#79 Esther Wojcicki: The “TRICK” to Raising Successful People
Esther Wojcicki discusses the current education model and how we can fix it and shares her powerful TRICK acronym, Esther’s secret for raising happy, resilient children.
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#80 – Vitalik Buterin: Ethereum, Cryptocurrency, and the Future of Money
Vitalik Buterin is co-creator of Ethereum and ether, which is a cryptocurrency that is currently the second-largest digital currency after bitcoin. Ethereum has a lot of interesting technical ideas that are defining the future of blockchain technology, and Vitalik is one of the most brilliant people innovating this space today.
This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.
Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
04:43 – Satoshi Nakamoto
08:40 – Anonymity
11:31 – Open source project leadership
13:04 – What is money?
30:02 – Blockchain and cryptocurrency basics
46:51 – Ethereum
59:23 – Proof of work
1:02:12 – Ethereum 2.0
1:13:09 – Beautiful ideas in Ethereum
1:16:59 – Future of cryptocurrency
1:22:06 – Cryptocurrency resources and people to follow
1:24:28 – Role of governments
1:27:27 – Meeting Putin
1:29:41 – Large number of cryptocurrencies
1:32:49 – Mortality
The Bernie Sanders campaign is an organizing tour-de-force relative to the Joe Biden campaign; yet the latter has won primary after primary — with even higher turnouts than 2016. So does organizing even work? And, if so, what went wrong?
Jane McAlevey has organized hundreds of thousands of workers on the frontlines of America’s labor movement. She is also a Senior Policy Fellow at UC Berkeley’s Labor Center and the author of three books on organizing, including, most recently, A Collective Bargain: Unions, Organizing, and the Fight for Democracy.
McAlevey doesn’t pull her punches. She thinks the left builds political power all wrong. She thinks people are constantly mistaking “mobilizing” for “organizing,” and that social media has taught a generation of young activists the worst possible lessons. She thinks organized labor’s push for “card check” was a mistake, but that there really is a viable path back to a strong labor movement. And since McAlevey is, above all, a teacher and an organizer, she offers what amounts to a master class in organizing — one relevant not just to building political power, but to building anything.
To McAlevey, organizing, at its core, is about something very simple, and very close to the heart of this show: how do you talk to people who may not agree with you such that you can truly hear them, and they can truly hear you? This conversation ran long, but it ran long because it was damn good.
Sam (@thesamparr) is by himself today without Shaan (@shaanvp) to tell you about what he thinks are 4 essential skill sets that will withstand a recession. Questions about any of these? Ask the hosts directly on www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion.
This week, President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential contenders Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders each gave separate speeches in response to a rapidly escalating coronavirus outbreak in the United States. What did they say? How do their responses differ? And what do those speeches tell us about how their future (or current) administrations? Vox’s Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias discuss on this week’s 2020 election edition of The Weeds.
Then, how will coronavirus impact the general election in November? Matt and Ezra run through the political science research on how economic growth correlates with electoral success, how analogous situations (like severe weather events) have impacted past elections and more. Hint: things don’t look so great for Donald Trump.
For more conversations like this one, subscribe to The Weeds on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts!
0:00:03 Hi everyone, I’m Zoran Basic, our crypto editor. 0:00:07 On February 21st, our team kicked off its very first crypto startup school. 0:00:10 We invited dozens of instructors and mentors 0:00:14 and 45 students who applied and were selected from around the U.S. and three countries 0:00:17 for a seven-week course to learn how to build crypto projects. 0:00:22 But just two weeks in, community spread of the coronavirus in our area started happening, 0:00:25 and as much as we loved having everyone gathered together in one place, 0:00:29 we decided to go remote, not just for the health and safety of everyone involved, 0:00:33 but for others too, given the recommendations around social distancing 0:00:35 and the importance of flattening the curve. 0:00:37 So I did a short hallway-style chat, 0:00:41 though in this case the hallways are all remote since A16Z has gone remote, 0:00:45 with crypto marketing partner Kim Milosevic and Jesse Walden, 0:00:49 former founder of MediaChain, who’s helping lead our crypto startup school effort. 0:00:51 We begin with Kim sharing her thoughts, 0:00:54 since so many others are going through this for their own events. 0:00:59 So the idea of moving a remote wasn’t something I was excited about at first, 0:01:03 because the first week, you know, it was clear that the excitement in the room, 0:01:08 like everybody was just so thrilled to be there and you could feel the energy. 0:01:11 You know, we kicked off the program and everybody was applauding. 0:01:15 You know, everybody was just so excited to be there with each other. 0:01:21 We had put a lot of emphasis on having these 45 students here in person 0:01:25 for the benefit of really learning from each other and being part of something. 0:01:29 And to then learn that this whole thing is going to go virtual, 0:01:35 my first thought was just how do we continue to have that sort of feeling 0:01:38 and create that kind of atmosphere for people. 0:01:42 And then it just really became, it’s very complicated, right? 0:01:46 We worked through it, it took a lot of us coming together, 0:01:49 many phone calls and figuring out all of our resources. 0:01:55 It’s really just the minutiae of the audio, the video. 0:01:58 How do we make that kind of a seamless experience? 0:02:02 And then also make sure these students feel like they still have a voice 0:02:06 and that they can still jump in and feel like they’re part of something. 0:02:11 So it went from like, oh, no, we put this emphasis on being in person 0:02:14 and creating a community with these students to all of a sudden the minutiae 0:02:22 of all the complicated logistics that goes into pulling off a virtual experience. 0:02:27 And we just don’t want to lose people and make them feel like they’re just on a conference call. 0:02:28 Yeah, and that was the big thing, right? 0:02:30 Because the energy was so good, 0:02:34 we wanted to somehow preserve this sort of live feel as best we could. 