Tuesday, Dec 28, 2021 • 1h, 16min
From Web2 to Web3: Alexis Ohanian and Kevin Rose
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Kevin is joined by Alexis Ohanian, founder of venture capital firm SevenSevenSix and co-founder of Reddit. Here, they discuss youthful Digg vs. Reddit rivalry, Web2 lessons for Web3 aspirants, the cultural and economic benefits of diversifying the crypto space, NFT collecting, the future of investment, Bored Apes vs. CryptoPunks, the power of community, and much more.
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Alexis Ohanian
Kevin Rose
Transcript
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00:00
Kevin Rose and his guests are not registered investment advisors. All opinions are Kevin's and his guests alone. Nothing discussed today should be relied upon for investment decisions, nor is it investment advice. This show is solely for information and entertainment purposes only. Please work directly with an investment professional.
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Alexis Ohanian
00:26
We're calling This was this designation? The Lost episode.
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Kevin Rose
00:31
Yeah, exactly. You have the Alex replacement I guess.
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Alexis Ohanian
00:34
Yes, I want Alexis for an Alex. I I didn't, I swear I DM you a minute ago. This was early into the
NFT
rabbit hole probably early this year. And I was like Kevin, I wanna do a podcast with you. I will be your Alex. I just I was so impressed, so impressed by the fact that you've been I mean you're ahead of the game obviously with Web2, I'm happy to talk about that but you've been absolutely pioneering on Web3
and in particular the culture and communities around NFTs
and digital art and all this stuff and it's I'm not ashamed to say it, it's been great following you on this and I think most of my great ideas around Web3
have come from reading your stuff and listening to your stuff.Share
Kevin Rose
01:17
I appreciate that. That means a lot. I mean I think a great place, you know, a good place to start, where one thing I absolutely figured I must do on this show is I think about the early
Digg
and Reddit
days. I mean, you know, late 2000, late 2004 for for one Digg
first got off the ground, you know? And I just want to say I want to apologize because I said some really mean things about Reddit
and I feel like...Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:48
Did you?
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Kevin Rose
01:48
Yeah, Dude, I was just, I was immature, we had this podcast, we were drinking. I look back on that time and I think a lot of fun jokes, a lot of stuff that you did watch now and I'd cringe like that stuff that was definitely, it's definitely you, but I, you know, I feel I feel bad for some of that stuff and I hope if you saw any of it, I hope now that, you know, not to take it personally and it was just me being, I mean it wasn't like every single episode we were bashing you, but I know that we were, there was some rivalry kind of going on there where it got a little intense at times.
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Alexis Ohanian
02:27
From my point of view and then I first, so I really appreciate that second I've never we've not spoken about this stuff like, despite being internet friends, despite being in your DMs or texts, like I feel weird closeness with you and an amazing like, amount of respect and, and I so I appreciate that at the time, the only, there's one thing, there's literally one thing that is just lodged in my brain, which was from a clip of a live
Digg
nation episode where someone through a Reddit
shirt on the stage and you pretended to blow your nose on it and throw it aside and somehow that clip in front of me. Here's because of the person that I am, I don't take any of this stuff personally, but I do take it, uh, what's the word? Well maybe I do take it personally, you know how, you know how there's that great Jordan
quote from the documentary was like, and I took that personally. I think one of the things that has weirdly been very motivating for me, my entire career is haters is people who, who have dismissed stuff that I've done or, or all this stuff and I literally put this stuff on my wall and you all were the, in our heads, like in my mind you were the Goliath because like in all honesty, hand to God, like I did not know neither Steve
nor I knew about Digg
when we built Reddit
and I still have the email like almost, we launched June 05. So you all were way ahead. July, like a month in, I learned about Digg
. com and I sent an email to Stephen and Paul Graham
, our lead investor and the guy who started Y Combinator
, I was like, oh shit, we have a really big competitor, the guy who started it started, it is this tech tv celebrity, like they have VC funding. We had $12,000 in the bank at the time YC wasn't like a known quantity, it was just this experiment and, and they're based in Silicon Valley and we're based in the suburbs of Somerville, were in Medford, Massachusetts in a little rented apartment.Share
Kevin Rose
04:29
I didn't know that. It's amazing.
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Alexis Ohanian
04:30
And it was just, it was the two of us in this rented apartment against what felt like this amazing arch nemesis that was an existential threat to our business. And for the next 10 years I had to, as the face of
Reddit
always explained I mean every interview, anytime anyone, I talked to us, any person about Reddit
, they'll be like, oh that sounds a lot like Digg
, how are you different from Digg
? Why are you different from Digg
? Why did you even bother doing this Digg
exist?Share
04:57
And, and so for years it was this sort of phantom, the specter that was, seemed to always be one step ahead always seemed to be better at shipping always seem to be better fun, it always seemed better everything. And, and so that was the only moment where somehow at some point over the years, that clip got lodged in my brain because it was put in for me, I was like, okay, alright, game on like blow your nose on snow, like we will do everything we can to make sure that you regret that and again, none of it was personal it's just the mindset that I have is one that I latch on these things and, and use it as motivation when I'm feeling like I'm having an off day and, and the irony is like, I, I think we were a lot more alike or similar than different or at least as I see now as we're both now older, we're both proud girl dads. I like, I just, and I'm more mature now myself and I realized like, man, I mean like you were so right on some of the biggest trends that shaped consumer social and now you have been so right and so early on the trends that are going to shape like everything. The Internet Web2 is gonna look like a blip. The stuff we were doing, the stuff that we cared about it's gonna seem like this weird, you know, ugly middle where it was like, we haven't quite figured it out yet compared to what is happening now. And, and so I just, I appreciate you a lot Kevin and I, I wish you'd had me on
Digg
nation back in the day. We could have sparred the Reddit/Digg
controversy...Share
Kevin Rose
06:33
Well the funny thing is, dude, after all those years, it's like, I felt well the first few years, you know,
Digg
had a lot more traffic than Reddit
and then I remember being like you guys sold to Conde Nast
right?Share
Alexis Ohanian
06:46
Now and it was GG right? We shouldn't have given up. Yeah.
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Kevin Rose
06:49
And I was like, oh good like that it's done there over like we won like awesome. And then dude, those subjects were so brilliant where you just deputized the community to go and build this long tail of content.
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Alexis Ohanian
07:01
Dude, the entire time I thought I was gonna wake up one morning to you announcing that you would let users create their own sub digs or any called something better like the thing. Okay, this and this is the argument I give to investors. But I would say, hey, we're raising our series air series whatever and then didn't obviously sell it to Conde. The thing that we are betting on is the
Digg
front page is always going to have a ceiling of people for whom it is going to feel relevant for that community because there's only so many people who can look at the front page and say this is for me. And then, you know, the early in the mid shots, we didn't have great recommendation engines, computer machine learning, all this stuff wasn't there. So it was like, how do you hack that? And we realized in the first month that we should just be allowing people to create their own communities because once our front page had too many programming or not enough programming links on it, the programming community was like, ma there's not enough stuff here. So we gave them our such programming and realized, oh good, we'll just let users do that. There was not a brilliant insight there other than let's just solve this problem and for years I just hoped no one over there would do it because if you all did, you already had the user base, you already had all the everything and I anyway, so I'm happy you didn't, so thank you for not doing it because I think you would have eviscerated us.Share
Kevin Rose
08:16
Well what was crazy is right then when, when you all were doing that, there was a couple of things like internally we had this dream and it was, it was my fault. Like I had this dream that it would be algorithms that we could kind of sit there and look at where interest was flowing and use a piece of math to determine what belonged on the homepage rather than human editors and that just never worked, man. But it's here now.
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08:43
Yeah. I mean talks determining our many years...
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Alexis Ohanian
08:46
It just was, you know, 15, 20 years later.
