Speaker 1: I'm Will Lucas and this is black tat Green Money.
Speaker 1: Vernon Common is a co founder and CEO at click app,
Speaker 1: formerly known as Real Time, which is a more intimate
Speaker 1: social network which also emphasizes human I r L interactivity.
Speaker 1: He's one of the youngest black entrepreneurs to raise VC funding,
Speaker 1: and he's got technologist like Alexis o hand In and
Speaker 1: Sam Alman on his cap table. In a world of
Speaker 1: TikTok Ig and Facebook, I wonder if there's room for
Speaker 1: another social media app. What did Vernon c missing in
Speaker 1: the marketplace that made him say, you know what I'm
Speaker 1: going in for us? I think it's about allowing people
Speaker 1: to be able to do three things. One is silenced
Speaker 1: the noise increased the signal. I think in the world
Speaker 1: where you have Facebook, Twitter, TikTok like all these platforms
Speaker 1: have a lot going on and a lot of content,
Speaker 1: and so almost there's almost a lack of mindfulness, right.
Speaker 1: That's why we have this term called doom scrolling where
Speaker 1: it's just always on, right, So that's one. The second
Speaker 1: I think think is about allowing people to reduce their
Speaker 1: curation and increase their rate of connection. So I think
Speaker 1: that on all these platforms, besides having and inundated and content,
Speaker 1: that content is also heavily curated and curated in a
Speaker 1: way where people are showing their best sells or their
Speaker 1: perfect selves. And I think that also, you know, has
Speaker 1: some negative psychological effects on how you're thinking about and
Speaker 1: perceiving your own life, especially for gen Z where where
Speaker 1: we've kind of come into an age of hypercuration. And
Speaker 1: then I think the third is is really about essentially
Speaker 1: the pressure that we face on these platforms to not
Speaker 1: just curate our best selves but also constantly perform right.
Speaker 1: And so a lot of these plays, a lot of
Speaker 1: these platforms have followings, which is another word for audience,
Speaker 1: and any time you get on stage and you're in
Speaker 1: front of audience, you to the fuel they need to perform.
Speaker 1: We even saw that with like Clubhouse back in the day, right,
Speaker 1: like you would go up on stage and then people
Speaker 1: will put their corporate voice on because there's an audience there. Um.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we've we've really been focused around
Speaker 1: buildion products that allow people to to increase their their
Speaker 1: rate of connection, reduce curation, and have more peace um.
Speaker 1: And so you know, we've built we've built one product
Speaker 1: where actually been testing another product that I think is
Speaker 1: doing a lot better in the in regards to a
Speaker 1: new new way for people to to use social media.
Speaker 1: And so, you know, I don't know how old job,
Speaker 1: but I don't know if you remember Path, it was
Speaker 1: an app about ten years ago or so. I loved Path,
Speaker 1: and perhaps it was ten years before its time, you know.
