May 20, 2023 • 21 mins
On this episode, Savvy Schmidt interviews Nico Laqua and Emily Yuan, developers of the Picnic App - a new app that promises to take the social media world by storm. Their new app was borne of what they believe is much needed - and lacking - in today's current social media platforms.
With younger generations in mind, Nico & Emily promise a myriad of brand-new features, more interactivity, and even ways for users to flex their creative skills. Join us on this fun & eye-opening episode!
With younger generations in mind, Nico & Emily promise a myriad of brand-new features, more interactivity, and even ways for users to flex their creative skills. Join us on this fun & eye-opening episode!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:01):
You're listening to radio loud, butyou know, and I don't feel it's
kind of control. This is me. You want to get crazy because I
(00:24):
don't give it. You're listening totalk like job. Want to Welcome to
Schmitt Talk. I'm Savvy Schmidt,and today I'm speaking to all the young
people out there. Okay, ifyou're on social media and most people are,
(00:48):
well maybe not most, who knows. But if you're there and you
feel like you're just hitting a walland maybe these social media sites are just
for old fogies, I've got agreat show for you today. I've got
two young people just like yourself whowanted to break the norm and start something
brand new. And let me tellyou after this interview, which this is
pretty recorded by the way, afterthis interview, I was like, Wow,
(01:11):
there's gonna be so much that theyoffer with this app, and it's
going to be really exciting. Ihave a good feeling about it, and
this is a great show to learnall about it and then go download it
yourself. Also, feel free towrite to me after the show let me
know what you think about it,and I'll pass your feedback onto the developers
of this new, exciting app.So, without further ado, here is
(01:36):
my interview with Niko Lakla and Emilyyu One. Guys, welcome to the
show. Thanks so much. It'sgreat to beare Yeah, thank thank you.
So tell me what your idea forthis new app was and why you
(02:00):
thought maybe that there should be somethingnew different, What was your idea behind
that. Yeah. So I've spentmy whole childhood on Internet forums and online
communities, and there's something that's verynear and near to my heart, and
I think that they're the most beautifulexpression of the Internet where you can discuss
(02:20):
topics that you care about and learnabout those topics with people that you might
not know for life. And whenI was a kid, I spent most
of my time most see on programmingforums and things like that. But the
potential to form communities online and tofurther your knowledge or entertainment around certain topics
(02:40):
or something that I think is reallyinteresting. And if you look at gen
z right now, particularly young people, there's a lot of social solutions that
they use, like like Snapchat orTikTok or YouTube that provide certain social functions,
but they don't really solve the problemof community for young people. So
(03:02):
that's the problem that we're trying tosolve by introducing an application that allows people
to create and join communities online.Okay, So our goal is to create
a fund space for anyone to discoverand meet people and join communities for topics
(03:22):
that interest them. We have beenlike for a little bit on our beta
version and recently launched a MVP thispast January, where our main audience right
now we appeal to teenagers and genz and like training. Communities would be
things like fashion and books and teenagers, all the things that young people like.
