Speaker 1: So welcome back to Civic Cipher. I am your host
Speaker 1: of Ramsey's job is rams' jah. I am q Ward.
Speaker 1: You are listening to Civic Cipher.
Speaker 2: Yes, indeed, once again, as promised, it is time to
Speaker 2: bring on our special guest, a man who is a
Speaker 2: hero in.
Speaker 1: Both of our books. This is Ebity Excellence, folks. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so that's why we didn't need to even throw to that.
Speaker 2: You know, we did mention before on the show a
Speaker 2: platform called fan base, and of course we're going to
Speaker 2: get into that a little bit more. But this man,
Speaker 2: you know, for the biggest part of his life I'm
Speaker 2: sure was associated with his famous father. Obviously he's made
Speaker 2: incredible contributions to the culture that we know and love
Speaker 2: and we.
Speaker 1: Call hip hop.
Speaker 2: But really nowadays he is making a difference, giving us
Speaker 2: our voice operating in a media space, specifically a social
Speaker 2: media space, and you know, we are incredibly proud of him.
Speaker 2: He's a hero of ours, dare I say even a
Speaker 2: mentor someone that we look up to. Absolutely, and he
Speaker 2: joins us today and we are honored to have mister
Speaker 2: Isaac Hayes the Third with us.
Speaker 3: Welcome to the show, brother, thank you for having me
Speaker 3: thank you for having me absolutely.
Speaker 2: So, you know, for folks that may have missed our
Speaker 2: other episode where we went in depth about fan base,
Speaker 2: talk a bit about what fan base is.
Speaker 3: So, fan base is the intersection of social media and
Speaker 3: what I call like micro casting or micro subscriptions. It
Speaker 3: is the first social media platform that allows you to
Speaker 3: have a follower and a subscriber on the same page
Speaker 3: via in that purchase, and that was a significant milestone
Speaker 3: for us and technology because no other app had done it.
Speaker 3: And fast forward to where we are now in twenty
Speaker 3: twenty two, subscriptions are all the rage. You know, Instagram
Speaker 3: is talking about subscriptions. Elon started his subscription based service
Speaker 3: today on Twitter Blue Launch. They're giving away blue Chat
Speaker 3: like it's nothing. But yeah, so it's fan base is
Speaker 3: just that I think the world is the world is
Speaker 3: going to open up in a way that allows people
Speaker 3: to monetize their content if they so choose. So it's
Speaker 3: free to download, free to use. You can have followers
Speaker 3: and subscribers on the same page.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So Q and I are both early adopters of
Speaker 2: fan base, and Q is an early investor, yes, and
Speaker 2: based as well. But one of the things that we
Speaker 2: felt was really important on this show is that.
Speaker 1: This story is a story of.
Speaker 2: Black ownership, black leadership, and really telling our own stories
Speaker 2: using our own voice. And that's one thing that I
Speaker 2: really love. I know that fan base obviously exists for
Speaker 2: all people, just like any other social media platform, but
Speaker 2: the restrictions that are often put in place, or the
Speaker 2: undervaluing that takes place in terms of black creatives contribution
Speaker 2: on the legacy sites, we'll call them your facebooks, your twitters,
Speaker 2: those sorts of sites had.
Speaker 1: Just gone on long enough.
Speaker 2: And I understand that you know, you were inspired to
Speaker 2: create fan base because of a story about I know
Speaker 2: it had to do with a kid and a Spider
Speaker 2: Man costume. Why don't you share that with us?
Speaker 3: Yeah, So this this kid from Memphis, Tennessee, that my
Speaker 3: hometown I was born in, went viral dancing in a
Speaker 3: Spider Man costume in a game stop and I just
Speaker 3: shout up a message and say congratulating Memphis, And he
Speaker 3: reached back and asked him I was a manager frantically
Speaker 3: trying to figure out how he could take eventage of
Speaker 3: this moment because he got like the three hundred thousand
Speaker 3: fowers pretty fast.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 3: And so I told him I don't really do artist
Speaker 3: management like that, but I said, you know, you know,
Speaker 3: he wanted to have a meeting.
Speaker 1: I said, well, send me your number and I think
Speaker 1: about it.
Speaker 3: And that was like in March, right, and then fast
Speaker 3: forward to I didn't really talk to him again until
Speaker 3: probably the next year. Sounds crazy, but I left that
Speaker 3: conversation was like, Yo, he's having the moment of his
Speaker 3: life and doesn't know how to make money off of
Speaker 3: it because there's a there's a really a very I
Speaker 3: guess wild and I don't I guess risky or risky
Speaker 3: way that people go viral and try to turn that.
