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Farokh and Loxley Talk Creator Economy
Recorded: Jan. 11, 2024 Duration: 1:46:01Space Recording
Full Transcription
Hey, Andrew, hope you're doing well.
I'm happy to dive in.
Let me tell you.
Yeah, so really quick.
So I did grow up here.
I've been in Brazil for a few years.
I've been there.
No, like, I don't speak Italian.
So it's obviously means something.
Definitely check it out.
I know you.
sat me down and showed me how to buy Bitcoin and why I should buy Bitcoin.
So I did that in 2013. I didn't think much of it.
Years and years later, as I was running my own little venture firm,
2016, 2017, I got a pitch to fund an Ethereum mining farm.
And it was just a fledgling GPU mining farm.
And so we went down that route and read a little book,
a little quick 19 hour read on Audible, if you're interested,
called The Sovereign Individual.
And it really had me transition my mindset and thinking around what crypto was and could be.
And I became a fanatic.
It truly was the Ethereum ecosystem and the idea of smart contracts and really like utility chains
that sold me. I think Bitcoin is fantastic. I think it's great.
But I, you know, as someone who had been building fintech and really looking at the expansion of
finance in a decentralized way, the concepts of DeFi outside of what Bitcoin could offer
really was far more intriguing to me than just lower performance on chain store value.
And so that's how I got in.
I was really wrapped up in DeFi, you know, DeFi summer and all of that,
all the way to a point where I was taking myself a little too seriously
and really thought that NFTs was a silly application and I didn't and I kind of faded it early on.
It wasn't until like summer 2021 that I realized that I needed to start paying closer attention
and then organically ended up becoming a fan of rug radio and the potential business model there.
My investment thesis for my portfolio has always been a potential for fundamentally sound cash flow positive.
And I felt like a lot of what was happening in crypto and in NFTs was very speculative,
didn't have a lot of fundamentals.
And I saw what Farouk was trying to build and I saw how the potential to build something long term,
viable, sustainable and ultimately impactful, not just to us and to our bottom lines,
but to society, was there.
And I just pursued a path of creating value for him in the ecosystem
into a point that I ended up just over a year ago now being invited to participate on a C-suite level at Rug Radio.
And that's how I am here today.
Block, that's a great story.
Farouk, welcome up on stage.
How you doing?
Hey, hey, what's up, y'all?
Sorry, I'm late.
It's back-to-back today.
Busy day.
Busy life.
Busy everything, man.
Golly, how are you guys doing?
Thank you for having us.
We're good.
We're good.
We appreciate you guys tuning in.
Obviously, your day is probably 10 times busier with the DMs than flooding in,
considering that ETFs have been approved today.
So I can imagine how flooded you are and your personal inbox there.
Yeah, it's been wild.
But look, we're glad to be here.
We saw the MobiMedia space come through and we're like, let's get it, you know?
We love doing these.
So it's really a pleasure for you guys to give us space to speak about what's going on in our world.
Of course.
You guys have been killing it, Farouk.
You are probably one of the happiest people when it comes to talking about NFTs.
I mean, I've been in your morning show multiple times this week and throughout I've been in the space.
And you're probably on top five when it comes to happiness equals NFTs.
Like there's nobody that I would think of that gets more happier than you do when you speak of the word NFTs and how you use it in sentences.
So it's always great to hear guys who are super bullish on the stuff here.
Lox, back to you really quickly.
I saw Rudo had his hand up.
But when did you join Rug Radio?
Like how long ago?
Six months ago?
Four months ago?
But I do want to ask Farouk right after.
Farouk, what did you see in Lox before he joined as a CEO?
Lox first, you then Farouk right after.
Yeah, I joined in the role of CEO basically January 1st, 2022.
And was a strategic advisor for Farouk and Rug Radio previous to that.
And then, I mean, Farouk always likes to tell this story.
So maybe you can kind of give a little bit more context.
I just hired him because of his teeth.
I mean, have you seen them?
They're – this man's got like the nicest teeth in Web 3.
Right?
That's what they were saying on Coffee with Captain.
And, you know, I got to give him –
No comment.
I'm not commenting.
I take –
Are the Bears lofty cheating or are they real teeth?
They're real teeth, dude.
I've never had braces.
Yeah, man.
I just got – I mean, the rest of my face is kind of fucked up and ugly.
But the teeth are okay.
Shut up.
Oh, my God.
Now, Lox is a handsome man.
Listen.
So it was Jan 1st, 2023 that Lox became officially CEO.
Mind you, this morning we had an interview with Tyler Didder of Lucky Trader on his morning show.
And we realized, Mitch's show, that today is the second anniversary of our mint.
So January 11th, 2022 is when we actually minted out Rug Radio.
December 22nd was a free mint 2021.
But January 11th, 2022 was actually the mint for Rug Radio NFT.
So the reason why Lox says I love telling a story – and it's true.
It's my favorite story at Rug Radio.
Obviously, aside from like I guess my own come up and stuff, it's really Lox's.
And I'll tell you why.
It's because Lox's story within Rug Radio Decrypt and now Rug Radio Decrypt is the exact thing and intention that I set out when I founded this thing.
Is I wanted to empower other people to be able to not only like become big creators and whatnot but also to own their narrative.
To own the narrative and to be in control of what we're building.
I never set Rug Radio out to be a Farouk-based company.
And as you've seen over the time, it has grown so much that it's so much bigger than me now, right?
And so I'll tell you the story is the life of Lox's and Rug Radio is simple.
There was a free membership pass meant December 22nd, 2021.
It was completely free by the way originally.
And then during South by Southwest, and so that was after the mint in 2022, we did a little event.
A friend of mine – it was an unofficial Rug Radio event, the first one ever where we did like live panels and stuff.
It wasn't really official.
My friend gave me a spot.
I was like, let's do it.
It was free.
And that's when the first time Mando and Steph and I hosted – and then there's like a line of people trying to talk to me after the panel.
And then like I meet this person called Oxley with his wife who, by the way, his wife, the best person.
I hear she got him into Rug Radio, okay?
So they come to me and like, yo, we're massive fans of like decentralized media.
We love what you stand for.
We're membership past whales.
And what do you mean?
He's like, well, it was one per person.
True story, 19,000 individual holders at first when we minted out.
And he was like, well, but we've been accumulating like 300, 400 of them to max mint rugs.
And they did.
And I'm like, what?
And so they were huge fans.
I'm like, well, let me look into this guy.
Like as a founder, I'm like, well, I need to start aligning with people like him that clearly believe in my vision because to go and own 300, 400 assets is nothing small.
So let me go into – so I started becoming kind of like chit-chatting with Logs and getting to know him a little more.
This man is super interesting.
By the way, like most interesting man in the world is not that meme.
It's Logs, okay?
And so then like we became friends.
And then like he started – he was one of those guys.
Like you know every project that these guys are like super involved, like Discord, Twitter, and like not even – like in the most cool way, like want to help, whatnot.
He kept like trying to help and everything and contribute to the network.
And we're trying to build this thing, right?
And we're very few people, like less than five people I think, right?
And then July 2022 hit, which was last year, a year and a half ago – when was that?
A year and a half ago now?
What are we?
2024?
Yeah, we are.
A year and a half ago and, you know, at this point, it's like me and like two employees.
And like Rug Radio's all-time bottom, the bottom of the bottom of the bottom of Rug Radio, whether you're talking for a price, whether you're talking fought on the timeline against me,
whether you're talking – just everything was going bad.
And I was – my back against the wall, July 25th, 2022, I called one person, Keith Grossman.
At the time, he was still CEO and president of Time, not president Moonpay.
And I said, Keith, he's like a mentor to me, and I call him Crypto Dad because he's like my dad in the space, literally.
And so I call him.
I'm like, Keith, you are a massive media CEO.
How the fuck do I build a media company?
I need you to help me.
How do I do this?
It's – it's just too hard.
My back doesn't know what to do.
He's like, do this.
Give me the alpha.
Tells me how to run this thing.
And he goes, and you need help.
I said, no problem.
Which is rare, by the way.
That's super rare to get that done.
Guys will offer that advice out of the industry when they've already stepped up, retired 10 years later.
Giving you alpha in the industry is crazy.
It's insane.
I mean, I'm very grateful and very lucky.
All my life, I've had great mentors.
I was 18 years old.
I'm 29.
I'm 29 now, yeah.
Yeah, and so basically the next day on July 26, 2022 is I called three people.
I called Mike Kriak, first and foremost in the morning, CEO of Consensus Mash, mind you.
And I said, hey – and he was also a really big contributor to Rugredo.
I said, would you like to be an advisor?
He says, yes.
I called Mando.
You all know Mando.
I'm an advisor.
Yes.
And I'm like, I need someone different that's been in it, that's been through it, in the trenches of Rugredo.
Because Mando, Loxley went from holder to council member.
The most active Ruggedo council member in all the Ruggedo council, no offense to anybody else, was Loxley.
He helped build all the Rugredo, Ruggedo frameworks that you've seen.
He was the most active at rear events.
He was the most eager to help in everything.
So the life of Loxley went from listener to holder, now council member.
Now I call him, immediately accepts to become an advisor officially to Ruggedo.
And then by the end of the year, Loxley, Mando, and I were pretty much like co-CEOing without officially them being CEOs, right?
They were doing it for free.
Like Mando literally like put a lot of his projects aside to do this.
And Loxley put like 20 companies that he's invested in aside to come and help me for free, right?
So they started helping me complete 180 Ruggedo.
And that you guys have probably all seen it.
If you think back at these dates I'm giving you, summer 2022, everything changed at Ruggedo, right?
We complete 180 the thing.
And then by the end of that year, Mike Mando and I had a meeting.
And we're like, listen, we need another CEO.
I recognize that I'm a very forward-facing person.
I need to be at conferences.
I need to be for Rogue, right?
I need to do my thing.
But also, I'm not an operator.
I have become an operator.
But naturally, I was not an operator.
And I recognize my weaknesses.
And I felt that Ruggedo needed someone more professional in the back end that can actually man a company, that can operate a company, that has done it before.
I've never bought and sold a company.
I was always a solopreneur for 12 years, right?
