July 3, 2025 ⢠50 mins
On this episode of Butternomics, our host, Brandon Butler, sits down with Isaac Hayes III, the force behind Fanbase, a groundbreaking social media platform redefining creator monetization. Isaac opens up about his unique approach to raising capital through equity crowdfunding, his journey transitioning from entertainment to tech, and why building infrastructure is the key to securing the financial future of black creators.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So I say, fan base is going to allow a
musician to make more money than he can make in
the record industry. It's going to allow actor and actors
to make more money than they could do working for
a movie studio or a TV studio. It's going to
allow athletes to make more money they could playing for
a sports team. That's the disruption that flips it on
its head, because there's nothing in between you and whoever
has a smartphone and the ability to hit subscribe to
(00:23):
pay you directly.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Here, everybody, Welcome to another episode of butteron NOMICGS. I'm
your host, Brandon Butler, found the CEO of Butter atl
and today I got a special guest in the building
when he's not out here building. You know, huge apps
and huge tech companies and filling around with Aire just generally,
you know, just ravel rousing people sometimes because you know
what I'm saying, he knows how to get the people going.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Of course, the.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
One, the only mister Isaac has. Sir, how you doing today?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Man? I'm good man? What's up?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I was any better? I'd be you, brother, no the
other way around. Glad to see you up in here, man,
Thank you for having me man, hey, man, I appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Look, man, I'm sure people you know, think they know
or got some perspectives and all that stuff. But we
do something little bit different here at Better Nomics. Man,
what I like to do to start off is I
asked chat gpt to write a bio on my guests.
So I'm gonna read you the bio that chat gpt
wrote about you. I won't you tell me if it's on,
if it's awful, were looking like, if it's missing anything? Okay, okay.
(01:29):
All I put in was what do you know about
Isaac Hayes Third in Atlanta. That's all I gave it.
This is what it came back with. Isaac Hasey Third
is a music producer, voice, actor, and tech entrepreneur and
the founder and CEO of fan Base, a social media
platform focused on monization equity for creators, especially those from
underrepresented communities. He's a son of legendary soul musician Isaac Hayes,
(01:51):
and while he carries the way that that legacy, he's
carved out of distinctly modern path rooted in ownership and innovation.
Before launching fan Base, Hayes has a strong career in
the music and entertainment industry, producing tracks for artists like
Little Scrappy, Kiki Palmer, and Redman, and lending his voice
to shows like The Boondocks. Over time, he became increasingly
focused at the intersection of black culture and tech, realizing
(02:12):
that while black creators fuel global trends, they rarely benefit
from the platforms they build value for. That insight led
him to create fan Base, the hybrid of Instagram and Patriarmeriter.
Users can follow creators for free or subscribe for exclusive content.
The goal isn't just likes of views, but ownership. Hayes
raised millions to equity crowdfunding, making fan Base one of
the few black owned social platforms to secure that level
(02:34):
of public investment. He's outspoken about the need for black
culture to move from influence to infrastructure and to stop
being the engine and start owning the vehicle. He's also
deeply rooted in Atlanta, where fan Base is based, and
continues to be a vocal advocate for building tech and
media ecosystems that reflect and serve the communities driving culture forward. Wow,
(02:55):
that's what we were just talking about. That that's what I
got to say about.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Thank you, AI. I think that's pretty accurate. That's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I didn't know the Boon Dogs. Who's what you doing
on the Boon Dogs?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Man? I did one.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I did Aquatine. I did little stuff, though I did
I did big stuff on Aquatine. I never did a
recurring character on a lot of shows.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I used to watch.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I was a Brude Witch. Okay, oh yeah yeah, Demonic Sandwich.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Man, look at that, man.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And now you're hear building tech companies. Man, Man, we
get all that, man, but just tell people, like, what
made you actually pivoted that? After being in the music
and entertainment space for so long.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I had no plans on building a tech startup. Zero.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Moved to Atlanta when
I was three. I have always loved social media. I
was on Instagram in twenty eighteen and I saw this
kid go viral from Memphis, Tennessee and he was dancing
a Spider Man costume in a game stop to Aha
take on Me and he went viral.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
He was black. I saw him.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
A DM said hey, congrats young Memphis, and he hit
me back, was like, yo, are you a manager? Manage people?
I need a manager. Here's my number. I'll come to Atlanta.
I'm like, he's like seventeen. I was like no, but
I understood the urgency that he was trying to capitalize
on the momentum he had from going viral, and I
(04:15):
was like, Yo, we need an app where people can
follow people like Instagram, but subscribe to the very same
person like you would subscribe to Netflix, but make it
a social media platform. And that is what led me
to say, Okay, I think we need to build this,
but I have no I'm not from the tech business,
so I just started researching competitors first, like what else
(04:37):
is out there at the time, And the only two
companies I could find were Patreon founded in twenty thirteen,
which was just a website, and then OnlyFans, which was
just a website but it was highly pornographic. But there
was no mobile app that allowed you to actually mobilely
subscribe to someone like you would a game or like
Spotify or Apple Music.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, and I mean even when building that out, there
have been things that you all have done from a
fan base standpoint that like didn't even exist from a
feature like I think with the ability to subscribe and
stuff like that or things that you all help create essentially.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And in that purchase subscription like peer to peer didn't
exist before fan Base, And I know that sounds. I
like to talk about that because I want people, especially
black people, to know that your innovations are real. And
you may think that someone else in this entire planet
has the idea that you have, but in the entire
nine billion people on this planet, no one had never
(05:31):
built an app to say, hey, I want to easily
subscribe to another person the same way I scrip survived
to a video game or something like that. And then
Apple wouldn't let us build it at first, and I
was scared shitless because I had spent like two hundred
thousand dollars to start to build this app. They told
us some things that we could and couldn't do. We
followed their rules, and then we launched an MVP of
fan Base that allowed you to subscribe to a person
(05:51):
using Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
What do you remember most about that time, like before
it even got launched, right like, cause again, there's a
lot of people that don't come from the text. It's
like you said, you didn't come from and they don't
really understand what it really takes to build something like that,
especially from a money standpoint or just from Look like,
what do you remember most about those early days when
you all were just getting like working through the prototypes
and early iterations of the app.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I was so excited at the future of what this
is going to be, and I still am because people still,
I don't think understand what what fan base can do
or what where we are right now in the world
I was excited about. I'm just running numbers. I'm looking
at like I'm looking at platforms like, well, why are
these Why are these platforms not letting you see all
(06:35):
the people that want to see see the content you
want to see. So my point is like, if I'm
someone like you know, Beyonce, and I have a three
hundred and eleven million followers, why can't three hundred and
eleven million people see what she posts? And I was
just like, that's crazy, and I said, oh, I know
why because the moment that video got added to social media,
(06:58):
everybody became a television network. Essentially, there's a lot of
quiet things that social media platforms don't want people to know,
so they act like they don't exist what they do.
So to everybody out there, every single person has a
social media platform. You're a television network. So Beyonce has
three hundred and eleven million people that follow her on
social media, so that means that she has three times
(07:18):
the reach of the Super Bowl twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week, and super Bowl commercial costs eight
million dollars for a minute, So if someone wanted to
post a one minute video on Beyonce's page and reach
three hundred and eleven million people, she could charge twenty
four million dollars for every post that she posted.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
It never work again.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Then I went to look at her views and I
was like, wait, her videos only have like nine million views,
four million views, and thirteen million views and twenty seven
million views. It was never consistent, and I was like, oh,
they're doing that because then the brands would come directly
to Beyonce and never spend money running ads on Facebook
or Instagram. And so that's the part that I was
excited about, is the disruption because I see so much
(07:57):
about how black culture is always the oil and never
the well, the you know, the gas, but never the vehicle,
and we're indoctrinated to be excited about the few that
make it as opposed to the many that benefit from
the culture.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
And I was excited to be able to break that wall.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I want to break that wall down where black culture
gets compensated on an infrastructure level from the energy and
the creativity and the revenue it brings to all these businesses.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, no, I's doping, says, to the oil and not
the whale. Like, why do you think that is? I mean, again,
I've seen things because I was in the tech space
as well, and you know, I've talked to people about
even stuff as simple as just getting access to capital.
Why do you think it is that we only on
one side but not on the other side of that equation.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
It's intentional, it's done by designing.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Well first, I mean historically you got to think black
people did that, and then our businesses were burned and
destroyed and we were murdered. And let's keep it one hundred, like,
you know, they ran you out of your town. You know,
Tulta had oil wels and banks and telephone companies and
they burnt all that stuff down and bombed it. And
so that was the first, you know, and then you're
getting into that again more too. The Jim Crow South
(09:03):
where it was illegal. You couldn't do this, and we
didn't want you to do this, and moving were redlining
and stuff like that. And so now we've moved into
the area now where technology has kind of connected all
of us in a way that we have the ability
to elevate businesses and scale them. So I just think
it was done by design, and we got used to it.
(09:24):
We just kind of got beat down, like, oh, they'll
never let you know, here's the okay, and this is
something that's important that I have to say. My optimism
comes from what I saw my father do. So we
get used to saying, oh, like they'll never let no
black man be president, you know what I mean? Stuff
like that. So I remember when my father was going
(09:44):
to get the oscar. He was going around and meeting people.
He was nominated for an Academy Award and he could
potentially be the first black man to ever win an
Academy Award for music, and people around Memphis and around
were saying, thank gonna let no nigga win no oscar,
you know what I mean, Like that ain't to happen,
and he did it. And so a lot of times
I always think about that moment when it's like, oh, yeah,
(10:06):
they're not gonna let you do anything, It's like, well,
it's not about letting you do anything. It's also about
the conviction and the belief and the faith that you can,
and then the preparation and the effort and energy that
you put into it. The effort and energy that my
father put into creating music and being a great musician
and studying the craft. So I felt like if I
put that amount of energy into learning tech and understanding
(10:28):
it and the business of it, that I could break
down that wall.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Do you think a lot of that comes from again,
like watching him grow up. I've seen you talk about
how you manage your state. Now you've done things to
help make sure you're securing you know, the royalties and ownership,
Like you kind of learn that all that just watching
because I don't know, like was it necessarily teaching you
or were you just seeing it and kind of just
noticing how the game worked and saying, when I get
a chance to kind of play this game, like, let
me make sure I'm doing it the right way.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And that was the difference between why I didn't really
I didn't last very long in the music business.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I didn't last very long.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
The reason being is because I entered it with this
hesitation and the bias of already knowing that it was
a very cutthrow business. And I saw my father lose easily,
probably one hundred million dollars that he never saw that
our family never saw one, because he filed for bankruptcy
a year before I was born. But not because he
(11:20):
spent his money, but because the label he was signed to,
Sax Records, owed him about twelve million dollars in nineteen
seventy four, which is like fifty sixty million dollars today.
He took out a loan, He defaults about his loans,
So instead of garnishing your income stream, they took my
father's asset. So they took the writer the actual ownership
of his writer shares. And then at some point in
(11:42):
like the early eighties, they got auctioned off from like
fifty grand. The two white guys, there were only two
people that showed up to an auction. Those two individuals
wound up purchasing Isaac Hayes's rights, his songwriting rights royalties,
four years before Sample came out. So you got to
think all the nineties records that sampled Isaac's Tupac, Doctor
(12:05):
j Stoop Dogg, Biggie Bu Tank Clan. All these songs
over the last thirty five years have made about sixty
million dollars that our family never saw. And so coming
into the music business, I never wanted that. My publishing
was always I held on to it like if I
can't own my publishing, I'm not doing any deals to
cut people in on parts of that. And I didn't
last very long. So I started so learned about music licensing.