Speaker 1: Into a business. It's inefficient, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: You go viral, you try to turn them into a business,
Speaker 3: hopefully end up on Loving hip hop or you know,
Speaker 3: you get brand endorsements or something like that. So I said,
Speaker 3: people need to be able to subscribe to him like
Speaker 3: you subscribe to Netflix, because people need to be able
Speaker 3: to learn how to dance like him. And so that
Speaker 3: was the birth of fan base, where I was like, Wow,
Speaker 3: you can have followers and subscribers on the same page.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the idea.
Speaker 3: I can follow you but if I want, you can
Speaker 3: post content and I can subscribe to you. And then
Speaker 3: that was the idea that kicked it off.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure, you know it's incredible.
Speaker 4: I've seen you talking about the inefficiencies and the lack
Speaker 4: of equity with regards to credit, attention and financial gain
Speaker 4: to black creators, you know, on those legacy apps, on
Speaker 4: the tiktoks and the Instagram, these these businesses that we've
Speaker 4: made that we've grown the evaluation for we're the reason
Speaker 4: that these places are cool. They take the culture, they
Speaker 4: take the ideas, and then they profit from it and
Speaker 4: we don't. I watched you take kind of the frustration
Speaker 4: of that the idea that you just said you came
Speaker 4: up with with this young man, young Memphis, and turn
Speaker 4: it into something that's living and breathing. Like we're looking
Speaker 4: at you. Our listeners can't see it, but you're sitting
Speaker 4: in the headquarters of fan base. I don't know if
Speaker 4: it's as incredible to you as it is to us,
Speaker 4: because I remember when it was an idea and then
Speaker 4: you let us all invest in it. And I remember
Speaker 4: I had a conversation with my mom and when I
Speaker 4: told her what it was about, she was so excited
Speaker 4: my mother from making Georgia, you know what I mean,
Speaker 4: having a conversation with her son about black tech and
Speaker 4: essentially creating our own capital. It really really blew her away.
Speaker 4: How has that experience felt for you?
Speaker 3: It's a surreal experience. It's the joy and honor of
Speaker 3: my life to be able to build something like this.
Speaker 3: It was unexpected. I was, you know, I was managing
Speaker 3: my dad's estate and still doing music from here, you know,
Speaker 3: from time to time. But I've always loved social media
Speaker 3: and I've been able to use it in a way
Speaker 3: to effectively communicate to the masses. What I recognize, which
Speaker 3: isn't a bad thing, is that social media is kind
Speaker 3: of like a shared experience between people where we mimic
Speaker 3: each other. You know, you do the dance, I do
Speaker 3: the jams. You do the challenge, I do the challenge.
Speaker 3: Advertising is the part of social media that that's messed
Speaker 3: up for the black community. And I'm gonna tell you
Speaker 3: why not not making this about race, But the overall
Speaker 3: goal of a platform like a TikTok or an Instagram
Speaker 3: is to generate ad revenue. So therefore, as many eyeballs
Speaker 3: on content that they can run ads in between, it's
Speaker 3: beneficial to their business. So therefore, it behoo's any of
Speaker 3: these platforms to have very very famous white creators because
Speaker 3: that is a larger audience of advertising that they can
Speaker 3: serve to rather than very very famous black creators. So
Speaker 3: what happens is our community creates the trends and the
Speaker 3: culture and the dances, and then these other creators duplicate them,
Speaker 3: which is not a problem at all because it's just
Speaker 3: we copy each other, but to the benefit of the platform.
Speaker 3: And then the creator that copies they see all the
Speaker 3: rewards and the benefit of you know, the financial gain
Speaker 3: from doing that, and the originators get left in the dust.
Speaker 3: So this has been a great process for me to
Speaker 3: start from something that's in my head that I feel
Speaker 3: like I can help our community and help everyone monetized,
Speaker 3: but especially the people that are underserved from it. Coming
Speaker 3: from an idea to building it and it actually works
Speaker 3: because you know, the first thing that I guess, there's
Speaker 3: there's a there's an assumption in black tech, like or
Speaker 3: technology sometimes like we build it.
Speaker 1: Do do it work? The log on? Does it crash? Like?
Speaker 1: Does it you know?
Speaker 3: It's like you know, and fan base is a really
Speaker 3: solid solid product built by an amazing team. So I'm
Speaker 3: fortunate to have them and love working with them.
Speaker 2: Yes, sir, So one of the things that I know
Speaker 2: is very frustrating for any content creators.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 2: And you know we're we're focusing on you know, black creators,
Speaker 2: which you know Q and I are with the show
Speaker 2: Civic Cipher is trying to best the algorithm. Now, this
Speaker 2: show exists on radio stations, but obviously we have to
Speaker 2: play the social media game as well, and these algorithms,
Speaker 2: there's sometimes sometimes they help out. Obviously in recent you know,
Speaker 2: uh weeks, we've seen the benefit of that, but there
Speaker 2: were years of toiling in the dark, and had not
Speaker 2: a fortuitous series of events happened, we may still be
Speaker 2: toiling in the dark with respect to social media. And
Speaker 2: I think that fan base has kind of addressed the
Speaker 2: algorithm issue with some of these legacy platforms as well.