And so Brutlock's on officially as CEO as January 1st, co-CEO, but pretty much CEO of Ruggedo on January 1st, 2023.
And then, you know, which is beautiful because, like, he's played his course for the last year and now, you know, be moving into the role of president.
And Loxley will be the sole CEO of both Ruggedo and Decrypt, which is, I think, amazing.
So I love telling that story, and Loxley knows it.
Like, I love the story because the evolution from listener, holder, council member, advisor, co-CEO to now CEO of both companies is really a beautiful success story in Web3, if you ask me.
And I hope it's a story that we'll be telling for a long time, at least.
It's a story I will be telling for a long time because it's really inspiring to me.
Broke, that was a great story.
And, like, obviously, people know you guys, but I do think it's also important to kind of reiterate who you guys both are.
And I think you did a great job of kind of painting that framework.
You stepped into the framework, talked about the inside of it.
You stepped back, talked about the framework from the outside of it.
I think that was super important.
I do have one question here, and I will get to Ruto after some of the hands.
I'm sure people got some questions from, obviously, there's been a ton of CEOs, been in and out of the business, right?
Like, there's been people that have worked in Web3, you know, Web2 CEOs, both stuff.
Both CEOs at scale, just kind of generalizing here, have said that, well, if we're going to hire somebody, whether it's junior, senior level position, director, whatever it may be, the person getting hired has to go through the CEO period.
CEOs have said this, culture is a massive thing in companies, it matters, right?
All that stuff.
When you appointed Lox as CEO, did you ever go, guys, I'm thinking of putting Lox as CEO, you went to the rest of the team, hey, this is what I think he does well, this is what I do well, this is where Lox can kind of get my six, do stuff that I don't do well, better, whatever it may be, right?
Did you kind of confront your team before hiring Lox?
Because usually CEOs do that with their team that they bring on.
No, no, but I mean, when we talk about a team, they're like, we were just so small when Loxy came in as like advisor, like we were really, I mean, Lox, how many people were at Rogue Radio?
It was me, it was Amy, but she was the director of Ops at the time, but she was pregnant, so we had to give her four months off.
So it was really just me, JC, and like one other person.
Yeah, there's three, there's three, and what's funny is the team, by the time I took the role as CEO, the team that we had at Rogue Radio was a team that Farouk, Mando, and I built together with advice from Mike Kriak, you know, helping us where he could as well.
So yeah, by that time, when Farouk says that we were kind of like impromptu, ad hoc, C-sweeting the thing, you know, Farouk, Mando, and I for a six month period, it truly was that, like we were already interviewing and hiring all the employees and all that.
So it's as close to like organic, you know, seat of startup as you can get without me having been there, you know, when Farouk dropped the thing up.
Yeah, we pretty much hired everyone together, Andrew, so it's, that's kind of how it went down.
So it was not really like a period of like introducing logs to CEO or whatnot, it's really just like, hey, like, you know, he'll be helping me build this entire thing from here forward.
Yeah, guys, it's crazy, because like I would argue that like within, within company and structure and operations, like a company can die two ways, you make a really big mistake, right, or you die by a thousand cuts, and I think there's certain mistakes when building a company you have to get right.
And there's not like, Andrew, what if you mess up?
No, you really have to get these things right.
Otherwise, you're gonna get punched in the mouth from now to the next time, between now and when you fix it.
And I think CEOs is getting that position right.
It has to get done right.
I don't care if it's 10 people, if it's just you, 10 people, four people, it has to get done right.
Congrats to you guys.
Ruto, what's going on?
My co-host.
Yo, I had a, I just had a quick question, Fro, because I, I actually remember being on this space where you're like, man,
you know, it'd be really cool if we just like called this shit Rug Radio, like how hilarious would that be?
And it kind of started out as like a meme a little bit, and people didn't really take it seriously.
You're like, no, no, no, no, seriously.
Like, I think I'm just gonna fucking do this, and I think I want to call it Rug Radio.
What was, at what, like, what was like the inflection point, like your aha moment when you were just joking around with the homies,
saying that you want to call like, you know, the, the, the spaces Rug Radio.
Like, what was the moment when you were like, guys, I think this actually like could be like a full-blown type of media company.
Like, I want to go all in on this.
Like, what was the moment?
Was it like immediately after like this space that you called up all the, you know, Mando and Lox and a bunch of the other homies?
Like, or was it something that kind of came to fruition a bit down the road?
And then what was that transition like for you?
Yeah, I mean, you're, you're spot on, right?
It's, it's crazy, like, man, two years and like some, some powder, like it was like September 19, I think September 2019, like that pull-up 2021.
It was just a Twitter space, it was a joke.
Like, I was like, it was, it was somewhat of a joke meme, right?
It was like, hey, like, I'm getting Rugged 10 times in a row hosting this space on a Saturday.
I boot it up 10 times again.
There's like 12, 1500 people on the space every time.
I'm just, we keep getting Rugged.
I'm gonna call it Rug Radio.
Like, it was, it was literally just a joke.
Like, the whole name was a joke.
Plus, I'm Persian, so it's even more funny because obviously we make their pants.
Rugged.
And so, and so I'm here, like, you know, making a joke about it.
And, you know, what happened after is, is that, like, out of, like, that space, like, a lot of people were on there.
And you remember, like, if you were around, like, I was throwing jobs around.
Like, who wants to be head of this?
Who wants to be fucking artist?
Who wants to be the creator of this?
And I was just throwing, like, titles as a joke to people.
But then, like, through, I'd say, like, a core group of four people took it seriously.
And, and we just started meeting.
Like, after this, we're like, okay, well, I guess, I guess we're doing this.
Let's do it.
And so, from September 19th, I think, 2021 to, to December, we just cooked.
So, we got in touch with, like, the Sinecadao team.
We started building tokenomics structure.
We, you know, got in, like, you know, we had, like, at the time, like, Jeremiah had done the art for the rugs with Jess Wiseman.
You know, we, we just, like, started, I started calling people that I thought would be good, like, tests, like, pilots, almost creators on the, on the things.
We had, like, a photography show.
We had an art show.
We had, like, a few shows.
I was, like, I actually found my notebook, again, from, like, the first days of Rock Radio.
And, like, oh, my notes.
It's crazy.
And, and so, and so, it was stuff like that, right, that, that we started doing.
And then, which led to the free mint.
But, yeah, like, we, we kind of got into, like, a small, small, like, group of, like, four people, Rudo.
And we started doing that.
That was way pre-Mando.
Like, there was no Mando logs.
Like, no, as a matter of fact, like, Mando, Ovi, and I were not even really, like, we respected each other through the space.
But we weren't really friends.
Like, we didn't really interact with one another, right?
It's after that, like, when it got serious and we were going to mint and the free mint that I started reaching out to people that, you know, were, like, had a big audience.
That I knew were, like, heavy investors in the space.
And I'd be, like, hey, like, look over here.
Like, this is serious.
We're about to, to, to do this.
I remember having a call with Mando and Ovi earlier.
I'd be, like, yo, guys, like, you guys don't really know me.
I don't really know y'all.
But you should check out what I'm building because it's going to be really big.
Like, and, and they were, like, our first whales.
Like, I remember Mando and Ovi and Keyboard Monkey were, and then at the time, I think it was Anonymix.
But it was, like, really Keyboard Monkey was the first person to buy, like, 100, 150 rugs.
And then Mando and Ovi, but, like, 180, which they still have in, like, Canary account, which is super funny when you go back and look.
Like, it's untouched.
And then, like, Loxley was one of those, like, shadow whales.
But I didn't know him until I went to South by Southwest a couple months later, right?
So he was, like, them just buying up membership passes just like them.
He was probably one of the earliest whales, but I didn't know him, right?
And I didn't know it was him.
So, like, when I met him, like, et cetera, that's what I knew.
But that's kind of how it happened.
So, like, I recruited Ovi and Mando.
I'm, like, you guys are smart.
You guys need a show on our network.
We're building a media network for crypto and Web3.
Join us.
And, like, somehow, like, it clicked.
I forgot who Ovi or Mando.
One of them two, they told me, like, clicked before the other.
And we're, like, whoa, this guy's actually going to do it.
Fuck it.
Like, let's just align ourselves with him and just go full blown.
So they used to have their own show called Smoking Jackets.
So they had 72 apes, like, right?
So each of them had an ape with, like, the red jacket, bathrobe.
And so they had a show called Smoking Jackets on Rock Radio.
It was just them two just talking about the market.
Like, that's how it started, right?
So that's kind of, like, the early days.
Like, it was really just, like, pure mom and pop shop, like, you know,
like, trying to do our best to build this thing.
And I'd say, like, things got very, very, very, like, more, like, corporate serious.
Like, in July of 2022 when I called everyone up and I was like, all right, it's time.
And I remember making a Discord just for logs, my create, Mando and I.
And, like, we built the entire business model from scratch.
And that's when we were like, okay, like, it's time.
Like, let's go.
It's real.
It's real now.
It got real really quickly.
And, like, that's usually what happens.
And I think it needs to, but obviously, like, part of the journey stuff happens by whether God, fate, will,
whatever you want to call it, like, you know, the world just happened in your way.
And I think things like that do tend to happen, but I think people at scale tend to not capitalize on them.
And you guys definitely capitalize on those opportunities that kind of fell your way,
which obviously I'm a huge, massive believer in compound effect, good and bad.
And obviously what you guys did was great.
I do want to get to some of these hands here.
I want to go to Z first, Donna, and then Matt.
And then after we go to these hands, I do want to unpack the merger, get into the nitty-gritty of that.
And then I do want to bring up my favorite subject, I think might be actually Farouk's favorite subject,
which is obviously the creator economy.
Z, what's going on?
Good morning, GM, GM.
So first off, big congratulations to you guys.
I had the pleasure of reading the two articles that were written in Decrypt and a lot of really good information.
I don't really have too, too many questions because I feel like those articles specifically really answered a lot.
I am just kind of curious.
It seems like you guys are really starting off on the right foot as far as the media side of things.
I'm kind of curious.
What are you looking forward to from the community side of things, right?
It seems like you guys are really going to be amplifying the people that are producing content with this token.
And hopefully I'm not getting ahead of the scale here, Andrew.
