Joseph Gordon-Levitt & Jared Geller on Creativity in Chaos

You probably know Joseph Gordon-Levitt as an actor from films like Looper, Snowden, and 500 Days of Summer. But he’s also an entrepreneur. In 2005, Joe and his brother started HitRECORD -- it was a simple website where he could post things he was making. In 2010 he opened it up. He and his friend Jared Geller turned HitRecord into an online platform where people from all over the world could come together to collaborate. Since then, they’ve pivoted from a production company to a tech company, with a vision to help us move away from aimlessly scrolling, towards creating together.

We’re in a moment filled with anxiety and fear. It’s hard to find any kind of silver lining. But if we had to, it might be this: moments of pain and uncertainty have historically led to incredible art and creativity. So what will be the legacy of the technology built in this age? In this episode of First Contact, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and co-founder Jared Geller talk to Laurie about finding creativity in difficult times.

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Show Notes

• Laurie’s interview with Joe at Web Summit 2016
• HITRECORD
• Jaron Lanier (author)
• Tristan Harris

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
First Contact with Lori Siegel is a production of Dot
Dot Dot Media and iHeartRadio. If you could write a
note to yourself from the future, after you've lived through
this pandemic, what would you say to yourself?

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Okay, let's see, how about uh, dear Joe. Right, we're
starting with dear dear Joe. You had to slow down,
and that was scary, but it was all okay. You
got plenty done a little bit slower, and as things
ramp back up and you feel the pressure to speedback

(00:42):
up again, you can remember the things were going fine
a little bit slower.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
You might recognize that boys Joseph Gordon Levitt. He's an
actor famous for his roles in television and film, and
his message to himself slow down a simple concept, but
it's great advice. This is a moment filled with anxiety
and fear. Now, I'm not really the kind of person

(01:20):
that wants to find a silver lining in all this
or tie the bow. I think there's just too much loss.
But I will say this, as a storyteller, I've witnessed
a common theme. Moments of pain and uncertainty have historically
led to incredible art and creativity. This brings me back
to Joseph Gordon Levitt. Now you know him as an

(01:41):
actor from great films like Looper, Snowden, five Hundred Days
of Summer. But I know Joe as a tech entrepreneur
who became obsessed with this idea of helping us create
and collaborate online more than a decade ago. He's an actor,
a producer, a writer, a director, but at the core,
his passion has been creating something from nothing, channeling frustration

(02:05):
and feeling into art and doing it with other people.
In two thousand and five, Joe and his brother started
Hit Record. It was a simple website where he could
post things he was making. In twenty ten, he opened
it up. He and his friend Jared Geller turned Hit
Record into an online production platform where people from all
over the world could come together to collaborate. They made art, music, books,

(02:28):
and movies, and anyone could participate and make money. They've
since paid out more than three million dollars to creators.
And then in twenty sixteen, Joe and Jared started doing
the Silicon Valley Circuit. They met investors. Eventually they raised
money and pivoted from a production company to a tech
company with this vision to help us move away from

(02:49):
aimlessly scrolling towards creating together. And that's when I met them.
Now full disclosure, I've heard them talk about the mission
of Hit Record for four years now and I can't
help but think this moment where we're all physically isolated
and craving connection, is a great opportunity to channel our
anxiety and fear into the art of creation in a

(03:12):
way to feel a little bit less alone in the process.
I'm Laurie Siegel and this is first contact. We were
joking as we started this. We've all kind of seen
each other in different cities from I think I met
you guys in Lisbon, right, and then we've been in
Toronto and in San Francisco, all because of Hit Record,

(03:36):
in this company that you guys have created, which I
want to get into, because man, do you guys have
a moment right now which I think is fascinating. But
I want to start with the idea behind the show
in this podcast, which is it starts with our first contact.
And our first contact was in twenty sixteen at Web Summit,

(03:58):
and Joe, I think back to my first contact with you,
and I remember a very specific moment with you because
I was interviewing you on stage and Lisbon at websummit,
which for our listeners, it's just like you go out
and there's just this auditorium. I don't know how to
describe it. It's like a huge it was.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Like Madison Square Garden.

Speaker 2 (04:19):
It's an arena. I was giving a talk, We did
an interview on stage with I think ten thousand people
in the audience, right, yeah, sort of bizarre.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
And you're like a big Hollywood movie star, like these
are things that like probably should make you nervous, and
I was on television for so many years, this shouldn't
make me nervous. And I remember this moment of like
peeking out, like as they were about to introduce us
and looking out at the arena, and I just remember
being like, first of all, this is how Beyonce must feel.

(04:52):
And then I was just like, oh my god, I'm
so nervous. But that was my first contact with you,
was being like, oh my god, I'm actually normally this
is like something that's come so easy for me, just
going out and interviewing people and interviewing generally tech founders
for me. But I just remember being like, WHOA, Like
there's so many people out there, and I was interviewing

(05:13):
you because this was you coming out and talking about
Hit Record, which is your passion project turned into tech company,
and that was like this extraordinary moment. But that was
our first time.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
Yeah, I remember. It humbles you to be on a
stage with an audience that big. It makes you shut
up quicker rather than pontificating elaborately. You're like, you know,
I'm gonna I'm gonna leave it at that. Right when
the audience is that big, you like get concise, which
is probably that good good thing for me.

Speaker 4 (05:42):
That time at web Summit in Portugal was actually an
interesting time for our company because it was really when
an inflection point for us when we started really thinking
about ourselves more as a tech com throw than we
had ever previously done.

Speaker 3 (05:56):
So is actually like like it was a real moment
for us.

Speaker 2 (05:59):
I think, yeah, and you were a real conduit for
us wading into the world of technology because my background is,
you know, in show business and Jared's's as well, and
we've been operating Hit Record for years as a production
company and making all kinds of art and collaboratively with

(06:19):
the world with a website, but really not leaning into
what it means to actually have a platform and understand
how to optimize it, etc. We didn't know what a
KPI was or anything like that, and a lot of
it started with you. I met you, then you introduced
me to I did that show of yours where I

(06:40):
met Ev Williams, and EV introduced me to lots of
different people, and it was it was a lot through
that connection that we started meeting people who were able
to kind of give us an education over the last
number of years about the difference between a production company
and a media technology company. And you know, now our
company is forty people and half of them are in

(07:03):
product and tech. And I know what the difference is
between user experience and user interface, and I know what
the difference is between front end and back end and DevOps.
And you know, I've learned all these things. I know
what in OKR is like. It's actually been really challenging
and illuminating, and I have found it really funnily enough,
really creative. It's creative in a different way than art

(07:25):
is creative, but really satisfying in a lot of the
same ways.

Speaker 1 (07:29):
That's interesting you guys talk about that being a pivotal
moment because I feel like as someone who I have
spent my career interviewing tech founders, and I remember thinking
this was for you guys, a moment for you guys
to transition to like what a tech company actually was, right,
And Hit Record came at such a fascinating time for

(07:50):
the Internet because I remember when I met you and
Jared I interviewed you. We were all in Lisbon, and
the next day Donald Trump was elected President of the
United States.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Wait who?

Speaker 1 (08:02):
And it was such a fascinating moment for tech because
we were seeing this pendulum swing around the narrative and technology.
People were more extreme than ever online. There were filter bubbles,
we were seeing these platforms weaponized, and you're talking to
someone who was like I had covered tech for so
many years and I was such an optimist about technology,

(08:23):
but folks didn't feel better online and so you were
kind of coming there and saying, hey, we have a
problem and the way that we interact online is broken.
It felt like in twenty sixteen there was an opening
for a company like Hit Record, right, especially in the
internet landscape. What was it?