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Kevin Rose
08:49
Exactly. So that, that never worked. But, you know, honestly, I remember use came out and said when we launched that version of
Digg
that just completely no, no, you, you came out and you said like this felt like it had VC meddling in it but dude, you were absolutely right. No, you were right.Share
09:11
It was, it was that time when for us, we were like, we had raised in a venture capital or we had a fat team and that we had a lot of heads, we didn't have enough revenue. And so we were like scrambling for ways to, you know, a lot of advertisers back then at least the big brands that we were trying to pitch to, they didn't like it when you had a weird ship on the front page, right? They were just like, oh that's like two years to put our brand next to, you know what I'm talking about?
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Alexis Ohanian
09:41
Brand safety, all the time.
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Kevin Rose
09:42
Yeah, so we had to like scramble and figure out how can we make this safer and, and honestly we just turned our back on the community that got us there and you all embrace it, you stayed lean and you played the long game and, and, and it works so hats off to you man like it it's, I mean, and I would imagine there's an IPO down the road here, which is, which is going to be crazy.
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Alexis Ohanian
10:05
I, wow, I totally, I should have prepared better for this. I was like, what are all the embarrassing things that are kind of like, yeah, that was okay. Well I appreciate that because I still, okay. I remember
Michael Arrington
wrote the front page story on Techcrunch about that and he was like guy who slams Digg
for copying Twitter, no guy who copied Digg
, slams Digg
for copying Twitter or something and I took that person because I'm like Dude, no, we were just ignorant, yes Digg
built at first, but in 2000 and five it was possible to be that ignorant about interesting things on the internet.Share
10:39
But that said, I do think the part... okay the hot take that I am convinced of is if you know if
Reddit
doesn't get acquired actually there was a USV
Fred Wilson
invited me over in 2010 this was so I had left Reddit
in early 2010 we've gotten starting this travel search website called Hipmunk, a terrible terrible industry for the wrong if you're in the business of just getting people their flights, you're just making nothing. But anyway, my dad was a travel agent, he still is 2030 years in the business and he warned me but I didn't listen because that's what kids do. I guess they make dumb mistakes. But I was Fred Wilson
called me to the office and he was like look we want to bring Reddit
out of Conde Nast
and we want to capitalize it and this is I have not shared this and he had the whole team there and I just sat there and I was like thank you but I'm really excited about travel search and you know I just didn't have the confidence. I honestly, did not have the confidence, I didn't have the savviness and I was just like, well I don't know this sounds like a lot of responsibility and like, let's just see how this travel thing works out.Share
Kevin Rose
11:49
Please tell me you got some ownership though...
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Alexis Ohanian
11:51
When I came back as chairman in 2014, yes don't, don't worry that, the SevenSevenSix Foundation is going to be very well funded. I've got creative names that foundation is gonna be very well funded from that and I'm, I'm mostly thinking back to these moments where I'm like, got a few different decisions and execution and I'll even go so far as to say, I don't think Twitter should have existed because I think if either one of us had nailed on the community side, but then also the sort of, not the self-promotion side of it, but giving creators a platform to say, hey, come here and post your content this has historically been the thing that it gutted me every time because I would talk to webcomic artists back in the day and like OG creators, XKCD seven more breakfast cereal, dinosaur comics and they say
Reddit
loves me, how do I participate more? And I would have to say to them, just comments and make good stuff because they were so used to saying, oh no, I want to let me post I mean, can I tweet stuff out, can I post? And it's like, no, actually like it's the product is hostile towards that because it's viewed as self-promotional and other stuff, but I look at so much of these platforms that have emerged and I just think, God, we had a couple, we have the right pieces, we had to write everything. Discord
is another one where I was like, I mean that was built out of the Reddit
sidebar, right? Gaming communities on Reddit
with Hugo joined the Discord
and it was very clear. Right? So The good news is uh, we both did okay. And at the end of the day, Web3
is going to fix all of this, dude, it's gonna fix all of this and the community stuff from 2004 that you were espousing and 2005, you know, I was espousing uh, it's the blueprint except now people have real ownership and so the value of that community is more than Internet points, man.Share
Kevin Rose
13:40
So I'm really curious. I mean, given your you've got this massive platform and read and I know like your day to day is shifted right in terms of clear, but are you, I mean, do you not look at that and say, Gosh, why doesn't
Reddit
just embrace all of this Web3
tech? I know that they've talked about it for a long time. Like, do you have any insight into what's going on there, I can't talk about it,Share
Alexis Ohanian
14:06
Kevin. I can't I but I also like, again, I do not speak for the company, I left pretty publicly last year. Post George Floyd and everything else. I am uh let me let me say this. There is an interesting thing that's happened here with and let's talk about Meta because that's a great or Facebook, they're real real name. Facebook historically these incumbents historically have had a huge advantage because of distribution, right facebook wants to or Instagram wants to copy step, they can roll it out to millions of users great if the features sticky like it'll stick around story is a perfect example. Excuse me. And yet I think with
Web3
, these incumbent platforms because they have the existing user base and distribution actually have a tremendous liability and it's worse than the innovator's dilemma because again what we started with this community is what matters here and you saw this with Discord
having to roll back the NFT
a pretty light NFT
integration and Jason, Jason is a smart Dude. Jason, I have a little bit of Discord
paper, full disclosure, but like they've done I think a very great job building something that is core infrastructure almost by accident for Web3
and yet the community there is still really pretty defensive about the concept. I think there's a learning curve there but you start going down the list and I think every one of these platforms, if Discord
has having this much trouble getting a light feature pushed out the education process for all these other platforms and not to mention the community buy in, I don't want to say it's impossible, but it's really, really, really hard and what you and I learned before anyone else realized it was that the CEO role of the future is just as much ahead of state as it is a business leader and right, we, I'm sure you had some weird conversations with your investors about like something going on on the platform and saying, no, no, no, I've got this like we know I've got a sense for where this, you know, this, this or that decision with the community and it's it is a it's almost like a not a it's almost like a governance or political type job. You have to understand that Yes. And making decisions on what to take down or what not to and so we got a 1o1 this is in our bones where we can't unsee that lived experience and every CEO we back that we invest in now going forward or any PFP project lead or any of these teams has to default think this way, whereas again, there's this weird awkward phase of Web2 founders and CEOs who if they're not if they haven't lived and breathed Internet communities for the last 15 years are kind of walking into a field that... the battlefield has changed drastically and it's a very different experience. And so for those reasons of, of both a community that has, has to get sort of shifted over and brought over and leadership just not having a sort of default community mindset, it's going to be very hard and that's, it's, it's never been a better time to be starting from zero because the expectations of your community are so low and because where it can go from here is so much greater. Like red Conning that in a community is very hard and even things. So I think my greatest contributions to the Reddit
product were up votes and down votes on comments, which led to karma score changes and then these awards. So like people today introduced themselves to me as like I'm a 12 year editor, they don't see their government name, they don't even say their user name because maybe they don't want you to know that. They say I'm a 12 year editor and it was a little badge along with a number of others that we had because after like six months, the karma scores were so high that a new user would just be totally unmotivated, they would never hit that goal even if you did it by day or by week or whatever. So I created these daily awards based off of the golden-eye because when you ended a golden-eye I four V four-person deathmatch, even if you were the worst, you still got some, usually some award like most cowardly. And so even though there can only be one winner, everyone felt like they had some participation trophy essentially for some unique thing. And these awards became a big part of the culture and a big part of the community. But again they had no value outside of these made-up internet points. Now the fact that a community can be rewarded for being early and right just by participating, whether it's playing a video game like Axie
, whether it's participating or it's not like community, whether it's buying an NFT
, whether it's whatever like that. Now starting out at zero is huge because every one of those early community members sees the potential upside.Share
Kevin Rose
18:36
And the potential upside is monetary, right? Like it's really Exactly.
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Alexis Ohanian
18:41
Yeah.