But as far as the community goes, like day ones, right, Farouk, you just kind of mentioned and brought a little bit of history back.
What are you looking forward to, I guess, from the community standpoint?
And how will the token kind of take place in that moving forward?
You want me to take it or you want to take it, Farouk?
Yeah, I mean, go ahead.
That's a great one.
Yeah, yeah.
No, you know, from the community perspective, the original ethos, one of the mantras from the beginning was that we believe that the value of media should accrue to the creators and consumers of media and content, not necessarily to platforms and to, you know, large companies.
If you look historically, Facebook, Google, and a few others have really dominated the ownership of the value within the media life cycle.
And, you know, we believe it wasn't not past tense, very much current and future tense.
We believe that there is and will be a future where value is redistributed in a big way to the creators and consumers of content.
And the beautiful thing is that blockchain and token ecosystems allow us to redistribute that value, whether it's social value or whatever it is.
One of the ways of doing that is by using the token rails to create a circular economy that allows people to participate in rewards and incentivizes them for their stickiness and their willingness to support content creators.
It also gives and opens up the opportunity for people who are aspirational content creators to try their hand at content creation in a way that allows them to see that media content creation and intention economy isn't zero sum.
Just because someone else is succeeding does not mean that they are taking oxygen out of the room or that they're preventing you from succeeding in building a platform and owning your own narrative.
And by incorporating, you know, this mechanism, blockchain and token rails that allow us to have a more free flow fluid movement of, you know, of attention and value, we give everybody and it's not exclusive to just, you know, a small handful of people.
There's not, it's not, it's not, it's not, it's, it's, it's, it's open-ended, you know, and it gives people across the globe, whether they're Web3 creators, Web2 creators, you know, just creators in general.
I really dislike Web2 versus Web3 creators, but just creators in general, the ability to pursue their aspirations.
We intend to empower that.
No, I thank you so much.
I appreciate it.
And I have one brief question.
So the Rug Radio ecosystem has a wide range of content creators, primarily spaces hosts.
And correct me if I'm wrong, what does the, what does this merging opportunity look like in regards to growth?
And will you all be bringing on additional content, sorry, content creators to kind of tap into a wider ecosystem being that, and from what I can recall reading the articles,
Decrypt has somewhere around like 10 million viewers that just kind of review and get all of their information.
How does that look like?
And what is the potential for growth for Rug Radio specifically?
So it's a great question, by the way, Ziana.
So thank you very much for asking it.
So basically nothing changes on the Rug Radio side, nor on the Decrypt side.
So it's a parent company that's going to be focused on ad tech, which, you know, obviously Loxy can get into that with you guys in a minute.
But it's a parent company that will now be holding both of the media properties, right?
Decrypt Media and Rug Radio.
So the goal of that and why we did this merger, you know, and that's something that Josh Quitner, co-founder of Decrypt, you know, sees in us as well,
just like we see in them is we have what they don't and that they don't necessarily want to build or have time to build or capital, whatever.
And they have what we don't, right?
So when you think of Rug Radio, you think culture, creators, and memes, right?
Memetics, put it that way.
When you think about Decrypt, you think about journalism, integrity, professionalism, right?
Decrypt actually is a great stat.
You gave 10 million.
Actually, last year, did over 40 million visits on the website with over 20 million unique individuals,
290,000 minutes, engaged minutes consumed on the website in 2023.
And mind you, half of it was in the bear market.
We're already seeing a massive rise in this week, obviously, with the ETFs and everything.
So Decrypt has its slay of riders.
As a creator myself that does report on the news, I may be a creator, but I do not, I am not a journalist, right?
And so the goal is really to keep the two separate in that sense, whereas a creator could potentially, in one way or another,
contribute to Decrypt with an op-ed that could be on Decrypt scene.
So if you go to Decrypt.co, forward slash scene, Decrypt has a brand called Scene that we've fully kind of taken over, right?
Which is now called Decrypt Rug Scene.
But they also have GG, which is like the IGN of Web3, and they have Decrypt where the writers write.
And similarly, Decrypt writers could come on Rug Radio, creators' Twitter spaces, et cetera, et cetera, and then write about what's being talked about by creators.
But we're really keeping the two separate.
So in a way, Zyana, we're going to keep growing our creator base, right?
And it's going to grow exponentially once the tech is out, because our goal is not to keep handpicking creators and grow them.
There's no growth in that.
Like, it makes no sense.
It's way too much human capital to be able to cater to a bunch of creators.
You guys know that.
You guys have a media brand here.
So it's way too much work, right?
How many hands do you think you need to have if one day you want to have 500 creators?
Because that's our goal, right?
We want 1,000 creators on the network.
But this is where Lock CKMs comes in with this tech background to come and build tech that will be able to cater to all these creators by building tools, reward systems for their participants, for the creators and whatnot, right?
But then the other side, Decrypt will be able to adopt our methods of rewards for their listeners, for their readers and whatnot.
I think the best example is Zyana of Cross Poll Nation.
Literally just happened last Friday on the FOMO Hour Morning Show, which is the show that I co-host with OSF Amanda.
We had Eric Balkunas on, senior ETF analyst at Bloomberg, right?
And so what we did is we had Decrypt Media and Rug Radio as co-hosts on the show, right?
So here you go.
You're representing both brands.
But while we were hosting, after that, the video was cut, embedded in an article on Decrypt.
So there was a video in the article, and then an article went out about Bitcoin ETF.
And then the quotes that a senior ETF analyst said, written by a Decrypt journalist, right?
So there's a lot of ways that we can cross-pollinate while keeping both of the brands completely separate.
So Decrypt is really more like consumer-facing, you said it yourself, so it's spot on, by the way, consumers-facing crypto media, right?
Out of 40 million visits last year, about 40% of these came through search.
Like, it is literally one of the most researched crypto medias in the world.
That's like stat.
That's a fact.
If you open the Robinhood app right now, you go to Bitcoin, you know how there's a news panel?
They literally have Decrypt in there, right?
But then Rock Radio is more culture, creators.
It's the people that are in here.
So that's the way we see the two of them.
But, Lox, I don't know if you want to kind of add to that or whatnot, or if you guys wanted to double down on the ad tech side.
But it's really interesting the way we want to approach this, because we tried to build what Decrypt has.
We failed, because it's so hard.
It really is hard.
And you know what?
That's what five years of executional prowess and operations building journalism at Decrypt,
built on the back of decades of experience from Josh Quintner and other contributors that allowed them to get to that point.
And that really wasn't our background.
But going back to Ziana's question, you know, the common thread that ties both together is obviously increased distribution through cross-pollination, cross-promotion on both platforms.
But it is the ad tech network that has an integrated loyalty and rewards program.
That's the magic sauce, right?
And it's like when we look at both of our companies, you know, Rock Radio being obviously more crypto native and Decrypt being maybe a little bit more crypto adjacent.
The Decrypt business model was a very linear growth business model.
We know that the blockchain and crypto industries are not looking at linear growth by any stretch of the imagination, right?
Like it's very exponential.
And the fact that we are an ecosystem built on the back of digital assets, on the back of a token ecosystem and token rails,
gives us the ability to capitalize on wider distribution, realignment of value and all of that.
And that will be adopted by the Decrypt company.
And we hope that in the future, many, many more independent and institutional media companies will be able to adopt the same token rails that we're pioneering with our foundation for both entities today.
Thank you, guys.
And just to shout out, if you guys haven't had the chance to go ahead and read those articles, definitely recommend it.
Definitely a nice, easy read, but answers a lot of the questions.
So it's hard for me to ask any questions, but I appreciate you guys and your answers.
Great questions, Dee.
Awesome questions, guys.
Appreciate it.
Donna, what's going on in the right for Donna?
We'll go back to Matt.
Thank you, Andrew.
Well, you know, I'm next dentist.
I left dentistry to go to Web3.
So when Farooq was talking about Luxie's teeth, I was, like, super intrigued.
I was, like, I really need to see a picture.
So, yeah.
I swear.
So, yeah.
You talked about the hard times you faced during 2022, and I like the way you described it.
But if you don't mind me asking, what are the exact challenges have you encountered in building and maintaining Reg Radio?
And maybe also, how have you addressed them?
Because Reg Radio is killing it right now.
So there are definitely some lessons people can learn from your journey, guys.
I'm not sure I caught the question, Donna, if you don't mind.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Want to go ahead?
Someone unmuted his...
Lux, want to go?
No, I was just going to say, you know, just really, like, what were some of the challenges that we faced, some of the hurdles and roadblocks, and how did we overcome them?
Do you want to go first?
Yeah, I mean, look, for me, it's been easy.
You know, like, I come in to, I come in, I get pulled in to do exactly what I do, which is take somebody.
I always joke with Farouk, and actually with all the content creators.
If you're a content creator within our ecosystem, I always tell you, I have no talent.
My job is here just to, like, maximize and empower your talent and your greatness.
But really, you know, Farouk had a huge vision.
Like, we, like, you know, when we're building one of the, like, what's a corporate buzzword, a BHAG, right?
A big, hairy, audacious goal of changing the future.
Super, super visionary.
And really, the challenge was, one, how do we, the biggest challenges were, one, how do we create internally a plan of action and, for lack of a better word, a roadmap on how to effectuate all of this?
But then, how do we also do this while not losing the ethos of building with our community, building in public, and doing it in the Web3 way?
I think one of the biggest challenges has been, and will continue to be, that it's really difficult to communicate and to manage expectations when you have externalities.
And by externalities, I don't only mean just market influences.
I don't just mean brand partners, but the fact that you have a community of people that is relying on you to meet their expectations, whatever those expectations are.
Sometimes they're misplaced.
Sometimes they're appropriately placed expectations.
But then, you know, to manage the amount, and you guys know how quick this space moves, but to manage the amount of workflow and effort required to build an idea into something so ambitious really dominates your time.
And so, like, for me, you know, as where I'm at, I'm in a position with a wife and kids, you know, and also wanting to, like, sleep a minimum of three hours a night, that it becomes really challenging to build, communicate internally with our team, with content creators, and with the community.
And I think one of the biggest hurdles here has been just simply managing, and I think it is the case for all Web3 companies and for all publicly traded companies, managing expectations, managing communications, and just making sure that you give and take with latitude from the people, let's call them stakeholders across the board, who, you know, who expect a lot out of you.
