Howard lensing is the founder and general partner at Social leverage all opinions expressed by Howard and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of social leverage or stock twits. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon for decisions. Guess May maintain positions and securities discussed in this podcast.
K not help you too. Oh, you broke protocol. It's your turn. I had a little buzz going. That's okay. Yeah, would you eat or drink or take a recess big cup? I really go off the deep cups. The big cups were extra salty sugary peanut butter. Oh Buzzy. This is the leftover Halloween candy or what? No, I literally have a sweet tooth. You know this. Well, I know that but you know, I would freely sugar. I'm just giving it out for a you know for an excuse, but did you hear that? I burp I just pulled.
Volume 4 love it goes so welcome everybody to our for listeners in the bay and my mom and Toronto. Hey, mom stay indoors and your family in Norway. He stick that's right. Yeah still listening horse penis in well, thanks for clarifying that I think that's what I mean. Do you guys told me to say that one time when I said listen, can you teach me Norwegian? Yeah, but that was in college now, we're supposed to be grown-ups. So
good guest today. Yeah. Tell me gen Z what Jen do you think Jen's e stands for? I have no idea. I'm too old for that. What I'm General were 50 and 55. What? Are you 59? You look at what? Where are we Jen? What what do they call us? What's our group? Well, I think we're Baby Boomers. Oh, so we're Boomers. I think we are at calm myself. I know I mean we might be the very tail end of that dogon. Yeah. She's gen Z Tiffany Zhong.
He's up in the in the Bay Area last one there told her to turn out the lights last time. I spoke a she is a Jen's ear. She's the Gen Z Whisperer. So I've been reading her yearly breakdown on gen Z. All right, and you have to live kind of in the present and the present is dominated by gen Z. So she writes his great report that I linked to and she has a big following on Twitter and I'm interested in all the things she's interested in but I want her take because I don't use the product. I don't
Use Snapchat a lot more long Snapchat, but I don't use it. I'll get tick-tocks every day from my kids, but I don't use the product. So and then you hear about all these influences and content and there's all this this this massive economy that the Gen Z is part of so I invited her on and she accepted great idea and I'm part of the Gen M Jen man's game. I'm a manscape whisper meaning you will you actually have to talk loud because there's always like the drumbeat of
You manscape are going and that's manscape.com which we are ambassadors. And so that's why talk about it so often but we invest in what we do and I definitely miss that. So let's get Tiffany right on the horn. This is going to be fun because the questions I have for a probably not that exciting to her but this is what she does talk about and I need this audience to understand the trends that are going on. So let's dollar up.
Tiffany Howard, thanks for having me.
I am excited to talk. I told you turn out the lights when you leave the bay. Where are you going?
I am going south which is where many people from the day are going as well. So going to the city of dreams and Los
Angeles. This is breaking news
this I mean, this is announced anywhere. No one knows this. So I guess it is
Mom you hear that?
Your son breaks news once in a while zebra IQ. What does that
mean? Zebra IQ. So I started this company three years ago essentially to bridge the gap between really adults and gen Z realized that a lot of adults in my sphere from Tech to CMOS. Did it really have direct access to gen Z and didn't really understand the trends that were happening with Gen Z and all the memes and everything that changes so quickly.
Glee in the world of the internet and gen Z on a weekly and daily basis. So that's essentially what we started out doing which we are gen Z modern insights platform helping Brands get fast insights from gen Z along with that. We're also building something that is still in stealth and hasn't been talked about much in public yet, but essentially tools to help creators this next generation of creators mom.
Ties Their audience and really go from creators to Moguls. So one of our missions our main mission, which is helping this next Generation helping these new millions and millions of new creators become Moguls and entrepreneurs in their own right which is what everyone wants everyone wants to be a mogul so building the tools to help them do
so. So Mogul is the new currency, right? I mean, I'm trying to think how old are you if I can
Ask I recently turned 24. So I'm on the talent to go to call it. I went to Berkeley for a year dropped out to start this company
and you were a VC. So tell me how a Dropout gets into the PC
business. I was a VC before I dropped out before I went to college. So essentially I started using Twitter which you know, when I was in high school, I was 1516 around that.
I'm sorry to just asking investors and entrepreneurs questions. I was curious about I wasn't trying to get into the VC world. I wasn't trying to become a VC. I was just seeing them tweet a lot and I had questions for them. So that's really how I started meeting. All these folks who wanted they wanted to understand gen Z. I wanted to understand what they do on a daily basis and how to how to build Innovative companies and that's really how it all started. Then I ended up joining product time to my senior year.
