July 26, 2022 • 55 mins
It may be cliché to say “it’s ok to make mistakes”, but for those willing to understand the logic behind them and not immediately dismiss them as irrelevant, clichés can hold valuable lessons.
Fred Schebesta has faced his fair share of failure but as one of Australia’s most recognisable entrepreneurs can assert that it is in fact ok to make mistakes…
As a co-founder of a half-billion dollar organisation, Finder, and a multitude of other ventures, Fred is a self-proclaimed lover of growing businesses from nothing to make them ‘Go Live’ - the title of his latest book.
In S02EP05 of That Digital Village Show, we sat down with Fred to discuss dealing with failure, building a sustainable business in increments, using the idea of narratives to innovate and whatever else popped into his brilliant mind.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome back to another episode of that digital
village show the show about thelatest tech trends news
impacting business people andplanet.
In today's episode, we have anexciting guest joining us,
launching a book recently titledgo live a 10 principles to
building a global empire, afounder of the company finder,
our familiar host, Luke and polewelcome Fred Shasta, Fred and
the digital village team will bediving deep into the topics of
(00:24):
success, unlocking the secretsto building and growing a
successful digital business andrelated principles to reach that
empirical status.
Why you should never give up andeven deep dive into the
existential realities of doingbusiness in our current
environment.
So sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, welcome back to the TV show or the digital
village shows.
We now call it of course, cuz wedon't want any confusion about
that.
Um, Luke is back and our specialguest, Fred Shasta, the founder
of one of the founders becausethere were two of finder.
Um, great to have you with us,Fred, uh, really looking forward
to hearing your story and whatyou are up to right now.
(01:10):
Um, thank
Speaker 3 (01:10):
For having me.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah.
So, so
Speaker 3 (01:13):
There's paradise cage, which
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Is kind of like it's a bit weird.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
We're trying to go full we're coming at you
Direct's no, no.
And no interventions have beenplace with all this podcast is
recording.
Correct.
Very analog experience.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Now the, the risk of sounding ages.
Do you remember a band calledtub thumping,
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Tub thumping.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
They had a single back in 1997.
Oh
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I August song.
Yeah.
Well the song
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Song was called.
It was Chumba Womba was the,
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I know Chumba
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Womba that's right.
And the, and the song was calledtub dumping and the first two
lines of it, I get, do I getknocked down, but get up again.
You're never gonna knock medown.
Yeah.
And I only put that in cuz Ihaving read the book go live,
which we'll talk about in aminute, that really resonated
with me the fact that you've,you've had to persevere and
(02:00):
you've gone through, God knowshow many startups and you know,
um, experiments that didn't turninto anything before you
actually became successful.
Yeah.
Is a great Agram we shouldreally try and dig into that a
bit later.
Yeah,
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah.
Um,
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, that was fascinating.
Nice.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Sum up.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Thank you.
That was
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Really good.
Thank you.
And you summed it up with asong,
Speaker 2 (02:20):
A song.
What?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
It's a crazy, he's a man of culture,
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Paul.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Paul,
Speaker 3 (02:26):
We do, by the way through everyone who's listening
right now.
I know this is not a visual, uh,as much visual, you might be
watching this, but just soeveryone knows, Luke has
incredible handwriting.
Now somehow he's an engineer aswell.
Yes.
So that means he must be able touse his left and right brain
together.
That's a fairly uniqueindividual.
Thank you very much,
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Fred.
He is an you're shame.
Talented really?
I mean, you know, well,
Speaker 3 (02:50):
You know, we all love to annoy character Paul.
Anyway, we can.
So you guys are in, ifyou're listening right now, very
creative.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
So moving on, we wanna learn a little bit about
your life experience, Fred, andalso try and give some advice to
our listeners around what it isthat they need to have to be
successful.
Now you've written a book aboutit.
I'm sure there's a lot more thatyou wanna share with us as well.
Um, but why didn't we start withthat?
What, what inspired you to writethe book in the first place?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Well, um, you know, it was, I guess the middle of
COVID.
I tried to write a book a fewtimes.
Yeah.
Um, but I, I sort of started andthen wrote like headings and
then didn't really, it didn'tnothing came like, you know,
like it didn't arrive.
The university was saying, thisis not the right time, similar
(03:41):
direction or different ideas.
I guess I got knocked down.
Then I got back up again andthen I, Hey yeah.
Um, I would say at least threeto four failed attempts solidly,
fully, you know, wrote thechapters names, titles.
Yeah.
(04:01):
Um, one was on like, you know,emotional growth one was on, um,
you know, how to build abusiness, just, you know, I just
didn't feel it.
Yeah.
But you, you, you end upcovering like all of those
things really don't you in, ingo live.
Yeah.
I think, I think it was a, anattempt to try and share the
(04:30):
varied and yet, you know, prettypersonally personal stories of
challenge and in some way,hopefully people got inspired
from that.
And then also another way I washoping that there was someone
out there who wanted to startsomething and they just did a
(04:52):
little nudge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So did you have that kind of picture in your head
when you're writing it of oneperson that you were kind of
directing this story too, say,
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Hey, I'm gonna, my, my current partner, um, Brenda,
who might be listening mayprobably not listening, but
we'll see.
Hopefully she does listen.
I do, I have to, I publish a lotof content, so it's hard to read
everything and listen toeverything.
But, um, I, I actually rememberthis story when she was starting
out and you know, she, shestarted up her own law firm.
(05:22):
It's called black gold legalmm-hmm and she used
to work at, you know, some very,fairly big law firms.
And I, I, I remember thisexperience of like going, Hey,
you could just start your ownlaw firm.
You're extremely capable.
You can do this.
Yeah.
And the sort of conversationswould actually be, I would just
start regaling stories of thingsI did and say, oh, well, you
know, I'm not sure if this isgonna work.
It's like, well, I can tell youabout things that don't work and
(05:44):
I've done a lot of them.
Mm-hmm and it'sokay.
Yeah.
And you just go again.
Yeah.
Uh, and, and I just, you know,kept on telling stories and
stories and stories and Irealized those stories are
highly constructive andinstructive as well.
Yes.
Yep.
Um, and so, and I noticedmyself, I I've over time, I I've
I've said these stories a lot.
(06:04):
And so I thought, okay, maybe weshould put these down somewhere.
Mm.
And the first thing we did waswe press record on zoom.
And I, I had an interview, um,with, with an editor and he just
interviewed me for like fourhours, um, three, three times in
a row re recorded the wholeentire thing.
And unfortunately the end of it,he said, look, Fred, I don't
(06:24):
actually know you you've coveredso many things.
I have no idea what to writethis book about.
so we, we werekind of back at the start again,
unfortunately.
Yes.
Um, so I got back up again and,um, that should be a name of the
book actually get back up, getback up again.
Yeah.
Um, in, or a song someone shouldmake a song about that.
(06:45):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then someone who shouldwrite a, make a really cool
podcast and introduce a guestwith that song, with that song.
Um, perfect.
That's like, that feels like themetaverse.
Um, metaverse, what's that, what, what I was
thinking, um, is, you know, thewritten word, if, you know, one
(07:07):
of the things, a big shiftingfinder, what I, I sort of
brought and really influencedrecently, or not recently, I say
in the last three years,particularly at the start of
2020 was to, um, really shifttowards narratives.
So when people create projects,we write narratives.
Yeah.
So instead of PowerPoints, youknow, PowerPoints are still
good, but we, we, we write out,you know, narratives and Amazon
(07:30):
really led this.
And then, you know, there othercompanies have obviously adopted
the similar process.
Um, in, in that one of thethings I was trying to figure
out, why is this process sopowerful?
And I, one of the things thatwas, um, I discovered in
researching this Amazon, I thinkJeff wrote, or, or someone in
(07:54):
Amazon said, well, the writtenword is one of the highest
bandwidth tools of humanity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the sh if, if you writesomething and then you give it
out and distribute it, theamount of bandwidth that is
packed into that, you know, intoa series of words, which are
read over and over and over andover again is extraordinarily
high.
(08:14):
Yep.
And so I thought, well, this is,you know, I just forgot that
idea, like that idea.
And I noticed this as we startedwriting more and more things
down at finder, the amount ofcontext that was shared, the,
the level of sharedunderstanding of, you know, why
we're doing things where we'vecome from and you could just go
(08:35):
back in time and literally readdocuments.
Yeah.
Um, that sort of partiallyinspired me as well.
And so, you know, that's whatsort of kickstarted us in 2020
to, to, to start to write it.
Cause I thought, Hey, there'sprobably some valuable things
that I could share.
Why don't we try and, you know,start to write these down.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
So how much do you think that narrative thing
actually influences culture infinder?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I think now it's assumed if you haven't written
it down now and you just proposean idea without, you know, you
can propose an idea and thenback it up as a potential pitch
to then write a narrative, togive the full context of your
thinking.
But if you are just talkingabout an idea now that's nowhere
has nowhere near as much weightas like, okay, I've written this
(09:26):
narrative.
It's like, oh, okay.
Now you've, you can read it.
And then, then people can start,start to debate and discuss.
And you know, doesn'tnecessarily mean the idea is
gonna live by the way.
No, can, there are manynarratives that don't, um, make
a pass, but at least you'veclarified and purified your
thinking.
It's like, what did you actuallymean about this?
Write it down.
Yes.
And that, that process, so the,so the process of taking
(09:48):
something from your mind and thepicture you have yes.
To actually translating it intowords is, is it actually, well
for Luke, it's a beautifulprocess for myself.
It's not as beautiful, but it'scertainly a clarifying process.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah.
But for a lot of people, writingis quite a challenge.
Being able to do that kind ofnarrative process without any
experience or new structure orguidance.
Yeah.
Um, is doesn't come naturally toeverybody.
Do you provide them with anyguidance on how to construct a
narrative?
Not,
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Not, not really.
And, and I, I think what'sinteresting about that is, um,
there are templates and thereare ones you can read.
And so you, you get the generalidea.
Um, the other day, one of ourdesigners and his first language
is in English.
Mm-hmm, um, hisname's kosha and he wrote a
narrative, um, about, actuallyabout a data science problem.
(10:42):
Right.
wow.
So let's just, just keep contexthere.
Right.
So he's on a data scientist and,um, but he had, he's trying
solve a, you know, a creativeproblem, Uhhuh and
I said, why don't you write downthis problem?
He was like, oh, okay.
And what I noticed in himwriting is the level of inquiry
(11:04):
is it's actually a bit shorter,but it's more concentrated and
higher bandwidth again, mm-hmm because he didn't
have all the waffle.
Yeah.
You know, he, he he's literallylike from a design perspective,
he's just gonna write what isneeded and exactly no more.
Right.
And it was like, wow.
Like, like, and it was shorter.
It was probably, you know, twopages.
Yeah.
But just that clarifyingdocument, even from, you know,
(11:27):
and again, you know, an engineerthe other day wrote a, uh,
narrative about an NFT.
Yeah.
And like an NFT is quite anethereal concept.
It's not just a technical thingto create and build.
It's got a lot of dimensions toit.
And so he really covered thatentire space.
He's obviously very passionateabout it.
(11:48):
Mm-hmm but I, Ijust think it is possible.
Um, and, and, and purely justthe process is actually what the
, the actual really the goal is.
Yes.
Also then the, the eque of thedocument.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So just,
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Sorry, sorry.
I was gonna say, yeah.
Getting people to you can't doit without thinking hard about
what you're writing about.
Right.
And thinking it through.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah.
Agreed.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
And so, yeah, so that, that really brings a more
complete and transferable, Iguess, as you say, narrative,
everybody, and you can pick itup with some confidence and say,
okay, somebody's put a lot ofthought and work into this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Do you think that process actually, um, speeds up
the process of innovation?
Does it make it easier to kindof filter out things which
clearly not gonna make it?
I mean, you are kind of manseems to be, you know, fail
fast, fail early, um, expectfailure because it's gonna have
to happen for you to get to thepoint where you've got something
(12:43):
that's actually practical andneeded.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So maybe I'll just separate two things there.
I just wanted to try.
And if I can, this is how Ithink of that, but maybe it, it
doesn't necessarily mean thatit's the right way.
Um, so when I think aboutinnovation, I think about two
different things.
So there's, I just wanted tounpack that slightly and just
(13:09):
clarify, cuz I think your, yourquestion is quite, um,
concentrated and I just wannatry and lay out a few, the
dimensions to it.
So the first way I think of thatis you've got incremental
innovation.
So, you know, mm-hmm, an improvement.
And in that CA that sense, Ithink a lot of context is needed
because what happens is if you,in that, when you, when you do
(13:30):
an incremental improvement, oneof the challenging parts is, is
to understand why things thewere way they were before.
And what are the considerationsof other people in making a
change?
Yeah.
Because something's working, youknow, it's, or it may not be
working the best, but at leastsomething, or there was some
reason or thinking that has comebefore you.