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Kevin Rose
18:42
That is a really cool advantage that these, these new, like I look at like gm. xyz and some of these little communities that they gate membership via an
NFT
so you have to have an NFT
to enter in. I mean it's just like the way you would build things if you did it from scratch today. I think you know what, I think a prime example of this is I, I don't know about you but like I have an extra laptop sitting around that is my windows box. Right? And it's, it's just for gaming, right? You don't use it for anything else. But this is your gaming rig, right? And I look at that interface and I'm like, my God, they need to do something to this, right? And then I got the new Windows, I got download the beta cause I'm like, this looks new and interesting.Share
Alexis Ohanian
19:22
Who does that? a new beta of Windows?
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Kevin Rose
19:25
Yeah, because who cares? But like, so I'm playing around with it and I'm just like, oh man, they didn't, they didn't go all the way, you know what I mean? Because they had this old legacy group of, you know, hundreds of millions of people that if they went all the way, it's gonna piss off a lot of people. And I feel that's the problem with any existing Web2 company today in embracing this new stuff, you almost have to take the, I like what
Discord
is doing and that they've said you can extend us via bots. So like, you know, well, put together an SDK and, and go and extend gating, go and extend rewards all via bots and we'll shove that off to the community. That's kind of, that's pretty interesting. And what are your thoughts on that?Share
Alexis Ohanian
20:07
I think it's the best solution that sort of solves the problem well enough while like kind of punting on the bigger issue, which is like jumping on the new trend, I think this becomes much more existential, much faster than any of us thought about, because back in the day we knew it would be years before a competitor would really come up and scale, right? And if the market caps of some of these profile pic projects or any indication like that's real value for nominal utility, although it's increasing like you put that kind of value creation behind a platform that has community and like wealth creation and excitement and all the things that social platforms and you get something that looks more like
Axie Infinity
coming out of nowhere with gaming, right? That's the start, it's only gonna get better sending these social platforms. And so I know, you know, at the end of the day, user experience is what wins. And that's the part where if you're only going to go half measure like a Discord
or any of these other web tools that are even further behind someone's gonna show up with that amazing user experience and the early adopters who already know how to connect their wallets and yes, it's terrible and yes, it needs to get so much better, they're gonna join and they're gonna have success and they're gonna recruit and this will grow and this flywheel spin and so I will never bet against the great user experience in those early days that can capture the momentum, especially in this Web3
world because like you said, you had something that can give people like change people's lives financially and well you have every incentive for it to keep growingShare
Kevin Rose
21:39
Yeah, it's gonna be, I mean a lot of these rough edges are just going to get sanded out over the next, you know, six months a year, year and a half and I think things are gonna get a lot smoother for the average consumer to kind of interact with this type of stuff
Share
Alexis Ohanian
21:50
Kevin, this is where and you'll see me like I, I push this, I know this, I know this is important to you too, which is why I'm gonna use my soapbox, like for everyone who is in this space right now, I'm very excited. Good. You're early, we're gonna make it. And you know, going to the events, talking to folks with you folks like it's still dominated by a lot of folks like us, white dudes who have been in tech all of our lives, which is great, I'm a big fan but where you actually have, where we all have an irrational incentive to bring more people and women is an easy one more people into this is that we're already seeing all this growth in a very just male-dominated environment. Women drive consumption, women drive so much sort of culture creation and curation and so it's actually in your best interests to, even if you're not even thinking for any social means and I think there's some great social justice reasons to want this too, to be expanding this and bringing even more people into the community as quickly as possible that are not representative today because that is going to further accelerate that flywheel because like that chasm when that gets crossed it's game over because now you're really talking about the engine of what drives all of this in terms of purchasing and culture and I'm very excited for that and I want it to happen as soon as possible.
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Kevin Rose
23:12
Yeah, I agree. And this is like I think of this as such, especially
NFTs
is such an expansive pie and it's it's one of those things where you know, some of the tweets I've done recently have just been drawing attention to black and ft artists to trying to have a lot of women artists on the podcast as well and the reason being is one, they're fantastic artist, so that's a no brainer. But to it's like I was one of the trends I've noticed is that when these NFT
Artists they make money and they start getting paid these royalties, they're backing their other artist friends and their help and so it's a beautiful flywheel of expansion into new markets as a standard, like white dude off the shelf, like I'm not going to have visibility into and so it'll be a great way to kind of push all of the different arenas and grow this pie, I think it's excitingShare
Alexis Ohanian
24:03
And dude, I'll double down on this with a weird fact. So when I left Reddit it the first time in 2010 I went to go volunteer in Armenia, I'm Armenian with
Kiva
doing microfinance, lived there for four months. And one of the things that get drilled into your head early on in microfinance and this is you know giving small loans in US Dollars, maybe $100, $500,000 loans to people in the developing world usually to start businesses or do whatever they need. When you it is statistically significant, you are way better off lending money or investing in women in these communities all the world doesn't matter when you normalize across different countries or regions cultures does not matter give money to women because when you do, let's say they're going to start a business or what have you the gains from that don't just get reinvested in the business, they get reinvested in their families and their communities and so this nature that you're talking about in the NFT
Community of paying it forward to other people in the community. Like it is real. We know it exists offline in environments that are way higher friction because it's just hard, you know, you're limited by geography, all this other stuff and it still happens unequivocally we take that to the digital world where the barriers fall down and you can find an artist halfway around the world that just excites you because you were bored at two am scrolling through Twitter, it's gonna keep happening and that builds that flywheel that again just makes us all better off at the end of the day.Share
Kevin Rose
25:26
Yeah, absolutely. When you think of
Web3
, what's your involvement with it these days? Because you know, I see obviously the no brainer stuff is you tweet about some artists that you like, you present your profile photo to something else. Like how deep are you going both in terms of the art side and collecting artists and then also on the investment side as well?Share
Alexis Ohanian
25:45
Okay, so when I started SevenSevenSix my VC fund a year ago and uh, you're obviously in the, in the community I thought Okay,
Web3
is gonna be a part of it. Like my, my biggest win adventure so far was seeding Coinbase
2009, no 2012. And that was largely because the R Bitcoin community was so strong that I was like, okay I've read it's this excited about this thing and brian Armstrong is this talented like government will probably shut it down. But something interesting will happen here and in a year or two ago I really got crypto pilled both with corn based going public and then just the energy of really talented people, whether it was on the design front or in the product front saying no, no, this is what I'm gonna spend the rest of my life working on.Share
26:32
And and so I mean at least half of our investments out of this fund are going to be
Web3
at this point and look man, I've made a career just out of finding people smarter than me and listening to them and especially the builders, not just people smarter than a lot of those people, people who are building stuff who I know are seeing where things are headed and looking at the tools they use, looking at the things they care about, looking at things they do and then just living like all of us one anxious morning at a time, frantically checking my Discord
and Twitter for all the stuff that I miss every single morning and just trying to participate. I mean it's dude, it the tools are gonna get better. I know you know that like it feels pretty frenetic to sit, at least in it, It's probably always going to feel that way, but we will get better tools, but I'm spending the vast majority of my time. And I think the fact that we make more than half of our investments in Web3
is probably going to increase even in the next year or two because that's that's the other part man, the rate of acceleration continues to exceed certainly my own expectations because I keep thinking, okay, well this is gonna, you know, this will get better in six months, let's get better a year or two years. It will be some and then sure enough it happens in a fraction of the time and this is that game uh my linear thinking brain doesn't want to play, but I feel needs to and it just it excites me, man, because it's we proved we proved in Web two that this stuff works and now by adding real ownership into it, it's changing lives and especially for so many of the artists, I mean even in to see basel here in south Florida, just be taken over, by everything from like NFT
Degen's to really amazing artists is exciting because it's cutting out middlemen that historically have not really played a role. And to hear just one artist and now I've obviously heard like thousands talk about the fact that like You know, they're your first work tends to sell for the least amount of money and for the rest of your life, you kind of rule the day you sold it because you see what it sells for at an auction, you know, 10 years later when you've you've built a career 15, 20 years later. But to know that now that you know that's secondary sale actually is going to bring in of the vast vast vast majority of the revenue for all time. That changes everything dude, it means an artist can think about making generational wealth, that, that carrie's right for for generations, their, their great, great, great, great, great great grandchildren will be able to withdraw from the address and be like, thanks again, great, great, great, great, great grandma, that's a really big fucking deal. Especially for an industry or for a career choice, an artist that usually has gotten met with, Oh, geez, do you have a backup plan? Right? I mean that's not, that's, that's fucking world changing Dude. And it's, it's not hyperbole like you,Share
Kevin Rose
29:34
When you say anything, when you say great, great, great, great too. Anethe address. Are you a do you believe in a multi-chain world? Like what's your sense?