High school with a really great team learning
with me if they're still or was it just proud Ryan Hoover was
it? This was right before nip joint. So I was the January to June 2015. I was working closely with Ryan and Eric team was super small at that time and I was taking calls in class like in my high school classes is funny because the product hunt team was like what you're in class right now, like you're like you're zooming Us in class and they're just
Confusingly like what is happening with this kid who is on our team? But I was all over school. I just wanted to build things and work on cool products with cool people. And so that's how the product type thing happened. I met Ryan and Eric through Twitter and a hackathon that I went to from there. I ended up meeting more VCS ended up joining $300,000,000 early stage VC fund right after high school called binary Capital was an investor for a
A year and a half then when I went to Berkeley and then dropped out. So I've had a pretty random untraditional kind of career path really led by my passions and
interests. No, my son is 21 and if I told you a little bit of Robin Hood stock, but I encourage you to maybe marry him I think backs. I mean think Max couldn't do better knut. I think you'd be great. Yeah, I think so. Now we may be on Rachel. I'm not gonna
Persians I shouldn't talk for Rachel my daughter's 23 and a heavy hitter. So either one of my kids is up for a dowry you have a dowry if you take on one of my children
it just selling out your kids at this point Howard.
I think I'm looking out for them Tiffany you're going places. So what was your motivator? Obviously my son hated school too. So let's talk about this and we kept him in school on the minute. He got a chance to bolte self-sabotage. What was your way with your parents to ditch school?
All because Berkeley is not cheap and it was obviously a grind to get yourself into position to get into Berkeley. So what's that like?
Yeah, so my parents are immigrants so that also adds another layer of complexity and me trying to drop out of the exact thing that they came to America to get the kids to do. So, I mean it was a lot it was a long process of priming and all sorts of ways to convince my parents that I needed to go start a company instead of staying in school that this
What I needed to do and it was really also just breaking it down both by Logic and by kind of framing my college environment as a as an unhealthy place to be which would be a very strong selling point to my parents. But the logic part was hey, so I learn best when I am in it when I'm thrown into an environment or Rio real-world environment where I get to actually apply things to real experiences. Try things out.
Things with my own hands and make mistakes as opposed to learning by sitting in a classroom. Now, that's just how I learn. I learned by seeking out experts in specific spaces that I'm interested in learning about and that's really why I use Twitter. I use it to meet interesting people to learn from them. And so that's one thing which they obviously wanted me to stay in school for the education and for Learning and I was I had to convince them that I learned things and by my own
Through all of these on traditional methods and then outside of that. It was also just a lot of my friends were were already working on startups. A lot of my friends where San Francisco and La as opposed to me going to college to try to find my crew, right? I already found my crew before I went to college and I really spent a lot of time kind of in the last few years just understanding myself as well. Which needed to be surrounded by
Close friends to do so and so that's that's kind of my my thoughts on College my thoughts on a job a career. You gotta have fun. You gotta be learning learning at a really fast picks I guess is the place where you can post and if not, then you need to kind of reconsider what you're spending your time doing. It's kind of how I approached what I wanted to spend my time doing. I think Ryan Hoover was the one who actually gave me that framework when I was considering a couple different types of gigs.
And opportunities
Ryan the young Legend. I'm a big fan. I don't talk to him that often but him and Eric who he hired early you could do worse by having those people as young mentors and Nev who I kind of mentored myself an investor vanilla pianos fund and same with Ryan. So that's great. You could do much worse. Oh, that's wonderful. And I think that the number one thing that I tell people you're living is
is if you have tools like you have today like Twitter and all the other tools are great. I just don't use them because I'm into learning and I'm into going fast and Twitter in stocked with solve that for me because I'm just in it for the expert network, but you're using Twitter really? Well. It sounds like as your school. You just know what you want to do and you're using Twitter for that thing, which is your mining for growth and expertise. So, how do you use?
Twitter in that sense because I see only follow 23 people and I haven't made the list and that's for another conversation because I don't know what I've ever done to you. But you know 23 you've curated pretty well and looking through the 23 people that you follow and I don't know them but no love all of them. So, how do you get on the list? How do you curate and then if you only have 23 people how to use Twitter?
