Erik Torenberg's Playbook: How to Bootstrap a Multi-Million Dollar Media Empire

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There's this big opportunity to build like audience in a box business. If you're big on any
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individual and any platform, you'll probably be big on other platforms as well. You just haven't
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gotten around to it yet. So if you have a big YouTube channel like Colin Simirado or podcast,
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when you also have a big newsletter and if you can have support doing that, it's kind of a no
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brainer to go to any creators big on any platform and say, hey, we'll help you get big on this other
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platform and give you a half of it. There's so many people who want to expand their audiences
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across platforms, a service that did this could charge quite a bit of money or even co incubator,
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co-own some of these media properties. Hey, everybody, it's Eric Tornberg.
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Dude, I'm honored. The roles are reversed. Exactly. So for those of you who don't know Eric,
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that's how Eric Tornberg, Mr. Podcast Man himself, network of podcasts, introduces,
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it starts every show. So I had to put that in before you put it in. I appreciate the tribute.
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Normally, I have the pleasure of interviewing you on one of my shows, but I'm excited to
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come to yours today. Big fan. I appreciate, man. Alright, we got a lot to discuss. You brought some
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heat as expected. I want to start with the trends first and then we'll dig into some of your
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startup ideas. So let's talk a little bit about, let's start with the rise of the B2B creator
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and what you're doing with Turpentine and why you think that's a trend worth, you know, betting
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your career on. Yeah. So a few years ago during the pandemic, I started to watch what you were doing
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on Twitter and I was like, huh, this is really interesting. And I tweeted out something like
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there should be a Greg Eisenberg for X, where like people should study your playbook,
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go deep on a specific domain or sector, write or podcast about the space. And at the time you
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obviously remain going deep on consumer, on community, on audience building, on sort of the rise
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of creators, go deep on a space, write or create media about the space where it's writing or
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podcasting. And then building, you know, products or tools that sell to people who engage with
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your content and or investing, right. And so you were early to this trend. And people who were
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doing this in parallel with you, people like Lenny Warchitsky, right, for product managers,
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audience here, obviously extremely familiar, or packing a corn mack or hiring stepings. These
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people, including you, you know, Julian, people come on your show, blew up the last few years.
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And so I saw that trend and said, hey, this is just the beginning. There's going to be a lot more
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people like this. Lenny is doing for product managers. That will exist for every position,
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for finance people, for engineering, for sales, marketing, etc. And that will also exist for
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every sector. And so I wanted to create, make a big bet on the emergence or the continued growth
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of niche creators, specific verticals, business verticals, and create media for those people.
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And instead of create the next tech crunch for everything, create the next tech crunch for
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a specific category. So I started Turpentine as a podcast network that basically, you know,
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today we are 13 podcasts. But instead of saying, hey, we're going to create the next Lex
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Vridman or Joe Rogan or, you know, hit show, it's hard to create hit shows from scratch today.
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But we're going to create the best show for CFOs or the best show for people in HR or the best
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show for people in AI. And we've niche down. And we think that these niches are only going to get
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bigger, that the audiences are super valuable. And that these will be, this will be not only
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a valuable media business, but also just a valuable audience for me to incubate other products
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or invest in businesses that sell to those niche audiences. So that's what I'm up to with
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Turpentine is Greg Eisenberg for X, Lenny for X, starting with podcasts, but then expanding to
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other formats as well. And why would you start with podcasts? Like to me, that seems painful,
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given that I run a podcast, and I know how hard it is to grow one. Why do you think it's worth
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investing as a podcast first? Like, what am I, what am I missing there?
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So podcasts are underrated for a few reasons. One is because they're the only media that you can
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create that allows you to create every other form of media from a podcast. So you create a podcast,
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you can turn that into a newsletter, you can turn that into a video, you can turn that into
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a community, right? Because you have all these guests who come on and you, boom, after 20 episodes
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of having chief people officers, now you have this incredibly valuable chief people officer
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community or a conference. So it's not that much hard work to get a podcast off the ground
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in a niche area and establish yourself because there aren't like how many CFO podcasts are there,
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not that many, how many chief people officer podcasts are there that are good, not that many.
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We've created, you know, just in the last few months, I think we have like a top three CFO
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podcast or chief people officer podcast. They don't have a ton of listeners. So, you know, under
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a thousand per episode, but they monetize really well because people want to sell that audience.
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And if you pair them with newsletters and you could build newsletters on top of the podcast,
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you could then monetize even better. But yeah, the punchline is, they're the medium where you could
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build every other medium on top of. And if you go niche, it's, you, you can create, you know,
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pretty strong, you know, ranking right out the gate. So the other thing that people aren't
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talking about is that social networks are becoming more video oriented. So if you could own the
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search terms for CFO or how I, you know, how to create a balance sheet. And then people consume
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those videos. And then they're like, okay, let me subscribe to this person or let me go buy
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his or her product. Like, that's the other, that's the other bed I think that you're making.
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Because you're not really doing, when people, when people hear podcasts, they think audio. But
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it's really video first. That's right. Yes, yes. And they're just a special relationship. You,
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you know, this is someone who hosts a podcast that you get from, from running a podcast that you
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don't get in the same way from, from other, other mediums because there's audio because there's
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video. And just to put some numbers on it, we're doing about 350,000 downloads a month across
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13 shows, which is, which is not huge. Like, some shows, you know, my first million is bigger than
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all of our shows put together, probably. But we're at about two million run rate, probably,
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because the shows monetize pretty well. Like each show, you know, we were talking really like
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30k a month or something like that. Like no show is huge. But it's, it's, it's kind of like the 80-20,
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where it's just, it's really hard to build a, you know, mainstream podcast today from, from a
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standing start. But to get it to a show of 30k, 40k a month, you know, in a, in a strong niche,
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it's not that hard. And so if you, if you can get a critical mass of them, you could start to build
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a real business. And then, of course, you could build all the other mediums on, on top of them.
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And one thing that people don't realize as much as that, when you look at media businesses
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of the last 15 years, one of the most valuable media businesses is this business called industry dive,
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which sold for $500 million to informa. Today, it'd probably be worth a lot more. And it was just a
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collection of trade publications, like HR dive, CFO dive. Basically what I'm trying to do with,
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with, with, with podcasts. And if you go to HR dive or CFO dive, it looks like it was made in 2012,
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because it was made into that stuff. Like they haven't really innovated on the format. And so I've
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also been inspired by, by work week, which is a media business that's also trying to create the,
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the modern day industry dive. And they, they have more of a newsletter first approach. And that's
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also why I wanted to differentiate. But the, you know, there's been a lot of money poured into media
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businesses of the last 15 years. A lot of it has been poured into consumer media, because that's
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where the attention is, that's where the, the splashing is, but business media, these, these,
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these are just great customer acquisition channels. And so in, in a world where, you know,
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distribution is more and more pouring, acquisition is more important. It's easier and easier to build
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things. Owning those distribution channels, those acquisition channels, is, is just going to be
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increasingly more, more valuable. So, so that, that's why we're focused on what we're focused on.
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So how do you think about choosing a new B2B niche? Because I think some people are going to be
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listening to this and being, and be like, wow, like I, I want to do this. But I'm much
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sure this niche actually is worth going after. Yeah. So my, my first business out of college,
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which you'll, you'll remember, was a rap music business. It's called wrapped FM. And it was like
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a chat roulette for rap battles. So I was, you know, really interested in, in rap and still,
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still am. And I, that was a niche I wanted to focus on. And there wasn't a ton of money there.