(03:47):
Yeah, that sounds amazing. Itsounds like you guys are on the
pulse. Yeah, we have.The attraction has been pretty good. We
first released our kind of beta versionabout a year ago and with that the
demand was pretty overwhelming. So wegot over a million down thuds in a
round a month with that one,and it was actually so much traffic that
(04:12):
the back end of our application completelygave out. But that told us that
people really wanted the product that wewere served developing. So um we raised
a momester money built out of theteam and released a scalable version of that
product in January, and now wehave about one hundred and fifty thousand monthly
active users. That's awesome. Sowhen you guys said that it allows creativity,
(04:34):
do you have features that are notavailable on other apps? Yeah,
so so I think I think tostart, like with Picnic, the structure
itself is relatively unique. Everything onPicnic exists in the context of the community,
So you can think of it aslike Internet forms or Facebook groups for
(04:56):
young people. But I attached tothose communities and attached that stri sure our
variety of futures that we're working onthem. We're pretty excited about. Um,
we allow the communities to govern themselvesand to run themselves in whatever way
it makes sense and kind of correspondingwith that, um, well, we're
even working on a looting the communitiesto install applications themselves, we call them
(05:17):
pods, to set their own rulesand regulations and ultimately to like conduct conduct
their their space on the app.We call them circles as best they can
or or how they want to mSo that's kind of what's that is,
apart from something like I guess Facebook, where you might follow your friends or
(05:38):
see what people are up to inthat way. Yeah, So, how
how Picnic Books is the app Spotinto a couple parts. Everything that is
created on the app is centered aroundthese communities that we call circles, and
each circle, anyone can make acircle, and when they make a circle,
it comes with a feed much likea TikTok feed singles life, as
(06:00):
well as a large circle chat,which is a live chat where anyone who's
a community can't go on chat abouttopics like whenever it's relevant. So for
example, we have lots of communitiesor on TV shows where they would post
things that they would post, editorspost theories and more discussion like that in
defeat, but also they would havea live chat going whenever there's like a
(06:24):
new episode out, so they cantalk about like what's going on, a
thin thing is going to happen,and we see a really really great sense
of community there. So I thinkwhat sets us apart isn't necessarily any one
super cool feature, but rather wewant to provide the best platform for these
communities to go to exist, interact, and where we are, we work,
(06:46):
we move really quickly, so ifthere's a new feature that people want
or that we see users really desire, we want to provide communities like whatever
tools they need to be run andppid main space online basically. Yeah,
And I guess the end vision isthat we want to make communities online in
(07:12):
a better format than has been donebefore, more mainstream has been done before.
We kind of want to do tooonline communities something like what YouTube has
done to videos. Oh, wewant picnic community, premier destination and kind
of a platform infrastructure for anyone thatwants to create or form or join an
(07:32):
online community about any topic at all. Wow, that sounds amazing. It
sounds like you guys put a lotof thought into this and you're really speaking
to your consumers, especially because youknow, I also heard that some of
the older online platforms are just nowkind of for older people, like I
won't mention names the one that startswith if so. Yeah, and right
(07:55):
now there's just no good space foryoung people to engage age in this like
community behavior and really meaningfully interact anddive into the stuff that they love.
Right. We see other platforms whereit's mostly like entertainment, funny stuffs,
things are served to you in analgorithm. But what we want to do
(08:18):
is we want to allow more Iguess, more intentional engagement with what you
love yet to choose your communities youwant to be a part of, and
each community has a different culture,which is said by the people who do
so it's really a different structure thana lot of what young people are more
(08:39):
than a lot of platforms to existright now. But it's something that they
have obviously, and so far wesee that they really love and they're inviting
their friends. They are making allsorts of new communities on picnic, and
we hope to see this continue out. Yeah, and at the same time,
I think was really encouraging ching.Is like the behavior of being part
(09:03):
of communities and joining communities isn't anewer, like crazy behavior something that I
did when I was young online thatmy parents entered online, that they did
in general. But you see themplatforms like with Facebook groups or Reddit or
internet forms, it's just those platformsfor a variety of reasons, aren't really
(09:24):
that gen z friendly. You know, especially teenagers aren't going to be checking
out Facebook groups. So that givesus a lot of opportunity to just solve
this really important behavioral need by givingyoung people in particular, but eventually everyone
a platform that they can that theycan use for this quartium of behavior,
(09:46):
and there's some pretty interesting teachers andkind of focuses that will take along the
way in order to get to thefinal destination. But overall, kind of
what we're lazer focused on doing communitiesbetter I've been done before. At least
that's awesome. Are you guys goingto have like a well, so I
the big social media platform that likestarts to the I UM, I noticed
(10:09):
lately that they're starting to like flagpeople for misinformation when it's something really innocent,
like a flower in the sidewalk andstuff like that. I do guys
think that's like a glitch? Andif so, um, do you guys
have plans to try to circumvent kindof issues like that or I mean,
if something like that arises or whatare your opinions on that? Yeah,
(10:31):
So the trend ports algorithmic algorithmic detectionbanning of people I think is a profoundly
negative one for a variety of reasons. And we see online, you know,
people going they're all sorts of measuresto try to circumvent like, um,
these automatic filters or in some casesmanual filters, clap discussions that they
(10:54):
should be gree to have exactly Yeah. Are Our philosophy overall is that we
think of ourselves as kind of neutralreferees where we want to allow people to
create groups around whatever topic they want, as off as it is legal and
UM. And the wonderful thing aboutour platform is the people that create the
(11:16):
groups have an incentive to UM togovern them, to moderate them however they
might want to, so they canban people if it's appropriate when the context
of their community. The that meansthat we can be relatively hands off.