(13:51):
And I think it's reallyimportant to stand on the
shoulders of giants from, frombefore you, right.
And honor that, that a thinkingthat works.
So, so I do think that's reallyimportant.
I think it speeds it up mm-hmm cause then
everyone's on the sharedunderstanding and then you're
not like, you know, um, youknow, sacrificing things which
are actually working because noteveryone understood why mm-hmm
and, and, and thenagain, you, then you get to the
(14:12):
project and at the end of theproject and you're like, oh, why
are we doing this in the firstplace?
It's like, oh, well, let's goback to the narrative.
Oh, that's the goal.
Oh, that's why we were here.
Understand.
Okay, cool.
And if someone new comes intothe project again, Hey, here's
the narrative for this projectagain, you've got succession
planning, these kinds of things.
I think so.
Yes.
I think that speeds upincremental improve innovation.
Right.
I think in innovation, which aregiant leaps forward, so where
(14:35):
you are doing something, whichis not been done before.
Yeah.
Where you like
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Starting from scratch, starting
Speaker 3 (14:42):
From yeah.
A blank piece of paper where youare, I'd say you have 3% of the
data that you are, you need tomake this decision.
You have a intuition, a piece ofdata or a customer conversation
or something you're exploringessentially that narrative, I
(15:02):
think, um, is a good place tostart.
Does it, does it solveeverything?
Is it, is it okay?
Let's talk about what does itactually solve there?
Well, one is to clarify the,kind of the, why, why we're
doing this.
And, and I think that works inthe same way.
The part, which I think is themost important part, but about
the narrative in the, in thecreative sense of that kind of
(15:23):
innovation, I don't thinkhappens on the paper.
I think it actually happensoutside the paper.
So it's, it's it's um, peoplecome together and one idea or
one piece of energy is sharedand it starts a, another
reaction in someone else whichopens up their mind
serendipitously to another idea,which shares with someone else.
(15:46):
And together you get to a placewhere you didn't think you were
gonna be, and no one's ever beenbefore.
Mm-hmm, that is nowyour place where you need to be.
And I don't think that happenson the paper unfortunately.
Right.
So it's more of a catalyst
Speaker 5 (15:56):
In that situation.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It's not, it's not defining.
Yeah.
It's an go where yeah, it has tothe, that creation and that
creativity.
And sometimes that happensactually made the work.
Um, so you're like, wow, we madethis error.
Hey, actually, that's prettygood.
Yeah.
What is that?
Let's go with that.
And that, that is where I thinkthat happens.
(16:18):
So, so I think in this case, thenarrative is more, a more like
defining an area of initialexploration.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Interesting.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yeah, no, it is.
And do you think it has to, andthat, that communication that
happens outside of the writing,like talking to somebody else
and then working through those Iideas, do you think that's
something that's really criticalto that process when we talk
about catalyzing?
The idea?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yeah.
I think that, so I, I, I thinkthat maybe I'm old school, but I
just think of it like two, twotriangles.
So it could, I think it'ssupposed to be a double diamond,
or I don't know,
Speaker 4 (16:59):
I've heard of this,
Speaker 3 (16:59):
But all I can think of is two triangles.
So in the beginning, you know,really expanding your thinking.
Yeah.
Throwing out ideas and then witha, with almost a meeting and a
purpose where there is no,there's no place you're
necessarily going, you'rewandering, curious, able to
explore, um, you seek horizons,you walk towards places not to
(17:22):
get to the horizon, but merelyto unlock maybe what are the
possibilities that are downthere?
Yeah.
Like when you're looking atidea, let's say we were all
right now gonna, you know, we'regonna make, you know, a rocket
and this rocket, his intentionwas to, um, you know, see if we
can quickly transport dogs, youknow, into space.
(17:44):
Well, firstly, we, neither of usprobably know that much about
rocketry.
I don't know if, well, maybe,maybe, maybe I shouldn't.
I shouldn't Paul
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Looks no, you're right.
You're right.
Wouldn't know we don't.
No,
Speaker 3 (17:54):
,
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I'm an engineer, but I know nothing about rocket
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Actual
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Engineer.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
But I mean, you know, we would then need to go learn
about rocketry, um, uh, you know, um, escape, velocities, the
effects of gravity, um, allsorts of things that we don't
really know that much about.
And so normally when you arecreating something brand new,
(18:19):
you're going normally into aspace where you may not have the
domain knowledge, um, to be ableto effectively debate and
discuss.
So you tend to talk in genericsand or yeah.
And then once you go down thatplace or that horizon and you
start to learn this new field orthis new, you know, let's learn
about solidity programming,learn about Ethereum and how
(18:40):
does it work?
And you're going down to thebasement of cryptocurrency.
What you start to learn thereis, okay.
These are maybe actually morespaces we should potentially go
and explore again.
So it's, it's, it's, it's, it'salmost a, and I think honor that
honoring that process is hard incompanies.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I was gonna say, yeah, cuz it needs a lot of time
undirected activity andsomething where I think people
who are overseeing that activityas well in the organization,
they say, what are we gonna getat the end of it?
We don't know
Speaker 3 (19:13):
and why are
you doing it?
Speaker 4 (19:15):
It's hard to do supply in many organizations.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Where, where, what is our goal here?
Our goal is to find a goal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, wow, what did that,what is that?
You know, I, I was what theother night I was watching and,
and, and just learning initiallyhow unity works, like the, the
3d programming language forgames and how it interacts with
blockchains.
And I literally, you know, didan hour tutorial on how that
(19:41):
worked.
I, I don't think I'm necessarilythe best coder or anything like
that, but I just wanted tounderstand what exactly is this
thing, you know, what is, howdoes the blockchain actually
work with, um, games?
Like how do they connecttogether?
I just wanted to understand,okay.
I wanted to go actually look atthe fundamentals.
And so then I can talk morecompetently and we can start to
innovate.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's a good example of thatthen like Fred's gonna go and
learn about unity.
So it's gonna enable more, Iguess, informed conversations
elsewhere that I guess becomemore productive.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And, and, and now coming all the way back.
Yeah.
That may form part of thenarrative that may form part of
the appendix.
Um, that context, it may berequired.
Reading required learning, um,it'll inform, um, the type of
team, the, the, the, the, um,types of tools we need to find,
(20:33):
um, identify partners andcompanies, um, influences, um,
experts, courses that we need togo and refer to look at and
consider.
Mm.
And that's like, you know, ifyou think about it milit, it's
like, these are the logisticsand the supply chain that you
need to go and fund thisexploration mission.
Right.
Yeah.
That's right.
(20:53):
So that's, so you keep going,
Speaker 4 (20:54):
That's the foundation of your like roadmap forward.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, I think that'sreally hard, you know, that's
why, you know, big leaps inthinking big leaps in innovation
are hard because it's an, it'san UN, uh, exact science of it's
seriously.
Yeah.
Wandering.
Yeah.
You're literally wanderingaround.
Yeah.
Yep.
(21:18):
And I encourage that in ourteam.
So in our, in our S I run theventures team at finder, which
this is what we do.
We literally wander, you know,we wander around and we make, we
made a game the other day and wehaven't launched it.
And we, we made, um, a littleapp that transfers money between
people in our finder app.
It's on one of our versions.
It fully works, you know, it'slike, like we just wander.
(21:39):
Right.
What does this actually feellike?
What does it actually mean?
What does that yeah.
What does it do?
What does that say?
You know, cause you talk aboutit, like, Hey, we should send
money between people.
Cool.
And like, that's the end ofthat.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like, that's the end ofthe idea of that feeling.
Whereas now when you go to thathorizon, right.
So you go to that place, youwalk down towards that area.
Now you, you sit there andyou're like, huh, this is what
(22:01):
this place looks like.
And that's really interesting.
And now what do we see fromhere?
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah.
What does it enable or yeah.
What new opportunities does itcreate?
Speaker 3 (22:11):
And that's a hard process.
Right.
And that's, that's something Ithink, you know, as, as a leader
or, or anyone who's, you know, amanager at a company, one of the
most important roles is toassign capital.
Right.
So where do you put people'stime?
Yep.
Um, the second one obviously isoperational excellence, but
those two things are the mostimportant things.
And signing capital to that.
(22:33):
Inexact science is hard.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It is hard.
And I would imagine quitedifficult to, um, to distribute
in a fair and even way across a,a large team.
I mean, how many people arethere in finder now
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Must be at least 300
Speaker 2 (22:50):
It's 300 plus
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Three.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And how many of them are, areencouraged to, to go down that
road that you are describing?
Well,
Speaker 3 (22:57):
You know, we, one of the, the, the values of Fonda,
the third value is to go liveand there is a real exploratory
feeling to that value.
Right.
Of, of going live of getting,putting things out there.
And, you know, um, we talk aboutthe idea that, you know,
anything on your computer, um,doesn't exist until it's on the
internet.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
right.
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah.
Which is kind of whack, which iskind of true, right.
It doesn't, it's on the internetand it didn't happen.
Um, we, so I definitely thinkpeople are, they do go live and
they do experiment, but this,this level of dedicated,
assigned time to wandering toplaces is a, is, is a defined
area of finder in the venturesteam.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Right.
Right.
Okay.
And over the, the sort of 22plus years that find has been in
existence, I was reallyfascinated by the fact that you
focus so highly on Australia asa market first, and the second
country that you went to was thestates, is that right?
Um, but that was some 10 yearsafter the company was founded.
(23:59):
So just looking at the, kind of,um, that, the history of a lot
of innovation in the internetspace, that seems like a long
period of time from one countryto the next, was that deliberate
or was that a factor of themarket or, you know, was that a
decision?
The leadership team was takingwhat, what was kind of the
driver behind?
(24:20):
Okay.
Let's take our time.
Let's make sure it works herefirst.
And then we'll start thinkingabout the next place.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Mm it's interesting.
Um, reflecting back like that.
And in the, in the moment, inthe time, I think to give
context, like Fondo a, was a,you know, a bootstrap company
for, you know, only to we hadour first, we had, we first ran
a funding ever last year.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Goodness.
Just to a new context.
Wow.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's, that's impressive.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So, so, you know, casually funded business, you
know, we ran a profitablebusiness.
It's not like a, a fast growthbusiness.
It's more of a slow, um, slow asright.
The word it's, it's more of a,we work fast at finder, but it's
just, we don't recklessly growfor growth sake.
Um, you know, it's, it's veryWarren Buffy in a way really.
(25:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
But it's, it makes it even more remarkable actually
that, that you've, you'vemanaged to, to grow the company
that way, because that is notthe way that most, you know, dot
com companies or that theleading digital companies have
actually grown, you know,they've all grown by being
fueled by these big capitalraises huge increases in, in
(25:33):
capital.
Yeah.
Which have taken the valuationup and given them what they
needed to grow.
So to do it organically is aphenomenal achievement.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
I know, but also creates expectation.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Doesn't it?
Well, it does.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
We've given you mega bucks now you shall grow.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
That's it.
And yeah.
So do you feel like that youcould take, you could take that
more considered approach thatyou were describing to, to
growth.
Yeah.
Because you were, you know,boots, strapped and
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Yeah.
I, I think, I think, yeah, it'sthe same, it, I think it should
be the same equation, whetheryou have big money or not.
Yeah, really.
Um, it
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Should be, but it is.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Very rarely anyway,
Speaker 3 (26:10):
We, you know, I think it depends on the clarity of the
growth and the clarity of thebusiness model and the
opportunity if it's very clearand obvious, and it's literally,
we just need to do more of thisand do it in a bigger sense
then, you know, there are timeswhen we have grown definitely
faster and we knew what we were,what, why we were doing that.
(26:32):
And we, we just added on,because we knew this was gonna
work cuz we'd done it beforethen I think it's slightly,
that's a different risk returntrade.
Mm.
Um, I think when you are likepot shotting, like you don't
really know and there's a lot ofmoney, then you're gonna make a
lot of mistakes.
Yes.
And I think that's what there'snot really seen is that there
are huge numbers of projects inlike Amazon and Google that
(26:57):
literally have, you know, tensof millions, if not hundreds of
millions and they'd never makeit.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Of course.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Um, and, and that's the same thing, right.
That's them just trying to starta new business and they fail.
It's just actually just astartup
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
And funded as well, but they just fund it from their
balance sheet.
Yeah.
Which is the same thing as whatwe kind of do in a way, um, just
in a small scale.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
But to your point, you know, even with, with
companies that have got a reallygood business model, I mean, I'm
thinking of Klarner who havejust announced, you know, an 85%
drop in their valuation based onwhat's happening on the stock
market at the moment, nothingwrong with their business model.
You know, people need to borrowmoney to buy stuff.
This is, you know, gone on formillennia, but because they have
(27:39):
been funded by these hugecapital raises, the valuation
went up to what, 450 billion atone point, um, and has dropped,
you know, right back down.
