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All things Modern Market w/ Carpenter
Recorded: April 2, 2025 Duration: 1:03:29Space Recording
Short Summary
The conversation highlights the launch of airdrop season as a new project, the impact of ETH price decline during its launch, and the growth of content delivery from newsletters to a daily show. It also discusses trends in content curation and innovations in building on-chain communities.
Full Transcription
GM GM welcome to this week's episode of founder mode I am co-host carpenter of web3 unfortunately
our other co-host AI bros unavailable this week but I'm super excited to have the co-founders of modern market legendary and be check on the show today
gentlemen how are you i'm great man thanks so much for inviting us absolutely
how are you legendary pretty good thanks for having us excited for the conversation
we're just saying in the private chat it's nice to be on the other side it's like yeah we can talk in the private chat and we don't
yeah we just we're not hosting we're not hosting anymore we host every single day and now we don't
have to host it's brilliant absolutely yeah it's kind of i was gonna some of my questions is uh
you know how does it feel to be on the other side right because you guys are usually the hosts
and you know what sometimes me and legendary very very rarely we switch around because
obviously we are co-hosts but i kind of lead on the hosting section and every now and again
maybe if i'm traveling or there's certain things that happen and like we switch around
legendary does it awesome so like he does a really good job but I actually kind of like it when I don't have to host because it means that my brain is fully loaded to give to give the take
and I feel like you can give I can give a bit more a home run of what I think because sometimes when
I'm hosting I have to like facilitate the conversation make sure you guys get a chance to
showcase like your thoughts and set you up in the ways to succeed. But then when I'm when I can take
the backseat, I can think of maybe be a bit more selfish in that respect. So yeah, sometimes it's
nice. But I have to say, Bichick, that doing more than what is it, 470 shows with you now,
your brain is now fully in hosting mode. So behind the scenes, when B and I talk, or we have a call,
we have a chat with Brett, B has some points that he wants to talk through.
He's going to moderate like he's on the show.
So he's literally saying moving on to the next piece, moving on to the next item on the list is literally perfectly moderating off air conversations as well as if it were the modern market.
Yeah, I end our private chats like I end the show.
It's just kind of all fusing together now.
The live show fuses with our personal life.
So that's just how it is when you do it daily, I think.
Awesome.
And I wanted to, so generally we kind of start out with the, you know, how did you get into crypto thing?
I also want to know how did you two meet?
Because like you guys just are like a dynamic
duo right um you guys feed off each other really well and i just i don't know as a like i streamed
a lot in web 2 um before coming over to web 3 but um it's just you guys like just beat up each other
so well i mean i'll just kind of pass it to you guys from there i feel like like I've told this story before, so I'm curious to hear Legendary's version.
I knew that you're going to pass it to me.
All right.
So how did we meet?
Basically, it was in the beautiful bull market, last bull cycle, NFT cycle it was.
And Bea and I were both in the Pixel Vault community, and it was NFC Lisbon. And we are basically both active
in the founder style discord, we're not really directly chatting to one another. But we were
aware that the other person does exist because we've seen our names and profiles in that founder
style chat. And because we the both of us were going to the same event that very night at NFC Lisbon we said hey let's link
up before grab some coffee and chill before the event which we ended up doing and we did so for
three hours talking about everything in the world from politics to values ethics philosophy and
everything and clicked clicked really well enjoyed the rest of the conference, enjoyed NFC Lisbon. And a couple days later, we reconnected both back in our home places,
and we kind of figured out that it is very, very rare to align with someone,
especially in Web3, on so many things and on so many values
that we wanted to do something together.
And we knew that there is a fit for the two of us to have a venture together, but we
weren't like exactly sure what to do from the get go. And by chatting, talking to one another,
actually, the first thing that we ended up doing was airdrop season, which kind of brought together
two, I feel like very, very cool skill sets. B is absolutely fantastic about forming interesting narratives from stories, from pieces of information,
packaging up content in a way that it's easy to understand, it's memorable.
And I, at the time, been a bit longer in crypto, have been dabbling around in DeFi protocols,
farming airdrops, and have done so, I would say, quite successfully.
And we thought, hmm, it'd be cool to bring those two skill sets together,
have this airdrop season product going,
where basically we do the weekly airdrop tutorials
and try to form a community around the token-gated NFT-gated Discord
that we were selling on the day where ETH that year
basically was down, what was it, be 16%, 18% on the day, ETH that year, as he was down, what was it?
Be 16, 18% on the day, worst day that year for ETH.
This is when we launched our product.
This is when we started a drop season and did so for,
we committed to half a year, extended for,
I think another year.
Yeah.
It's a full year then did one and a half years of that.
Then that was done and finished and
while we were getting closer to the end of airdrop season we kind of started experimenting with some
sort of spaces where we talked not news first kind of airdrop opportunities started with a once a week
audio only like literally talking with our with our phone we would take our phone and literally
just be like this because we didn't you know we didn't know how to do anything we were just like okay let's try
um we did a little bit we gave up mostly because the topics were wrong like we were trying to
still fit the show with whatever show we thought we were doing we were trying to fit it with
the content like content and the business at that time which was this specific product you buy the nft you get access to these
tutorials those two things were matching there was no real product market fit there ultimately so we
kind of just we kept our promises to the community we then even extended it a little longer and i
can't remember how we kind of closed it out, Ledge. Like we just took a while to think probably.
And then I think after a while we were like,
you know what, I think maybe we should start that Spaces thing again.
But we obviously just attacked it in a completely different way.
Meanwhile, I had been personally writing my newsletter, right?
So I was writing my newsletter every single week.
I've done 160 newsletters so far, started at the end of 2021.
After a year of writing like completely for free,
managed to get my first sponsor.
And then like a year later,
I was like, let me do these daily updates.
So I started doing daily updates
and then it kind of made sense like,
well, okay, I do these daily updates.
Why don't we just take that information
and do a show on top of it?