It's really tough to maintain your sanity.
It's really tough to build tech, build ideas that everyone tells you are impossible.
But I think that if we can, and we always continue to ask for patience and understanding, and a little bit of a latitude from the stakeholders, creators, consumers, you know, people in the token ecosystem, whatever it is, that our goal always has been and always will be to put them first and to make them very proud of what we are producing.
It's just a tough thing to communicate.
Seems ironic, right, being a media, being a media people, but it really is a challenge.
Great question, Donna.
Yeah, I love the answers.
Thank you so much.
Appreciate it.
Matt, let's go over to you.
Then after, Matt, I do, because Z brought up a good point.
The articles are all kind of, you know, they're there, they're written, just read them.
If you can't read, get your mom to do it.
I don't know, but I do want to transition over to the creator economy afterwards.
I feel like that conversation is better serving for everyone listening and speaking, opposed to just kind of reading articles over when all the information is there.
Matt, what's going on?
I hope you've got an operational question.
I do.
And I thank you for calling me out.
I'll have to get my mom to help me read, not a read school in Florida.
Yeah, the, you know, I listen, I, you know, I, Loxie, I have to, I have to give my flowers a little bit, right?
Like I, as a, as a founder myself or, you know, whatever, CEO, whatever you want to call us, the managing expectations is infinitely difficult.
Probably the hardest part about the job after it's all said and done, right?
Especially in this space, Lord have mercy.
But the, my question is, why a token and how do you know that you're going to be able to create a sustainable economy with a token when we basically have never seen one before, especially in this space?
And then, like, I mean, I hate to be this guy, right?
And, and, and hopefully you solve this, but even, even the Fed can't solve a stable economy at points in time, right?
So it's like, how do you, how do you approach that and think that you're going to be able to do that and be able to do that at a scale, especially with so many creators as an ambitious goal of about 500, right?
So there's a lot to unpack here.
So let's, let's touch this on a few different things.
One caveat, we believe in and embrace creative destruction, meaning that we intend to succeed.
And we believe that we, we believe that our goals, no matter how ambitious, that we will achieve them.
But in the event that something catastrophic does happen, we do know that when we put our best talents, efforts and everything forward, and things do explode, that they explode spectacularly and beautifully, and that there are pieces that can be salvaged and reconstructed from that process.
I, I, I would have to say that if any of us, like, like we are all here collectively, and if you can't recognize that as a collective, that we are delusionally optimistic, but also feel for those of us who have kind of been in crypto for, you know, one cycle, two cycles, whatever it is, you feel a sense of ownership over the ecosystem and success of not just like the communities, but the technology.
Like, I truly believe that, you know, blockchain as advanced database management is one of the keys to unlock a huge future of opportunities.
And so, you know, we, as early movers, get to play rent seeker in some cases, in some scenarios, where just by being early, we pull an insane amount of value out of the ecosystem, and we're endowed with stupid amounts of liquidity.
I mean, like, who thought that buying pictures of monkeys would make, JPEGs of monkeys would make people wealthy?
Well, the question is, if you look at this from like a holistic perspective, what responsibilities, because you were able to make five, six, in some cases, seven figures of liquidity and capital in USD terms, you know, for being early in the space, what does that insinuate about the responsibility that you have to build and to create?
Well, if we are not so self-centered, and we start looking on a greater, more holistic picture of the space, it really is our responsibility to reinvest some of our capital gains into advancing and delivering space.
I'm not saying everybody has to, but for those of us who, you know, fall in like the builder mentality, we all feel an obligation to advance the space that has given us so much for being early believers, early adopters.
And so, you know, for us, to give you some context on why token, when Rug Radio launched and deployed the NFTs, there was an associated ERC20 token, a fungible token, the Rug token.
That was intended to be a governance token, because the assets from the Mint went into a DAO treasury.
And really, the genius behind this was that instead of Froke minting something and trying to pull $5, $10, $15, $20, $100 million out of liquidity out of the space and be extractive, what they did was they decided they were going to reinvest in the space by building a media entity.
And the process of ensuring the success of this entity was to issue a token that would act as a governance token and give the community the responsibility of holding Froke and team accountable to budgets and to processes that would ensure that those funds lasted for enough time to be able to build something sustainable, something robust, etc., whatever the outcome would be.
The Rug token accomplished that goal in a spectacular way.
We went from Froke, you know, having some consultants and some advisors, to then just being a solo entrepreneur with two employees, to now being an entity with millions of dollars in annual operational revenue, with 34 employees, and operating on a global scale.
The question is, just because the Rug token accomplished that, what does it do now?
Does it just fuck off and disappear?
The answer is absolutely not, right?
Like, people believe in this token.
So our opportunity now is to say, as we've scaled, as we are achieving critical mass, and as we are in a position to start helping redistribute and realign value accrual within the creator economy, and within the content consumption economy as well, because that is a massive economy.
You know, $700 billion a year, you know, what tools, what instruments, what mechanisms can we use, what levers can we pull to actually effectuate that redistribution of value?
And that answer is token ecosystem.
And so taking what worked for its first intended cause, and helping mature and evolve that into the next iteration of token ecosystem, which gives us the ability to reward ecosystem participants, is the next challenge.
The good news is that we have a big piece of that puzzle solved.
And, you know, like you said, you know, government can't be trusted with maintaining a sustainable, let's call it a token ecosystem, right?
Like, it doesn't seem to have worked.
I think that the solution is very apparent and very simple.
I think we often overcomplicate things that don't need to be overcomplicated.
But when you look at an economy, you have to look at a circular economy in terms, let's call it in token terms, in terms of sinks and emissions.
There has to be a balance of inflows and outflows and a way for all of the key stakeholders to transfer the token and to incentivize the use, adoption, and expenditure of these tokens in the right places at the right time in order for it to be sustainable.
What happens is eventually you get to a point, if you look at, for instance, like Ethereum, right?
It's still inefficient, it's still not large enough, but you have this road and you can imagine it like a toll road out in the desert headed to nowhere.
It's not going to be worth anything.
But you build a casino at the end of that toll road and all of a sudden people start using that toll road to get to the casino and gamble.
Well, what happens when you start putting streetlights and then you start putting gas stations and you start putting homes and hospitals and schools and libraries and everything else that goes along that toll road?
All of a sudden you've built this world, this microcosm of reality living on this toll road and what happens to the value of that toll road?
It becomes invaluable to the people who rely on it day to day, right?
To get from point A to point B and everything else in between.
And in a lot of ways, our job is to identify all of those key points and all of those utilities within the RUG token ecosystem that will cause people to need it, want it, and be incentivized to stay and use it versus moving out of that desert and off that toll road to greener pastures.
That kind of didn't answer your question, but it kind of answered your question, I guess.
Matt, you take a note?
He's quiet.
Yeah, I mean, you know, we could go on, right?
We've got 10 minutes.
I think, Loxy, we need to connect on a deeper level on that for sure because I'm very curious.
I do have some follow-ups, but I'll let Andrew take away from the rest of the show.
But just like in another way, like from the way I see it, Matt, and of course, like I'm no tokenomics expert nor like a crypto OG, which is why I have always brought on people that know better than me into the mix to help me do this.
But like what I've loved about tokenization and tokenizing, like, which is I came to crypto through NFTs because it just made sense to me the most, which I've assumed a lot of people on the stage or maybe in the audience even had a similar experience to me.
But like it just helps you.
Like to me, like founding something and launching through NFT is like growing a company on steroids.
Like if you see like the rise of Hugo Labs to a $4 billion raise, $500 million raise, $4 billion valuation, but you get me.
And all these other companies like Pudgy Penguins and even Rug Radio and whatnot, I think launching VNFTs rather than traditional route is what has allowed us to grow way faster than anybody else in the space.
Like when you look at crypto media, not just NFT crypto media, you have, you know, CoinDesk, DeGrypt, and, you know, a bunch of others that you all know, BlockWorks, DeBlock, blah, blah, blah.
And these guys have like, DeGrypt has been around for like eight years now, right?
But when you look at Rug Radio has been able to achieve within just two year timeframe, like maybe two years ago today was like when we meant it, right?
So what we've been able to achieve within just a two year timeframe, truly just a one year and a half when Logs and Co. really came in, is really impressive in my opinion.
And when I say this, I don't mean, I don't even, I'm not even patting my own back.
I'm just patting the back of people to help me do this.
And it's just like, I think tokenization really allows you to build something turbo speed.
Like when there's a lot of people involved, you have a community that's involved, you have a community that's involved with, you know, their time, their attention.
Obviously the Mint costs money, so now they're involved with that.
And it helps you, I think, turbo speed grow something.
And that's the way I see it, personally speaking.
Now, we can get into the intricacies for hours about like how the new tokenomics structure is going to work and why it's important for us to have that.
But rewards program is just like your American Express card or anything else, right?
Like you get to get so much more for flying Delta and using Amex.
Well, guess what?
You can get so much more for uploading your content into the Rug Radio machine or creating content on the Rug Radio network and whatnot.
So that essentially, like, that would be the best parallel I could draw for you, Matt.
No, and listen, I love what you guys have done for the space, right?
Like I've been here for a very long time.
I have watched you guys grow from infant stages to where we're at today.
I just want to continue to see you guys grow, and I want to make sure that you guys are really, really set up for success.
And I think, you know, I got to commend you, right?
When a leader can recognize that they have a shortcoming and fill the gap with what I'm presuming, and this is me going out on my own limb here, with someone of such value as locks, I mean, you've done a great job.
I give you guys credit where credit is due, for sure.
I am just super, super curious, and like I said, I want to dive into the details, because that, unfortunately, is my favorite part about all of it, right?
But you guys are doing a damn good job, right?
I love what you guys are doing and what you guys are setting up for.
Now it's just a matter of, like, how do you finesse it to where it's 100%, you're at 120, and you just keep growing, and that 500 becomes 5,000, and then 5 million, right?
Like, that's the name of the game.
So you guys keep doing what you're doing.
I love it.
Thanks, Matt.
Appreciate it.
Kind of words.
And just so you guys are cognizant of this, Matt doesn't usually get flowers like that.