Of course, we need to makesure users are safe, and we need
to make sure you know, there'sthere's no sort of malicious or like illegal
activity or bonds and things like that. Yeah, overall, I think the
(11:41):
trend towards like kind of making everythingfit in in a cookie cutter box and
UM and only saying what maybe thebig platforms right need to say, I
think is one of those really negativefor society and something that UM that will
always try our best to make surethat we don't all for the same sort
of behavioral patterns or traps. That'sreally awesome. I really like the fact
(12:07):
that you guys are into like morefree speech because I've I've always been a
firm believer of more voices, notless and um, you know within reason
like you said, Um, andI really feel like that's going to be
really good for everything. And becauseI mean, I'm just like I said,
if people, you know, youcan't just shut off all the voices
(12:31):
because they don't they dissent from whatyou believe and stuff like that, because
it was never like this, likeyou know, even five years ago.
Um, so I'm really glad tohear that you guys are encouraging more communication
and more open communication. Yeah,something that's really cool to what we're doing.
Um. You know, we asas a people that made this spot
(12:52):
more might think that, um,we know a lot, but like the
people that are ultimately using using ourplatform are the ones who matter, and
what matters is that we allow themto speak freely, speak their mind,
to engage in good discourse around whatevertopics really matter to them. That's good,
(13:13):
that's really refreshing to hear. So, UM, do you guys have
like where you're going to allow peopleto also like advertise on your platform as
well? So right now, wedon't generate any revenue, we don't run
any ads. We're financed by byboth ourselves and external investors. In the
(13:35):
future, we might explore advertising asas a mechanism to to monetize the pay
our our engineering salaries and the hostingcosts and the cost associated with running the
business. That being said, we'vemade a commitment where some function of the
advertising revenue that's generated, when itcomes, we'll be going directly to the
(13:56):
communities that generate the advertising revenu umin which at which point they'll be able
to do whatever they want with that. So um, so we don't really
have any revenue or advertising yet,but but when and if it comes,
M will make sure that that there'san incentive M for communities to want advertisements
(14:18):
to appear, um you know,in their posts or in their chats or
elsewhere, will allow them to customizechoose whether those advertisements here or not.
Yeah, well that's really good becauseyou know, other platforms just kind of
I know, they try to dotheir best on advertising on what they think
that you want to see, butsometimes you know, you just get like
innundated, Like I know the onelike I said that starts to the I
(14:39):
like every other post now as anad and it's just like wow, So
this will be good to see somelike actual authentic content on your platform.
Yeah, I think. I thinkone thing that's so important is UM is
rewarding the people who are putting ina lot of work and UM and we're
(15:00):
making the platform like a good place. So if you look at most UM,
most consumer applications right now, withthe exception of something like YouTube,
you see that the platforms are youknow, centralized, and they take all
the revenue that comes from advertising forthemselves or other forms of revenue. But
(15:22):
there's a new trend emerging UM that'scome in the last ten or so years
where revenue sharing is a really powerfulmechanism to make people more incentivized to to
want to use products and also allowsthem to get some some capital that allows
them to make better content and furtherthe discussion. So we see it was
(15:45):
something like YouTube. On YouTube,about half the advertising revenue goes directly to
the personal uploads of media, andthat's that allows really awesome forms of content
that wouldn't otherwise exist to be there. Another example is like Roadblocks. Roadblocks
is like a gaming platform, butthey don't make any games themselves. They
allow other people to make the gameson their platform and then and then those
(16:08):
games to monetizes. However, theywant roadblocks takes to cut off their revenue
as it comes from. That's sucha great concept. Yeah, Yeah,
it's something that we're really excited about. And it's never existed for communities online
before. It used to be whenyou were running a forum, or if
you make a Facebook group or somethinglike that, you don't get anything for
(16:30):
doing that, or to make asunbread or a Discord server, you don't
get You don't get anything, evenif it's the biggest group in the world.