(12:29):
So music licensing is, oh, you want the permission to
use my song in this movie, here you go. I
get a checked, do that. And I just took my
entire catalog put it into this company. And then my
music started winding up on like you know, loving hip
hop and Real Housewives and NBA on TNT and stuff
like that. And I would just go to the mailbox
every quarter and get a check. But I was still
music adjacent. But it gave me the understanding of how
(12:50):
to navigate the music business without compromising ownership of what
I do.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
You definitely have a deep understanding of that. One thing
I love you to explain is this is something I
always even struggle with, is like can you explain publishing?
How does publishing work? Because I hear people talk about
it like only your publishing and all that stuff, I
feel like you can break it down in a way
that it's going to be very easy to other say.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, So publishing is basically a pizza. You cut it
in half. Half of it is publishing, the other half
is writing writer shares. The publishing side has all the
legal control to say who can and cannot use that music. Simultaneously,
whenever money comes to the publisher, they get paid by law,
(13:32):
they split that with the writer. So if one hundred
dollars comes in, whoever the company is pays the publisher
one hundred dollars, it's up for the publisher to pay
the writer the fifty dollars and they keep the other fifty.
So that's typically what happens. So in situations like that,
a lot of times publishing companies will come along and
purchase the rights for a length of time years for
(13:54):
the publishing that you're going to make off songs, and
give you an advance, not knowing whether you're going to
be in a amazing songwriter or a crappy songwriter. It's
an investment, but imagine I give you one hundred thousand
dollars for fifty percent of your publishing. Right, so now
it's four people before it's like, you know, get I
get the publishing, you get your writers.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
We're splitting that.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And now you go on to make sixty million dollars
writing songs over the next ten years. And I just
gave you one hundred thousand bucks. That's why it's like, oh,
you know what I'm saying. So it's these it's the
worst loan ever. If I get explained a publishing deal,
I get played a publishing deal like this to be terrible.
Let's say you had a pizza restaurant and you had
(14:36):
a million dollars worth of pre orders of pizza, right,
but you would only get paid over the course of
a year. I walk and you said, Brandon, I'll give
you the million dollars you're about to make off this
pizza restaurant in his first year, right now, so you
don't have to wait all way till twenty twenty six
to get your million dollars. Cool, you got to pay
me that million dollars back, but now every other pizza
restaurant you open for the next ten pizza restaurants, I
(14:57):
get fifty percent of the revenue.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Terrible deal. No, that's terrible, terrible deal.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And that's how these deals are actually working.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
That's how those deals work. They're terrible deals.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
But you got to think these are very, very creative people, talented,
and not the best financial situations. They want to get
out of hard times. So one hundred thousand dollars to
somebody is like, yo, I'm out, not knowing that you
just gave up twenty four million dollars over the next
ten years.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
So what's your perspective of while these companies are buying
up all these you know, these these artists of you know,
publishing and you know all their records and albums and
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Well, I mean two reasons people wanted to come and
buy my father's publishing from us, but I did not
do that. And you've seen a lot of other artists
start to sell their writer Actually still their writer's share
is not even their publishing because they' publishing hasn't even
reverted yet, which is a whole nother thing. But the
writer's side that I talk about, they're able to sell those,
and so I have mixed feelings about that. But they're
(16:07):
getting these large sums of money up front that before
fifteen twenty years ago it might not have been a
good idea. But now there's so many ways to take
large amounts of capital and invest it into things in
startups and stuff like that, you could take it. So
you've seen people like The Dream sell a portion of
his catalog, but then he might open up a whole
(16:27):
bunch of Popeyes Chicken franchises, so he can take that
money immediately, can do that, and he's still alive, so
he can still perform and write songs and do all
that kind of stuff. They're buying that catalog because streaming
has nowhere near peaked and the amount of revenue it's
ever going to make. So when you think about the
people on planet Earth that have a smartphone in their
hand that could have a music streaming service on it,
it's about six billion people, all right. So currently there's
(16:51):
probably about six hundred and seventy million people that have
music streaming services on their phone.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
So think about that.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
There's another you know, five billion people that could have
Spotify or Apple Music if they wanted to.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
So the amount of.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Money that's going to be made out streaming is going
to be trillions of dollars, So buying it now and
being able to hold it for the next thirty forty years,
it's a lot of wealth there. And then also you
got to remember because of streaming, streaming gave infinite revenue
to records that did not have that it didn't have before.
(17:23):
So even my father's category songs my father, So my
father wrote a song called hold On Upcoming by Sam
and Dave before streaming. The only way he would make
money off that is they played it on the radio
an oldie station, or somebody went into some old mom
and pop store and bought the forty five. Now it's streaming.
It's available globally worldwide, twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week. So now it's an infinite revenue cycle
(17:46):
that's there. So every song ever created has the opportunity
to make money. And also those songs have the ability
to go viral years later or become popular way after
the fact. So when you've seen records like sure Thing
like My Miguel that went viral maybe two years ago,
but that record came out like he wrote that record
like two thousand and eight, he made more money off
that record two years ago than he did when he
(18:06):
wrote it and they released it on an album. So
you got to think about all the songs that are
going to go viral that were written over the last
thirty forty years. So whoever owns a publishing on that
is sitting on a potential goal mine?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Oh okay, okay, So how does that then relate back
to creators and what you're doing now? Like you see
the same opportunities, you see the need for equity, but like,
how does all that stuff that you learned now roll
into what you're building with fan base?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So it was cool because when I got into the
tech space, I started asking questions about the business. First
first thing I did when I came with Families trademark
the name. The next thing I did is I incorporated
the company. I created two classes in stock voting and
non voting shares. This is all before I raised money
(18:48):
because I thought about again, as a black person, I
always have this like anxiety like somebody's gonna try to
steal my shit. So I trademarked the name. I remember
that Steve Jobs was a brilliant innovator, but he got
kicked out of Apple. I was like, how did that happen,
and that's because he had a board, and the board
had board seats and voting shares and all that kind
of stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I said, I don't want that.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And then I saw that Zuckerberg had done that with Facebook,
where they created two classes of stock and he had
the majority of the voting shares so he could never
get kicked out of the company. So I said, yeah,
I want that. And then I said, Okay, I need
to build. So now I have the ability to go
as far as I possibly can. And the only thing
that's really in my way at this point now is money.
Is how we're going to raise the money to be
able to do that. So when I look at content
(19:31):
creators who generate billions of views that don't get the
credit or the compensation that other creators who are usually
white get, because it's great business. And I explain this
all the time to people that get mad about the
inequity of black creators versus white creators, they should not
get mad at that, and they should not be mad
(19:52):
at the creators. So for every Charlie Demeilia or Addison
Ray or all these people that get famous that are
white on TikTok, and they get that dance from some
of you young black girl like Julia Harmon or whatever. Right,
you can't be mad at Charlie Demilion in those individuals
because that's what tiktoking needs to have to do. You
do the dance, I do the dance. You do the trend,
I do the trend.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
The problem is that these platforms are based on advertising,
and so again, as I always say, things presented or
sold by white people are typically deemed to be for
all people. Things presented by black people are deemed to
only be for black people. So if you're advertising something,
if you want to cast the widest net of people
that might buy your product, it be who's you to
(20:33):
have a white face, a young white girl selling dunkin
Donuts coffee, then a young black girl trying to sell
dunkin Donuts coffee. So therefore it be whose platforms like
TikTok and Instagram to have very very famous white creators
to be able to sell more ads. The inequity happens
that they're taking this content and then they're not getting
paid the brand deals. Black creators aren't getting paid the
brand deals and all that kind of stuff. So when
(20:54):
you move out of ad revenue and that bias that exists,
and you go straight to talent and support and subscriptions
and it's like, okay, you can subscribe to support me
in the content that I create for whatever I do,
I don't care if I'm doing makeup, I'm dancing, telling jokes, singing,
whatever it is, gardening, it doesn't matter. So now we
have a level playing field where people can scale businesses
(21:14):
through subscription and not have to worry about those games
and get played on social media platforms with advertising.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, I mean coming from the advertising space, that's what
you call general market versus multicultural. And it's like super
weird because yeah, if you're essentially a cis white male, right, like,
you're considered general market, right, and that means you can
advertise to anybody. But if you're a woman, if you
have any kind of color, all of a sudden, you
get relegated like the multicultural correct, and you're only for
whatever reason considered it can talk like that specific audience
(21:42):
of people.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
And it's always weird because when you think about the
way that even way culture looks like like multiculture, like
what is multicultural? Like culture is everybody there's all kinds
of people in it. So this idea that if you
look a certain way, you can only like you only
get to brief from a Black History Month and Sinko
to Mayo. But then you know, if you're not you
can get it for anything. That's however, size and industry
has worked for a long time, so now they're trying
to flip it on our head and say, no, there's
(22:03):
like general market is multicultural. But to your point, that's
why those ad dollars go that.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Direction exactly, And that's that's very frustrating because now you
have a world of creators that are breaking their next
to try to create all these views and doing things
that are inauthentic to who they really want to be.
So you got to act, pose five dance videos a day,
you know all that, and that's not even really what
I want to do. I'm just doing this so hopefully
I'll get a brand deal and make some money. Yeah,
As opposed to when you see the success of streamers
(22:31):
that are doing things like on Twitch like Kasanat where
he just gets to authentically be himself and make more
money without having to actually dance, sing or whatever. He
just gets to be himself and then people support him.
And what I love about the mistake that I think
people are making is that you think that subscriptions are
all about content, but it's about support. Kystannot doesn't provide
(22:54):
any content exclusively. His subscribers just come because they want
to support him, right twitch, So he's not even he
hadn't even gone the exclusive role yet. So even people
are detached from the fact that people will support you
and pay for content. You just don't know it. Humans
are transactional. We're not stingy for every reason. I don't
know why people think that humans will just have money
(23:15):
and just hoard it. We will openly give money to
a multitude of things, things that we care about, want
to support, or whatever. So that route opens up the
door for the average individual to make more money being
a content creator than having a nine to five job.
I know people with millions and millions of followers on
social media that are broke, right, But I tell people, imagine,
(23:36):
out of a planet of six billion people, if you
can find five thousand people to pay you two dollars
and fifty cents a month, right, that's twelve thousand, five
hundred dollars a month. That's one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year. That's more than ninety seven percent of
Americans make.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Meanwhile, that means you could just that means you can
make more. You don't have to go work for nobody.