He's usually kind of a hard ass.
Whoa.
Yeah.
He's one of those guys.
I didn't know that.
That's crazy.
I appreciate that, Matt.
Big win.
Broke, we had a couple teams on, man, a couple weeks ago, and Matt was like, I'm going to nail these guys, because the stuff they're saying is not making any sense.
So I said, Matt, you do what you think is the right thing to do, and Matt did the right thing.
But I want to be cognizant and respectful of your guys' time.
You guys have a dead stop in 10 minutes, right?
Eight minutes?
We can stand a little more if it's needed, dude.
Okay.
Appreciate it.
So I have a question, Creator Economy.
I think this is the moment people have been waiting for.
Obviously, you know, we often speak, guys, gals, let's follow the money.
We're all in agreeance.
Okay.
So I'm looking at a chart in front of me, multiple charts.
I pulled this up last night.
I just kind of know what I was talking about.
Let me not say stuff that I might not sound like I'm saying, but let me say stuff that, you know, is going to make sense, and that's true.
So the Creator Economy, obviously, scaling, I think, examples of that, Logan Paul, et cetera, we all know it, right?
But when looking from a capital standpoint, people are actually spending more dollars for influencer marketing over social ad growth across all platforms, right?
TikTok, Facebook, whatever it may be.
And obviously, it's the numbers and comparisons.
So it's one to five, what it seems to be here.
So if people are spending $1 on ad, right, people are now spending $5 in influencer growth.
It's a one to five ratio from what I'm currently reading.
Obviously, data points change all the time.
It might not be right.
People have different sources, whatever, fine.
But we're all in agreement that it's scaling, right?
And with that being said, I think X as a platform is not doing as well on this list because I think the video concept is something super new.
But I do think it's something that people would get around to doing in the next five, 10 years.
I think Elon's trying to figure that out the way TikTok has, right?
And I'll say this.
Obviously, there's a lot of creators in this space.
We have a lot of good creators in this space.
A lot of the good creators in this space are still small.
And I think this question is, is this something that you guys can address, you know, together?
You guys take stabs at a time, whatever it may be.
So obviously, as a creator, there's leverage.
There's low leverage and there's high leverage.
People hate using the word leverage.
Guys, it is what it is.
It's business.
You have to use it.
You have to say it.
There's low leverage, meaning you put in, you know, you have so much leverage already.
You can do a 10-minute podcast with the Nelk boys, let's say.
And that goes viral because they have so much leverage.
As in, the creators who start out have to have such a high leverage input that gets, you know, maybe 10 views or 20 views, whatever it may be.
So for the creators that have, you know, low leverage, but they're doing, they're trying to get to the high leverage, they're putting in, you know, so much hours of work and only getting little leverage.
What's your guys' advice to them?
Like, if they're just starting off, they're just kind of making their way.
Farouk, you want to, I mean, like, I generally let Farouk speak about creator economy.
Let me tell you just really quickly.
Go ahead.
Let's have a look.
I want you to go because you've been cooking up with that stat you like seeing on these interviews.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot.
There's a lot.
There's a lot of stats here.
But look, let me go, let me, let me pull this, let me pull this back really quickly to a more macro view aside from giving direct advice, which I'll leave to Farouk.
I think it's important that people realize that this trend that we're seeing moving towards the influencer economy versus, you know, versus just digital advertising on a, on a, on a gross macro or corporate scale, enterprise scale is not going to stop anytime soon.
And I think it's a byproduct of oversaturation of, of media.
Really, we've created through the age of information technology, we've created an environment where there's zero barrier to entry and the creation of media.
And with a few dollars, with a little bit of leverage, it's easy for people to dominate and acquire the voices to give an over, let's say, let's just say, let's say, go back to the word dominate, to dominate the attention within an economy.
What's happened is it's been so poorly bastardized or so, so bastardized and so poorly utilized that large enterprise advertisers, content creators, et cetera, can't be trusted.
And so if you look at, you know, we talked about this in the very beginning when I was introducing myself, but the progressive liberalization of society and the trend towards democratization, we will lean further and deeper back into the micro influencer by way of, or, or by virtue of returning to our roots of oral tradition and going back pre-industrial because we believe people within our spheres of influence.
And so, you know, going the little bit of advice that I have and basically what you will see in the future is, you know, you see it in gaming, they use the word guild and a lot of other places, you know, they use other words.
But the ability for us to use micro communities as micro influencers to align interests and align potential economic impact and reach to the people that we have the opportunity to influence in a much more personalized way is going to re-revolutionize the distribution of value in media.
I'm sure Farrell can speak directly to advice he would give to an independent content creator, but I think, you know, from my perspective, I would say, you know, we've said this a million times, Rug Radio doesn't intend to suck the air out of the room.
We don't intend to dominate the noise.
What we're trying to do is create infrastructure and ecosystem that allows independent content creators to support themselves and to recapture or, in our terms, to own the narrative of their specific topic or niche.
Lock, quick question.
I want to cut you off.
I'm going to go to Farrell for this.
You're on to something fantastic here.
You mentioned the oversaturation, right?
And I'll give an example.
So TikTok is the way it is, and it does the numbers the way it does, because creators post creating content, right?
They post good stuff.
We love it.
Wow, that cat's doing that crazy stuff.
Fantastic.
Great.
Whatever, right?
And then there's the concept of now where they're, you know, TikTok shop.
Obviously, I'm in Canada.
I'm in Toronto, so I can't really see this stuff.
But I have a lot of American friends like you guys who can't see this stuff operate on TikTok shop, whatever it may be.
There's conversations, and there's obviously some concern here with conversations, that, like, there's going to be oversaturation of products being sold.
With the creator.
So what made TikTok great initially was creators are creating.
They're doing the thing that they're good at, the forte, pun intended.
Right now, the conversation is switching.
It's like, guys, if they're doing too much product, this is not Amazon.
We're not supposed to be selling products here.
It's supposed to be creator-driven, right?
Lox, do you think that you mentioned that, you know, the paid ad stuff, the stuff with all people's faces, that's old.
That's probably gone.
The numbers are shrinking.
People are kind of going on the creator economy side.
Do you think the inverse happens where the creators are creating too much oversaturation, and the creator specialty, whatever you want to call it, doesn't work as much anymore because there's so much of it.
Back to the basic metrics of supply and demand and scarcity startup.
Like, does that make sense?
So that system, you're right, and that system self-fulfils if we don't introduce a new model and a way to innovate the relationship between, or redefine the relationship between brands and consumers.
So the creator becomes the medium through which brands interact with their audience and their potential consumers.
If we enable, if we continue to enable the current predatory, like, advertising mechanisms, then what you just alluded to comes to fruition without a doubt.
We in the space specifically have a tendency to want to demonize commercialization.
The reality is that, like, commercialization isn't bad.
The question is just how do we commercialize responsibly?
And the innovative model that myself and Quinn, Quinn Button, who if you don't follow her, she's fucking brilliant, but she's our COO of this new ad tech company and Decrypt and Rug Radio and all of that, that we started hypothesizing months and months ago and starting to build towards.
This is the reason why I wanted to bring her on, was to change that interaction by convincing brands that instead of extracting value from their consumers, that they need to be willing to reinvest in consumers.
And it's a very simple thesis and hypothesis.
When you look at what it costs to retain a consumer of your brand versus what it costs to acquire a consumer, it's infinitely cheaper.
I mean, like, orders of magnitude cheaper to just retain and build loyalty and advocacy amongst your current users than it is to acquire new ones.
So how do we convince brands to invest in the consumer versus just extract from them and prey on them?
Well, that's where the token rails and the token ecosystem comes back in.
And we, I mean, like, we could do, I could do three hours of space to, like, detail all of this.
I won't bore you with it.
I won't bore you with it right now.
We're going to need a series on that.
We're going to have to come back.
We're going to have to come back and talk about that.
Andrew, do you mind repeating the main question, please?
I get lost when Oxy talks.
It's so fascinating.
Yeah, so my question is, like, obviously, like, a ton of creators are entering this space.
Like, I am trying to create now as well, my own capacity, my own personal team.
So I'm getting to the hump, like, it's being passed.
Obviously, there's low leverage, high leverage conversations, right, where a creator has to put out 30 pieces of content to just get 10,000 views, right?
That's the low to high.
And then there's, sorry, there's a high and low.
And then there's conversations of, well, this creator is already so big, the podcast gets 10 million stuff, you know, a week, like you guys did last week or whatever it was.
You say one thing goes viral.
You guys have low leverage put in, high leverage output, 20, 80, 80, 20.
How would you encourage, what would you say to the creator that's, like, just creating, that's starting to create, like, for many of us here, where they have the high leverage, low leverage output, where now 80% of the stuff is only keeping 20% of the output because of how low the stuff is, right?
And then, like, what would you say is, like, the potential greatest ROI habit if it's a single one out?
Yeah, I mean, look, I've been a creator forever, right?
Like, I'm 29, really started on Facebook when I was a kid, like, 12 years old, whatever, yeah, yeah, the whole story, like, went through Twitter, then Tumblr, then Tumblr, then Tumblr when I was 14, built a blog, 17, 18, got into IG, all that shit, like, or 20, I forget.
And then did Instagram for eight years, built millions of followers on there, then start from zero, COVID, Clubhouse, zero followers, built Clubhouse.
Twitter, I wrote about it the other day when I hit 350K, but I had zero, like, well, maybe 1,000, maybe 500 followers on Twitter in February 2021 when I started, and then here we are.
But it's, the biggest hurdle for any creator is that, like, you want to call yourself a creator, and that's not you, Andrew, but you in general, like, you want to call yourself a creator, but you too are afraid to create.
Like, it's, like, you can't just, like, always count on, like, validation of other people and expect, like, 500 listeners on your first Twitter spaces, second, second, you know what?
Sometimes you could not even expect 500 listeners to the first fucking 200 Twitter spaces you could be hosting, for example, right?
And the biggest hurdle that I think creators nowadays are encountering is that, of course, it's a huge dilution at the moment, as, like, if everybody's a creator, then nobody's a creator, and everybody's trying to become, like, a Twitter space source.