Speaker 2 (08:44):
What's the opening for Hit Record?

Speaker 1 (08:46):
For me?

Speaker 2 (08:46):
The big difference between what happens on Hit Record, and
what happens a lot of other places online is that
we're all about collaboration, and people use the word collaborate
on a lot online. But today's dominant platforms for art
and creativity, and they're not built for collaboration. They're built

(09:06):
for consumption, and they're built for ultimately feeding ads to
the users. That's how they make money. And on Hit Record,
you don't show up and see a feed of content
to consume. When you open the app on your phone,
for example, the first thing you see is a feed
of projects for you to get involved with. Is an

(09:28):
opportunity to collaborate with other people, other people saying like
hey I made a beat, I want someone to play
bass on top of it, or hey I wrote a story,
I want someone to illustrate it. And when you're collaborating
with other people online, not just sharing something you've made,
not just saying hey, world, look what I made, but
you're like, hey, what can we make together, you begin
to relate to people in a very different way than

(09:50):
what you often see online. The snark sort of goes away.
When you've got a common purpose. You're more vulnerable trying
to do something together, and so you're gonna relate to
each other. You're gonna have an empathy that you wouldn't
have if you're just scrolling through a bunch of quote
unquote content to consume. So like, okay, entertain me, what

(10:12):
will entertain me? This doesn't entertain me, That doesn't entertain me.
I can say something snarky about this or that. It's
all kind of dehumanizing and it's all very addictive, and
it's very effective at serving ads and making money. But
I don't ever come away from, you know, spending a
session on traditional social media and feel like I accomplished something.

(10:33):
And that's that's ultimately what we're trying to build on
Hit Record and what we've been doing for years. And
so you mentioned twenty sixteen. You know, in twenty sixteen,
we had accomplished kind of everything we had set out
to accomplish as a production company. When Jared and I
first started Hit Record in twenty ten, we made a
list of things we wanted to do, and we said, well,

(10:55):
could we could we make a short film in this open,
collaborative way with people making things together online and disperate
geographic locations. Could people come together and make something that
was a finished short film there was good enough to
play it at Sundance Say, and we did that, and like,
could we publish a book, could we put out a record?
Could one day we make a TV show? And eventually

(11:17):
we did make a TV show. It won an Emmy,
and we were really happy with everything we'd done. But
we realized that the limit to what we were doing
as a production company was how many people we could
really include in that creative process. Because when we were
always the ones leading these collaborative projects, lots of people

(11:37):
would come and contribute to our projects. They were making
a TV show. We say, hey, world, come contribute to
our TV show. But we couldn't use all of those
contributions in the TV show. So a good percentage of
the people that were contributing, we're feeling like, oh I
didn't make it. I didn't make it in and that
was not our intention at all. That's kind of contrary

(11:58):
to how I feel the spirit of our community is.
And so we said about thinking like, how could we
do it so it's not exclusive like that, where anybody
can come and find collaborators and have this experience of
being creative together with other people. And we realized, okay,
well then it can't always be us leading the projects.

(12:20):
We have to take what we've learned leading all these
projects and let other people lead their own projects. And
then we realized, well we're going to do that, we
need much better software because our website at that time
was just you know, it was the work of a
like literally, it just two or three engineers. We didn't

(12:43):
have any I didn't know what a product hire was.
I didn't know what head of product meant like, I
didn't know any of that. We didn't know any of that.
We never really tried to know any of that. We
would just come up with what we thought a website
would be, and we would hire a few engineers and
they would build it, and you know, it worked well enough.
But once we realized, okay, we want other people to

(13:04):
be able to come and use these tools to lead
their own projects, we realize, okay, we have to learn
what it means to actually become more of a media
tech company. And that's when we started going to places
like web Summit and meeting people like you, Laurie, and
all the different people that you introduced us to, and
starting to learn what it would take to build not

(13:24):
just a production company, but a decentralized platform where people
could come and collaborate with each other. And that's what
we've been doing.

Speaker 3 (13:33):
And I think it makes sense if you think about it.

Speaker 4 (13:36):
Like Joe said, we're from the background of like show business,
of making movies or theater or thing. You place the
emphasis on the finished piece of quote content or the
art that you're all making together, and so we optimize
for Okay, let's just make really the best end product.
And what we realized in the process of evolving into

(13:57):
a tech platform and we spoke to our community, Hey,
do you want to make more you know, music videos,
or do you want to make more TV shows, or
do you want to do more branded campaigns like all
the things that we've been doing. And the answer was
actually surprising to us and so obvious. And our community said,
we don't care what we make. We just want to
be able to make things together. And that's when we realized, oh,

(14:21):
the emphasis should be on the experience of being creative,
not necessarily the emphasis placed on the finished content. So
when we talk about product and we talk about user
experience and user interface and all those things, which is tech,
you know, that's the language of tech. That's what informed it.

Speaker 1 (14:37):
We'll go to the future in this moment now because
I think it's important. But I love how this company
was born. I think it's so important for people to understand, Joe.
What I actually love is that Hit Record kind of
came out of this idea of rejection. And it is
very hard for folks to realize that you, as an actor,

(14:57):
we're like having some trouble getting work and we're rejected.
But you were a child actor, had lots of success
and took a break to go to college, but when
you were trying to get back into acting, you couldn't
get a role. And I would love for you to
tell the story that this company kind of came out
of frustration, like and just wanting a platform and wanting
to say something, which I think is kind of the
root of creativity. Talk to us a little bit about

(15:20):
how that was like the beginning of Hit Record.

Speaker 2 (15:23):
Sure, well before it was a company, before it was
a community or a website or anything. Hit Record was
just something I was saying to myself, making a metaphor
out of the you know, the red circle record button.
In the moment you just described, I'd been an actor

(15:45):
when I was a kid. I'd quit to go to college,
and then I wanted to get back into acting and
couldn't get a role. And it can be just so
frustrating when you have the impulse to be creative and
you don't feel like you have permission to do it.
And that was when I decided, Okay, I have to

(16:05):
take responsibility for my own creative outlet. I can't wait
around for someone to cast me in a movie or
a show or something. And I started teaching myself to
edit video and I started making little short films and
songs and stories and things like that. And hit record
was just this symbol for me, like I'm going to

(16:26):
be the one to do it. I'm going to push
the button. And it's sort of a play on hit
record because in the past, media was a thing like
a hit record was what you wanted was to be,
you know, selling lots of records. And I think the
way that media is going and this is a while ago,

(16:48):
and my idealism thought that the way that media is
going was it's becoming less of an object to consume
and more of an action something to do. To hit record,
and I started making things and my brother helped me
set up a little website. This isn't you know, the
mid two thousands, just before it was so common to

(17:09):
post things on YouTube and Facebook, et cetera. So we
set up our own website and we called it hit
record dot org. And at first it wasn't about collaboration
at all. It was just a place for me to
put up things that I was making. But what happened
was my brother was like, hey, do you want to

(17:30):
put up like a message board on this website? And
I was like, oh, I don't know. A message board.
Then other people could post their own things on my space,
like leaving aside MySpace. I didn't mean that for that
pun to happen, but.

Speaker 3 (17:45):
It was a debate though.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
It was I remember you were really debating it whether
or not to include this message.