So that's a great question. I actually unfollowed everyone. I think one or two years ago it was
Is some end of December early January I went through and use one of those Twitter bot son followed everyone right? I got that down to zero and I didn't follow anyone for like a full year. And so the way I use Twitter is through lists. I have I have a couple different types of lists that I use where I put really interesting people in this office the way I use my following now is people I I can vouch for basically people who are like my family and my close friends and
Those are the people who make it onto the list I have this is not even a humble brag. This is just a brag. I have a couple famous people who follow me and I don't follow them back. I feel kind of bad but I can't I can't make my following list too. Messy. I have to be super curated about the people who I can know I can vouch for and people who I want others to follow. So that's kind of how the list works and for my other lists. I have three.
Realists actually so it breaks down into tweets that I want to see daily. So daily list. I have a weekly list to he said I want to check in on weekly go through people who I don't need to see every single tweet but have interesting tweets and then third list is monthly so people who are in the broader circle of interest, but might not maybe not every single one of their tweet has immense value to my life.
So I think I'm in that one show so you
Use less I've never used them. So they have
value. Yeah. Yeah, this was great because you shouldn't just look at your feet and absorb everything. That's right. You can break it down into different categories to I used to have one that was like marketing a marketing list. I used to have one that was like a product list. So people who are smart on consumer product and you could break it down by people who are founders people who are CEOs people who are investors. It's a really interesting way to kind of curate the different types of
Of content you want to consume as opposed to you? Look at your feet and is probably all sorts of different types of things and he will never finish reading your whole feed. So yeah, that's how I use it. I used to spend a lot of time like every day I would reply to people 50% of my tweets were replies 50% my tweets were tweets you have to do a mix of both of you don't reply you won't you won't get on people's radar. You won't you can't just organically grow you need a I mean a pro tip is reply.
To someone who has a decent amount of following but not millions of followers where your reply will get lost in the sea of hundreds of other replies reply to people who have 10,000 to 300,000 followers and their followers will see your replies. If you reply interesting things ask interesting questions. The poster will probably like it and reply what you need to do this consistently and that's kind of the trick to Twitter. You can't really give up early on
And you should use it as a place to learn as a as opposed to a place to gain clout never go into it with an approach of hey, I want to use Twitter to gain Cloud. I want to use Twitter to be famous. At least not in my point of view. There's a lot to learn and there's a lot of interesting people to meet. I'm also just DM people to I kind of just DM people all the time. I would suggest people doing that to you have nothing to lose for anyone listening to this like you have nothing to
Is by dming called messaging emailing people doesn't matter how old you are
up that I always said that you're always no matter how successful you are. You're going to be making cold calls, so might as well start young so good for you. So I want to talk about the five Seas you talk about that creators Community content Commerce culture was a great I believe, you know, that's how I am best. Right? Like if I look at all the companies that I focus on.
And I've started in the people that interest me. I mean America is our last great expert other than Tech is culture Commerce. If you're going to invest or if you're going to be an investor or you want to start a business, you have to understand Commerce when I think of content now, everybody is a media company including like whether it's a 16-0 our firm social leverage Community. I've started my own and I know what that how important that is and Creator so when you talk about Moguls, is this what it
Means
so what I talked about mogo's I'm talking about how today's creators are going to be tomorrow's Fortune 500 Founders. That's my take in the next five to ten years. We're going to see these creators building billion-dollar media companies and billion dollar e-commerce and direct to Consumer Brands. They already have the distribution. They already have the community.
They just need a build and so that's what I mean. When I say creators are going to become Moguls. We're already seeing some of these younger creators being really strategic on how they think about business and finance sway house being one of them. I'm not sure if you follow them closely or even know who this way house boys are deal.
No, I it's been mentioned before so just take your time
and
Yes, very house. One of the biggest gen Z Tick-Tock houses a couple boys who are 19 20 21 became Tick-Tock stars and they collectively invest in startups. Now they have one of them has a podcast with Bryce Hall one of the guys Bryce how has a podcast with Anthony promptly. I know who I'm sure you know, yeah.
And all the others are also doing their own podcast. Another one has a podcast Josh Richards has a has a podcast with Dave Portnoy. So you're seeing how these kids are really being really smart about who they surround themselves with and how they can make sure that the millions of dollars that they earn a year aren't going to become zero. They aren't gonna go into bankruptcy like what some celebrities have done. They're trying to figure out how the
you can leverage Their audience to really build something that's longer lasting outside of their own name starting from using their audience using their name, but how can they grow outside of that? How can they grow something? That is sustainable? How can they grow something that will last five to ten years as opposed to having a really short shelf life of one year and then losing your influence now the 5c is that I talked about from creators to community to content to Commerce to internet culture.