You saw this trend go on, like, when we started regular two years ago, people laughed at me, saying that we were going to fail, and that the company was going to go bankrupt, and we're going to zero, because we were relying on Twitter spaces, and that there was just not going to be a demand for that.
In the bear market, every single person became a host.
Like, every single person became a host, and every single PFP project, mind you, turned into a media company, okay?
Every single PFP project turned into a media or gaming company.
No in between.
They're either doing media or they're launching a game, right?
And so when you think about it this way, then it makes it even harder.
So I think for creators nowadays, it's really about standing out with, like, obviously there's consistency, but at the end of the day, like, consistency doesn't do everything, because you could also be consistently good at doing nothing, right?
But it's also about, like, just trying to stand out and find out your own groove.
I think, like, too many people are trying to be Threat Guy.
Too many people are trying to be Throat, or too many people are trying to be Miko.
Maybe too many people are trying to be Moby Media and Andrew, right?
But I think that what's important for a creator nowadays to really stand out in the age of the creator, right?
Like, you guys are about to see creators hit the billionaires list on Forbes.
Like, it's happening.
Mr. Beast, you talked about Logan earlier, like, whether the crypto is a thing or not doesn't matter.
Right, but think about it.
Like, there's going to be a lot of creators that are going to start hitting that Forbes billionaire list, because this is just a new reality.
Like, Kai Sinat is paid more than, like, a NBA player right now, right?
And so when you think about it this way, like, there's going to be so much demand for it.
And so the only way to go about it is to keep iterating and reiterating and reiterating and reiterating and putting content out in different forms and methods of distribution.
Right now, video is working.
We have done a full pivot towards video, and you're about to see them do Crypt Media as well.
There's going to be a huge pivot where video is going to become a very important part of the platform and stuff like that.
So I think, like, it's really about just, like, breaking the barrier and trying to, like, just, like, be unique and do your thing and go at it nonstop.
But also the other part is really, like, the way you're going to be networking with people and trying to build your own brand.
Like, Andrew, clearly you've got a co-host here.
It seems like you guys are, like, a crew of people that come here often and, like, contribute to this panel.
Like, you were talking about Matt, et cetera.
And you have your people asking questions.
So really it's about, like, finding your crew and, like, just building together and kind of building your own table.
Like, when I was just a small up-and-coming creator, I wasn't invited to sit at the table of the big creators, right?
I just, I don't know.
I built my own table and I started growing.
And then they had no choice but to acknowledge me.
Like, that happened on Clubhouse.
I was just this guy with zero followers, came in out of nowhere.
And all these people, a lot of followers on Clubhouse, like, just, like, helping each other out.
Then whatever.
I became so big that they just had no choice but to either invite me on panels because they wanted my following.
Good.
I'll leverage that, right?
You're talking about leverage?
And then guess what?
Then the table flipped around where I became so big that they wanted to be on.
And, of course, you always wake up on my table, right?
So, it's just a matter of, like, networking and managing to leverage what you're good at, right?
I knew for 10 years that I am really, really good at networking with people.
And I'm very good.
That's what LogSell was telling me because I told LogSell, I don't know what my forte is.
But he's like, your forte is being a magnet for, like, bringing the right people around you.
And that's what I do best, right?
That's how I got LogSell and all the people around our team and whatnot, right?
So, I did that.
So, like, I doubled down on what I was good at in order to put myself in the position of winning as a creator.
So, you just got to figure it out.
Like, for some of you, you're incredible maybe thread writers.
So, go write threads for somebody and then end up being on stage with them.
Grow your own audience off of them.
Give them something in return and then go off and do your own thing but maybe with them in mind and collaborate.
It could be maybe you're a good clip editor.
Like, a lot of the people within Rock Radio, like Ben White right now, okay,
it just took a really important leading role within Rock Radio.
Started this week, okay?
You go off, see him.
Ben started off as a, he's another successor at Rock Radio that I like saying, like, like, like,
Rock Seas.
Started off.
Dude, the guy was doing, like, 10 listeners per space, okay?
Doing his thing.
Then ends up having 1,000 plus per space.
Partnership with Transient.
Partnership with fucking the Magic Eden or Solana or whatever he's doing now.
Partnership with OpenSea.
Partnership with this.
But guess what?
There was a moment where I know he hated doing clips and, like, editing content, but he was hired for us as, like, a contractor to edit clips.
Why did he do that?
And I can talk for him because he told me that and he says it often in public.
He did it because he wanted him to put his foot through the door at Rock Radio and we didn't have anything else to offer to him but to do clips.
So if you want a job at Rock Radio for Ben back in the days, he had to do clips.
Or there wouldn't be a spot for him not because I can't, because I can't, not because I don't want to.
And now he's literally, like, in a leadership role as of this week, right?
So in jazz, like, jazz went from being a fan of mine on Twitter and of Manonosef to writing threads about our space every day.
It was GM and FT's at the time.
Like, who the fuck is this guy?
What the hell?
Let's bring him up on stage.
And then I give him a job.
And then he kept going up and up and up the ladder.
So it's just, like, you know, it's, like, as a creator, like, we, like, growing as a creator is so hard, right?
In the age of the creator.
But you also get to sit your ass at home and tweet and, like, do all these things.
Like, our ancestor had all this manual labor to do, right?
Like, that's how they brought money on the table.
You're talking about a giga economy that's billions, trillion dollars soon, right?
Like, or even more.
I don't even know the stats.
Locke has them and you have, Mandrew, clearly.
But, like, there's so much to come.
So, like, if you're not willing to, like, put on the extra time and extra work, like, then it's going to be tougher for you.
Because the truth of the story is it's going to be harder probably to find a job from home and online than it is in real life.
There's, like, a shortage of fucking plumbers in Montreal, electricians and stuff.
Because kids these days, they don't want to do plumbing and electricians.
They want to be a creator, right?
They want to be the next fucking Vine star.
So it's, like, you're going to have to get used to it.
It's going to get cutthroat and competitive.
And hopefully, you know, hopefully, and I think we're going to make it, right?
We're going to build a tool and a platform for people to be able to be empowered to do so.
But for now, you know, you're going to have to grind it out.
There's no secret.
A lot of great points there.
I do want to say one thing that I will run back to Ruto here.
Broke, so, like, I'm Gen Z.
I'm 26.
My generation, your point, they do not want to do trades.
They want to sit at home, work at a bank, sit on, you know, office, desk, whatever.
That's fine.
It makes sense.
You can definitely do it.
There's something that I went through early.
It happened actually last week.
And I'll say that I'll toss over to Ruto here in a sec.
So I think there's two breakthrough moments in every person's life.
Creating business, marketing, whatever the hell it is.
Even driving, right?
You have this first stage of uninformed optimism where you think it's going to be so fucking easy.
Yeah, we're just going to kill it in two months.
We're going to fucking do all these views, all this stuff.
And then there's what I got slapped with two days ago, which was uninformed pessimism.
I didn't think it was going to be this way.
So I had written a thread about security, right?
It's not a show.
I thought I was going to get a lot more views on what it actually did.
I'm like, damn, that's all it got for the four hours that I put into this video time,
writing the script, whatever.
And maybe I'm like, damn, that's it.
So that uninformed pessimism smacked me in the face.
And now I know I got to put in 12 more hours to get 3x the result with the input times volume,
whatever it may be.
So that's what I would say, guys.
Definitely don't stop.
I will end my rant, though.
Bruno, over to you, sir.
You got your bubble over there, I can tell.
No, I think Pro touched on a lot of good points, too, because I remember coming into the space
from I activated my Twitter account in like 2011 or something like that.
And I used it mainly for, you know, just connecting with like RL homies, you know, the Web 2 days,
right?
Like pre-Instagram, essentially.
But then when I came into Web 3 and I transitioned into, you know, getting into a lot more like
Web 3 content, I remember trying to get a seat at the table, as Farouk liked to call it,
and thinking to myself, like, okay, do I need to copy the roadmap of like what other people
are doing to get into that position?
The answer is yes and no.
But there's, I can't, I know Farouk knows this as well.
Like the amount of people who hate on people with like an audience or like, oh, they get
a ton of handouts.
Like they get a lot of shit for free, this and that, blah, blah, blah.
But the reality is, is that anyone with any significant sort of audience size or community,
they've obviously done something to, in order to get to that position.
And so I always say to people, if you want to grow a following and if, or an audience,
whether it be through content creation or like some sort of skillset that you have, you
can't just expect to like just post GM every day and like be active in Twitter spaces and
this and that, and then grow a following to like 20, 30, 50K.
That just doesn't happen.
I think the best route that you can go is identify what you're good at, what you enjoy,
and then build skillsets that align with the things that you like to do or find pain points
in the market that you can solve, build a skillset that adheres to that.
And that's how you drive value.
That's how you grow an audience, not just by, you know, being a bystander and clapping on
the sidelines.
You have to actually provide some sort of skill or value.
So anyone listening who wants to grow an audience, be someone worth following.
That's all I can say to that.
So huge shout out to anyone who's grown a following Farouk and, you know, everyone else on stage
and the listeners too.
A bunch of great stuff.
Do you guys have like 15 minutes max or are we being too...
Let me see the...
I don't even...
I don't decide what I do.
Like, as soon as I wake up...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
We're told to do where to go.
It's like, oh, shit.
9 a.m.
There's this meeting.
10 a.m.
There's this meeting.
Oh, wait.
NFT Paris event.
Oh, wait.
Let's show.
Oh, wait.
A commercial call.
Oh, wait.
We got to talk to Mika.
We're good, I think, for 15, right?
Yeah, we can make another 10-ish.
We have a meeting in 10.
Yeah.
Okay.
We got 10.
We got 10.
Let's do it.
Perfect.
Matt, you've been quiet.
Matt, you're quiet.
I'm nervous because you're thinking about...
Uh-oh.
Yeah.
Dude, just Matt's coming.
Oh, actually, he's not...
Actually, no.
Matt's not here.
I forgot.
Matt has to...
That's on me.
That one's on me.
Donna, let's go over to you.
You got some questions.
Otherwise, we can go back to Rudo or I'll ask him.
Damn, I'm 0 for 2.
You guys hear that?
I'm 0 for 2.
Rudo, please don't be my 0 for 3.
Wait, wait.