0:02:37 So we took the videographers that we had 0:02:40 who were going to be capturing everything we were going to be doing in person 0:02:47 and try to set up as much of a kind of live in person experience even though it was remote. 0:02:52 So we had, like you said, a minutiae of sorts where we had the videographers 0:02:57 capturing high quality video of the people that we had in person 0:03:03 while also trying to capture as much high quality content of folks that were remote. 0:03:08 So in the case of last week, for example, we actually had a video crew in New York 0:03:13 for our speaker, Sam Williams, from our weave who was there in New York 0:03:15 and wasn’t able to fly out here. 0:03:20 And then in some cases, we were not able to have a videographer on site. 0:03:22 For example, the case with biology. 0:03:30 So we had to create as much of a high quality zoom in experiences because I do want to go back to the students. 0:03:34 What was their reaction to going remote and all the all the different things 0:03:36 that they’re going to have to navigate as you were talking to them through this? 0:03:43 Well, I think actually a lot of them were relieved because they themselves were concerned about the virus. 0:03:52 Others were, I guess, disappointed that they were going to be missing out on some of the in-person get-togethers that we had planned. 0:03:58 And so they took it upon themselves to plan get-togethers for those that were comfortable continuing in person. 0:04:03 And so we had a group watching the live stream from one of the students’ apartment. 0:04:05 I think it was a group of like six or seven or so. 0:04:10 And so that’s great. I think there’s people with varying levels of comfort 0:04:13 and remote just gives everyone flexibility and options, which is nice. 0:04:18 You touched on almost the team feeling among all the students. 0:04:21 And we noticed that just in the first two weeks, right, they really came together. 0:04:27 It was a very boisterous, fun, engaged environment during the in-session, in-person classes. 0:04:37 Yeah, well, so as I mentioned earlier, we were doing Q&A with the speakers, and that portion of the session was very engaged. 0:04:39 Or there was a lot of engagement from students. 0:04:44 And I think one thing we didn’t quite account for is how to sort of wind down the session. 0:04:48 And so what ended up happening is a student reached out on Slack saying, 0:04:52 “Hey, it’d be really nice if we could all somehow cool off from the session.” 0:04:57 And I think what we ended up doing on Slack is asking people to sort of express 0:05:01 how they’re feeling about the session through emojis, which is lower bandwidth 0:05:06 than an in-person discussion, but I think still carries a lot of information with it. 0:05:13 And so going forward to address that better, we created a channel with a bot 0:05:17 that pairs students one-on-one so that they can sort of talk with one another after the session 0:05:22 or between sessions so that they still feel like they’re getting a lot of face time with others 0:05:25 in the program, because that’s clearly important. 0:05:27 What were your interactions like with the students as this was being announced 0:05:29 and was actually happening? 0:05:33 I think some of them actually prefer the sort of asynchronous nature of the communication 0:05:38 that they’re having now on Slack, because it allows for sort of everyone to participate 0:05:43 in the conversation as opposed to having breakout groups or limited time 0:05:45 for folks to interact with one another. 0:05:49 So talk a bit about that, just the way you set up communications and the Slack channel 0:05:52 and other collaborative tools you had to use to keep people engaged. 0:05:57 Right. So with Zoom, we’re specifically using a feature called Breakouts 0:06:02 that allows the whole group to come together, but then also breakout into smaller groups 0:06:08 to discuss what they’re learning, give feedback to one another in a more personal setting. 0:06:14 In addition, we’ve been supplementing that with Slack to do Q&A with instructors 0:06:20 so that we can moderate a sort of useful discussion after presentations as opposed 0:06:25 to having sort of a cock-a-phoney of folks on a video chat trying to talk over each one another. 0:06:31 And the benefit of having questions come in on Slack is we can get to every single one. 0:06:34 Instructors can follow up with as much detail as they’d like. 0:06:37 Students can chime in, ask follow-up questions. 0:06:41 And so it’s actually turned out to be sort of a much richer experience. 0:06:47 And then on the actual sort of logistics of setting up the video stuff, for me, 0:06:54 that was sort of fun because it reminded me of experience that I had back in 2012 0:06:57 or so where I was running this thing called Boiler Room, 0:07:00 where we would broadcast live music performances on the internet. 0:07:06 And so similarly, we’d have basically a portable TV station that we’d bring to some warehouse 0:07:12 and film DJs or musicians performing live to an online audience and try to– 0:07:15 there was tons of online engagement through a chat box there. 0:07:19 So kind of a similar setup many years later in a different industry, 0:07:21 but I guess that was good preparation. 0:07:23 Well, this is kind of the bigger picture, right? 0:07:26 Because so many events have been canceled in recent weeks. 0:07:28 You know, right around the time that we went remote, 0:07:32 like South by Southwest was canceled, you know, huge event. 0:07:36 And more and more companies are having employees work from home. 0:07:40 It seems like this could be almost like an inflection point where this becomes more 0:07:43 of a thing that people want to do and see that it should be done in terms 0:07:48 of different kinds of virtual conferences, even though the appeal 0:07:51 of a conference is supposedly you go and you network and you meet people that you don’t know. 0:07:53 Yeah, absolutely. 0:07:59 I mean, I think that the coronavirus certainly is what prompted us to move this whole thing virtual. 0:08:02 But, you know, I think it has been– 0:08:05 it’s something that we actually were really excited to experiment with. 0:08:08 And, you know, so coronavirus is a forcing function, 0:08:12 but it’s a really good muscle to build for us to learn how to do this 0:08:16 and how we can scale it and what works, what doesn’t work. 0:08:19 And, you know, as Jesse pointed out, one of the things that we’re now thinking 0:08:23 about moving forward is, you know, how do we make sure that we continue 0:08:26 to have as much interaction as possible, right? 0:08:29 The sort of one-to-many broadcast is important for the content. 0:08:33 And you want that to be a good experience for the people that are participating. 