Those are the five things that really are important and relevant in this day and age you need to understand all five of them to know where things are headed. And that's kind of why I dubbed it 5C and it's it's an interesting thing to think about because there's so many different factors to building a successful brand these days and yeah, that's really what I think impacts culture all of those five factors
so in gear, what do you think?
They're best at when you're thinking through this for yourself. Do you say I've had too much Community lately. I need to work on Commerce or do you like I get it? Like if I'm an athlete you have no excuse today, right? Because you don't have to have any special skill you already people look up to you. So the fact if you're not creating content and not thinking about your life after Sports, you've been given the gift of being good at one thing and getting paid for it. So to not take advantage of the five.
Jesse's in an era of the Social Web seems crazy now we're seeing athletes do that because that's a really good point. You make the the sway house. They're actually thinking about how not to go broke because they have this gift that's been given to them and they don't even have to Dom the pads or go on the field and and and risk their lives. They just have audience.
Yep. Exactly. So when I think about it, my job is to kind of cover all five seasons.
I think everyone needs to be well aware of what's Happening across all five and it's not a today. I'm going to focus on this one or that one it's to be well-rounded and to understand what is what is happening in the world today? And where the where the future is headed you need to spend time in understanding all five of them and for athletes, especially they are a Creator themselves. They might not call themselves that but they are a Creator they're creating content. We are
All creators at the end of the day and some creators level up into turning their content into something that others want to watch and share with their friends and they keep going up and up now as a Creator. You don't even need that many followers. I tell creators that they need to care more about how many super fans they have versus how many followers they have. You could have 50 million followers and not be able to sell out.
5,000
sweaters, correct. And so what makes that difference because I think about e-commerce for myself all the time and I see people doing this and I have all these great ideas for clothing and for slogans, like what what is it that makes you be able to monetize an audience in an e-commerce why like I I live off getting a laugh but that doesn't translate into dollars. So what is the trick? Is there a
trick it could translate to dollars right? I think to talk two main types of
content is entertainment and education. And so if you can make people laugh, if you can get people invested into you as a personality you as a person you will be able to build a community and sell them whatever you want to sell. There's not really a trick to it. It's just you have to actually care about people who follow you people who reply to you. You need to engage with your fans. I see creators once they hit a million followers or even five.
Decay they just stopped replying to their fans. They stopped liking their fans comments. That is probably the dumbest mistake one can do because if you're not replying to them, they're gonna go find other creators who will reply to them and they're going to become super fans of those creators. They don't owe you anything. And so you need to make an effort to keep your to keep your followers and convert them into superfans right needle treat them as humans and value them and so, how can
Can you bring value to your community? What is it that they want to do do they want to video chat with you? Do they want to get access to behind-the-scenes content to behind-the-scenes experiences? How can you offer that to people who are your your biggest fans to the people who always comment to the people always engage with your content to the people who share your content and tell their friends to follow you that's extent is essentially what we're setting out to build which is how can we help creators figure out who are their super fans?
Figure out how to monetize Their audience
and so this great so who and what forgetting just me but just ran do person like myself a good Community. What are the products, you know your products and out out. I'm happy to talk about your product or where it's at, but we can have you back to do that too if it's not ready, but what what should I be thinking about? Is it Shopify or they're more is there better vertical stores? Is it what are the things that you would use to?
Today if you had an audience to monetize the brand of
Tiffany.
We're essentially building at all the tools that I need to monetize my brand and also other creators. So I mean I need craters listening to this. Feel free to hit me up. I'll help you think through how you should monetize your audience, but I would say the most important thing is you needed first do research you need to First understand who your audience is which surprisingly a lot of creators actually don't know who Their audience is you could ask them. What is your audience? Breakdown? Like they don't really know they don't even know what what states what countries what kind of
Demographic breakdown to audiences or what kind of interest that the audience is interested in. So for you Howard, I would first start off with understanding. Why do people follow you figure out what are the deeper reasons figure out what are the things that they'd be willing to pay for figure out what are their interests outside of just following you who else do they follow? What kind of content do they consume do? They consume a hundred percent your content or maybe 80% of your content?
Just you have to do research to understand your audience. You have to spend time doing that at least at the beginning and then in the future just keep them in the loop. Ask them. What do you think of this shirt idea? What do you think of this merch idea eighty percent say they love it great. That's a great idea then go and build go and produce and sell it. If only twenty percent say they like it then maybe maybe don't ship it. And so you can you can constantly test out these different types of ideas.