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You know, there, there probably is much more today than, than there was back then, because
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niches are just bigger and bigger. But I mean, today in terms of how we pick our, our, we really
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focus on like, who are enterprise buyers? Like, who do startups try to sell to, right? They try
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to sell to, you know, finance people. They try to sell to salespeople. They try to sell to,
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and you know, CTOs, like, who are these just buyers at companies, HR leaders, right? And having
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invested in a lot of companies, I kind of get a sense for who startups are asking me to, to target.
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So part of it is enterprise buyers. Another part of it is just sectors that are, that are important
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and that are, that are hot and that aren't too crowded. Like, crypto is extremely crowded.
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Or Web 3 is extremely crowded. There's, there's a very mature media ecosystem. And so we're not
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going in there at the moment. Whereas AI, obviously, is getting crowded. They're, you know, our friend
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Bentosco created Benzbites and other newsletters. But it's still really early. Like, there isn't a,
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sort of, you know, the equivalent of a block works or a coin desk or a coin telling,
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these kind of mature media companies for AI. Just that they're just a few newsletters that are,
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that are taking off. And so we're actually deciding in Q1 to go much deeper on AI across platforms.
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So it's going to be our first newsletter. We're going to get into some news coverage as, as well.
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And really kind of going on, on that vertical. But historically, we've been looking at it.
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Hey, who are just customers that are really valuable? Are you enterprise buyers or what are
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spaces that are really valuable? And then what are spaces that don't seem to crowd it? Where we think
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we could have a top five, you know, property within just a few months. Have you thought about
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acquiring some creators in some creative way? Or acquiring a business that has a creator
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attached to it? Like, for example, I don't know if he's selling or would sell, but like Ben Tassel.
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You mentioned Ben Tassel. Like, his newsletter Ben Spites. Like, what if you could acquire that
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business and then strap on the podcast as a part of it? I haven't considered it in, seriously,
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because we're in the business of ownership at the moment. The challenge of podcasts when you
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don't own the feed is that the host can just leave you. And so if, so we only want to be in business
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at the moment in places where we own the feed, because otherwise it's almost like investing in a
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startup. But once the startup gets to, you know, gets a ton of traction, you don't own equity
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in any more. They just don't want to partner with you. And so we want to be, you know, co-owners
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for life. Otherwise, the incentives get misaligned and you have sort of this Taylor Swift or, you know,
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Scooter Braun like situation. And then in terms of, so in order for us to acquire a majority
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ownership, it just would either require a bunch of cash, which we're not immune to. We did
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put a bunch of cash to see this business personally. But I just haven't seen the specific
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thing that we should go by. But I'd love to hear your take. If you were me, how should I be
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thinking about, you know, acquisitions as a, as a possible strategy? Well, I think the interesting
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thing about owning something like Ben's Bites, let's say, let's use that as the example is, you
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know, you mentioned my first million earlier, you know, my first million wouldn't be where it is
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today. In my opinion, if it wasn't for its partnership with the hustle. Yeah. And the way it worked
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was Sam and Sean came up with a brilliant idea for our podcast, executed on it brilliantly.
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And they were consistent. They did it, you know, every single week. And then they used the pipes,
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the media pipes of the hustle to help promote some of those, some of those episodes. And still do
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that to that, to this day, actually, like the HubSpot Network helped promote my first million.
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Now, you could say, well, Turpentine has all these shows. We'll just cross promote. And that's true.
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But if you wanted to go faster and, you know, one way would be to acquire media and then find,
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you know, either new talent or the founders like a Ben to create a show. Yeah. One thing we've been
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doing is trying to partner with the biggest hosts we can find. So basically,
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internet work, we have packing McCormick, we have Noah Smith and, um, Baron Hobart of a few other
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kind of pretty big newsletter writers for their specific niches with a few hundred thousand subscribers.
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And we say, hey, you don't have a podcast today. Let's create one for you. All you have to do is show up
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and talk about the things that you've been writing about regardless. And we'll give you 50% of
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everything in exchange for just, you know, an hour or so a week. And in exchange, they promote it
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in the newsletter too. So we are interested in partnering with people who already have distribution
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to borrow it. And if there's an opportunity to acquire something where it makes sense, I'm really
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intrigued. I just worry about people's loss of motivation when they don't, when they don't own it
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in the same way. Or I wonder if there's a way to get kind of the benefits of ongoing distribution
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by sort of co-creating with people already have it in different formats. And then using the,
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using, you know, those are already existing user bases or distribution sets to, you know,
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bring them to the podcast and the collection of podcasts. Do you know the story of the company
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and behind common smears newsletter? Have you heard about this? Smooth media. I think if the
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team from Morning Brew that's very talented that created a couple stars at Morning Brew and is
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now trying to do that for other creators as well, like pretty similar to what would I'm doing?
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Yes. Well, similar but different, you know. So Colin Samir have this newsletter. It's called
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the Publish Press newsletter. And it's a newsletter just for creators. Make sense. Colin Samir,
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YouTuber, YouTubers who just got creator stuff, created a newsletter. They want to get off the
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YouTube treadmill so they have this newsletter and now has like more than 150,000 subs.
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Yeah, awesome. So I started digging into it and I realized that it's a company called Smooth Media
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that's behind it. So basically they partner with, they partner with creators and then they do
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email newsletters for them and they write them, etc. So it seems like, it seems like a lot of people
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are scratching the surface on this B2B thing. I like your angle for podcasts first because
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I think it's just harder and sometimes when you do things that are harder, there's more of a
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moat there. So I like what you're doing. There's another note that you have here on this list that
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says media businesses are under monetized. What do you mean by that? First, let me just say I think
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there's this big opportunity to build like audience in a box business. Like if you're big on any
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individual and any platform, you'll probably be big on other platforms as well. You just haven't
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gotten around to it yet. So if you have a big YouTube channel like Colin Samir do or a podcast,
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like yeah, when you also have a big newsletter and if you can have support doing that,
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it's kind of a no-brainer to go to any creator who's big on any platform and say,
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hey, we'll help you get big on this other platform and give you a half of it, but we'll keep
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half of it, right? And so there's so many people who want to expand their audiences across platforms.
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This service that did this could charge quite a bit of money or even co-incubate or co-own
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some of these media properties. Is there something like this that exists yet?
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I mean, people are trying, right? So smooth is trying. You're trying. We're trying.
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We're all kind of, we all have our own angle and I think what you're seeing is that 2023,
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there was just like scratching the surface. 2024, I think we're going to see like, oh, turns out
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that podcasting was the right angle or community was the right angle or email newsletter was the
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right angle. So that's my prediction. By the end of 2024, I think we'll have a pretty good
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understanding of like how creators and then specifically B2B creators because I agree with you,
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B2B creators are probably worth 100 times more. If you have 100,000 YouTube subscribers
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and as a B2B creator, you're basically the Mr. Beast of your world.
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Yeah. So that's my take on that.
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So let me get back to how media is under monetized. It's interesting, right? We saw people like
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Harry Stebbings, Packie McCormick, you know, built these large tech audiences and then raise
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funds on top of those audiences, right? Hundreds of millions of dollars in the case of Harry.