Share
Alexis Ohanian
29:42
I'm not a maximalist, don't try to bag me into one of those corners...
Share
29:47
I doubled Dude, I am, the only way to do this job. Well, in my opinion, is to be pragmatic as possible. So, so I yes, I mean, I look, I obviously, like everyone wish I had bought even more Bitcoin when I did that Coinbase investment. But when Eve showed up, I was lucky enough to be in the pre sale. I've doubled in other chains and we'd invested in an avalanche even were very intrigued to see this, uh, messed around with a few others, obviously saw the salon a partnership that we're doing. But I'm, I'm following I do, I'm most excited about teeth. My largest personal position is in Ethereum still. But no, I'm not a maximalist man. You can't, you just can't. I like there's this is such a big pie that I don't believe anyone technology can possibly win and I'm just doing my best to sort of forecast in 10 years, what I think is going to have the most value. That's it and
Share
Kevin Rose
30:47
Yeah, yeah, I think, I think they're just like databases like I don't know about what was with
Reddit
and we'll Digg
was the lamp stack Linux, Apache, mySQL, PHP what were you guys back in the day?Share
Alexis Ohanian
30:60
So we originally built
Reddit
in Python...Share
Kevin Rose
31:02
It was smart!
Share
Alexis Ohanian
31:04
That was terrible. That was, that was because Paul Graham was like, you should build it and lisp and whatever. We, within six months we switched over to python and so similar. I remember the wars, I remember even the rails developers, I remember, you know, PHP kids like there it was, I feel the exact same way on this, like your tech stack at the end of the day doesn't really matter unless it affects the user experience, which again is the thing people actually care about and there are going to be tech stacks that matter for certain technologies that have to be a certain way or smarter that way. I still think there are plenty of databases that are fine to be centralized like where the user experience is better... do that and, and so I, you know, plenty of dumb money is going to get convinced by a deck that sees like a slide that just says "
Web3
... Blockchain" where it doesn't matter or where it doesn't actually serve a purpose or it is actually more expensive or whatever. Just stupid. But no man, no, come on, I got no time for that, no time for the maximalist.Share
Kevin Rose
32:03
I don't know which podcast is gonna go out there probably going on everything. But when you think about like net worth and allocations to, to crypto like some people are like, oh 1% of your net worth in crypto everything else, just like robo investing like completely decentralized, are you a stock picker? I mean we don't have to get into the nitty gritty, but like give me the high overarching kind of like how do you think about this stuff.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
32:22
Yeah. Okay, so I've, and I'm not investment advice but I, but I am not very good at most of this investing and I have remained blissfully ignorant of all the things that I have not felt like I've had an unfair advantage in so. Most of my wealth is in like fairly, although becoming less so illiquid startup stock or like VC carrier from funds I've started or basically long term investments in pretty illiquid privately held companies that is where I have all my unfair advantage. That's where like making a phone call to help a portfolio company shout out riverside that like changes the entire trajectory of the company because it's the right investor or the right new user like that. That's, I'll do that all day long because I can actually affect the market cap. I can no matter how many water bottles I order off of Amazon, I'm not affecting uh not affecting the market cap. But the crucial thing for me has always been focused on what I'm really great at. I probably have 10% of my net worth in crypto right now. Do I feel like it should be higher? Yes. I think the market I, so I, this is the reason I know I'm not good at trading stocks because I get too motivated or I get too emotionally attached to shifts in the market. So I like ignoring this stuff and any of my paper hands mistakes in the past have been because I just feel like, oh God, I've made too much money on this. I have to sell like I'm nervous like this doesn't feel right. And, and in a lot of cases holding like having illiquid assets like startup stock has helped me because I couldn't sell it and you know, these miracles are compounding are the right ones. But I, I have a Robin Hood account with like what I consider gambling money that I'll invest from time to time and by a little game stop by a little whatever just for the lulls, but I don't.
Share
Kevin Rose
34:13
So are you in the subreddit still like, you know...
Share
Alexis Ohanian
34:16
That's no, but like okay. But it's like there is, I am not a Wall Street bets Degen though. Yeah.
Share
Kevin Rose
34:24
But you know,
Share
Alexis Ohanian
34:25
You must look, I mean, but I can't, I don't have Kevin. I don't have an unfair advantage there. And so I, I only want to play in places where I know I have this unfair advantage and like, yes, I have like a multimillion-dollar collection of trading cards and classic comics and video games like weird alternative assets that I've been into the last few years. But I'm, I really believe and this is advice. I didn't get like my, my, my folks, my folks did fine. But like just selling read it the first time was more money they were going to make their entire lives. And so I get handed a bunch of money in my bank and I get wired a bunch of money in my bank account. I'm just like, who do I talk to? And I went and talked to the first financial advisor that I met, which was dumb. And he was a nice guy. This isn't one of those horror stories. But I realized a few years in, I was like, you're not that much smarter on this stuff than I am. And I'm not smart at all. And I started realizing that okay, there's different levels to this and unless I feel like I'm unless I know I'm not the sucker at the table. Like I don't even want to play this game because I'm gonna be the sucker at the table. And and I just tried to invest that way. Uh As best I can. So I stick to crypto,
NFTs
collectibles. You know, normal stuff. 60/40 bond stock. That's dead.Share
Kevin Rose
35:48
Yeah, I actually don't hold any bonds at all. I just I had this I had this robo investor that was you know, doing all this stuff through it via Wealthfront. And it's like I like it because I just don't have to worry about it man. It just does all the talking tax-loss harvesting and all that stuff and then I killed the whole bonds because you can like drag like your little allocations and killed the whole bonds. And I put it all into stable coins because like, you know, you're getting 8% all over the place on these stable coins and I'm like bonds are not going to outpace that anytime soon. I guess there's more risk there. But I'm fine with it.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
36:24
Dude. It's it's a weird. And that's okay. That's that's the weirdest part right? I feel like I should be the most tolerant of this idea of Defi but maybe because I feel like I know too much how the sausage works. I'm like I can only put so much in this because this? What is clear though is you now have more and more regular retail consumers for retail investors. Now aware of interest rates that they aren't getting from the traditional institutions and we already have our institutions at an all-time low of trust. And so here is yet one more knockout punch to be like, what the hell are you doing for me? And that you know, I have my own generational baggage. The generation coming up, the kids, the young people, the Gen Z's listening to this. They give zero FS about the way things used to be right and they don't have any of the biases that was encumbered with that I know at least holds me back sometimes. I'm like jeez I don't know. And they're going to have an understanding of markets and supply and demand and things that like they'll be doing them, they're doing on their smartphones in class while I and with infinite resources from podcasts like this to Youtube and elsewhere to self educate, man. It's gonna be wild.
Share
Kevin Rose
37:43
Because when they're when they hit a network that is like interesting, imagine somebody that's grown up buying skins on Xbox and Playstation is like, oh you mean
NFTs
they're like skins that I can actually only make money off of like it's just gonna be a no brainer versus were like... What are these NFT
things all about? Like.Share
Alexis Ohanian
38:01
Yes. And and the kids who made money flipping sneakers for the last 10, 15 years are similar, right? They were of that ilk that were the earliest adopters, the alternative assets that realized culture and scarcity have value so I'm going to flip these using Ebay or goat investor stock X et cetera. Got to get all my disclosures in and and I look at this and I'm like, damn, this is exciting because this generation is gonna think digital-first and I know look, I'm going to have to explain to my daughter why I played all those hours of video games as a kid and never got anything for it. And worse why I spent money on things that I didn't actually own because it will be so foreign to her generation and then like layer this up. Right? So okay, here's where things get fun. Alright. So I had, my first job was mowing lawns and I was probably in like school. All right. And do you remember the first time you got handed some money from a stranger or not a stranger but a neighbor for doing a hard day's work.