You get none of the benefit.But you're generating advertising platform and we
want to kind of in the longrun turn that on the set. Right
now, that's not our focus andwe won't be running out for quite some
time, but when we do,I think that that's a really exciting opportunity
(16:52):
to really change the way that communitieslook and exist online. Yeah. And
also you're creating a lot of incentivefor people to be creative, which is
just so much fun and I feellike it's so needed right now. You
know, we've all been through theRinger this past three year, yeah,
three years now, and I reallyit gives me a lot of hope that
you guys are doing this because wejust so needed something new and different and
(17:15):
I really have a good feeling aboutyour app. Yeah, thanks, I
think right now, right now we'rejust starting out. We're kind of in
our MVP or minimum viable prototype base, but our initial audience, which is
mostly you know, we got peoplebetween age so maybe thirteen and sixteen,
(17:37):
are really loving the product that weput out. Their engagement it's really good.
And I think that we're expecting tohave a more wide and like official
launch in the coming in the comingweeks, and that's kind of what we're
looking forward to, because right now, if you're not a team growth,
I'm like, who that heard ofpicnic? But um, but we think
(18:00):
that that will change relatively quick,relatively soon. So that's that's what we're
looking forward ka Um. Can peoplefind your app on the App Store like
on Google Play? And uh,I don't have Apple, so I don't
know. I've always been like adiehard Android person, so I never really
got into Apple. Yeah, yeah, so you can. You can find
(18:21):
us on either the Apple App Storethe Google Play Store, or you can
go to our website. Our webapp is still work in progress. We
actually want to started a couple ofweeks ago. But but if you want
to sneak, you can go topicnic dot song see enemy um or you
can if you search a picnic oneither the Google Play or the Apple App
Store or the top results and theone with the watermelons. The watermelon that's
(18:45):
awesome. So, do you guyshave a like UM presence also like on
the other social media apps, justto kind of get your UM message alter,
excuse me, we're going take toomuch on other socials right now.
We made we made a TikTok atone point because that was what our like
launch shoes were into and liked using. And I think we've got like a
(19:07):
hundred yeah, but I wouldn't sayI'm a big TikTok type of guys.
So um So, I don't knowif we pleas said anything there any time
recently, UM, but um,but we'll probably we'll probably get a little
active on Twitter and uh, andI don't know if we'll grow on other
(19:29):
platforms necessarily, but we we wemight, we might as we start to
um as we start to think aboutour like official release and our wider release.
But most most of the people thatdownload us here about it. We're
pretty much all of them here aboutit to be a word of mouth.
It's over ninety percent of our installsor people searching Picnic on the app store
normally. Monday is like a reallybig day for us for growth because um,
(19:51):
because you know, people will goto school and tell their friends and
stuff like that. So um soright right now, like people are mostly
hearing about it fromtly friends, I'mgoing forward, we might think about think
about being on Twitter on that's awesome. Well I have a preteen girl,
(20:11):
so I'll tell her about it,and uh, I'm sure she'll go tell
her friends. So you'll get alittle bit more business from over here or
traffic. Yeah, that's awesome.Yay um. And also I'm gonna have
your information at the Radio Love websiteat radiolove dot com. That's Radio Luv
dot com. We'll have links andwe're gonna have a blog post there and
(20:33):
uh article and the show we'll beembedded in there and uh yeah, so
I want to thank you guys forbeing on the show again. I've been
talking to Emily U One and NicoLakwa and they are the developers of the
app called Picnic. Be looking outfor that. I expect that it's probably
going to take the social media worldby storm. I can't wait to see
(20:53):
what you guys do. Yaw yeahhaving us Yeah, thank you. You've
been listening to my interview with MikoLapwa and Emily u on the developers of
the new app Picnic. To findout how you can download this app,
go to the Radiolove website at radiolovedot com. That's Radio Luv dot com.