Speaker 1: And what makes what's different today that makes a private
Speaker 1: or more curated social experience viable that didn't exist when
Speaker 1: Path was making you run at it? I think there's
Speaker 1: a couple things, right, Because it's like Path, Path, if
Speaker 1: I remember correctly, they limited the social graph by one
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty, right, And I think that was just
Speaker 1: based off of some of the data that Machom glad
Speaker 1: Well talked about in Tipping Point. Right after one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty people, an organization, doesn't, you know, it loses
Speaker 1: it's it's a rate of connectivity amongst amongst different different
Speaker 1: members of that org. And I think Path I was
Speaker 1: actually reading about this a couple weeks ago. I think
Speaker 1: one issue that it had was that people actually want
Speaker 1: to constantly expand their social graph. And so because a
Speaker 1: lot of these games, a lot of these these products
Speaker 1: are based around gaming mechanics. So when I started in
Speaker 1: my career, I was building in iOS and android games
Speaker 1: in high school. I've always been a heavy gamer, and like,
Speaker 1: when you study game mechanics, right, it's about like, uh,
Speaker 1: for social media, it's about increasing status as a point
Speaker 1: as opposed to like your your your points or whatever, right,
Speaker 1: and so status Unfortunately, you want to create an endless
Speaker 1: status game. Facebook did that well, Instagram did that well,
Speaker 1: TikTok's doing it well now. But when it come came
Speaker 1: to something like Path right one hundred, maxing your your
Speaker 1: cap out one hundred and fifty people seemed great, but
Speaker 1: the ideas once you you know, essentially everybody can max
Speaker 1: out their social status game. So that was one issue
Speaker 1: with it as as it was back then. But I
Speaker 1: think today we live in an age where path came
Speaker 1: about before Instagram was really blowing up. I mean, Instagram
Speaker 1: was its thing, but it wasn't a billion users, basically
Speaker 1: hadn't even started yet, which evolved in a TikTok, and
Speaker 1: Snapchat was nascent at best, if it was if it
Speaker 1: was even out. And so I think that what's happened
Speaker 1: is that gen Z one crazy more authenticity. And I
Speaker 1: think that because we've been inundated and grown up with
Speaker 1: the Instagram and gone to snapchat and gone to TikTok,
Speaker 1: which I think our indicators are more authentic forms of expression.
Speaker 1: Even if they are a little bit performative, it's still
Speaker 1: a more authentic form of expression. What I think has
Speaker 1: happened there is that you now get to a world
Speaker 1: where we're in a data with notifications, in a data
Speaker 1: with content, and we want a little less, but we
Speaker 1: still want to express. So you get a ride of
Speaker 1: something like be real, right, where it's like, hey, you
Speaker 1: know what, it's just gonna be one shitty photo of
Speaker 1: a day. Really that's the intention, right, It's like, this
Speaker 1: is not high quality content. So snapchot was always a
Speaker 1: low quality content platform, but when you're constantly inundated with
Speaker 1: like constantly having a snap, caring about the view count instead,
Speaker 1: let's just shift this back to I think we're seeing
Speaker 1: a rise of close friends apps because we've essentially we've
Speaker 1: we've been playing these status games for a long time,
Speaker 1: but now the status games have lost their their their appeal, right,
Speaker 1: every game, video games have a half life, and I
Speaker 1: think social networks the half life is really about seven
Speaker 1: to ten years. I think we're just tired of playing
Speaker 1: the game where you know, I might become the world's
Speaker 1: next Instagram model or the top you know, top TikToker
Speaker 1: or whatever. So those those kind of my my stream
Speaker 1: of conscious around path and and today's networks. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you did bring up that, you know, there is some
Speaker 1: sort of performative mechanism that today social media offerings rely on.
Speaker 1: And even with that that, you know, there's so much
Speaker 1: of our content that revolves around dancing and imitation and etc.
Speaker 1: And this is an opportunity to even talk about how
Speaker 1: your product works because this is still unlimited beta for
Speaker 1: a lot of folks, and so a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't have access to it. But how do you imagine
Speaker 1: this might evolve having that performative style that we have,
Speaker 1: a matter of fact, I want to I want to
Speaker 1: act this in there. Also. I remember it was one
Speaker 1: of the founders of Twitter who talked about I don't
Speaker 1: remember it was Ev Williams. As a matter of fact,
Speaker 1: it was Ev Williams who had put out a comment
Speaker 1: about how to grow products and he was like, if
Speaker 1: you're trying to get people to change what they do,
Speaker 1: you have a very hard time in success and trying
Speaker 1: to find success in business. But if you make it
Speaker 1: easier to do what they already want to do and
Speaker 1: what they already do, then you'll find an easier path
Speaker 1: to success. So, because we're getting further in further along
Speaker 1: the road of performance and you know, trying to find
Speaker 1: good angles, even on TikTok and snapchat, you're still looking
Speaker 1: for the right light, right, And so, um, how do
Speaker 1: you imagine this might evolve inside of a more curated
Speaker 1: private network? Oh yeah, so I think this is this
Speaker 1: is interesting because um, we've over the last couple of years,
Speaker 1: we've been building um, different products around the idea of
Speaker 1: how do you connect people in a more meaningful way. So, like, uh,
Speaker 1: with what we had recently built click was video chat
Speaker 1: communities and being able to meet and interact with people
Speaker 1: based on your interest graphs. Right. So if I want
Speaker 1: to meet other black founders at a raised ventric capital, right,
Speaker 1: I don't need to be in San Francisco or New
Speaker 1: York or London or whatever. I can be in South
Speaker 1: Carolina and still be able to interact with these people.