Speaker 1: So can you speak to that as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's not necessarily an issue. It is the
Speaker 3: design and function of our platforms that are built off advertising.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: So what that means is is, and I say this
Speaker 3: all the time when I ask this question and the
Speaker 3: light bulb goes off in your head, and sometimes you
Speaker 3: know something is so simple that you don't think about it.
Speaker 1: When you think about it, you're like, yeah, it makes sense.
Speaker 3: I tell people, why would Instagram let you reach a
Speaker 3: million people when they're about to charge Target and Walmart
Speaker 3: to reach a million people through ads?
Speaker 1: Wow?
Speaker 3: Because if you could reach a million people through ad
Speaker 3: through your generic posts, the posts that you make, and
Speaker 3: Walmart and Target would just come and pay you and
Speaker 3: they would never run ads on Instagram. So for that
Speaker 3: very reason, they have to suppress everybody's content down to
Speaker 3: a level that allows them to make money from these brands.
Speaker 3: So someone like Kim Kardashian that has three hundred and
Speaker 3: thirty million followers, that's three times the visibility and the
Speaker 3: viewership of the super Bowl. The super Bowl only comes
Speaker 3: on one day a year for four hours, and they
Speaker 3: charge seven million dollars for a commercial. So if Kim
Speaker 3: Kardashian could reach three hundred million people twenty four hours
Speaker 3: a day, seven days a week, she could charge twenty
Speaker 3: one million dollars a post and never have to do
Speaker 3: anything again for the rest of her life because she
Speaker 3: has more visibility and reach than major network television stations.
Speaker 3: Take the word following and turn it into viewership and
Speaker 3: then it all makes sense, like, oh, she has three
Speaker 3: hundred million viewers. Wow, that is insane. That's an insane
Speaker 3: amount of that. That's the population of the United States
Speaker 3: of America at the click of a button going live.
Speaker 3: Three hundred million people posting a photo, three hundred million
Speaker 3: people posting a video, three hundred million people.
Speaker 1: That's insane.
Speaker 3: So that is why the algorithm, that's why content is suppressed,
Speaker 3: because nobody would ever run ads. I mean it's like
Speaker 3: you would brands would be able to reach the exact
Speaker 3: demographic that they want to reach it. But I know
Speaker 3: somebody has twenty million followers that's seventeen years old, that's black,
Speaker 3: that likes video games and Oreo cookies. I'm going to
Speaker 3: go on his page. But they have to go through
Speaker 3: Facebook and Instagram to figure all that kind of stuff out,
Speaker 3: and that's how they do it. So we don't do
Speaker 3: that at fan Base. I want to lift the veil
Speaker 3: of suppression off because I'm more focused on subscription than ads,
Speaker 3: and because subscription is the future of what social media
Speaker 3: is going to be, and.
Speaker 2: I think that that's very important. Having a black man
Speaker 2: give his black insight to a business and being able
Speaker 2: to create something that speaks to maybe needs is a
Speaker 2: strong word, but sort of the shortcomings that we find
Speaker 2: in our black communities, that is able to address that.
Speaker 2: And I think that the bigger picture here is that
Speaker 2: black ownership really matters. I think this is what I
Speaker 2: want our listeners to take away from it. When we
Speaker 2: say support black businesses, We're not just talking to Black people.
Speaker 2: We're talking to all people because ideas like this deserve
Speaker 2: to exist, because there are white creators that would benefit
Speaker 2: from this same business model as well. Absolutely so, in
Speaker 2: your own words, I want you to speak, because you've
Speaker 2: built something from the ground up, speak to the importance
Speaker 2: of black ownership, black thought, black entrepreneurship, you know, black leadership,
Speaker 2: those things that obviously are very important and instrumental in
Speaker 2: getting this endeavor off the ground.
Speaker 3: Well, one of the things that I'll say is being
Speaker 3: black is probably the biggest gift that a person on
Speaker 3: this planet could have being an African American person. And
Speaker 3: I know, you know, I've had conversations about the lineage
Speaker 3: and the legacy in the in the heritage of black people,
Speaker 3: but African american Ism, as I call it, is the
Speaker 3: hottest ish on the planet, like it is the hottest
Speaker 3: thing on the globe. You it is literally impossible for
Speaker 3: you to market and promote anything as being cool. Not sentimental, exciting,
Speaker 3: or adventurous, but cool without the assistance of black people.