0:08:36 But then, again, we have these students and part of the goal 0:08:40 of this whole crypto startup school is for them to interact and learn from each other. 0:08:44 So how do we, you know, make that possible, you know, as much as we can moving forward 0:08:48 when we don’t have specifically a workshop element, for example. 0:08:53 So we’re now trying to think of creative ways to have people still break out in groups, 0:08:54 still interact with one another. 0:08:56 How do we prompt people for questions? 0:09:00 How do we get really clever with how we use Slack? 0:09:04 You know, how do we keep people engaged there and prompt questions there? 0:09:08 And so they’re still like– we’re still experimenting with a lot of different things here. 0:09:13 But hopefully we can figure out some smart ways to use it in other ways, too, 0:09:15 other than crypto startup school. 0:09:20 So in the midst of all this, two or three days after our first remote session, 0:09:24 A16Z itself went remote, meaning employees weren’t going to the office 0:09:27 like many companies around the Bay Area and around the country. 0:09:29 We were encouraged to work from home. 0:09:33 So that added sort of another layer of complexity because here we are trying to figure 0:09:38 out all these logistical issues and experiment in all these new ways 0:09:42 with a remote conference, and we’re all working remotely as well. 0:09:46 Yeah, I think we’re all sort of figuring this out what this new world is like. 0:09:51 And we’re trying tools like tandem where they have these water cooler functions 0:09:59 where you can sort of be in a room with folks and just kind of chat with each other spontaneously. 0:10:03 And we’re all, I think, all trying to figure out making sure we have time to eat. 0:10:06 I know myself included in others are saying like, 0:10:11 I didn’t actually lunch until three o’clock or, you know, when do you, you know, 0:10:13 just completely changes your whole daily schedule. 0:10:15 So just trying to figure that out. 0:10:19 But then also trying to create some guidelines because there’s not really 0:10:23 these clear start and end times like you have going in and out of an office. 0:10:26 And while I think in tech, we all kind of work 24/7. 0:10:29 I found it, I don’t know what your guys’ experience is, 0:10:34 but even that much more difficult of, you know, having sort of a as much 0:10:37 of a beginning and an end to your work days you can. 0:10:41 Yeah, it’s so easy for work to bleed into life and vice versa, even more than usual. 0:10:43 And one thing people kept bringing up was sort of like, 0:10:46 I need to remind myself to get out of the house and take a short walk 0:10:49 because otherwise you’re head down all day and you realize I haven’t been outside. 0:10:52 Yeah, in some ways, it’s funny as I think like you you’re worried 0:10:55 that you’re not going to be in touch with each other as much. 0:10:59 But in reality, I think I’m actually talking to people more. 0:11:03 I think I’m on phone calls all day long, whereas in the office, 0:11:06 you might run into people or you have a moment that you you also have. 0:11:10 You have, you know, maybe a block of time or you can just kind of be at your desk 0:11:16 and get some stuff done, whereas, you know, it feels like I’ve been on the phone constantly. 0:11:22 Yeah, I myself found found that I hadn’t been outside for, I guess, 0:11:25 like 30 hours or something like that. 0:11:28 So I was starting to get a little stir crazy and had to go for a walk. 0:11:32 You know, I think it’s interesting because I’ve had some experience 0:11:36 with remote work before my startup, we ran sort of a remote process. 0:11:40 And so it’s not surprising to me that this sort of changes. 0:11:42 I think I’m familiar with them. 0:11:45 But it is it is interesting to see it happening on the scale 0:11:52 and within Andrews and Horowitz, where, you know, remote culture was not sort of a primary reflex. 0:11:55 So I think we’re developing a muscle for it. 0:12:00 And yet it’ll be interesting to see how that muscle if that muscle sticks around. 0:12:02 I think it is a culture question. 0:12:07 I’ve heard of startups who have a really pro remote culture, including one 0:12:11 that I worked at in which they really took pains till I include everyone who was remote 0:12:15 and make sure that they were not sort of second class citizens to people who worked in the office. 0:12:18 And that included things like, you know, when people in the office got swag, 0:12:22 you made sure to send it to the people remote and just little things like that 0:12:25 or having virtual happy hours, little things like that, I think, 0:12:28 go a long way toward making a team feel unified. 0:12:33 So one of the perhaps ironies of this is that crypto itself is very decentralized. 0:12:37 And we ended up having a decentralized conference. 0:12:41 It’s a muscle that a lot of our portfolio projects, I think, have already developed to some extent. 0:12:46 And of course, like when building a startup, going fully remote is a decision 0:12:48 that needs to be weighed carefully because there’s a lot of tradeoffs 0:12:53 that founders and sort of leaders of these projects need to anticipate. 0:12:57 But the fact is that crypto is sort of this worldwide movement. 0:13:00 These are sort of open networks where anyone can participate. 0:13:03 And as a result, there’s a lot more geographic distribution. 0:13:07 And so I think, you know, we’re learning something that the crypto community 0:13:10 has been been learning from the get go, which is how to how to coordinate 0:13:14 a really decentralized group of people towards an outcome that everyone wants. 0:13:19 So, you know, obviously it was a bit of disappointment and a bit of a scramble to make it happen. 0:13:21 But I think we’re pulling it off. 0:13:23 Kim and Jesse, thanks so much. Talk to you soon. 0:13:24 Thank you.
On February 21, Andreessen Horowitz kicked off its very first Crypto Startup School, with 45 students from around the U.S. and three countries gathering to learn how to build crypto projects. But just two weeks into the seven-week course, community spread of the novel coronavirus meant the school had to go remote — not just for the health and safety of everyone involved, but for others too, given the recommendations around social distancing and the importance of “flattening the curve”.
Marketing partner Kim Milosevich and Jesse Walden, former founder of Mediachain who’s helping lead our Crypto Startup School, chat with a16z crypto editor Zoran Basich — in this hallway-style episode of the a16z Podcast — about virtual learning and collaboration in a new, uncharted world.
This special pop-up episode explores Covid-19, with Balaji Srinivasan. Balaji is one of the more thought-provoking, interesting, and multi-disciplinary thinkers I know and we do a deep dive, including possible second and third-order consequences.