You literally could just get up every day, be yourself
and make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And that's the tipping that.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
That's not We're not even talking about really famous people
or people with extreme talent that people are willing to
pay to see people perform, like Beyonce or athletes like
Anthony Edwards and stuff like that. We haven't even gotten
to that point. And now you're getting to people where
I can make hundreds of millions or not billions of
dollars with subscriptions, more than what the industries that exist
(24:20):
pay me. So I say, fan base is going to
allow a musician to make more money than he can
make in the record industry. It's going to allow actor
and actors to make more money than they could do
working for a movie studio or a TV studio. It's
going to allow athlete to make more money they could
playing for a sports team. That's the disruption that flips
it on its head because there's nothing in between you
(24:40):
and whoever has a smartphone and the ability to hit
subscribe to pay you directly. And that's the most disruptive
thing about fan base. And the reason why none of
these other apps have even begun to do that is
because they are the seismic giant tankers of advertisment that
can't turn on a dime. Ninety seven point five percent
of Facebook's revenues through advertising. They can't go to subscription,
(25:02):
they can't, they can't even begin to stop. The company
runs off of advertising, and they double and triple down
on the fact that there is advertising. And so for me,
I'm just a little speed bowl in the water just
to say subscriptions, tipping, you know, and get to do that,
and it gives us an opportunity to kind of lead
that market more so than anybody else. While these other platforms,
while they dabble, they don't add it. They'll put it
(25:22):
over there and the side to see if they can,
but they can't make that their bread and butter.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
No pun intended, No again.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I mean you look at these platforms like a good
friend of mine sets even from an influencer standpoint, like
look at the ones that generate the most AD revenue,
because those are the ones that have the revenue. And
they said, if Facebook's pulling in that much money from
ads or I would tell people like, look, if it's free,
you're the product in some capacity, right, And so you've
got to realize that's how they're using these tools. Like
from a fan based standpoint, how do you get people
(25:48):
to really understand the value proposition and see like, look,
you can go over here and do stuff and try
to wait for these creative reward programs to kick in,
or you can actually start talking to your audience and
get subscriptions.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
That's a layered question.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
You get asked that question, how do you do that
as a white founder with capital, or how do you
do that as a black founder, first time founder that
doesn't have VC dollars and that way, So number one,
convinced people that you have the ability to build a
product that's comparable to an Instagram or Facebook as a
(26:21):
black guy coming from the music business.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
That's the first thing you gotta do.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
You got to win the trust of people, and then
you have to win the trust of people enough for
them to invest in you to do that. So I
think the first thing that I had to do was
build something and validate it in a way that no
one could tell me no. So what I don't want
to do is and most of what I know about
tech or my perspective of tech, comes from being in
(26:45):
a music business. So you don't ever want anybody to
tell you no. So if you walk into an interview
and no one can kind of throw something at you
that you don't know already, then do that. So one
of the first things that I did after one of
the first VC meetings that I took, was with a white,
white woman at a VC company, and I knew what
separated fan base from every other platform, because I recognize
(27:08):
that black culture is literally the economic engine of social
media when you demystify things. So I'm not a I
didn't go to college, But all I try to do
is take something and break it down to the simplest
form that I can comprehend, which is, if black culture
left all of these apps, these apps will be void
of the fun shit that keep people on them, that
(27:30):
entertain them, while we fill all the other stuff in
the middle. And so when black culture is the gas
and the app is the vehicle, then who's making all
the money. It's the person that owns the car who
owns the infrastructure, right, So I'm like, well, somebody's got
to build infrastructure. Somebody's got to build the infrastructure and
then bring those two worlds together. And then that scares
(27:53):
a lot of people because the people that benefit from
black culture and these vcs are looking at this guy like,
so wait a minute. So you're telling me that the
culture and the infrastructure gonna be owned by black people
and it's gonna circulate.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
It's a circular build.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
They're gonna own the app and they're gonna use that
and they're gonna make money. Like, oh shit, So don't
nobody want me to succeed? So, because that's why you've
never really seen anybody in this space succeed, because you've
got to be crazy to try to do this shit.
But the one thing that the white woman BC told
me in our first meeting, she goes, why would you
(28:30):
want to build something that's competing with Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
They're giants?
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And I calmly told her I can build anything that
Mark Zuckerberg can build, but Mark Zuckerberg can't build black people.
And that's the difference. And no one ever walks into
a room and says that to them, like, you're screwed.
If black people ever get together collectively and just invest
in infrastructures across every sector, I don't care.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
If it's a store like Target.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I don't care if it's an auto vehicle company like Tesla,
an app like fan Base, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You're cooked. Because black is the cool of the world.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
It is impossible to promote something is being cool without
the intenses of black people. It cannot be done. It
can be romantic, it can be sentimental, it can be adventurous.
All those can be done by white people.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
You got to have our dances. You got to have
somebody from our culture, you got to have our music.
You got to throw Montel jord in there. You need
something in there to validate the coolness of what you're doing.
And that is a trillion dollar value that black people
do not leverage against any kind of business nowhere near
(29:41):
the way that they need to to drive that value
back to our community.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
So then what's your vision. It is the end to
own the infrastructure for more. He's not just for the application,
but just in general from a cultural standpoint, Like I
was talking to Ryan Wilson about this, and it's like
he's like, yeah, you know, if you really think about it,
there's not a place in Atlanta that, if you need
it to, you know, rent out for a thousand people,
that anybody black owns, you know what I mean, Like,
we don't own these levels of infrastructure, but you see
(30:17):
us outside right, you see it's kicking it right. So
to your point, it's all about owning the infrastructure, starting
to own those, as I say, like the streets and
the roads and the highways that connect these different things.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yeah, that's the secret of Atlanta, right, that's the gift
of being in this city. I know you're you're heavily
an advocate of Atlanta just as much as I am.
And so I recognize that. And Atlanta produces a different
type of black person. And I know this sounds and
I know cause black people. I don't I don't say
this to offend anybody that's black.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
You just kind of be here to kind of get it.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, And so, but I always always do the litmus
test of people that are not from Atlanta to Atlanta
and when they get here, and I don't have to
say much, I'll just them somewhere, and then I watched
them go, what are all these black people doing here?
And I'm like, did you hear what you just said?
You're black and the fact that you are surrounded by
(31:11):
your own people makes you uncomfortable. Let you know that
you have lived a minority existence your entire life, and
the sheer sight of your own people existing and doing
normal things, hanging out, having drinks, running in the park,
you know whatever. Just operating businesses is foreign to you,
(31:31):
and that is every day in Atlanta, Georgia. So I say,
I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. I've never felt like
a minority in my entire life. In fact, I've never
made money through the acceptance permission of white culture my
entire life. I've never needed that because I was in
a music business. So it's like I went to high school,
then go to college. Once I got a music I
(31:53):
just I'm usually just making records and I'm selling my
music or whatever. But it wasn't a permission, It's not
I had to fight my way through anything. And then
starting businesses and looking at other people start businesses and
understanding how Atlanta was built off joint venture contracting and
all the things that Maynard Jackson did to set up
the way that black people can make money. It's just
a different type of black person. You don't get Ryan
(32:15):
Wilson's or La and Babyface saying we need to get
at a La Mooe Atlanta and we're gonna build a
record company and make Face Records, which is probably the
biggest Black R and B label ever produced some of
the most iconic artists. Or Tyler Perry saying, Yo, let
me get up out of it, let me drive to Atlanta,
Georgia start doing plays and you know Will Packer coming
up from fam you to and doing Rainfall. You don't
(32:37):
get those type of people except here. And then factor
in the fact that layered into all this is a
political infrastructure that grants the permission and the opportunity to
scale your vision bigger than what you would be allowed to.
So it's like, oh, you want to build a recording studio, Okay,
in Cincinnati, No, you niggas can't have no recording studio.
(32:58):
You want to build a move stud You want to
build a movie student in La Tyler Perry, no, Negro,
you can't do that. But in Atlanta, the mayor is black,
so Hey, Mayor, I want to go build this movie
studio over here at this military base.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Can I buy that from you? Yeah? You can have
three hundred fifty acres for thirty five million dollars. Done deal.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Now, it's the largest movie study the entire country owned
by a black man. That would never happen unless there
was a black mayor, because that land would have been
sold to some white guy to build his movie studio.
So that is the point and purpose of why I
talk so much about Atlanta, because there's this relationship, and
it is something that we take for granted, is the
fact that none of this works without political power. None
of this works without black mayors. When I was gonna
(33:33):
say fan base, I would have not made fair. I
would never built fan base in any other city again,
which is why I say black Plane is the last
time we ever been this close. That was two thousand.
It's twenty twenty five between now and then. You and
I know that there are tens of thousands of black
people that have way more money than I do and
are way smarter than I am, but no one builting up.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So there's something missing, right because it could be done.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So what is the what is that you know, like,
what is that that recipe that creates the environment for
something like this to grow? And I say that it's Atlanta.
You got to want to be here. You got to
have the courage and the guts and be like, man,
f these people. Man, we're about to do our own thing.
To be able to do that, and so that that
energy is why fan Base was important. That was the
(34:20):
challenge in saying, how do I get people to come
to a platform and do that? Well, First I have
to gain their trust and I feel like I've gained
their trust. Now I have to execute. But again, I've
been raising money a lot differently than most of these
other guys. I had to do it three ninety nine
at a time, not here's forty million dollars and go
build your app.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Yeah, And I was just about to ask about that.
I guess I have to school. I am an investor
in fan Base. That was in the very first round,
I believe it was. But like, what's that process been like?
Because to your point, these guys can scribble out an
idea in the back of a napin in a coffee
shop and get twenty thirty million dollars, right, and then
if it doesn't work out, Everybody's like, oh, you know,
it's too much. You know, it is what it It
is like you've gone to start e ginerute, you've had
(35:02):
one of the biggest campaigns, or like, how much are
'all at right now?
Speaker 1 (35:04):
So so I say this too, we're at about twelve million,
but collectively, over four rounds of equity crowdfunding, I raised
twenty two million dollars and then we close around I
raised twenty seven million dollars.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Again, this is history.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
None of this stuff ever gets reported, like I'm the
first black man to ever raise twenty seven million dollars
in equity crowdfunding for anything. Nobody's talking about that I
invented in that purchase, peer to peer subscription, that Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat,
all these platforms are using now to try to put subscriptions.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
No one talks about that.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
So and on purpose, because again it's like, we can't
let the world know that this innovation is coming from
black people. And I say, because I want people to know,
you ain't got to be a rocket scientist to invent
some cool shit. So we've raised that amount of money
and it was it was a blessing but it also
became a passion of mine because once I got introduced
to equity crowdfunding, it also opened up the idea that
(35:58):
I can make you rich. So typically when all these
startups happen, it's a group of small you know, ten
to fifteen people get together raise the million two three
million to start their company. That company scales, exits, and
then those people wind up making thirty forty fifty, one
hundred million and a billion dollars off their initial investment.
What I love about equity crowdfunding is that it allows
(36:19):
anybody to invest in a company and see a return
at limited risk because the minimums to invest are not
big two hundred and fifty dollars three ninety nine. Now
you can put large amounts of money. We have large investors.
But the ability to say I could put two hundred
and fifty bucks into a startup and potentially turn that
two hundred and fifty dollars into two hundred fifty thousand
dollars or half a million dollars or a million dollars.
(36:43):
You have better odds at investing in startups that way
than playing the lottery or gambling in the long run.
But again and so and the rules which were in
place before the Jobs Act, which spawned equity crowdfunding, which
was a regulation that only allow out rich people, certified
investors credited to be able to invest in early stage startups.
(37:06):
Then yeah, so then all the white people got to
invest in Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dell, Facebook, you know Uber.
I always talking about Aoron Michaels. I'm gonna meet oorrom
Michaels one day because I probably said his name about
ten thousand times in the last five years. But orm
Michaels was the smallest investor in Uber ced round whereas
half a million dollars in twenty ten. To get started,
(37:27):
Ormichael put five thousand dollars into Uber. Now I'm not
counting everybody's pocket I know you got five thousand dollars. Man,
I got five thousand dollars even I didn't me you
and add the people could get five hundred dollars a piece
and put five thousand dollars in Uber in two thousand
and nineteen, nine years later, but Uber went public that
five thousand dollars was worth twenty four million dollars.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah, that's a flip exactly. It's a flip.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
It's like, oh my god, right, But again, no one
knew if Uber was going to fail or succeed, but
just the opportunity to try. But my point is they
can get Uber, but you can only go gamble at
the lottery and in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Well even that's the point that always annoys me when
I see people talk about that stuff, like, you know,
if you would have invested four thousand dollars in Netflix,
It's like yeah, but also you leave another party. You
had to be a credit investor, you had to get
an opportunity to invest. And the kids getting these deals like,
they let who they want to get in, So to
your point, you're actually letting people get in on the
ground floor of a deal as well.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Right, And I have introduced many people into equity CRAWDNK.
I referred probably five or six companies to raise capital.
But what I loved about technology is the fact that
the scale potential of a social media platform can get
into the hundreds of billions of dollars. When I'm looking
at Facebook as a market cap of one point five
trillion dollars, and I'm not saying fan base will be Facebook,
but you know, expair company byte dances worth three hundred
(38:44):
billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
I'm like, man, that's a huge flip, right.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
So I'm like, if Byite Dance can be worth three
hundred billion, I know that I could probably give fan
Base to one hundred billion. And when I thought about that,
I'm like, my first valuation was twenty million dollars for
fan Base when I raise. So if you invested in
fan Base that earned that first round, that means whatever
you invested when fan Base gets to one hundred billion,
(39:09):
because I'm gonna claim it, whatever you put in will
have that same five thousand extra turn that on Michael's had.