We've had one of our creators 24k gold and who your kids probably know produced the number one song in the world called mood right celebrities play that song in the back of their videos. It's a massive song now, he used our platform to ask his fans. What merge do you want to see? He asked an open-ended question and he got a bunch of different responses that were four straight into this many people this percentage of your fans want to see
See this merch from you this other percentage want to see this. So now he knows exactly what his merch rollout plan should be or how he should be thinking about building his e-commerce brand and same thing goes for you. Same thing goes for anyone who's trying to sell anything.
This is fantastic. So have you built the product or did you raise money at or where you at with the with the
company? We've built an MVP. We're continuing to build on top of it. We're beta testing with some early creators.
Some of some of who you may know and yeah, that's kind of where we're at right now where we're just heads down building out interesting Creator tools that creators want. So
yeah, I've seen so many, you know, try and Community I'm trying you know, I I use all the writing tools. I obviously stock twits. I'm not really in it to monetize my network because I've chosen the business of investing so I use my
My network to just help me go faster and make less mistakes, which is you know work. Okay, but at the same time the creative side of me, you know sees these Brands get created whether it's you know Supreme ratley Road or all these cool brands that happen and you just it's hard not to think that it's amazingly possible to do this now. I mean, it's really a fascinating moment in time and they'll never be a
Perfect product. So how do you think about that yourself knowing knowing that right? Like do you build one super tool or war or know that people are just going to have all these Jiu Jitsu tools and there's no one Perfect Tool. So, how are you thinking about that?
Yeah. Was that going to too much into our strategy the way we think about it is we really want to experiment right now and work closely with some some creators. Make sure we're building something that
They love using that their fans love using and then we'll kind of launched with a bang. I will say
got it and the easiest way to follow you is on Twitter. Do you think for most people
Twitter Instagram LinkedIn soon YouTube videos. I'm everywhere.
So me again. I love writing. I'm stuck. No, it's hard for an older person to experiment because I don't want to start from scratch.
If I'm focus on my blog, so I'm WordPress Twitter stock twits. What's the next? What's the thing that I'm missing? Like, I'll never figure out Tick-Tock. I'm not an editor. I don't understand it. It's too many buttons. It's too much. You couldn't make it easy enough for me. So is it just more of the same or is there something you would say Howard you're going to have to master this before you get to the next level.
I mean at the end of the day, it's just really thinking about how you can increase your distribution, right?
Right because top of funnel drives down into more super fans. And so for you as you're thinking about and you're seeing all of these new younger Brands like you mentioned Supreme those types of companies Street where Brands there's a lot of interesting learning so you could take away from what companies and other Industries are doing essentially which how can you experiment on Tick Tock? I know I know tick-tocks new for you, but there's a lot
Knowledge that you could be sharing on Tick-Tock and it's it's easy enough to use just watch a YouTube video about how to use tick tock. I have your kids teacher and you'll learn it in a day. And also you want to understand the format that works. Well on Tick Tock to so spend three or four hours scrolling through tick-tocks, but don't look at Tic tocs in the sense of in the in the from the eye of entertainment like you're looking at Tic tocs to break down what works and what
does so what works well usually starts off with a very very quick hook and then a storyline and then kind of a conclusion the trick is if you have the conclusion as something that's really fast or really quick people will keep watching and if people keep watching it the view count goes up and there's a much higher chance for your video to show up on the for you page which means a broader audience will find your video and we'll see your video. That's just kind of one thing to think about
And you thinking about how you can produce content on Tick-Tock because I would say tick-tocks to easiest distribution platform right now. It's really hard to grow on Instagram. It's kind of hard to grow on Twitter. Tick-Tock has created a platform where famous kind of democratized anyone can become famous on Tick-Tock. Anyone can go viral on Tick Tock just based on how the algorithm works. It's based on if you have good content and not based on.
Tan if you already have followers so
but it is Visual and I like being you know, not one show my face other than in manage settings just being on videos much different than just shouting on
Twitter. It's fair, but there's also something called the green screen on Tick-Tock where you can have kind of a background you can do voice overs videos with your face do well to really do much better on tick-tock.
Because people want to see faces, but you honestly if you really wanted you could make interesting videos without showing your face.