Speaker 3: You need our music, you need our slang, you need
Speaker 3: our dance, you need our fashion, You need one of
Speaker 3: our top artisans, one of our top you know, musicians
Speaker 3: to sell cool and cool is what sells things. So
Speaker 3: being black is like we are the cool of the world,
Speaker 3: as I say it, And so what comes with that
Speaker 3: is innovation, and so we innovate industries, we freestyle infrastructures
Speaker 3: off the top of our head, and don't understand that
Speaker 3: we're actually doing those things. I've said this a bunch
Speaker 3: of times before. Shout out to Graham Master Flash. I
Speaker 3: had a chance to talk to him about a month ago,
Speaker 3: and I always tell people I use him as an example,
Speaker 3: and I say, look, man, the first time you DJed
Speaker 3: on two turntables and a mixer, someone should have pulled
Speaker 3: you to the side and said, do not show an
Speaker 3: mffort what you just showed me. Let's go figure out
Speaker 3: how to make turntables and mixers. Because everybody that's going
Speaker 3: to do this is going to need turntables and mixers
Speaker 3: so you can innovate, you can. So he created DJ
Speaker 3: culture to the point now that his innovation is in
Speaker 3: one device, one piece of hardware that pioneer cells. So
Speaker 3: Serato and Techniques and pioneer owned DJ culture when it
Speaker 3: should be owned by all those original DJs. All those
Speaker 3: guys should be billionaires just sitting back in their sixties
Speaker 3: chilling like, yo, we invented this and we we innovate
Speaker 3: that culture. The same thing with mobile cultures, like we
Speaker 3: we're the ones that did TVs in the headrests. You
Speaker 3: see Maybox with those rims led lights in the ceilings,
Speaker 3: really amazing sound systems. But we don't own a Ford,
Speaker 3: we don't own Chrysler, we don't own Mercedes, we don't
Speaker 3: own any of the automobile companies.
Speaker 1: And then you get to social media.
Speaker 3: We give our dances to TikTok, our clapbacks to Twitter,
Speaker 3: you know, our skits to Instagram, but we don't actually
Speaker 3: own the infrastructure of any of these things that we make.
Speaker 3: And so it's it's time that there is a black
Speaker 3: owned social media company that a social media platform that
Speaker 3: serves the benefit of all users, because given the current
Speaker 3: construct of social media, it's an exploited relationship. They let
Speaker 3: some people through. There's some stars that make it, you know,
Speaker 3: Cobby Lame. Shout out to Cobby Lame, and the people
Speaker 3: that you know become household names off social media.
Speaker 1: But as a whole, there are billions and billions.
Speaker 3: Of dollars in ad revenue being created, and none of
Speaker 3: that is ever finding way back to the Black community,
Speaker 3: not time of it.
Speaker 4: So rams is mentioned earlier that I'm an early investor
Speaker 4: in fan Base. Now you know that there's a reason
Speaker 4: why you and I weren't invited to invest in Twitter
Speaker 4: and Instagram and Facebook. The fact that I'm an investor
Speaker 4: in fan base is a really really cool thing that
Speaker 4: I'm ridiculously proud of. Kind of explain why the way
Speaker 4: that you're even you know, generating revenue and raising money
Speaker 4: is so much different than the way other tech companies
Speaker 4: did their startup and their and their seed rounds.
Speaker 3: So let's talk about accredited investors. That is a term
Speaker 3: given to wealthy people that meet a qualification to invest
Speaker 3: in early stage companies. It's a law, It was a
Speaker 3: law made by rich people to give them the opportunity
Speaker 3: to have the early access to the best investments. So
Speaker 3: the qualifications of being an accredited investor is you have
Speaker 3: to have a network in excess of a million dollars
Speaker 3: might as your house, or over two hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 3: a year for two consecutive years. The average American salary
Speaker 3: is about forty seven thousand dollars. Now, mind you this
Speaker 3: this law was put into effect in like nineteen thirty three,
Speaker 3: So I don't care what color you were. This was
Speaker 3: really about wealth versus poverty. So all the companies that
Speaker 3: you've seen throughout you know, American history, the ibms, the Microsoft's,
Speaker 3: the Apples of the world, the facebooks of the world
Speaker 3: were all invested. Uber were all funded by angel investors
Speaker 3: who are credited. So I use an example of a
Speaker 3: guy named Oron Michaels. He put five thousand dollars into
Speaker 3: Uber in twenty ten, five thousand dollars, cool money. When
Speaker 3: the when an Uber iPod in twenty nineteen. Nine years later,
Speaker 3: his five thousand dollars was worth twenty four million dollars. Now,
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to be funny, but like I could
Speaker 3: get ten of my friends together, we put five hundred
Speaker 3: dollars a piece and walk away with two point four
Speaker 3: million dollars in nine years. Right, But the IRA and
Speaker 3: all of that is, you don't have to be accredited
Speaker 3: to buy five thousand dollars worth of lottery tickets to
Speaker 3: win a two billion dollar powerball jackpot, how very much
Speaker 3: money they made. You don't have to be accredited to
Speaker 3: go to Vegas and put five thousand dollars on a
Speaker 3: crap table or blackjack. But I can't put five thousand
Speaker 3: dollars into Facebook over all of these companies. So shout
Speaker 3: out to Congress at the time in Barack Obama creating
Speaker 3: this law called the Jobs Act that allows any person
Speaker 3: to invest in an early stage startup. So any company
Speaker 3: can raise up to five million dollars in a calendar year,
Speaker 3: and the accredited industry rule is wiped out. It doesn't matter,
Speaker 3: It doesn't matter, your network, it didn't matter. So I
Speaker 3: got introduced to start Engine through a colleague of mine,
Speaker 3: a good friend of mine, and she said, you need
Speaker 3: to go to start Engine because fan base is a
Speaker 3: people's product. And when you think about social media, the
Speaker 3: users generally, you know, effect the value of the startup.