So if you put two hundred and fifty dollars into
fan Base in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and fan
Base reaches one hundred billion dollar valuation and somebody either
acquires us or I go public, that two hundred and
fifty dollars be worth one point twenty five million. Now,
that for black people is the largest distribution of wealth
(39:30):
to black people in the history of the country ever.
Bob Johnson made the most millionaires ever when he sold
bet I want to obliterate that record because now we
can take that wealth and acquire other things and build things.
Not much target is worth and gets how much Target's
worth probably what two hundred billion dollars, No, forty.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
That's not a lot, it's billions, but it's not yet.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
So imagine being able to say, Okay, well, a whole
bunch of people get together and black people, let's buy
Target and make it our own black Target.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
You know what I'm saying, Well, that's the get you know.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Again, like and even in the state like Atlanta, right, Like,
that's what I tell people is like when you heard
things like the PayPal mafia and all this stuff, right, Like,
that's where this stuff comes from. Is people get on,
they get it, and you know, getting these companies. These
companies go public, they get their windfall from it, and
it's like you know what, yeah, now you know, hey, yeah,
you go kick in fifty grande hundred grand. I'm gonn
kick in fifty hundred grand and go do this thing.
(40:21):
Like you know, even when Mailchimp got sold a couple
of years ago, like in Atlanta, I said, it's great
that it got sold, but the problem is it didn't
create this influx of millionaires in Atlanta because again, when
that was like a couple billion dollars, it got sold
for you should have been at least ten twenty millionaires
that came out of that, and it was a very
small amount, you know, because it was privately held. Nobody invested.
(40:41):
And but again, you think about these companies that happening
on Silicon vallec I talk about all the time. I
have a buddy of mine, his wife or to Airbnb
when they went public, she was in customer service and
she made over a million dollars just because she was there.
She was like a customer service manager, you know what
I'm saying, Like, imagine if that happens at scale, and
now all of a sudden, you've got one hundred two
(41:02):
hundred one thousand new black millionaires running around.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
There's twenty two thousand investors in fan Mase majority are black.
So imagine you have twenty two thousand men like Bruh.
And I guarantee you the next time I build something,
y'all put your money into that one too, Like what
we're doing next, Let's go or let's go. Because my
point is it gives us the ability to buy these
infrastructures and scale. And that's the thing that's like, it's
just crazy to me that not being included in these
(41:25):
deal flows and then being able to scale those companies.
Like you said, Mailchimp, I mean that is again a
small group of people being able to invest and then
and then that same small group of people get to
take that money and do it over and over and
over again, and none of that money goes to black people.
And we got to start thinking like that. But the
problem is that outside of Atlanta, you are taught that
(41:46):
you have to infiltrate this system to gain wealth through that,
and that is not necessarily the case. And especially now
with technology, we're all connected, so we could scale. We
could take black people, could take any business they wanted
to and turn it into a billion dollar business overnight
by will.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
We literally could do that.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
The problem, I think is that we don't activate on
the ability to do that because we don't have the
infrastructure to do it. We're not connected in a way
that we can do it, which is another reason why
I think which makes fan Base an extremely important company,
because now you're taking technology that allows people to build community,
so when people can have these conversations and circulate that
information and do that just by people using social media
(42:29):
on a regular level to be able to scale, So
the equity crowdfunding route. And that's something else that I
wanted to talk about too, is when you were just
talking about those companies though that exit. Here's the difference
though too. I've learned a lot from watching tech companies
and coming from the music business, because again I understand publishing.
(42:49):
I know percentages. I would ask anybody to go look
at those companies that do raise that money and see
how much equity those people give up in their companies.
So when they take money from venture capital five percent
at the time, chunk here And the reason why I
spent two hundred thousand dollars in my own money to
build fan base, and I advanced myself that money from
the publishing that I was making from licensing my music
(43:13):
because I didn't sell my publishing, so I had the
money to do that probably save me twenty percent of
the company that I would have had to give up
if I want to give start out saying hm, and
then I would have had to have a board probably,
and then let's say and then so then the board
thing comes in and says, okay, Ike, so fan base
is worth now one hundred and sixty million dollars. Well,
I would almost guarantee you that if fan Base had
(43:34):
a board and it was other people on the board
and they were like, Ike, sell fan Base right now,
one hundred and sixty million dollars. Come on, man, you
did great. It's great. You'll be able to say you're
a tech founder. You know, I might walk over with
twenty thirty million dollars walk around at Land of the
rest of my life like, yeah, I'm a tech guy.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
I'm newslash, y'all. I'm not in it for that. I'm
in it.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
I want I'm trying to f it up, like I'm
trying to run the bag so far up that everybody
eats in a way that's a lot more powerful. And
so boards would do that. They'll tell you that because
they don't want you to get your vision all the
way to the top. They're like, if he keeps going this,
Negro is gonna be as rich as Elon Musk.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Yeah, he's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
And there's never been anybody that's as rich as Elon Musker,
Mark Zucker.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
We never had what I call a super nigga. I
you know, I know, I know.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Excuse me, my language, Excuse me, I'm being canned and
funny but the amount of wealth that you could throw
away if you wanted to, that could change the direction
of an election.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
So you know when Bloomberg ran for president, he spent
a billion dollars on his campaign and lost. He even
make it close. Imagine being able to blow a billion
dollars as a black person. But I said, I'm not.
But I'm not gonna blow. I'm not gonna blow a
billion dollar. I'm gonna take a billion dollars in fund
five thousand new black owned businesses, but only in Atlanta, Georgia,
because you got to move here, number all. You got
(44:57):
to live here to be able to do it, because
I got to make sure that Atlanta stays black, and
we got to get a black.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Governor and all that.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
It's all, all of this is done intentionally, in my opinion,
or not not even my opinion. In fact, by me,
I'm intentional about this because I understand that for this
to continue to grow, we need black political leadership, We
need more black people in Atlanta. Atlanta's not full. Don't
fall for the bullshit, and we need to be able
to scale those businesses. But those founders that have lost
(45:23):
so much equity in their company by doing the VC
route and equity crowdfunding. I've been able to maintain and
keep that equity, so they hate that too. So not
only have you been able to raise twenty two million dollars,
you haven't had to give up eighty percent of your
company to get it. Right, It's like, ah, so now
it's just a numbers game for me. So now fan Base,
I say, the apps are the artists, the vcs are
(45:46):
the record companies, and the app store charts are the
billboard charts. I'm an independent artist. As an app I've
raised twenty two million dollars selling stock out the truck
of my car. Right I I'm not signed to deaf
Jam or I'm not with A sixteen Z and all
these other companies. I'm out here start engine it the
indie label. So now all I gotta do is make
(46:08):
fan Base a hit. And so when fan Base is
sitting up at the top of the app store charts,
my phone's gonna ring. It's We're like, hey, we want
to invest in fan Base. How much do you want?
Give me one hundred million at a billion dollar evaluation.
So I'll sell ten percent of company. And that's how
I've set this whole thing up to say that not
(46:28):
only can I scale the company, I can scale it
in a way that gives me enough to raise capital,
really be disruptive, but maintain control, equity ownership, and be
able to do the things that I do. And that's
why equity crowdfunding is such an important thing for all entrepreneurs.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
That's any business.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
You keep control of your company, you constructure the way
you can, you can scale your business. You don't have
to get involved in all the because you know, we know,
I don't know how many entrepreneurs that I know that
are taking venture capital and gotten kicked out of their companies.
You know, they have forced out or whatever, the board
fires them or whatever. They can't say I met. I
met a group of I met these I'm not going
(47:05):
to say who they are, but I met a group
of girls over the weekend, two black entrepreneurs that have
a business, and I said, oh, y'all need to raise
some money for equity crowdfunding. And they go, yeah, we
took some institutional capital and they're not allowing us to
do it. See that's already a problem, and you need
the money. They're slowing down the ability for you to
scale your business because somebody else is allowing you to
tell you what you can do with your business. See
(47:27):
that's what the music, see all that stuff, my dad.
I don't want nobody to be able to tell me nothing.
If I can't have control, I don't want to be
a part of it. And so that's the challenge in scaling,
you know, fan base. But we're doing a good job
and now we've gotten some Now because of this large
round that we're about to close, I've been able to
bring on some really cool people that allow me to
really focus and actually scale the company, because again, you
(47:48):
just got to hire people that know way more than you.
And now I've got some. I've got some really good advisors.
I got two advisors by the name of Alvin Bowles
and Tie my tailor. They were both at Meta Album
was at me Up for like ten years. Tie was
at Meta and Snapchat and he ran TCHX for George Lucas.
So these guys are like the shit and they're my
(48:10):
advisors in how to navigate this tech ecosystem, specially by
way of even if we think about venturing into advertising
stuff like that. And then we have some great new
hires locally here in Atlanta, two black women, and they're
over product and product marketing. And so I'm just excited
because I'm building the team that I know I always
wanted to build, but I'm building it in a way
that still allows me to keep the culture of the
(48:32):
company but still be a tech company, but out of Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
No, Man, look, all the pieces are there. Again, you're
doing it in public, and like I said, Man, a
great product with a great team is positioned to go far.
So you know again, Man, congratulations and everything you've built
out before we get out of here. Mantel folks, how
can they support fan Base? How can they invest? How
can they support y'all? I give them all the things, man.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Start engine dot com slash fan bases where you can invest.
The minimum to invest it's three hundred nine dollars. You
get sixty shares of stock and fan base. Download fan Base,
create an account, join the community, follow me at ISACSE
three on all socials, but especially on fan base tap
in And if you don't know what fan base is,
it's just a free social media platform that allows people
(49:18):
to subscribe to you if they want to for content
that you can put behind paywalls, and it's photos, videos, audio, chat,
live stories, long form all there straight out Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
So well, I love it. Congratulations everything y'all. Get y'all
fan base up. Let's get it going. We got an
account on there too. We got to get back on
it some more. You know what I'm saying. We get busy,
but look we're about to take this taking this thing up, man,
absolutely and get this thing going. So with that said,
we out y'all. That's the pot. You've been listening to
button Nomics and I'm your host, Brandon Butler. Got comments, feedback?
(49:49):
Want to be on the show. Send us an email
today at hello at butteronomics dot com. Butter Nomics is
produced in Atlanta, Georgia at iHeartMedia by Casey Pegram, with
marketing support from Queen and Nikki. Music provided by mister Hanky.
If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button and never
missed an episode, and be sure to follow us on
all our social platforms at butter dot at l. Listen
(50:09):
to better Nomics on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
So I say, fan base is going to allow a
musician to make more money than he can make in
the record industry. It's going to allow actor and actors
to make more money than they could do working for
a movie studio or a TV studio. It's going to
allow athletes to make more money they could playing for
a sports team. That's the disruption that flips it on
its head, because there's nothing in between you and whoever
has a smartphone and the ability to hit subscribe to
(00:23):
pay you directly.
Speaker 2 (00:34):
Here, everybody, Welcome to another episode of butteron NOMICGS. I'm
your host, Brandon Butler, found the CEO of Butter atl
and today I got a special guest in the building
when he's not out here building. You know, huge apps
and huge tech companies and filling around with Aire just generally,
you know, just ravel rousing people sometimes because you know
what I'm saying, he knows how to get the people going.
Speaker 3 (00:54):
Of course, the.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
One, the only mister Isaac has. Sir, how you doing today?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
Man? I'm good man? What's up?
Speaker 2 (01:00):
I was any better? I'd be you, brother, no the
other way around. Glad to see you up in here, man,
Thank you for having me man, hey, man, I appreciate you.