But it's been inflated becausethey've had these big cap
raises, which have kind ofdriven the perception of value
way in excess of what they wereable to, to deliver from a
(27:59):
revenue
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Or expected value.
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Or expected value
Speaker 3 (28:02):
That's value they expected to grow into.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah.
Whereas your model, I think ismuch more, uh, it's got a lot
more integrity to it becauseit's, it's basically saying, you
know, we, we have to be able toprove to ourselves that our
business has value in of itselfand that it grows through our
efforts to make it so notsomebody else just chucking
money at it.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah.
And I, I agree with you and Ithink, um, maybe to wrap that
back, so let's go, if you go allthe way back, what does that
mean?
Well, we have to make somethingvaluable to the customer.
Yep.
We have to find product marketfit.
Yep.
Um, and we've had lots of thingsthat have not, you know, we
(28:42):
built a marketplace during COVIDand we shut that down after
about five months, like a fullon marketplace, you could buy
and find out you could listproducts.
It was full on.
So we thought eCommerce is gonnabe massive.
Yes.
Yeah.
And then we kind of likethought, okay, maybe there's a
gap here, but we didn't reallydo enough of what that exact gap
was.
And we realized that actualsheer depth and, um, moat there
(29:09):
is it's, it's like, it's, it'snot a moat, like a barrier that
stops you in front of you.
It's just the sheer length anddepth of data, um, people to
contact and, um, almost connectconnections that you need to
(29:30):
build to get to a, a reasonablesize of whether enough buyers
and sellers to create thatnetwork effect.
Yeah.
The, the amount of, um,activation energy that needs to
put in is enormous.
It's enormous.
Yeah.
And you know, when you're reallylate to the game, like eBay's
been around sold, I mean,listed, you know, it's kind of
(29:54):
been done.
Books have been written aboutit.
I'm pretty sure the guy fromtrade me in the New Zealand,
this has probably a rip off, buthe just literally read the eBay
book and then copy pasted.
like, you know, the bookwas already written.
It just, literally there wasnothing in New Zealand, you
know, like yeah.
That sense.
It's a good opportunity, right?
Yeah.
Whereas we're like, okay, eBayshere, it's number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
(30:16):
top sellers.
And that was probably, you know,a little bit of a, you know, it
was a poor, but it wasn't a, itwasn't, it wasn't, it, it, it,
it definitely failed, but ittaught us to a lot of things.
And there are, there are piecesof things that now we have used
in other ways, really.
Um, so you kind of, yeah.
(30:38):
So taking payments, like wenever took any payments, no one
gave no customer gave findermoney.
Never.
Yeah.
Okay.
It was like, it's a freeservice.
Right.
And we were like, people arewilling to give finder money.
Like that was a, that, that,that as an idea was not like we
were like, you are willing togive us money revolutionary.
(30:59):
Yeah.
Like to us internally, that'slike, everyone else is like,
obviously getting money we'relike of us.
Like, would you give us somemoney?
Are you sure you wanna, like,you've never given us any money
before, you know, that, that,that seems, it's kind of like a,
if you think of it, it's a, anidea wall that we broke down and
(31:21):
then now new nuances were ableto be formed.
It's like, oh, well, we are, wecan take payments now.
You know, we subscribe, what,what do you take them for?
Well, you know, we startedcollecting money from customers
and so people could list theirproducts on finder.
They still can list theirproducts, they list their
business bot.
So we just slightly changed it.
Oh, okay.
(31:43):
Excuse me.
Um, and that, that just, thatjust wasn't an idea we would
ever do.
It just wouldn't happen.
Right.
No one would, you know, nocustomer will give finder a
credit card.
It just, you know, that hadimproved, obviously our payment
terms, cuz you kind of almost goto negative negative terms
because someone prepays your,you, you kinda owe their money.
(32:05):
Really.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm, you know,so you going negative, which is
really, you know, it's good forthe business, you know, to a
crew.
Yeah.
You go the other way around, youknow, you get a liability.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I don't know if that's theaccounting treatment by the way,
but I just, it is never enough.
Yeah.
A nuance um, it is, youknow, I think, you know, we also
think now, Hey, could, could webuild a subscription?
(32:26):
Well, people are willing to giveus money.
That idea can now be, you know,that, that, that barrier is no
longer a barrier, you know?
And, and so, so let's actuallyextend that.
So people will give us money.
Okay.
Now we built a wallet in, in, infinder, in the, in the app and
it, you know, it has, you know,I don't know, north of tens of
millions of dollars in it.
(32:47):
And people are willing to buycrypto with, from finder again.
Oh, well, people are willing togive finder money.
So maybe they're willing totrade with us.
I suppose it's a nice leap andnot, not too far away.
Cool.
So, you know, I think, I thinkthat's, I think there's, you
know, I think of it, like, youknow, you build sort of a, a, a,
um, a construction, it kind oflike gets taken to this, you
(33:11):
know, tip, but the energy andthe idea barriers it crossed,
come into existence are kind oflike, you know, when I think
about you, you imagine you goton a ship right now for the very
first time, like a wooden shipand you came to Australia and
(33:33):
all you saw was Bush.
And you know, like, like snakesand insects and birds flying
around and some kangaroos, youknow, and, and, and, and
obviously some, some, somepeople who originally were here
and you are like, whoa, okay.
Let's say we wanna walk fromthat first beach to a stream.
(33:55):
No one's ever been well, well,people have been on that route,
but I mean, no one has a clearmap that's been written to go to
that path.
Like, we didn't even know if wecan get any water in the first
place.
Okay.
So we don't even know if we cansurvive.
Oh, that's a bit of a problem.
All right.
So imagine that first persongoing that path, maybe, maybe,
maybe two people set off and oneperson comes back.
Okay.
That's kind of bad, but like,you know, that path gets formed.
(34:19):
Yep.
Now, and I think of it like anidea bridge inside an
organization.
It's, it's like, you know, onceyou start to be okay with doing
something like that, that givesbirth to now, that road gets
formed and that's, that'snormal.
So now say that path to thewater was established.
Okay.
So now we need another path andwe're thinking, Hey, can we make
it from here to the wood, to theforest?
(34:41):
Cause we need some wood.
Cause we need to build ourhouses and you know, those kind
of things.
Yeah.
Yes.
We're okay with exploring onewe're okay.
Because we've built a roadbefore two, we've worked out how
to survive.
You know, these are kinds ofthings and skills and muscles
that you'd start to learn.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
That was the new normal, right?
Yeah.
It goes from, here's the thingwe've never done before.
Oh, now we do it all the timeand river confident to like take
the next
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Step.
I'll give you the most extremeexample.
Um, you know, we've, weobviously have this new wallet,
business and finder.
Yeah.
And it's, it's obviously a verysmall percentage of our revenue.
Um, and, and you know, I thinksome people can see that as
like, oh, well, you know, youknow, we're spending all this
resources and it's only for asmall owner revenue.
Well, let's go back all the wayback in time.
(35:25):
And I remember sitting in a, youknow, we, we had a, we had a, a
boardroom, which was a hexagon.
It was kind of interesting cuzno one sat in the middle, which
at the head of the table, whichwas kind of nice.
Yeah.
Cool.
And we had 12 ideas, all writtenon a four pieces of paper.
They were, I'd say max three orfour sentences with a title.
(35:45):
And they were literally just putit on the paper, on the, on the,
on the, on the table.
I can still see it now.
And we just voted on which ideaswe go for.
Yeah.
And four of them were chosen andone of them just happened to be
finder three of them failed and literally that's how
we began.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
That's start.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
So, so like, you know , yeah.
We chose a great idea back then,but that's the nature of it.
Right.
So we are still trying to chooseideas.
Now they just don't look likewhat Fonda looks like today.
It look, they look like, youknow, a wallet that, that you
know, is making some money, butit's, and, and that's hard, you
know, that's a, that's a, that'sa hard idea because every see
(36:20):
everything, you see all thestructures, everything you see
around you inside anorganization looks like the,
what the, what, what, what theorganization is today.
And it's very hard sometimes tosee what it was.
Yeah.
I can imagine Microsoft wasmaybe a tiny office with a few,
um, people sitting around codingdos and like getting a call from
(36:42):
IBM and like quickly better getin the car and drive on over.
Yes.
You know, like, or get enough,let's look at airplane flights
and figure out, maybe therewasn't, you know, let's go and
call up a travel agent.
Maybe that's how they did.
I dunno how they did it backthen.
But you know, before theinternet, before there were
hashtags, you know yeah.
Before there was to, um, youknow, I, I think,
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And mobile phones.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Yeah.
Cell phones, by the way, here'sa question for you.
I remember.
So I used to, when in thebeginning I sold websites and I
used to drive around all aroundSydney.
Yeah.
For distances to try and winbusiness.
And I did a relatively solid,you know, three outta 10 success
rate, but I was re I realized wedidn't have GPSs then no.
(37:25):
And we looked at the, you know,the, the book of
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Maps, you have a Z, did you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Like, like an, a Z.
Um, and, and, and, and what I'mtrying to remember is how did we
know how long it would take?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Oh, what an interesting question.
I don't think we did.
I think,
Speaker 3 (37:43):
How did we know we're gonna be on time?
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I think we just sort of had that cognitive process
kinda it's from a, to B, it'sgonna take us that long.
Yeah.
Like how could we
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Possibly know that you
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Wouldn't know?
Speaker 3 (37:52):
And, and obviously, well,
Speaker 2 (37:53):
You'd look at it in terms of, it's this number of
kilometers, I'm gonna be doing Xnumber of kilometers per hour.
You're gonna take me an hour.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Whatever I agree with you roughly.
But I was thinking like, and Iagree.
And I was like, but I wasthinking about it the other day.
I was like, I was like, like,have we become worse estimators?
Cause we're so precise now
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Completely.
I, I
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Would say yes,
Speaker 2 (38:12):
A hundred percent, definitely
Speaker 4 (38:14):
A hundred percent because everything is, I guess,
everything is very, it's easy tomake loose plans as well,
because we're all verycontactable.
And, but also we're very used togetting precise answers.
It'll take 37 minutes to getfrom here to over there.
That's that's fine.
And so,
Speaker 2 (38:30):
But when it doesn't take 37 minutes, how, how off do
you get?
I,
Speaker 4 (38:33):
I know it's so annoying.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
It's like the weather fall comes.
I mean, you know, the technologythat sits behind the weather
forecast is extraordinary.
Yeah.
But how many times is it wrong?
Well, it seems like it's wrongmore often than it's.
Right.
But that's only because we havea very high expectation it's
gonna be right.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
One.
So I just wanna build on thisidea if I can slow.
I don't, if I'm taking it toomuch of a tangent from, so just
on this idea, and I think it's areally important idea, um, is to
recognize how poor humans are atforecasting, the future.
Like we are just average, I'dsay below average.
(39:09):
Yes.
Really rotten, like people,
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Even when we've got data to back it up.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah.
Proper, like what the, like,like a hundred years of data of
population growth.
And we're trying to predict thisnumber.
No, no idea.
No
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Outcome of an election.
No idea.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Yeah.
um, so, um, what I, whatI, what I wanna sort of take
that data point.
Right.
And I, I think what'sinteresting in coming all the
way back to the innovationquestion is I think in that
moment of creation, one of theinputs that you're trying to
also encounter and deal with iswhat is the future gonna look
(39:45):
like?
Right.
So you are not planning whenyou're innovating for three
months, six, probably not even12.
It probably took a good 18months before the finder app
took any shape at all.
Robert, we took two years beforeit started to gain some traction
with its wallet and probably twoand a half years before we built
the earn product.
You know, it's like, like, thinkabout, that's a significant,
(40:08):
terrible lack of ability toforecast the future, right?
Like shocking two and a halfyears to wait until we've got
some P think, okay, let's turnthat a round up.
Let's submit that.
Maybe just, maybe we are justnot great at forecast in the
future.
And if you look on earth, likethis is probably a big statement
(40:33):
and there might be some thingthat I don't realize does as
well, but I'd say almost all ofbiology also is pretty bad at
predicting the future.
And doesn't really spend thatmuch time doing it.
They don't sit around and go,Hmm.
Well, you know, I think this isprobably gonna be a mass
extinction coming.
We probably should forecast forthat and deal with it.
And those kind of things that'snot gonna happen.
Right.
So, so, so in general, what dothey do?
(40:56):
I think this is interesting,right?
Yeah.
And I think this is what the,the, the zeitgeist of today is
about is I think what they spendtheir time doing is focusing on
their ability to adapt.
Yeah.
So, so the ability to respond,to change, to move, to, to, to,
to, to take new inputs and asquickly as possible, translate
(41:20):
them into an output that'srelevant.
Yeah.
Timely and valuable tocustomers.
So given that, I think, youknow, this is future
forecast.
