Did This Man Just Expose the Silicon Vally Tech Mafia? - Ryan Breslow, Founder of Bolt

my motivation here was to open people's eyes so what goes down in silicon valley where it's not all sunshine and rainbows it is very fierce and there's fierce competition and there's also games that are played with powerful institutions and you know groups of people who you know help each other out don't check have two wings yeah but it's not their actual wing hey what's up brian what's up sean sam what is it dude you can you can settle this for us so sam this is ryan he's the the the founder of bolt and we're having we're just going over this detail are chicken wings actually the chicken's wings or they just like the ribs of the chicken i think they're the wings what's a drumstick you actual wings i feel like they're not the wings feel like shark is like this is like a a such a market executive of course they are like what's a drumstick is a drumstick a leg power powerful young ben ben looked that up see you see if i'm right i think i i think i'm right oh alright we should we should switch gears okay so ryan's here i'm at ryan in where are we hang on la i was in la i'm at this dinner and and ryan's across the table from me and at this dinner everybody kinda like dressed up because it was at the dinner is at the owner of an nba team's house and you know some most people pretty dressed up i see this one guy who looks like i'm like is this a tiktok star like who's this guy's got earrings he's got this like tie dye shirt on it looked totally different than every other kinda like business sc at this thing and i was like oh what's man like what's your i was like like i'm literally my head i was like this guy's definitely a tiktok or a youtuber i he's got this like charisma about him i feel like that's who he is hey he's like no i'm ryan i you know i started payments company i was what is it bolt and i was like oh shit i know bolt that's amazing and we ended up becoming friends ended up investing in the company and you ended up getting twitter famous over the last few months my friend and i wanted to have you on to talk about a couple things that you've done some pretty impressive stuff at a young age i wanna talk about i wanna get people in the background of that and then you currently have some spicy twitter shit going on i wanna give get your take on on some of those things welcome to the show i don't know if you've ever listened but we have a very casual business show yeah it's a pleasure to be on sean i've been looking forward to doing this and i think we picked the perfect time and sam what do you know about ryan besides what i just told you so i was googling you so i i i saw your twitter come out of nowhere about a month than a half ago and sean told me all about bolt and he told me about this dinner that he had and so bolt is a payments company that is at like eleven or fourteen billion dollars in mark or valuation so it's a huge company what i know is that you look incredibly young and on your bio maybe on linkedin or something or maybe twitter it says that you've started two or three companies that are worth about a billion dollars including a bunch of crypto stuff and when i was googling you today one of the first images that comes up it's beautiful because you're tweeting about mods and mafia your the forbes headline is meet the stanford bitcoin mafia it was a picture of you at like three friends and so i know that you've got your hands in a bunch of stuff so brian what's the what's your claim to fame so this is the part you don't have to be humble just give people the the reason why they should be listening who is this cat what have what have you done what's your claim to fame and well i claim the fame is i think i've you know i operate pretty fearless and i've you know done a lot of things that that i think i've told been told i shouldn't be doing so i think this business i've been told by many people i shouldn't be doing it'll never be possible and you know we've written the framework on culture unconscious dot org people are like who are you to write about culture now i have close to hundred companies pledging that culture of written books done four day work so you know i think we're thinking differently myself and the whole bolt team and i'm very proud of that and so walk us through the i i don't wanna go too far into what bolt is i'll give kind of like the tl on on on the i'll overs simplify it you might cringe a little bit as i overs simplify but basically the way we pay for things online is you know some people shop at amazon and amazon says hey one click check out we got your stuff saved and then you have shopify shopify has a bunch of stores now shopify has shopify pay which says hey you've shopped at a shopify store before you can check out that way if you want and apple's got apple pay they let you pay it some places and what you've done is you went to like you're like hey you know even though those those companies are huge they're monstrous the internet internet's a lot bigger than that there's a whole bunch of stores that aren't on shopify there's a whole bunch of platforms like pinterest where people go and they find products they love and they love to be able to check out and as somebody who owns an e commerce store you i i felt this paying many many times which is you can look at how many people just drop off at the checkout because they don't wanna type in their name their first name last name address credit card you know zip code blah blah blah every single time when they're on their phone and they're on the go and i'm just see how like that's the biggest drop off in our whole store it's like shit what could i do about that like wouldn't it be amazing if there really was a way to just check out at any store have your information saved they would make a merchant like me more money because my drop off would be lower it would make the consumer experience easier because i don't have to type in the same shit over and over and over again and it has this like network effect where the more stores who use something like bolt the more shoppers have a bolt account now every single store benefits because that account can be used on all these different stores amazon is gonna work on amazon and shopify is gonna work in shopify but the world is a lot bigger than that alright how did i do at a attend did did i get it at what i missed sean that was pretty epic we need to play you in customer calls yeah there we go i'm i'm down so so that so you create bolt and you're saying at the beginning people told you don't do this or it can't be done what what's an actual story that happened there where somebody kinda told you look look man it's not gonna work so i a pretty extreme story i went to one of the you know tier one silicon valley firms someone who's a paypal led you know not paypal sorry of payments legend not paypal mafia but a payments legend big fur big name and i went i told them about what we're what we're doing and they spent the entire conversation telling me why this couldn't be done and that you know they actually got mad during the conversation and then after the conversation saw one of the people on our team because we were recruiting pop people was that another company they're involved spent three hours trying to convince that person not to join us and to join other portfolio companies and so is amazing you know i think everybody coming from the payments