Speaker 1: And the thesis was that that that that increasing the
Speaker 1: level of connection right, Actually one, because it's in synchronous,
Speaker 1: people are going to be more of their real selves.
Speaker 1: But two of these rooms are less than six people each, right,
Speaker 1: and so there's less of an audience or a rate
Speaker 1: of performance, and in theory, right, like people will just
Speaker 1: use it to talk. Unfortunately, what we've recently realized is
Speaker 1: that this is not back to what you're saying about,
Speaker 1: Evan Williams, this is not what people at least adults.
Speaker 1: Teenagers and other markets might be a completely different thing,
Speaker 1: but when it comes to adults, right, what we found
Speaker 1: was like it was cool. People enjoyed the experience of
Speaker 1: being on to meet somebody knew that they wouldn't ordinarily
Speaker 1: met or catch up with people that they don't ordinarily
Speaker 1: fee on clip. But the reality is it's like this
Speaker 1: is not something they're already actively doing to stay connected
Speaker 1: with people. Right, Like we thought about, you know, how
Speaker 1: do we change fundamentally how community works on the Internet
Speaker 1: all of its asynchronous. We thought synchronous might work, but
Speaker 1: there's so many in a world where we're constantly moving
Speaker 1: and a world where we have constant inundated of content
Speaker 1: and other things that we could do. It's just easier
Speaker 1: to stay connected on Discord. It's easier to stay connected
Speaker 1: on Twitter, it's easier stay connected on Instagram, be Real,
Speaker 1: et cetera. And so I think that Discord is like
Speaker 1: the hardest app to use by the ways. Yeah, I agree,
Speaker 1: I agree, I agree, I agree. Um, but it's it's
Speaker 1: one of those things where it's like, you know, if
Speaker 1: the only way you were able to connect with people
Speaker 1: was like you had to get on a real time
Speaker 1: video call with them, right, all of a sudden, it's like,
Speaker 1: use the product once a week. It's not been into
Speaker 1: your life. And so I think for us, what we
Speaker 1: had actually we had done different experiments and we actually
Speaker 1: came up with this new product called jot uh. And
Speaker 1: what jot is it's literally, I think be real meets
Speaker 1: ig notes, So you can post once a day. It's
Speaker 1: only text based content. You can post to your friends.
Speaker 1: It's friends first, and you could post publicly if you
Speaker 1: would like, right, And so like what we're seeing, um like, uh,
Speaker 1: people are one loving that, But that this aspect where
Speaker 1: we realize that like people already express themselves through text.
Speaker 1: Gen Z does not use Twitter for the most part,
Speaker 1: bespides like this all subset of tech gen Z, and
Speaker 1: people are looking for a way to express themselves stay
Speaker 1: in touch with their friends that might not be as
Speaker 1: performative as putting the camera in front of my face,
Speaker 1: but just taking a thought out of my head and
Speaker 1: putting it into the world in a much more simpler manner.
Speaker 1: And so I think there's tremendous opportunity in the text
Speaker 1: medium for this kind of once a day app products.
Speaker 1: And I think it's more like anything with social media.
Speaker 1: It's very ze guy store, right, and I think the
Speaker 1: zeitgeis wants to use their phones a little bit less.
Speaker 1: They want to get out what they're saying, they don't
Speaker 1: want to carrate themselves too much, and they don't want
Speaker 1: to worry about a timeline following them five years later.