Share
Kevin Rose
39:00
And and it felt like great, right?
Share
Alexis Ohanian
39:05
Because you're not earning money for your work and you're associating it with this crumpled up green bill. And that's a feeling right? It's this and and it builds up your entire life. And so if I hand you $10 today in USD is that a Madison? Anyway, I hand you a $10 bill. You know what that feels like? Cause it's evoking all those feelings. If I handed you $10 in Japanese yen, unless you spend the time to time in Japan actually fine alright. Unless I had you 10, 10 dollars in Deutschmarks now now now gone but like I guess what would have been worth whatever $10 in your heroes is too common. Argentinean pesos. I don't worry, I hand you something in a different currency. Even if I tell you it's worth $10, you're gonna look it, you're gonna feel it and it's going to feel a little foreign, you're not, you know, you're going to Google it and you're gonna be like okay I guess, but it's not gonna feel the same and that's this irrational bond, it's sort of perfectly exemplifies fiat because at the end of the day right?
Share
40:01
You just, it's just a piece of paper that's like shiny and has some dead person on and you're like okay, I feel a way about this, okay, an entire generation is I mean there's some are gonna still be mowing lawns, I hope it's a great job those robo lawnmowers are coming to a bunch of kids are gonna they're gonna make that money playing a game and they're going to feel that warm and fuzzy, not with the crumpled of green USD they're gonna feel it with the ether token or the excess tokens or whatever it is they're collecting. Dude, that shapes an entire generation to think so differently about time and effort and value creation. I mean in a way that's not like oh ATMs are replacing bank tellers or oh you can pay using your phone instead of paper money. It means oh thank you so much not dead president on the USD Thank you so much like internet for facilitating this world and that's the like and I'm not, look I'm not a crypto anarchist I really like civil society I'm just thinking ahead to when a generation feels this kind of affinity to something that doesn't have there's no nation state attached to it. There's no army attached to it. There's no even physical feeling to it and that's just going to seem obvious and how they will value assets, how will they value, how they will value their time is going to be so foreign to us. And I'm I'm hanging on and trying my best to keep up because this is it's going to hit sooner than we realize and the implications that are a big deal. They're a big deal
Share
Kevin Rose
41:29
And it is hard to keep up especially as you get older right? Because we are so baked in our old thinking you see this stuff it's just like you just, I was asked by a reporter the other day, they were doing a story on, on the information about just VCs and
Web3
and there's a whole slew of VCs that just have no clue what's going on with Web3
they're just like completely out of the loop. And she asked me, she's like, why do you think this is? And I said, well my best guess is that to be into Web3
, you don't just have to be a VC, you actually have to be an entrepreneur because you have to be willing to kick the tires on things and try new things and you know, install beta software and do all the weird stuff that is like you probably don't have time to do because you have kids and all kinds of other things and other commitments, but you have to set some time around to tinker and if you, if you're not willing to do that, you're just gonna be locked in in Web2 thinking or Web1 or wherever you last were.Share
Alexis Ohanian
42:26
Dude, you're, you're so right. Although you're giving VCs too much credit for assuming that they do any work, but you're a certain amount of when someone hits a certain network on the VC side I've, I've seen the productivity plummet for sure unless they are twisted and are not in it they're in it for something else.
Share
Kevin Rose
42:50
Like
Fred Wilson's
and the Texans like the curious, the curious,Share
Alexis Ohanian
42:56
I mean I, and I like I'll Chris can attest to this. I will text them every few months and half-jokingly but half-serious be mad at him for basically funding all of the new internet. And, and the reality is, you're right, you're going to see a difference between the Fred's and the Chris's and the others who, who sort of helm or have, you know, lots of a, because of that genuine curiosity and genuine hunger. And so it's not age-dependent, although it is a lot easier once you're older and have kids and other responsibilities, to block it off. But I mean, I like, I can't wait when Olympia is a little older, I can play with her and it's considered research. So she's only four. So right now we're kind of limited on that.
Share
Kevin Rose
43:34
But, So No, no second kid. Just one.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
43:37
I mean, I don't want to break any news here. I were like God willing, we'll have a basketball team. That's what I told my wife when we were getting, uh, we're getting together. I was like, look, if this, this goes somewhere, I want five. Uh, so we'll, we'll see. But the bigger move here is that mindset and I think you're totally right. This is, and this kind of goes back, this goes back to the liability point having the established reputation and having sort of made it and figured out the world is actually a huge liability because now you come in with this bias and I have to challenge it. I had, we were talking to, bobby hundreds about this and, and I thought this was so smart where, and he's an OG from streetwear and street culture. He said the moments when I feel most kind of disconnected and like insecure and confused and frustrated with some new thing those are the moments when I checked myself to lean in to learn more and for someone who's been at the top of this craft now, I think really across errors it was such perfect advice because that's the feeling I don't want to ever lose. I think that's where folks start slipping and, and that's the part also too if I can think if I could put on business dad hat, that's the thing I want to encourage in my kid, which is I think just useful in life but certainly if you want to stay on top of
Web3
trends, which is the, the things that are going to challenge your thinking in the sort of most initially kind of repulsive ways again, like intellectual thoughtful things are going to be the areas to be like, okay, why does this hurt me, why does this seem totally foreign or weird or different? Because that's, that's where the growth happens. Yes, I mean, and it dude, it is so hard to not be excited. I are you, I have never been this excited in 16 years there's no point at Reddit
, there's no point in any of my VC career, any point in my life where career wise I have been more excited than I have in the last year.Share
Kevin Rose
45:39
Yeah, I mean for I agree, I agree. Like I definitely Web2 was really excited like that was that was those were fun early days,
Share
Alexis Ohanian
45:48
But...
Share
Kevin Rose
45:49
But you're right that this unlocks the promise of a lot of what we thought might come out of Web2, but just did never kind of, you know. Yeah, you're right, this is much bigger. I get it if this all works and it will, it will, it might take time. But it is, it is, it is going to have a much larger impact than just us creating another centralized organization that feeds a few 100 million people, you know?
Share
Alexis Ohanian
46:13
Dude, that's a big deal. Yeah, we got to I mean like I and I'm trying, I'm I know this is the high before the fall and this is the time when everyone says it's different, that's when things go wrong, but I keep trying to stay grounded, I keep talking to as many smart people as I can about all the things that could derail us, however, and I still keep coming back to this feeling of holy ship No, this really does feel different. This feels like the moments I read about as a kid in the history book of like all these are formative moments right? The start of the United States, the French revolution, like all these very, very important moments in society that had implications that shaped humanity in many ways and I'm like, oh my God, we're actually living through one of these, it's truly global and to be in the position that you and I are in based on our experience and our network and our capital other things like this is the dream I mean this is truly living the dream at a time that I think will shape so much of our future and more importantly our kids and grandkids futures and I'm just like, man, we gotta make the most of this.