Speaker 1: No users no startup.
Speaker 3: Everybody left Instagram to day be where zero dollars and zero cents,
Speaker 3: clubhouse zero dollars and zero cents, TikTok, same thing. So
Speaker 3: who better than to give opportunity in owning a platform
Speaker 3: than the people that actually use it. So I got
Speaker 3: accepted the start Engine. Only two percent of people that
Speaker 3: apply to equity crowdfund and get accepted. I got accepted,
Speaker 3: learned a lot more about my business going through that process,
Speaker 3: and my initial goes to raise one million and I
Speaker 3: wound up raising three point four million in the first
Speaker 3: round that I did, which was amazing. And then I
Speaker 3: launched a second round about a year ago and I
Speaker 3: raised two point six million dollars and I just launched
Speaker 3: the final This is the last one. I'm doing the
Speaker 3: final round to invest in fan Base, and we've already
Speaker 3: raised about nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars in five weeks.
Speaker 3: So I tell everybody that wants to own part of
Speaker 3: the future of social media, in the future, the future
Speaker 3: tech giant of social media, you can invest in fans
Speaker 3: Base and have ownership in this platform and use it
Speaker 3: by going to start Engine, dot com slash fan Base
Speaker 3: and investing now the minimum to invest is two hundred
Speaker 3: and forty five bucks. That's a price. That's the price
Speaker 3: of a pair of jays. Yeah, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3: That's a that's a state incredible, that's a stake dinner, Ruth,
Speaker 3: Chris to get you some equity and a startup that
Speaker 3: has an upside and a very very bright future that
Speaker 3: we're working hard to continue to scale. And so I've
Speaker 3: done these three rounds to get people the opportunity to
Speaker 3: have equity in the company. But like now, we have
Speaker 3: to move to that level where we do let institutional
Speaker 3: investors in because they cut the checks that are big.
Speaker 1: They cut the.
Speaker 3: Twenty million dollar checks, the forty million dollar checks in
Speaker 3: one one fail swoop, and that's how you scale faster.
Speaker 4: Yes, sir, so I invested in round one and two.
Speaker 4: Rams Is said, do not close round three until you
Speaker 4: let him invest. And I'm about to invest for the
Speaker 4: third time.
Speaker 1: You better hurry up for this round closed. I gotta
Speaker 1: don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: Because was what happens is when I do amazing programs
Speaker 3: like these, we see a spike in investment. Okay, so
Speaker 3: you know, like one time at one time, like when
Speaker 3: I did the Breakfast Club. I raised probably two million
Speaker 3: dollars in like in twenty four hours.
Speaker 1: Wow, So it was like that fast because it just
Speaker 1: went viral.
Speaker 3: So thank you for having me on the program to
Speaker 3: even let people know that they have a chance to
Speaker 3: invest in opportunities like this, because these raises tend to
Speaker 3: go viral. And the fact that we've already were almost
Speaker 3: halfway there in like five weeks, when typically they give
Speaker 3: you about six months to raise the money, it's incredible.
Speaker 4: So I gotta say this before I pass it back
Speaker 4: to Ramses. I see people complaining all the time about
Speaker 4: us not having our own space. You probably see me
Speaker 4: tagging you and fan base every time I see somebody
Speaker 4: say that, Why do you think people are so slow
Speaker 4: or so hesitant when they're begging for it? You know,
Speaker 4: RAMS does not have this conversation all the time. We
Speaker 4: watch people say, man, we really need to have our
Speaker 4: own We really need to have our own space and
Speaker 4: our own platform. Why do you think now that it exists,
Speaker 4: we still have to urge and urge to get people
Speaker 4: to come over, especially when it's a position that would
Speaker 4: be far more financially equitable for them. Like I see
Speaker 4: you letting people know how much money they're missing out
Speaker 4: on by allowing all of that fan base to live
Speaker 4: somewhere else.