So you're being like super, super efficient
with all of the information
that you're producing like taking all of the work that you already do and just like repackaging it
in different ways and so in some ways the show i know kind of gone off the question that you asked
but like the thing that i find interesting about our development is the show was the final thing
and it's like the final product and it's the best product that I've created like because in you know
in a way it went newsletter daily updates show and this final iteration was the best one but I
would never have got to it if it wasn't for a meeting legendary because we wouldn't have I
wouldn't have been able to do it myself but b if I hadn't like gone through those other stages
of creating so I think that's pretty interesting as kind of part of the development too.
And the big thing then was that you B said,
you need to break into people's habits straight from the protocol.
Legendary really didn't want to go daily at the beginning.
You said we have to go daily.
I'm like, I can't commit to do anything once a day.
That's a heavy, heavy commitment.
But you managed to talk me into it.
And it was absolutely the right decision.
And obviously, the next breaking point, quote unquote, along the journey was to stop doing spaces and audio only.
And I had video to that.
Where me, I wasn't doxxed at the time.
I was quite wary of me being quite actively
trading people tracking my wallets me not wanting all of that so i was hesitant to do that and i
will never forget the the beautiful words that b said to me when we did the first videos he said
you are as comfortable as a monkey on the cage that's being put on display i'm like thank you
but you are right i know i did not feel comfortable at all. But with the time...
Oh, it is.
Yeah, no.
I'm never going to do that.
You literally have to force me to do that.
But with the time came the routine.
And this is how we basically now arrive to what is the 479th iteration of the modern market.
And show.
I'm, for one, very happy that this that happened that
you know he was able to talk you into going uh you know video because what i like is the
pardon me the way that it's on um you know you guys still do the spaces but as well the video
is like depending on my day I if
when I'm driving to the job site I can listen right put my earbuds in just
listen and drive or I can what I prefer to do is be on the computer and watch
right and then what I love is the format of your show right and kind of do that
the headlines at first and you go through more like deep dives and
everything and then I'm able to when I'm on the computer is kind of go through more like deep dives and everything and then i'm able to when i'm on the computer is kind of go through and a lot of the times i have not um heard of or been as active into certain
spaces um kind of like you were talking about bear chain a couple weeks ago and you know the
multitude of other topics i'm able to sit there on my computer and kind of get into those ecosystems
which i know like you guys help so many people it's
it's incredible um and i've been a long-time listener and uh i know a lot of the people in
like my little circle are as well long-time listeners so i'm very happy that it happened
it's cool hearing from both your uh your sides right of how it all came to fruition
appreciate it man i appreciate it a lot and
also it's just interesting for us to figure out like one of the things we've been speaking about
recently is trying it like although we go live and although we do it every day there is like a
bit of a disconnect in terms of like getting feedback like getting like getting true feedback
i think a is great live that is that is the best because you've got the comment
section you've got the youtube comments going live so it is good but even like those little
things about understanding how people are consuming your content and knowing that okay well in one
window they're going to have it on and then in the other window you're going to be researching
the stuff like knowing that that's what like i hadn't necessarily thought of that but knowing
that that's one of the ways that people are consuming the content is helpful to us because
it means we can design the show just with that in mind sometimes and just knowing that that's one of
the behaviors that's kind of being elicited from the way that we deliver it is is pretty cool
i wanted to kind of ask um so there's so much information and I know myself, as long as many others, not only watch the show, but are subscribed to the newsletter, right?
Does that go basically from the time you're off, you know, live to just, you guys just researching on stuff or like, do you have that pretty streamlined now or what's that process look like?
Yeah.
So in terms of content
i think i'll make two points one i think it's really i think one of the reasons why our show
is good is because we actually do the stuff that we're talking about there there is no content team
there's no research team there are no researchers there are no analysts like it is me
and legendary doing all the stuff that we're talking about like we're in the market so and i
think that beyond anything when you see other people doing media as well the people that are
my observation has been the people who are always strongest the people you feel most attached to the
people you trust most is when you know that it's them slinging
their capital around in the sayings that they're speaking about so i think that's like first and
foremost the thing to say and then beyond that yeah it's like super streamlined at this point
i think there's a few maybe news sources that i'll go to as soon as the show finishes i'm basically
on twitter again bookmarking things all day i We go to sleep, wake up, check what else is new, keep bookmarking.
Then I'll just review all the bookmarks and then try and make sense of it before the show.
Then I'll write the snapshot.
And so it's just a constant process of researching, bookmarking, reviewing, evaluating and synthesizing
and then putting it into like a, you know,
attaching some kind of layers of importance to it. Cause that's what people need, right? There's
no point me putting like a random list together of 20 things. If they're all in some random order,
like people need to know, okay, this thing has happened, but maybe that's not the main thing
you need to know about today. Maybe that's like the seventh thing. And sure. I think that's
important. And like, to be honest, sometimes there's things that are going on and i make just
the editorial decision like okay it's not it's not going to be in like i know it's happened i know
some people might think it's important but i don't want it to be in i don't think people need to know
about it and conversely there'll be things like okay maybe this might be a little bit left field
but i think this should be a headline because i've got my specific thought about it so
um yeah it's just it's just a process.
And over time, you get faster and faster and better and better and more and more efficient.
And interestingly enough, this was one of the things how we learned that the show has actually become relevant
is when people started to reach out to either you, Bichick, or to myself to be like,
this happened today and you did not include it in the snapshot.
This clearly is a main piece of news.
It's not in there.
So people start caring about us as a distributor of media and news that they were reaching
out to say, hey, I think this is important.
You did not include it.
Why?
That shows you, okay, you are now a serious media company within this bubble of Web3 where
You are now a serious media company within this bubble of Web3 where we're operating in.
we're operating in.
And that's what, well, we'll kind of tie into later down in the conversations, but, or in the questions, but this is a good transition.