Speaker 1: So that's kind of my thoughts around that. Yeah, as
Speaker 1: you brought up a term that I want to recall,
Speaker 1: this idea of the interest graph versus the social graph,
Speaker 1: and more and more social apps are moving to the
Speaker 1: interest graph that you know, the fyp page for you page,
Speaker 1: and I wonder your thoughts on the implications of moving
Speaker 1: to the interest graph. We have had long conversations about
Speaker 1: connectivity and staying connected with people that you know love
Speaker 1: and friends that you're into high school with and etcetera, etc.
Speaker 1: And I want to have that conversation about the interest
Speaker 1: graph because in a world where you can go down
Speaker 1: a rabbit hole on any conversation or any topic, the
Speaker 1: interest graph and not to be provocative, but the interest
Speaker 1: graph reverberates that it makes that even more an issue.
Speaker 1: And so what are your thoughts on how we manage
Speaker 1: as a society, again, not to be provocative, but how
Speaker 1: we manage as a society the implications of the interest
Speaker 1: graph versus the social graph. Yeah, that's a great question.
Speaker 1: It's tough, right, because I think that when it comes
Speaker 1: to we live in an age where information is completely
Speaker 1: accessible and therefore we're constantly able to expound our interests,
Speaker 1: change our interests. But a lot of interest graph networks
Speaker 1: are very much echo chambery, right, So it's not really
Speaker 1: about who Will is today, it's showing you who will
Speaker 1: was a month ago, a year ago, whatever, Right, Whatever,
Speaker 1: whatever loop you got into is usually the content it
Speaker 1: continues to show you, which is cool in some sense
Speaker 1: because like you've self curated your algorithm, But in another sense,
Speaker 1: it's like human beings grow evolved, and change, except we
Speaker 1: don't want to, especially when it comes to consuming content
Speaker 1: or or being social on the internet. We don't want
Speaker 1: to do too much work. Right, Like if if they're asking,
Speaker 1: you know, you to go and say, hey, now go
Speaker 1: reselect your interests, go relook at all these different videos,
Speaker 1: like you're kind of like, now, it's easier to just
Speaker 1: kind of stay in that, in that in that loop.
Speaker 1: And I think that it's hard because we create connectivity
Speaker 1: as human beings, and I think we get it out.
Speaker 1: You know, when when I was younger and playing like
Speaker 1: Call of Duty or or Tighten Far or whatever, right,
Speaker 1: we hop on Xbox Live or PlayStation Network with my
Speaker 1: friends and that's how we stay connected. But as I
Speaker 1: got older, right, it's like you kind of just I
Speaker 1: just see what's going on on Stagram, I see what's
Speaker 1: going on Twitter, and these things are evolving from my
Speaker 1: friends and now what they have going on to just
Speaker 1: this interest graph. And you combine that with AI, you
Speaker 1: combine that with deep fakes, and I'm really really good
Speaker 1: at being able to show you, you know, exactly what
Speaker 1: might be of interest but also skew you towards a
Speaker 1: more radicalized approach or whatever it is that you're into, right,
Speaker 1: And so I think it's I think I think the
Speaker 1: world needs both because I think it's it's good to
Speaker 1: have a place where you can just explore your interests
Speaker 1: and see what's going on in the world, or see
Speaker 1: what's going on within your interest segment or what people
Speaker 1: what thought leaders are people who think about whatever your
Speaker 1: interest is are doing. But I think it's also we
Speaker 1: can't lose this ability to stay connected with our friends
Speaker 1: and feel that true sense of connection because I think,
Speaker 1: you know, we're basically an error where it's hard to
Speaker 1: separate what's on TV from from you know, who's outside. Essentially, right,
Speaker 1: TV used to be the quote unquote interest graph. It
Speaker 1: used to be the place where we consume content, and
Speaker 1: outside was where we saw our friends and spend time.