Speaker 3: Two things. For the black community, it is unfortunately part
Speaker 3: of our uh I don't want to say programming, but
Speaker 3: part of our our existence in this country has been
Speaker 3: the spaces that we don't feel welcome, and we fight
Speaker 3: harder to be a part of.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Right.
Speaker 3: So it's like, you know, tell us, tell us you
Speaker 3: don't want us to shop in Gucci and we want
Speaker 3: to buy more Gucci. Tell us you don't want us
Speaker 3: on Twitter, and we fight harder to stay on Twitter.
Speaker 3: Take tell us you're gonna tell us you you know,
Speaker 3: you take my TikTok away because of you know the
Speaker 3: fact that my my butt is bigger than an extract.
Speaker 3: I'm a fight harder to stay on TikTok when to
Speaker 3: the to the direct left or right of you, there's
Speaker 3: an alternative place where there is none of that, and
Speaker 3: that happens, so people fight hard. I call it the
Speaker 3: velvet rope mentality. It's like, you know, you ever bet
Speaker 3: like you could go to a night club on a
Speaker 3: Tuesday and then come back on the Saturday, and they
Speaker 3: got a velvet rope over in the same vinyl furniture,
Speaker 3: and you will break your neck to get on the
Speaker 3: other side of that rope. And that's what people do.
Speaker 3: Is like when you put those barriers to entry, people
Speaker 3: fight harder again. And it's just psychologically. As a human
Speaker 3: we all have these dysfunctional relationships with social media, like
Speaker 3: real relationships with people like girlfriends and boyfriends. And what
Speaker 3: I mean is like the platform. I hear so many
Speaker 3: people complain about Instagram and TikTok not treating them well
Speaker 3: and how they do them wrong, but they stay. It's wild.
Speaker 3: It's like, yo, h okay, then leave. But we're afraid
Speaker 3: to lead because we've having it. We've been in this
Speaker 3: relationship since twenty twelve. If you've been on Facebook, you know,
Speaker 3: you might have been on Facebook fifteen years. How you
Speaker 3: gonna break up with somebody after fifteen years? That's the
Speaker 3: marriage you are. You are in a relationship with your
Speaker 3: Instagram page and you don't even know it. You know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying. Instagram came out in twenty ten, You
Speaker 3: twelve years in. If you started in twenty ten, you
Speaker 3: started in two thousand, you know you're in. You know
Speaker 3: what I'm saying you're all you are all the way
Speaker 3: into this thing. So what I tell people is date apps.
Speaker 3: You should be dating apps. And what I mean by
Speaker 3: that is you should never have a loyalty to one
Speaker 3: app over another app, including fan base. Don't have loyalty
Speaker 3: because every app isn't for every person. And I use
Speaker 3: examples like DJ Khaled DJ. If d DJ was faithful
Speaker 3: to my Space and Facebook and Twitter and Instagram, he
Speaker 3: would have never met Snapchat, which wound up being the
Speaker 3: love of his life. It changed his life. He would
Speaker 3: have said, no, man, I'm sticking with Instagram. I'm gonna
Speaker 3: stick beside her, right, you know what I mean, I'm
Speaker 3: gonna stick beside Ig.
Speaker 1: Man Ig been there for me. And he was like, no,
Speaker 1: I'm going out with Snapchat. Hey snap And they clicked.
Speaker 3: And it propelled his career matter of two or three years,
Speaker 3: to the to the you know, the pinnacle of success
Speaker 3: of his entire life. And then I think of someone
Speaker 3: like Jason Derulo, who as a musician was probably all
Speaker 3: but forgotten about in the realm of popular music. He's
Speaker 3: still as talented as he ever was, but he got
Speaker 3: on TikTok and became a superstar. On TikTok. He's one
Speaker 3: of the most popular people on TikTok. And so if
Speaker 3: he would remain faithful to the my spaces and the
Speaker 3: Instagrams and the snapchats, he would have met TikTok, and
Speaker 3: TikTok changed his life. So date apps, you never know
Speaker 3: what app is going to change your life. Someone's going
Speaker 3: to someone's going to get on fan base and have
Speaker 3: a relationship with fan base that blows all the other
Speaker 3: relationships away, and it's going to be one that is
Speaker 3: a financial gain, and it's going to be like, oh,
Speaker 3: I really been bsing.
Speaker 1: I could have been over here making millions money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I've been giving away my content for free
Speaker 3: for years and now I'm over here making money.