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What do people say, A16Z, you know, that it's like 50 billion or whatever AUM, they say it's
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a media company that monetizes the venture capital, right? So clearly investing is a compelling
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opportunity for people who are selling to business creators, at least in certain categories,
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right? But if you own this relationship with the customer, there's also additional things that
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you could be doing. Like maybe the next Harry Stebbings doesn't only do a venture capital,
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sort of a fund, but maybe he also sells services to other venture capital firms. He has an
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agency that does fund management, right? Maybe he builds underlying platform or builds, by builds,
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I mean, he's like an audience co-founder where someone trying to build the next
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Carta or Angel Lester, whatever platform that sells to his customer set, where he has the
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sort of widest set of customers and the most trust with them, just to name Harry as an example
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in VC as one example position. But maybe they give him some percentage of the company
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for ongoing evangelism. So I think those are two ways in which it's directly undermonitized,
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but there's another way, which is there's a lot of data that media companies get as exhaust
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that they don't monetize. So I'll give one very specific example that was inspired by this
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business I saw called Tigis. Tigis is an expert marketplace. If you listen to invest like the best
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Patrick O'Shaughnessy, you've heard them advertise there. And so their expert marketplace,
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like a Gerson Lerman group, a GLG, which is sort of one of the early OG expert marketplaces,
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if you're looking to, let's say you're at a hedge fund and you're looking to make a biotech
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investment and you're looking to talk to some customers or some people used to work at this
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company or people who have expertise on this space, you'll ask GLG to set you up for a few calls,
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you'll pay some money for those calls, you as the expert will get paid to those calls, it's kind
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of an established category. So what Tigis does is they go into this established category and they say,
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hey, we're going to record the calls. These calls are already happening. We're now going to record them
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in exchange for recording them. We're going to take less of the sort of margin. So it's going to be
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cheaper. So it's cheaper for the person paying to in order to use Tigis. As a result, these calls get
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recorded. They then build a database of these calls, a data set of these calls. And now if you're
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looking to learn, let's say about biotech, instead of having to place an individual call, you can now
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read the transcripts of dozens of calls in the same amount of time. And so they've created a
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moat there just by using the exhaust from these calls that were already happening. Now what do
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reporters or people in media do often is they get insights. They talk to people all the time,
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right? And so this insight came to me when I was reading this report on stability AI that came
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out. It was on Forbes. It was a bit of a bit of a negative piece or expose. And this journalist
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talked to 30 reporters, sorry, sorry, sorry, we talked to 30 sources, early employees, executives,
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investors. And then I looked at Tigis. I was like, oh, wow, this reporter talked to 30 people.
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I looked at Tigis. And they just had a handful of people on stability AI. So I was like, wow,
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this journalist is maybe sitting on the best data set in the world, the qualitative data set in
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the world on stability AI. Who else in the world knows what early employees, investors,
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whatever, et cetera, think about stability. And the only revenue they're making is just the ad
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revenue off that Forbes piece. Whereas people on Tigis pay $25,000 per seat in order to access those
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calls. And the irony of those calls is if those calls were released to the broader public,
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they wouldn't be that popular. This information is extremely valuable to an extremely small set of
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people. And so the media businesses and media creators often don't price discriminate. And
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especially if you're in business media, if you can attract information that's extremely
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valuable to a very small subset of people, you should be charging a ton. And so media, especially
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journalists, they often have this broad sense of informing the public. And they kind of think
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the public is is equal. But if you're reporting on business, maybe your, you know, your
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customer shouldn't be the person outside of tech who's just trying to understand what's happening.
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But maybe you should be informing an investor on, or your data is that should be informing
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an investor on, hey, should I invest in stability AI? I joined stability AI. And so most,
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yeah, most people who create media don't think who is the most valuable customer I should sell this
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to. And what is the actual job to be done here or value prop that I could sell them that I could
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thus charge a lot more perhaps. So that's a way in which we think media is undermoditized. And
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in which we are going to try to do ourselves. So we are going to create media that helps people
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to do better at their job and identify, you know, which companies are doing well, etc. We're
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going to get in the list game, right? Top companies, top people per sector, get you use these,
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this media to get all this insights, all this data on people and companies and products.
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And then try to sell that data in a transparent way. People know what they're signing up for,
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there's anonymity, etc. But to the most valuable, the sort of customer that values it the most.
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So that was an input on why I think media is undermoditized because they're not just providing
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eyeballs. They're also providing data insights and sometimes even determining reputation. And that
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is very valuable. It's almost like the eyeballs are like the least interesting parts. Yes, exactly,
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exactly. That's well said. Like if you owned the information, it just has a or Forbes or something.
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And we're not constrained by sort of the idea of being a journalist, which also interestingly
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today, people aren't constrained, right? The Lenny's, the Jews, the Paquies, the you guys could
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invest in the businesses that you cover, you could incubate businesses and you're not, people
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don't trust you any less for it. So that's an interesting development. But let's say you've got
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really information. What other businesses could you create on top of that? They used to do org
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charts, right? It's almost like Craigslist, right? Remember the same Craigslist graph where you looked
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at every sort of feature on Craigslist and saw, oh, that's Airbnb, that's this kind of business.
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That's another business. Similarly, if you go in the information, I see they have org charts.
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Oh wait, there's a company called the org that is specializing that. They have a different
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professional network. I'm like, oh wait, okay, there's LinkedIn. You can imagine building a
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professional network off of that. There's all these data companies. There's CrunchBase that just
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CrunchBase emerged from TechCrunch, right? So there's Glassdoor, you could imagine. Media companies
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and there are other things that are like this too, recruiters. What do they do all day? They get
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all this data on people. When business I want to build is reference checks as a service. We do
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all these reference checks and yet no one ever compiles them or organizes them. And so at any time,
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there's a thing that is done all the time that's not recorded that could have data as exhaust.
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I'm interested in, hey, could you create something that structures that data that has a give-to-get model
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where people are incentivized to give data in order to see the data and building these kind of
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like information marketplaces. Are we using media as the wedge? So what you're saying is
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similar to how there was the unbundling of Craigslist. And I've talked with the unbundling of Reddit.
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Yes, basically taking a subreddit, a niche, a subreddit niche, and then people building
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products for that niche. There's this new B2B media unbundling that's happening. And you have
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the ability to build social networks, you have the ability to build marketplaces, you have the
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ability to build agencies, you have the ability to build SaaS tools. And the media is almost like
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the ticket to the ride. Yeah, exactly. I've watched you in the businesses you've been able to build
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the different agencies, the different communities, the different products. And a lot of it stemmed
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from your Twitter. And then your newsletter and the other stuff you've built. And I think I've
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realized, hey, I enjoy creating, but I don't think I'm the world's best creator. I don't think
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I'm as good as good as you are. But I think what I could do is find the Greg Eisenberg for X and
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help produce them or help incubate them. And some people listening to this have that creator
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drive or that potential. And some say, hey, maybe they're more of a producer or maybe they're
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more of a partner to these creators. I think one thing that's under explored also, there's this
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massive creator, I don't want to burst a spot in case it's confidential. But at the level of someone
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like yourself who has a chief of staff who gets 25% of everything he does. And I think that's a
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really interesting model for someone who realizes, hey, I'm not the creator, I'm the producer,
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I'm the person who's going to let the creator just be themselves and I'm going to take care of
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everything else. Go up to someone you really might or say, hey, I'll literally take everything
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off your plate that you don't like doing. That's really important. I'm going to get you to next level.