So one thing that you guys do, like I've noticed like in the bottom of your corners, I'm just thinking you're sponsored.
you guys do like i've noticed like in the bottom of your corners i'm just thinking you're sponsored
uh now was that something that was always planned or is that something just came about um you know
doing the sponsorships i think uh and stuff like that which uh you know you don't see a lot of
you know podcasters but you guys are like a media company so um quite a bit bigger than the average average
podcaster so um for me yeah it was all planned like i know a lot of people say oh it's not
planned just kind of take it as you go but i definitely had the vision that this is like
because you've seen other people do it we We had like, although we're still kind of,
although we're still kind of early to the,
this industry of live social audio and streaming,
you can see the route to the thing.
For example, before us, you had the Bodogos group
who did an awesome job from the previous bull market
into now where they've kind of expanded
and do even more video content or whatever.
Like they kind of showed how to do it in some way rug radio as well before us kind of showed how to do
it so you know they they had their vision of okay well you know if we're going to have a sponsored
segment you're going to invite someone on maybe you get 15 minutes towards the end of the show
blah blah blah I had my own vision of like the way that I wanted to do the sponsored part we do it
differently so we have a different model as in it's the same model you're obviously paying for I had my own vision of like the way that I wanted to do the sponsored part. We do it differently.
So we have a different model as in, it's the same model.
You're obviously paying for attention,
but we have a different way that we integrate partners into our content.
But I feel like it's,
it was always part of the plan because my intention was always, I mean,
I've said to the boys before,
my dream is to be able to wake up and chat with the boys
for my job. So like, if I want to make that possible, I have to make sure that
this is profitable and that it becomes a very self-sustaining business. Like it absolutely
has to do that. I have no choice because this is, this is what I've chosen. I don't,
I used to be a teacher. I used to be a lawyer. I a lawyer i've i've i've i've left those things in the past i have to make this work and this would this was
the of all the things i've done this is the thing that has the most product market fit so
i i didn't have a choice basically
that's awesome and it's cool that you say like uh you were a teacher and a lawyer um that's what did uh this
isn't wasn't on the list but i'm definitely intrigued now what were you guys prior to
legendary b check um you know would you do web 2 if you don't mind me i don't know how docs you
guys are um then we can skip this if i'm overstepping yeah not overstepping at all before
before web3 so i got into crypto in like 2016 2017 and at that time on the one hand i started
my career in investment banking then had transitioned to management consulting in one
of the big four left that field to get into fintech startups and basically was working with
a couple of startups they helped scaling and growing in the gsa germany switzerland austria
area but was already dabbling into crypto and at one point basically the opportunity cost of
working full-time was too high when you could trade and flip JPEGs. And then I fully transitioned into this circus and into this madness.
Yeah, for me, I was just, well, I stayed out of university.
I was a teacher.
I taught in English for English literature and language for three years in a really
difficult, let's describe it as difficult
secondary school in London and then I applied to these law firms I got funded to go to law school
for a couple of years so I went to law school then ended up working in one of these big law firms in london specialized in litigation
media litigation specifically um then you know by the time i was getting a bit older i was like
do i really want to do this do i really want to do this forever discovered nfts in 2021
quit my job within six months so uh that's that's how it played out yeah that is super cool it sounds like so let me know you said you got in about 2016 2017
um was that about the same time or did you get a little bit later b check loads later i came in
2021 because of nft i didn't know anything about crypto really before 2021 um i came in because i
thought digital art like i like I like art in real life.
I'm no expert by any means, but I used to go to galleries.
I still go to galleries, just think it's a nice thing to do.
And I thought, oh, it's cool that these digital artists can make some money.
But that's all I thought.
Oh, that's cool.
Let me just buy a couple.
So I bought a couple of pieces on Nifty Gateway in 2021.
And the prices started to go crazy crazy started to look into it more became
decent expert on the art market on the digital art market which i've still to this day i'm pretty
strong on um but then it kind of went from there i started trading the other stuff started learning
about crypto was very eth aligned for a very very long period of time still kind of am in some ways
um but it just it just kind of took off from there.
So then everything I learned about crypto was via NFTs
and was super aligned with everything.
So I kind of love it and all of its complications and good stuff,
the bad stuff, the challenging stuff.
I'm kind of so very, very here for it.
But yeah, I was very late to it, relatively.
That's actually super surprising i the way you navigate i wanted to switch over to legendary so you joined in 2016
2017 was what brought you to the space um you know what caught your eye what made you stay
i have been aware of i was aware of bitcoin for way longer than that and i kind of felt like
i'm late to bitcoin i'm late to bitcoin i don't know what to do i feel like i missed this train
at some point then i decided maybe i'm not that late and there wasn't an app where you could trade
bitcoin peer-to-peer and this is what i I started to do in my hometown. I was buying BTC
on that app and I was selling it to people for cash and I was buying more BTC and trading around
with that with little sums. And I was basically realizing I'm not going anywhere with this.
So I asked myself the question and I had no idea about, I didn't have any clue about the white
paper, about what's going on with the rest of the ecosystem.
But I saw, oh, there's another cryptocurrency, ETH.
BTC is at a couple thousand dollars, but ETH is available at low two digits.
I was like, maybe.
And I see Funky in the comments saying no one is late to Bitcoin.
I was like, maybe this thing could also run.
I was like, maybe this thing could also run.
It's just, you know, magnitude's cheaper.
It's just, you know, magnitude's cheaper.
So I bought that and ended up holding some ETH
and having some BTC,
but I did not do a lot with that
other than like kind of educating myself a bit on the side
and keeping some buys coming.
I had set up basically a recurring savings plan
for quite some time.
And then in 2019, it was was when this is also why i picked
legendary as a moniker when i was playing hearthstone the trading card game by blizzard
back then on my phone when i saw oh it's pretty frustrating if the meta is changing and i can't
sell my cards to anyone else and then i was like there has to be a better mousetrap for that and
this is when i discovered gods unchained back then then were building this NFT-based trading card game.