Speaker 2 (17:51):
Board exactly, yeah, because I thought maybe this should just
be my thing. And my brother was like, well, why
don't we just put it up and then if people
are nasty then we can take it down. And I
was like, oh, yeah, okay, fine, cool, let's just see
and we put up this message board. And not only
were people really cool to each other, what we noticed

(18:14):
was they weren't just talking about the little songs and
stories and videos and things that I was making. They
wanted to make things together together with me, together with
each other, and that felt fascinating and legitimately new, Like oh, well,
you know, being able to post a video and say, okay,

(18:36):
here's my video. That's not that different from television or
movies or whatever. There's an artist, they make something and
an audience can watch it. It's still kind of one way,
even though more people can do it, it's still pretty similar.
But people using the Internet to make things together that
they wouldn't have been able to make by themselves. That's

(18:56):
really different than any other time in history. And we
thought that was really cool, and so we leaned into that.
And again, this is really before This wasn't a company
at all. This is just a total hobby thing that
my brother and I were doing purely for fun because
we were like young and had the time to do it.
And the community kind of grew and evolved, and it
was after a little while that Jared said like, hey,

(19:20):
could this be something more ambitious? Could you make bigger,
larger scale works of art using this kind of communal,
collaborative creative process. And that's when when we started Hit
Record together as a company.

Speaker 1 (19:33):
So okay, I find painting the scene. So was there
a project back in the day when when you and
your brother are looking at it, you were like, oh
my god, like this is actually something right like that,
you were like whoa. And then when you and Jared
were talking about it, like where were you guys, was
he like at your houseman?

Speaker 2 (19:50):
No?

Speaker 1 (19:50):
No, no, like this is actually something cool, like this
is not just like your pet website.

Speaker 2 (19:56):
I remember the first time that Jared called me, and
because we had plenty of conversations about the pet website version,
because Jared and I were good friends, had been friends
for years, and so we would just talk about it.
But the first time he called me and proposed the
idea of working on it together in a more ambitious
and professional capacity. I was in la and you were

(20:16):
in New York, you know, speaking of you know, working remotely.
You know, this company has in its bones from its
very inception, it's it has a remote working and you know, eventually,
you know, we would meet up. I'd be in New
York and we would we would talk. And then of
course there's that that storied lunch that we had at

(20:37):
BNH Deli in the East Village where we made that list. Jared,
you tell the B and H Deli story.

Speaker 4 (20:45):
Well, that was that was I think a little while later,
we definitely did list out all of the different goals
that we would have for an organization that where people
would be collaborating on different creative projects together. We thought, okay, okay,
but this has to be a business. It's not going
to be a not for profit. It has to be
able to sustain itself and grow on its own. And

(21:07):
we made a list. We thought we could do make books,
we could put on live shows, we can make music together,
and then one day maybe we could make a TV show.
And I'm remembering this now, from the very beginning, we
said we will not sell ads, can't we can't create
because at the time, every like startup was like, all right, we'll.

Speaker 3 (21:28):
Just sell ads.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
We'll just generate a lot of traffic and sell ads.
And from the very beginning I remember us thinking like, no,
we have to have a business model that doesn't rely
on views and ads. And I think that that actually
ended up working out pretty well for us.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
I was going to say, but like, hold on a
sec because this is back in what like two thousand and.

Speaker 4 (21:47):
Two thousand and nine is a nine because we launched
Hit Record as a company at Sundance twenty ten, and
so a lot of the planning and all that stuff
was happening in two thousand and nine.

Speaker 1 (22:00):
This is long before the conversation that we were having
in Silicon Valley about the attention economy and how it's
broken and how we optimize for clicks and it doesn't
make you feel better? So what were you guys? Why
we're too like like non tech people at the time
talking about art and creativity online and saying, but this

(22:20):
is going to be a different business model and we're
going to do it like this, Like what do you
think you guys? Why did you care so much? I mean,
and I mean this in the nicest way, Like, what
what was it about you guys in this deli that
just cared so much at the time?

Speaker 4 (22:34):
First of all, have you ever been to like it's
it's so good, so good? It's uh yeah, it's really.

Speaker 1 (22:43):
It's like, is it the kind of deli that you're
just like passionate about anything you're talking about? It's like
the mats of ball soup is like so.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Good, so very romantic.

Speaker 4 (22:50):
It's tiny, tiny, tiny in the East Village and it's
very easy to get passionate and swept away.

Speaker 1 (22:58):
Very fair only all the tech founders did their company
business plans there, then we would maybe not be in
the same position we're in.

Speaker 2 (23:07):
At that time. Though it's an interesting question you're asking.
We weren't coming at it from the point of view
of knowing about the attention economy or thinking through a
business model, or how does this scale or what impact
does it have. At that time, we were still very
much rooted in the perspective of pretty much just artists,

(23:30):
and I think coming from that perspective, if we thought
about what kind of collaborative art are we going to
make with this thing we're building, we knew that if
we were compelled to have to sell ads, that would
really influence the art that we were going to make.

(23:52):
And we knew that we would have to kind of
dip down to the lowest common denominator. If what we
were trying to optimize for was sheer eyeballs, we would
have to go to the short attention span, we would
have to go to sensationalism, we would have to you know,
go to you know, your basic base stuff, and that

(24:14):
just didn't sound interesting. At all. We didn't want to
spend our time doing that. We wanted to make art
that we found it inspiring and beautiful and fun to make,
and so we knew that there's a way to find
that balance. And that's you know what I think both
of us had spent our careers as artists doing was
finding that balance between artistically dignified and inspiring and commercially viable,

(24:41):
and so we wanted to keep striking that same balance
as artists with this company, with this production company. But
we knew again just doing online ads in the way
the internet was, we wouldn't be able to do that,
and so we had to operate more as a production company.

Speaker 4 (24:57):
And I think we both had and have, I think,
without sounding too hippie dippy, a really good grasp of
the creative process and respecting the creative process. I think
one of the reasons why the community feels so positive
is we've always tried to allow for the creative process
to be protected. And like I said, that could sound

(25:19):
hippie dippy, but I think it's really important, especially at
the very beginning for us.

Speaker 1 (25:27):
Okay, we've got to take a quick break to hear
from our sponsors more with my guests after the break

(25:47):
and tell me a little bit about your background, Like
let's go to this love story of the deli, right, Like,
how did you guys actually meet? Initially? It sounds like
you guys have known each other for a very long time,
because Joe, you're talking about Jared being like, oh no,
this is something larger, even when you're building the website
back in the day, when you were building it with
your brothers, Like, how did you guys know each other?

Speaker 2 (26:07):
We met the summer of two thousand and one, Is
that that's right?

Speaker 3 (26:12):
Right?

Speaker 1 (26:13):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (26:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
I had just finished my first year of college. I
was going to college in New York, and I wanted
to stay in this city over the summer. And I
got a part in an off Broadway play called Uncle
Bob and like a two hundred seat theater and so
host so hopeful operation Yeah, And Jared was a stage

(26:37):
manager on that show.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
It's the assistant stage manager, right.

Speaker 2 (26:41):
I knew he was going to say that that's our bit.
I say stage manager, and then he corrects me and says.

Speaker 4 (26:51):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (26:54):
And that's where we met and we we made friends
and we actually I needed a place to stay in
his roommate was out of town for a couple of months,
so we ended up being roommates, and we were, you know, kids,
We were just kids in the summer in New York City,
you know, doing a play and talking about art and

(27:16):
thinking about like theater, and you know, Jared kind came
more from the background of theater and I hadn't really
done much traditional theater before, so I was in a
show and off Broadway and talking about old traditions of
art and creativity and new ideas of where things are going.
Both of us were kind of interested in technology, and

(27:38):
back then, you know, the Internet was a thing that
everyone was familiar with, but it was still quite new.
Like I think that first year in college that was
the you know, that was the year of Napster, and
like Google just showed up. I think for the first time.

Speaker 4 (27:52):
You definitely didn't have like a camera on you at
all times. There wasn't a device where you had a
way to capture everyday life. And that summer we would
just run around the city.