Share
Kevin Rose
47:19
I'll tell you a secret that I don't think I've ever mentioned on a podcast, but when I was a partner over Google Ventures, we had a team of you know, over 10 people and it was close to 15 people that did nothing but write kind of and this has been mentioned elsewhere, but I don't know how and what depth but do nothing but write code algorithms that would predict based on a variety of factors how successful startup was going to be early on. And so what we did is at partner meetings, that piece of software was given kind of like a full partner vote more or less where we would plug in all the data and that data would be like, you know, founders name of the company, how long it had been around, who else had backed the company, the address of the company and one of the, well, here's the crazy thing, one of the things that the software was telling us and, and they were, I mean this is all point from Google corpus of data to some big massive datasets. One of the things that software was telling us is that in the last 20 years of venture, it had been proximity to the Bay Area that was one of the biggest predictors of success. So how close you were to the Bay Area and what's crazy about
Web3
is almost every founder I meet is not in the Bay Area like of maybe 10%, maybe 15. But everybody is so diverse and so global. That is really exciting to me.Share
Alexis Ohanian
48:49
Dude, wait, are you still in the pair?
Share
Kevin Rose
48:50
No, I'm in Portland, Oregon now.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
48:52
See Dude, I, I got out of there as soon as I could. I just, I'm not, I'm an East Coast kid and so it was inevitable that I was going to make it back east. I didn't think I'd be in Florida, but my wife... five years ago I had a very good idea. I look, yes, it is really good on the tax front I came here just simply because she, she was very convincing and was like, hey, the weather's great. We travel all the time. I'll only be there for the holidays, which all true statements. But then
Covid
happened and I'm sitting here on my little farm, livin my life like it's amazing. I got fruit trees, I got chickens. Like I'm full Florida man now. And so I bet Oregon you've got a good, good setup. You're with all the things you need, all the people you need. And Dude, this is the promise of the Internet.Share
49:37
The whole idea was supposed to be, you could be anywhere and you could start a startup and you didn't have to be in the bay. And I believe those numbers now, I think we've, it's safe to say we've obliterated those numbers. Uh, which is exciting man. And it's better, again, it's just better for all of us now. Talent has so much leverage. I mean, this is the number one thing on my mind on Caitlin's mind here at the firm for next year, is how do we build this org to support the new world of recruiting and talent where talent has infinite leverage and, and we need and our founders need our CEOs need to figure out how to access the best people in the world, how to entice them, how to still build cultures in a remote or flexible first work environment like this stuff. Here's another playbook that's getting not rewritten, just written from scratch and again, it gives more leverage to the people who do the real work the creators, the workers. I mean it's there's so many democratizing parts of this that like, I even think of not just the folks who do the work, but then the folks who are the kind of like, tastemakers are the early, like curators of culture that historically have never been in the equation at all, who played a really valuable role, like the first kids, not just the first creators of like hip hop, not just the first people on turntables, mixing records live or remixing them live but then the people who then took those tapes and started handing them out to their friends. Right? And you see this music is such a good example because it's so dramatic, but like, you can see this in every genre of music at every point. You know, there were so many people in the equation between the actual first creators on the stage and then the ones who actually monetized it and then the people who actually made all the money, right? Gone. Like we can actually now reimagine every one of those things in a world where yeah, if you're early and right, and you meant some Bored Apes, there was a story today of a photographer who had one sale for was $1.5 million and it's changed his life, God bless him for being early and mincing this one project and that's here's okay. Okay. I got to double down on this stuff too because Kevin like I now forgive me you might have had a whole like 10 episodes about this on modern finance but we're already in a scenario where like I or anyone is reluctant to say cell border because of FOMO, because of the sort of utility that's emerging around it, loss aversion all this, all these reasons, I mean those coins still has like a $25 billion Internet, but in the next six months, maybe sooner, maybe a little later. You financially won't have to sell that asset because you're gonna have the Defi infrastructure, maybe it already exists and I should have invested in it to just lend or borrow against it right? To say, hey look I need to, I got to pay some bills. Rich people do this all the time, right? You have a bunch of stocks in the stock market, your banks like I got you, that's a liquid asset, we know what it's worth. We'll let you borrow up to this much against it and it's actually a really smart way spoiler, it's how rich people make a lot of money because they don't have to sell the stock in order to benefit from the value of it so they can buy their stuff. Okay that will exist.
Share
Kevin Rose
52:47
Oh, it's already out there. Yeah absolutely there's NFTx, there's fractionalized art, there are a bunch of ways to do it. But yeah it's all relatively new...
Share
Alexis Ohanian
52:56
That user experience is going to get seamless and it will be the default. And so if you think all these Hodler's of Apes let's say are never going to sell their definitely never going to have to sell where they can just borrow against the asset. So what happens? There's a fix, there's a limited supply that supply is going to shrink as more and more people have more incentives because the utility goes up because the sort of whatever the sex appeal of it goes up and just financially they don't actually have to sell it.
Share
Kevin Rose
53:25
Dude, I saw a crazy idea the other day where it was just like basically talking about let's just say you take all the blue chip
NFTs
are out there right? And think of them less like because of course there are okay we checked that box but what if they were to be bundled together and they could serve as the cultural underpinnings of a currency so that you can lend against them. So imagine like a future Dogecoin is backed by a bunch of different NFTs
that are the backbone of that's the supporting structure and value from the, yes it could be so cool.Share
Alexis Ohanian
54:01
I'm in, I mean that like this is, and what's wild is nothing about what you're saying is a technological feat at this point. Like it's all this is regulations and then the regulation part. But remember these are not securities, these are just assets.
Share
Kevin Rose
54:20
And yeah, it's crazy when you talk about like your fractionalized
NFTs
, people can say, well now you're offering that up as investment like NFTs
and it's just it's a nightmare real quick. I know, I know you have limited time. We're coming up in an hour. I have a few more rapid-fire questions for you. So why, why an ape on your profile versus a punk? And what are your thoughts on punks?Share
Alexis Ohanian
54:43
Uh Dude, I bought seven of them that I bought seven that looked like my wife last year because I, well I wanted to, I wanted to get a punk I didn't find any that looked like me and for the first time in my life as a white dude with a beard, I was like why is there nothing that looks like me? Fine. Alright, this is a good experience and I checked it out for my wife and I was like, hey these are way cheaper than they should be. And I saw this one with the headband and dark skin and dark hair and I was like, oh, this is, this looks like
Serena
so I just bought seven of them, gave one to her. And then our great, great, great, great, great grandkids can appreciate the fact that their great, great, great grandpa made a good decision. But but really imbuing all the obviously great things my wife has done in that art, so that's the only reason I would just feel weird. I should actually bug her about putting, she doesn't mess on. Social. Social media, unfortunately is not a fun place to be if you are someone like her, so she doesn't spend a lot of time there. But uh, why do I put that? I just because the ape, I felt the ape actually looked like me.Share
Kevin Rose
55:41
Do you do you like the community? Do you spend time in their
Discord
at all?Share
Alexis Ohanian
55:44
Yeah, and you know what's wild? I, you know, I reached out and got to know the apes pretty early after the launch and like any good investor, I was like, hey, so what can I do to be helpful? And, and they were just like, I don't know, just like, do you, I was like, oh, that's there's a whole, this is a whole new world, like this is a there is something really special about, like I said, this feels kind of punk rock? I don't remember punk, I wasn't alive during the whole punk rock thing, but it feels very not corporate and I know I'm the corporate Dude who shows up to be like how can I be helpful? But I love the fact that they were like nothing just like, I don't know, enjoy your apes and I was like, okay, that's good. And it's been wild even like an
NFT
in NYC going hanging out with folks just even walking around in public and seeing someone with the merch, even if they don't own the ape, but they're part of the extended community, dude. I flashed back to Reddit
and this is supposed to be lightning round stuff. The feeling I had so okay. The first fight that we had as founders, this was like a month in the Reddit
was I wanted to sell merch and and Steve was like, that's a terrible idea, it's it's stupid, don't waste our money. And I was like, no, no, no, this was you know CEO override. I was like, I'm gonna buy 300 shirts with the Reddit
alien with snow and this is before Shopify, so it was before Stride. This was like junky Paypal ship Dude. So I put this thing up, I tell everyone we sell out 24 hours the next morning, I have garbage bags, I stuffed all the envelopes myself, signed them, dragged them all down to the post office, mailed them out and it was amazing because people were willing to put on their torso this logo that it only existed for a few months based on just random connections between anonymous strangers on our junky little website and I'm sitting here watching what's happening now and I'm like, oh my God, like this is all of that essence. But like, I mean, yes, if you have one of the original Reddit
shirts, maybe you could flip it for a few bucks on Ebay, but like none of the value created or upside captured from those people. I'm so grateful. Those people, those people were so fucking valuable, but they couldn't be properly rewarded in 2005. They can be today. And so when I see it happening with boredom and I'm like, oh man, it's like snu 2.0 and, and the way it's being executed is so punk rock and so awesome and genuine and I just, I like so yeah, I mean, I love, I love dabbling in this stuff mostly because it fulfills this part of me that feels like the hope and promise and potential of Reddit
now gets to flourish across the internet and it's so much more democratized and, I don't know. And then I, most of the stuff that I buy, I buy because it's either like looks nice, the community vibes or it's something that I, I'm usually just buying from my wife or daughter. Like I have a whole portfolio of doodles for Olympia, that all like looked like her and I'm like weirdly sentimentally attached to these things because I believe in some I could be totally wrong and it's the lamest thing ever in like five years if she's like oh I want my profile to pick to be that doodle. My dad got me from when I was a toddler but like I'm trying to think ahead as to what that new savings bond looks like and I know it's got to be Web3
and I don't have the heart to like invest in Shiba Inu on her behalf. So instead I'll stick to beautiful NFTs
.Share
Kevin Rose
59:17
Yeah. At least you can put them up around the house to you know like one of the things that I always talk to my audience about is when thinking about making an
NFT
investment decision. Like this is going to be the classic uh you know risk roller coaster over the next you know a few years and so we're gonna just buying it to flip then. No like buy it because you want to hang in your house for the next decade and guess what if you bought. Well then you're gonna be doing fine right? But just like think about it more as like something I'd like to have up and appreciate and then the price appreciation will will come with time.Share
Alexis Ohanian
59:47
So a 100% of the vote man.