This is how I discovered NFT.
I realized, wait, this is being built on ETH,
the ETH that I've been buying for quite some time now.
Let's put some of that to use and start trading those NFTs, those cards.
And that was back in 2019.
And that basically did Steamroll into uh top shot the closed beta i was very well aware of
crypto punks back then who were trading at a couple hundred bucks when i was like nah who
wants those ugly pixelated pfps i certainly don't let's rather trade axie infinity plots let's
rather trade nba top shots and all of those things but I was early enough and that's what I always keep saying
to make enough mistakes
and learn from those and round trip a lot of money
that once the quote unquote real
NFT bull started they had learned some
lessons and they could take profits quite
aggressively
That's so cool
just hearing the dollar values
right? Double digit
you know a couple hundred dollar
punks right
that's so cool
and so being
like I'm big into
not so much anymore but I used to play in the
Star City Games Tour
you said Hearthstone did you ever play Magic
at all is that what brought you to Hearthstone
or? Never
I played Pokemon I played Yu-Gi-Oh as a kid Did you ever play Magic at all? Is that what brought you to Hearthstone? Never.
I played Pokemon.
I played Yu-Gi-Oh! as a kid.
The only digital one that I played back then was Hearthstone.
Recently, I was playing some Marvel Snap,
but I never got into Magic.
Okay.
Because there's, surprisingly,
there's a lot of crossover between whether it's Pokemon
or Magic the Gathering when it comes to NFTs,
especially of the collectible side, right?
Which is really cute.
Really not cute.
Cool.
I was reading a comment at the same time.
But so would you say that like you've been through multiple cycles, Legendary, and then B-Check, you've been through, this is legendary and then b check you've been through
this is your third or second second second yeah because i joined about in between you two right so
like in 2018 if i first got in but like 2020 is when i really got in
and put a lot of capital in and it sounds like we've all kind of like round-tripped some money
or left some on the table in the form of legend legendary you know watching punks right um and
that's that's so cool i wish i could even have seen them there i probably wouldn't have grabbed
them because they do like kind of funny never thought those would be the nft right um but
would you say it's uh kind of part of the process is round tripping the
money to make you a better trader and more aligned with not aligned with the space, but
to be able to take profits more long term?
I think there's very few people who get it right from the get go. They might have previous
life experience. They might have seen other people round-trip and have learned this lesson remotely in a way. But I feel like
for most people, it's not only crypto-specific. That's for people who trade future stocks,
whatever commodities they want to trade. You need to round-trip some paper gains to realize
that if you booked them, if you had booked them, that is real money, or that would
have been real money. And for that reason, I think it's part of the journey. Like I sometimes say,
you know, you need the first cycle to round trip, then you need the second cycle to have PTSD from
round tripping and selling everything too early. And the third cycle is where you make it and you
basically have set yourself up for a very very
beautiful life at least this is how it worked out for me and i think how it's working out for a lot
of people some people learn faster some people don't need the round tripping experience but i do
think it's helpful and one of the things that helped me a lot was when i round tripped a shit
ton of money in the last cycle was just knowing that I made it once
I'm going to make it again
that is that's a good
mentality actually
and you
I think I like reading
posts and
other podcasts
but mostly it's in post hearing
you know I've done it once I can do again. It's usually with the more successful people, right?
You two are, are very successful in what you're doing.
And I remember seeing legendary, I remember seeing you like,
I thought that was on vibrate before you changed your name here, you know,
last year. I remember the whole discussion about all that.
And I remember in like 2021,
and I don't remember where it was,
but I remember following both of you guys
kind of in that journey.
And I wish I would have got more into
your project back then,
because it would have been cool to see that rise firsthand.
Right.
But it's really, is yours kind of the same b check with um
the way you think it's kind of uh like you know round tripping the first bag and
i think um i think a couple of things one i think trading trading slash investing is really really
hard and it's kind of ridiculous to think that anyone would be
immediately good at it. If it was so easy, everyone, if it was so easy to buy low and sell
high, then everyone would just be clicking the buttons all day and everyone would be getting
rich. And so I think you do need to build up some experience in doing that.
And so, yes, I think there is definitely a period of time.
I mean, I remember when I was trying to invest,
like as a young person, like early 20s,
I'd try and invest, I'd just, I lost money on everything.
Every single thing that I would touch,
I would just do it wrong.
And so with NFTs, somehow because it was art,
maybe I understood it better. So I think there's something, I know people call NFTs, somehow because it was art, maybe I understood it better.
So I think there's something, I know people call NFTs like meme pictures with, altcoins
with pictures or something like, I actually, I just, I don't think that they are like that
entirely.
So I think there's some different element there.
They trade slightly differently.
But I do think that you need to go through
it it's a skill that takes some time to learn but i think the biggest thing for me and arguably like
i'm one cycle behind legendary right and one maybe one cycle behind a lot of people but i think based
on my like observation of other people why i've been able to maybe jump ahead in some ways is that
i think my risk management is pretty decent and so yes you've got to go through it yes you've got to lose some stuff
but everyone always thinks about the wins but no one talks about as much like how to minimize your
losses like people always want to know what to buy but they don't talk about when to sell
and in general across the two cycles that i've been in, I don't lose that much.
Meaning I'm not like getting wrecked routinely.
I'm mostly staying in majors.
I'll take like a proportion and do some crazy stuff with that.
Whereas the main stuff I'm just not going to touch.
So it's like, I think the risk management aspect is huge.
And yes, you're always going to fail with certain stuff.
And arguably, actually, you should fail.
I really like the analogy of, I'm a big NFL fan.
And like, you know, big criticism of Aaron Rodgers, for example, is that he's got a great
passing average or whatever they call it.
But it's like, yeah, if you only throw 10-yard throws left and right all the time, then you're
not going to go down the field fast.
And so arguably, it's okay to have a slightly worse average.
Every now and again, you want to take some risk, right?