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Give me some percentage of what you make. 10%, 20%, 25, whatever it is. I feel like that's an
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opportunity for people. And that's what we're doing the entire time. We get 50%. And so, yeah,
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that's what we think about it. Yeah, I think, first of all, I really like the producer versus creator
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bit. I'm going to use that. I'll credit you on that. Not everyone needs to be a creator.
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Not everyone needs to be a creator. Back when being an entrepreneur was really cool,
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and everyone wanted to be an entrepreneur, some people that I really respect would say,
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not everyone needs to be an entrepreneur. And now, 2024, it's like, no, not everyone needs to be
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a creator. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the producers actually do way better than the
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creators in the end. Wouldn't be surprised just because they're more diversified. They can produce
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multiple projects. They learn, like, you're going to learn so much about, you know, what's working,
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what's not working across your portfolio. We see that ourselves. Like, we have a portfolio,
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and we're doing an offsite in Miami next week with all the different leads of all the different
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businesses. And they're going to all share what's working and what's not working. And as you know,
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the producer, you can look at that and be like, okay, maybe we shouldn't have incubated that AI
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business, but let's go incubate something like this. Totally. Yeah. And it's interesting. Like,
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if you, you know, what I'm doing with the podcast now, what smooth media is doing for newsletters,
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some people are doing for YouTube. If you own a medium, you get really good at any specific
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medium, you can then go to people. Of course, you can do it for service and, you know, get paid,
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but if you're good enough, you can co-incubate. You can go to someone who doesn't have one of these
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channels and say, hey, what's with me is doing it. We'll say, hey, we'll create this for you. We'll
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run the whole thing. We own 50% and want to be long term partners or whatever we own in our
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long term partners. And I think that's just a difference in mindset. It requires taking a bit more
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upfront risk. But if they're already big on a different medium, you know, you've kind of
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diversified it. One example I'll give, and I, this guy's been immensely successful. So I don't
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mean to take anything from him, but Dave Perrell, you know, he did his writing courses. I think
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another business he could have done. Now, he's not as passionate about it. So, you know, you should
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do what he's passionate about. He's been very successful. But he could have, instead of teaching
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people how to write, he could have gone to people who either, you know, are big on other platforms
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or just have really valuable service businesses like, you know, financial wealth managers or
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accountants or lawyers or whatever and said, hey, I'm going to make you the biggest lawyer on
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Twitter or the biggest accountant on Twitter, the biggest whatever. And in exchange,
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make me a 25% partner in your business. And he could have done that with like 5 or 10 accounts
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or more. And really just been in kind of the equity game. And it's a shift in mindset from
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teach someone how to do something to kind of do it for them in exchange for a big chunk. Now,
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if you do that, you can work with their trade-offs, of course. You can only work with the, you know,
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there's much limited number of people you can work with because it takes much more time. Whereas,
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of course, you can, you know, serve sort of, you know, infinite people in theory in terms of however,
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if it's asynchronous, at least in terms of how many people watch it. But you, you then get in the
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ownership game. And I'm very excited about the ownership game. How much have you studied
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music, the music business? A little bit, right. RaptFM was in the, was in the music business.
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I mean, labels were, were amazing at sort of these 360 at owning their, their artists. And I have
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a friend who worked at this, this company called United Masters, which tried to reinvent record
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contracts to look more like venture deals, to look more like situations where the entrepreneurs
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owned the most of the company instead of the VC or instead of the record label in the case of
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music. And one finding he had was, although I don't know how widespread this is still today,
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is that most artists or these rappers actually preferred the deals that the record labels gave
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them because they got more money up front. And they were able to do anything they wanted with that
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money. And I think that's a little bit different between record labels and VC. Like, if you get a
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few million dollars from a VC, it's, I think it's less expected that you're able to just like
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pay yourself that. I think, in fact, they encourage you to not pay yourself much. I know people
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who raise five million VC paying themselves 50k salary, and I'm like, what are you doing? You know,
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they pay themselves, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars won't you pay yourself
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anything? But I guess artists just were more comfortable paying themselves a lot of their advance.
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And so they preferred the one million up front and giving up 90% of everything they ever make.
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I mean, of course, many of them are graded later on. Anyways, I'm, I'm, I'm rambling a bit.
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So that's my familiarity with the industry. So VC and music and the music business have a lot in
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common. Essentially, they put out both put up money. And they're producers, but another way
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they're producers in your words. And they get some upside. You know, a lot of people, including
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Kanye West, say some say, say some things about music labels that, you know, they, they,
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you know, they're two, they own their artists. And so I think that's not great.
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Which is why I want to be in co-ownership. I want to be, hey, let's be partners.
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I don't, yeah, I think it needs to be partners, right? And it's true, true sense.
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And to defend the music labels a little bit, like, I'm sure not all of their deals are like that.
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Realist, you know, but yeah, you know, I think what you're trying to do is it feels to me
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very much like a music label, co-ownership, partnership style, where you're essentially
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approaching a B2B creator. And you're saying, hey, like, let me go accelerate this for you.
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Let's go, you know, put one plus one equals three here. And, you know, there might be some,
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you know, advance of some sort. I'll get you advertisers. I'll do this. I'll do that. I'll build.
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And I think the takeaway for the listener, one of the takeaways is, like, don't be afraid to
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approach creators and be like, hey, I want to produce. And in fact, the opportunity in 2024
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is the approaching and the producing in a lot of ways. Totally. And it's interesting because,
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yeah, any creator who has an audience on one platform, probably wishes that they could have
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an audience on another platform. And if you're good at that other platform, they've already
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de-risked it a little bit by having an audience and showing product marketing on one platform.
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So going to them and saying, hey, let's create this on this other platform. You pack his big
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newsletter, you go to pack your hey, let's reach the same audience via podcast. He says, yes,
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no brainer. But here's an interesting thing. Like, we did that in AI, for example, with an AI
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creator. And now we want to create an AI newsletter. And we actually don't need the creator anymore,
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because we can, we co-own the podcast. We're going to create, he could create a newsletter too. He
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can create, I mean, he can leverage the work we did on the podcast to help him and any other thing.
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He wants to do in the future. But similarly, I guess what we're saying is, we're borrowing or
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using the creator for their distribution. But of course, providing a ton of value, giving them
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more distribution, more revenue, something they wouldn't have had otherwise. But now, because we've
374
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sort of established one format, we can go on another format and then create our own,
375
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own sort of audience, hey, we're going to do it 100% ourselves. And this is how we're building
376
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our brand. We're building the brand of great partnerships with creators that we then go into
377
00:35:18.720 --> 00:35:23.120
other platforms and say, hey, now this is the Turpentine AI newsletter. And yeah, we'll
378
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feature, we'll promote the podcast. So he's happy to and promote his stuff, etc. But if you're a
379
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producer or even a creator and don't have an audience partnering with a creator in one format
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to help you get out there, right? We have his friends, Safwan, who's an up-and-comer,
381
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who partnered with Michael Karnsch to create a podcast. And he, I think the value change was that
382
00:35:47.120 --> 00:35:51.520
he did a lot of the work for it. They get seen as co-hosts that grows Safwan's audience. Now,
383
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Safwan can use that for other things. But yeah, being able to add value to other creators helps
384
00:35:57.280 --> 00:36:00.320
you build your audience that you can use for other things. Is it take a while?