Speaker 2: You know, I like what you said about dating apps
Speaker 2: because you know, one of the things that I don't
Speaker 2: know how true this is, but one of the things
Speaker 2: that I learned about from you know, the legacy platforms
Speaker 2: is a thing that is called shadow banning. Again, I
Speaker 2: don't know how real this is, but effectually, what it
Speaker 2: means is that you'll put some content out and you'll
Speaker 2: notice an appreciable drop in engagement for this specific piece
Speaker 2: of content. Let's say, you put out something and it
Speaker 2: misrepresents what you think, and then you follow up with
Speaker 2: another post that corrects, you know, people's impression that they
Speaker 2: may have taken away from it, and it doesn't get
Speaker 2: the same sort of reaction that the initial post got.
Speaker 1: And so.
Speaker 2: There's no reason it's not necessarily algorithmic because you can
Speaker 2: point to certain keywords or maybe there's you know, there's
Speaker 2: things that you wrote in the title this sort of thing.
Speaker 2: And I think that you know, to your point, having
Speaker 2: someone else exact control over exactly how you interact with
Speaker 2: your followers, the degree to which you can reach people,
Speaker 2: the amount of influence that you're able to have over
Speaker 2: your own subscribers, that is giving away way too much
Speaker 2: power dating these it takes the power back. As you
Speaker 2: mentioned Jason Drulo being one of the biggest folks on TikTok.
Speaker 1: I have a son, my older son.
Speaker 2: He went viral on TikTok and it's a video of
Speaker 2: him playing some really dirty music for his dad, and
Speaker 2: that blew up millions of views, right and everyone's on
Speaker 2: there like, oh my.
Speaker 1: Gosh, Jason Drula, Jason Drula, it looks like Jason Derula,
Speaker 1: I look a thing like this guy, but this is
Speaker 1: what everyone was saying.
Speaker 3: I was trying to say, you look like Jason Derula
Speaker 3: though I was thinking that, but that's funny.
Speaker 2: Well, anyway, on the app, everyone's you know, tagging him
Speaker 2: and then I go to his page and I see
Speaker 2: how many followers you have, and I'm like, oh my god,
Speaker 2: so absolutely to your point, you know, I love that. Uh,
Speaker 2: before we let you go, I want to make sure
Speaker 2: that you let folks know where they can get fan
Speaker 2: Base if they want to invest, and that you know,
Speaker 2: and I'll say this, it is open to all investors
Speaker 2: of all people. It's black owned, but it is a
Speaker 2: brilliant site. But please let folks know where they can
Speaker 2: go and how they can invest and how to download
Speaker 2: the app.
Speaker 3: So fan Base is on iOS and Android. We're in
Speaker 3: over one hundred and eighty countries. It's incredible for me
Speaker 3: to get on the app and see someone from India
Speaker 3: using one of our verticals called flicks, which is like
Speaker 3: our TikTok Yeah, and making videos like this is crazy
Speaker 3: to me. It's like people are utilizing all the functionality.
Speaker 3: Fan Base has six amazing verticals photos or photos and
Speaker 3: videos what you call posts, stories, Live audio Flicks which
Speaker 3: is short form video like reels and TikTok, and fan
Speaker 3: Base plus which is long form. Con your Netflix, your
Speaker 3: place to put your podcast to your show, and everybody
Speaker 3: can monetize. And if you want to put that content
Speaker 3: behind a paywall and have subscribers, you can do that.
Speaker 3: We just actually launched a brand new feature today. I
Speaker 3: don't know if you guys saw, but you can actually
Speaker 3: take a YouTube link that's unlisted and share that and
Speaker 3: put that behind a paywall. So now YouTubers, and let
Speaker 3: me tell you something about podcasting and podcasts out there.
Speaker 3: You do a podcast and you have video component to it,
Speaker 3: monetize your video component, especially black creatives. I say this
Speaker 3: all the time. I have a friend of mine who's
Speaker 3: been in the apparel space for over a decade and
Speaker 3: we've been working together, and he recently started helping podcasters
Speaker 3: and comedians sell their content through subscription and utilizing tools
Speaker 3: like fan Base, but other platforms like Patreon. But he
Speaker 3: didn't know about fan Base, and he didn't even know
Speaker 3: that I had gotten this far with because I didn't
Speaker 3: talked to him so before the pandemic. But let me
Speaker 3: tell you, people that are not black are making two
Speaker 3: hundred thousand a month off of podcast, and then they
Speaker 3: may have thirty thousand subscribers, forty thousand subscribers, they're making
Speaker 3: two point four million a year, and you would walk
Speaker 3: past them and never know that they're making that type
Speaker 3: of money. The issue is people that look like us
Speaker 3: give our content away for free, right and then expect
Speaker 3: to get paid for it. So it's like the mixtape game.