Speaker 3 (28:04):
Joe had always had a video camera on him, which
was rare, I.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Mean, which is normal now now everyone has a video
camera on their.

Speaker 4 (28:12):
Phone yet now, And he would do things like he
would hit the record button it whatever moment, and then
on the same tape would like fast forward, record rewind,
So then you would end up with this like a
couple hours of just like this collage of random moments,
and he would edit in the camera, and that was

(28:34):
before you had like final cut. Anyway, my point is
is that there was just like this moment of just
like running around just being creative, doing weird things and
making weird art. And Yeah, that's how I think. I
think we sort of set up almost like a language
of like this creative process that we that we sort
of became familiar with each other.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
Yeah, and it also sounds like you became protective over
that process to a degree.

Speaker 4 (29:00):
I remember, I don't know why I just thought of this,
but I remember we were living in this apartment for
like a couple of months, and if we were playing music, Joe,
you wouldn't you would like hate to like cut off
a song, Like you wouldn't want to like stop on
the side, Like you would either want to fade it
out or let the song finish before we could leave
the apartment.

Speaker 1 (29:23):
Why what does that say about the creative process?

Speaker 2 (29:27):
Well, someone took the trouble to make a song and
they you know, thought about how they were going to
end it, and here we were listening to it, and
I don't know, I just felt, I guess abrupt or
disrespectful or no good to like just stop it in
the middle. These are the thing you know. It was
also probably stoned. To be honest, that was also probably no.

Speaker 4 (29:47):
I think it's actually because, like another another, you really
placed the emphasis on the artist and the artist's intent.
So like he shunned compilation CDs, like now you could
pick an choose what you want to listen to in
Spotify whatever, but like would never would never the endorse
the purchase of a compilation.

Speaker 2 (30:07):
Our greatest hit CD, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
Exactly, you'd want like, Okay, this is the artist intended
to release this music in this format and that's how
the audience should experience it.

Speaker 2 (30:20):
Yeah, we definitely lost that battle. That did not go
our way.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
There is something so fascinating when you go on hit Record,
and I do kind of want to explain to folks
like what hit record is like when you go on
the site, when you experience it, it is really just interesting.
I went down a rabbit hole last night and was
like looking at poems and like feeling all sorts of things.

(30:46):
Can you explain, like what exactly that looks like? Now? Like,
what did Hit Record in the time that I saw
you guys in twenty sixteen, and it was a production
company and you're selling things like it?

Speaker 3 (30:58):
Did?

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Become a platform? Like it did? You guys went to
Silicon Valley, You raised money, You have forty employees, you
raised over six million dollars, like you totally became a
tech entrepreneur and not just like I say this in
a nice way, like not just like a celebrity who
comes in and says they're going to have a company,
like you actually went to the meetings. And I can

(31:19):
say this because I cover technology and I and I
know a lot of the venture capitalists and whatnot like you, Actually,
you and Jared went and got heavily involved and you know,
created a tech company. You know, what does the platform
look like? Explain it to our listeners.

Speaker 2 (31:34):
Sure, well, I was saying a second ago that the
platform is really emphasizing collaboration, and that's very different than
other media tech platforms. If you look at Instagram or
TikTok or YouTube, et cetera. Those platforms are really consumption platforms,
and yes you can post on them, but a creator

(31:55):
on those platforms is all sort of being funneled into
the larger business model of consumption of bite sized fragments
of content with ads, because that's how those companies make
their money. You mentioned the attention economy. It's all about attention.
Everything is sort of optimized for keeping the attention and

(32:17):
serving the ads and on hit record. Everything is optimized
to try to get people to participate and to collaborate,
and not just post something of their own and be
incentivized through likes, followers, etc. But to collaborate to participate

(32:37):
in projects. So what does it specifically look like? I
might have mentioned a second ago. When you open up
our app, the first place you land is a project's feed,
So you're not just looking at content to consume. You're
looking at projects that people have started. Probably like you
mentioned you were seeing poems, Laurie, I imagined what you
saw was people who had written poems who were looking

(32:59):
for others to illustrate those poems. Or you might have
seen like someone who started a project and they were like, hey,
here's this really cool illustration. What kind of writing could
be inspired? By this illustration. It's all about people building
off of one another and ultimately collaborating with one another.
And what we found over the years of doing this,
first as a production company and now is an increasingly

(33:23):
decentralized platform, is that when people are collaborating, when people
are making things together and they have a common purpose,
they relate to each other in a really different way
than when they're just consuming stuff. And that, to me
is the fundamental difference that defines our community, and it
cascades in any number of ways. And when you and

(33:46):
those feelings you mentioned, like the feelings, I think those
feelings come from from that basic premise. People are more
open with their feelings. People are more ready to be
vulnerable with each other because they're partners, they're collaborating, they're
trying to do something together, they're not just kind of
competing for likes. And so this is the kind of

(34:06):
north star that drives all of our decisions as we
form our product roadmap and we decide what features we're
going to build next.

Speaker 4 (34:13):
We also just you know, in terms of Hollywood versus
Silicon Valley, we knew that we didn't know, you know,
we didn't know how to find a head of product
or how to lead a product and tech company. And
so when we did go to raise venture capital, we
went to Silicon Valley one to raise capital, but two

(34:35):
to have you know, a partner or partners who are
in that world who could help guide how we would
lead this company. Because we know how to make shows
and we know how to make TV shows and things
like that, but we didn't necessarily know how to lead
a product and tech.

Speaker 1 (34:51):
Company, Like how do you do that? You know? I'm
just like, I think it's so fascinating when we like
hear these stories and even you, Joe, like you're a
big Hollywood actor and I'm sure people are really nice
to all but a lot of times like and all
that stuff, right, but like even I don't think people
understand this, Like even when you go into a room
in Silicon Valley, like people are still going to ask

(35:13):
you really hard questions and you still both of you
guys like might not know the playbook, right, Like can
you explain you talk about like we didn't know how
to do this, but now you guys have a platform
and you've raised money and you're doing this stuff, so
like it's easy when we read about it it's easy
when we talk about it even four years later after
I met you and and you've gone and raised this

(35:34):
money and done this, Like, what are the things you've
kind of learned from this process of kind of going
Hollywood even though you're still in Hollywood, but like Hollywood
Silicon Valley.

Speaker 2 (35:44):
Well, one of the big things I think we had
to learn, which gets to what I was talkying about,
is sort of the difference between you might say art
and science, or you might say evidence back to decision
making versus intuition back decision making. And in Hollywood there

(36:04):
isn't much science. You don't go in and pitch a
movie with you know, any kind of study or polls
or any of that stuff. I mean, I guess maybe
like you might go into like a marketing campaign in
Hollywood with those kinds of numbers, but when you're going
into pitch a movie, you don't. And I don't think

(36:27):
a lot of the leadership in Hollywood really thinks in
those terms, and maybe they shouldn't. I don't think it's
necessarily bad to go with your intuition. Intuition can be powerful,
but if you're going to build a more decentralized platform,
if you're building a software product, you have to have

(36:48):
more science to your thinking. You have to have numbers
to back up what you're saying. And I actually feel
like I've really benefited just as a human being, from
adding onto my thinking this sort of scientific method, like
I have to be able if I'm going to say something,
if I say this is true, I have to be
able to say and here's my evidence for why it's true.