(21:17):
I want to thank you for tuningin today. If you want to
be a guest on Schmidt Talk,shoot me at email at Savvy at radiolove
dot com, or just find meon social media and reach out. I
look forward to next week's show.Until then, stay safe.
You're listening to radio loud, butyou know, and I don't feel it's
kind of control. This is me. You want to get crazy because I
(00:24):
don't give it. You're listening totalk like job. Want to Welcome to
Schmitt Talk. I'm Savvy Schmidt,and today I'm speaking to all the young
people out there. Okay, ifyou're on social media and most people are,
(00:48):
well maybe not most, who knows. But if you're there and you
feel like you're just hitting a walland maybe these social media sites are just
for old fogies, I've got agreat show for you today. I've got
two young people just like yourself whowanted to break the norm and start something
brand new. And let me tellyou after this interview, which this is
pretty recorded by the way, afterthis interview, I was like, Wow,
(01:11):
there's gonna be so much that theyoffer with this app, and it's
going to be really exciting. Ihave a good feeling about it, and
this is a great show to learnall about it and then go download it
yourself. Also, feel free towrite to me after the show let me
know what you think about it,and I'll pass your feedback onto the developers
of this new, exciting app.So, without further ado, here is
(01:36):
my interview with Niko Lakla and Emilyyu One. Guys, welcome to the
show. Thanks so much. It'sgreat to beare Yeah, thank thank you.
So tell me what your idea forthis new app was and why you
(02:00):
thought maybe that there should be somethingnew different, What was your idea behind
that. Yeah. So I've spentmy whole childhood on Internet forums and online
communities, and there's something that's verynear and near to my heart, and
I think that they're the most beautifulexpression of the Internet where you can discuss
(02:20):
topics that you care about and learnabout those topics with people that you might
not know for life. And whenI was a kid, I spent most
of my time most see on programmingforums and things like that. But the
potential to form communities online and tofurther your knowledge or entertainment around certain topics
(02:40):
or something that I think is reallyinteresting. And if you look at gen
z right now, particularly young people, there's a lot of social solutions that
they use, like like Snapchat orTikTok or YouTube that provide certain social functions,
but they don't really solve the problemof community for young people. So
(03:02):
that's the problem that we're trying tosolve by introducing an application that allows people
to create and join communities online.Okay, So our goal is to create
a fund space for anyone to discoverand meet people and join communities for topics
(03:22):
that interest them. We have beenlike for a little bit on our beta
version and recently launched a MVP thispast January, where our main audience right
now we appeal to teenagers and genz and like training. Communities would be
things like fashion and books and teenagers, all the things that young people like.
(03:47):
Yeah, that sounds amazing. Itsounds like you guys are on the
pulse. Yeah, we have.The attraction has been pretty good. We
first released our kind of beta versionabout a year ago and with that the
demand was pretty overwhelming. So wegot over a million down thuds in a
round a month with that one,and it was actually so much traffic that
(04:12):
the back end of our application completelygave out. But that told us that
people really wanted the product that wewere served developing. So um we raised
a momester money built out of theteam and released a scalable version of that
product in January, and now wehave about one hundred and fifty thousand monthly
active users. That's awesome. Sowhen you guys said that it allows creativity,
(04:34):
do you have features that are notavailable on other apps? Yeah,
so so I think I think tostart, like with Picnic, the structure
itself is relatively unique. Everything onPicnic exists in the context of the community,
So you can think of it aslike Internet forms or Facebook groups for
(04:56):
young people. But I attached tothose communities and attached that stri sure our
variety of futures that we're working onthem. We're pretty excited about. Um,
we allow the communities to govern themselvesand to run themselves in whatever way
it makes sense and kind of correspondingwith that, um, well, we're
even working on a looting the communitiesto install applications themselves, we call them
(05:17):
pods, to set their own rulesand regulations and ultimately to like conduct conduct
their their space on the app.We call them circles as best they can
or or how they want to mSo that's kind of what's that is,
apart from something like I guess Facebook, where you might follow your friends or
(05:38):
see what people are up to inthat way. Yeah, So, how
how Picnic Books is the app Spotinto a couple parts. Everything that is
created on the app is centered aroundthese communities that we call circles, and
each circle, anyone can make acircle, and when they make a circle,
it comes with a feed much likea TikTok feed singles life, as
(06:00):
well as a large circle chat,which is a live chat where anyone who's
a community can't go on chat abouttopics like whenever it's relevant. So for
example, we have lots of communitiesor on TV shows where they would post
things that they would post, editorspost theories and more discussion like that in
defeat, but also they would havea live chat going whenever there's like a
(06:24):
new episode out, so they cantalk about like what's going on, a
thin thing is going to happen,and we see a really really great sense
of community there. So I thinkwhat sets us apart isn't necessarily any one
super cool feature, but rather wewant to provide the best platform for these
communities to go to exist, interact, and where we are, we work,
(06:46):
we move really quickly, so ifthere's a new feature that people want
or that we see users really desire, we want to provide communities like whatever
tools they need to be run andppid main space online basically. Yeah,
And I guess the end vision isthat we want to make communities online in
(07:12):
a better format than has been donebefore, more mainstream has been done before.
