it's a head-scratcher, honestly. And I, I, I think it's un-unfortunately, those are the example companies that just, like...
Uh, uh, I mean, look, all the luck in the world to them, but if they don't get a good exit, it's just they're burning their audience, and that'll just have a compounding effect with people leaving.
And then if a VC has to come in and dilute them further, it's just, it's gonna create a lot of weird dynamics that let the VCs take the risk.
Don't put that risk on your community, especially ones that are very, like, new on your platform. I get, I get nervous about that. That's fair. All right, let's leave it there.
This was a, this was a great meeting of the Brians. I appreciate it. Thank you so much, Brian. Thanks, Brian. We'll talk soon. [gentle music] Thank you so much for listening. Again, please do send me your feedback.
My email is bmorrissey@therebooting.com. Thanks a lot to Chase Sparks, who is producing this podcast.
If you're thinking about doing your own podcast, and again, they're hard to grow, but the depth of engagement is amazing, so don't let that scare you off. Get in touch. Jay can help you out. He is at podhelpus.
That is podhelp.us.
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