Share
Kevin Rose
59:51
Okay thank you. I don't
Digg
anymore so I can beat up but I don't really care.Share
Alexis Ohanian
59:56
You know what can I tell you something else? Really petty. I'm so happy I didn't do this. I was this close to buying
Digg
. com when it was sold and then redirecting it to Reddit.Share
Kevin Rose
01:00:07
Oh my God.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:00:09
But I was like, that's just too petty. And I didn't do it.
Share
Kevin Rose
01:00:12
But I remember when you took
Reddit
and you completely reskinned it to look like Digg
.Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:00:17
Yeah. What was that for April fools or something wasn't it was pretty sure it was for an April Fools.
Share
Kevin Rose
01:00:22
I remember I remember going, people are like, they're like, Kevin there. Like they were like
Reddit
has changed their entire site to look like Digg
and I'm like shut up. And it was, it was good. I mean you guys were so good that Guerilla warfare, you know, it's like, yeah, it worked out. It was, it was awesome. I love it. Cool couple more quick questions raising a child. What what's been your biggest kind of, you know, lots of new dads out there probably listening. Like obviously you have a podcast around stuff like this like, but what are your, what's your biggest piece of advice for someone that's getting into this, this world? Any favorite books, any kind of like thing thatShare
Alexis Ohanian
01:01:05
My North star on this is and I've, I've talked to actually I got to get you on, we did one season and then
Covid
hit and so I need to resurrect business dad, but I have talked to so many super successful Alpha Male leader dads across every industry from sports, entertainment, business startups doesn't matter. And every single one of them without fail is like, this is the thing, especially the granddads definitely say this, but this is the thing I know is going to be my legacy and no matter how successful I've been on the field, no matter how successful I've been in business, no matter whatever. Like this is it, this is the thing that matters. And so I, I want, I want to create spaces for more and more really successful driven career-oriented dads to be able to talk about it because we do care. I find overwhelmingly we care. We struggle with it. We know we're not great at it and there's so many like it's a gift and a curse to have a career that I absolutely love. And I suspect you feel this way to Kevin like I could do this every day. Like it's the best thing ever. It's the greatest job ever, right. And also know that like I've got a responsibility here to be a father to be a role model to be present for this stuff and that's attention and I know I'm one of the lucky ones who gets to have all of the infrastructures who can afford all this stuff to make it work as efficiently as possible. And so I think I want to learn as much as I can from other folks who have been a little further along. And the part they just keep coming back to is the fact that these moments really are precious and that giving your attention in those moments and it's so hard with this all the time, but that I I try to make such a concerted effort when I'm on the clock as dad to be there to be locked in. And it only frankly took a couple of times of Olympia to be like pop up with the phone away for me to be like, okay, all right, you're right. And sometimes I'm like, babe, I'm just trying to take a cute video you for grandpa and she's like, I don't care, I'm like, it was just a photo, I promise I'm not texting but that I want to see more and more dads talking about it makes me so happy to see. And I think our generation of dads now has the freedom, we own the microphones, so we get to take control it's not just Homer Simpson sort of dad takes and really talk about the fact that like this is the best thing we've ever going to do and we still care a ton about being great at our work, but this is important and you know, look, if you make a lot of mistakes, you just try your best and that's 99% of it at the end of the day.Share
Kevin Rose
01:03:36
Yeah, that's true. Like, for me, if I get it's the data, will you come to do this? And if I, you know, I've got that email sitting over there, the laptop sitting over there and I'm in the middle of something, it's like I unless it's an absolute emergency. I always, and like, of course, and then it's like that gets pushed to the back burner because they're requesting my time and it's like, the, the only the small for so long, you know, it's going to be gone, man, I think it's gonna be gone so far. It's already missing it with my older one. You know, she's getting, I can barely hold without throwing out my back. So it's like, it's going fast. Next question I have for you, uh relationship advice. You know, anything, you know? I know, because you're in a hardly a tough place because it's like celebrity stuff, I don't want you to stay stuff that's gonna get in trouble on freaking TMZ or whatever, but like yeah, how do how do you, because, because having a kid is tough and his
Covid
was tough and for me, all the salt start, but like me and my wife, we did therapy and it was fantastic and it was great and it was like, the best thing I ever did to be able to sit down and like have someone help us through what has been a difficult couple of years. You know? And we're like way stronger because of it. Like is there anything that's worked for you? That that you'd recommend others?Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:04:51
So highly recommend therapy. I've been all-in on I mean I say this on the business side from a coaching standpoint on the personal relationship side. I think one of the highest R. O. I. investments you can make in your relationship I, so, I think so for sure even throw the celebrity part out uh navigating a relationship navigating marriage as a white dude with a black woman means I am default putting myself into situations where I want to like always be learning, because it's in many cases actually it's the best classroom for it because it's coming always from a place of love like I know no matter what even if I say something stupid, even if I have these just unintentional biases that like she catches. I know we're still a unit, we're still a team, she's saying it because she loves me. She knows like it's these are easy. You know, these are harder conversations to have with friends or even harder conversations to have with strangers. Their conversations we need to have as a country overall. And I think in particular it's a privilege that I get to have them and hear them and feel them and experience them because I get to have a higher degree of empathy now because again, I'm, I'm looking out for a daughter that I can only, it's it's hard enough as a dad trying to relate to your daughter because you know gender.