Like we're obviously in the space to take some risk.
And fine, even Bitcoin and ETH is considered to be a risk in this space.
But like you want to have like some risk there. And then and again you want to throw down the field you want to you want you do want
to try to hit a hit a home run but you don't want to try to hit hit a home run with every single one
of your plays because that's incredibly risky so kind of mixing metaphors there between different
sports but the point is i think the risk management is an incredibly important part and that's
definitely helped me
over the two cycles to not lose forget winning winning is important but like not losing is also important absolutely and that's one thing that took me the longest to learn was um because i've
been in i did forex starting at 18 and stuff and was the uh keeping portfolios
different like an investment portfolio and then a uh or investment and then trading portfolio
and then one that's more altcoins um and like not really stables but you know the e the solana
avex and then also just very small portion that goes to meme coins or you know
newer projects but it's i think a lot of people um and i was one of them for the longest time
that kept everything together and just would you know oh i need some more i'm gonna take it from
this and you know this wallet and whatever yeah it's tempting absolutely
tempting absolutely oh yeah so i know we kind of got a little um off modern market there i want to
pick your guys brains a bit um but so when you guys were first coming up with modern market
did uh so we this is something i remember from icob's telling me is when he first started
he uh would just post to like put posts up there and no
one would see him right for a long time. And then was that
like that for you guys? Or did you guys kind of just take off
right away? Or how did that process go?
It was a slow start. It was a very slow start. First shows we
did, where four or five people that was for that first iteration before it
was even the modern market when we revamped and rebooted it as the modern market it was 14 15
people listening in we were like kind of dreaming to getting to the point that we have 50 listeners
and even before 50 listeners i was like vichek was always saying you know he still has the the
teacher in him and the analogies in him. He was saying, a full classroom, that's already great. Speak daily in front of a full classroom. Then the classroom got filled and we're like, speak in front of 50 people. And it was like, obviously, 100 was the big number. Now it's speaking in front of an entire school, maybe, if we were to continue down that track of analogies.
But it was definitely a slow start.
And I think the helpful thing for us,
at least from my perspective, I can't speak for you, B,
was that A, we had already done the airdrop season before,
and we've seen that was successful for Web2 standards.
For Web3 standards, where you see people left, right, and center
making absurd amounts of money on mintsints it wasn't the greatest thing but if you compare it like to
a traditional web two startup that was cash flow positive within the first couple of months
essentially was doing great we both had our social presences already established so we said
it's probably just a game of consistently doing that. We've seen that from growing our own audiences.
B-Check has seen it from growing his newsletter as well.
So the thesis basically was, if we do this for a long enough time, it's going to work out.
And I feel like that has been our mantra ever since for so many of the new things.
Sorry, adventures we've gotten into even take
something very recent like started doing tiktoks a couple months ago i think and at first nobody
was really watching the tiktoks we basically it's not a high effort thing we took the the clips which
we post on youtube which are a high effort thing just took them, repurposed them slightly and put them on TikTok.
And now just a couple of days ago,
I noticed we started to gain some momentum on there
and getting more likes, getting people to follow.
So it's just do something, stick with it
because this is what most people have a hard time doing.
And honestly, I am not the person
who has a lot of structure.
Like I'm very, very free spirited and very creative.
And this is where I said, if I am to commit to a daily thing,
which I said to be a long time to convince me to do so,
that's the maximum that I can do.
But then I know this is also like a load that I can be,
that I can stick with consistently.
And I know that like this routine will pay off.
So this was my thinking when it
comes to the, to the growth and to the start of the show. Yeah, I think there's, there's a few,
a few points for me, like one, got to have some self-belief, I think in general, in this, in this
space, it doesn't really matter. It doesn't really matter whether you're in this space or any other
space, you have to have some self-belief at the beginning to trust that the thing that you're doing people are going to come around to and the
way that i knew that this was going to be good was because it was content that i wanted to see
um i felt like there was a gap in the market for like a show that's maybe more structured like ours
and that's something that I wanted like I wanted to
see that in the world so I created something which I would consume myself so like that was
the objective so and I'm betting that the bet that you're making there is that there are more people
like me in the world and the beautiful thing about the internet is it has this amazing ability to connect just like me and Leslie connected like God knows how many years ago because of a random discord from shared interests and similar personalities and simple like there was what are the odds are actually relatively high when you end up getting to that point that you are actually aligned and that you do actually
get along because there's so many other decisions you've had to take in order to get into that place
and so I think you've just got to got to believe in yourself that there's going to be more people
like you in the world um and you and then beyond that I think there are two key things at the
beginning one stay consistent which I'm increasingly realizing other people find really, really hard. Personally, my maybe, I don't know if it's controversial,
but it's a strong view. I don't think being consistent is a special quality. I just turn
up to work every day. It's Monday to Friday. Loads of other people do it. It's not a big deal.
This is what everyone else in the universe has to do.'m doing the exact same thing i don't deserve like a special award for that but the other maybe more nuanced thing is that the way people grow on
twitter is usually by borrowing other people's audiences you rent other people's audiences
because you know that's part of the growth it's like one of the ways that you can attract other
people um and that is definitely one good way and
you you might notice we've started to do that a little bit now we do interviews as well and that's
good it's a good way to supplement the the growth but what happens then is that ultimately that's
renting that's not owning and so what i wanted to do at the beginning with the modern market is
i want to own you know i i want the relationship with the with market is I want to own, I want the relationship with the,
with the audience to be with us, like with me and legendary. So even if some big name can't join us
on that day, we can be confident. Maybe there's only six people in there, but those six people
are there for us. And then maybe there's only 12 people in there, but they're there for us.
And then maybe there's 25 in there, but they're there for us and then maybe there's 25 in there but they're there for us and that means when we get to 100 that they're still there for us and
we can kind of rotate uh bigger names then into the into the mix but it just puts us in a strong
position like it just builds a really strong foundation so that i think that's one of the
things i i that's one of the reasons why I think it took longer.