Speaker 3 (01:07):
Now.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
Look, man, I'm sure people you know, think they know
or got some perspectives and all that stuff. But we
do something little bit different here at Better Nomics. Man,
what I like to do to start off is I
asked chat gpt to write a bio on my guests.
So I'm gonna read you the bio that chat gpt
wrote about you. I won't you tell me if it's on,
if it's awful, were looking like, if it's missing anything? Okay, okay.
(01:29):
All I put in was what do you know about
Isaac Hayes Third in Atlanta. That's all I gave it.
This is what it came back with. Isaac Hasey Third
is a music producer, voice, actor, and tech entrepreneur and
the founder and CEO of fan Base, a social media
platform focused on monization equity for creators, especially those from
underrepresented communities. He's a son of legendary soul musician Isaac Hayes,
(01:51):
and while he carries the way that that legacy, he's
carved out of distinctly modern path rooted in ownership and innovation.
Before launching fan Base, Hayes has a strong career in
the music and entertainment industry, producing tracks for artists like
Little Scrappy, Kiki Palmer, and Redman, and lending his voice
to shows like The Boondocks. Over time, he became increasingly
focused at the intersection of black culture and tech, realizing
(02:12):
that while black creators fuel global trends, they rarely benefit
from the platforms they build value for. That insight led
him to create fan Base, the hybrid of Instagram and Patriarmeriter.
Users can follow creators for free or subscribe for exclusive content.
The goal isn't just likes of views, but ownership. Hayes
raised millions to equity crowdfunding, making fan Base one of
the few black owned social platforms to secure that level
(02:34):
of public investment. He's outspoken about the need for black
culture to move from influence to infrastructure and to stop
being the engine and start owning the vehicle. He's also
deeply rooted in Atlanta, where fan Base is based, and
continues to be a vocal advocate for building tech and
media ecosystems that reflect and serve the communities driving culture forward. Wow,
(02:55):
that's what we were just talking about. That that's what I
got to say about.
Speaker 3 (02:58):
Thank you, AI. I think that's pretty accurate. That's pretty good.
That's pretty good.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
I didn't know the Boon Dogs. Who's what you doing
on the Boon Dogs?
Speaker 3 (03:04):
Man? I did one.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I did Aquatine. I did little stuff, though I did
I did big stuff on Aquatine. I never did a
recurring character on a lot of shows.
Speaker 2 (03:14):
I used to watch.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
I was a Brude Witch. Okay, oh yeah yeah, Demonic Sandwich.
Speaker 3 (03:19):
Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Man, look at that, man.
Speaker 3 (03:21):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:22):
And now you're hear building tech companies. Man, Man, we
get all that, man, but just tell people, like, what
made you actually pivoted that? After being in the music
and entertainment space for so long.
Speaker 3 (03:31):
I had no plans on building a tech startup. Zero.
Speaker 1 (03:36):
I was born in Memphis, Tennessee. Moved to Atlanta when
I was three. I have always loved social media. I
was on Instagram in twenty eighteen and I saw this
kid go viral from Memphis, Tennessee and he was dancing
a Spider Man costume in a game stop to Aha
take on Me and he went viral.
Speaker 3 (03:53):
He was black. I saw him.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
A DM said hey, congrats young Memphis, and he hit
me back, was like, yo, are you a manager? Manage people?
I need a manager. Here's my number. I'll come to Atlanta.
I'm like, he's like seventeen. I was like no, but
I understood the urgency that he was trying to capitalize
on the momentum he had from going viral, and I
(04:15):
was like, Yo, we need an app where people can
follow people like Instagram, but subscribe to the very same
person like you would subscribe to Netflix, but make it
a social media platform. And that is what led me
to say, Okay, I think we need to build this,
but I have no I'm not from the tech business,
so I just started researching competitors first, like what else
(04:37):
is out there at the time, And the only two
companies I could find were Patreon founded in twenty thirteen,
which was just a website, and then OnlyFans, which was
just a website but it was highly pornographic. But there
was no mobile app that allowed you to actually mobilely
subscribe to someone like you would a game or like
Spotify or Apple Music.
Speaker 2 (04:57):
Yeah, and I mean even when building that out, there
have been things that you all have done from a
fan base standpoint that like didn't even exist from a
feature like I think with the ability to subscribe and
stuff like that or things that you all help create essentially.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
And in that purchase subscription like peer to peer didn't
exist before fan Base, And I know that sounds. I
like to talk about that because I want people, especially
black people, to know that your innovations are real. And
you may think that someone else in this entire planet
has the idea that you have, but in the entire
nine billion people on this planet, no one had never
(05:31):
built an app to say, hey, I want to easily
subscribe to another person the same way I scrip survived
to a video game or something like that. And then
Apple wouldn't let us build it at first, and I
was scared shitless because I had spent like two hundred
thousand dollars to start to build this app. They told
us some things that we could and couldn't do. We
followed their rules, and then we launched an MVP of
fan Base that allowed you to subscribe to a person
(05:51):
using Apple Pay and Google Pay.
Speaker 2 (05:54):
What do you remember most about that time, like before
it even got launched, right like, cause again, there's a
lot of people that don't come from the text. It's
like you said, you didn't come from and they don't
really understand what it really takes to build something like that,
especially from a money standpoint or just from Look like,
what do you remember most about those early days when
you all were just getting like working through the prototypes
and early iterations of the app.
Speaker 1 (06:12):
I was so excited at the future of what this
is going to be, and I still am because people still,
I don't think understand what what fan base can do
or what where we are right now in the world
I was excited about. I'm just running numbers. I'm looking
at like I'm looking at platforms like, well, why are
these Why are these platforms not letting you see all
(06:35):
the people that want to see see the content you
want to see. So my point is like, if I'm
someone like you know, Beyonce, and I have a three
hundred and eleven million followers, why can't three hundred and
eleven million people see what she posts? And I was
just like, that's crazy, and I said, oh, I know
why because the moment that video got added to social media,
(06:58):
everybody became a television network. Essentially, there's a lot of
quiet things that social media platforms don't want people to know,
so they act like they don't exist what they do.
So to everybody out there, every single person has a
social media platform. You're a television network. So Beyonce has
three hundred and eleven million people that follow her on
social media, so that means that she has three times
(07:18):
the reach of the Super Bowl twenty four hours a day,
seven days a week, and super Bowl commercial costs eight
million dollars for a minute, So if someone wanted to
post a one minute video on Beyonce's page and reach
three hundred and eleven million people, she could charge twenty
four million dollars for every post that she posted.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
It never work again.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Then I went to look at her views and I
was like, wait, her videos only have like nine million views,
four million views, and thirteen million views and twenty seven
million views. It was never consistent, and I was like, oh,
they're doing that because then the brands would come directly
to Beyonce and never spend money running ads on Facebook
or Instagram. And so that's the part that I was
excited about, is the disruption because I see so much
(07:57):
about how black culture is always the oil and never
the well, the you know, the gas, but never the vehicle,
and we're indoctrinated to be excited about the few that
make it as opposed to the many that benefit from
the culture.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
And I was excited to be able to break that wall.
Speaker 1 (08:15):
I want to break that wall down where black culture
gets compensated on an infrastructure level from the energy and
the creativity and the revenue it brings to all these businesses.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yeah, no, I's doping, says, to the oil and not
the whale. Like, why do you think that is? I mean, again,
I've seen things because I was in the tech space
as well, and you know, I've talked to people about
even stuff as simple as just getting access to capital.
Why do you think it is that we only on
one side but not on the other side of that equation.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
It's intentional, it's done by designing.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Well first, I mean historically you got to think black
people did that, and then our businesses were burned and
destroyed and we were murdered. And let's keep it one hundred, like,
you know, they ran you out of your town. You know,
Tulta had oil wels and banks and telephone companies and
they burnt all that stuff down and bombed it. And
so that was the first, you know, and then you're
getting into that again more too. The Jim Crow South
(09:03):
where it was illegal. You couldn't do this, and we
didn't want you to do this, and moving were redlining
and stuff like that. And so now we've moved into
the area now where technology has kind of connected all
of us in a way that we have the ability
to elevate businesses and scale them. So I just think
it was done by design, and we got used to it.
(09:24):
We just kind of got beat down, like, oh, they'll
never let you know, here's the okay, and this is
something that's important that I have to say. My optimism
comes from what I saw my father do. So we
get used to saying, oh, like they'll never let no
black man be president, you know what I mean? Stuff
like that. So I remember when my father was going
(09:44):
to get the oscar. He was going around and meeting people.
He was nominated for an Academy Award and he could
potentially be the first black man to ever win an
Academy Award for music, and people around Memphis and around
were saying, thank gonna let no nigga win no oscar,
you know what I mean, Like that ain't to happen,
and he did it. And so a lot of times
I always think about that moment when it's like, oh, yeah,
(10:06):
they're not gonna let you do anything, It's like, well,
it's not about letting you do anything. It's also about
the conviction and the belief and the faith that you can,
and then the preparation and the effort and energy that
you put into it. The effort and energy that my
father put into creating music and being a great musician
and studying the craft. So I felt like if I
put that amount of energy into learning tech and understanding
(10:28):
it and the business of it, that I could break
down that wall.
Speaker 2 (10:32):
Do you think a lot of that comes from again,
like watching him grow up. I've seen you talk about
how you manage your state. Now you've done things to
help make sure you're securing you know, the royalties and ownership,
Like you kind of learn that all that just watching
because I don't know, like was it necessarily teaching you
or were you just seeing it and kind of just
noticing how the game worked and saying, when I get
a chance to kind of play this game, like, let
me make sure I'm doing it the right way.
Speaker 1 (10:52):
And that was the difference between why I didn't really
I didn't last very long in the music business.
Speaker 3 (10:57):
I didn't last very long.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
The reason being is because I entered it with this
hesitation and the bias of already knowing that it was
a very cutthrow business. And I saw my father lose easily,
probably one hundred million dollars that he never saw that
our family never saw one, because he filed for bankruptcy
a year before I was born. But not because he
(11:20):
spent his money, but because the label he was signed to,
Sax Records, owed him about twelve million dollars in nineteen
seventy four, which is like fifty sixty million dollars today.
He took out a loan, He defaults about his loans,
So instead of garnishing your income stream, they took my
father's asset. So they took the writer the actual ownership
of his writer shares. And then at some point in
(11:42):
like the early eighties, they got auctioned off from like
fifty grand. The two white guys, there were only two
people that showed up to an auction. Those two individuals
wound up purchasing Isaac Hayes's rights, his songwriting rights royalties,
four years before Sample came out. So you got to
think all the nineties records that sampled Isaac's Tupac, Doctor
(12:05):
j Stoop Dogg, Biggie Bu Tank Clan. All these songs
over the last thirty five years have made about sixty
million dollars that our family never saw. And so coming
into the music business, I never wanted that. My publishing
was always I held on to it like if I
can't own my publishing, I'm not doing any deals to
cut people in on parts of that. And I didn't
last very long. So I started so learned about music licensing.
(12:29):
So music licensing is, oh, you want the permission to
use my song in this movie, here you go. I
get a checked, do that. And I just took my
entire catalog put it into this company. And then my
music started winding up on like you know, loving hip
hop and Real Housewives and NBA on TNT and stuff
like that. And I would just go to the mailbox
every quarter and get a check. But I was still
music adjacent. But it gave me the understanding of how
(12:50):
to navigate the music business without compromising ownership of what
I do.
Speaker 2 (12:55):
You definitely have a deep understanding of that. One thing
I love you to explain is this is something I
always even struggle with, is like can you explain publishing?
How does publishing work? Because I hear people talk about
it like only your publishing and all that stuff, I
feel like you can break it down in a way
that it's going to be very easy to other say.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
Yeah, So publishing is basically a pizza. You cut it
in half. Half of it is publishing, the other half
is writing writer shares. The publishing side has all the
legal control to say who can and cannot use that music. Simultaneously,
whenever money comes to the publisher, they get paid by law,
(13:32):
they split that with the writer. So if one hundred
dollars comes in, whoever the company is pays the publisher
one hundred dollars, it's up for the publisher to pay
the writer the fifty dollars and they keep the other fifty.