(37:11):
And you don't say that when you're pitching a movie.
You don't say, here's my evidence for why the ending
of this story is going to be great. You just
tell them the ending and you perform it right, and
you've written it right, and if they feel it, they
feel it. And that's that. In rooms in Silicon Valley,
it can't just be based on feeling. That said, there's
not no feeling to it. There's still an art. And

(37:32):
this was actually funny to learn as well, was because
I went into the whole experience in Silicon Valley thinking, Okay,
I just have to leave my artist self at the door.
This is just going to be about math and science
and evidence and that's it. And once I started getting
into rooms, I realize, like, oh, you know, there actually

(37:54):
is this is like halfway, like pitching a movie. Halfway.
It's like it's half art and have science.

Speaker 1 (38:01):
In what sense? Was it like pitching a movie? Did
you and Jared have a bit? Yeah, we talk about
your college bit? Did you guys know?

Speaker 2 (38:07):
Absolutely? Yeah, of course you tell the whole story if
you're pitching it. When we by the time we were
like really pitching, we had a whole story. It was
like a show as a show. We put on a show.

Speaker 3 (38:20):
Yeah, we did the math.

Speaker 4 (38:21):
I think we pitched it like sixty times.

Speaker 1 (38:23):
It wasn't you know, well you pitched sixty times.

Speaker 4 (38:26):
Yeah, something like that, but not not all not not
not sixty vcs, but because like when you when you go,
you have to do it again for the same vcs
and then yeah, their partners totally.

Speaker 1 (38:36):
And people don't people don't realize how many times, I
actually think that's interesting. People don't realize how many times,
like you don't just get like funny, how many times
you have to tell your story and how much you
do have to perform it, and how much that is
a part of it too, and believing it.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
So I mean, well, and from what I understand, doing
it sixty times is actually a low number for raising
a series A.

Speaker 3 (38:56):
I know.

Speaker 1 (38:56):
I actually think it's many, many more. I mean I
think like people would say they pitched thousands of times.

Speaker 2 (39:01):
You know, they do know how to put on a
show as well as we did.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
They're not all they don't all have performance background.

Speaker 2 (39:10):
Yeah, So it's it's that balance. And I find that
not not just pitching for fundraising, but day to day
in the operations of the company, whether it's you know,
we were just in all hands and in a department
heads meeting earlier this morning, and all the decisions we make,
there's always a balance of art and science, and we
are we're really striving to become more and more of

(39:31):
a of a data driven company. And you know, we've
got new people on our team who have that as
a background and very you know that really helps. You know,
our our new head of Products and Technology are gom Derhotunian,
who comes from Pixart and Discovery and Vivo et cetera.

(39:52):
Like he knows about this is this is how you
track KPIs And he even he knows it so well
that he actually has intuition about it because he's seen
it so many times. And that's valuable experience. But it's
always a balance of saying, like, Okay, what evidence can
we point to that this is the right decision to make.
What numbers can we look at? And at the same time,

(40:15):
let's do just a human animal check, you know, like
check our intuition to make sure that this feels right.
I think you really have to have a balance of both,
maybe saying that with you know, too much authority because
I'm still just still just relatively new at doing the

(40:36):
tech side of it. But yeah, I think that's one
of the biggest changes for us as we've evolved from
more of a production company into more of a platform
is incorporating data into our decision making without letting it
rob us of our intuition.

Speaker 4 (40:55):
And from a practical standpoint, you said, like, how do
you actually do it?

Speaker 3 (40:58):
Like how do you go about in VC in Silicon Valley?

Speaker 4 (41:01):
Like this gush the Web Summit people are really gonna
love the fact that we're endorsing them so hard. But
we met this guy suit cheat Dash, He's a CEO
of Dubsmash, And we have the benefit of having like
some really awesome and supportive advisors and people around us
who give us really great advice. And I remember we
sat down at a coffee shop with Suite Cheat and

(41:24):
he said, Okay, when do you when are you thinking
about making this evolution into a tech company. And he
basically wrote, I swear on the back of a napkin,
like what the process would be. Okay, here's when you
start soft pitching. It's like, take coffee meetings, don't make
it seem like you're actually pitching, and then you go
for your your partner meetings, and then this, that and
the other. Oh and and you know, make lists of

(41:45):
potential vcs who might be aligned with you, and you know,
ask the task for introductions from have a timeline, get
introductions through other founders vcs love not necessarily VC to VC,
but founder to VC who can vouch for you. And
the fun thing was was that we had met Alex
Gorovitch of Javelin socially. Joe had met him socially, and

(42:07):
he said, Hey, we're about to go and pitch Silicon
Valley vcs. Would you have breakfast with us and just
take a look at our pitch just to give us
notes And we seriously were not pitching him, and so
it really and then we sat we had breakfast, we
went through our pitch deck really just for feedback, and
over the course of that breakfast, he was like, wait

(42:29):
a minute, I think this might be something that we
would want to invest in. He was on the board
of Masterclass and thumb Tech and Neantech and all sorts
of really wonderful companies. And the funny thing is is
that Alex became, you know, the lead investor in our company,
and now we speak to Alex almost every day. And
it was almost exactly how the napkin went, you know,

(42:50):
how it is how it actually turned out.

Speaker 1 (42:52):
It's funny they sometimes say, you know, if you ever
want to get investment, just ask for advice. Actually, don't
ask for investment. I want to talk about the actual
platform and creativity during this time because I think for
me personally, I don't know how I put this, Like
we're all living very different versions of this, but as
a journalist, I think I've struggled, like we're all living

(43:14):
the same story, right, Like I've always considered myself like
a pretty empathetic human and that I can no matter
what person and like what they're going through, I can
interview them and feel empathetic towards them, but I'm generally
not in the same situation right as everyone on the
planet and not same situation, but you know, we're all
facing this global pandemic, right like, I think everyone is

(43:37):
dealing with their own version of fear and anxiety and
worry to a degree. So I think that for me,
as someone who I like to say I'm creative, I
think about my own creative process and the way that
I deal with fear and anxiety is I create, I
tell stories, and that's my therapy. So that's why I
was excited to talk to you guys, and not just

(43:59):
becase because I've known you guys for many years and
it's pretty cool to see hit record, you know, come
into fruition and become this thing that I saw you
announce on stage and our Beyonce like moment, Joe. But also,
you know, this moment to a degree, unfortunately for better
for worse, feels like a super Bowl for you guys,
you know, because I think there's so much fear and

(44:20):
there's so much anxiety, and I think a lot of
people do feel a need to create or collaborate in
some way, and there is that outlet. So I'd be
curious to know, what projects are you guys seeing on
the platform that are coming out of this anxiety and
this pain, Like, what kind of creativity are you seeing?

Speaker 2 (44:40):
Yeah, that's a great question. It's really true. We've been
doing creativity and collaboration remotely as it were, all these years,
and it's been a bittersweet thing to see this tragic,

(45:01):
dark moment in history descend upon everybody and see our
community kind of rise to the occasion and watch as
it fulfills a need that a lot of people are
having right now. When I started Quarantining, you know, I
was in the middle of production. Actually, I was shooting

(45:22):
a show and the production got put on pause, like
all film and TV production, and I came to a
resolution like, Okay, I have to stay doing something or
else I'm gonna I'm gonna start, you know, getting getting negative,

(45:44):
and I said, I'm gonna. I'm just gonna do something
creative every day and always do it with other people.
And hit record was like built for that's that's what
it does. And so I've been just doing that every
day and so many different people are really resonating with
it and coming to it, and we are seeing a

(46:07):
real surge in people coming to Hit Record and engaging
in this communal, collaborative process. And I think a lot
of it is to do with the pandemic, although it's
actually not just that. It's all this work that we've
been doing for the last couple of years building a