No, I mean, I thought...
I was like, damn, it's circled back to me.
I literally just went on a fucking tangent there already.
But no, dude, Froak, Lox, you guys have been incredible to have up here.
I think a lot of people just genuinely can learn a lot from the type of stuff you guys
are building.
Froak, you mentioning that a lot of these projects are moving more to either gaming or media.
And there's a huge reason for that, right?
Like 99% of these projects, most are probably pretty close to insolvency, but they won't talk
about it.
So the only way that they're able to generate some revenue is either through a new Mint
or trying to come up with a game that they can monetize on or even like media.
And that's why you see a lot of projects either doing like ambassador programs for distribution,
for example, because ultimately they're trying to build that distribution up so that they
can monetize somewhere down the road.
So we all know it's actually much more difficult to monetize in media than people think it
So like just a huge shout out again, you know, taking the knee pads off here in a second,
but just big props to you guys for scaling this thing out.
I'm excited to see how shit rolls out this year, man.
So are you guys planning on doing a...
Actually, I'll just go to Andrew.
I'll just keep fucking talking for no reason.
You might as well.
We're just back.
You're there.
Yeah, I was going to see, because I know you guys do events and stuff.
Are you guys planning on hosting at pretty much every event this coming year?
I know like ETH Denver, I know Paris, I know NFT NYC LA and stuff like that is coming up.
So we, yeah, we will be present at most of the events.
We're now a 34 person team and we have journalists that will be covering things aside from that.
Even when the people that are not on our team, but our content creators can make it to
places they will be there.
You will see us, you know, if anyone is in Davos for the World Crypto Forum in Switzerland
this upcoming week, you will see us there.
If you are in Paris, we will have quite a few engagements and activations in Paris.
The week after Paris, we will also have a few people at ETH Denver,
more technical and journalism side versus the content creation side in Denver.
And then, I mean, it goes on and on and on.
I mean, feel free to...
We're going to be everywhere.
There's no reason not to be everywhere.
We have so many team members, whether in Asia or in Europe or in America,
like there's no point.
Like we are going to be absolutely everywhere.
Now, pertaining more to like your question on events we're going to do.
So our house in Miami was a massive success.
And I'm really grateful for the team that made it happen, which is the Rug Radio team.
They cooked.
Like they absolutely crushed.
You know, all I did was show up and do my thing and be a host.
But they really did a good job.
We've had over 2,000 unique individuals came through four days, nine events.
It was exhausting.
We were all burnt after it, but it was fire.
So it was totally worth it.
But, you know, we're going to be replicating the R house around the world now.
So once a quarter, we're going to do the R house.
The next R house is going to be Paris on February 22nd.
It's going to be a one-day event and we got a higher location.
Like it's so crazy.
But instead of doing the three days, it's going to be one day R house in Paris, right?
From like 10 to 6 or something, 12 to 6, I forget.
It's something like that.
We haven't announced anything yet, but the emails went out to start, you know,
working with partners and to save the dates went out.
So I can say it.
And then we have another event in Paris.
So we're going to like pick the big ones.
Like the big conferences, yes.
You'll see Rugby to be present at events and whatnot.
And the small stuff, not small, sorry.
Like Denver, we don't need to have a side event.
Rox is going to be there because he has a home in Denver.
And like a lot of our journalists are going to be there because it's East Denver after all.
It's massive.
And so we're going to be doing interviews and whatnot.
So a lot of like there's some place, it's like, there's like,
there's like three levels of like presence that we're going to have.
Some of it like base level is like creators and journalists writing articles.
Taking notes on panels and putting content out.
Second level is like, I don't know.
It's like being a media partner to like an event or to like a side event.
So you're like, Moby Media has an event.
Oh, Rugby just tapping onto that, right?
Because it's very minimal like lift for us.
And then there's like the extreme level, which is like Art Basel.
Like, which is like we're putting on a freaking four-day production.
And in Paris, that's what it's going to be.
Like Paris, we have a 22nd event.
22 to 24, we're most likely to be the main media partner again for NFT Paris.
Like we were last year through Rug Radio and Decrypt.
So pay attention there.
We're going to be all over the place, like big time.
And then on 24th, we have another event at night.
So see, that's bigger production because it requires more hands.
But I also have like one of the co-finders of Decrypt's friend.
She lives in Paris.
Our executive assistant, like she's out there in France.
Sammy from Decrypt, like he leads marketing.
He's in Paris.
So it's very easy for us.
I'm born and raised there.
It's like, it's our thing.
20,000 people went last year.
It's a no-brainer.
So you're going to expect a lot of us.
And again, it goes out to all of you guys.
If anybody here like has events around the world,
you stuff that you guys think that you have stuff that you think Rug Radio could add value to.
Like we have writers.
We have people.
We're happy to collaborate.
Like you were asking about cross-pollination with Ziana earlier, I think,
how Rug Radio and Decrypt cross-pollinate.
Where does most times like Recrypt has a limited amount of journalists.
They need to be in the newsroom all day, right?
The newsroom meaning like virtual newsroom, right?
On Slack and stuff, which is sick to watch.
I love like just reading that newsroom.
But like we can send a creator somewhere.
So Andrew, let's say, right?
Say Andrew's a creator.
He's going to like ETH, whatever.
So to an event, right?
Like in Connecticut.
It's called Connecticut.
We're obviously not going to do an event in Connecticut, right?
What an awful place.
What?
What an awful place.
Where are you based?
Where are you based, Andrew?
Toronto broke.
I'm Canadian.
No way, Toronto.
Okay, it's a Toronto man.
So there's an event in Toronto, right?
By the way, I'm speaking in Toronto on the 25th.
We just shared that.
It went live during your space.
So I'll send you the invite.
You should come say what's up.
But like the point being, like so like let's say Andrew's in Toronto.
It doesn't mean Toronto.
We don't have the capacity to send someone.
Also, by the way, it's costly and it's not like we have trillions of dollars to spend, right?
So Andrew's there.
We can have a writer tell him questions to ask someone specific, record them, send them to the writer.
The writer writes an article because it has to come from a journalist and it has to be written by a journalist and edited by journalists.
And then it could be said, this article was in collaboration with Andrew Forte of MobiMedia.
So in that case, we'll be like XX of Rock Video.
So see, that's another way to cross-pollinate the brands and be able to be present everywhere.
Bro, that's a good idea.
I might just show up, to be honest.
I do have two quick questions.
The first one I've actually forgot to ask, which I'm a little bit silly for here, running around a little bit.
And the second one, probably a question from Marshall Locks.
And my second one is just kind of really just by the hip.
You guys obviously changed the logo of the brand, right?
And I'm a pretty big brand obsessed guy.
To me, I think brand is the association of predictable behavior.
So if Andrew's eating, I know, Frosted Flakes every morning and I don't, I am now Frosted Flakes.
Frosted Flakes is me.
My behavior is predictable.
Andrew eats it every morning.
So this is what he does.
This is who he is.
Whatever, whatever.
You guys changed the logo from the old logo to this one that looks like a microphone.
Bro, what was kind of the inspiration, I guess, the, ah, that one's sexy, that one's it moment for you guys?
Dude, that's our baby.
I am a branding nut.
Bro, like, I, I'm just like, I'm just, I'm just like, I, that's like, I'm a nerd for this shit.
Bro, it's everything.
It influences behavior, right?
It's everything.
Like, I, I called Locks one day.
Dude, it took us six months to get to that point.
People don't realize, like, it takes six months to rebrand.
It's not just some small little thing you see, like, us push the button on, on December 6th to, like, all the brand around, like, the amount of work that goes behind.
We actually had to hire a professional branding agency, right?
And so, so the way it works, like, six months ago, I called up Locks and I'm like, listen, we have huge plans.
At the time, I'd known about the crib.
Like, the crib was, like, two months before bad.
The crib happened within, like, a fucking month.
It was crazy.
Like, whole 180 on our plans.
But, like, we had plans.
I called Locks and I'm like, listen, like, our brand is great, but Rug Radio 1.0 is behind us, clearly, because he came and helped Rug Radio 2.0, right?
And, like, it's also a little juvenile.
I love it.
It's my baby, but we need to mature.
Like, the baby is not a baby anymore.
It's a teenager, right?
And we got to elevate it.
And so I was like, I'm like, I don't like it anymore.
I'm like, I don't like it.
We got to change it.
We got to change it, right?
We need a better brand.
It's too much.
It's everywhere.
Like, you've seen the old Rug Radio branding.
I love it.
It's vintage.
It's my baby for life, you know?
But, you know, it needed some change.
And so, you know, that's when we started working on it.
Literally, like, when Locks?
Fuck.
It was six months.
Like, during February, I don't even know, man.
Like, it was...
I don't even know.
I think we started talking about it February, March.
And then by May, we were working on it.
And by May, we were actively investing time, money, and resources into fixing it.
And then that's, like, if you're looking at it literally from, like, a P&L perspective,
that's when the clock really started ticking.
And it's, like, money going into rebranding.
But it was important.
It's extremely important.
100%.
So we did that.
And just because we just love the way it feels, it looks, it needs an icon.
Like, you have the icon, you know it's Rug Radio.
And, you know, it's clean.
Like, I just like it.
That's when it started.
Yeah.
The other thing is, too, to talk, like, just really about, like, the ethos of it really
is that it's no surprise that when Rug Radio launched, we were a fledgling media company
and co-op, like, like, a co-op of content creators on spaces that were really revolving largely around Farouk's personal brand.
And the vision that he had and we all collectively had was that we would extend and expand ourselves to be service and infrastructure providers to anybody and everybody who wanted to create content.
Not necessarily just people who wanted to identify as the Rug Radio brand in the stage or phase that I was, right?
So really, when you look at this new logo, you see it and, you know, the little microphone on your keyboard, the little microphones within the Twitter spaces, anywhere where you are using your voice to project what's in your mind or communicate with people is represented in some derivative of this logo that is now the Rug Radio logo.
And really, like, Farouk's motto, you know, he says, our just do it is own the narrative.
And that has persisted from day one, from the moment that we launched.
That's been the motto of Rug Radio.