space the og they have real you know they've been in the sausage factory that you see how hard it is but i think there is a little resistance to the fact that there could be something disruptive that's this obvious and we just you know decided to go ahead and do it what were you and i wanna hear all about that but what were you doing before this before bolt sean mentioned i dropped that of school it's so a little bit about my background first job was bag in groceries that for three years and then i started going to the internet to make money started some websites online businesses ran what ran a web development agency working for a lot of other customers so that's why i learned everything there is about e commerce and then i was lucky again to stanford sorry the sanford bitcoin group with some friends in early twenty thirteen many of wish have gone on to do amazing things and i dropped that to school in twenty fourteen to focus entirely on crypto i'm like crypto was gonna change everything about payments i still believe but about a year end so mid twenty fifteen i was like wait a second why has nobody solve this checkout problem if you create a checkout and all the users who go through your checkout enroll in shopper accounts you could create the most powerful important shopper network payment network on the planet and so like was a site i couldn't un see and i decided to go you know real out like learn about the space the more i learned the more i realized this was an opportunity and so we started building and and yeah so that's that's that's the story did you did you did you you dropped out but before i mean you're probably what twenty one twenty two you dropped out at a young age did you did you just like knock it out the park with crypto to the point where like money you you you fixed money's good you're good now you're gonna go and start things did it happen at that young of an age unfortunately it did not i had this mentality that i was going to build things in crypto not invest in it which was a very costly mentality i like a little bit of crypto i mean you know but you you you you didn't become you know f you written no not at all so i had to both had to make it i was couch surfing like i didn't have enough money to like even rent a place to stay so i was couch a friend texted me before this podcast and he said ask him like how wealth like be like well he already got really wealthy from bitcoin is that why he's like so bras now and so you've kind of just answered that question you weren't warrant and at full i start off at a forty k salary and for about five years it never got higher than sixty k so i was living paycheck to paycheck i want in every dollar to maximize bolts outcome and just recently i sold a very tiny amount of shares just to kinda pay some expenses but up until at a month ago i hadn't sold a single share almost eight years into the journey what about your other businesses yet you didn't sell any of those it also helped start eco right or now known as eco your buddy runs that i think who's also what's the name as like impressive as well yeah and i don't wanna go too much into eco because your twitter stuff frankly just more spicy right now but basically you kinda helped the what just with the vision of that or the the the kind of the initial strategy of that yeah so i what i can't take credit for is i helped build an awesome team of founders and inspire some of the ideas but they have really manifested eco into what it's come become today the founders there have drove amazing vision the ones who on the ground every day and they've executed and so i've played a part in the journey but andy bro is one of the ceos i have the most respect for on the planet henry ryan sachs joey k there have done miracle work cool and and so let's talk about this twitter so you came out the other day and you you basically said look you're like bolt you know we we've become successful now but it wasn't without kind of some some challenges and there's like the normal business challenges and then there's sort of the like the challenges of the powers that be and in silicon valley there's two kind of like very powerful and in in most people's minds you i think you picked a fight with people that very few people have bad things to say about like comb and stripe right stripe is probably like the most beloved startup up in silicon valley respected beloved whatever and and yc see is also you know the most powerful sort of like a brand you know it's like basically if you were gonna pick on college you pick on either stanford or harvard if you were going for the top and and you basically told the story about them being them mafia and so i want you to kind of quickly can you quickly bullet point the the what your argument was for people who aren't nerd out on twitter and aren't seeing it because this all the audience we have here is not gonna have seen it so bullet point that and then i got some questions for you yeah so the point is my motivation here was to open people's eyes to what goes down in silicon valley where it's not all on sunshine and rainbows it is very fierce in their fierce competition and there's also games that are played with powerful institutions and you know groups of people who you know help each other out and so if you're starting a company especially in payments you've likely failed there's you know the only ones that been as successful have been internationally and we probably should have failed five times over with investors pulling out of term sheets when we were about to run out of money and so we i'd say bolt almost didn't exist because of the powers that be and powers that be and you know i think there are a lot of other companies that would have existed today if it wasn't for the powers that be and so you know now i don't blame these institutions k but but what i kick get you're you're i i i i don't know if you're doing this on purpose to be kind but you're kinda being vague is it possible that you like what does institution mean and gay are are are you able to like actually let let's separate out right there's there's fair fair you know fair business getting games which is like we're competing against somebody that's fair they can compete with us fiercely there's investors just deciding the space is too competitive or stripes gonna win i'm just gotta i'm just gonna back away right so perception thing that's kind of like nobody would say that that's unfair talk about the specifics of what you felt was unfair or where you know some some some there was some heavy handed this to it yeah so when we would be pitching investors they'd get interested they'd say they wanna invest and then they would talk to somebody at stripe someone related to stripe and either be told they can't invest or they shouldn't invest or somehow the conclusion was they were dis from investing but how do you know that that's what happened many they might just come and say we're not told me the stripe would always come up somehow in that conversation so many of them told me directly an investors say directly i got a call by stripe and they told me i can't invest in you guys is that bad though i mean what if they if they're already an investor of stripe i i understand have a conflict but you know stripe has like all the big names in silicon valley invested in enough or so they intentionally put every single you know tier one firm on their cap table and it even stuffed