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Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/
0:00:05 The content here is for informational purposes only, should not be taken as legal business 0:00:10 tax or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security and is not directed 0:00:15 at any investors or potential investors in any A16Z fund. For more details, please see 0:00:21 A16Z.com/disclosures. Hi, and welcome to the A16Z podcast. I’m Lauren Murrow, and today 0:00:26 we’re talking about when fintech meets social. It’s a trend that’s evident on both ends 0:00:30 of the spectrum, whether that’s people divulging their crushing levels of debt on Instagram 0:00:35 and Twitter or bragging about their credit scores and stock trades. In this hallway-style 0:00:39 conversation with fintech general partner Anish Acharya and Darcy Kulikin, a partner on the 0:00:46 consumer tech team, we discuss why this holy grail of social plus fintech is both so challenging 0:00:50 and potentially so rewarding. We’ll cover which products and companies are taking advantage 0:00:55 of it, how it’s being driven by various subcultures online, and why this shift is happening now, 0:00:59 which is where this conversation begins. The first voice you’ll hear is Anish, followed 0:01:02 by Darcy. So the fact that people are actually talking 0:01:07 publicly about their debt is a new behavior. In the past, spending was public, but debt 0:01:12 was private. And for the first time, debt is starting to become a public conversation. 0:01:17 What’s new is that this generation is living in a completely different socioeconomic context. 0:01:21 That’s not flighty millennials and zoomers or whatever. That’s a completely different 0:01:25 financial world that they’re growing up in, and that’s driving a different set of conversations. 0:01:29 You see certain categories that people are now talking about that they didn’t talk about 0:01:33 before. Salary is something that a certain generation is much more comfortable talking 0:01:38 about. Student debt is a category that people are much more comfortable talking about. Trading 0:01:42 is a category that people are much more comfortable talking about. Across the spectrum, you see 0:01:48 sharing on social of financial stuff going up. You see it on Twitter, you see it on Facebook, 0:01:51 you see it in blogs. There’s a bunch of pockets. 0:01:57 Why do you think this shift is happening? I think it’s driven by a few factors. One 0:02:02 is generational. Every generation’s relationship with sharing and every generation’s relationship 0:02:06 with money is different. So what boomers did versus what Gen X did versus what millennials 0:02:11 do versus what Gen Z does is different. And I think you see this macro trend around increasing 0:02:15 sharing. And that’s driven by historical changes. That’s driven by the financial crisis. 0:02:20 Exactly. They have to take nontraditional paths to achieve financial progress and dreams. 0:02:25 For a long, long time, buying a home was not only the American dream, but something you 0:02:29 achieved through the traditional financial system. So everyone had a mortgage. Today 0:02:33 mortgages are less accessible than they’ve ever been. Will you talk to your peer set 0:02:37 about how am I ever going to buy a home? And that’s really the catalyst behind many of 0:02:39 these things. And I think you see that also with the massive 0:02:44 increase in student debt over the last 10, 15 years. It’s reaching unsustainable levels 0:02:48 and that’s forcing a conversation. And then that breaks down the stigma about talking 0:02:51 about student debt. And then once you break the stigma, then it’s like, hold on and everything 0:02:55 comes flooding to the forefront. We’ve talked about how money is inherently 0:03:01 private. Do you not think that that is becoming less so? There’s a generational piece of it. 0:03:05 Then yes, we’re sharing more of our lives in general. And then there’s a political angle 0:03:09 to it, this idea of radical transparency to affect change. So that’s why we’re posting 0:03:13 more about student debt, about medical debt, about our salaries. 0:03:19 Usually there is a long-term trend line towards sharing more rather than sharing less. But 0:03:24 you see it happening at the category level and to a certain extent at the subculture 0:03:28 level. So take student debt as one category. When people start talking about it, then everybody 0:03:34 feels empowered to talk about it. And I think you need catalysts for walls to come down around 0:03:38 certain categories like the student debt crisis, a financial crisis. There’s a lot of external 0:03:42 events that have led to some of these things come down, but it’s happening inch by inch 0:03:46 and category by category. And the question is, what pieces are going mainstream? 0:03:52 I think the hacker mindset has pushed outside of software and into finance. There is always 0:03:57 a small number of people who are excited about hacking their money, but now that’s becoming 0:04:02 a more mainstream concept. So the idea of being someone who arbitrages rewards across 0:04:07 credit cards used to be a pretty niche edge thing. And now more and more people are doing 0:04:10 it to the point where a lot of card companies are having to pull rewards back because there’s 0:04:14 a points guy and a million other sites that tells you how to actually hack the system. 0:04:19 And credit scores are very similar. It’s not a destiny. It’s a game, or it’s at least closer 0:04:23 to a game than a destiny. And more people are talking about the ways that you play it. 0:04:28 When I say it’s a game, I say that in a hopeful way, but not in a dismissive way in terms of 0:04:29 the importance of it. 0:04:32 It also goes to what are the things people like to do on social? And three of the core 0:04:37 functions are bragging, complaining, and rubbernecking. And I just think you’ve seen where social and 0:04:42 finance intersect, kind of coalescing around those three use cases as well. 0:04:45 At the end of the day, social and finance, a lot of it is just content, and it’s content 0:04:49 that’s anchored around some financial transaction, but it’s still just content. And so the usual 0:04:53 rules of social apply. Another way to think about it is, when you’re building something 0:04:58 in social plus finance, you have an interaction layer, and you have a transaction layer. And 0:05:02 the interaction layer is built around the emotional and cognitive pieces. And that is 0:05:06 content creation, that is messaging, that is all these social things that we see pop 0:05:11 up that appeal to these cognitive and emotional levers. And then you have a transactional 0:05:15 layer, which is whatever your actual financial transaction is. And that’s generally much 0:05:21 more of a functional use case. The magic in social plus finance happens when the transactional 0:05:25 piece and the interactive piece are mutually reinforcing, and that’s where the flywheel 0:05:29 on social plus finance really starts to spin aggressively. 