385
00:36:00.320 --> 00:36:05.520
I like him, man. I like it. So, is there room for all of us?
386
00:36:07.520 --> 00:36:13.520
I think so. I mean, you identified early on that these niches are getting bigger and bigger and
387
00:36:13.520 --> 00:36:19.120
bigger. And it's interesting, right? Like, because venture capitalists have raised more and more
388
00:36:19.120 --> 00:36:28.160
money, the expectations of what they need for returns are much higher. So, it used to be like
389
00:36:28.160 --> 00:36:34.720
$1 billion business. That was venture scale. Then it's like $10 billion business. At some point,
390
00:36:34.720 --> 00:36:40.240
it's going to be $100 billion business, right? And so, a lifestyle business is just a business
391
00:36:40.240 --> 00:36:45.520
that's not appropriate for a venture. And so, as the venture expectations have gotten bigger,
392
00:36:45.520 --> 00:36:51.440
because all this money flooded ecosystem, the people call lifestyle business is much bigger.
393
00:36:51.440 --> 00:36:56.000
Like, if it can only make $100 million a revenue, maybe it's a lifestyle business for some
394
00:36:56.000 --> 00:37:03.440
VCs, right? But that's massively life-changing. And so, these niches are getting bigger,
395
00:37:04.160 --> 00:37:11.760
and also, these areas where VCs aren't touching as much are getting wider, which means there's
396
00:37:11.840 --> 00:37:20.240
less competition, perhaps. And yeah, you called it a few years ago. Any subreddit where there's
397
00:37:20.240 --> 00:37:26.880
just a growing community, there's probably a big business waiting to be built there. And if you
398
00:37:26.880 --> 00:37:33.360
see a creator in one format, perhaps you can help that creator get to the next format, maybe
399
00:37:33.360 --> 00:37:40.800
become the creator yourself or become the entity that produces a bunch of creators. But it still
400
00:37:40.880 --> 00:37:48.080
feels very early innings, particularly in business creators. We're looking to talk to anyone
401
00:37:48.080 --> 00:37:53.840
who's creating something for a certain sector or for a certain valuable business audience.
402
00:37:56.400 --> 00:37:58.720
Yeah, it feels like it's just the beginning.
403
00:37:58.720 --> 00:38:05.600
The short answer is, yes, there's room for not just only us, but really, there's thousands,
404
00:38:05.600 --> 00:38:10.560
literally thousands of business ideas, tens of thousands of business ideas for creators out there.
405
00:38:11.520 --> 00:38:20.000
B2B is interesting. We're also really focused there. There are some opportunities in B2C,
406
00:38:21.840 --> 00:38:27.120
but my take on this is, and I'll tell you a little story, I haven't shared this publicly, but
407
00:38:28.400 --> 00:38:36.400
my take is basically that the top 50 creators in B2C are uninteresting to collaborate with.
408
00:38:37.360 --> 00:38:46.800
And we had a top YouTube creator, and when I say top, I mean, top 10, top 12 YouTube creator,
409
00:38:46.800 --> 00:38:53.360
come to us, we had his trust, wanted to collaborate, and wanted to co-incubate something,
410
00:38:55.120 --> 00:39:01.920
and we walked away from it. We walked away from it because that particular, I'm trying not
411
00:39:01.920 --> 00:39:07.440
to give it away, but basically, it was funny-type videos, and there wasn't a niche there. There
412
00:39:07.440 --> 00:39:12.400
wasn't a strong niche. It was just like, I would watch people would watch it when they just
413
00:39:12.400 --> 00:39:17.280
wanted time to pass. They weren't really, really connected to that particular creator.
414
00:39:17.280 --> 00:39:23.280
So I think those creators are not that interesting, but there are consumer creators who have a niche
415
00:39:23.280 --> 00:39:28.080
that the audience has disposable income that you could produce with.
416
00:39:28.160 --> 00:39:34.160
Yeah, totally. But one thing I just find so interesting as an aside, Greg is like, you're not
417
00:39:34.160 --> 00:39:42.800
someone who came up as a 22-year-old thinking about this new Greenfield of niche ideas.
418
00:39:42.800 --> 00:39:48.880
You're someone who did it the old way and built a lot of cred in the old world, so to speak,
419
00:39:48.880 --> 00:39:55.520
of raising a ton of venture money, having worked for a venture backed company, or the biggest
420
00:39:55.520 --> 00:40:02.080
one in WeWork. There were so many incentives to just keep going down that path in some ways,
421
00:40:02.080 --> 00:40:06.480
and there's a lot to walk away from in terms of some people came up to and were like, hey,
422
00:40:06.480 --> 00:40:12.720
what are you doing? That feels weird. It's the golden era of raising VC, and you're saying,
423
00:40:12.720 --> 00:40:18.320
hey, don't raise VC. It's so much harder when you have stuff to walk away from, and that's why I
424
00:40:18.320 --> 00:40:22.400
used to say things like, it was easier to get into crypto if you came up in it, or something,
425
00:40:22.400 --> 00:40:26.880
because you didn't have all these people saying, oh, that's weird. But you did, and I think that's
426
00:40:26.880 --> 00:40:33.040
inspiration for people who are already down a path, who raised a bunch of money, or are in a space
427
00:40:33.040 --> 00:40:38.800
that doesn't feel that exciting, or doesn't feel like you're on the sort of what's going to happen.
428
00:40:38.800 --> 00:40:43.280
If you're listening to this, you kind of have a vibe for where things are going, and what types of
429
00:40:43.280 --> 00:40:48.400
people are going to have more and more career capital. It's the use, it's the Sahel blooms,
430
00:40:49.040 --> 00:40:57.520
shampoos, etc. I just hope that is inspiration for people listening that you can take that
431
00:40:57.520 --> 00:41:06.000
different path, even if you're already down a path. If people are thinking that the path is weird,
432
00:41:06.000 --> 00:41:11.600
maybe you're doing something right, or maybe you're on to something, because you're exploring
433
00:41:11.680 --> 00:41:18.880
something that is on the upswing, that people haven't figured out yet. That's both an opportunity
434
00:41:18.880 --> 00:41:23.360
for people who are just up-and-comers and getting their starts to explore something that's
435
00:41:23.360 --> 00:41:28.240
under-explored, but also people who've been in the game for a while.
436
00:41:28.240 --> 00:41:34.400
Well, first of all, I appreciate you saying that. Thank you. The reason I had this come to
437
00:41:34.400 --> 00:41:41.920
Jesus' moment was because I saw how the sausage was made, and once I saw how the sausage was made,
438
00:41:41.920 --> 00:41:50.320
I realized that this not only, it just wasn't for me, it just was not for me. You talked earlier
439
00:41:50.320 --> 00:41:55.840
about how sometimes founders don't pay themselves after even raising millions of dollars, and that's
440
00:41:55.840 --> 00:42:02.640
really true and not really spoken about. When I was running islands, I paid myself a $75,000 salary
441
00:42:02.640 --> 00:42:13.520
in San Francisco, which goes nowhere. In the last 12 months, I didn't even feel like I deserve
442
00:42:13.520 --> 00:42:21.440
the salary because I wanted to extend the runway. I stopped taking a salary. There's so many examples
443
00:42:21.440 --> 00:42:28.400
of venture back startups and where that can go. I'm happy that more and more people are sharing
444
00:42:28.400 --> 00:42:32.720
in, and that's one of the reasons why the podcast is a good way to share these stories.