them with small checks they're like everybody's on their cap table right and so you know from and then they say you're conflicted out right that's a competitor of ours you're our shareholder don't right exactly and i didn't even you know consider ourselves a direct competitor at the time but i think they're very guarded about anything in their periphery so i've heard the same story from companies you know doing card issuing i've heard the same stories from companies doing subscription payments and then strep we're brought out their own product next so it's almost as if they have these feel out anything that's tangent gentle they make sure that doesn't get off the ground and then they go and build it and so is there any is is there any side of you so the way that you're phrasing it and i would like to figure out what what my opinion is i don't have a opinion yet is is like that's unethical but one maybe could argue and be like well that was just a savvy strategic move to like get everyone on board and you know that's just like that's just like that's a that's fair is do you do you see that side of it at at all or do you think that like the way they went about it their intentions were the intentions matter here yeah i've never pulled a single investor you can't invest in somebody right and so to me like everything is fair competition and if someone wants invest in a company tangent central to me i tell them go forth it we've even invested in tangent i'm invested in tangent central i think you know innovation is good have a very long term perspective so when you're calling investing you can't invest in this company like even if they're not on this stripe cap table with investors too that are non the stripe cap table to me that's just not how i would do business and i also want found the next generation of founders to go into building with an their eyes wide open because i invested eight years of my life into this business and not knowing about the games that go on right and so the most important thing i'm exposing here is if you're coming to silicon valley you have an idea you're quitting your job putting a lot on the line like get ready for war like it's it's it's serious and there will be people who do not want you to exist and you're gonna need to be ready to battle that and so one of the things you say is that which is they basically hurt our ability to fund raise by telling the first they they they kind of played good good game theory right they they got every every big investor to get a little piece of stripe because every investor wants a piece of stripe and then they said cool now you're conflicted out of investing our our competitors okay some might say that's that shady i personally just i'm an investor in you right i'm a fan of yours i personally would just say okay there's nothing unethical all about that you may not like it but that's competing i that's like a it's a strategy it's it's a hard strategy okay fair enough in the same way that like i don't think it's cool that mark zuckerberg just copied stories or whatever i think that's like you don't get bonus points of respect from me but i also don't think you did anything illegal or crooked completely crooked right that's that's you copied something that was copied it okay fair enough the second thing you said is that they could that yc which is has a huge stake in stripe control their own hacker news and that on hacker news people would be posting by bolt it would get some play would go up the ranks but that somehow there's some you know editorial shenanigans behind the scenes where all of a sudden the post about bolt would disappear or get der rank and then i post about stripe would be up higher and so you posted some examples of that now that's i think i think that's the summary of what you said as that was happening did you is that a suspicion or you're like i know that that's what happened pretty sure that's what happened you know because we had a a some post one in particular that you i'd written catered to watch the audience it was unraveling of how we do fraud detection better and guarantee it with your payments which was radical and new at the time it had organically got in to number one held there we had a ton of comments on it just like very active people very interested you can go read all my comments and then stripes post i don't know if it was there before it seems like they said it got posted technically before but anyway laughter got to number one they're started to rise and ours just started to fall and then disappeared and so i don't know if those editorial there's also this down vote functionality right and so you can also just have a bunch of your employees go and down or have a bunch of friends so you know whatever it is they're able to get us off of there pretty quickly right the the guys who started stripe the carlson brothers i don't know them but they seem from the outside like good dudes do you think that is that do you know and is that a is that a character characterization that you'd challenge yeah i mean what's exactly what i'll do it so you know let's they don't mean my standards for good dudes and so you know good dudes is not what you say publicly it's what you do privately and yeah i i just think that like right now you're like a loose cannon and i love it and i find it incredibly refreshing because from the outside you've raised money from amazing people at a fourteen billion dollar evaluation you are like the guy right now and i'm just i think it's cool and i've shocked but i think it's cool that you're that you've just said that i i think that that's i've never heard that before and sam both have definitely like a rebellious streak in us and we've told some stories on the pod about situations where where we do kind of like not keep it muzzle and you know sometimes that works to our benefit and sometimes there's some you know collateral damage or some you know some blow back from it i gotta ask you news came out i don't know yesterday today day before you're stepping down a ceo of bolt okay did you get in trouble what happened here so stepping up into executive chairman i like it i like it nice that those things that you like come up at the shower and it bed it but you write it out you know that was actually the truth and i know it's but yeah the stepping up the worthwhile twitter and and a promoted module because this guy is like he schools me on execution every day of the week so he started off running tech and product they gave him coo like sixty percent of company reports to and this just like my that's all my superpower right my superpower is is creativity it's visions culture is landing epic deals for the company now i get to spend a hundred percent of my time on that so this is something i've yeah but the the the timing is weird right everyone a lot of people online even though it's not true they say ryan got fired because of what he said well our you know this is this is a start of our fiscal year and basically january thirty first starts that and so this was the timing we had planned on for a while and so then i had some people saying you don't think we should wait people were gonna think it's related to the tweets whenever and i used to have fear about those types of things in the past and i think this recent episode has just locked into the my fearless even more i'm like eth like let's just do it and as everyone's getting gossip and you know interpreting