0:05:33 Can you give me some examples of particular products in which you’ve seen this magic happen? 0:05:38 The easiest example is probably Venmo back in the day, where you had messaging apps, 0:05:42 money transfer apps like PayPal existed, and Chat existed, but the idea that you could 0:05:46 attach your transaction to an emoji just made the transaction easier, it made the emoji 0:05:51 more fun, it made the whole thing more self-reinforcing. It’s a really challenging problem to be able 0:05:53 to do that, but when you do do it, it’s magic. 0:05:58 I actually think that those products are fascinating. I still like to scroll through the global 0:06:03 feed on Venmo, which now is capped at the last 50 transactions, but it’s just so fascinating 0:06:07 to see all of these people all over the country sending each other money. There’s something 0:06:13 that is just vicariously thrilling about it, and because money does touch all of us, and 0:06:17 it’s so private, and the products that can start to invert that, I think they just touch 0:06:21 a nerve in an interesting way. And by the way, it doesn’t have to only be online. So there’s 0:06:27 a couple of interesting offline examples, SoFi, which is really in the business of refinancing 0:06:34 mispriced student debt, built this whole community of Henry’s, high earning, not rich yet, did 0:06:40 a ton of parties and events, and made it feel special to be a SoFi member, and really they 0:06:45 were a lender. So I think they’ve actually, at least in the early days, had a lot of success 0:06:51 combining the two. I imagine it’s less successful as Capital One is now opening coffee shops 0:06:56 where you can hang out and get coffee and do your banking, I guess, and it’s easy to 0:07:00 dismiss that as clumsy, but I do think that they’re trying to touch the same nerve. 0:07:06 There’s also this long legacy of companies starting out at the nexus of social and fintech, 0:07:10 and then eventually moving one way or the other generally towards the fintech transactional 0:07:14 layer. So a lot of people who can build either features or community in the early days and 0:07:19 really use it as a way to bootstrap their product, but then over time it migrates more 0:07:23 towards a transactional fintech product rather than a truly social product as well. 0:07:24 What are some of those examples? 0:07:28 SoFi is a great example. It’s functionally a lender, which is not a multiplayer social 0:07:31 game, but they were able to build this early community, which is able to get them a lot 0:07:35 of traction. You look at Wealthfront. Before it transitioned into Wealthfront, I think it 0:07:40 started as Ka-ching, which was a social fintech product. If you look Robinhood originally, 0:07:45 it was a much more social product, then became a much more transactional product. Prosper 0:07:48 started as a much more social product, and then became more of a peer-to-peer lending 0:07:53 platform. A lot of these things start social and are able to bootstrap in their early days 0:07:57 off of some of those networks. Then you end up at a decision point where you try to thread 0:08:01 this needle and continue down the social plus finance angle, or do you move into a more 0:08:05 single-player fintech product? I think a lot of the more successful fintech companies have 0:08:07 started social, but then eventually transitioned. 0:08:09 Why are they making that transition? 0:08:10 It’s hard. 0:08:14 Well, let’s talk about it. What is so hard about social fintech? 0:08:19 The most direct manifestation of social plus fintech is we have messaging, plus we have 0:08:24 payments or some other shared accounts, shared ledgers, some other joint accounts, et cetera. 0:08:29 I think that is very difficult for a number of reasons because money is so private. People 0:08:35 are less likely to send invites to each other and bootstrap a social product in the way 0:08:39 that you would bootstrap other social products. 0:08:43 I think there’s a lot of other examples, though, where the experience may not directly represent 0:08:48 social plus money, but it very much plays to that. I think the example Darcy brought up 0:08:52 is great, which is Robinhood. There’s been a ton of talk about how Robinhood is doomed 0:08:57 because others have cut fees and adopted their business model, but in truth, Robinhood is 0:09:02 a game, and it’s a game that people like to talk about. It works because it feels like 0:09:06 adulting when you actually have a stock portfolio, not because active trading is something that’s 0:09:12 smart for almost anyone to do. I really see it as addressing a different consumer need 0:09:17 than Schwab is addressing, and it’s really not threatened as much by players like Schwab. 0:09:23 That’s an example where the fintech product is addressing a social consumer need, but 0:09:27 at first blush, it may not appear to be the combination of social plus money. 0:09:32 Some of these products are really tapping into the trend for its gamification. Do you 0:09:36 think more products will go that route and design around that impulse that we have? 0:09:41 I think the thing you will likely see is that these social plus fintech products will actually 0:09:45 come much more from the consumer side of things. I think there’s some things like Robinhood 0:09:50 where you are able to build both fintech and community, and it comes from the fintech side 0:09:53 of things. Another encouraging angle to it is the things that are coming from the social 0:09:57 side. Whether it’s a bunch of the chat apps that now have wallets and payments installed 0:10:00 in them, or even something as weird as Fortnite, which is technically a game, but they have 0:10:05 V-Bucks, and they have these economies built into them. It’ll be fascinating to see what 0:10:09 happens with those types of products, because that could be the actual place where we see 0:10:10 social plus money take off. 0:10:14 I do think, by the way, there’s been a bunch of past attempts, which maybe seem naive at 0:10:19 the time, but now just seemed like bad timing. Blippi is a famous example of this where it 0:10:23 tweeted everything that you bought, linked your credit card, and every time you swiped 0:10:29 it, it tweeted. Okay, there’s obvious reasons why that might not be a good idea, and yet 0:10:30 I think the fact that… 0:10:31 It’s too soon. 0:10:34 Hey, look, the fact that Dave Ramsey exists, and people are talking about debt and spending, 0:10:39 and there’s the nugget of truth in all these things. As Mark says, it’s rarely that the 0:10:42 idea is wrong. It’s usually that the timing is. 0:10:46 One of the interesting things about this category of company is that if you just take a step 0:10:50 back and you’re looking for a broader consumer trends, you can often look at little emergent 0:10:53 behaviors that are happening somewhere on the internet and try to figure out, is that 0:10:56 going to actually go into the mainstream at some point? 