(46:27):
better product. We just you know, we had just shipped
new mobile apps that are just you know, now getting
user friendly, and all of this work that we've been doing.
It's sort of a bizarre storm of events that now
a lot of people are stuck at home and looking
for something to do besides just chat about the headlines

(46:50):
online and doing something creative and doing it together with
other people. It really does fill that neede. And so
you asked about like different projects that we're seeing, you know,
we're definitely seeing a lot of stuff surrounding this current moment.
One of the first things, more ambitious things I did

(47:12):
to make sort of a short film out of you
mentioned poetry, someone else's poem. There was just sort of
about taking stock as you slow down and being grateful,
and lots of people contributed various cinematography and voice acting,
and it came together into this beautiful montage short film.
We made a music video about a song that this
songwriter wrote and she was kind of being optimistic, which

(47:36):
is nice to have a moment of optimism, a little,
you know, darkly tinged optimism. We're right now, we're in
the middle of making a short documentary project that's about
how different people with different economic realities are impacted differently
by this pandemic. And that was sparked by a woman

(47:58):
who lives in Oklahoma, who's a single mother supporting her kids,
and she can't work from home, and she had just
learned that there were confirmed cases of COVID nineteen in
her workplace, and she was understandably really scared and freaked
out about it, and she just wrote this piece about

(48:18):
how she it was so frustrating to hear over and
over again, stay home, you have to stay home. And she's,
like she said in her writing, I would love to
stay home if I could. I can't. If I stay home,
then I can't support my kids. And that really hit
me hard because I had, honestly just really hadn't even
considered that. And so she and I are now leading

(48:41):
this documentary project together, and we're getting contributions from people,
you know, throughout the spectrum, people talking on camera, or
writing their experience, or if they don't feel comfortable getting
on camera, just talking into the microphone about whether or
not they are staying home. And you get people talking
about their life in quarantine, and you get people talking
about you know, hey, I'm an assistant manager at a

(49:02):
grocery store. I can't stay home, and here's the trials
and tribulations of my day. And it's been really fascinating
seeing all the different perspectives come in to this collaborative
project about who gets to stay home and how grateful
those of us who are staying home, you know that
that's actually a luxury that we ought to be grateful for.

(49:24):
So we're putting that together into some kind of short
documentary and we just announced that this is all going
to come together into a show that YouTube Originals is
going to present. And they really liked what we were doing,
which was great to get support from them, and they've
got this initiative with YouTube Originals where they're doing a

(49:44):
bunch of these shows all around, you know, kind of
how people are coping with this pandemic. Various artists are
doing their art and ours is all about collaboration about
you know, it's not really about me and my art
so much as it's about me trying to help all
sorts of creative people, whether they're skilled artists or not

(50:05):
so skilled, just learning, but people with creative impulse who
want to connect and collaborate with each other, not just
to share something they made on their own, but to
make things together. And so we're making a show about
that right now for YouTube originals, and anybody can come
be a part of it. You can come to hit
record right now and jump in and help us make
this show. We're gonna episodes are going to start coming

(50:28):
out in May, but we're making the show right now.
So it's been been really rewarding to see this thing
that we've been working on for so long come into
this moment and honestly kind of help and help to
it to a degree. I mean, it's not helping, you know,
it's it's not a nurse on the front lines. But

(50:49):
I do think that that nowadays, the kind of sincere
connection you can get through creative collaboration is something a
lot of people are looking for. And yeah, that's what's
going on in the community right now.

Speaker 1 (51:05):
How's it helping you me?

Speaker 2 (51:07):
I mean, like I said, I was in the middle
of shooting a show, you know, so I was in
the middle of my my bliss, Like that's where I
grew up doing. That's what I love to do, is
just making something all day. And if I didn't have
Hit Record when that show stopped, if I just came
home and I was like, uh, okay, now what am

(51:29):
I gonna do? It's not easy to just self start
and say like, well, I'll do something else, not the show,
but I'll make whatever I'll write. I'll start writing a
new thing, or I'll make my album or whatever. Like
I find it hard, you know, to do that all
by yourself. But on Hit Record every day I just

(51:51):
look around and see what other people are doing. And
I've started some of my own projects, but mostly I
just like I find other people's projects and that inspires
me and I can just I can get in to
that flow state of creativity so much easier because I'm
doing it kind of in collaboration with someone else. They
provided that spark.

Speaker 1 (52:14):
Okay, We've got to take a quick break to hear
from our sponsors more with my guests. After the break, Jared,

(52:35):
how are you coping? I know you are a Broadway producer, too.
I was a big fan of Oklahoma. Oh God, like
what I would give just to like hear that like
booming from like everywhere. And you know, you know, a

(52:58):
lot of your livelihood is is just the theater and
the arts and people gathering. And so I ask you personally, like,
how are you coping with like the uncertainty of art
in this form, in the form that you love or
that I know that you love and that I've actually
seen come together, Like, how are you coping with the
uncertainty of that?

Speaker 4 (53:19):
Taking a pause, Well, I mean, I think Joe and
I both share a passion for like live performance, and
I think one of the reasons is because this separation
between audience and artists, You're in the same room, you're
breathing the same air, and so it is actually feeling
like a collaboration in a sense because the audience is participating,

(53:40):
especially like in that production of Oklahoma, the audience is
an active participant because the lights are on, You're seeing
how people are reacting, and so, you know, I think
the thing that is great for me, one of the
things that I'm passionate about is to try to figure
out how to support creativity in any kind of way.

(54:00):
And I think what's exciting for us is by embracing
the product and tech side, figuring out the different ways
that people could get involved from a creative standpoint, creating
collaborative tools. We're seeing that more people are participating, not
only because of this moment in time, but as Joe said,
it's easier for people to participate. Like our mobile app,

(54:23):
it's way way more easy to use right now, more
people are doing voiceover projects or writing projects and things
like that because we've just hopefully, hopefully we've helped to
demystify the creative process so more people can participate. And
so figuring that out, you know, having a really awesome

(54:44):
team that hit record and being able to figure out
how to provide an occasion and opportunity to have more
people experience and participate in the creative process is something
that's keeping me going.

Speaker 1 (54:57):
I think, you know, something I worry a little bit
about out at this current moment. As we were having
this conversation about tech and the negative impact of Facebook
and Instagram and what it was doing to our mental health,
and people were trying to figure out a way to
regulate screen time, and then this happened and it's like
we just swallowed the red pill, like we just went

(55:17):
all in and like I mean, I'm literally you're staring
into my where for our listeners, we're on zoom, Like
you're literally like staring into my living room right now,
Like there's just like no off button, it feels like
right now, and we have an excuse because this is
the only way we get human connection right now, and
we are so relyingt on it. Never in our generation,

(55:38):
our parents' generation, did we have to self isolate like this,
And so now there's not as much of a negative
conversation around Facebook or TikTok or Instagram. And it feels
like the pendulum swing that had gone all the way
one way when we met in twenty sixteen is beginning
to go all the way in the other direction. And
I do think that's that's dangerous because when we come

(55:58):
out of this, and hopefully we will come out of this,
I wonder, like, will they let us go? And also
I think we're going to be facing a mental health crisis.
I think that people, you know, isolation and how we
feel about ourselves, like these are things that are going
to be very much to the surface because of this moment,
and so i'd be curious, Joe or Jared, Like, you've

(56:20):
spoken a lot about how these traditional tech platforms TikTok, Instagram, Facebook,
don't necessarily because of their business models, make us feel better.
How are you feeling about this moment where I think
we're on these platforms even more? You know, do you
think that they're going to get it right? They're going
to also do good while you're at it? Like, is
this an opportunity for tech to redeem itself?