in their own way and i actually think that's great right you're you're crazy i like yeah i respect that and it also i respect the move not the the ceo part right great that's that's fine i i don't know i don't know anything about that but for the for the content that you're putting out so we've talked before about about how to pick a fight in fact there's a there's a passage from a book called rework called pick a fight it's a marketing strategy and it's like a two page thing and i remember earlier on the pod i literally read it word for word because i was like this is a great idea and i think this is when the guys from thirty seven signals were picking a fight with apple and saying you know this is not right or fortnite you know epic games from fortnite was picking a fight with apple and and we talked about you know there's a there's an art to doing this like first you know you can't just completely make something up right you gotta have actual reason to pick a fight but then you wanna pick a fight not when you're punching down you wanna punch up at you know the the whoever is they sort of like the power and when you do that you're gonna get this grounds swell of a attention b support and see other stories will come out of the wood work that'll make you seem even more credible and and you get your name out there so like you i know how many people knew about bolt before this because it's like okay you know check out technology is not the most like in your face you know it's not snapchat it's not like a like like a product everybody uses but a lot more people know about it now and so how conscious were you i mean how strategic was it that you were you're thinking you know what like i think if we come out with the story yes i'll be helping people understand how the game is played but i think this will be good for bolt too yeah i mean i i think doing what you believe to be right will always pan out in the end and so i think this was i stand by decision i think it's great for both that shows the world who we are as a company it's it shows that we're gonna stand up for what's right no matter how controversial that may be we're gonna stand up to the big guys which is literally what our entire product is about and what i've wrote to my team you know when i was doing this i said just because our companies worth billions of dollars you know i'm not gonna become a sellout founder like it's worth way more financially for me to go become buddies with all these guys right but every selling in my metabolic my my spirit won't let me do that and so for me it was a way of telling the world who i am as a leader and i'm trying to you know set an example of fearless leadership for the next generation of founders because i think we lack it like i can't point to do many leaders in this country who are truly fearless who stand up for what they believe in and i think a lot of leadership is fear based and i think we have to kill that i i agree with you i i'm i'm entirely on board with you i think the i don't i don't actually think this is my stance but i in fact it's not my stance but at first it was but it's changed a bit and that's that like i don't know if what you're saying is necessarily true and i saw a lot of people who used to have your position where they're the underdog like sam alt men tan they're not anymore now they're like the man you know the folks in charge but and they're like this guy ryan is lying he's false he's he's just full of it and so it's like really hard to take aside right now because of this he said she said even though i i totally agree with you that they are this like cool kid group and it's always fun to stick it to that cool kid honestly the things you said that they did this is like actually credit to you the things that you said that they did are not even that bad like the he said she said doesn't even really matter because it's like if they did it okay even if they did it it's not the worst thing in the world if they didn't do it nobody's gonna know how to prove it kinda doesn't really matter i think you pointed out the overall power dynamic and that's what was important and then you just like got your story out there about who you are your bolt what's your point of view is or whether people agree with you or not that's their choice but but i think it's actually it actually emphasizes it how brilliant the the tactic was that it's not even like the most scandalous you know thorough knows does this work is it a giant fraud is it deception at the highest levels no it's not even if the acquisition is true it's not but it got so much play because of a you're a good writer and b everybody is so afraid to say award against them like i got one of my my most viral tweets was that i came out and said the club house is gonna fail and here here's why i think here's how i think it goes down and it is because at the time club boss was the darling every vc was fighting to get into the deal everybody was on club every night talking about how great club hours is i was the only topic they knew what to talk about and that's why it faded quickly because you go in the product all you could talk about is a product it's gonna fail and and so and i got privately i got a bunch of messages from high profile people who are like dude i could can't sorry i can't re tweet this to like show support for this just because of you know politics but dude i totally agree with you i like or like i'm glad somebody fucking said it i don't believe in the shit at all i had one person you know these are all blue check marks do people must be smoking and crack if they think that this thing is gonna work and so did you get like the the dm back channel support of people who are like look i can't come out and i don't wanna get yc on my bad side but like dude you're so right hundreds you know exactly if i if i was if had any nervous about doing it beforehand the out pouring that i got afterwards just gave me all the conviction in the world that this was the right thing to do because hundreds of founders reach out to me thanking me many of them sharing their stories with me about what encounters they've had and you know this this this stuff has happened this stuff has rampant and so yeah i had all of those messages all you were missing you needed a movement people could could rally behind the hashtag yc has done this to me the problem is why is everyone so afraid right well why are you asking that question you know the answer right you already said the answer which is you'd be significantly more financially successful if you just were to shut up and so that's why i asked you that question are you already very financially successful on paper just a bolt you're very you're set that's on paper but that's why i was asking do you have this like crazy bitcoin stash do you did you have this other stuff think even in this like tiny version of the interview you've actually heard four or five examples like dropped out of stanford i'd take some guts to do that when you don't have like something else that's working i may that's what i was asking i dropped just a note want to focus on bitcoin when bitcoin was nothing at that time that's fearless start payments company to compete with you know like one in one of the most like vicious fields where everybody tells you every everybody who's smart that you respect tells you that this ain't gonna work fearless number two it's going on the four day basically