0:11:00 One of the interesting and challenging things about social plus fintech is that so much 0:11:04 of it is driven by norms, so much of it is driven around what’s taboo and what’s stigmatized, 0:11:09 and that actually exists at the subculture level. You can grow up in the same town at 0:11:13 the same age, and if you grow up on one side of town, your norms around money and sharing 0:11:16 are very different from the person on the other side of town. 0:11:20 That leads to a lot of very distinct subcultures within different pockets on the internet. 0:11:24 One of the more entertaining one is All Street Bets on Reddit, where people are posting some 0:11:29 mix of fake and real trades and explosions and everything like that, and so then you 0:11:32 can look at these things and say, “Oh, here’s this crazy emergent behavior that’s happening. 0:11:36 I think this is going to go mainstream.” In some cases, it will, or in some cases, it 0:11:40 is just part of that subculture because the norms and taboos will never translate into 0:11:46 the mainstream, but when those stigmas fall, then everything happens and everybody runs 0:11:48 for the entrance at that point. 0:11:52 Yeah, it is interesting. If you think about crypto, so this crypto as a computing platform, 0:11:57 which is how we talk about it a lot internally, but then there’s also the sort of socio-political, 0:12:02 perhaps anarchist thread of crypto. I think the historical example of that was mostly 0:12:03 gold, though at the end is taboo. 0:12:07 Nobody was screencapping their Boolean collection and sharing it on Twitter. 0:12:13 Well, depending on what Facebook group you’re in. I think, again, there is a past precedent, 0:12:17 but you’re right. There’s a functional aspect of hedging against things that may go badly 0:12:22 wrong in the future, and then there’s a cognitive, emotional, socio-political to your point, Lauren. 0:12:25 Crypto is fascinating because it’s a subculture that has a totally different relationship with 0:12:30 transparency and anonymity and all of these different dimensions and just changing the 0:12:36 form factor of value from a dollar to some sort of token has freed an entire segment 0:12:39 of people to talk about it and have a different relationship with it. It’s one of the most 0:12:45 entertaining parts of social is what’s happening in crypto. Again, the concept of crypto versus 0:12:49 concept of money created a psychological shift in some people that then made the norms around 0:12:50 it much different. 0:12:54 So, you’re saying there are these subgroups, little niche categories, but it’s difficult 0:12:57 to build a business around them until they reach that tipping point? 0:13:01 I actually think you can build great businesses around some of these subcultures. There’s 0:13:04 a lot of these quote-unquote niche, but they can be massive niches, right? Like Wall Street 0:13:06 Bets has like 800,000 members. 0:13:10 People always want to talk about how they’re making money. It’s having debt that’s always 0:13:15 been private. So, the hardest problem in terms of social and money is having people talk 0:13:20 about their debt, which is why people don’t want to have a relationship with their lender 0:13:23 or talk in too much detail about certainly their credit card debt because they feel bad 0:13:28 about it. They feel like it reflects poorly on them. Now, it’s just checking Insta right 0:13:35 now and there’s 675,000 posts for #debtfreejourney. This has become a public conversation and a 0:13:39 lot of it is happening on Instagram and I think that’s the hardest problem, the hardest 0:13:43 segment to actually unlock. So, I actually think we’re pretty far ahead right now. 0:13:47 Well, and to your point, Wall Street Bets is not just about, “I made a bunch of money. 0:13:50 It’s also people posting, “Shit, I just lost a bunch of money.” 0:13:54 Though, the subtext is, “Look at all the swagger I’ve got. I can lose all this money and it’s 0:13:55 all good.” 0:13:56 Yeah. 0:13:57 Not always. 0:14:03 Fair. Where this gets a lot more interesting is looking beyond social media and social 0:14:08 networks and starting to talk about how this stuff drives an emergence that are products 0:14:12 and how products are designed. Lauren and I both talked about this, which is the concept 0:14:17 that as a product, you can create value in a functional way, which is, “Hey, my credit 0:14:23 score was X and now it’s X plus Y.” You can create value in a cognitive way, which is, 0:14:27 “Hey, I now better understand my credit score,” or you can create value in an emotional way, 0:14:32 which is, “I feel better about my credit score and my financial situation.” Historically, 0:14:36 most products have been designed with a complete focus on the functional and now we’re seeing 0:14:40 the next generation of not just fintech but consumer products think more about cognitive 0:14:41 and emotional. 0:14:46 There’s also more offline examples than we’re all typically aware of. So, one I learned 0:14:52 about over the last few years is called RASCAS, which is Rotating Savings and Credit Associations, 0:14:56 which are these offline communities that are managed in mostly immigrant communities managed 0:15:01 by an individual where everyone contributes, let’s say, $1,000 a month. And then each month, 0:15:06 if there are 10 members, one member receives $10,000. And typically, these are folks in 0:15:11 your community. You might meet them at church and it’s really hard to save $10,000. It’s 0:15:15 a lot easier to contribute $1,000 a month. And then when you receive the lump sum, there’s 0:15:20 always some big thing you want to do with the $10,000. There’s tons of examples of these 0:15:25 micro communities has not yet successfully been brought online. So, not everything is 0:15:29 sort of starting from zero when it comes to digital products. 0:15:33 And those ones are interesting because there’s a different iteration of those in every single 0:15:37 culture and every single country. And it is this robust offline behavior. And the question 0:15:42 is how do you bring it online and how do you bring it online in a way that is culturally 0:15:47 specific enough that it reflects the norms of that culture but also in a way that’s scalable? 0:15:52 So there’s the example of Rosca’s in a lot of communities all over the world. And then 0:15:57 I think if you look at the flip of that, what’s the extreme San Francisco version, it’s a 0:16:01 lot of people here do things like invest in restaurants. Why would you ever invest in 0:16:05 a restaurant? You’re probably not going to get your money back. There’s no liquidity. 0:16:09 At best, it’s sort of like cool to tell your friends maybe that you’re an investor there. 0:16:12 Maybe you skip a sort of reservation. It goes to emotional versus transactional. 0:16:13 Totally. 0:16:15 It’s not a transactional piece. It’s the emotion of the finance. 0:16:21 Exactly. But the proof point of actually investing in something versus just frequenting something 0:16:26 is very different. People want to participate. They want to express these preferences and 0:16:27 money is the strongest way to do so. 0:16:31 Well, and another example of something that’s inherently social. You’re investing in something 0:16:34 that then has a built-in social network in the investment. 