So that's typically what happens. So in situations like that,
a lot of times publishing companies will come along and
purchase the rights for a length of time years for
(13:54):
the publishing that you're going to make off songs, and
give you an advance, not knowing whether you're going to
be in a amazing songwriter or a crappy songwriter. It's
an investment, but imagine I give you one hundred thousand
dollars for fifty percent of your publishing. Right, so now
it's four people before it's like, you know, get I
get the publishing, you get your writers.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
We're splitting that.
Speaker 1 (14:15):
And now you go on to make sixty million dollars
writing songs over the next ten years. And I just
gave you one hundred thousand bucks. That's why it's like, oh,
you know what I'm saying. So it's these it's the
worst loan ever. If I get explained a publishing deal,
I get played a publishing deal like this to be terrible.
Let's say you had a pizza restaurant and you had
(14:36):
a million dollars worth of pre orders of pizza, right,
but you would only get paid over the course of
a year. I walk and you said, Brandon, I'll give
you the million dollars you're about to make off this
pizza restaurant in his first year, right now, so you
don't have to wait all way till twenty twenty six
to get your million dollars. Cool, you got to pay
me that million dollars back, but now every other pizza
restaurant you open for the next ten pizza restaurants, I
(14:57):
get fifty percent of the revenue.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
Terrible deal. No, that's terrible, terrible deal.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
And that's how these deals are actually working.
Speaker 3 (15:06):
That's how those deals work. They're terrible deals.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
But you got to think these are very, very creative people, talented,
and not the best financial situations. They want to get
out of hard times. So one hundred thousand dollars to
somebody is like, yo, I'm out, not knowing that you
just gave up twenty four million dollars over the next
ten years.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
So what's your perspective of while these companies are buying
up all these you know, these these artists of you know,
publishing and you know all their records and albums and
stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (15:45):
Well, I mean two reasons people wanted to come and
buy my father's publishing from us, but I did not
do that. And you've seen a lot of other artists
start to sell their writer Actually still their writer's share
is not even their publishing because they' publishing hasn't even
reverted yet, which is a whole nother thing. But the
writer's side that I talk about, they're able to sell those,
and so I have mixed feelings about that. But they're
(16:07):
getting these large sums of money up front that before
fifteen twenty years ago it might not have been a
good idea. But now there's so many ways to take
large amounts of capital and invest it into things in
startups and stuff like that, you could take it. So
you've seen people like The Dream sell a portion of
his catalog, but then he might open up a whole
(16:27):
bunch of Popeyes Chicken franchises, so he can take that
money immediately, can do that, and he's still alive, so
he can still perform and write songs and do all
that kind of stuff. They're buying that catalog because streaming
has nowhere near peaked and the amount of revenue it's
ever going to make. So when you think about the
people on planet Earth that have a smartphone in their
hand that could have a music streaming service on it,
it's about six billion people, all right. So currently there's
(16:51):
probably about six hundred and seventy million people that have
music streaming services on their phone.
Speaker 3 (16:56):
So think about that.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
There's another you know, five billion people that could have
Spotify or Apple Music if they wanted to.
Speaker 3 (17:02):
So the amount of.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Money that's going to be made out streaming is going
to be trillions of dollars, So buying it now and
being able to hold it for the next thirty forty years,
it's a lot of wealth there. And then also you
got to remember because of streaming, streaming gave infinite revenue
to records that did not have that it didn't have before.
(17:23):
So even my father's category songs my father, So my
father wrote a song called hold On Upcoming by Sam
and Dave before streaming. The only way he would make
money off that is they played it on the radio
an oldie station, or somebody went into some old mom
and pop store and bought the forty five. Now it's streaming.
It's available globally worldwide, twenty four hours a day, seven
days a week. So now it's an infinite revenue cycle
(17:46):
that's there. So every song ever created has the opportunity
to make money. And also those songs have the ability
to go viral years later or become popular way after
the fact. So when you've seen records like sure Thing
like My Miguel that went viral maybe two years ago,
but that record came out like he wrote that record
like two thousand and eight, he made more money off
that record two years ago than he did when he
(18:06):
wrote it and they released it on an album. So
you got to think about all the songs that are
going to go viral that were written over the last
thirty forty years. So whoever owns a publishing on that
is sitting on a potential goal mine?
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Oh okay, okay, So how does that then relate back
to creators and what you're doing now? Like you see
the same opportunities, you see the need for equity, but like,
how does all that stuff that you learned now roll
into what you're building with fan base?
Speaker 1 (18:27):
So it was cool because when I got into the
tech space, I started asking questions about the business. First
first thing I did when I came with Families trademark
the name. The next thing I did is I incorporated
the company. I created two classes in stock voting and
non voting shares. This is all before I raised money
(18:48):
because I thought about again, as a black person, I
always have this like anxiety like somebody's gonna try to
steal my shit. So I trademarked the name. I remember
that Steve Jobs was a brilliant innovator, but he got
kicked out of Apple. I was like, how did that happen,
and that's because he had a board, and the board
had board seats and voting shares and all that kind
of stuff.
Speaker 3 (19:08):
I said, I don't want that.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
And then I saw that Zuckerberg had done that with Facebook,
where they created two classes of stock and he had
the majority of the voting shares so he could never
get kicked out of the company. So I said, yeah,
I want that. And then I said, Okay, I need
to build. So now I have the ability to go
as far as I possibly can. And the only thing
that's really in my way at this point now is money.
Is how we're going to raise the money to be
able to do that. So when I look at content
(19:31):
creators who generate billions of views that don't get the
credit or the compensation that other creators who are usually
white get, because it's great business. And I explain this
all the time to people that get mad about the
inequity of black creators versus white creators, they should not
get mad at that, and they should not be mad
(19:52):
at the creators. So for every Charlie Demeilia or Addison
Ray or all these people that get famous that are
white on TikTok, and they get that dance from some
of you young black girl like Julia Harmon or whatever. Right,
you can't be mad at Charlie Demilion in those individuals
because that's what tiktoking needs to have to do. You
do the dance, I do the dance. You do the trend,
I do the trend.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
Right.
Speaker 1 (20:12):
The problem is that these platforms are based on advertising,
and so again, as I always say, things presented or
sold by white people are typically deemed to be for
all people. Things presented by black people are deemed to
only be for black people. So if you're advertising something,
if you want to cast the widest net of people
that might buy your product, it be who's you to
(20:33):
have a white face, a young white girl selling dunkin
Donuts coffee, then a young black girl trying to sell
dunkin Donuts coffee. So therefore it be whose platforms like
TikTok and Instagram to have very very famous white creators
to be able to sell more ads. The inequity happens
that they're taking this content and then they're not getting
paid the brand deals. Black creators aren't getting paid the
brand deals and all that kind of stuff. So when
(20:54):
you move out of ad revenue and that bias that exists,
and you go straight to talent and support and subscriptions
and it's like, okay, you can subscribe to support me
in the content that I create for whatever I do,
I don't care if I'm doing makeup, I'm dancing, telling jokes, singing,
whatever it is, gardening, it doesn't matter. So now we
have a level playing field where people can scale businesses
(21:14):
through subscription and not have to worry about those games
and get played on social media platforms with advertising.
Speaker 2 (21:20):
Yeah, I mean coming from the advertising space, that's what
you call general market versus multicultural. And it's like super
weird because yeah, if you're essentially a cis white male, right, like,
you're considered general market, right, and that means you can
advertise to anybody. But if you're a woman, if you
have any kind of color, all of a sudden, you
get relegated like the multicultural correct, and you're only for
whatever reason considered it can talk like that specific audience
(21:42):
of people.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Correct.
Speaker 2 (21:43):
And it's always weird because when you think about the
way that even way culture looks like like multiculture, like
what is multicultural? Like culture is everybody there's all kinds
of people in it. So this idea that if you
look a certain way, you can only like you only
get to brief from a Black History Month and Sinko
to Mayo. But then you know, if you're not you
can get it for anything. That's however, size and industry
has worked for a long time, so now they're trying
to flip it on our head and say, no, there's
(22:03):
like general market is multicultural. But to your point, that's
why those ad dollars go that.
Speaker 1 (22:07):
Direction exactly, And that's that's very frustrating because now you
have a world of creators that are breaking their next
to try to create all these views and doing things
that are inauthentic to who they really want to be.
So you got to act, pose five dance videos a day,
you know all that, and that's not even really what
I want to do. I'm just doing this so hopefully
I'll get a brand deal and make some money. Yeah,
As opposed to when you see the success of streamers
(22:31):
that are doing things like on Twitch like Kasanat where
he just gets to authentically be himself and make more
money without having to actually dance, sing or whatever. He
just gets to be himself and then people support him.
And what I love about the mistake that I think
people are making is that you think that subscriptions are
all about content, but it's about support. Kystannot doesn't provide
(22:54):
any content exclusively. His subscribers just come because they want
to support him, right twitch, So he's not even he
hadn't even gone the exclusive role yet. So even people
are detached from the fact that people will support you
and pay for content. You just don't know it. Humans
are transactional. We're not stingy for every reason. I don't
know why people think that humans will just have money
(23:15):
and just hoard it. We will openly give money to
a multitude of things, things that we care about, want
to support, or whatever. So that route opens up the
door for the average individual to make more money being
a content creator than having a nine to five job.
I know people with millions and millions of followers on
social media that are broke, right, But I tell people, imagine,
(23:36):
out of a planet of six billion people, if you
can find five thousand people to pay you two dollars
and fifty cents a month, right, that's twelve thousand, five
hundred dollars a month. That's one hundred and fifty thousand
dollars a year. That's more than ninety seven percent of
Americans make.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
Right.
Speaker 1 (23:49):
Meanwhile, that means you could just that means you can
make more. You don't have to go work for nobody.
You literally could just get up every day, be yourself
and make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 3 (23:58):
And that's the tipping that.
Speaker 1 (23:59):
That's not We're not even talking about really famous people
or people with extreme talent that people are willing to
pay to see people perform, like Beyonce or athletes like
Anthony Edwards and stuff like that. We haven't even gotten
to that point. And now you're getting to people where
I can make hundreds of millions or not billions of
dollars with subscriptions, more than what the industries that exist
(24:20):
pay me. So I say, fan base is going to
allow a musician to make more money than he can
make in the record industry. It's going to allow actor
and actors to make more money than they could do
working for a movie studio or a TV studio. It's
going to allow athlete to make more money they could
playing for a sports team. That's the disruption that flips
it on its head because there's nothing in between you
(24:40):
and whoever has a smartphone and the ability to hit
subscribe to pay you directly. And that's the most disruptive
thing about fan base. And the reason why none of
these other apps have even begun to do that is
because they are the seismic giant tankers of advertisment that
can't turn on a dime. Ninety seven point five percent
of Facebook's revenues through advertising. They can't go to subscription,
(25:02):
they can't, they can't even begin to stop. The company
runs off of advertising, and they double and triple down
on the fact that there is advertising. And so for me,
I'm just a little speed bowl in the water just
to say subscriptions, tipping, you know, and get to do that,
and it gives us an opportunity to kind of lead
that market more so than anybody else. While these other platforms,
while they dabble, they don't add it. They'll put it
(25:22):
over there and the side to see if they can,
but they can't make that their bread and butter.
Speaker 3 (25:26):
No pun intended, No again.
Speaker 2 (25:28):
I mean you look at these platforms like a good
friend of mine sets even from an influencer standpoint, like
look at the ones that generate the most AD revenue,
because those are the ones that have the revenue. And
they said, if Facebook's pulling in that much money from
ads or I would tell people like, look, if it's free,
you're the product in some capacity, right, And so you've
got to realize that's how they're using these tools. Like
from a fan based standpoint, how do you get people
(25:48):
to really understand the value proposition and see like, look,
you can go over here and do stuff and try
to wait for these creative reward programs to kick in,
or you can actually start talking to your audience and
get subscriptions.