saying we're gonna only do four four day work weeks because i believe in x y z in terms of company culture coming out against yc right so that's actually like several of these kinda like you know it's like when i invested something i've looked for like a bread crumb trail it's like oh actually i see a trail of this person doing you know really bold things or you know clever things or packing different systems i think they're the next thing is just gonna be more of that and so you know that's i think that's pretty cool i wanted to to switch gears a little bit and ask you you you are an idea guy in fact and when we were driving home from the dinner you were telling me some different like i was like how'd you get the idea for bolt how'd you get the idea for eco and i just kinda got got the sense that you're an idea guy but you're fully cut you know you've been fully locked in for eight eight years doing one idea so want you to get out that little note sheet of other opportunities other things that you see that you don't have time to do or the energy to do or the interest in doing but you think that these are opportunities that exist did you bring any ideas for me i brought some okay fire them off and we will we will react to them so you give us the quick pitch and we'll okay this is a big one i think a lot of people are gonna do it if they hear this so i hope they do i think someone needs to start an investment bank for early stage companies why they help okay to introduce you to a bunch of investors you know they sanity any check your dac and materials they blast off with bunch of intros which is ninety nine point nine percent of the value that yc has right i they didn't even do that they don't even send personal intros you're one of four hundred companies right so now you're you know real company it's being intro you're a serial number here literally and so somebody needs to do so that's what i do personally i've probably done that for two hundred companies half the size of yc batch i've done this for personally so for founders it doesn't take very much time you know if you have the contact list if those people trust you right you can do it with one email and then a bunch of follow up intros if investors are interested and you know maybe half an hour sixty minutes with the founder making sure their materials are good getting them some feedback so i think there needs to be an investment bank for all stages of company building actually a really good idea how would you where would you what what would be the business model for it so would you take a percentage of the raise would you take equity would you take a referral fee from the vcs who want this deal flow you take far less than seven percent of the company you maybe take a certain percent of the amount raise right and then maybe a little equity that's what i do for earlier stages i take you know in from a few percent to high single digit percent of of the capital raised and then i would take a little bit of equity and that's you do this ryan does i do this how much how how how much money have you raised for other companies a ton of money i mean i don't know what that means a hundred million dollars or a billion or ten million through one company can be i mean through intros that i i've made hundreds of millions of dollars maybe upwards and they've given you a percentage of that account i know i don't take a percentage of capital raised so i used to i've someone do this voluntarily for free if i like a founder i don't take anything and then for some might take a little bit in adviser shares it's usually less than a percent it's usually less than half half actually a great idea it's actually a great idea yeah i think it's a good idea too but here's the thing so i used to run this conference business and it was fun and everything but the crappy part was the more successful the conference scott meaning the more in i mean you go you either do more events or you have more people come or you charge more money but when we the more people who came and the more successful my event got the worst it out and it sucked and so with this if you're doing this would this be like that where the bigger it got the less your you're like oh man he promotes everything or this brand promotes everything you know what i mean yeah totally you have to be picky with who you know who you work with right you can't work with four hundred companies every quarter and so sure and and a company you could do this you could start your own firm could team up with people you can do it as an individual founder you can do this so i think there's many ways to skin this cat and many different models here so this is just a a seat of a thought how did you build that reputation as both a the guy who knows the investors and the the investors trust and b the guy that gets his fingers on the has his fingers on the pulse of early stage companies so much so that you're helping them raise money well the secret that i'd share with any investors is treat founders really well and they for other founders right and so some do do that early on then they have a brand and then they you know form an ego right and they forget how that brand was generated in the first place and so the the firm that continues with that ethos and hold on ethos forever is gonna build one of the greatest next generation firms there is and so i i developed the reputation from founders from being somebody they could call about literally anything that they don't have to mince their words that they could trust that has their back completely and so you know my only wishes i had more time which that's kind of the challenge but i every ounce of available time i've tried to dedicate to the next generation and it's you know it's the most rewarding thing i could possibly do i like it so let's give i like that idea i think that's a good i've i've said this for a while which is that like venture investing is going into like couple big categories i think i think there's like the big brands that are like you know there their their stamp of approval means like a lot for you whether they're good or bad investors doesn't really matter they're like the harvard stanford of the world that's sequoia yc entries and whoever else benchmark whatever and then there's niche specialists that are like oh i know robotics better than anybody and so i'm gonna see all the robotics companies i'm gonna help them and even if they get a sequoia invest in them they'll also want the robotics expert in the deal and then the last one is basically like venture services which is can you serve the founder in some way so if you could help them raise their next round i think that's a a a smart way to basically get yourself into the right companies if as long as your as long as your filter is pretty good alright what else do you give us another idea well i think dow are gonna change the world so in continuation of of the spirit of investing in vcs there need to be more vc da where you invest in things as a dow and why is a vc dow better than a normal you know either individually investing or starting a traditional fund why is why is a vc dow better because it relies on the collective intelligence of a group i think it's transparent in terms of how it makes decisions i think you can raise capital more publicly and i think your actions are more kind of on a public record so you know i and frankly the best reason is i think if you're up and