0:16:38 There’s also this amazing trend around fractional ownership. So there’s a category of companies 0:16:44 that includes Rally Road and Otis and Mythic. They will take some asset, be it a classic 0:16:51 car, be it some culturally significant item, be it a magic card, be it a case of wine. 0:16:53 There’s a different version of all of this. And they will take that asset and they’ll 0:16:59 functionally securitize it. And then you, as a user, can purchase shares of that asset. 0:17:03 And then in some cases, depending on the kind of investment that you make, you get certain 0:17:07 levels of access or swag or other things that are associated with ownership. 0:17:13 So on the one hand, you actually have a piece of equity, a share in something that is theoretically 0:17:17 valuable because it’s actually a hard asset that has value. On the other side, you have 0:17:23 the status of owner within this piece that is of value in a more emotional sense, which 0:17:28 you’re investing in cultural pieces, which may or may not be a good financial investment 0:17:32 but from emotional cognitive side can be really, really rewarding. So I think that’s another 0:17:35 version where this idea of social plus fintech is taking off. 0:17:38 I love this example. You know, we’ve talked about this internally as perhaps a future 0:17:43 of museums and I think that vision is really interesting and it’s a much more emotional 0:17:44 than rational. 0:17:48 What’s the potential there? Are there areas where you see opportunity in some of these 0:17:50 niche groups? 0:17:54 I think social and finance is like the Holy Grail, right? The social version of most products 0:17:59 is the best version of most products. Engagement is higher, retention is higher, customer acquisition 0:18:03 costs go down. All these things that most consumer fintech companies struggle with are 0:18:07 solved by building the social product. It’s the extent that you can get something that 0:18:12 threads that needle between social and fintech. It’s amazing. It’s magical. It’s this incredible 0:18:16 thing that happens when it actually happens. It’s really hard to do, but when it does happen, 0:18:17 it’s phenomenal. 0:18:21 I think the biggest opportunity comes from finding the emergent behavior within niche 0:18:27 groups at the social level, at the community level, and then figuring out how fintech or 0:18:32 transactional layers into or on top of that. The saying is every company is eventually going 0:18:36 to become a fintech company, and I think that is probably the direction in which it goes 0:18:41 and which you have weird social behavior that has some ability to layer transaction inside 0:18:44 of it, and then that’s how social plus money takes off. 0:18:49 In my mind, the most direct way to start seeing this play out is just having more fintech products 0:18:54 address emotional needs as well as functional and cognitive needs. There’s some fintech products 0:19:00 like Joy, an app where you rate every transaction on how it made you feel. The goal of the game, 0:19:03 of course, is to only spend money on things that make you feel good, which is interesting. 0:19:07 I think that’s a product that’s completely designed around a set of emotional needs with 0:19:12 perhaps a set of functional outcomes as a happy side effect. I think there’s probably 0:19:15 a middle ground where a lot of products that are focused on helping you buy your first 0:19:21 home or reduce your debt or invest in stocks can actually start to design for these emotional 0:19:25 needs when it comes to money. That’s how we actually start to see this achieve scale. 0:19:29 Are there companies right now that you see making strides in that direction? 0:19:33 I think an example of a company that’s really gotten this right is Credit Karma, and granted 0:19:38 I was at Credit Karma. But if you look at the tone of the emails, if you look at the 0:19:44 ads that are on TV, if you look at the way the product is positioned, it plays as much 0:19:50 to curiosity and taking some of the heaviness out of credit. I think that’s been a really 0:19:55 successful strategy for them. I think this is a company that’s gotten it right when it 0:19:59 comes to how you talk to your customer about these otherwise really heavy things. 0:20:03 As people share more, it becomes less intimidating. 0:20:07 Or if you can see yourself relative to other people, that’s the other way that Credit Karma 0:20:11 works. It’s like, I know where I stand relative to other people, and maybe it makes me stressed 0:20:14 or maybe it makes me feel more comfortable, but at least there’s some level of transparency. 0:20:19 Right. There’s some freedom in that transparency that perhaps is driving customer acquisition. 0:20:24 That’s right. In terms of the products that have not worked, I think the product category 0:20:29 that hasn’t really seen success is personal financial management tools. There’s two reasons. 0:20:34 The first is that there’s a very small number of people who are super excited about budgeting 0:20:38 and trying every budgeting app, which is why when a lot of these products launch, they 0:20:42 get great growth in their first 18 to 24 months. You can get a couple of million users who 0:20:47 are really engaged. That’s not actually representative of the wider market where most people hate 0:20:51 budgeting. It’s not just because it’s a pain to keep a budget. It’s because it’s mostly 0:20:57 bad news. I look at a lot of these PFM and budgeting apps like calorie counting apps. 0:21:01 Just mostly makes you feel bad, and it’s easier to uninstall the app than it is to actually 0:21:05 stick with the budget or the diet. I think that’s a great example of a product category 0:21:10 that despite the fact that there’s real functional value there, it hasn’t taken off because it 0:21:14 didn’t address the emotional challenge that the consumer is facing. 0:21:19 I think another category that has not worked super well is ones that are designed to be 0:21:24 social but only transactional. I think there’s been this long history of people trying to 0:21:29 get people to be more public about what their portfolio is, and then other people can invest 0:21:35 based off of that portfolio, and it benefits the portfolio manager who’s sharing it. That’s 0:21:41 one where it is almost purely transactional relationship with purely financial incentives. 0:21:44 I think there’s been a lot of attempts at that. As far as I’m aware, none of them have 0:21:48 really taken off, but I think that’s another category where when you just stick within one 0:21:53 kind of bucket just within the transactional side, it’s really hard to layer social into 0:21:54 that. 0:21:58 So if we agree that social meets Vintec is really hard to do, but I’ve also heard you 0:22:03 both say it is the holy grail. Why is that? What makes it so powerful if we can get there? 