445
00:42:32.720 --> 00:42:37.680
And yeah, I could have gone. I was at WeWork close with the SoftBank folks. I could have just gone
446
00:42:37.680 --> 00:42:43.840
and been a partner or whatever at SoftBank for the rest of my life and sold money to people.
447
00:42:45.280 --> 00:42:52.640
But no. Honestly, I find this path to be for me at least way more interesting. I don't know
448
00:42:52.720 --> 00:43:03.680
about you. You also have a background in venture raised a lot of money. How do you feel about
449
00:43:03.680 --> 00:43:10.880
this new kind of road path that we're on? It's been an adjustment. So yeah, raised a lot of money
450
00:43:10.880 --> 00:43:16.880
in the past from a lot of the big names. And when you raise money from big names, you get invited
451
00:43:16.880 --> 00:43:23.040
to fancy parties. And people come up to you and just give you all this validation all the time.
452
00:43:23.040 --> 00:43:31.440
And people, venture capital firms became so good at marketing where they convinced founders to
453
00:43:31.440 --> 00:43:36.400
take a lot of their money, more money than they ever need it. I remember at product time,
454
00:43:36.400 --> 00:43:42.160
we raised a seed round with like $2 million or something, maybe $1.5 million in the seed round.
455
00:43:42.160 --> 00:43:47.520
And then a few weeks later, we got a series A term sheet from Andreessen Horowitz.
456
00:43:47.520 --> 00:43:52.480
And we didn't even know how to spend the $2 million let alone the 8 to 10 that came after it.
457
00:43:52.480 --> 00:43:59.040
But it was, and I love Andre, I'm a big, you know, I'm friends with that firm. But that money was
458
00:43:59.040 --> 00:44:04.480
just so enticing. And you know, did we need the money? Not really, right? Was it was that the right
459
00:44:04.480 --> 00:44:11.120
thing? It wasn't unclear. But the firm and just VC in general is so good at being a signal to the
460
00:44:11.120 --> 00:44:16.960
market that our company is one to be taken seriously. And people should want to join our company,
461
00:44:16.960 --> 00:44:22.560
people should want to trust, you know, customers should want to trust that. And so it's incumbent on
462
00:44:22.560 --> 00:44:27.760
startups, start a ecosystem to have other versions, this is why I'm excited about media too,
463
00:44:27.760 --> 00:44:32.400
other versions of that signal, other versions of that blessing that don't come with major dilution
464
00:44:33.040 --> 00:44:38.320
over overly capitalized businesses and expectations that are way ahead of where the business is
465
00:44:38.320 --> 00:44:43.600
going. And there needs to be other entities that can bless these companies with that signal that
466
00:44:43.600 --> 00:44:49.280
don't come with the same sort of constraints. So you ask me how it's going. It's been an adjustment
467
00:44:49.280 --> 00:44:54.320
because I haven't been invited to all the same fancy parties or I haven't had the same level of
468
00:44:54.320 --> 00:44:57.680
validation. People would say, oh, what are you up to? I say, oh, you know, I'm working on this media
469
00:44:57.680 --> 00:45:01.600
company. Oh, that's cute. You know, but when are you going to go for something really big? And I'm
470
00:45:01.600 --> 00:45:05.760
like, oh, no, wait, this is like the infrastructure. Well, this is big, but to this is the infrastructure.
471
00:45:05.760 --> 00:45:10.880
And I didn't raise any venture for it. And people just think you're going small, right? But people
472
00:45:10.880 --> 00:45:16.800
don't realize like the mail champs and there's a lot of businesses or there's at least enough
473
00:45:16.800 --> 00:45:21.680
businesses that have gotten massive massive scale that barely raised any venture money or didn't
474
00:45:21.680 --> 00:45:26.240
raise any at all. And venture capitalists would have loved to put money in the same way that there's
475
00:45:26.240 --> 00:45:30.720
you know, lifestyle business is kind of this like euphemism. There should be a similar euphemism
476
00:45:30.800 --> 00:45:35.360
for a business that's like too good to raise venture money, right? And like the mail champs or
477
00:45:35.360 --> 00:45:38.880
Xavier is like, when a capitalist would die to put money into it, but it's too good to be business.
478
00:45:38.880 --> 00:45:43.840
It doesn't need this upfront, like, you know, massive capital and dilution and expectations and
479
00:45:43.840 --> 00:45:49.600
bosses as you've been, you know, writing about how we investors, you've got bosses. And I have a
480
00:45:49.600 --> 00:45:58.160
friend who got his business to 30 million a year error, totally bootstrapped. It's a service
481
00:45:58.640 --> 00:46:03.360
he did just raise some money because he wants to go really big on AI and he also wanted to take
482
00:46:03.360 --> 00:46:11.440
some money out and that's great for him. But you know, it's easier to get businesses off the ground.
483
00:46:11.440 --> 00:46:16.880
It's easier to get distribution. And if you don't need capital for it, why raise it? So it's
484
00:46:16.880 --> 00:46:22.400
a bit of adjustment, but I think what you and I and other people are doing are showing examples
485
00:46:22.400 --> 00:46:27.520
of success, like businesses that which you've real success that didn't need to raise money that
486
00:46:27.520 --> 00:46:35.120
were in fact sort of advantaged for not raising money. And I have increasingly, in the same
487
00:46:35.120 --> 00:46:39.280
way that a lot of our friends want to do personal holding companies, which we'll get to in a minute.
488
00:46:39.280 --> 00:46:44.640
But a bunch of our friends who've raised hundreds of millions or even more in capital say,
489
00:46:44.640 --> 00:46:49.040
hey, I don't want to do that again. I don't want to do that anymore. I want to raise zero. And now
490
00:46:49.040 --> 00:46:53.840
it's like, we need to turn it from a, you know, signed a couldn't raise money to a sign that
491
00:46:53.840 --> 00:46:58.960
you're you're too good to raise money. Like you know the costs of it and you don't need it anymore.
492
00:46:58.960 --> 00:47:05.120
Well, let's just change the name of exactly. Of unicorns, unicorn founders and unicorn companies
493
00:47:05.120 --> 00:47:09.680
to like a unicorn company isn't something that gets to a billion dollar valuation. It's something
494
00:47:09.680 --> 00:47:16.000
that gets to a billion dollar value, you know, if you can get, it's something that gets to like
495
00:47:16.560 --> 00:47:21.440
10 million in cash flow. That to me is a unicorn company. Yeah. And a unicorn founder,
496
00:47:21.440 --> 00:47:26.320
someone who could do that. It's like your buddy. Yeah. No, it's crazy. I'm making my goals for 2024.
497
00:47:26.320 --> 00:47:31.280
And when I look back at my goals for previous years, it was like, okay, get this, you know, my
498
00:47:31.280 --> 00:47:36.720
company to 20 million revenue and to this growth percentage. But like those were the wrong metrics.