coming aspiring investor or vc it's way easier because you don't have to spend five years building relationships with lps you can start a public track record investing within your dow and that track record will you know talk for itself and attract more and more capital right what have you have you heard of orange dow no what is orange style so orange dow is basically as is what ryan's describing but against you know his his enemy of of the month which is yc so basically what it is is it's a dow which means it's like a if people don't know it's a decentralized autonomous organization basically in the crypto it's the crypto version of a company and so what it is is basically they made it where a only a yc alumni can and enter and all only yc companies can get funded so it's a it's an organization whose mission is to fund yc companies and the all of the investors are yc alumni so basically it start off with like ten or twenty now there's a thousand yc alumni that are in this they provide the capital they also provide the deal flow and the diligence and the filtering and whatever else and then they fund yc companies and and so if you're a if you're a yc company you could take money from orange out in addition to these other traditional funds and with it you're getting these thousand people and the and the i think the dow votes on the deal so so somebody proposes i think we should vote i think we should invest in this company and then the dow holds a vote and it'll come back you know seventy percent say yes thirty percent say no let's invest and it's like a a group group investment fund like that so i actually i like y comb i think that the like the paul graham i love reading paul graham work i i like a lot of that guys but when you're describing this sean i understand i am also frustrated i'm like oh so the rich get richer even more and more like it's this a you it just a it's a circle jerk that that is never ending and i that frustrate me i don't wanna i feel like i guess but it's definitely part envy of like well i'm not in that crowd therefore i miss out and it's also part like david vertical goliath type of thing yeah i can't stand clubs and so it's yeah i i've had same feeling sam it just something about it doesn't feel right and even if i was inside of it you know i've i've had the opportunity to join in a lot of these clubs and i won't do it because you it's also in your self interest not to do it you know i could've have obviously gotten the benefits of them but you know now look at where i am like i'm i'm free to do what i want and to speak up how i want and i don't owe any favors to anybody and so people but you are are are you free though why are why are you free to do this because because he's he's not in a tribe he didn't he didn't basically go into a tribe which has certain like rules but he's got he's he has six hundred employees who he doesn't wanna completely screw over you know like some if something that happens ryan that could negatively impact some of his people he's got some investors the general i mean i don't i have accountability maybe you're single though to my employees and my shareholders right to make make them successful and better off and i think that's enough like i don't need i don't have all these other groups that i'm accountable to in addition to that that you know basically makes impossible to say anything and i i i consider myself fairly free where were you raised miami florida and what did your parents do for work my mom was worth a local secret job my dad a small business so i grew up very middle class i went to you know very lucky again to stanford on you know almost entirely financial aid so up without much money went to a big public high school in miami four thousand kids drove in a very diverse environment so i got into break dancing and stuff like that so when i came to silicon valley in stanford it was like the biggest culture shock ever because miami and silicon valley it's like it couldn't be more opposite not anymore alright did you have any other ideas you wanted to share with the with the audience man i so here's my general theme is and i'll i'll reference bolt for a second then i'll talk out it broadly everything's is getting decentralized so do you think about commerce amazon phase one right network effects economies of scale data everything but on one domain amazon dot com and then phase two is you have shopify which is all of that power network effects economy a scale tech scale but on one end to end in closed platform ren bolt is the network effect and the data and the tech economies is of scale in a fully decentralized way completely un bundled completely headless completely tech agnostic and that's why we're such a powerful force for commerce right that's why mad who's our new ceo he centralized commerce to and amazon for eight years ran all logistics cain because he saw it getting decentralized and thinks they have the best approach to decent decentralized in commerce so i think every industry is getting decentralized i think purchasing you're gonna see a tidal wave of purchasing platforms that help you purchase from your neighbors purchase food locally i think the consciousness of our society is raising i think we wanna buy and purchase things that are good for society that are sustainable that are recycled more than things that are flashy you know i think more people are gonna start wearing t shirts and so i know there wasn't a specific idea but those are those how i think about things and with your with this whole new like with you kinda coming out and doing this twitter thing and accusing these people it it like a a smart move and you seem like you're definitely are incredibly smart is like you know i'm mad at the that this system exists and it just so happens i'm working on a solution is that what you've got up your sleeve just might be so what are you gonna do two to v announced i've been work on ideas for a while i think there are much better systems that could be created if you think creatively about incentive alignment and i have confidence that you know better systems will be created not just by myself but for others who may see this as an opportunity to go build well you realize i agree with what you're i i think what you're doing is smart but like if i was a hate if i was sam alt or whoever's like disagrees with you i would say oh well he's talking shit because he's launching a competitor and so what what percentage what moto how how are they each playing into this of like i genuinely feel this way and also i i have something up my sleeve i wouldn't be doing this if i wasn't so distraught with how they operate so you know if they were like a bastion of positivity good advice and you know well they were super founder i wouldn't be doing this but i fundamentally do not think they are and so you know and they being white comb and are you are you happy right now or do you have like a nervous energy in the morning because of what's going on i mean like i know sometimes when i do something that i like i'm happy that i did i wake up in the morning i'm like man i'm getting a lot of hate though like this type of energy just bothers me what where's your energy right now i like sean's thing about club house it kinda it wasn't like a career maker but like it wasn't that far from that but like he was getting a ton of hate and like i i don't know i didn't ask him but i maybe there was some nervous energy