Okay? Well wait yelling at me. I got your message. I should be on Tick Tock and don't need to raise your voice. So Tiffany, I mean I'm learning tons. I feel a little guilty here. Do you invest or do you just to focus because you know a lot so I'm saying like if you had to choose between Facebook Snapchat tense
sent do you own them all or is there a couple that just is these companies that you just in your heart, you know that no one really fully gets yet, or are they all just over value to you? How do you think about that?
So public investing is is interesting it's harder for me because the way I invest as I invest in a lot of startups, right I think startups are interesting because they have the chance to disrupt things and there's also the opportunity to
Actually help out these Founders when it's public companies. There's less of a chance where I can figure out what it is that they're actually where they actually headed and how I think about how they're going to execute in all of those details. And so with that being said, I are more on the side of early stage investing which I love doing and I want to do more of that and just really being on the side of Founders and Builders people who are building something new.
Okay? Well, that's cool.
But if I said to you which of those like if it's Snapchat or Facebook or Ten Cent or Google YouTube who's doing the right things?
That's such an interesting question though because Facebook has Instagram correct Instagram is really making smart moves into Commerce and Google has YouTube which also is crushing it and it's funny because if your Tick Tock Creator and you want to monetize and you want to build
Your audience even more you go to YouTube. You start making long form content on YouTube. So that's the transition that you see right now, which if you're a big talker and you're thinking really strategically about where are you want to house your content you're starting to make YouTube videos because you can get bigger brand deals through that. You can monetize your videos through YouTube AdSense Instagram is just like a profile. Everyone has an Instagram not everyone has a YouTube though, right?
So you think YouTube gaming is also doing really interesting things tencent is really interesting. I think if you look at a lot of these companies in China consumer social companies in China, they are innovating on the different types of formats to different types of entertainment experiences for consumers. I would say they are more interesting than American companies. But yeah, I would say it's kind of hard for me to choose out of those three,
but you haven't said Snapchat. So how do
Use
Snapchat which one I'd bet on Snapchat still owns gen Z authenticity. So gen Z is go there as their main Messenger as a place to be their real self as a place to be authentic. That's what sets them apart. They had an interesting move recently where now they allow like influencers to show like their follower counts and so is Snapchat going to become another social network. They call themselves a camera.
Any right there a camera messaging company, are they going to become another social network will see they're making interesting moves into music as well, which I think is very smart because music is kind of the bridging gap for teens and Young Folks and I mean people of all ages really and music is what drives Tick-Tock so Snapchat seems to want to start competing with to talk
more and more. And so where does Shopify fit into this? I just have a few more questions or like if you're a brand
You be thinking about selling stuff for you should be thinking about selling content or should you just be thinking about getting paid by Brands to just shout out their name and where their stuff? What do you thinks the most interesting long-term way for someone to think about this
shopify's really a really interesting company. I love Shopify. I think what they're doing in terms of helping anyone build a business online is massive. It's a massive deal now if you're a Creator, how should think about
Content you always need to be producing content produce as much content as possible without burning yourself out at the same time. You need to be building your community. Don't think too much about monetizing your audience. If you're still an early Creator because you don't want to alienate the audience that has already came, right? You want to make sure that you're just always providing value to your audience. That's what you need to think about every piece of content you put out there. Is it providing value to my Audience by value?
Be it could be funny. It could be an interesting story. It could be an interesting lesson that you share but is every piece of content you're putting out there providing value and just goes out to anyone who's tweeting making Tik toks any form of content really? And so I think it's interesting because Instagram doesn't really you're posting content on there. A lot of Instagram content is not really providing value.
Yeah. I find it. I mean obviously I'm biased it just acquired a company of ours customer. So I think they're making this move into the mall.
All right, kind of a shop of Phi it's better. I can't figure out where they're going hard to bet against them because International and just they just have that power and so they're spending real money now to get into e-commerce and they've changed our whole app to be more like a shopping place plus every time I open I'm Instagram they show me shit that theoretically I should like golf stuff and Leisure wear and weird trinkets that somehow they must know I've talked about
So I think they must be in the leadership role in terms of a future of Congress. But I agree with you on YouTube. You have to follow the the influencers in the going from tick talk to YouTube. And you know, Google's breaking out Snapchat. I love what you're saying about authenticity because I don't use it but I own the stock, but I know my kids use it they just don't talk about it. But that's the place where they trust that one part of the network, which is chat and that's going to be hard for some they're starting to go beyond that one demographic because the kids are now going
getting older and still using SnapChat.
Correct? Exactly.