We kind of want to do tooonline communities something like what YouTube has
done to videos. Oh, wewant picnic community, premier destination and kind
of a platform infrastructure for anyone thatwants to create or form or join an
(07:32):
online community about any topic at all. Wow, that sounds amazing. It
sounds like you guys put a lotof thought into this and you're really speaking
to your consumers, especially because youknow, I also heard that some of
the older online platforms are just nowkind of for older people, like I
won't mention names the one that startswith if so. Yeah, and right
(07:55):
now there's just no good space foryoung people to engage age in this like
community behavior and really meaningfully interact anddive into the stuff that they love.
Right. We see other platforms whereit's mostly like entertainment, funny stuffs,
things are served to you in analgorithm. But what we want to do
(08:18):
is we want to allow more Iguess, more intentional engagement with what you
love yet to choose your communities youwant to be a part of, and
each community has a different culture,which is said by the people who do
so it's really a different structure thana lot of what young people are more
(08:39):
than a lot of platforms to existright now. But it's something that they
have obviously, and so far wesee that they really love and they're inviting
their friends. They are making allsorts of new communities on picnic, and
we hope to see this continue out. Yeah, and at the same time,
I think was really encouraging ching.Is like the behavior of being part
(09:03):
of communities and joining communities isn't anewer, like crazy behavior something that I
did when I was young online thatmy parents entered online, that they did
in general. But you see themplatforms like with Facebook groups or Reddit or
internet forms, it's just those platformsfor a variety of reasons, aren't really
(09:24):
that gen z friendly. You know, especially teenagers aren't going to be checking
out Facebook groups. So that givesus a lot of opportunity to just solve
this really important behavioral need by givingyoung people in particular, but eventually everyone
a platform that they can that theycan use for this quartium of behavior,
(09:46):
and there's some pretty interesting teachers andkind of focuses that will take along the
way in order to get to thefinal destination. But overall, kind of
what we're lazer focused on doing communitiesbetter I've been done before. At least
that's awesome. Are you guys goingto have like a well, so I
the big social media platform that likestarts to the I UM, I noticed
(10:09):
lately that they're starting to like flagpeople for misinformation when it's something really innocent,
like a flower in the sidewalk andstuff like that. I do guys
think that's like a glitch? Andif so, um, do you guys
have plans to try to circumvent kindof issues like that or I mean,
if something like that arises or whatare your opinions on that? Yeah,
(10:31):
So the trend ports algorithmic algorithmic detectionbanning of people I think is a profoundly
negative one for a variety of reasons. And we see online, you know,
people going they're all sorts of measuresto try to circumvent like, um,
these automatic filters or in some casesmanual filters, clap discussions that they
(10:54):
should be gree to have exactly Yeah. Are Our philosophy overall is that we
think of ourselves as kind of neutralreferees where we want to allow people to
create groups around whatever topic they want, as off as it is legal and
UM. And the wonderful thing aboutour platform is the people that create the
(11:16):
groups have an incentive to UM togovern them, to moderate them however they
might want to, so they canban people if it's appropriate when the context
of their community. The that meansthat we can be relatively hands off.