in the morning yeah is i didn't like how much i started looking at my mentions that next twenty four forty eight hours because i was like oh man like as two days of my life i kind of let my main focus be what are people's reactions to this it was very hard to look away from that for me personally and i'm pretty like strong minded about the sort of thing and very like i tweeted this out the day i want my attention to be very expensive but i know once you get you know twenty million impressions on some tweet and you're getting fifty thousand you know replies or whatever or the heart likes or whatever you know that's a flood of stuff you can go look at about people talking about me people saying things to me what are they saying people hating me do i need to defend myself it it was a bit of a distraction for me yeah so where's your energy right now are you nervous are you happy are you up tight where are you well i'd be lying if i said i don't care people think i mean i obviously do in fact i'm doing this because i care people think so much that i want the right you know i want my opinions out there in the world and so you know people can't update how they think about these things and i'd i've been fair with it pretty well like dia yoga and meditate every day every morning and i stay pretty calm and grounded and you know i think that i feel more more empowered than ever just like i've gotten so much love the last few days it's been you know ninety five percent love and then it's all the people i expected to blast on the hate who came out of the world works right it was like sequoia vc what you know paul sam yc and so that was on i was actually kinda surprised at how just like crazy their messages were and how hostile they were like you know generally a older like could think they'd be wiser but what what did they say they like gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna fuck you up what are they gonna fight you or do they say i mean like what what would they say paul nit picked on a tweet of mine about straight publishing which basically said because i focused on that that this is man you know i manic or something like that and then sam like just like said something and then he like corrected my spelling which is like you know what someone in saw that why he he not even your spelling he's said why comb it's two birds not right yeah yeah most air most arrogant most arrogant time that's like you could do i thought it proves my point right like that's what you do in middle school you know and then like they might as well have just said i know you are but what am i yeah exactly and then sean was just like you know called it like use just horrifying words and just you know this who guy the got the guy from su sequoia he he basically was like this you know he's making it sound like everybody was against them but the truth was their numbers just yeah started commenting on my metrics like just like and it's this only thing you know he could point like first of all vcs aren't supposed to comment on metrics second off what he said it was a blatant and lie about our metrics and so another just complete low blow and so everybody who messaged like all of those comments validated what you were saying like these are the people you're putting on your cap table imagine when you'd have a disagreement with that as a founder how they're gonna treat you you i actually think this is gonna be a net pot net win for you i think that like there's definitely fear if i was you of like man is anyone gonna work with me again but i think like being a good nature loose canon is actually a typically a loose cannon i like nature cannon yeah because intentions matter intentions matter a lot so like if you're a lose cannon but you just wanna hurt people that's one thing if you're a lose cannon and you generally wanna help that's another thing that's lovable so i actually think this is gonna be a big benefit to for you do you are you single do you live alone or do you have a girlfriend or whatever you're into what and what what are they saying oh well i have people close with and like everyone was super supportive they're like dude you're doing what no one else but everyone was afraid of doing and i find if you're doing things that other people are afraid to do you're generally in the right so you know it's for me that's a marker of like i'm on the right track and yeah they're very supportive have you read the book forty eight it laws of power i haven't but i want to i heard it's epic you are doing it so maybe you should go read it try to get it all that pretty soon because you are in the middle of a lot of like different strategies that the author discussed interesting alright i'll go pick it up yeah and the author his name's robert greene he's got another one called the thirty three strategies of war of which you are also doing some of that but this is very interesting that you're like involved in this what what do you read on a what have you read that's made an influence on this whole process of yours well i read a lot of spiritual texts and that has given me the fearless to make first principal decisions because when you're grounded in spiritual reasoning you're not grounded in mainstream reasoning and so that drove conscious culture that drove four day work i'm like why are we working people to death that's not healthy or health spiritually is very important sustainability it's important spiritual concept we have to push forty workweek week and you know monks certain monks the more higher on this spec on you know wiser are they are more sending they are the longer their sleeps and people are like oh lot speak because they're more docile and it's not the case it's because they're actually you know more combative when they see something wrong in the world and so for me like i've found that kind of the further i've gone and kind of healing myself and healing those around me and going inward the more fearless i've had externally and this is one manifestation of that you are so strange it is awesome you are so cool i've become a fan sean i understand what you what you saw in this guy when you had dinner with him yeah exactly thanks thanks for coming on seven twenty eight right twenty nine twenty seven you are the weirdest twenty seven year old i've met that is what a unique what a unique perspective it just you're you're you're interesting tb if if if if this battle i hope i hope you win this battle but like you're definitely gonna win some big war that's for sure we're looking forward to it fight the war cool let's go alright so people people go follow you on on twitter i think that's the best spot what's your handles king ryan or ryan king the ryan king why why is that your name i think it's fitting oh my god it awesome okay there's a great meme i don't know if you saw it but you posted another you posted the thread about the mob and and the yc mafia then he posted another thread why yc isn't worth it and like one of the first replies i saw was this meme of like this wife asleep and the husband's like like reaching over to her and he goes honey wake up the bulk guy did another thread and i thought it was so funny so people should follow you a handle actually to my grandparents always used to call me ryan king so call me that growing up and i'll just like awesome great handle let's go for it dude thanks for coming on appreciate it and good luck with all the old stuff guys thanks sam