Speaker 2 (56:42):
Well, first of all, I would say that while I
think it's important to criticize the downsides of some of
these dominant platforms, that's not an absolute thing. And lots
of good does happen on Facebook and YouTube and Twitter,
and so it's not a black or white thing. But

(57:02):
I think you're raising a really great point, Laurie. I'm
happy you're saying it. We are all spending more and
more time online because so many of us are not
going out into irl. Not everybody, of course, a lot
of people are still going out into the world, but
for those of us that are staying home, we're probably

(57:23):
spending more and more time online. And I think this
could perhaps serve as a good preview for our future,
because this is the direction we're headed as the human race.
We're going to become more and more and more integrated
with technology. It's going to become a bigger and bigger
and bigger part of our lives. That's I think inevitable.

(57:46):
And the question is how is that technology going to
be oriented? Who is it going to be serving? To
what end? And I'm not alone or unique or in saying,
there's lots of people who know a lot more than
I do that are saying that if we let the

(58:07):
framework of our lives be defined by this attention economy,
by the notion of sort of path of least resistance
towards just more and more engagement, and you know, third
parties behind the curtain, sort of manipulating your will, that's
no way to build a society. And I would stop

(58:29):
there because my expertise doesn't go into how it impacts
our democracy, our economy, et cetera. But where I would
keep going is to talk about how that framework impacts
our creativity, because creativity is something I think I can't
speak to with some amount of authority. It's what I've
been doing my whole life, and I really do think

(58:50):
that talk to a lot of people, talk to or
just observe a lot of people. And now, right now,
this moment where people are more people are at home,
creativity is flourishing, can flourish. But I feel it in
myself that the more time I'm at home and the

(59:12):
more time I spend online, it really can spin you out.
Like I've been making these videos every day about what
I'm doing creatively, and we post them on Hit Record
and and I feel great. But we also do post
them on Instagram, and it's great to post them on Instagram.
It reaches a much larger audience on Instagram, of course,
because the whole world's on Instagram. But so I've been

(59:33):
spending more time on Instagram because I've been posting these videos,
and I have the same experience every time I go on.
I look at those numbers, I feel inadequate. I compare
myself to other people, and I don't think I'm the
only one doing this. These platforms are built for that.

(59:54):
And I'm really quite concerned that a whole generation of
people are growing up generational creative people, you know, generation
of people who have that creative impulse to be artists
or growing up where this is the framework of creativities.
If you want to make a movie, if you want
to tell a story, if you want to express yourself, well,
how many likes is it going to get? Think about

(01:00:15):
what you're writing, is it gonna get retweeted? Like, if
that's embedded into your creative process, I don't think that's positive.
And I'm doing my best to really limit my time
that I expose myself to that kind of sort of framework,

(01:00:36):
and we're building an alternative to it. I'm not saying
that it's ever going to go away, but I really
do think that it's one of the more important tasks
of our generation is to figure out how is our
digital life going to work? How are we going to
organize ourselves as a society online? And I don't think

(01:00:57):
this attention economy and ad model should be the drive force.
I really don't think so. And again I'm not alone
in saying that. Read Jaron Lanier, read Tristan Harris, read
plenty of other people, and so yeah, so if it,
like I said, it feels gratifying to be able to
have a haven away from from that kind of popularity contest,

(01:01:19):
and our community really focuses less on how many likes,
how much tension, how many ads can we serve? And
focus is more on what do we make together?

Speaker 1 (01:01:30):
I want to and in a more kind of personal way, Jared,
You know, there are just good days and there are
bad days with all of this, and you were saying
that there have been, you know, there have been symbols
of hope throughout this, and something for you was the
Navy ship arriving in New York City to help and
that was something that was personal to you. Can you
explain why that was personal to you? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:01:52):
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 4 (01:01:53):
My dad was in the Navy. He's one of the
only folks that was in Vietnam and also Operation Desert
Storm and back in the Night teen ninety one, I believe,
and he was attached to the USNS Comfort. I think
it's the USNS Comfort And so my dad was when
I was I want to say nine or ten, was
taken away to go and be a part of Desert Storm,

(01:02:15):
and he unfortunately passed away almost I think like a
year and a half later. But I think when he
was away on active duty for Desert Storm, while he
was participating in a war, he was helping people. He
was a nurse and from ever. As long as I
can remember, I remember the Comfort, the ship that he

(01:02:36):
was attached to, and a couple of weeks ago I
saw in the news that the Comfort was I didn't
know that. I don't know really very much about about
Navy operations, but that the Comfort, which is a medical
ship basically a huge floating hospital, was docked in Manhattan

(01:02:56):
to help and it was almost as if my dad
was coming back, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
It really got me thinking about him. My mom sent me.

Speaker 4 (01:03:07):
A text message with a photo of his hat that
said the USNS Comfort on it, and the fact that
she sent that to me, I don't know. I don't
have a ton of memories of my dad, but I
do remember him as being somebody who was universally loved
by just everybody loved him, and he was always there

(01:03:28):
to help. And so to see this ship sort of
come back in my life and to make that connection
between the Comfort coming into the help New York and
then also having that memory really helped me made me
feel really good, having a really good memory of who
my dad was even today, because he would have been

(01:03:49):
so proud to have been associated with something that is
providing help and comfort to New York.

Speaker 3 (01:03:57):
He would be just beaming so really good to see
in the news.

Speaker 1 (01:04:01):
Yeah, what do you guys think when you look back
at hit Record, Like, what do you want the contribution
for hit Record to be during this period?

Speaker 3 (01:04:10):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:04:12):
I mean, Jared was just mentioning the word comfort. I
find art and creativity really comforting. And there's a lot
of important things that a lot of people are providing now,
you know, people in the medical industry, people in the
food industry, all the essential workers. And I certainly won't

(01:04:34):
claim that art and creativity is the same as that,
but I know for me it's it's really helped me
keep my head on straight. And I'm seeing that a
lot in our community, that people are finding a moment
of comfort, finding a moment of peace and focus and
positivity and productivity and humanity in being creative together with

(01:05:00):
other people. And that's the whole point of Hit Record,
And it sort of just so happens to be acutely
needed right now in this moment of pandemic and quarantine.

Speaker 4 (01:05:17):
I think it's really cool that there's a place to
document an archive all of the experiences that people are having.
You know, they're recording their experiences and they're doing it
as a creative conversation, So we have all of these
different perspectives and stories of people's experiences, and what a
wonderful way to share that.

Speaker 1 (01:05:38):
Yeah, Joe. When I started out in two thousand and
nine interviewing entrepreneurs, and I would always do this thing
where I would try to figure out why they were
obsessed with what they were obsessed with. Because to be
a good entrepreneur, I have found you have to have
two things. One is you have to be obsessed with something,
and the other one is you have to be resilient.

(01:05:59):
I think, like for me, just having interviewed a lot
of entrepreneurs around my career, it's never just being the
smartest person in the room, despite what everyone thinks, Like
I think, it's this, you have to be obsessed and
you have to be resilient because a lot of people,
no matter who you are, are going to say no
to you all the time. Those are just like the
two patterns I've seen. So when I met you four
years ago now, I think I was trying to figure

(01:06:19):
you out as an entrepreneur, not as an actor, and
I looked and this is before you raise six million
of funding and before you had forty employees, and there's
a theme to the work you do. There's a constant
battle I think to help people who are feeling isolation
or loneliness. And I would also say, and this maybe

(01:06:42):
even came out and some of the themes of like
you're the Quarantine documentary, you're doing right, a desire to
look at like all the different layers in life, like
a looking like at different textures and nuance. You know,
you could have taken Hollywood money. You didn't. You would
have got Silicon Valley money. It would have been easy
to make this company, make this just a hobby, but

(01:07:02):
you didn't. You know, you went and built this. So
I think as every entrepreneur that has an obsession, if
I could define it, and you could be like Laura,
you're totally wrong, which I totally could be. You are
drawn towards helping people feel less alone through the creative process.
Why is that?