Of course, we need to makesure users are safe, and we need
to make sure you know, there'sthere's no sort of malicious or like illegal
activity or bonds and things like that. Yeah, overall, I think the
(11:41):
trend towards like kind of making everythingfit in in a cookie cutter box and
UM and only saying what maybe thebig platforms right need to say, I
think is one of those really negativefor society and something that UM that will
always try our best to make surethat we don't all for the same sort
of behavioral patterns or traps. That'sreally awesome. I really like the fact
(12:07):
that you guys are into like morefree speech because I've I've always been a
firm believer of more voices, notless and um, you know within reason
like you said, Um, andI really feel like that's going to be
really good for everything. And becauseI mean, I'm just like I said,
if people, you know, youcan't just shut off all the voices
(12:31):
because they don't they dissent from whatyou believe and stuff like that, because
it was never like this, likeyou know, even five years ago.
Um, so I'm really glad tohear that you guys are encouraging more communication
and more open communication. Yeah,something that's really cool to what we're doing.
Um. You know, we asas a people that made this spot
(12:52):
more might think that, um,we know a lot, but like the
people that are ultimately using using ourplatform are the ones who matter, and
what matters is that we allow themto speak freely, speak their mind,
to engage in good discourse around whatevertopics really matter to them. That's good,
(13:13):
that's really refreshing to hear. So, UM, do you guys have
like where you're going to allow peopleto also like advertise on your platform as
well? So right now, wedon't generate any revenue, we don't run
any ads. We're financed by byboth ourselves and external investors. In the
(13:35):
future, we might explore advertising asas a mechanism to to monetize the pay
our our engineering salaries and the hostingcosts and the cost associated with running the
business. That being said, we'vemade a commitment where some function of the
advertising revenue that's generated, when itcomes, we'll be going directly to the
(13:56):
communities that generate the advertising revenu umin which at which point they'll be able
to do whatever they want with that. So um, so we don't really
have any revenue or advertising yet,but but when and if it comes,
M will make sure that that there'san incentive M for communities to want advertisements
(14:18):
to appear, um you know,in their posts or in their chats or
elsewhere, will allow them to customizechoose whether those advertisements here or not.
Yeah, well that's really good becauseyou know, other platforms just kind of
I know, they try to dotheir best on advertising on what they think
that you want to see, butsometimes you know, you just get like
innundated, Like I know the onelike I said that starts to the I
(14:39):
like every other post now as anad and it's just like wow, So
this will be good to see somelike actual authentic content on your platform.
Yeah, I think. I thinkone thing that's so important is UM is
rewarding the people who are putting ina lot of work and UM and we're
(15:00):
making the platform like a good place. So if you look at most UM,
most consumer applications right now, withthe exception of something like YouTube,
you see that the platforms are youknow, centralized, and they take all
the revenue that comes from advertising forthemselves or other forms of revenue. But
(15:22):
there's a new trend emerging UM that'scome in the last ten or so years
where revenue sharing is a really powerfulmechanism to make people more incentivized to to
want to use products and also allowsthem to get some some capital that allows
them to make better content and furtherthe discussion. So we see it was
(15:45):
something like YouTube. On YouTube,about half the advertising revenue goes directly to
the personal uploads of media, andthat's that allows really awesome forms of content
that wouldn't otherwise exist to be there. Another example is like Roadblocks. Roadblocks
is like a gaming platform, butthey don't make any games themselves. They
allow other people to make the gameson their platform and then and then those
(16:08):
games to monetizes. However, theywant roadblocks takes to cut off their revenue
as it comes from. That's sucha great concept. Yeah, Yeah,
it's something that we're really excited about. And it's never existed for communities online
before. It used to be whenyou were running a forum, or if
you make a Facebook group or somethinglike that, you don't get anything for
(16:30):
doing that, or to make asunbread or a Discord server, you don't
get You don't get anything, evenif it's the biggest group in the world.