If I was looking at, you know,companies and markets, as you
were talking about before, Ithink if you right now were to
(41:41):
index companies on theiradaptability, I think you're
gonna see the winners in thenext two to three years.
Mm.
And who would you put in thatcategory?
Well, you know, for example, Ithink there are, there are fast
followers as well.
Like Microsoft does a great job.
It's like, and no slight in nohand, you know, Samsung did it
(42:01):
for years and still does, butMicrosoft, you know, saw hip
chat, saw slack and made teams.
And I don't think they, youknow, I'm not saying like that's
good or bad or by them, but theyadapt quickly.
Yes.
You know, they do a good job.
Yeah.
And they rally teams around itand they, they put engineers and
they put a product set around itand it works and it, you know,
(42:21):
it builds onto their thing.
I think that's a good thing.
Um, you know, I don't thinknecessarily I was the inventor
of comparison as an idea thatthat's an age old idea that's
been around forever and it wasin print magazines beforehand.
We just did a really good job ofadapting.
And we, we do a good job ofadapting and to new things.
Right.
You know, so during COVID westarted, you know, comparing
(42:42):
heavily stocks cause stocks arereally popular, um, where to buy
them cryptocurrencies, facemasks, rat tests, you know,
these are all massive thingsthat came.
Energy's a big deal right now.
A price of energy.
People are switching theirenergy massively right now,
which they should, by the way,that's small tip, there's lot, a
lot of money to be saved and youget a hundred dollars in the,
(43:03):
find a wallet.
That's a small promotion,shameless shame of this
promotion.
Remember that?
Go for it.
Yeah.
Um, so, you know, I thinkindexing on that I think is
really strong.
Yeah.
Um, there are things that don'treally change that much.
You know, bricks, people arestill buying bricks.
(43:25):
People are still buying steel.
Um, they still need iron.
You know, there are certainthings that I don't think are
changed that much.
And there have large lengths ofpersistence.
Um, you know, they're gonna takea large period of time to sort
of unwind that the car bunk ontop of human's behaviors, right.
(43:47):
Those are the kind of thingsyou're looking for.
It's gonna take a long time tochange some of those things.
But there are other areas whereI think if I was to, you know,
other companies that adaptingfast, you know, I think teams is
, it started out pretty averageand it's gotten better.
(44:07):
I think, um, you know, LinkedInkeeps, you know, I think moving
a little bit.
I like LinkedIn.
I don't know.
I think maybe I'm just the oddone.
Um, everyone everyone's hangingout on, on, I don't know,
Instagram and TikTok these daysand I'm the one on LinkedIn
still.
I, I like the place, you know,the reason why, you know, why I
like it is cuz it's clean andwell lit.
(44:28):
Yes.
You know who you're speaking to.
Yes you do.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
But I mean to
Speaker 3 (44:32):
There's some accountability to that.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah.
I, I agree.
I, I think it, it, it can be alittle bit banal sometimes
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Can be boring.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Uh, and a bit boring and, and uh, you know, you need,
you need to be in the rightgroups to, to get value out of
it.
But I, I agree with you.
I think it, it serve a reallyuseful purpose.
The thing that really surprisesme about LinkedIn is there is no
competitor to it.
There is no viable competitor toLinkedIn.
That's right.
Why hasn't anybody had a go
Speaker 4 (44:59):
As much as people
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Complain, creating something that addresses some of
the shortcomings of LinkedIn
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Must be a hard problem.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
It must be a hard problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You wouldn't think it would bethat right.
I mean, you know, a massivemarket for million news is
whatever it is.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
Yeah.
But building something to get anetwork effect from the ground
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Up.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Another company has been around for a long time and
survived a lot of things, but,uh, yeah.
I'm surprised it hasn't got anyviable competitors.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
I think so building on, you know, those other
companies, things which are new,but have become slightly less
popular, but if they make itthrough, they'll always still
have that moat and that brandfrom, from, you know, that COVID
digitization, we went through.
So, you know, I think Zoom's agood example.
Right.
(45:48):
So what is the difference thesedays between zoom and Google
meetings and teams?
Like, it's kind of, not much,maybe, I don't know.
Everyone has their preferences,right?
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah.
Just of a personal preferencething or a company preference
thing.
And it's like really any kind oflogic to
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Now.
It's, it's gotten
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Better than another.
Yeah.
I don't think they're all, it'slike your energy
Speaker 3 (46:12):
Company.
You don't really care.
No.
Um, no disrespect to anyone whoworks in energy, but
Speaker 2 (46:17):
no, but I
mean, if you're a Microsoft
user, it's, it's the go-toproduct.
Right.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
And it's dictated often by, you know, your
company, your organization, whatsort of infrastructure they're
bought into,
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Why would you want to go to zoom if you've got
Microsoft 365?
I mean, it's, um, you know, oneof those things really isn't it.
Yeah.
And if you're into Google, samething, it's a platform choice.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
And I think there's cost savings now everyone's
quite conscious about, so Ithink zoom is one of those ones
where they need to find thatnext thing, that next angle.
And I bet you, that's whatthey're talking about all day in
their just going, we needanother feature or hook or, or
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Pandemic
Speaker 3 (46:59):
To keep.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah.
So because that was the event.
Yeah.
I mean the pandemic was theevent for zoom.
If they, if they hadn't had thatpandemic, would they be as big
as they are now?
Probably not because Microsoftand Google would've swallowed up
the market.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Yeah.
It's, it's definitely, um, youknow, I think, I think we, we
were using zoom maybe two orthree years before the pandemic
and because it was just easierand it was just better.
Yeah.
But that, I think we were, wewere like, everyone else was
sending us, you know, WebEx and,and, you know, Google meets and
stuff like that.
(47:36):
Um, we would send a zoom linkand everyone was like, oh, you
could actually share yourscreen.
You know?
Like it works.
Yeah.
You know?
Um, so, so I guess what, I'm,what I'm trying to submit, but
is that's a good example of acompany where, you know, if they
make it through, they've almost,they've got a verb, you know,
(47:57):
zoom me, you've got a greatposition.
You've gotta play great place.
If they just need to stabilize,they need to show that they can
adapt and be resilient throughthis.
And then great.
Fortunes will be on the otherside.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Fair enough.
Can I talk about crypto?
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
What's happening.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
It's all happening.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
is it, is it
gonna recover?
I mean, I, it's been a reallybrutal couple of months.
Um, and I know that you've,you've invested in that, that
area itself.
What, what would you say topeople who are thinking of
investing crypto?
Speaker 3 (48:32):
So, you know, I always think start starts more
start with the amount of moneyyou're willing to just lose
start there.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
So, because most of us have yeah.
Lost
Speaker 3 (48:42):
In.
Well, it depends, you know, ifyou bought, if even if you
bought the all time high in2018, 2019, I think you'd at
least break, even if notslightly up right now, mm-hmm,
just, you know, togive gut context.
So, you know, if you bought anytime before 2018, you are up
(49:02):
like that's.
Yeah.
So, and the new high, you know,what, 64,000 it's pretty high 60
, I think it might be 68 when Itouched.
Um, so, and if you just zoomback, let's go back further.
Um, in 2013, Bitcoin crossed, Ithink it was a thousand dollars
for the first time, and then itcrashed down to$150.
(49:25):
So you're down 85%.
That'd be a pretty big loss.
Right.
But that it hit a thousanddollars was a remarkable thing.
Now imagine if Bitcoin went to athousand dollars, how much would
you buy?
Like as much as you couldpossibly load up probably.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so think of that perceptionand zoom back in time.
And now what's hard is to sayactually, maybe right now we're
(49:49):
at the$150 mark, potentiallymm-hmm like, I'm
not, I'm not, this is notfinancial advice.
No, no, but yeah, we that's,right.
Yeah.
not expecting everymarket gets to this point where
it goes through these, you know,exorbitant, exuberance, and then
fear and, you know, um,hopelessness.
(50:12):
Yeah.
Hope, you know, um, capitulation, um, anger, um, despair and,
and, and normally, and, anddepends on you.
You've got obviously gotta backa company or a, a crypto that is
gonna survive and is gonna, youknow, continue on.
And if you do that during thosetimes, that's when you tend to
(50:33):
actually make your money, youbuy in those times when those
extreme fear, um, you know,despair, um, and those kinds of
beliefs.
So, so right now, I think is thetime where I personally am
adding.
So I'm, I see this as like, Ibelieve mm-hmm,,
(50:55):
I'm a believer in what crypto'sdoing.
I think it's just the beginningof like, just at the, at the
beginning of the internet, it'sonly just started and there are
more engineers and developersand designers and accountants
and smart business people goinginto it.
It's not like, it's not likepeople are leaving.
It's like people are going in,more people are going in more
(51:15):
courses are being taught likemore, um, like kids now talk
about their NFTs and theircryptocurrencies than they do,
you know, talk about their, um,you know, their baseball cards
or their, um, online gaming orstocks.
Yeah.
But like, you know, your youngkids that know how to do
technical analysis, you know,for stock trading mm-hmm or, or,
(51:38):
or, or crypto trading.
And they're learning that assuch a young age, imagine what
they're gonna be like in 20years time.
I think it's an incredibleeducation.
Yes.
It's like a, like a, yeah, theymight have lost some money.
They might have made some moneyas well.
I know a lot of people who havemade very good money and have
helped their family and, youknow, put their kids through
school.
Um, I know single moms thathave, you know, just, just
(52:01):
collective, like consistentlyinvested throughout time.
And now, you know, they takecare of their, their, their
child.
You know, there's all sorts ofdifferent stories, right?
Selling is the hard part,obviously with all these things,
cuz you get really exuberantand, but this is a time I think
where I believe, and I'm notgoing anywhere now.
(52:21):
I'll, I'm here to here to keep,um, building.
And um, I think this is anotherone of those lows.
Talk about it again.
Like I remember 2017, 2018, whenwe hit$3,800, Bitcoin hit 3,800
from a high of 20 grand.
I remember the day I was sittingthere, I was watching the chart
and I saw it capitulate andeveryone thought it was dead.
(52:43):
It was like, oh this is over.
People were leaving.
They like left, you know, I'mjust like, and I just stayed.
I was like, ah, quite right.
You've gotta have been here forthe long term.
Haven't you really that's thething.
Yeah.
Amazon stock just after the.comcrash, you know, that hit like
ridiculous prices.
And there are people who writeletters to Jeff Bezos thinking
(53:04):
him for putting their kidsthrough college.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Like, but that's, that's what itis.
Right?
That's that's, that's, that's,that's the creation of wealth.
That's where you believe whereyou understand where you've got
someone and a group of, of otherpeople, right.
Coming together to createwealth, to bring wealth.
And there are other people whotake the risk and invest with
(53:28):
those managers, invest withthose people to create something
great.
And they deserve those gains.
Cause they took the risk.
And also the people who did thework, they deserve the gains
because they did the work to goand get that.
And so the, the whole systemworks.
And so I think this is one ofthose times where people's
belief in crypto are questioned.
And you know, if you don'tbelieve in Bitcoin anymore, look
(53:49):
, I'm happy to put my Bitcoinaddress at the bottom of this
podcast.
You, everyone can send me there.
Bitcoin.
It's fine.
I get it.
You're over it.
Totally understand.
I'll hold onto it, you know, foryou probably won't, you know,
if, if you're not into it,that's fine.
I'll hold.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
Okay.
So I think we're going to dothat, and we'll also put a link
into your book and to find the,uh, and if anybody obviously
wants to send you money, I'msure you'll say yes as well.
Fred, Fred.
Thank you so much for joining usand great conversation.
Really good to have you here and, uh, best of luck in whatever
you're gonna do next.
We're gonna be keeping an eyeout for that too.
Um, but thank you very much,indeed.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Really amazing conversation.
Ands, really looking forward toseeing what's coming next.
I, I I'm, I'm sure it won't bewhat you expect.
thanks a lot.
All the better there.
Cheers.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Hope you enjoy today's episode.
Feel free to check our otherepisodes out on any of the major
podcast channelsand@digitalvillage.network.
If you enjoyed what you heardtoday, we'd love a subscribe
follow, or even a share.
It really helps us out, but onthat note, stay safe and I look
forward to catching you on thenext episode of that digital
village show.
Welcome back to another episode of that digital
village show the show about thelatest tech trends news
impacting business people andplanet.
In today's episode, we have anexciting guest joining us,
launching a book recently titledgo live a 10 principles to
building a global empire, afounder of the company finder,
our familiar host, Luke and polewelcome Fred Shasta, Fred and
the digital village team will bediving deep into the topics of
(00:24):
success, unlocking the secretsto building and growing a
successful digital business andrelated principles to reach that
empirical status.
Why you should never give up andeven deep dive into the
existential realities of doingbusiness in our current
environment.
So sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Well, welcome back to the TV show or the digital
village shows.
We now call it of course, cuz wedon't want any confusion about
that.