It's longer, it's harder to grow when you are,
because I know Legendary said we were kind of established names,
but like obviously much less back then than we are now.
It's like two years ago now.
But it takes longer when you want to do it all on your name
rather than share it. both strategies are fine both strategies
can do really well it was just a harder period for us as a consequence of that specific decision
so i thought that was helpful for people to to hear about
i personally i found that that is completely true. Like on, so first I'll touch on the, um, uh, showing up to
work every day thing. So as like a business owner, yeah, it's like, I've built up a web to like
remodeling business, but then I also see that some people, it is hard. Like it's really hard to get
good help. Um, some people like don't want to show up every day and stuff um and then i will say it's harder it was i would for me
personally it's i would rather make like or it's easier to make like two or three
web two businesses than there's one sustainable web three um like it's just hard maybe it's just
my brain doesn't work that way yet uh it's harder for me to like the interviews are the easy part
for me but it's like doing the con
like making the shorts which i was really good at at first and yeah there's so much stuff behind
the scenes right people think what you just go live and that's the business like i spend you know
fine we turn up and do the show but i mean hey just the generation of the content is an all-day
thing because i said i'm bookmarking and we're researching we're sharing ideas we're like doing all that stuff and now there's i mean we've created this like calendar to-do list thing
there's like 30 things on there that we're kind of sharing the responsibility for over the course
of each week because whether that's to do with partnerships whether that's to do with content
for the show whether it's to do with partnered, whether that's to do with content for the show, whether it's to do with partnered content generation, it's like, okay, well, Legendary is going to prepare the segment on this day.
He's going to send me the draft.
I'm going to review it, whether I'm going to finalize it, and then it's going to be ready three days later.
So there's like a whole content schedule.
There's like outreach with partners.
There's like, there's all kinds of stuff going on behind the scenes.
And yeah, it's, uh, it's obviously obviously more than just just what you see in the hour
absolutely yeah it's um it is that's kind of uh transitioned into uh is so you guys have the
we talked about a little bit earlier um about kind of being all they think the 30 uh which is crazy to think like a 30
object or item to-do list um like i assume that's like a joint calendar right uh and then
is there is both like do you both take part in everything or is there kind of like so like with
a eyebrow and i like i do a lot of theests, I like making the posters, like the primary host,
and then he does generally more of the outreach.
We both do outreach, but he does a little bit more so.
Like, you guys each have defined roles,
or are they both like equal in your making of modern market?
I feel like one thing is the reality,
and the other thing is the vision of what we want to be
and what we want to be the reality.
We are navigating basically towards a state where everything is becoming a standardized process because ultimately we want to grow.
And the way to grow is that both of us have the mental capacity to focus on new things,
which only can work if the day-to-day
business is standardized and we just have the confidence that it's working and that it can be
done. And we always have tried that there's certain roles, certain things B is focusing on,
certain things that I am focusing on. But a those things have changed a lot along the
way. And those things also have more overlap than you think and you naturally get into each other's
like, quote unquote, territory, don't want to call it territory, because it's not territorial,
but into each other's like, field of work, if you want to put it like that. And it is fluent to a certain extent,
but I feel like we both think that if you take your job seriously,
if you think this is a media company that you want to grow,
ultimately you need to have those defined roles.
It's not helpful if everyone is trying to do everything.
And yes, I think fluidity is super important because those things change and they will change and they will evolve. But at the same time, having that conquering and dividing mindset is super important.
legendary a while back i was like like look this is i'm happy to take the lead on certain
of these aspects i mean remember we started in like the bear market so it was like not
straightforward to get this stuff moving it feels like every time we try to start something it's
always the bear market so um it was like not straightforward and i was like look i'm happy
to go to really take the lead on certain aspects because maybe it's my former teacher,
brain, former lawyer, communicator thing. Like I just, I felt like this is, this is the thing.
This is the thing for me, 110%. Legendary was obviously like completely on board, fortunately.
But I was like, look, I'm happy to do this because I really, really want to make a success
of that. Legendary obviously wants that too. I was like, let's, let happy to do this because I really, really want to make a success of that. Legendary obviously wants that too.
I was like, let's, let's, let's really do this.
So I'm, I've been like happy to kind of take the lead on certain things, but in the end,
like it just, it really doesn't work unless you find ways that you can compliment each
other and that you can fill in the gaps when other people are not able to do certain things so
yeah we we we definitely split certain things up legendaries on certain content is way better than
me i'll do certain content which is maybe uh more more in line with what i'm doing um but yeah it's
uh in a startup when there's when there's basically two people and now we obviously have bread as well
there's a limited number of things that you can farm out so everyone's responsibilities is kind
of everyone's at least for a period of time and then it's just like our job to try to keep everyone
accountable and make sure that we achieve what we need to super cool and uh so you brought up and bread so it's bread i wanted to ask
is he um i think he's on there a lot is he actually is he part of the team i guess or is he like more
of a guest special speaker like he's on it i would assume he's kind of a part of the team but i wasn't
sure for sure yeah yeah yeah bread's been part of
the team for a long time now um i think when you're initially figuring out who you want to work
with there's a period of time where just like look let's let's see how it goes because you know as
with as legendary already mentioned at the beginning it's like a big commitment it's a big
commitment to turn up every day and do this thing and it might not be for everyone even if someone has all the will in the world it might not just be the thing
that they want to do practically it might be a relationship thing that might not work out
there's all kinds of reasons why it might not be the thing to go live on a video with a bunch of
guys um every single day so we obviously there was a period of time with bread was like okay let's
let's see how it goes he just resp responded like super well to everything he's does all of his
content really really well he also has an expertise in an area that we don't have an expertise in so
he's awesome to like plug that knowledge gap but i'd say more so than anything his like his attitude application
to what he does is outstanding and in the end we need people who we can rely on every single day
we need people who we can trust who are going to like attack this in this with the same energy
and attention that we care about it ourselves and no matter where he's been in the world and he's traveled
around a lot in the last year he has attacked attacked his job to the extent that he's like
involved attacked it with the same energy and intent as the way we do and i think those are
the kind of people you want to have on your team long term and when you do notice that
um you want to kind of sign
those people up like as soon as you can i think something uh i've noticed with brett is he's um
and this is the first time talking uh with you guys but it's the same with you both of you super
like free spirit free flowing and just really easy to talk
to and i remember the first time i had did like an interview type thing with bread was
on fantasy hour which i got really lucky not lucky but i had like an easier route into
web3 content because of fantasy um you know the founders are really cool and gave a bunch of support
and then linked me originally with Brad.