499
00:47:36.720 --> 00:47:41.520
Like those metrics were based on what investors wanted, right? They wanted to see a graph up into
500
00:47:41.520 --> 00:47:45.520
the right of revenue. But that didn't take cost into account, right? Or growth, but that didn't
501
00:47:45.520 --> 00:47:50.240
take retention into account, right? And so now I'm thinking about, hey, these are goals just for me.
502
00:47:50.240 --> 00:47:54.320
And it's like, wait, what exactly should the goals be? It's just like a totally different way
503
00:47:54.320 --> 00:48:00.800
of thinking about business building when you're your own boss as opposed to your investors.
504
00:48:00.800 --> 00:48:06.000
And your investors just have a different level of risk reward given they're, you know,
505
00:48:06.000 --> 00:48:12.320
extremely diversified and you're playing lottery tickets. So can you talk a little bit more about
506
00:48:12.320 --> 00:48:19.040
what your goals are for 2024? Yeah. I'm creating them right now. But I want
507
00:48:19.040 --> 00:48:27.360
turpentine to, I want a million dollars in my bank account as a result of, you know, next year
508
00:48:27.360 --> 00:48:34.640
turpentine. So it's less of a revenue number for the company and more of what I take personally.
509
00:48:35.840 --> 00:48:42.880
I also, but I'm also going to keep reinvesting into the business. So I want us to get,
510
00:48:42.880 --> 00:48:47.040
so I have a distribution goal as well. I want us to hit a million monthly podcast
511
00:48:47.040 --> 00:48:52.640
listens. We're at 350 right now. I also have a newsletter goal as well. I'm still figuring
512
00:48:52.640 --> 00:48:56.960
out what was our right number. We're at zero today. But I want us to go big on newsletters.
513
00:48:56.960 --> 00:49:01.040
But there are a couple other things I want us to get into as well. I want us to get into the
514
00:49:01.040 --> 00:49:06.480
reputation game. I think lists are very powerful if done well. And I want to really establish
515
00:49:06.480 --> 00:49:14.720
ourselves in the list game. And then I also want to start this expert network. And so,
516
00:49:15.360 --> 00:49:21.440
and I want to create this flywheel between this sort of the reporting that the media company does.
517
00:49:21.920 --> 00:49:28.000
And that data entering this sort of expert network or the transcripts. Each call should be a
518
00:49:28.000 --> 00:49:33.680
transcript that enters this database that is compounding. I also have a few other
519
00:49:33.680 --> 00:49:40.480
reputation products. I've just launched one is a VC rating system. One is a service provider
520
00:49:40.480 --> 00:49:46.320
rating system. One is a SaaS tool rating system or review site. One is a company review site.
521
00:49:46.320 --> 00:49:51.680
I'm going to have individual metrics for a company review site like a Glassdoor competitor,
522
00:49:51.680 --> 00:49:56.960
individual metrics for those. And those are going to be part of this bookface competitor that I'm
523
00:49:56.960 --> 00:50:04.000
launching. This is a social network for founders. So high level intention for 2024. It's
524
00:50:04.000 --> 00:50:09.040
build the infrastructure. The infrastructure that is going to help me create more businesses and
525
00:50:09.840 --> 00:50:16.960
have more kind of ability to invest or like get into deals that I'm excited about by just having
526
00:50:16.960 --> 00:50:22.800
more leverage. Like I saw how product hunt and on deck just gave me so much leverage because people
527
00:50:22.800 --> 00:50:27.840
wanted me to in their network or on the cap table because I can get them distribution and I can
528
00:50:27.840 --> 00:50:34.080
get them talent. And I want to create those same sort of bulwarks in the broader empire I'm building
529
00:50:34.160 --> 00:50:41.600
on the distribution side. And part of distribution is also reputation and then also on the talent
530
00:50:41.600 --> 00:50:50.000
side. And so there's going to be a tangible sort of distribution audience size and profit numbers
531
00:50:50.000 --> 00:50:54.880
related to that. But also this broader sense of hey am I building the infrastructure that makes
532
00:50:54.880 --> 00:50:59.760
it easier for me to incubate more businesses on top of that. So that's what I'm thinking about
533
00:50:59.760 --> 00:51:08.880
2024. I like it. I like a big year. We only got a few minutes left. I want you to give folks
534
00:51:08.880 --> 00:51:13.600
a few free startup ideas or things they should be thinking about. What do you got? Yeah.
535
00:51:13.600 --> 00:51:20.560
Okay, so I mentioned that I'm really excited about reputation. One idea I have is a it's
536
00:51:20.560 --> 00:51:29.600
quarrel for people. Basically a search engine for who's the expert why? I'm in who's the best
537
00:51:29.600 --> 00:51:34.880
dentist in Miami or who's the best FinTech investor or I'm going to New York. Who should I meet?
538
00:51:34.880 --> 00:51:39.280
We see these questions on Twitter all the time or Facebook. They have tons of engagement and then
539
00:51:39.280 --> 00:51:43.920
they're never stored. And so I'm really interested in the intersection of engagement and kind of
540
00:51:44.880 --> 00:51:50.800
stored state. And so you could go on Twitter and scrape all these questions. You use LOMs to
541
00:51:50.800 --> 00:51:55.200
somehow find a lot of these questions, organize them, structure them, create your own social
542
00:51:55.200 --> 00:52:03.360
network just for these questions. And then find who to sell them to. Because similarly to what
543
00:52:03.360 --> 00:52:07.200
I said earlier, it's not like some of this information is really valuable to a small subset of
544
00:52:07.200 --> 00:52:15.440
people. So that's a space I'm curious to explore. Speaking of things that are really valuable to
545
00:52:15.440 --> 00:52:21.360
a small subset of people, the dating space. I think people are going around at the wrong way.
546
00:52:21.360 --> 00:52:28.720
They're not price discriminating. I think, you know, if we were to ask single people how much
547
00:52:28.720 --> 00:52:33.520
would you pay of your what percentage of your net worth would you pay to find your partner
548
00:52:33.600 --> 00:52:38.480
in the next year or two? Especially people in their 30s, right? I think it's fair to say that
549
00:52:38.480 --> 00:52:44.640
a bunch of people would say something like 10%, 20%, maybe even more. And so I think there is a
550
00:52:44.640 --> 00:52:52.240
big opportunity to build sort of a high-end combination coaching plus matchmaking business.
551
00:52:52.240 --> 00:52:58.640
Almost of like what an executive recruiter does. So we paid, you know, 100K plus to get a COO or to
552
00:52:58.640 --> 00:53:05.120
get a COO. And that recruiting firm not just didn't just source for us. They took us through the
553
00:53:05.120 --> 00:53:09.200
whole process and made sure we found one. It's like, yeah, you could find a COO on your own.
554
00:53:09.200 --> 00:53:13.040
But if you pay 100K, you're definitely going to get one. And they're going to stay with you
555
00:53:13.040 --> 00:53:18.960
until you get one. And I think something similar on the on the matchmaking front. And I've only
556
00:53:18.960 --> 00:53:24.800
seen solutions that do either matchmaking or do coaching, but not like personal trainer style,
557
00:53:24.800 --> 00:53:31.760
like just make sure it's, you know, do it for you almost. Like be in the dating halves for you.