And we really felt like this was a way to visually encapsulate that motto of own the narrative, knowing that you, whether you ever have this badge, I mean, or you as, like, Andrew, you know,
and anyone within Moby Media, within, you know, Fox, CNN, it doesn't matter where, right?
Like, Forbes could wear this badge on their chest on a hoodie or something like that proudly to show the world that I'm a content creator.
We felt like this logo did that.
Yeah, that's it.
I mean, look, I'm a, like, at the end of the day, like, Rug Radio is also my baby.
And, like, if I don't like the brand, and I like to think that I have a good finger on the pulse of what good branding is like, because that's what I did for a living for the longest time.
I got to a point where I didn't really like it anymore.
I was like, we need to change it.
Like, it was, it started off, like, almost a selfish thought.
And Alex was like, I actually agree with you.
And then we're like, okay, let's do it.
And then when the new brand came out, it was so sick.
Like, that video, we got to pin it.
I got to find it.
But it was, like, it was so cool, like, when the whole thing happened.
And, like, that's how we started our buzzer.
It's growth.
I mean, it's literally growth.
I mean, you could look up, like, the top ten companies today.
They didn't start what they were doing.
Like, what they're doing now is how they started.
Your team is going to kill me.
But I have one more selfish question.
Let's go.
Let's go, baby.
You got five more, though.
Five more that I have actually in the point of meeting.
So, let's do it.
I appreciate that.
So, obviously, Lox, you and I went back and forth on this.
I think it was, like, two weeks ago or something, whatever it was.
I had said that, like, I think the future of, you know, creators is probably attacking themselves to chains, to brands, to products they believe in.
And I'm a big, firm believer in this, that just because you can doesn't mean you have to.
So, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should do it.
Ethicals, you know, matching, fit, match me to heaven, all that stuff.
My question is for you guys.
Obviously, you have your own network and your creator network, whether it's ten people, a thousand people, a million people, whatever it is.
There's obviously a ton of brands coming into our industry, Web 2 to Web 3.
And then there's people that are coming from Web 2 into Web 3, but they're either coming with a current brand or they're starting something from new.
As we mentioned before, you know, influencer marketing is definitely more popular, one-to-five ratio, right?
How much of your guys' business model is actually, I guess, involved with, you know, getting influencers on your team to work with reputable brands
and help kind of scale out their distribution the same way that, you know, you guys are now scaling out Decrypt's distribution as an overall company,
except kind of minimizing that to, you know, to creators themselves, opposed to overall being of the company as existence.
A little bit of a ramble there.
I hope you guys got that.
Okay.
Yeah, we did.
Is Locke still here?
I think he moved down or something happened.
He fell off.
I brought him back up.
Yeah.
Okay.
But basically, like, for now, like, at least at the moment, like, you know, let Locke also go.
But, like, obviously, like, a lot of the revenue being generated is through partnerships, like, media partnerships, right?
I think that's pretty obvious.
I mean, you guys see them all over.
Like, we announced them.
We put them out.
We disclosed everything and whatnot.
Like, right now, for example, like, Ledger being, like, my show partner or what we did some work with Kraken, like, the F1 that we did with them,
like, the months of sponsorships that we had for, like, Leap and Threadguy and Michaela or, like, we did Uniswap Ledger.
We did a bunch of LVMH brands.
Like, it's crazy.
We must have worked with, like, 50 to 100 different companies just in 2023 in the depth of the bear market.
So a lot of that was based on this.
But, you know, I like to think, and I think Locke agrees with that, that media is not what puts at the end of the day, like, media is not enough, right?
The margins in media are good, but they're not great when it comes to running in, like, a purely, like, profitable business.
And so that's where Locke comes in.
Like, honestly, Andrew, like, this is where I come in.
I needed someone who comes in and just sees things from more of a revenue standpoint and is like, hey, like, you know how to run a profitable, you know, business.
Because it's something to run a business.
It's easier to spend money.
Even easier to spend other people's money, mind you, right?
A lot of reckless spending once people tend to raise VC.
But it's something else to build a business that's actually profitable.
I mean, Locke, you should take this on because, like, this is where the tech comes in.
Because, like, Rug Radio might, while most people think that all this is a media company, it's actually more of a tech company that powers media on two different platforms, right?
So, Locke, like, what do you think on this point?
Like, how do you see us, like, this year, like, really building more revenue for our creators, for our ecosystem, for our companies, right?
Like, both of them, like, across, like, through different ways and just, like, media distribution.
Yeah, thanks for recapping that because I did get rugged for a second there.
You know, we, just like you guys preach, and I know, Andrew, you're, like, you're a big proponent of this.
The creator economy is growing.
And there is a way, both on the commercialization front but also outside of commercialization, to build and support creators.
Everyone thinks that you have to, like, pigeonhole yourself and say, oh, I'm a crypto company.
Or, oh, I'm a SaaS company.
I'm this, that company.
I'm an AI company.
The reality is that just because you graduate from the sixth grade and go into the seventh grade doesn't mean that you forgot everything that you learned in the sixth grade or the fifth grade or the fourth grade, right?
Speak for yourself.
I know Matt's still trying to learn how to read.
So we build a repertoire of knowledge and skills and tools and utilities, and we build upon that.
And so for us, you know, what people don't realize is internally, specifically at Decrypt and headed into Rug Radio as well, the suite of AI tools that we use right now to compress the time and the energy expended by journalists, editors, et cetera, is mind-boggling.
I actually had, you know, a deeper dive this week into the technology at Decrypt than I have ever had.
Like, this was my week to do it.
And it plays perfectly into things that Gman and the rest of, like, the tech team and I were hypothesizing.
But really, we have to look at this as open-ended.
Yes, the end point right now is media and commercialization of content coming out of Rug Radio and media and the commercialization of content coming out of Decrypt.
But ultimately, you know, those are just the launch pads that we're able to use to innovate and build and grow into the future.
We are in a position, a unique position, to be a technology-based company that is token-tied, that has insights and capability in all kinds of frontiers, including AI.
We just happen to have an incredible suite of inventory available to us to monetize against, to support our growth into the future, right?
It's, like, it's beautiful.
It's, like, thinking that you want to create, you know, you want to create a more efficient HVAC system for houses, and you just happen to own a portfolio of 100 rental properties.
It's, like, well, yeah, that fucking makes sense.
Like, we have the ability to test and iterate internally to grow and support, you know, the creator economy on a greater basis.
And while it's not our immediate mandate and imperative, you will see that as, you know, as we grow and as we create and pioneer stuff internally, that tangentially we're able to spin off, utilize, monetize, or just distribute products and innovation to the creator economy in some ways that might end up being greater than what we intended to accomplish in the first place.
Does that make sense?
That was awesome.
I do want to go to Matt, but I know we can't, Matt.
I'm sorry.
The team's got a dead stop.
I want to be respectful.
Froak, Locke, their whole team.
Last one.
Last one.
Just because it's Matt.
Just because it's Matt.
Yeah?
Are you sure?
Just because it's Matt.
Just because it's Matt.
Froak just texted the team and said, please tell the, please tell our meeting that we're going to be two minutes late.
Run, run, run.
Tell them to email me, mattlopez1291 at gmail.com.
They can send me angry emails there.
No, they, so, I really, I think you guys have.
Like, you're onto something interesting.
I wanted to touch base on a few things.
Like, I have, I have some ideas, obviously, of my own, but you guys are, you guys are wanting to cater to your creators.
Have you guys, like, thought of creating some sort of, like, let's just call it an academy or school system where you teach the, you know, the skills necessary to become a creator so you can, like, leverage that, you know, that platform and push people in that direction?
Or are you trying to only focus solely on onboarding existing creators?
Yes.
Nice.
Okay.
All right.
We're all good.
No, the answer is yes because he's almost, he's already built it.
Like, a lot of the tech we're talking about has already been built.
Like, Gman's in the audience, CTO, and, like, he's been doing this for a minute now.
Like, but it's, it's like, it's yes.
The answer is yes.
There's going to be a whole suite of masterclasses and stuff coming up.
That's great.
That's great.
I think, I think enablement, right, is a huge proponent of really creating that next wave of micro influencers.
And you can, guys can be the breeding ground of that.
I think you guys are off to a great start.
So, awesome.
Yeah.
Enjoy your next meeting.
I appreciate it.
Sorry.
I literally jumped from a two o'clock to a two thirty and came back.
So, thank you guys for still being here.
Hey, I appreciate y'all.
Matt, that was an awesome question for a guy who can't read.
I also can't read because Matt did text me.
He says, you know, I won't be here for five minutes.
And I read it, but I can't read.
So, I also didn't, you know, recognize that.
So, yeah, obviously, guys, great, great show.
Great conversation.
So much depth.
We appreciate Locks and Farouk for being here, spending an hour and a half with us and cutting into their time.
Guys, thanks a ton.
Really quickly, Locks, Farouk, where can everyone find you guys?
Aside from Twitter.
Honestly, I'm at Farouk on every single platform that exists.
So, you can just find me there or you can find me at, like, probably, like, every single conference this year.
Even MySpace?
Even MySpace?
Yeah, if there was a MySpace, you'd see me on there.
But mostly here, though.
That's where I spend most of my time.
I use Instagram as, like, a way to show some travel stuff and food.
So, if you like food, I love fishing Persian food there.
But besides that, you know, you really live in these Twitter streets over here.
Yeah, if you're not finding me on Twitter, you're finding me at home with my wife and kids.
So, and when I'm not with them, I'm usually with Farouk.
So, that's it.
DM us on Twitter.
Like, shoot us a DM.
My DMs are open.
Sometimes if I'm not following you, obviously, it goes to requests.
We might not get into it quickly.
But shoot us DMs with ideas, comments, questions, concerns.
I'm always happy to take constructive criticism and try to grow collaboratively.
Thanks to all the guests, all the speakers, all the panelists.
Great stuff.
Great conversations.
If you're not following everybody up here after all the value add, you definitely should be.
We'll give you a couple minutes to do that.
Guys, once again, appreciate you guys.
We'll see you guys next time.
And thanks a ton.
Everyone have a great rest of your Thursday.
Thank you all.
Thank you, Andrew.
Appreciate you all.
Ruto, Andrew, Moby Media, everybody on here.
It really means a lot.
You know, any questions?