And who are you watching that? No one quite hasn't heard of yet. And how do you keep track of what's up and coming because that must hurt that's your stress is like, well, what am I missing?
Yeah. So how I keep up to date. I mean, we have a panel of tens of thousands of gen Z's. We I'm always talking to gen Z's. I'm talking to people at the Forefront of culture people who shape culture. So not just gen Z's, but people who actually are like maybe more
Any of those who are trendsetters and tastemakers and that's kind of how I see what's up and coming I could swim a lot of content on Instagram Twitter Tick-Tock YouTube. I look at the comments. I look at how gen z's are replying to each other in the comments as well trick to understanding. What's happening with Gen Z is you look at the biggest influencers gen Z influencers on Tick-Tock and Twitter and look at how their fans are reply and even going read it too. That's also where a lot of Trends and memes start off.
Well, I think people don't talk about Reddit nearly as much when they talk about which fans come from and that is where a lot of these memes that you see on Instagram. They come from Reddit. So I'd probably say that's one company that not enough people are talking about outside of that in terms of startups or earlier stage companies. Just kind of feel like interesting ones kind of operating in the Commerce space or building community space.
Building things for creators. I think there's a lot of a lot of companies that are in this space right now building really interesting things and I'm excited because the Creator economy as they call it is becoming larger and
larger. It may be the largest economy ever Unleashed this peer-to-peer Creator economy. Meaning I was the Lulu guy me and now I feel everybody where's Lulu, so I'm looking for Lulu just for me which became Rafa which
Is cycling but I'm not loyal meaning I just want I just am constantly changing just like the seasons and it's not, you know, I don't go into web store. So I don't need to be loyal. I just need to see the best stuff that appeals to me in this moment in my life. So I think everybody is undervalued a couple things the cloud for sure e-commerce for sure. And now I think this Creator economies may be the biggest thing ever Unleashed and it's pretty cool. Do you use at sea or far-fetched or any of these other ones that I
Those are great too. It's see is its he's doing well, I believe. Yeah, it's he's doing really well because creators are think creators are becoming more and more this year. I will say more and more people have thought about building and starting their own small businesses because of the pandemic right? Like people are losing their jobs. People are becoming unemployed there now figuring out ways to make money online and that's why companies like Etsy are doing well. It's
I companies in the content in space are doing well because people are making content people are making products physical products digital products. People are just making more things, which I love like that just means more Innovation is going to happen because more people are are becoming self starters realizing that they can do that and that they should own their own business because you're putting your life and career working at a big company and you're trusting that they won't fire you versus being able to own that responsibility.
Be
yourself. So last question Creator economy. Whoo. Whoo, how do I stay up to date? I follow you. But like how do I truly as someone who wants to build their own brand and get better at it? I'm going to take your advice. I'm going to go to watch YouTube the knut you have some work to do did I can't learn this all myself. You have to go to YouTube and get me some videos and she lets let's learn how to do you got it? Okay, so we that's our project and we'll send them to Tiffany and she'll share mmm, but if they're good, so I learned a lot
There I have to experiment I have to Tinker I have to pull myself out of my routine to get to the next level. It's like leveling up in a game like play the same game you win and I think this happened even with Trump he won the game. He won Twitter. Guess what didn't guarantee him a second term. He didn't evolve. He just kept yelling in the same Echo chamber and that wasn't that wasn't enough to win and that proves that even the president can't just rely on.
Why on one trick so I get it but what I forgot my question canuto what do you read to like if they're a couple things a couple like go to places and organize this for you or sub Stacks or things that like you have to read once a week or is it just the
feeds? I actually don't have a list of things that I read religiously. I read my friend Taylor lorenz's articles always that
I must everyone must do that.
Oh, okay,
and she's at the New York Times she writes about internet culture and Trends and how they happen and where they come from and you just need to read all of her stuff if you want to understand and stay up-to-date
done just followed her and I'm already annoying her at the center.
So she's great and I mean to stay up to date. There's also just Business Insider has a really good.
Creator economy influencer team, so I would take a look at the journalists on that team and read some of their stuff all of them on Twitter. I kind of read all sorts of stuff. I don't really read one specific thing. And I also just have friends to a journalist friends who are writers friends in different Industries who just share interesting things with me and that's kind of how I stay up to date with
everything fair enough fair enough. I appreciate all your time. This is great. Do you have any questions for me old people? Do you have one per question?