Speaker 3: It's like I'm gonna go I'm gonna do one hundred dances,
Speaker 3: then one gonna go viral, and then I'm gonna make
Speaker 3: up for all of that.
Speaker 1: Like by doing that one, you know.
Speaker 3: You gave away all your hot stuff and now now
Speaker 3: you've got to turn that into a business, which is
Speaker 3: the most inefficient thing to do. So utilize fan base.
Speaker 3: It is a tool for the planet. I keep saying,
Speaker 3: subscriptions are going to take over the planet. It's going
Speaker 3: to be bigger people subscribing to other people is going
Speaker 3: to be bigger than Netflix and Disney Plus and Hulu combined.
Speaker 3: There's seven and a half billion people on the planet
Speaker 3: with a smartphone, and there's nothing in between you and
Speaker 3: them except two clicks of a button or a face
Speaker 3: scan or a fingerprint that is an incredible amount of reach. Yes,
Speaker 3: so you can invest in fan Base on start Engine,
Speaker 3: go to start Engine, dot com slash fan Base to invest.
Speaker 3: The minimum is two hundred and forty five dollars to invest.
Speaker 3: This is the last time. So I'm telling everybody I
Speaker 3: want people to own. The reason why I want people
Speaker 3: to own part of these these platforms is because, especially
Speaker 3: from the standpoint of being African American and knowing our
Speaker 3: value that we bring to these platforms. Bob Johnson created
Speaker 3: the most black millionaires in history when he sold the
Speaker 3: et I want to obliterate that one day wow by
Speaker 3: people that invested in fan Base. I want to say,
Speaker 3: like I made four thousand, five thousand, six thousand, seven
Speaker 3: thousand millionaires because these tech companies, mind you, you know,
Speaker 3: get to valuations of three hundred billion, four hundred billion.
Speaker 3: Fan Base is valued at eighty five million. Now, we
Speaker 3: started at twenty, we were valued at fifty in our
Speaker 3: second round. We're valued at eighty five million in our
Speaker 3: third and final round of equity crowdfunding. But fan Base
Speaker 3: is easily one hundred billion, two hundred billion dollar company.
Speaker 3: You know what I'm saying, So imagine going from that,
Speaker 3: and then some sort of acquisition or ipo and then
Speaker 3: everybody makes all this money. I don't care what color
Speaker 3: you are you've invested, but especially in our community because
Speaker 3: we do the heavy lifting of making these platforms incredibly valuable.
Speaker 3: So it'll be the largest distribution of wealth to black
Speaker 3: people in the history of America. It's like, all right,
Speaker 3: you want you want to talk about reparations. Investing in
Speaker 3: tech startups and walking away with a big check is
Speaker 3: one way to get there, and you can control it
Speaker 3: because the users directly affect the value of the company.
Speaker 3: Meaning oh, okay, let's say, let's let's hypothesize some dude
Speaker 3: starts a social media platform and allows everybody to invest,
Speaker 3: and then we invest and we move on the platform,
Speaker 3: and then the value of the platform goes up, so
Speaker 3: our investment goes up.
Speaker 1: Who would do that? Crazy enough to do that?
Speaker 3: I don't who'll be crazy enough to let people invest
Speaker 3: for two hundred and forty five dollars and try to
Speaker 3: make a startup go, you know, be one hundred billion dollars.
Speaker 1: I know a guy, but you know sounds crazy, Like, yeah, well,
Speaker 1: we love it. I love crazy, I love crazy.
Speaker 2: Really proud of you. Obviously, we're on fan base. You
Speaker 2: can find us at Civic Cipher. I am q Ward
Speaker 2: at Rams's Jah. Tap in with us like dirty, go
Speaker 2: ahead and drop your fan base handle as well.
Speaker 3: It's at Isaac Hayes three. You can find me over there.
Speaker 3: And if you're looking for me on all your other socials,
Speaker 3: I'm not leaving those as well, because I'm in those
Speaker 3: relationships too. I just got I got more girlfriends. I
Speaker 3: got more you know what I'm saying. I got more
Speaker 3: than one.
Speaker 1: Lady when it comes to social media, and and I
Speaker 1: love them all. I like that. I like that.
Speaker 2: Isaac Hayes the third, thank you for coming on to
Speaker 2: Civic Cipher.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: We appreciate your insight. Let's have you back again real soon,
Speaker 2: please absolutely. And that's going to do it for us
Speaker 2: here Civic Cipher. I'm the host Ramsy's Jah.
Speaker 4: He is Rams's Joe.
Speaker 1: I am q Ward.
Speaker 4: You have listened to Civic Cipher once again. We appreciate
Speaker 4: y'all and until next week, all right.
Speaker 1: Peace