sean such a pleasure see you see you alright ryan just left alright what what'd you think bye guys so like let's separate this current like do i think he's right or wrong i i i don't i haven't investigate him i think he's right may maybe but i haven't i don't hold that that's currently but as a person this guy is a killer i'm team ryan at just in light this guy is so unique unique yeah he he's very unique guy he's got a very unique style of speaking yes like i i usually have a bias against people who speak slowly all he talk so slow but i loved and so and i i've noticed about myself that i'll like i'll instantly kind of okay this person talking you slowly if they don't like have something super interesting to say right away i find myself tuning out when i met ryan he was talking really slowly but then he would say one thing that would just grip me and i'd be like wait what and then he would say the next then it would like be another minute and he get me with another one and another one i was like wait i think this guy might be one of the more i was how old are you because like i i think i been in when he's twenty six or twenty seven and i was like you're one of the weirdest and you said it probably you you know you are the strangest twenty seven girl old that i've ever met and it's awesome and that was my exact takeaway and then i was like i was leaving the dinner and i was like you wanna just hang more you wanna how about i drive here where are you going and he's like oh that'd it'd be great and canceled uber and hopped in the car and i just drove around we just talk some more because i found him to just be a very interesting person and you know i like the stuff that he stands for which is great in our text group ahead of this people were saying oh yeah you know he probably has sold a ton of secondary he probably made all this money on bitcoin and maybe that's one of the reasons why he's able to kinda be this like loose cannon say whatever he wants he said that that's not true yeah and i think that that's i don't think he's a alive i mean i obviously i'm sure he's doing fine right bolts a fourteen billion dollar company now i think you know and that's what i fired and his equity will still be there for i mean know that's okay like that that wouldn't be you know i think that that's the safe thing but like had said in a thing he's got a track record of just kinda doing things his own way so i'm not really surprised and i also think he didn't say anything bad and i think actually it's a whole bunch about nothing he did say something bad on the pod though he said i am saying that the stripe brothers are bad i said you they're good dudes and he goes no i don't think they're good i don't think they're good yeah but that's what i don't think that's that bad i out you're allowed to say i you know i don't think these are these are gonna do i think that's bad man i think that's bad i think that that that is a strip that's a very simple word bad and good but like it's it's like to say someone i don't think i don't think this person's a good person that's a really strong thing today i feel like we saved strong into that every episode about people we know half as much about but like i text you that all the time i'm like hey this person messaged me i i might work with them on x y and z are they a good person right and if the answer is yes that's it right if the answer is no that that's it as well now i would say i think the things that he said that they did i don't think they're that bad at all and again i'm an investor in both i like ryan were friends so you know like i'm i'm not agreeing with him that they're that bad even if they didn't it but that's okay like here he's totally allowed to think that those are fucked up things i think that those are pretty much fair play but i think it's really funny the way that people reacted to it and i think it's really good for him and good for their brand the way people reacted to it so good on him for for using them in a way to build the the brand of what he's doing and also put his stake in the ground and say this is what i think is right wrong i think they did wrong you know he's fair to say that even if my stake would have been ten feet over to the left i i this guy is interesting that was a good find so i don't know where the in the episode this little segment is gonna go in the beginning in the end but that's what we think about that guy that guy i was fascinating i could talk to him for a long time yeah i'm older than him but i would like look up to and i think that in his like you know when he was on here i think he was you know trying to do a good job kind of representing what he stands for like i think most people do if you go i think was default if i get invited onto to a podcast gonna go on i'm gonna try to like you know say all the right things so i think he was definitely doing a little bit of say the right things it stuff but actually having talked to him in private he actually was very similar where he's like you know i believe in this i think it's gonna be awesome i think we're gonna win and i'd be like yeah but like you know we're just shooting the she his late night dinner over two drinks like but he was just like i said what i said and i met wife said you know like i think this is awesome i think i've you know this is the best i think this is totally gonna work i think bob blah so like i think he has a very singular minded about what he believes in and i think that's cool to to to interact with because i think most hey don't believe anything b when they believe they'll hedge or c they'll kinda be wishy washy about it or they believe when the lights are on and then when the lights are not on they're you know why are you applying for a job i thought you just said this is the company that's gonna win yeah yeah a case you know like there's a wishy washy rest to a lot of people i he has zero wishy washi so you know for better for what and i i'm upset at myself i judged him as being far different just by looking off his profile picture what what'd you think he was not just that he was this like i thought he was what people accused me of being of this like blonde hair white bro who had everything in life handed to them who is gonna be kind of maybe not as intellectual kind of a an alpha right you know like this this stereotype that it's not an insult necessarily but i wouldn't be proud like if they just think i'm just like a good looking strong muscular successful guy and i just feel like it's unfair well i'm not talking about myself but like with him i'm like well because he went to stanford he dropped out of stanford was in bitcoin forever so it was like crazy rich at a young age he said he's from miami so in my head i'm like yeah oh okay i got fine i paid you yeah this is like this this is this thing that you're calling life is a game for you right and in reality he was incredibly intellectual very intriguing i believe him that he that like i understand that you can be very wealthy on paper but like he hasn't sold a lot of stuff so like that's an interesting perspective so i thought he was cool different than what i thought he was gonna be i enjoyed it yeah cool let us know what you think if you want us to do kinda of more of these or less of these you could tweet at us and you know we we take into consideration we don't necessarily listen but we we we'd like to know what you think and then we may or may not do it