But yeah, he just super, same with you guys.
Like I kinda told you I was nervous before the show.
You guys like calm my nerves and stuff.
So it's really awesome seeing the three of you each morning
doing your thing and complimenting.
Because it is like each you have your own like expertise and uh what it's
like bread still talks over my head 90% of the time in the morning when I'm watching you guys
but uh it's it's super cool uh and you need that in order for anyone to develop you need
I remember reading this thing like there's there's this rule for primary not comparing our audience to children necessarily
but like there's this thing in development where when you're reading a book and kids are trying to
learn there needs to be a certain number of words that they don't understand like when you're when
you're trying to find the appropriate book for a kid to read you can't just give them something
that's too easy you can't
give them something's too easy because they get bored and there's not enough challenge there and
i genuinely like i just i don't see that significant a difference between the way we develop
as adults and the way and if anything part of the reason why i think being an adult gets more boring
is because we stop that childhood like exploration and you don't
necessarily get a chance to explore your curiosity as much as you can so when we do the show we
ideally want to stretch people you don't just want to you don't want to give them the bullet
points in like a really basic way you want subject experts who are able to push people's
understandings and yeah maybe they're going to talk about some things that people don't understand, but that, that
like little gap up should help people make the leap from their current
understanding to the next level. So I think that's the objective and you
actually want that level of, um, like whether it's confusion or whether that's
just, um, challenge, you want that level of challenge
in your life i think and that's part of the reason why again even just working with each other
everyone's kind of relentlessly curious i think that's another thing that has matched us all
together like we're all relentlessly curious in our own ways on the various topics that we excel
on which makes us like subject
matter experts which means that we're able to provide that challenge even to each other like
even internally this ride we talk for like 45 minutes after the show because we're just like
going off on random tangents we get the bit we do the to-do list for the business then we're just
talking about other stuff so um i think that's an important component as well
So I think that's an important component as well.
There's one, the one thing, like we, through just conversating, the last, you know, 50 minutes, we've hit like everything with, that was on my list, except for one.
One thing I found that worked well for me and a lot of other people before this, I was kind of talking to people like how your guys' timeframe worked with everyone and if they had to watch it on replay or they're going to watch it live.
How did you guys, and it seems to work well with a lot of time zones, how did you guys come to your start time of 7 a.m. Eastern time?
I think we had a discussion.
We kind of talked it through.
Like, obviously, we're both in a very similar time zone.
We are one hour off.
And we were like, do we want to host this in the morning?
And we're like, yeah, maybe.
But then you need to be up pretty, pretty early
because obviously all of the research that B is doing
needs its time as well.
And then you kind of do the show, but you get up super early.
And most of the U.S. is late night or even asleep.
Then we're like, do we want to do it late night and have the afternoon prepping for the show?
Also doesn't sound like the most intriguing thing.
And we kind of settled for what is our lunchtime, our noon basically to do the show.
And that ended up making a lot of sense. I like it in
particular, because it splits my day in half, I have the pre
show and the post show day basically. And this is also a
good time for for a lot of times as ultimately 7am Eastern time, as you said, on the East Coast.
It's around lunchtime for Europe.
Afternoon in the UAE.
It's reasonable evening time in most parts of Asia.
So it ended up working quite well around the globe.
It's probably a very, very late time for Australia.
It should be like, depending where you are,
11 p.m., something like that, midnight even.
But we said that if we want to do it daily
and we want to do it daily,
it needs to be a time zone that ultimately works for us.
And because both of us have been traveling a lot
over the last year or so,
we've experienced hosting the show from many different time zones for myself, ranging from
5 a.m. to 9 p.m.
And I realized that out of everything, I like the lunchtime zone the most.
The second best option for me would be to host it in the evening.
Second best option for me would be to host it in the evening.
But then again, I can also see that I would get annoyed with that after a certain time
because basically it prevents any evening plans.
I always say I can't go out for lunch.
I can't meet the people who still have a 9-to-5 job, friends of mine, and go with them for a quick lunch.
It's not going to work.
It's quote-unquote never going to work.
But out of all the things, I have to compromise and i feel like this still is the best time zone and again i like
that splitting of my day into pretty much equal parts yeah i think that there's two key things
when you're considering making content on a routine basis that I think would be helpful for people to know. One, you absolutely must do something which is okay for you. Like first and foremost, it's you that has to stick
to the routine. Like you've got the whole calendar free. What do you want to do? Like you pick,
you want to do the morning, you want to do lunch, whatever you do, you're going to have to stick
with it. And you've got to be reliable for your audience because people trust that you're going
to be there. And if you're not there, when trust that you're going to be there and if you're not there when you said you're going to be there you just lose
all the trust that you've built up you've that you've built up so people need to be able to rely
on you one of the big things I said to Ledger was like we need to get into people's routines
so you can't get into people's routines if you yourself can't stick to your own schedule so I
say okay first and foremost it's got to be something me
and Legendary were happy with we picked this time so that's the first thing the second thing which
I probably realized a little bit more as we've gone unfortunately this has just worked out
like nicely because we were not in opposition to this, is that you can't ignore the States.
Like, although we have a lot of people in Europe listening,
which is wonderful, it's unbelievable.
It's actually crazy.