You get none of the benefit.But you're generating advertising platform and we
want to kind of in the longrun turn that on the set. Right
now, that's not our focus andwe won't be running out for quite some
time, but when we do,I think that that's a really exciting opportunity
(16:52):
to really change the way that communitieslook and exist online. Yeah. And
also you're creating a lot of incentivefor people to be creative, which is
just so much fun and I feellike it's so needed right now. You
know, we've all been through theRinger this past three year, yeah,
three years now, and I reallyit gives me a lot of hope that
you guys are doing this because wejust so needed something new and different and
(17:15):
I really have a good feeling aboutyour app. Yeah, thanks, I
think right now, right now we'rejust starting out. We're kind of in
our MVP or minimum viable prototype base, but our initial audience, which is
mostly you know, we got peoplebetween age so maybe thirteen and sixteen,
(17:37):
are really loving the product that weput out. Their engagement it's really good.
And I think that we're expecting tohave a more wide and like official
launch in the coming in the comingweeks, and that's kind of what we're
looking forward to, because right now, if you're not a team growth,
I'm like, who that heard ofpicnic? But um, but we think
(18:00):
that that will change relatively quick,relatively soon. So that's that's what we're
looking forward ka Um. Can peoplefind your app on the App Store like
on Google Play? And uh,I don't have Apple, so I don't
know. I've always been like adiehard Android person, so I never really
got into Apple. Yeah, yeah, so you can. You can find
(18:21):
us on either the Apple App Storethe Google Play Store, or you can
go to our website. Our webapp is still work in progress. We
actually want to started a couple ofweeks ago. But but if you want
to sneak, you can go topicnic dot song see enemy um or you
can if you search a picnic oneither the Google Play or the Apple App
Store or the top results and theone with the watermelons. The watermelon that's
(18:45):
awesome. So, do you guyshave a like UM presence also like on
the other social media apps, justto kind of get your UM message alter,
excuse me, we're going take toomuch on other socials right now.
We made we made a TikTok atone point because that was what our like
launch shoes were into and liked using. And I think we've got like a
(19:07):
hundred yeah, but I wouldn't sayI'm a big TikTok type of guys.
So um So, I don't knowif we pleas said anything there any time
recently, UM, but um,but we'll probably we'll probably get a little
active on Twitter and uh, andI don't know if we'll grow on other
(19:29):
platforms necessarily, but we we wemight, we might as we start to
um as we start to think aboutour like official release and our wider release.
But most most of the people thatdownload us here about it. We're
pretty much all of them here aboutit to be a word of mouth.
It's over ninety percent of our installsor people searching Picnic on the app store
normally. Monday is like a reallybig day for us for growth because um,
(19:51):
because you know, people will goto school and tell their friends and
stuff like that. So um soright right now, like people are mostly
hearing about it fromtly friends, I'mgoing forward, we might think about think
about being on Twitter on that's awesome. Well I have a preteen girl,
(20:11):
so I'll tell her about it,and uh, I'm sure she'll go tell
her friends. So you'll get alittle bit more business from over here or
traffic. Yeah, that's awesome.Yay um. And also I'm gonna have
your information at the Radio Love websiteat radiolove dot com. That's Radio Luv
dot com. We'll have links andwe're gonna have a blog post there and
(20:33):
uh article and the show we'll beembedded in there and uh yeah, so
I want to thank you guys forbeing on the show again. I've been
talking to Emily U One and NicoLakwa and they are the developers of the
app called Picnic. Be looking outfor that. I expect that it's probably
going to take the social media worldby storm. I can't wait to see
(20:53):
what you guys do. Yaw yeahhaving us Yeah, thank you. You've
been listening to my interview with MikoLapwa and Emily u on the developers of
the new app Picnic. To findout how you can download this app,
go to the Radiolove website at radiolovedot com. That's Radio Luv dot com.
(21:17):
I want to thank you for tuningin today. If you want to
be a guest on Schmidt Talk,shoot me at email at Savvy at radiolove
dot com, or just find meon social media and reach out. I
look forward to next week's show.Until then, stay safe.
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