0:22:07 I think first of all, if you just look at it, the most narrow lens is just from a core 0:22:13 business perspective. Stickiness, cross-out, acquisition, all of these things that are 0:22:18 super hard problems for most Vintec companies become dramatically easier if there’s a strong 0:22:24 social layer. So that’s the most narrow lens. And then I think the broadest lens is just 0:22:30 ending this dynamic where we’re alone together. Everyone’s in a dark room feeling bad about 0:22:34 their money with everyone else in that same dark room, and I think if you can turn the 0:22:40 light on, then all of a sudden, it is an opportunity to uplift everyone a little bit and normalize 0:22:44 the situation that folks are in. I think that with, especially we talked about both the 0:22:50 good side of Insta, but Insta is also a very public place to talk about your spending, 0:22:55 and I think that that drives a perverse set of expectations around what’s normal, and 0:22:56 we should try to change that. 0:23:00 Yes. There’s multiple levels to why social plus money is this holy grail. Another lens 0:23:07 is it broadens the solution space within which, as a founder, you can operate because now you’re 0:23:12 not just on the transactional level or you’re not just on the emotional and cognitive level, 0:23:17 you’re now across all three. If you actually have financial or social plus Vintec or whatever 0:23:23 it is, so you can now design things that have some combination of those three levers, which, 0:23:26 if you’re competing against a purely transactional thing or you’re competing against a purely 0:23:31 emotional thing, you now just have more factors that you can operate across. The flip side 0:23:37 to that is it’s combinatorially more complicated to do, but if you do do it, you’re in a class 0:23:38 of your own. 0:23:40 Thank you for joining us on the A16Z podcast. 0:23:41 Thanks, Lauren. 0:23:42 Thanks, Darcy. 0:23:43 Thanks, Anish. 0:23:43 Cheers. 0:23:53 [BLANK_AUDIO]
The last financial crisis prompted many consumers to reassess their banking expectations—none more so than millennials and Gen-Z-ers. While revealing one’s financial information was once considered taboo, now consumers are more apt than ever to openly discuss money and debt on online platforms. It’s a trend that’s evident on both ends of the spectrum, whether that’s people divulging their crushing levels of debt on Twitter and Instagram (#debtfreejourney), bragging about their credit scores, or bemoaning their latest stock trades. And the repercussions extend far beyond social media.
In this conversation with fintech general partner Anish Acharya (a former product manager at Credit Karma), consumer tech partner D’Arcy Coolican (a social+ fintech founder himself), and host Lauren Murrow, we discuss why the “holy grail” of social plus fintech is both so challenging and, potentially, so rewarding. We cover which products and companies are taking advantage of it (some in rather novel ways), how it’s being driven by various subcultures online, and why this shift is happening now.
Jack Kornfield — How to Find Peace Amidst COVID-19, How to Cultivate Calm in Chaos | Brought to you by FreshBooks and 99designs.
“We have the opportunity, even in difficult times, to let our spirit shine.” — Jack Kornfield
Jack Kornfield (@JackKornfield) trained as a Buddhist monk in the monasteries of Thailand, India, and Burma, shortly thereafter becoming one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West. He has taught meditation internationally since 1974.
Jack has had a profound and direct impact on my life, and I’m thrilled to have him on the podcast once again.
Jack co-founded the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts, with fellow meditation teachers Sharon Salzberg and Joseph Goldstein and the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is a father, husband, and activist.
This episode is more of a personal therapy session for yours truly in some respects. You will notice that I sound anxious and unsure in this interview, and that is very much by design. I think it is unhelpful when people in the public eye hide the fact that they also struggle, and it puts them on this illusory pedestal that I think is ultimately self-defeating. Instead, I want to share with you that no matter how much Stoic philosophy I read, no matter how often I meditate, there are times when I struggle, and this week is one of them.
I also hope that you’ll listen to portions of this conversation multiple times. There are a number of exercises that Jack shares that I will certainly be listening to in the upcoming weeks.
Please enjoy.
This episode is brought to you by FreshBooks. I’ve been talking about FreshBooks—an all-in-one invoicing+payments+accounting solution—for years now. Many entrepreneurs, as well as the contractors and freelancers that I work with, use it all the time.
FreshBooks makes it super easy to track things like expenses, project time, and client info, and then merge it all into great-looking invoices. FreshBooks can save users up to 200 hours a year on accounting and bookkeeping tasks. Right now FreshBooks is offering my listeners a free 30-day trial, and no credit card is required. Go to FreshBooks.com/tim and enter “Tim Ferriss” in the “How did you hear about us?” section!
This podcast is also brought to you by 99designs, the global creative platform that makes it easy for designers and clients to work together to create designs they love. Its creative process has become the go-to solution for businesses, agencies, and individuals, and I have used it for years to help with display advertising and illustrations and to rapid prototype the cover for The Tao of Seneca. Whether your business needs a logo, website design, business card, or anything you can imagine, check out 99designs.
You can work with multiple designers at once to get a bunch of different ideas, or hire the perfect designer for your project based on their style and industry specialization. It’s simple to review concepts and leave feedback so you’ll end up with a design that you’re happy with. Click this link and get $20 off plus a $99 upgrade.
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378: Facebook Groups: Grow and Monetize a Community Around Something You Care About
Melissa Fassel Dunn has built a thriving – and profitable – online community serving residents in her small town.
The interesting part is that she didn’t start her Facebook group or website with the goal of making money.
She did so to solve a pain point she was experiencing finding information about services in her town of Milton, a suburb of Boston.
“I needed information about kindergarten, I needed information about a plumber, an electrician, and I felt like there wasn’t a go-to place for any of that.
“So, I thought, I’m going to start a group, I’m going to add some of my friends and we can exchange information with one another,” Melissa told me.
She started Milton Neighbors, a Facebook group for residents of Milton to share information and recommend local services.
That was in 2013, today the group has more than 11,000 members and is almost a 6-figure business.
Tune in to hear how Melissa built up her group, how she keeps people engaged, her monetization methods, and how you can replicate her model with a Facebook group of your own in just about any niche.