558
00:53:32.320 --> 00:53:37.920
I think it's for you. Yeah, exactly. I think in general, it's a big trend of like shifting from
559
00:53:37.920 --> 00:53:44.240
like teach you how to do something to like press button and it's done. Like do it for you. And this
560
00:53:44.240 --> 00:53:48.640
sort of like going from coaching to personal trainer doesn't just tell you what to do. He also
561
00:53:49.120 --> 00:53:56.160
or she watches you until you do it. And I like solutions that do that for people because
562
00:53:56.160 --> 00:54:01.040
there's all this education. And it's great. But it's rare to have someone who will take the
563
00:54:01.040 --> 00:54:05.120
whole end. And I think there's something at the intersection of like, and you've thought about
564
00:54:05.120 --> 00:54:11.120
this too in different ways, but coaching, accountability, sort of executive assistant,
565
00:54:12.560 --> 00:54:18.080
that just kind of is there with you. Personal trainer for life, basically. What are the areas
566
00:54:18.080 --> 00:54:22.400
in which you want to grow? Like I looked at my 2024 goals and one thing I'm doing,
567
00:54:22.400 --> 00:54:27.920
and I'm lucky enough to have some people helping me, but hey, EA's are cheap. You use Athena and
568
00:54:27.920 --> 00:54:32.640
get it, you know, pay, you know, a few bucks an hour, I mean, six dollars an hour for an assistant.
569
00:54:32.640 --> 00:54:38.240
And you can get someone to help you out too. And I'm putting that assistant next to those goals.
570
00:54:38.240 --> 00:54:43.600
Like imagine having someone whose job it is to achieve your goals for you.
571
00:54:43.600 --> 00:54:50.720
Like the level of not just accountability, but support that you will get from that is really
572
00:54:50.720 --> 00:54:53.920
powerful. So I love the service that takes that to the next level. Maybe that just is the
573
00:54:53.920 --> 00:54:58.560
Athena, but you can imagine it applied to different spaces like relationships as an example.
574
00:54:58.560 --> 00:55:02.480
Yeah, and I don't think it's Athena. Like I don't think it, you know, because it's an
575
00:55:02.480 --> 00:55:08.640
easy purpose built for this. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. All right, man, I do a machine. I like it.
576
00:55:08.640 --> 00:55:14.960
I also like that the underlying theme of this whole conversation has been price discrimination.
577
00:55:15.760 --> 00:55:20.560
And it's like, how do you sell the most expensive thing to a small group of people?
578
00:55:21.200 --> 00:55:26.160
Yeah, and start there. It doesn't mean you can't democratize it and build something for everyone.
579
00:55:26.160 --> 00:55:34.080
Tears, yeah. Tears, but so I like that. I like that. Where could people get to know you more?
580
00:55:35.040 --> 00:55:40.880
Twitter. Check out. I'm Eric Tormer. Go on Twitter. I've substack. I interpretine.co. If you want to
581
00:55:40.880 --> 00:55:45.920
check out what we're doing, if you loved any of the ideas that I'm working on, I see myself as
582
00:55:45.920 --> 00:55:51.360
wanting to build a studio and incubators. So do do reach out if you're inspired to take on any
583
00:55:51.360 --> 00:55:54.960
of the ideas and just want one supporter or one of a potential partner on it. You've got to come
584
00:55:54.960 --> 00:56:01.680
back on again, man. Yeah, it's been an honor to be here. Greg always love chatting with you and
585
00:56:01.680 --> 00:56:07.120
brainstorm. We got to do our next Puravita. Yes, absolutely. You left Miami. I can't believe
586
00:56:07.120 --> 00:56:11.360
you left Miami. I know. It was it was hard, but I'll come back and visit.
587
00:56:11.360 --> 00:56:15.600
Was it because there was just Torrenberg, Eisenberg, you were getting mixed up.
588
00:56:15.600 --> 00:56:17.840
You know, you couldn't do it. Yeah, I didn't know there was enough burgs.
589
00:56:20.240 --> 00:56:26.400
No, it was it was a good run, but there was a moment where I just needed more professional
590
00:56:26.400 --> 00:56:34.320
and personal serendipity in my life. And so I came back. And with this, San Francisco,
591
00:56:34.320 --> 00:56:43.920
how is it versus like our San Francisco, 2012, 2019? Wasn't the same, but it's not the same,
592
00:56:43.920 --> 00:56:52.000
but it's back. People have left. There's a whole lot of people like we came with Ryan Hoover,
593
00:56:52.080 --> 00:56:55.680
like he's gone. Like David Spings, he's gone. Like a bunch of people, right? A bunch of people are
594
00:56:55.680 --> 00:57:00.960
friends. They're gone. But there's a whole new crop, a whole new, you know, set of young people
595
00:57:00.960 --> 00:57:08.160
who came in. And one thing that's different that is there's a sort of consciousness to San Francisco
596
00:57:08.160 --> 00:57:13.600
about sort of making San Francisco great, which is like making it a safe place, like getting
597
00:57:13.600 --> 00:57:17.360
their people who are now like running for office who are previously doing tech companies. And
598
00:57:17.440 --> 00:57:22.560
that's exciting to me because one of the things that I sort of miss about Miami or didn't like
599
00:57:22.560 --> 00:57:26.880
about San Francisco was it felt that everything was just about tech and there wasn't really enough
600
00:57:26.880 --> 00:57:33.920
diversity. And now I'm seeing all this kind of like community activism energy. And it's just
601
00:57:33.920 --> 00:57:37.920
giving a new flair, a new excitement. And it makes me feel like part of something,
602
00:57:38.800 --> 00:57:43.120
part of something bigger than just myself or just my company. It's like, no, it's actually like
603
00:57:43.120 --> 00:57:48.160
make this city great. If you're in your 20s and you want to start a turpentine or late check out
604
00:57:48.880 --> 00:57:55.440
type business, do you do San Francisco, New York, or somewhere else? I think the answer used to be
605
00:57:56.800 --> 00:58:00.320
you have to be in San Francisco if you were trying to be a built tech company. Now I think
606
00:58:00.320 --> 00:58:09.280
you can probably be anywhere. But you know, I still think on the margins probably San Francisco
607
00:58:09.280 --> 00:58:14.800
or New York or just wherever there's a concentration of amazing people, like wherever you can find
608
00:58:14.800 --> 00:58:20.240
your tribe, that's where you should go. Like in San Francisco, when I first moved here, I couldn't
609
00:58:20.240 --> 00:58:24.320
find my tribe for a couple of years. So it wasn't a great place for me. So I'd almost like find them
610
00:58:24.320 --> 00:58:31.440
online, like see where people you want to meet. Where do they live? And people you can meet too.
611
00:58:31.440 --> 00:58:35.680
And then just go there. Like if you're able to get into the Austin scene with Dave Perrell and
612
00:58:35.680 --> 00:58:41.200
Justin Maris and all these people, like go to Austin, right? So that's what I would think about
613
00:58:41.200 --> 00:58:45.920
is where can you find your tribe and look online for us? Or if you want to come hang out with me and
614
00:58:45.920 --> 00:58:54.800
Ryan Hoover and Miami. Exactly. Come do that. So I won't take it personally and appreciate the time.
615
00:58:54.800 --> 00:58:56.080
Later. Yeah, appreciate it. But