Speaker 3 (25:58):
That's a layered question.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
You get asked that question, how do you do that
as a white founder with capital, or how do you
do that as a black founder, first time founder that
doesn't have VC dollars and that way, So number one,
convinced people that you have the ability to build a
product that's comparable to an Instagram or Facebook as a
(26:21):
black guy coming from the music business.
Speaker 3 (26:22):
That's the first thing you gotta do.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
You got to win the trust of people, and then
you have to win the trust of people enough for
them to invest in you to do that. So I
think the first thing that I had to do was
build something and validate it in a way that no
one could tell me no. So what I don't want
to do is and most of what I know about
tech or my perspective of tech, comes from being in
(26:45):
a music business. So you don't ever want anybody to
tell you no. So if you walk into an interview
and no one can kind of throw something at you
that you don't know already, then do that. So one
of the first things that I did after one of
the first VC meetings that I took, was with a white,
white woman at a VC company, and I knew what
separated fan base from every other platform, because I recognize
(27:08):
that black culture is literally the economic engine of social
media when you demystify things. So I'm not a I
didn't go to college, But all I try to do
is take something and break it down to the simplest
form that I can comprehend, which is, if black culture
left all of these apps, these apps will be void
of the fun shit that keep people on them, that
(27:30):
entertain them, while we fill all the other stuff in
the middle. And so when black culture is the gas
and the app is the vehicle, then who's making all
the money. It's the person that owns the car who
owns the infrastructure, right, So I'm like, well, somebody's got
to build infrastructure. Somebody's got to build the infrastructure and
then bring those two worlds together. And then that scares
(27:53):
a lot of people because the people that benefit from
black culture and these vcs are looking at this guy like,
so wait a minute. So you're telling me that the
culture and the infrastructure gonna be owned by black people
and it's gonna circulate.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
It's a circular build.
Speaker 1 (28:09):
They're gonna own the app and they're gonna use that
and they're gonna make money. Like, oh shit, So don't
nobody want me to succeed? So, because that's why you've
never really seen anybody in this space succeed, because you've
got to be crazy to try to do this shit.
But the one thing that the white woman BC told
me in our first meeting, she goes, why would you
(28:30):
want to build something that's competing with Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram?
Speaker 3 (28:35):
They're giants?
Speaker 1 (28:36):
And I calmly told her I can build anything that
Mark Zuckerberg can build, but Mark Zuckerberg can't build black people.
And that's the difference. And no one ever walks into
a room and says that to them, like, you're screwed.
If black people ever get together collectively and just invest
in infrastructures across every sector, I don't care.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
If it's a store like Target.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
I don't care if it's an auto vehicle company like Tesla,
an app like fan Base, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 3 (29:03):
You're cooked. Because black is the cool of the world.
Speaker 1 (29:08):
It is impossible to promote something is being cool without
the intenses of black people. It cannot be done. It
can be romantic, it can be sentimental, it can be adventurous.
All those can be done by white people.
Speaker 3 (29:19):
Cool.
Speaker 1 (29:21):
You got to have our dances. You got to have
somebody from our culture, you got to have our music.
You got to throw Montel jord in there. You need
something in there to validate the coolness of what you're doing.
And that is a trillion dollar value that black people
do not leverage against any kind of business nowhere near
(29:41):
the way that they need to to drive that value
back to our community.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
So then what's your vision. It is the end to
own the infrastructure for more. He's not just for the application,
but just in general from a cultural standpoint, Like I
was talking to Ryan Wilson about this, and it's like
he's like, yeah, you know, if you really think about it,
there's not a place in Atlanta that, if you need
it to, you know, rent out for a thousand people,
that anybody black owns, you know what I mean, Like,
we don't own these levels of infrastructure, but you see
(30:17):
us outside right, you see it's kicking it right. So
to your point, it's all about owning the infrastructure, starting
to own those, as I say, like the streets and
the roads and the highways that connect these different things.
Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yeah, that's the secret of Atlanta, right, that's the gift
of being in this city. I know you're you're heavily
an advocate of Atlanta just as much as I am.
And so I recognize that. And Atlanta produces a different
type of black person. And I know this sounds and
I know cause black people. I don't I don't say
this to offend anybody that's black.
Speaker 3 (30:47):
You just kind of be here to kind of get it.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
Yeah, And so, but I always always do the litmus
test of people that are not from Atlanta to Atlanta
and when they get here, and I don't have to
say much, I'll just them somewhere, and then I watched
them go, what are all these black people doing here?
And I'm like, did you hear what you just said?
You're black and the fact that you are surrounded by
(31:11):
your own people makes you uncomfortable. Let you know that
you have lived a minority existence your entire life, and
the sheer sight of your own people existing and doing
normal things, hanging out, having drinks, running in the park,
you know whatever. Just operating businesses is foreign to you,
(31:31):
and that is every day in Atlanta, Georgia. So I say,
I grew up in Atlanta, Georgia. I've never felt like
a minority in my entire life. In fact, I've never
made money through the acceptance permission of white culture my
entire life. I've never needed that because I was in
a music business. So it's like I went to high school,
then go to college. Once I got a music I
(31:53):
just I'm usually just making records and I'm selling my
music or whatever. But it wasn't a permission, It's not
I had to fight my way through anything. And then
starting businesses and looking at other people start businesses and
understanding how Atlanta was built off joint venture contracting and
all the things that Maynard Jackson did to set up
the way that black people can make money. It's just
a different type of black person. You don't get Ryan
(32:15):
Wilson's or La and Babyface saying we need to get
at a La Mooe Atlanta and we're gonna build a
record company and make Face Records, which is probably the
biggest Black R and B label ever produced some of
the most iconic artists. Or Tyler Perry saying, Yo, let
me get up out of it, let me drive to Atlanta,
Georgia start doing plays and you know Will Packer coming
up from fam you to and doing Rainfall. You don't
(32:37):
get those type of people except here. And then factor
in the fact that layered into all this is a
political infrastructure that grants the permission and the opportunity to
scale your vision bigger than what you would be allowed to.
So it's like, oh, you want to build a recording studio, Okay,
in Cincinnati, No, you niggas can't have no recording studio.
(32:58):
You want to build a move stud You want to
build a movie student in La Tyler Perry, no, Negro,
you can't do that. But in Atlanta, the mayor is black,
so Hey, Mayor, I want to go build this movie
studio over here at this military base.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
Can I buy that from you? Yeah? You can have
three hundred fifty acres for thirty five million dollars. Done deal.
Speaker 1 (33:12):
Now, it's the largest movie study the entire country owned
by a black man. That would never happen unless there
was a black mayor, because that land would have been
sold to some white guy to build his movie studio.
So that is the point and purpose of why I
talk so much about Atlanta, because there's this relationship, and
it is something that we take for granted, is the
fact that none of this works without political power. None
of this works without black mayors. When I was gonna
(33:33):
say fan base, I would have not made fair. I
would never built fan base in any other city again,
which is why I say black Plane is the last
time we ever been this close. That was two thousand.
It's twenty twenty five between now and then. You and
I know that there are tens of thousands of black
people that have way more money than I do and
are way smarter than I am, but no one builting up.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
So there's something missing, right because it could be done.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
So what is the what is that you know, like,
what is that that recipe that creates the environment for
something like this to grow? And I say that it's Atlanta.
You got to want to be here. You got to
have the courage and the guts and be like, man,
f these people. Man, we're about to do our own thing.
To be able to do that, and so that that
energy is why fan Base was important. That was the
(34:20):
challenge in saying, how do I get people to come
to a platform and do that? Well, First I have
to gain their trust and I feel like I've gained
their trust. Now I have to execute. But again, I've
been raising money a lot differently than most of these
other guys. I had to do it three ninety nine
at a time, not here's forty million dollars and go
build your app.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Yeah, And I was just about to ask about that.
I guess I have to school. I am an investor
in fan Base. That was in the very first round,
I believe it was. But like, what's that process been like?
Because to your point, these guys can scribble out an
idea in the back of a napin in a coffee
shop and get twenty thirty million dollars, right, and then
if it doesn't work out, Everybody's like, oh, you know,
it's too much. You know, it is what it It
is like you've gone to start e ginerute, you've had
(35:02):
one of the biggest campaigns, or like, how much are
'all at right now?
Speaker 1 (35:04):
So so I say this too, we're at about twelve million,
but collectively, over four rounds of equity crowdfunding, I raised
twenty two million dollars and then we close around I
raised twenty seven million dollars.
Speaker 3 (35:15):
Again, this is history.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
None of this stuff ever gets reported, like I'm the
first black man to ever raise twenty seven million dollars
in equity crowdfunding for anything. Nobody's talking about that I
invented in that purchase, peer to peer subscription, that Instagram, TikTok, Snapchat,
all these platforms are using now to try to put subscriptions.
Speaker 3 (35:33):
No one talks about that.
Speaker 1 (35:34):
So and on purpose, because again it's like, we can't
let the world know that this innovation is coming from
black people. And I say, because I want people to know,
you ain't got to be a rocket scientist to invent
some cool shit. So we've raised that amount of money
and it was it was a blessing but it also
became a passion of mine because once I got introduced
to equity crowdfunding, it also opened up the idea that
(35:58):
I can make you rich. So typically when all these
startups happen, it's a group of small you know, ten
to fifteen people get together raise the million two three
million to start their company. That company scales, exits, and
then those people wind up making thirty forty fifty, one
hundred million and a billion dollars off their initial investment.
What I love about equity crowdfunding is that it allows
(36:19):
anybody to invest in a company and see a return
at limited risk because the minimums to invest are not
big two hundred and fifty dollars three ninety nine. Now
you can put large amounts of money. We have large investors.
But the ability to say I could put two hundred
and fifty bucks into a startup and potentially turn that
two hundred and fifty dollars into two hundred fifty thousand
dollars or half a million dollars or a million dollars.
(36:43):
You have better odds at investing in startups that way
than playing the lottery or gambling in the long run.
But again and so and the rules which were in
place before the Jobs Act, which spawned equity crowdfunding, which
was a regulation that only allow out rich people, certified
investors credited to be able to invest in early stage startups.
(37:06):
Then yeah, so then all the white people got to
invest in Apple, Google, Microsoft, Dell, Facebook, you know Uber.
I always talking about Aoron Michaels. I'm gonna meet oorrom
Michaels one day because I probably said his name about
ten thousand times in the last five years. But orm
Michaels was the smallest investor in Uber ced round whereas
half a million dollars in twenty ten. To get started,
(37:27):
Ormichael put five thousand dollars into Uber. Now I'm not
counting everybody's pocket I know you got five thousand dollars. Man,
I got five thousand dollars even I didn't me you
and add the people could get five hundred dollars a piece
and put five thousand dollars in Uber in two thousand
and nineteen, nine years later, but Uber went public that
five thousand dollars was worth twenty four million dollars.
Speaker 3 (37:47):
Yeah, that's a flip exactly. It's a flip.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
It's like, oh my god, right, But again, no one
knew if Uber was going to fail or succeed, but
just the opportunity to try. But my point is they
can get Uber, but you can only go gamble at
the lottery and in Vegas.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
Well even that's the point that always annoys me when
I see people talk about that stuff, like, you know,
if you would have invested four thousand dollars in Netflix,
It's like yeah, but also you leave another party. You
had to be a credit investor, you had to get
an opportunity to invest. And the kids getting these deals like,
they let who they want to get in, So to
your point, you're actually letting people get in on the
ground floor of a deal as well.
Speaker 1 (38:23):
Right, And I have introduced many people into equity CRAWDNK.
I referred probably five or six companies to raise capital.