Speaker 3 (01:07:22):
Why is that?

Speaker 2 (01:07:24):
Uh, well, it's it's probably just what I feel, you know,
to go back to the beginning or the why why
does anybody who's creating anything do that? Feeling less alone?
It's kind of it's why you express yourself. You put
yourself out there. You hope that there's something you get back.

(01:07:48):
You hope it's it's not just a one way thing
where you're you know, shouting into a void, but you
hope that there's something that comes back, and that then
what comes back results in something. And that's what I
love about all the things that I get to do.
And I probably have loved it ever since I before

(01:08:09):
I can remember, you know, doing little acting or stories
or songs or stuff with my mom was a tiny
kid with my son's age, and that kind of continues
to be it, I think. And I love getting to
do what I do, and in the conventional means, you know,
making movies, acting and stuff, or getting to write or

(01:08:31):
direct sometimes I really love doing that. But there's something
that I've gotten out of hit record for all these
years now that's just different. It's it's it's different than
making something and you know, showing it to an audience.
It's it's that two way things. It's a feedback that's

(01:08:52):
unlike what I get in more conventional acting or filmmaking.
And it's evolved this point of now, you know, we're
really leaning into the technology right now. I think, you know,
eventually I'm going to keep doing this and the technology will,
you know, find its place and we'll be focused on

(01:09:13):
how that technology can enable further creativity. And it's really
kind of what I've always just loved, and I don't
I don't know if it's funny you talk about being obsessed.
You could say obsessed, you could say love. It's sort
of the same thing. It's compelled beyond any reason. And
maybe this gets back to the art and the science
that I was talking about a minute ago. At a

(01:09:33):
certain point, I don't think you can really quantify or
give a scientific reason why. If you know, for what
I love, why do you love being a journalist? I
imagine there's probably a similar a similar answer in there.
You couldn't necessarily boil down why if you had to.
It's something you're compelled to do. And yeah, so I

(01:09:56):
don't mean to give you a non answer, but I
but I think you asked such a deep question there,
like there isn't always like a finite answer to that.
It's just something I really love.

Speaker 1 (01:10:11):
Well, I look forward to seeing what you guys were
going to do with hit record, and my last question
to both of you as a hit record prompt, this
is like revealing something very dorky about myself in the process.
But someone put like a prompt on hit Record where
it was like, write a note to your younger self. Right,
So part of hit Record is that you can answer
other prompts that users kind of put in and Joe

(01:10:34):
sometimes you answer them, Jared, sometimes I guess you answer them.
So I want to end this one on a prompt,
something I've always done when I go through very hard
or weird periods in my life. And this was not
for Hit Record. This is just in general, as I
write myself a note from my future self, I know.
So this was like I was very inspired when I
saw that they were doing Hit Record. I was like,

(01:10:56):
what you know, so I would love to end on
a and what would you tell? You know, we have
to write a note? But you know it's you twenty
years from now, we're looking back at this period. What
do you what do you write in a letter to
yourself twenty years okay, not twenty years two years whenever?

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
No no, no, no, no, no, I don't this is
your problem.

Speaker 3 (01:11:16):
I was just I was just it feels like that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:19):
Just wasn't as collaborative of a creative process as I envisioned.

Speaker 3 (01:11:26):
That's more. I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

Speaker 4 (01:11:28):
Oh man, it's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:11:29):
Write a letter to your current self from your future
self that got through this global pandemic.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
Oh, you're going to participate as well? Right? Do I
have this? This is hard?

Speaker 1 (01:11:43):
It is, It is hard. It doesn't have to be whatever.
What would you tell yourself? Do you want me to
start to rip the band aid?

Speaker 2 (01:11:49):
Sure? Then I know how long to do it. I know.

Speaker 1 (01:11:51):
I feel like I'm definitely going to screw it up.
I would say, dear Laurie, O God, this is like
the other side of the questions. Now I know what
it feels like. Dear Lourie, you had no idea how
resilient you were, and this was the reset that put

(01:12:13):
it all into focus. You had so much love in
your life, and you had no idea how much you
could do, and you could have all the things you
really wanted, and this really made you believe that love
your older, much wiser self who got it together. Also,
you learned how to make scrambled eggs, and I cannot

(01:12:35):
believe you didn't know how to do that before.

Speaker 4 (01:12:40):
I would say, dear Jared, this moment in time really
did give an opportunity for the world to focus on
what was most important, not in just our personal lives,
but globally, really place an emphasis on income, inequality, climate change,
the health and human services, and hit the reset button

(01:13:01):
and really provided an opportunity for us to examine those
issues and provide better resources to our fellow human beings.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Okay, okay, let's see, how about uh, dear Joe. Right,
we're starting with dear dear Joe. You had to slow down,
and that was scary, but it was all okay. You
got plenty done a little bit slower, and as things

(01:13:39):
ramp back up and you feel the pressure to speedback
up again, you can remember the things were going fine,
a little bit slower and maybe slow as smooth as
they say in the military, you know, nod to the
USNS comfort They say slow is smooth and smooth as fast.

(01:14:01):
So maybe just a little bit slower overall is not
a bad way to keep going even after the world
speeds up again. How about that.

Speaker 1 (01:14:22):
I like this idea of ending this episode where we
started with the luxury of perspective one day. I think
we're going to have it right now. It's a bit hard,
So as we end this season of first Contact. I
haven't ask write yourself a note from your future self.
I promise in a couple years you're going to look
back on it and be grateful you did. We're winding

(01:14:45):
down the season of first Contact, but don't worry. Even
social distancing is not going to keep us apart for long.
After all, if you've stayed with me this season, you've
heard about hacking your dreams. You listened as I developed
a relationship of sorts with a chat. I thought you
heard some of the most powerful people talk about what
it means to be human, looking at issues like anxiety

(01:15:07):
and fear through the lens of technology. Tech has always
been my lens into the human condition, and what an
extraordinary time to be covering it. I hope you'll stay
in touch with me. We're building out a media company
called dot dot dot where we're developing docuseries, this podcast books,
you name it, and keep an eye out on your
podcast app. You never know you might find a surprise

(01:15:28):
episode or two between seasons. Also, sign up for our
newsletter at dot dot dot media dot com backslash newsletter
and visit our site for extras. We're launching the newsletter
this summer, and it'll be your best source to stay
in the loop about any upcoming episodes, virtual town halls,
and other future projects. I'll be working on Email us
your thoughts on the season, or you can send me

(01:15:48):
your note to yourself anything at First Contact Podcast at
gmail dot com and you can contact me directly. My
number is nine one seven five four zero three four
one zero. I think the theme here is stay in
touch and follow along on our social media. I'm at
Lori Siegel on Twitter and Instagram, and the show is

(01:16:09):
at First Contact Podcast on Instagram. On Twitter, We're at
First Contact Pod. First Contact is a production of Dot
dot Dot Media, executive produced by Lori Siegel and Derek Dodge.
This episode was produced and edited by Sabine Jansen and
Jack Reagan. The original theme music is by Xander singh Okay,
that's a w app. I'm thinking about you guys as

(01:16:30):
we navigate this messy period. Stay healthy, stay human, and
stay in touch. I'm Lori Siegel and this is First Contact.
First Contact with Lori Siegel is a production of Dot

(01:16:52):
dot Dot Media and iHeartRadio.