Share
01:06:14
But then you layer on the fact that she's gonna have a very different lived experience as a black woman than I will have ever had as a black man. So there's there's layers to and I want to be an active student and I think the best advice I would give myself get it going into marriage because number one you don't need to be the CEO of every you don't need a CEO every situation. And I think the biggest challenge for me over the last gosh, four or five years has been realizing like not every problem needs a solution like right there. And and more often than not it is okay to actually not engineer a solution for it. And that is a mindset in business that I just can't, my brain is just naturally wanting to solve problems. It's just I get trained to get my little biscuit for solving problems and that's that's the muscles. And so it has been hell of a learning experience. It is definitely work. No doubt anyone who says otherwise is lying to you. Therapy is a huge asset, couples therapy, couples counseling. Whatever you wanna call it, a huge asset, definitely do it. And, and shout out to all my, all my listeners in interracial relationships because I do think there's an extra level there. And especially with the dynamics, right? Like I've, I've literally lived my life at the top of the social pyramid in the United States. My wife has literally lived her life at the bottom of the social pyramid of the United States when you think of all the sort of biases and all those things that are locked in and I take for granted even most basic things, like the fact that literally everywhere I go, people will listen to me or assume that I should be there. And I've never ever had these moments of, of, of feeling things that she and many others have had just even just casually walking down the street, which is wild. I'm a big fella to even little things man. It's, it's wild knowing like I've never gotten into an elevator with someone and had them shrink away and, and I talked to my nephew who is the sweetest dude on the planet and I hear the stuff that he has to go through as, as a black dude in America, I'm just like, wait what I mean? Like I've literally never, my presence has never made a single person or woman, whatever feel uncomfortable in a physical space and I'm six feet five dude lumbering around like it's the little things that have been a constant education and I'll be learning for the rest of his life. Uh, that has made it, it's made it harder at times because I'm also like, why, why does it, like in these moments, I wish we could remove all this other stuff. But I know that, it comes in every conversation we have. What kind of podcast is this Kevin? It's a
Ophra Winfrey
podcast?Share
Kevin Rose
01:08:46
No, it's good. You know, I like it, I like it because one of the things that man, I, I tell you, I've, I've come to appreciate and I've, it's just that I'm on this quest to kind of be this, this person that never shuts down and is someone that is a lifelong learner, like I think that's just like the best way to possibly be.
Share
01:09:04
And, so I'm always asking these questions because I, I want to figure out ways that I can continue to evolve and improve and I found that when I'm most vulnerable and I can go out there, I mean that's the only way I can learn, I think there's a lot of mistakes I made a
Digg
here because I was still shut off, I was like, no, no, no, I know this even though secretly I didn't know what I was doing, you know, and it's like I, I'Ve, so for me, I, I asked questions like this of all the all the people I chat with because I wanna I wanna figure out what should I be learning, what am I not paying attention to? You know where my biases that I'm not seeing like so it's it's it's really helpful.Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:09:39
Let me give you one piece of advice that I'll steal which is it's not even a humblebrag, it's just to brag. So I got a few minutes with President
Obama
and uhShare
Kevin Rose
01:09:48
It must have been amazing,
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:09:50
It's pretty dope, pretty dope not gonna lie. And he's also a very well-known girl dad. And I asked him for advice, I was like what advice would you give to a fairly new father of a daughter?
Share
01:10:02
And he said "Well the thing you want to keep in mind for your daughter is every day is that pretty good is every day the way that you treat her mother is the way that she's gonna expect other men to treat her. So role model the behavior that you want her to expect from a man, that's your job" and I'm like okay Mr President oh my god that is so good. It was really good. And and I and that's always stuck with me and I mean I think a pretty good Dude to be getting some father advice from her husband advice from.
Share
01:10:42
And uh and it stuck with me because now I'm just like wow okay like let's like the even the and this this put more responsibility made us say, okay let's make sure we're doing the work, not just when it's us in private, but also in public and in front of her and so for her to see, because like I had, I mean we could make this podcast even longer, we can talk about my own experiences grub, I feel very fortunate and very loving mom and dad, but I also saw a dynamic there that like, as I'Ve gotten older, I'Ve understood more layers to and I think this is just the gift and the curse of getting older is you start to reinterpret and reimagine a lot of this stuff and and so now I'm like, oh man, this actually had a huge, like there are, there are good and bad things, there's there's all this stuff that plays into how I now come to expect a relationship And uh and so I try to run that script in my head when I'm like Okay, like let me think through how we're gonna handle this situation, because I'm not just solving this problem today, I'm giving Olympia sort of a blueprint for how she should be thinking about solving it in 50 years.
Share
Kevin Rose
01:11:45
Yeah, and they pick up on all the little nuances, you know? Yeah, exactly, everything.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:11:50
Yeah, that's awesome.
Share
Kevin Rose
01:11:54
Well Alexis Dude, this has been great, I'm so glad we did this,
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:11:58
I am to Kevin and I like I was, I was not ashamed of of begging to be on your podcast and I'm so happy happy to do this man
Share
Kevin Rose
01:12:06
Will do when you reboot the the 100%.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:12:12
And then we're going to do a cross country road show uh where we do uh some kind of, we needed a name for it. You had a live podcasting thing.
Web3
Nation. Yes.Share
Kevin Rose
01:12:27
I'm game if you're game.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:12:29
Dude, I'm not I'm not playing around with all this
Covid
stuff settled next year. I would, I would love, I would love to ride on your coattails.Share
Kevin Rose
01:12:35
Uh We should at least do wanted like a N. F. D. N. Y. C. Or something like that.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:12:39
That'd be fun done or come down to Florida. I have a little fun down at okay. Alright, so it's happening one or the other or both if the people want Also congrats on Proof.
Share
Kevin Rose
01:12:52
Oh thank you.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:12:53
I mean I this is why I'm still wondering like Kevin I know, I mean I know you've got a great gig over true, you know, but I mean Kevin like you can, I mean you could do anything.
Share
Kevin Rose
01:13:06
I mean Dude, I I hear you and I honestly I gotta say and this isn't just me kissing my employers ask but like like true has been just a fantastic firm for for me to be at and I raise capital from them a bunch of times before. So I was kind of both sides of the aisle and you know, do the next one is going to be a billion dollars plus. So like it's, it's, it's big, it's big dollars playing around with it. I, I can't go out and raise a billion dollar fun on my own.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:13:34
So I mean I would be your first check just to be clear.
Share
Kevin Rose
01:13:37
I appreciate that. That's a testament.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:13:39
I hope I'm, I know true knows, but like, I mean, I don't know what those true marketing materials look like, but they should just have a photo of Kevin Rose and be like
Web3
, we've got it figured out Dude, you know what the cool thing about them is they've been like, I'Ve been like, I want to do a podcast, okay, go do it boom.Share
Kevin Rose
01:13:55
I want to do an FFT drop of course we've got your back, do it because they like, they know that there's this entrepreneurial kind of driving me and they're like, it's going to come around and we've already seen that like, you know when I had Eric, the founder of our blocks on the show, we ended up leading his round, you know like, so some of these, these connections all just kind of work so what are we gonna cook?
Share
01:14:13
And the last time I tried to get you on riverside, what are we gonna, I know we should have, I should have done riverside because now that I look at what they've built because when I first saw it, I was like, oh you zen caster blah blah blah and now look what they've built.
Share
01:14:24
I'm live streaming on Twitter and it's like this is it for people that don't know what we're talking about. If you're watching just watching the stream on Twitter riverside dot FM Alexis, tried to get me into invest II pass on it and it it's it's a killer podcasting platform so it's it's pretty awesome.
Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:14:41
I'm looking out for you, Kevin but we're gonna have plenty of things to cook on man, we'll be doing it and I'm an investor in your fun, so I'm very grateful man. No Dude, it's I I I plan to make you a lot of money and and then you know what, we can then go and buy
Digg
dot com and use it for something.Share
Kevin Rose
01:14:59
I was just gonna say if if
Reddit
ever goes downhill, I promise not to buy it and forward it to my website so I can't promise that I might you might still do it.Share
Alexis Ohanian
01:15:08
I wouldn't blame you. I wouldn't blame you one bit.
Share
01:15:13
Thank you so much Dude, I again, I have so much respect for you, you've been ahead of the game. If you're listening to this podcast you're going to make it because you're listening to Kevin, I listen to Kevin, you should listen to Kevin uh tell your friends,
Share
01:15:23
Thanks brother this is fun alright,
Share
Kevin Rose
01:15:28
We're doing this again. Alright, boom, See you, man.
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Alexis Ohanian
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