But what I loved about technology is the fact that
the scale potential of a social media platform can get
into the hundreds of billions of dollars. When I'm looking
at Facebook as a market cap of one point five
trillion dollars, and I'm not saying fan base will be Facebook,
but you know, expair company byte dances worth three hundred
(38:44):
billion dollars.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
I'm like, man, that's a huge flip, right.
Speaker 1 (38:49):
So I'm like, if Byite Dance can be worth three
hundred billion, I know that I could probably give fan
Base to one hundred billion. And when I thought about that,
I'm like, my first valuation was twenty million dollars for
fan Base when I raise. So if you invested in
fan Base that earned that first round, that means whatever
you invested when fan Base gets to one hundred billion,
(39:09):
because I'm gonna claim it, whatever you put in will
have that same five thousand extra turn that on Michael's had.
So if you put two hundred and fifty dollars into
fan Base in twenty twenty, twenty twenty one, and fan
Base reaches one hundred billion dollar valuation and somebody either
acquires us or I go public, that two hundred and
fifty dollars be worth one point twenty five million. Now,
that for black people is the largest distribution of wealth
(39:30):
to black people in the history of the country ever.
Bob Johnson made the most millionaires ever when he sold
bet I want to obliterate that record because now we
can take that wealth and acquire other things and build things.
Not much target is worth and gets how much Target's
worth probably what two hundred billion dollars, No, forty.
Speaker 3 (39:49):
That's not a lot, it's billions, but it's not yet.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
So imagine being able to say, Okay, well, a whole
bunch of people get together and black people, let's buy
Target and make it our own black Target.
Speaker 3 (39:59):
You know what I'm saying, Well, that's the get you know.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Again, like and even in the state like Atlanta, right, Like,
that's what I tell people is like when you heard
things like the PayPal mafia and all this stuff, right, Like,
that's where this stuff comes from. Is people get on,
they get it, and you know, getting these companies. These
companies go public, they get their windfall from it, and
it's like you know what, yeah, now you know, hey, yeah,
you go kick in fifty grande hundred grand. I'm gonn
kick in fifty hundred grand and go do this thing.
(40:21):
Like you know, even when Mailchimp got sold a couple
of years ago, like in Atlanta, I said, it's great
that it got sold, but the problem is it didn't
create this influx of millionaires in Atlanta because again, when
that was like a couple billion dollars, it got sold
for you should have been at least ten twenty millionaires
that came out of that, and it was a very
small amount, you know, because it was privately held. Nobody invested.
(40:41):
And but again, you think about these companies that happening
on Silicon vallec I talk about all the time. I
have a buddy of mine, his wife or to Airbnb
when they went public, she was in customer service and
she made over a million dollars just because she was there.
She was like a customer service manager, you know what
I'm saying, Like, imagine if that happens at scale, and
now all of a sudden, you've got one hundred two
(41:02):
hundred one thousand new black millionaires running around.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
There's twenty two thousand investors in fan Mase majority are black.
So imagine you have twenty two thousand men like Bruh.
And I guarantee you the next time I build something,
y'all put your money into that one too, Like what
we're doing next, Let's go or let's go. Because my
point is it gives us the ability to buy these
infrastructures and scale. And that's the thing that's like, it's
just crazy to me that not being included in these
(41:25):
deal flows and then being able to scale those companies.
Like you said, Mailchimp, I mean that is again a
small group of people being able to invest and then
and then that same small group of people get to
take that money and do it over and over and
over again, and none of that money goes to black people.
And we got to start thinking like that. But the
problem is that outside of Atlanta, you are taught that
(41:46):
you have to infiltrate this system to gain wealth through that,
and that is not necessarily the case. And especially now
with technology, we're all connected, so we could scale. We
could take black people, could take any business they wanted
to and turn it into a billion dollar business overnight
by will.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
We literally could do that.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
The problem, I think is that we don't activate on
the ability to do that because we don't have the
infrastructure to do it. We're not connected in a way
that we can do it, which is another reason why
I think which makes fan Base an extremely important company,
because now you're taking technology that allows people to build community,
so when people can have these conversations and circulate that
information and do that just by people using social media
(42:29):
on a regular level to be able to scale, So
the equity crowdfunding route. And that's something else that I
wanted to talk about too, is when you were just
talking about those companies though that exit. Here's the difference
though too. I've learned a lot from watching tech companies
and coming from the music business, because again I understand publishing.
(42:49):
I know percentages. I would ask anybody to go look
at those companies that do raise that money and see
how much equity those people give up in their companies.
So when they take money from venture capital five percent
at the time, chunk here And the reason why I
spent two hundred thousand dollars in my own money to
build fan base, and I advanced myself that money from
the publishing that I was making from licensing my music
(43:13):
because I didn't sell my publishing, so I had the
money to do that probably save me twenty percent of
the company that I would have had to give up
if I want to give start out saying hm, and
then I would have had to have a board probably,
and then let's say and then so then the board
thing comes in and says, okay, Ike, so fan base
is worth now one hundred and sixty million dollars. Well,
I would almost guarantee you that if fan Base had
(43:34):
a board and it was other people on the board
and they were like, Ike, sell fan Base right now,
one hundred and sixty million dollars. Come on, man, you
did great. It's great. You'll be able to say you're
a tech founder. You know, I might walk over with
twenty thirty million dollars walk around at Land of the
rest of my life like, yeah, I'm a tech guy.
Speaker 3 (43:53):
I'm newslash, y'all. I'm not in it for that. I'm
in it.
Speaker 1 (43:56):
I want I'm trying to f it up, like I'm
trying to run the bag so far up that everybody
eats in a way that's a lot more powerful. And
so boards would do that. They'll tell you that because
they don't want you to get your vision all the
way to the top. They're like, if he keeps going this,
Negro is gonna be as rich as Elon Musk.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
Yeah, he's gonna be.
Speaker 1 (44:15):
And there's never been anybody that's as rich as Elon Musker,
Mark Zucker.
Speaker 3 (44:19):
We never had what I call a super nigga. I
you know, I know, I know.
Speaker 1 (44:22):
Excuse me, my language, Excuse me, I'm being canned and
funny but the amount of wealth that you could throw
away if you wanted to, that could change the direction
of an election.
Speaker 3 (44:35):
Right.
Speaker 1 (44:35):
So you know when Bloomberg ran for president, he spent
a billion dollars on his campaign and lost. He even
make it close. Imagine being able to blow a billion
dollars as a black person. But I said, I'm not.
But I'm not gonna blow. I'm not gonna blow a
billion dollar. I'm gonna take a billion dollars in fund
five thousand new black owned businesses, but only in Atlanta, Georgia,
because you got to move here, number all. You got
(44:57):
to live here to be able to do it, because
I got to make sure that Atlanta stays black, and
we got to get a black.
Speaker 3 (45:00):
Governor and all that.
Speaker 1 (45:01):
It's all, all of this is done intentionally, in my opinion,
or not not even my opinion. In fact, by me,
I'm intentional about this because I understand that for this
to continue to grow, we need black political leadership, We
need more black people in Atlanta. Atlanta's not full. Don't
fall for the bullshit, and we need to be able
to scale those businesses. But those founders that have lost
(45:23):
so much equity in their company by doing the VC
route and equity crowdfunding. I've been able to maintain and
keep that equity, so they hate that too. So not
only have you been able to raise twenty two million dollars,
you haven't had to give up eighty percent of your
company to get it. Right, It's like, ah, so now
it's just a numbers game for me. So now fan Base,
I say, the apps are the artists, the vcs are
(45:46):
the record companies, and the app store charts are the
billboard charts. I'm an independent artist. As an app I've
raised twenty two million dollars selling stock out the truck
of my car. Right I I'm not signed to deaf
Jam or I'm not with A sixteen Z and all
these other companies. I'm out here start engine it the
indie label. So now all I gotta do is make
(46:08):
fan Base a hit. And so when fan Base is
sitting up at the top of the app store charts,
my phone's gonna ring. It's We're like, hey, we want
to invest in fan Base. How much do you want?
Give me one hundred million at a billion dollar evaluation.
So I'll sell ten percent of company. And that's how
I've set this whole thing up to say that not
(46:28):
only can I scale the company, I can scale it
in a way that gives me enough to raise capital,
really be disruptive, but maintain control, equity ownership, and be
able to do the things that I do. And that's
why equity crowdfunding is such an important thing for all entrepreneurs.
Speaker 3 (46:44):
That's any business.
Speaker 1 (46:44):
You keep control of your company, you constructure the way
you can, you can scale your business. You don't have
to get involved in all the because you know, we know,
I don't know how many entrepreneurs that I know that
are taking venture capital and gotten kicked out of their companies.
You know, they have forced out or whatever, the board
fires them or whatever. They can't say I met. I
met a group of I met these I'm not going
(47:05):
to say who they are, but I met a group
of girls over the weekend, two black entrepreneurs that have
a business, and I said, oh, y'all need to raise
some money for equity crowdfunding. And they go, yeah, we
took some institutional capital and they're not allowing us to
do it. See that's already a problem, and you need
the money. They're slowing down the ability for you to
scale your business because somebody else is allowing you to
tell you what you can do with your business. See
(47:27):
that's what the music, see all that stuff, my dad.
I don't want nobody to be able to tell me nothing.
If I can't have control, I don't want to be
a part of it. And so that's the challenge in scaling,
you know, fan base. But we're doing a good job
and now we've gotten some Now because of this large
round that we're about to close, I've been able to
bring on some really cool people that allow me to
really focus and actually scale the company, because again, you
(47:48):
just got to hire people that know way more than you.
And now I've got some. I've got some really good advisors.
I got two advisors by the name of Alvin Bowles
and Tie my tailor. They were both at Meta Album
was at me Up for like ten years. Tie was
at Meta and Snapchat and he ran TCHX for George Lucas.
So these guys are like the shit and they're my
(48:10):
advisors in how to navigate this tech ecosystem, specially by
way of even if we think about venturing into advertising
stuff like that. And then we have some great new
hires locally here in Atlanta, two black women, and they're
over product and product marketing. And so I'm just excited
because I'm building the team that I know I always
wanted to build, but I'm building it in a way
that still allows me to keep the culture of the
(48:32):
company but still be a tech company, but out of Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (48:36):
No, Man, look, all the pieces are there. Again, you're
doing it in public, and like I said, Man, a
great product with a great team is positioned to go far.
So you know again, Man, congratulations and everything you've built
out before we get out of here. Mantel folks, how
can they support fan Base? How can they invest? How
can they support y'all? I give them all the things, man.
Speaker 1 (48:55):
Start engine dot com slash fan bases where you can invest.
The minimum to invest it's three hundred nine dollars. You
get sixty shares of stock and fan base. Download fan Base,
create an account, join the community, follow me at ISACSE
three on all socials, but especially on fan base tap
in And if you don't know what fan base is,
it's just a free social media platform that allows people
(49:18):
to subscribe to you if they want to for content
that you can put behind paywalls, and it's photos, videos, audio, chat,
live stories, long form all there straight out Atlanta, Georgia.
Speaker 2 (49:28):
So well, I love it. Congratulations everything y'all. Get y'all
fan base up. Let's get it going. We got an
account on there too. We got to get back on
it some more. You know what I'm saying. We get busy,
but look we're about to take this taking this thing up, man,
absolutely and get this thing going. So with that said,
we out y'all. That's the pot. You've been listening to
button Nomics and I'm your host, Brandon Butler. Got comments, feedback?
(49:49):
Want to be on the show. Send us an email
today at hello at butteronomics dot com. Butter Nomics is
produced in Atlanta, Georgia at iHeartMedia by Casey Pegram, with
marketing support from Queen and Nikki. Music provided by mister Hanky.
If you haven't already, hit that subscribe button and never
missed an episode, and be sure to follow us on
all our social platforms at butter dot at l. Listen
(50:09):
to better Nomics on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you get your podcasts.
Host
Brandon Butler
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