Um, Luke is back and our specialguest, Fred Shasta, the founder
of one of the founders becausethere were two of finder.
Um, great to have you with us,Fred, uh, really looking forward
to hearing your story and whatyou are up to right now.
(01:10):
Um, thank
Speaker 3 (01:10):
For having me.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah.
So, so
Speaker 3 (01:13):
There's paradise cage, which
Speaker 2 (01:14):
Is kind of like it's a bit weird.
Speaker 3 (01:16):
We're trying to go full we're coming at you
Direct's no, no.
And no interventions have beenplace with all this podcast is
recording.
Correct.
Very analog experience.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
Now the, the risk of sounding ages.
Do you remember a band calledtub thumping,
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Tub thumping.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
They had a single back in 1997.
Oh
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I August song.
Yeah.
Well the song
Speaker 2 (01:37):
Song was called.
It was Chumba Womba was the,
Speaker 3 (01:40):
I know Chumba
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Womba that's right.
And the, and the song was calledtub dumping and the first two
lines of it, I get, do I getknocked down, but get up again.
You're never gonna knock medown.
Yeah.
And I only put that in cuz Ihaving read the book go live,
which we'll talk about in aminute, that really resonated
with me the fact that you've,you've had to persevere and
(02:00):
you've gone through, God knowshow many startups and you know,
um, experiments that didn't turninto anything before you
actually became successful.
Yeah.
Is a great Agram we shouldreally try and dig into that a
bit later.
Yeah,
Speaker 3 (02:14):
Yeah.
Um,
Speaker 2 (02:14):
Yeah, that was fascinating.
Nice.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Sum up.
Speaker 2 (02:17):
Thank you.
That was
Speaker 3 (02:17):
Really good.
Thank you.
And you summed it up with asong,
Speaker 2 (02:20):
A song.
What?
Speaker 3 (02:22):
It's a crazy, he's a man of culture,
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Paul.
Speaker 3 (02:25):
Wow.
Speaker 2 (02:26):
Paul,
Speaker 3 (02:26):
We do, by the way through everyone who's listening
right now.
I know this is not a visual, uh,as much visual, you might be
watching this, but just soeveryone knows, Luke has
incredible handwriting.
Now somehow he's an engineer aswell.
Yes.
So that means he must be able touse his left and right brain
together.
That's a fairly uniqueindividual.
Thank you very much,
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Fred.
He is an you're shame.
Talented really?
I mean, you know, well,
Speaker 3 (02:50):
You know, we all love to annoy character Paul.
Anyway, we can.
So
creative.
Okay.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
So moving on, we wanna learn a little bit about
your life experience, Fred, andalso try and give some advice to
our listeners around what it isthat they need to have to be
successful.
Now you've written a book aboutit.
I'm sure there's a lot more thatyou wanna share with us as well.
Um, but why didn't we start withthat?
What, what inspired you to writethe book in the first place?
Speaker 3 (03:20):
Well, um, you know, it was, I guess the middle of
COVID.
I tried to write a book a fewtimes.
Yeah.
Um, but I, I sort of started andthen wrote like headings and
then didn't really, it didn'tnothing came like, you know,
like it didn't arrive.
The university was saying, thisis not the right time, similar
(03:41):
direction or different ideas.
I guess I got knocked down.
Then I got back up again andthen I, Hey
Um, I would say at least threeto four failed attempts solidly,
fully, you know, wrote thechapters names, titles.
Yeah.
(04:01):
Um, one was on like, you know,emotional growth one was on, um,
you know, how to build abusiness, just, you know, I just
didn't feel it.
Yeah.
But you, you, you end upcovering like all of those
things really don't you in, ingo live.
Yeah.
I think, I think it was a, anattempt to try and share the
(04:30):
varied and yet, you know, prettypersonally personal stories of
challenge and in some way,hopefully people got inspired
from that.
And then also another way I washoping that there was someone
out there who wanted to startsomething and they just did a
(04:52):
little nudge.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (04:54):
So did you have that kind of picture in your head
when you're writing it of oneperson that you were kind of
directing this story too, say,
Speaker 3 (05:01):
Hey, I'm gonna, my, my current partner, um, Brenda,
who might be listening mayprobably not listening, but
we'll see.
Hopefully she does listen.
I do, I have to, I publish a lotof content, so it's hard to read
everything and listen toeverything.
But, um, I, I actually rememberthis story when she was starting
out and you know, she, shestarted up her own law firm.
(05:22):
It's called black gold legalmm-hmm
to work at, you know, some very,fairly big law firms.
And I, I, I remember thisexperience of like going, Hey,
you could just start your ownlaw firm.
You're extremely capable.
You can do this.
Yeah.
And the sort of conversationswould actually be, I would just
start regaling stories of thingsI did and say, oh, well, you
know, I'm not sure if this isgonna work.
It's like, well, I can tell youabout things that don't work and
(05:44):
I've done a lot of them.
Mm-hmm
Yeah.
And you just go again.
Yeah.
Uh, and, and I just, you know,kept on telling stories and
stories and stories and Irealized those stories are
highly constructive andinstructive as well.
Yes.
Yep.
Um, and so, and I noticedmyself, I I've over time, I I've
I've said these stories a lot.
(06:04):
And so I thought, okay, maybe weshould put these down somewhere.
Mm.
And the first thing we did waswe press record on zoom.
And I, I had an interview, um,with, with an editor and he just
interviewed me for like fourhours, um, three, three times in
a row re recorded the wholeentire thing.
And unfortunately the end of it,he said, look, Fred, I don't
(06:24):
actually know you you've coveredso many things.
I have no idea what to writethis book about.
unfortunately.
Yes.
Um, so I got back up again and,um, that should be a name of the
book actually get back up, getback up again.
Yeah.
Um, in, or a song someone shouldmake a song about that.
(06:45):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And then someone who shouldwrite a, make a really cool
podcast and introduce a guestwith that song, with that song.
Um, perfect.
That's like, that feels like themetaverse.
Um, metaverse, what's that,
thinking, um, is, you know, thewritten word, if, you know, one
(07:07):
of the things, a big shiftingfinder, what I, I sort of
brought and really influencedrecently, or not recently, I say
in the last three years,particularly at the start of
2020 was to, um, really shifttowards narratives.
So when people create projects,we write narratives.
Yeah.
So instead of PowerPoints, youknow, PowerPoints are still
good, but we, we, we write out,you know, narratives and Amazon
(07:30):
really led this.
And then, you know, there othercompanies have obviously adopted
the similar process.
Um, in, in that one of thethings I was trying to figure
out, why is this process sopowerful?
And I, one of the things thatwas, um, I discovered in
researching this Amazon, I thinkJeff wrote, or, or someone in
(07:54):
Amazon said, well, the writtenword is one of the highest
bandwidth tools of humanity.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Like the sh if, if you writesomething and then you give it
out and distribute it, theamount of bandwidth that is
packed into that, you know, intoa series of words, which are
read over and over and over andover again is extraordinarily
high.
(08:14):
Yep.
And so I thought, well, this is,you know, I just forgot that
idea, like that idea.
And I noticed this as we startedwriting more and more things
down at finder, the amount ofcontext that was shared, the,
the level of sharedunderstanding of, you know, why
we're doing things where we'vecome from and you could just go
(08:35):
back in time and literally readdocuments.
Yeah.
Um, that sort of partiallyinspired me as well.
And so, you know, that's whatsort of kickstarted us in 2020
to, to, to start to write it.
Cause I thought, Hey, there'sprobably some valuable things
that I could share.
Why don't we try and, you know,start to write these down.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
So how much do you think that narrative thing
actually influences culture infinder?
Speaker 3 (09:05):
I think now it's assumed if you haven't written
it down now and you just proposean idea without, you know, you
can propose an idea and thenback it up as a potential pitch
to then write a narrative, togive the full context of your
thinking.
But if you are just talkingabout an idea now that's nowhere
has nowhere near as much weightas like, okay, I've written this
(09:26):
narrative.
It's like, oh, okay.
Now you've, you can read it.
And then, then people can start,start to debate and discuss.
And you know, doesn'tnecessarily mean the idea is
gonna live by the way.
No, can, there are manynarratives that don't, um, make
a pass, but at least you'veclarified and purified your
thinking.
It's like, what did you actuallymean about this?
Write it down.
Yes.
And that, that process, so the,so the process of taking
(09:48):
something from your mind and thepicture you have yes.
To actually translating it intowords is, is it actually, well
for Luke, it's a beautifulprocess for myself.
It's not as beautiful, but it'scertainly a clarifying process.
Speaker 2 (10:01):
Yeah.
But for a lot of people, writingis quite a challenge.
Being able to do that kind ofnarrative process without any
experience or new structure orguidance.
Yeah.
Um, is doesn't come naturally toeverybody.
Do you provide them with anyguidance on how to construct a
narrative?
Not,
Speaker 3 (10:18):
Not, not really.
And, and I, I think what'sinteresting about that is, um,
there are templates and thereare ones you can read.
And so you, you get the generalidea.
Um, the other day, one of ourdesigners and his first language
is in English.
Mm-hmm
narrative, um, about, actuallyabout a data science problem.
(10:42):
Right.
So let's just, just keep contexthere.
Right.
So he's on a data scientist and,um, but he had, he's trying
solve a, you know, a creativeproblem, Uhhuh
I said, why don't you write downthis problem?
He was like, oh, okay.
And what I noticed in himwriting is the level of inquiry
(11:04):
is it's actually a bit shorter,but it's more concentrated and
higher bandwidth again, mm-hmm
have all the waffle.
Yeah.
You know, he, he he's literallylike from a design perspective,
he's just gonna write what isneeded and exactly no more.
Right.
And it was like, wow.
Like, like, and it was shorter.
It was probably, you know, twopages.
Yeah.
But just that clarifyingdocument, even from, you know,
(11:27):
and again, you know, an engineerthe other day wrote a, uh,
narrative about an NFT.
Yeah.
And like an NFT is quite anethereal concept.
It's not just a technical thingto create and build.
It's got a lot of dimensions toit.
And so he really covered thatentire space.
He's obviously very passionateabout it.
(11:48):
Mm-hmm
Um, and, and, and purely justthe process is actually what the
, the actual really the goal is.
Yes.
Also then the, the eque of thedocument.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
So just,
Speaker 4 (12:01):
Sorry, sorry.
I was gonna say, yeah.
Getting people to you can't doit without thinking hard about
what you're writing about.
Right.
And thinking it through.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
Yeah.
Agreed.
Speaker 4 (12:08):
And so, yeah, so that, that really brings a more
complete and transferable, Iguess, as you say, narrative,
everybody, and you can pick itup with some confidence and say,
okay, somebody's put a lot ofthought and work into this.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (12:21):
So
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Do you think that process actually, um, speeds up
the process of innovation?
Does it make it easier to kindof filter out things which
clearly not gonna make it?
I mean, you are kind of manseems to be, you know, fail
fast, fail early, um, expectfailure because it's gonna have
to happen for you to get to thepoint where you've got something
(12:43):
that's actually practical andneeded.
Speaker 3 (12:48):
So maybe I'll just separate two things there.
I just wanted to try.
And if I can, this is how Ithink of that, but maybe it, it
doesn't necessarily mean thatit's the right way.
Um, so when I think aboutinnovation, I think about two
different things.
So there's, I just wanted tounpack that slightly and just
(13:09):
clarify, cuz I think your, yourquestion is quite, um,
concentrated and I just wannatry and lay out a few, the
dimensions to it.
So the first way I think of thatis you've got incremental
innovation.
So, you know, mm-hmm,
And in that CA that sense, Ithink a lot of context is needed
because what happens is if you,in that, when you, when you do
(13:30):
an incremental improvement, oneof the challenging parts is, is
to understand why things thewere way they were before.
And what are the considerationsof other people in making a
change?
Yeah.
Because something's working, youknow, it's, or it may not be
working the best, but at leastsomething, or there was some
reason or thinking that has comebefore you.
(13:51):
And I think it's reallyimportant to stand on the
shoulders of giants from, frombefore you, right.
And honor that, that a thinkingthat works.
So, so I do think that's reallyimportant.
I think it speeds it up mm-hmm
everyone's on the sharedunderstanding and then you're
not like, you know, um, youknow, sacrificing things which
are actually working because noteveryone understood why mm-hmm
(14:12):
project and at the end of theproject and you're like, oh, why
are we doing this in the firstplace?
It's like, oh, well, let's goback to the narrative.
Oh, that's the goal.
Oh, that's why we were here.
Understand.
Okay, cool.
And if someone new comes intothe project again, Hey, here's
the narrative for this projectagain, you've got succession
planning, these kinds of things.
I think so.
Yes.
I think that speeds upincremental improve innovation.
Right.
I think in innovation, which aregiant leaps forward, so where
(14:35):
you are doing something, whichis not been done before.
Yeah.