Our YouTube data, our Spotify data,
everything suggests the majority of our listeners
are still in the States.
And even though we're live at 7 a.m. Eastern time,
and it could arguably be a much more convenient time
in Europe or elsewhere,
it's still the States that are tuning in the most.
And so I think this has historical precedence
whether you're an artist, whether you're a musician,
whether you're a creator,
anyone wants to try and break the US market
because you've got the biggest market,
it's a single market. You've got the biggest network effect probably and so you
want to do something where the states can participate we couldn't do it in a way where
it would also include la for example like i thought about it it's not possible can't can't do it so
we we factored those things in we thought okay we're the early
slot for the east coast at least was something that we can we can do and hopefully they'll
participate in that and it's been it's been great so far so I think I think those are the two things
that are super important like it's got to work for you and then got to make it work for the states
you said you wanted uh you had to make,
or wanted to get it into people's routines.
I for one know that it is part of my routine, right?
Again, whether I'm at home or on the way to work.
I know at first I was like, oh, you know,
when I had to start going back to the job site more often
to help my brother out who does like the onsite stuff.
I was like, oh, I'm going to have to miss the guys okay i'm not gonna be there till this time right that's how in-depth it is
into the the thing right and uh i was like oh wait no i can listen to it we're good i don't have to
be there like physically like doing this stuff right i can just listen take some notes and
re-watch it when i get home so withdrawal symptoms yes just scratching a little bit i gotta get into
it but uh i also wanted to ask about that did you guys um like not only does it work really well for
time zones like in the states right but also um it works really well with not um going against like
the two other media uh outlets or you know companies that you know bodogos which used
to be nifty gateway or not gateway nifty portal and then fomo hour now did you take that into
consent or into consideration or did that just kind of happen to where it's like literally
perfect like a tv show right it goes one two three um yeah we thought about that at the
time i think it definitely didn't make sense to go go like in someone else's time slot as such
um you also got steve and captain at 8 a.m eastern time as well they do run an awesome show with a
lot of like good people who are in their audience so i think it made loads of sense because we're like slightly later in the day on our side
to just kind of slot in before kind of ticked all the boxes.
But yeah, we did think about that.
And I think that makes more sense
when you're going live, right?
I don't know now if we would do the same, Ledge.
I don't know what you'd think,
but I think we did the right thing.
Yeah, I think we did the right thing.
I think that
i mean the best example now take the fridays when friday we do the non-encrypto interviews we
obviously slide into someone someone else's time slot like nobody is owning a time slot but
we basically say for us it makes the most sense to extend the show because we already have the
momentum already have the audience in and all we need to do is to smoothly transition them into the
interview, hook them within the first five or ten minutes, which is still part of the regular
time slot of the regular show, and then they're going to stick with us. And by sticking with us,
they obviously, if they were people who were listening to us and then to Captain Steve or
to another show, they would stick with us.
So at some point, if you want to extend,
and that is what makes the most sense for you,
you have to do it.
The beginning might have been a stronger consideration
to try to establish our own time slot.
But after some time in the market,
and especially if you want to grow the show,
you just have to do what is best for how you have planned that i really like uh when you do do do do uh you know extend that
because it's nice i know i think it was last friday i was sitting there i was like
dang it you know i was really into the conversation and then you just went into, I think it was Serpentax that last week or the week before,
I think it was the week before,
I can't remember,
but I was sitting there going,
I was like,
you have to get another hour.
But yeah,
so I want to respect your guys' time.
We've been around about an hour or actually just crossed over an hour.
Is there anything I missed or anything you guys would like to talk about
before kind of closing out?
Lech?
I'm thinking.
I don't have a good answer.
I think we covered quite a lot of things.
We don't have anything that comes to mind right now.
Maybe after you, B.
I think the thing that I'd say is like,
well, things that people that I'm excited about,
things that we're interested in moving forward is, okay, A, from the content side, like building out
the content in different platforms, going way harder on YouTube, which I think is super important
to build up some resilience to Twitter. It's kind of a different universe over there. So we're
building that out, doing some TikTok stuff and other other things so that's all fine but the thing which i think all media has kind of failed so far
is genuinely building some type of on-chain community and making that expression of fandom
meaningful so i know people have minted nft before. People thought they were going to be amazing, like thought they were going to be amazing,
like community clubs and things like that.
But they were way overpriced in the first cycle,
completely stupidly so.
Everyone got wrecked.
And, you know, then you go the other side
and you do some cheap stuff
and maybe that's not valued as much.
It's like the thing that I'm excited about
moving forward is building the community side more in the next year.
Now that we've established the content side, figuring out ways to reward and value our on-chain community and do interesting things like push the boundaries for what it means to be create, not just creators, but like on-chain creators to try and push
the Web3 creator industry forward. I know some of the things that we've done has already been
quite innovative in the way that we've like started minting the podcast and how that's
going to feed in in the future, we hope. But like, we're just playing around with those ideas. I just
want people to know that that's the thing that we're thinking about. That's the direction we're
going in, trying to make this on-chain economy make sense for creators in a meaningful way.
And hopefully that can inspire some more people to go on-chain in a way that is not terrifying.
No, you don't need to launch a meme coin.
You don't need to sell an expensive NFT.
There's actually a sustainable way to do this.
And I think with a meaningful community,'s a way to to do that properly
absolutely that's that has got my wheels spinning too to where i'm excited to see what you guys
um have going in the future because i'm for it whatever it is too so yeah i'm very excited for that yeah we appreciate man um it's been a great conversation
really really enjoyed it and thanks so much for tuning in man glad to know that we've got you
uh that you're tuning in all the time and yeah it's uh it's great to great to meet great to chat
it's been a pleasure absolutely thank you so much for having us on the show
absolutely thank you guys for for being guests on here.
And I mean, this is awesome.
Better than I could have expected.
So thank you guys so much.
And you guys have a great day.
You too, man.
Take care.