Ask an old person
that's a great question. So my one question would be what do you think was the highest leverage thing you did as you built out stocked widths or any of your media properties.
Well, I don't think I was good at it. I just did it the basic way just being authentic and just being nice. I always say that so easy to be mean on the internet and I'm guilty occasionally of doing that but I do it around public figures with trumpet and they're not listening anyway, so I just do it for the
Laughs I think the biggest thing is I'm not scared of pissing off. It's risky, but I'm not scared of pissing off people. That is risky though.
No pain. No gain.
Sometimes people ask me. Why did you do that? Go and just make mistakes. Sometimes it's just a tweet. It's just a photo a didn't mean anything by it in particular, but we make mistakes, so I'm not scared of the mistake and I'm not I'm not scared of saying I'm sorry sometimes as soon as I send I go whoops and I'll just have to I know I wouldn't be prepared to
Sorry doesn't happen that often but it is the most important thing is I may be too much. So I'm engaged in the comments and the community of it but I will say that it pays off The Leverage Incredibles. We're growing faster than we've ever grown the venture capitalist and he says fuck he should have done every trick in the book to grow sooner to get your valuation up. So it's just it's a tough one, but I would say the number one thing is it's a good question you ask is just being nice I generally and maybe that's not good for growth but being nice.
I think that's important for for anything you do. So yeah
in the spirit of being nice you've wasted enough of my time Tiffany the show and then do you are your parents now happy that you dropped out.
I wouldn't say happy. I would say they have a Septa did it and where do they live there in the Bay Area?
Oh, so now you're leaving them for La. Well, they should be
I'm trying to convince them to come to
La well fabulous. I'm excited.
For you if I can help in the Mover in the journey, you know, just hit me up. This was a treat to talk to someone so young, but I think that's part of the excitement of this Earth. The experts are coming at us from every different angle and every different age and there's something to learn from everybody in this in this amazingly connected world. So so good luck and hopefully our paths will cross again
soon.
Thank you for having me both. Thank you.
Bye.
Knut truly amazing 24 right my been reading her such a Slackers now, they're not what's fascinating is you and I were farting around letting ourselves on fire with like sake bombers. We usually let other people on fire. Well, you know what, I mean? It was the world was just different. We were 28 29 and we we knew we had there were stress right but yet credit it was different to you could just borrow from Best Buy or borrow from your car, you know.
I mean like right is given shit away and it's sucking you in so you had a eventually buy into the work. I don't think it dies. I'm we had said we have any understanding of any of this but that drove us meaning you borrowed. Yeah, you had stuff you had to work. Well, these kids don't have that pressure. They have a different pressure which is like what what's the world to expect of me? What a my parents think one of my friends doing, but they don't have the hundreds if they don't.
Scoffs you drive you don't have hundreds of thousands of the debt and you don't need any got your iPhone your ear pods. You got your social networks, which are free and you can go build your network for free right just your time and that time may be better spent doing that because you carry that network with you your whole life. So 24:27 who's to judge, but 24 pretty impressive very impressive. Brilliant girl. Brilliant girl. All right. Well, that was fun. That was great fun. God do that more. I learned located a get younger people as I try and and
Right Max. I know he has stuff there to tell me and he's not sharing it with me. It's like we go on the golf course and Eagle yesterday. He makes it look like an eagle. Yeah, and he go he drove a green like to 90 and when was behind us and in front edge 80 feet. He instead I would have potted it because my chipping socks, but he fucking hits pink tank top, you know, you know bounces twice skids Eagle at all are for yeah, that is beautiful. So and then he's just like
Birdies and exhale it's just like it's no easy peasy. Yeah you and I were to stopped may be ordered in start a fight with the people behind us saying wait a minute slow the fuck down. We just had an eagle Max just goes and birdies and exhale the it's a world is different. His skill is just the way he learned golf visually from YouTube and his iPhone that's his gift. He's not sharing it with anybody's pleasuring himself, but but it is fascinating. It is fucking Tiffany good for her.
Great, I wouldn't best what if she shows me a deal on the best thing. We do you think without our knowledge. All right. So this is panic with friends. We do this twice a week go to Apple Spotify search Panic with friends search my name subscribe. You'll hear me talk to Founders investors Traders venture capitalist this culture Commerce thing, which is always comes up is fascinating how to just make a little bit of money and if we can do that we've done our part here at Panic with friends. Thanks knut.
Thanks stocked. What's for Distributing this and getting this going and for everybody that listens we will be back soon.