Where you like
Speaker 4 (14:40):
Starting from scratch, starting
Speaker 3 (14:42):
From yeah.
A blank piece of paper where youare, I'd say you have 3% of the
data that you are, you need tomake this decision.
You have a intuition, a piece ofdata or a customer conversation
or something you're exploringessentially that narrative, I
(15:02):
think, um, is a good place tostart.
Does it, does it solveeverything?
Is it, is it okay?
Let's talk about what does itactually solve there?
Well, one is to clarify the,kind of the, why, why we're
doing this.
And, and I think that works inthe same way.
The part, which I think is themost important part, but about
the narrative in the, in thecreative sense of that kind of
(15:23):
innovation, I don't thinkhappens on the paper.
I think it actually happensoutside the paper.
So it's, it's it's um, peoplecome together and one idea or
one piece of energy is sharedand it starts a, another
reaction in someone else whichopens up their mind
serendipitously to another idea,which shares with someone else.
(15:46):
And together you get to a placewhere you didn't think you were
gonna be, and no one's ever beenbefore.
Mm-hmm
And I don't think that happenson the paper unfortunately.
Right.
So it's more of a catalyst
Speaker 5 (15:56):
In that situation.
Speaker 3 (15:57):
It's not, it's not defining.
Yeah.
It's an go where yeah, it has tothe, that creation and that
creativity.
And sometimes that happensactually made the work.
Um, so you're like, wow, we madethis error.
Hey, actually, that's prettygood.
Yeah.
What is that?
Let's go with that.
And that, that is where I thinkthat happens.
(16:18):
So, so I think in this case, thenarrative is more, a more like
defining an area of initialexploration.
Gotcha.
Okay.
Interesting.
Speaker 4 (16:31):
Yeah, no, it is.
And do you think it has to, andthat, that communication that
happens outside of the writing,like talking to somebody else
and then working through those Iideas, do you think that's
something that's really criticalto that process when we talk
about catalyzing?
The idea?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
Yeah.
I think that, so I, I, I thinkthat maybe I'm old school, but I
just think of it like two, twotriangles.
So it could, I think it'ssupposed to be a double diamond,
or I don't know,
Speaker 4 (16:59):
I've heard of this,
Speaker 3 (16:59):
But all I can think of is two triangles.
So in the beginning, you know,really expanding your thinking.
Yeah.
Throwing out ideas and then witha, with almost a meeting and a
purpose where there is no,there's no place you're
necessarily going, you'rewandering, curious, able to
explore, um, you seek horizons,you walk towards places not to
(17:22):
get to the horizon, but merelyto unlock maybe what are the
possibilities that are downthere?
Yeah.
Like when you're looking atidea, let's say we were all
right now gonna, you know, we'regonna make, you know, a rocket
and this rocket, his intentionwas to, um, you know, see if we
can quickly transport dogs, youknow, into space.
(17:44):
Well, firstly, we, neither of usprobably know that much about
rocketry.
I don't know if, well, maybe,maybe, maybe I shouldn't.
I shouldn't Paul
Speaker 2 (17:51):
Looks no, you're right.
You're right.
Wouldn't know we don't.
No,
Speaker 3 (17:54):
Speaker 2 (17:55):
I'm an engineer, but I know nothing about rocket
Speaker 3 (17:56):
Actual
Speaker 4 (17:57):
Engineer.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
But I mean, you know, we would then need to go learn
about rocketry, um, uh, you know, um, escape, velocities, the
effects of gravity, um, allsorts of things that we don't
really know that much about.
And so normally when you arecreating something brand new,
(18:19):
you're going normally into aspace where you may not have the
domain knowledge, um, to be ableto effectively debate and
discuss.
So you tend to talk in genericsand or yeah.
And then once you go down thatplace or that horizon and you
start to learn this new field orthis new, you know, let's learn
about solidity programming,learn about Ethereum and how
(18:40):
does it work?
And you're going down to thebasement of cryptocurrency.
What you start to learn thereis, okay.
These are maybe actually morespaces we should potentially go
and explore again.
So it's, it's, it's, it's, it'salmost a, and I think honor that
honoring that process is hard incompanies.
Speaker 4 (18:57):
I was gonna say, yeah, cuz it needs a lot of time
undirected activity andsomething where I think people
who are overseeing that activityas well in the organization,
they say, what are we gonna getat the end of it?
We don't know
Speaker 3 (19:13):
Speaker 4 (19:15):
It's hard to do supply in many organizations.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:18):
Where, where, what is our goal here?
Our goal is to find a goal.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
It's like, wow, what did that,what is that?
You know, I, I was what theother night I was watching and,
and, and just learning initiallyhow unity works, like the, the
3d programming language forgames and how it interacts with
blockchains.
And I literally, you know, didan hour tutorial on how that
(19:41):
worked.
I, I don't think I'm necessarilythe best coder or anything like
that, but I just wanted tounderstand what exactly is this
thing, you know, what is, howdoes the blockchain actually
work with, um, games?
Like how do they connecttogether?
I just wanted to understand,okay.
I wanted to go actually look atthe fundamentals.
And so then I can talk morecompetently and we can start to
innovate.
Speaker 4 (19:58):
Yeah.
Okay.
So that's a good example of thatthen like Fred's gonna go and
learn about unity.
So it's gonna enable more, Iguess, informed conversations
elsewhere that I guess becomemore productive.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:12):
And, and, and now coming all the way back.
Yeah.
That may form part of thenarrative that may form part of
the appendix.
Um, that context, it may berequired.
Reading required learning, um,it'll inform, um, the type of
team, the, the, the, the, um,types of tools we need to find,
(20:33):
um, identify partners andcompanies, um, influences, um,
experts, courses that we need togo and refer to look at and
consider.
Mm.
And that's like, you know, ifyou think about it milit, it's
like, these are the logisticsand the supply chain that you
need to go and fund thisexploration mission.
Right.
Yeah.
That's right.
(20:53):
So that's, so you keep going,
Speaker 4 (20:54):
That's the foundation of your like roadmap forward.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think, I think that'sreally hard, you know, that's
why, you know, big leaps inthinking big leaps in innovation
are hard because it's an, it'san UN, uh, exact science of it's
seriously.
Yeah.
Wandering.
Yeah.
You're literally wanderingaround.
Yeah.
Yep.
(21:18):
And I encourage that in ourteam.
So in our, in our S I run theventures team at finder, which
this is what we do.
We literally wander, you know,we wander around and we make, we
made a game the other day and wehaven't launched it.
And we, we made, um, a littleapp that transfers money between
people in our finder app.
It's on one of our versions.
It fully works, you know, it'slike, like we just wander.
(21:39):
Right.
What does this actually feellike?
What does it actually mean?
What does that yeah.
What does it do?
What does that say?
You know, cause you talk aboutit, like, Hey, we should send
money between people.
Cool.
And like, that's the end ofthat.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's like, that's the end ofthe idea of that feeling.
Whereas now when you go to thathorizon, right.
So you go to that place, youwalk down towards that area.
Now you, you sit there andyou're like, huh, this is what
(22:01):
this place looks like.
And that's really interesting.
And now what do we see fromhere?
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Yeah.
What does it enable or yeah.
What new opportunities does itcreate?
Speaker 3 (22:11):
And that's a hard process.
Right.
And that's, that's something Ithink, you know, as, as a leader
or, or anyone who's, you know, amanager at a company, one of the
most important roles is toassign capital.
Right.
So where do you put people'stime?
Yep.
Um, the second one obviously isoperational excellence, but
those two things are the mostimportant things.
And signing capital to that.
(22:33):
Inexact science is hard.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
It is hard.
And I would imagine quitedifficult to, um, to distribute
in a fair and even way across a,a large team.
I mean, how many people arethere in finder now
Speaker 3 (22:49):
Must be at least 300
Speaker 2 (22:50):
It's 300 plus
Speaker 3 (22:51):
Three.
Speaker 2 (22:52):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And how many of them are, areencouraged to, to go down that
road that you are describing?
Well,
Speaker 3 (22:57):
You know, we, one of the, the, the values of Fonda,
the third value is to go liveand there is a real exploratory
feeling to that value.
Right.
Of, of going live of getting,putting things out there.
And, you know, um, we talk aboutthe idea that, you know,
anything on your computer, um,doesn't exist until it's on the
internet.
Speaker 2 (23:16):
Speaker 3 (23:17):
Yeah.
Which is kind of whack, which iskind of true, right.
It doesn't, it's on the internetand it didn't happen.
Um, we, so I definitely thinkpeople are, they do go live and
they do experiment, but this,this level of dedicated,
assigned time to wandering toplaces is a, is, is a defined
area of finder in the venturesteam.
Speaker 2 (23:38):
Right.
Right.
Okay.
And over the, the sort of 22plus years that find has been in
existence, I was reallyfascinated by the fact that you
focus so highly on Australia asa market first, and the second
country that you went to was thestates, is that right?
Um, but that was some 10 yearsafter the company was founded.
(23:59):
So just looking at the, kind of,um, that, the history of a lot
of innovation in the internetspace, that seems like a long
period of time from one countryto the next, was that deliberate
or was that a factor of themarket or, you know, was that a
decision?
The leadership team was takingwhat, what was kind of the
driver behind?
(24:20):
Okay.
Let's take our time.
Let's make sure it works herefirst.
And then we'll start thinkingabout the next place.
Speaker 3 (24:26):
Mm it's interesting.
Um, reflecting back like that.
And in the, in the moment, inthe time, I think to give
context, like Fondo a, was a,you know, a bootstrap company
for, you know, only to we hadour first, we had, we first ran
a funding ever last year.
Speaker 2 (24:44):
Goodness.
Just to a new context.
Wow.
Yeah.
Okay.
That's, that's impressive.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
So, so, you know, casually funded business, you
know, we ran a profitablebusiness.
It's not like a, a fast growthbusiness.
It's more of a slow, um, slow asright.
The word it's, it's more of a,we work fast at finder, but it's
just, we don't recklessly growfor growth sake.
Um, you know, it's, it's veryWarren Buffy in a way really.
(25:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (25:12):
But it's, it makes it even more remarkable actually
that, that you've, you'vemanaged to, to grow the company
that way, because that is notthe way that most, you know, dot
com companies or that theleading digital companies have
actually grown, you know,they've all grown by being
fueled by these big capitalraises huge increases in, in
(25:33):
capital.
Yeah.
Which have taken the valuationup and given them what they
needed to grow.
So to do it organically is aphenomenal achievement.
Speaker 4 (25:41):
I know, but also creates expectation.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Doesn't it?
Well, it does.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
We've given you mega bucks now you shall grow.
Speaker 3 (25:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (25:47):
That's it.
And yeah.
So do you feel like that youcould take, you could take that
more considered approach thatyou were describing to, to
growth.
Yeah.
Because you were, you know,boots, strapped and
Speaker 3 (25:58):
Yeah.
I, I think, I think, yeah, it'sthe same, it, I think it should
be the same equation, whetheryou have big money or not.
Yeah, really.
Um, it
Speaker 2 (26:06):
Should be, but it is.
Speaker 3 (26:08):
Speaker 2 (26:08):
Very rarely anyway,
Speaker 3 (26:10):
We, you know, I think it depends on the clarity of the
growth and the clarity of thebusiness model and the
opportunity if it's very clearand obvious, and it's literally,
we just need to do more of thisand do it in a bigger sense
then, you know, there are timeswhen we have grown definitely
faster and we knew what we were,what, why we were doing that.
(26:32):
And we, we just added on,because we knew this was gonna
work cuz we'd done it beforethen I think it's slightly,
that's a different risk returntrade.
Mm.
Um, I think when you are likepot shotting, like you don't
really know and there's a lot ofmoney, then you're gonna make a
lot of mistakes.
Yes.
And I think that's what there'snot really seen is that there
are huge numbers of projects inlike Amazon and Google that
(26:57):
literally have, you know, tensof millions, if not hundreds of
millions and they'd never makeit.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Of course.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:04):
Um, and, and that's the same thing, right.
That's them just trying to starta new business and they fail.
It's just actually just astartup
Speaker 2 (27:09):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
And funded as well, but they just fund it from their
balance sheet.
Yeah.
Which is the same thing as whatwe kind of do in a way, um, just
in a small scale.
Speaker 2 (27:19):
But to your point, you know, even with, with
companies that have got a reallygood business model, I mean, I'm
thinking of Klarner who havejust announced, you know, an 85%
drop in their valuation based onwhat's happening on the stock
market at the moment, nothingwrong with their business model.
You know, people need to borrowmoney to buy stuff.
This is, you know, gone on formillennia, but because they have
(27:39):
been funded by these hugecapital raises, the valuation
went up to what, 450 billion atone point, um, and has dropped,
you know, right back down.
But it's been inflated becausethey've had these big cap
raises, which have kind ofdriven the perception of value
way in excess of what they wereable to, to deliver from a
(27:59):
revenue
Speaker 3 (28:00):
Or expected value.
Right.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Or expected value
Speaker 3 (28:02):
That's value they expected to grow into.
Speaker 2 (28:04):
Yeah.
Whereas your model, I think ismuch more, uh, it's got a lot
more integrity to it becauseit's, it's basically saying, you
know, we, we have to be able toprove to ourselves that our
business has value in of itselfand that it grows through our
efforts to make it so notsomebody else just chucking
money at it.
Speaker 3 (28:22):
Yeah.
And I, I agree with you and Ithink, um, maybe to wrap that
back, so let's go, if you go allthe way back, what does that
mean?
Well, we have to make somethingvaluable to the customer.
Yep.
We have to find product marketfit.
Yep.
Um, and we've had lots of thingsthat have not, you know, we
(28:42):
built a marketplace during COVIDand we shut that down after
about five months, like a fullon marketplace, you could buy
and find out you could listproducts.
It was full on.
So we thought eCommerce is gonnabe massive.
Yes.
Yeah.
And then we kind of likethought, okay, maybe there's a
gap here, but we didn't reallydo enough of what that exact gap
was.
And we realized that actualsheer depth and, um, moat there
(29:09):
is it's, it's like, it's, it'snot a moat, like a barrier that
stops you in front of you.
It's just the sheer length anddepth of data, um, people to
contact and, um, almost connectconnections that you need to
(29:30):
build to get to a, a reasonablesize of whether enough buyers
and sellers to create thatnetwork effect.
Yeah.
The, the amount of, um,activation energy that needs to
put in is enormous.
It's enormous.
Yeah.
And you know, when you're reallylate to the game, like eBay's
been around sold, I mean,listed, you know, it's kind of
(29:54):
been done.
Books have been written aboutit.
I'm pretty sure the guy fromtrade me in the New Zealand,
this has probably a rip off, buthe just literally read the eBay
book and then copy pasted.
It just, literally there wasnothing in New Zealand, you
know, like yeah.
That sense.
It's a good opportunity, right?
Yeah.
Whereas we're like, okay, eBayshere, it's number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
(30:16):
top sellers.
And that was probably, you know,a little bit of a, you know, it
was a poor, but it wasn't a, itwasn't, it wasn't, it, it, it,
it definitely failed, but ittaught us to a lot of things.
And there are, there are piecesof things that now we have used
in other ways, really.
Um, so you kind of, yeah.
(30:38):
So taking payments, like wenever took any payments, no one
gave no customer gave findermoney.
Never.
Yeah.
Okay.
It was like, it's a freeservice.
Right.
And we were like, people arewilling to give finder money.
Like that was a, that, that,that as an idea was not like we
were like, you are willing togive us money revolutionary.
(30:59):
Yeah.
Like to us internally, that'slike, everyone else is like,
obviously getting money we'relike of us.
Like, would you give us somemoney?
Are you sure you wanna, like,you've never given us any money
before, you know, that, that,that seems, it's kind of like a,
if you think of it, it's a, anidea wall that we broke down and
(31:21):
then now new nuances were ableto be formed.
It's like, oh, well, we are, wecan take payments now.
You know, we subscribe, what,what do you take them for?
Well, you know, we startedcollecting money from customers
and so people could list theirproducts on finder.
They still can list theirproducts, they list their
business bot.
So we just slightly changed it.
Oh, okay.
(31:43):
Excuse me.
Um, and that, that just, thatjust wasn't an idea we would
ever do.
It just wouldn't happen.
Right.
No one would, you know, nocustomer will give finder a
credit card.
It just, you know, that hadimproved, obviously our payment
terms, cuz you kind of almost goto negative negative terms
because someone prepays your,you, you kinda owe their money.
(32:05):
Really.
Yeah.
Mm-hmm
really, you know, it's good forthe business, you know, to a
crew.
Yeah.
You go the other way around, youknow, you get a liability.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, I don't know if that's theaccounting treatment by the way,
but I just, it is never enough.
Yeah.
A nuance
think now, Hey, could, could webuild a subscription?
(32:26):
Well, people are willing to giveus money.
That idea can now be, you know,that, that, that barrier is no
longer a barrier, you know?
And, and so, so let's actuallyextend that.
So people will give us money.
Okay.
Now we built a wallet in, in, infinder, in the, in the app and
it, you know, it has, you know,I don't know, north of tens of
millions of dollars in it.
(32:47):
And people are willing to buycrypto with, from finder again.
Oh, well, people are willing togive finder money.
So maybe they're willing totrade with us.
I suppose it's a nice leap andnot, not too far away.
Cool.
So, you know, I think, I thinkthat's, I think there's, you
know, I think of it, like, youknow, you build sort of a, a, a,
um, a construction, it kind oflike gets taken to this, you
(33:11):
know, tip, but the energy andthe idea barriers it crossed,
come into existence are kind oflike, you know, when I think
about you, you imagine you goton a ship right now for the very
first time, like a wooden shipand you came to Australia and
(33:33):
all you saw was Bush.
And you know, like, like snakesand insects and birds flying
around and some kangaroos, youknow, and, and, and, and
obviously some, some, somepeople who originally were here
and you are like, whoa, okay.
Let's say we wanna walk fromthat first beach to a stream.
(33:55):
No one's ever been well, well,people have been on that route,
but I mean, no one has a clearmap that's been written to go to
that path.
Like, we didn't even know if wecan get any water in the first
place.
Okay.
So we don't even know if we cansurvive.
Oh, that's a bit of a problem.
All right.
So imagine that first persongoing that path, maybe, maybe,
maybe two people set off and oneperson comes back.
Okay.
That's kind of bad, but like,you know, that path gets formed.
(34:19):
Yep.
Now, and I think of it like anidea bridge inside an
organization.
It's, it's like, you know, onceyou start to be okay with doing
something like that, that givesbirth to now, that road gets
formed and that's, that'snormal.
So now say that path to thewater was established.
Okay.
So now we need another path andwe're thinking, Hey, can we make
it from here to the wood, to theforest?
(34:41):
Cause we need some wood.
Cause we need to build ourhouses and you know, those kind
of things.
Yeah.
Yes.
We're okay with exploring onewe're okay.
Because we've built a roadbefore two, we've worked out how
to survive.
You know, these are kinds ofthings and skills and muscles
that you'd start to learn.
Speaker 4 (34:54):
That was the new normal, right?
Yeah.
It goes from, here's the thingwe've never done before.
Oh, now we do it all the timeand river confident to like take
the next
Speaker 3 (35:02):
Step.
I'll give you the most extremeexample.
Um, you know, we've, weobviously have this new wallet,
business and finder.
Yeah.
And it's, it's obviously a verysmall percentage of our revenue.
Um, and, and you know, I thinksome people can see that as
like, oh, well, you know, youknow, we're spending all this
resources and it's only for asmall owner revenue.
Well, let's go back all the wayback in time.
(35:25):
And I remember sitting in a, youknow, we, we had a, we had a, a
boardroom, which was a hexagon.
It was kind of interesting cuzno one sat in the middle, which
at the head of the table, whichwas kind of nice.
Yeah.
Cool.
And we had 12 ideas, all writtenon a four pieces of paper.
They were, I'd say max three orfour sentences with a title.
(35:45):
And they were literally just putit on the paper, on the, on the,
on the, on the table.
I can still see it now.
And we just voted on which ideaswe go for.
Yeah.
And four of them were chosen andone of them just happened to be
finder three of them failed
we began.
Speaker 2 (35:58):
That's start.
Speaker 3 (35:59):
So, so like, you know , yeah.
We chose a great idea back then,but that's the nature of it.
Right.
So we are still trying to chooseideas.
Now they just don't look likewhat Fonda looks like today.
It look, they look like, youknow, a wallet that, that you
know, is making some money, butit's, and, and that's hard, you
know, that's a, that's a, that'sa hard idea because every see
(36:20):
everything, you see all thestructures, everything you see
around you inside anorganization looks like the,
what the, what, what, what theorganization is today.
And it's very hard sometimes tosee what it was.
Yeah.
I can imagine Microsoft wasmaybe a tiny office with a few,
um, people sitting around codingdos and like getting a call from
(36:42):
IBM and like quickly better getin the car and drive on over.
Yes.
You know, like, or get enough,let's look at airplane flights
and figure out, maybe therewasn't, you know, let's go and
call up a travel agent.
Maybe that's how they did.
I dunno how they did it backthen.
But you know, before theinternet, before there were
hashtags, you know yeah.
Before there was to, um, youknow, I, I think,
Speaker 2 (37:01):
And mobile phones.
Speaker 3 (37:02):
Yeah.
Cell phones, by the way, here'sa question for you.
I remember.
So I used to, when in thebeginning I sold websites and I
used to drive around all aroundSydney.
Yeah.
For distances to try and winbusiness.
And I did a relatively solid,you know, three outta 10 success
rate, but I was re I realized wedidn't have GPSs then no.
(37:25):
And we looked at the, you know,the, the book of
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Maps, you have a Z, did you?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:29):
Like, like an, a Z.
Um, and, and, and, and what I'mtrying to remember is how did we
know how long it would take?
Speaker 2 (37:39):
Oh, what an interesting question.
I don't think we did.
I think,
Speaker 3 (37:43):
How did we know we're gonna be on time?
Speaker 2 (37:44):
I think we just sort of had that cognitive process
kinda it's from a, to B, it'sgonna take us that long.
Yeah.
Like how could we
Speaker 3 (37:50):
Possibly know that you
Speaker 2 (37:52):
Wouldn't know?
Speaker 3 (37:52):
And, and obviously, well,
Speaker 2 (37:53):
You'd look at it in terms of, it's this number of
kilometers, I'm gonna be doing Xnumber of kilometers per hour.
You're gonna take me an hour.
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
Whatever I agree with you roughly.
But I was thinking like, and Iagree.
And I was like, but I wasthinking about it the other day.
I was like, I was like, like,have we become worse estimators?
Cause we're so precise now
Speaker 2 (38:11):
Completely.
I, I
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Would say yes,
Speaker 2 (38:12):
A hundred percent, definitely
Speaker 4 (38:14):
A hundred percent because everything is, I guess,
everything is very, it's easy tomake loose plans as well,
because we're all verycontactable.
And, but also we're very used togetting precise answers.
It'll take 37 minutes to getfrom here to over there.
That's that's fine.
And so,
Speaker 2 (38:30):
But when it doesn't take 37 minutes, how, how off do
you get?
I,
Speaker 4 (38:33):
I know it's so annoying.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
It's like the weather fall comes.
I mean, you know, the technologythat sits behind the weather
forecast is extraordinary.
Yeah.
But how many times is it wrong?
Well, it seems like it's wrongmore often than it's.
Right.
But that's only because we havea very high expectation it's
gonna be right.
Speaker 3 (38:47):
One.
So I just wanna build on thisidea if I can slow.
I don't, if I'm taking it toomuch of a tangent from, so just
on this idea, and I think it's areally important idea, um, is to
recognize how poor humans are atforecasting, the future.
Like we are just average, I'dsay below average.
(39:09):
Yes.
Really rotten, like people,
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Even when we've got data to back it up.
Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yeah.
Proper, like what the, like,like a hundred years of data of
population growth.
And we're trying to predict thisnumber.
No, no idea.
No
Speaker 2 (39:20):
Outcome of an election.
No idea.
Speaker 3 (39:22):
Yeah.
that data point.
Right.
And I, I think what'sinteresting in coming all the
way back to the innovationquestion is I think in that
moment of creation, one of theinputs that you're trying to
also encounter and deal with iswhat is the future gonna look
(39:45):
like?
Right.
So you are not planning whenyou're innovating for three
months, six, probably not even12.
It probably took a good 18months before the finder app
took any shape at all.
Robert, we took two years beforeit started to gain some traction
with its wallet and probably twoand a half years before we built
the earn product.
You know, it's like, like, thinkabout, that's a significant,
(40:08):
terrible lack of ability toforecast the future, right?
Like shocking two and a halfyears to wait until we've got
some P think, okay, let's turnthat a round up.
Let's submit that.
Maybe just, maybe we are justnot great at forecast in the
future.
And if you look on earth, likethis is probably a big statement
(40:33):
and there might be some thingthat I don't realize does as
well, but I'd say almost all ofbiology also is pretty bad at
predicting the future.
And doesn't really spend thatmuch time doing it.
They don't sit around and go,Hmm.
Well, you know, I think this isprobably gonna be a mass
extinction coming.
We probably should forecast forthat and deal with it.
And those kind of things that'snot gonna happen.
Right.
So, so, so in general, what dothey do?
(40:56):
I think this is interesting,right?
Yeah.
And I think this is what the,the, the zeitgeist of today is
about is I think what they spendtheir time doing is focusing on
their ability to adapt.
Yeah.
So, so the ability to respond,to change, to move, to, to, to,
to, to take new inputs and asquickly as possible, translate
(41:20):
them into an output that'srelevant.
Yeah.
Timely and valuable tocustomers.
So given that, I think, youknow, this is
forecast.
If I was looking at, you know,companies and markets, as you
were talking about before, Ithink if you right now were to
(41:41):
index companies on theiradaptability, I think you're
gonna see the winners in thenext two to three years.
Mm.
And who would you put in thatcategory?
Well, you know, for example, Ithink there are, there are fast
followers as well.
Like Microsoft does a great job.
It's like, and no slight in nohand, you know, Samsung did it
(42:01):
for years and still does, butMicrosoft, you know, saw hip
chat, saw slack and made teams.
And I don't think they, youknow, I'm not saying like that's
good or bad or by them, but theyadapt quickly.
Yes.
You know, they do a good job.
Yeah.
And they rally teams around itand they, they put engineers and
they put a product set around itand it works and it, you know,
(42:21):
it builds onto their thing.
I think that's a good thing.
Um, you know, I don't thinknecessarily I was the inventor
of comparison as an idea thatthat's an age old idea that's
been around forever and it wasin print magazines beforehand.
We just did a really good job ofadapting.
And we, we do a good job ofadapting and to new things.
Right.
You know, so during COVID westarted, you know, comparing
(42:42):
heavily stocks cause stocks arereally popular, um, where to buy
them cryptocurrencies, facemasks, rat tests, you know,
these are all massive thingsthat came.
Energy's a big deal right now.
A price of energy.
People are switching theirenergy massively right now,
which they should, by the way,that's small tip, there's lot, a
lot of money to be saved and youget a hundred dollars in the,
(43:03):
find a wallet.
That's a small promotion,shameless
promotion.
Remember that?
Go for it.
Yeah.
Um, so, you know, I thinkindexing on that I think is
really strong.
Yeah.
Um, there are things that don'treally change that much.
You know, bricks, people arestill buying bricks.
(43:25):
People are still buying steel.
Um, they still need iron.
You know, there are certainthings that I don't think are
changed that much.
And there have large lengths ofpersistence.
Um, you know, they're gonna takea large period of time to sort
of unwind that the car bunk ontop of human's behaviors, right.
(43:47):
Those are the kind of thingsyou're looking for.
It's gonna take a long time tochange some of those things.
But there are other areas whereI think if I was to, you know,
other companies that adaptingfast, you know, I think teams is
, it started out pretty averageand it's gotten better.
(44:07):
I think, um, you know, LinkedInkeeps, you know, I think moving
a little bit.
I like LinkedIn.
I don't know.
I think maybe I'm just the oddone.
Um, everyone everyone's hangingout on, on, I don't know,
Instagram and TikTok these daysand I'm the one on LinkedIn
still.
I, I like the place, you know,the reason why, you know, why I
like it is cuz it's clean andwell lit.
(44:28):
Yes.
You know who you're speaking to.
Yes you do.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
But I mean to
Speaker 3 (44:32):
There's some accountability to that.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Yeah.
I, I agree.
I, I think it, it, it can be alittle bit banal sometimes
Speaker 3 (44:39):
Can be boring.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:40):
Uh, and a bit boring and, and uh, you know, you need,
you need to be in the rightgroups to, to get value out of
it.
But I, I agree with you.
I think it, it serve a reallyuseful purpose.
The thing that really surprisesme about LinkedIn is there is no
competitor to it.
There is no viable competitor toLinkedIn.
That's right.
Why hasn't anybody had a go
Speaker 4 (44:59):
As much as people
Speaker 2 (45:00):
Complain, creating something that addresses some of
the shortcomings of LinkedIn
Speaker 3 (45:04):
Must be a hard problem.
Speaker 2 (45:06):
It must be a hard problem.
Yeah.
Yeah.
You wouldn't think it would bethat right.
I mean, you know, a massivemarket for million news is
whatever it is.
Speaker 4 (45:13):
Yeah.
But building something to get anetwork effect from the ground
Speaker 3 (45:17):
Up.
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:18):
Another company has been around for a long time and
survived a lot of things, but,uh, yeah.
I'm surprised it hasn't got anyviable competitors.
Speaker 3 (45:28):
I think so building on, you know, those other
companies, things which are new,but have become slightly less
popular, but if they make itthrough, they'll always still
have that moat and that brandfrom, from, you know, that COVID
digitization, we went through.
So, you know, I think Zoom's agood example.
Right.
(45:48):
So what is the difference thesedays between zoom and Google
meetings and teams?
Like, it's kind of, not much,maybe, I don't know.
Everyone has their preferences,right?
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Yeah.
Just of a personal preferencething or a company preference
thing.
And it's like really any kind oflogic to
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Now.
It's, it's gotten
Speaker 2 (46:10):
Better than another.
Yeah.
I don't think they're all, it'slike your energy
Speaker 3 (46:12):
Company.
You don't really care.
No.
Um, no disrespect to anyone whoworks in energy, but
Speaker 2 (46:17):
user, it's, it's the go-toproduct.
Right.
Speaker 4 (46:21):
And it's dictated often by, you know, your
company, your organization, whatsort of infrastructure they're
bought into,
Speaker 2 (46:27):
Why would you want to go to zoom if you've got
Microsoft 365?
I mean, it's, um, you know, oneof those things really isn't it.
Yeah.
And if you're into Google, samething, it's a platform choice.
Speaker 3 (46:37):
And I think there's cost savings now everyone's
quite conscious about, so Ithink zoom is one of those ones
where they need to find thatnext thing, that next angle.
And I bet you, that's whatthey're talking about all day in
their just going, we needanother feature or hook or, or
Speaker 2 (46:58):
Pandemic
Speaker 3 (46:59):
To keep.
Speaker 2 (47:00):
Yeah.
So because that was the event.
Yeah.
I mean the pandemic was theevent for zoom.
If they, if they hadn't had thatpandemic, would they be as big
as they are now?
Probably not because Microsoftand Google would've swallowed up
the market.
Speaker 3 (47:15):
Yeah.
It's, it's definitely, um, youknow, I think, I think we, we
were using zoom maybe two orthree years before the pandemic
and because it was just easierand it was just better.
Yeah.
But that, I think we were, wewere like, everyone else was
sending us, you know, WebEx and,and, you know, Google meets and
stuff like that.
(47:36):
Um, we would send a zoom linkand everyone was like, oh, you
could actually share yourscreen.
You know?
Like it works.
Yeah.
You know?
Um, so, so I guess what, I'm,what I'm trying to submit, but
is that's a good example of acompany where, you know, if they
make it through, they've almost,they've got a verb, you know,
(47:57):
zoom me, you've got a greatposition.
You've gotta play great place.
If they just need to stabilize,they need to show that they can
adapt and be resilient throughthis.
And then great.
Fortunes will be on the otherside.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Fair enough.
Can I talk about crypto?
Speaker 3 (48:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (48:14):
What's happening.
Speaker 3 (48:15):
It's all happening.
Speaker 2 (48:17):
I mean, I, it's been a reallybrutal couple of months.
Um, and I know that you've,you've invested in that, that
area itself.
What, what would you say topeople who are thinking of
investing crypto?
Speaker 3 (48:32):
So, you know, I always think start starts more
start with the amount of moneyyou're willing to just lose
start there.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
So, because most of us have yeah.
Lost
Speaker 3 (48:42):
In.
Well, it depends, you know, ifyou bought, if even if you
bought the all time high in2018, 2019, I think you'd at
least break, even if notslightly up right now, mm-hmm,
So, you know, if you bought anytime before 2018, you are up
(49:02):
like that's.
Yeah.
So, and the new high, you know,what, 64,000 it's pretty high 60
, I think it might be 68 when Itouched.
Um, so, and if you just zoomback, let's go back further.
Um, in 2013, Bitcoin crossed, Ithink it was a thousand dollars
for the first time, and then itcrashed down to$150.
(49:25):
So you're down 85%.
That'd be a pretty big loss.
Right.
But that it hit a thousanddollars was a remarkable thing.
Now imagine if Bitcoin went to athousand dollars, how much would
you buy?
Like as much as you couldpossibly load up probably.
Right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, so think of that perceptionand zoom back in time.
And now what's hard is to sayactually, maybe right now we're
(49:49):
at the$150 mark, potentiallymm-hmm
not, I'm not, this is notfinancial advice.
No, no, but yeah, we that's,right.
Yeah.
it goes through these, you know,exorbitant, exuberance, and then
fear and, you know, um,hopelessness.
(50:12):
Yeah.
Hope, you know, um, capitulation, um, anger, um, despair and,
and, and normally, and, anddepends on you.
You've got obviously gotta backa company or a, a crypto that is
gonna survive and is gonna, youknow, continue on.
And if you do that during thosetimes, that's when you tend to
(50:33):
actually make your money, youbuy in those times when those
extreme fear, um, you know,despair, um, and those kinds of
beliefs.
So, so right now, I think is thetime where I personally am
adding.
So I'm, I see this as like, Ibelieve mm-hmm,
(50:55):
I'm a believer in what crypto'sdoing.
I think it's just the beginningof like, just at the, at the
beginning of the internet, it'sonly just started and there are
more engineers and developersand designers and accountants
and smart business people goinginto it.
It's not like, it's not likepeople are leaving.
It's like people are going in,more people are going in more
(51:15):
courses are being taught likemore, um, like kids now talk
about their NFTs and theircryptocurrencies than they do,
you know, talk about their, um,you know, their baseball cards
or their, um, online gaming orstocks.
Yeah.
But like, you know, your youngkids that know how to do
technical analysis, you know,for stock trading mm-hmm or, or,
(51:38):
or, or crypto trading.
And they're learning that assuch a young age, imagine what
they're gonna be like in 20years time.
I think it's an incredibleeducation.
Yes.
It's like a, like a, yeah, theymight have lost some money.
They might have made some moneyas well.
I know a lot of people who havemade very good money and have
helped their family and, youknow, put their kids through
school.
Um, I know single moms thathave, you know, just, just
(52:01):
collective, like consistentlyinvested throughout time.
And now, you know, they takecare of their, their, their
child.
You know, there's all sorts ofdifferent stories, right?
Selling is the hard part,obviously with all these things,
cuz you get really exuberantand, but this is a time I think
where I believe, and I'm notgoing anywhere now.
(52:21):
I'll, I'm here to here to keep,um, building.
And um, I think this is anotherone of those lows.
Talk about it again.
Like I remember 2017, 2018, whenwe hit$3,800, Bitcoin hit 3,800
from a high of 20 grand.
I remember the day I was sittingthere, I was watching the chart
and I saw it capitulate andeveryone thought it was dead.
(52:43):
It was like, oh this is over.
People were leaving.
They like left, you know, I'mjust like, and I just stayed.
I was like, ah, quite right.
You've gotta have been here forthe long term.
Haven't you really that's thething.
Yeah.
Amazon stock just after the.comcrash, you know, that hit like
ridiculous prices.
And there are people who writeletters to Jeff Bezos thinking
(53:04):
him for putting their kidsthrough college.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah.
Like, but that's, that's what itis.
Right?
That's that's, that's, that's,that's the creation of wealth.
That's where you believe whereyou understand where you've got
someone and a group of, of otherpeople, right.
Coming together to createwealth, to bring wealth.
And there are other people whotake the risk and invest with
(53:28):
those managers, invest withthose people to create something
great.
And they deserve those gains.
Cause they took the risk.
And also the people who did thework, they deserve the gains
because they did the work to goand get that.
And so the, the whole systemworks.
And so I think this is one ofthose times where people's
belief in crypto are questioned.
And you know, if you don'tbelieve in Bitcoin anymore, look
(53:49):
, I'm happy to put my Bitcoinaddress at the bottom of this
podcast.
You, everyone can send me there.
It's fine.
I get it.
You're over it.
Totally understand.
I'll hold onto it, you know, foryou probably won't, you know,
if, if you're not into it,that's fine.
I'll hold.
Speaker 2 (54:05):
Okay.
So I think we're going to dothat, and we'll also put a link
into your book and to find the,uh, and if anybody obviously
wants to send you money, I'msure you'll say yes as well.
Thank you so much for joining usand great conversation.
Really good to have you here and, uh, best of luck in whatever
you're gonna do next.
We're gonna be keeping an eyeout for that too.
Um, but thank you very much,indeed.
Speaker 3 (54:27):
Really amazing conversation.
Ands, really looking forward toseeing what's coming next.
I, I I'm, I'm sure it won't bewhat you expect.
All the better there.
Cheers.
Speaker 1 (54:44):
Hope you enjoy today's episode.
Feel free to check our otherepisodes out on any of the major
podcast channelsand@digitalvillage.network.
If you enjoyed what you heardtoday, we'd love a subscribe
follow, or even a share.
It really helps us out, but onthat note, stay safe and I look
forward to catching you on thenext episode of that digital
village show.
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