Speaker 1: But now those worlds are kind of getting a little
Speaker 1: bit too blended, right, And so that's why you might
Speaker 1: see your friends, like on Instagram constantly posting content as
Speaker 1: a way to cry to an interest graph as opposed
Speaker 1: to connecting with you as a human being. So, I
Speaker 1: don't know, I think it's important for us to keep
Speaker 1: a balance. I think we can need it inso a society,
Speaker 1: But it's it's gonna be tough, especially when you start
Speaker 1: adding adding the fact that byte dances, you know, essentially
Speaker 1: a Chinese sponsor government product in terms of one of
Speaker 1: the largest interstgraph products in the market today. I hear
Speaker 1: that the algorithm that works in China is not the
Speaker 1: algorithm we get. Yeah, that's that's I've heard that too.
Speaker 1: I've heard that, I've heard different things. I've heard that
Speaker 1: before you know when you're a teenager. When you're a teenager,
Speaker 1: so I think before sixteen or fourteen, a lot of
Speaker 1: the contents focus on educational self improvement, self empowerment, different
Speaker 1: things that get people's minds and particularly teenagers' minds to
Speaker 1: think about creating and building in and purpose. Where it's
Speaker 1: in America, it's the algorithm. Teams are often showed it's
Speaker 1: more about dancing having fun, which is all fine and dandy,
Speaker 1: but the issue is what you then create, right. There's
Speaker 1: been multiple studies around this is that gen Z younger
Speaker 1: gen Z as well as the Alpha's the generation after
Speaker 1: gen Z, they're top things that they want to be
Speaker 1: as a content creator, but it's not the content that
Speaker 1: these people want to create are not widely built around
Speaker 1: purpose or things that actually help help you as an adult.
Speaker 1: It's more about status or more about you know, having
Speaker 1: the most amount of eyeballs, rather it's doing something outrageous whatever,
Speaker 1: And so I think that's a whole different problem instead
Speaker 1: of policy that hopefully will get either some heavy regulation
Speaker 1: or figure out how to how to how to have
Speaker 1: just as much control of such a widely used platform
Speaker 1: here in the States. So it's it's interesting with what
Speaker 1: you just brought up. So I imagine five, ten, fifteen
Speaker 1: years ago, when when social media companies were being built,
Speaker 1: they could just build software and build tech and put
Speaker 1: it out in the world. But what I'm hearing you
Speaker 1: say and correct me if I'm wrong, is that when
Speaker 1: you're building social media tech today, you've got to be
Speaker 1: thinking about implications and regulatory things and what it does
Speaker 1: to society. And you can't just build tech for tech
Speaker 1: sake or just tech for fun, but you got to
Speaker 1: think about so many other things. Yeah, this is this
Speaker 1: is interesting because I think when early early on as
Speaker 1: a builder, I have always approached building products as an
Speaker 1: as an artist, and so I think that's what you
Speaker 1: needed to consumer social products to get anything good out
Speaker 1: of it, Because I do believe fundamentally consumer, especially the
Speaker 1: ones that strike it's very much with the zeitgeist, and
Speaker 1: it's very much in the moment and in the times.
Speaker 1: And I think that when you approach it as an artist,
Speaker 1: you're very good at capturing the energy that's in the
Speaker 1: ether right now and funneling it into something that people
Speaker 1: can now you know, millions, if not billions of people
Speaker 1: can now use to express. And so I think it
Speaker 1: starts off as fun, right like our product JOT started
Speaker 1: off as I woke up December twenty third and I said, hey,
Speaker 1: I called some of our engineers and I said, I
Speaker 1: want to do something around text based expression. Here's how
Speaker 1: we're going to do it. Design the mechanics in a
Speaker 1: day and just started going right. But I think that
Speaker 1: as you start to you can't just put it out
Speaker 1: into the world and start growing as fast as possible
Speaker 1: without taking at least some time, which is what we've
Speaker 1: been doing in a beta testing phase, in a trunch
Speaker 1: growth phase where maybe you're you know, you vote in
Speaker 1: it to the public, but you're you know, you're not
Speaker 1: letting it get to millions of users. You're actually constraining
Speaker 1: the growth because you're trying to trying to be mindful
Speaker 1: of the dynamics and the certain certain ways and with
Speaker 1: certain mechanics that you designed and product can have an
Speaker 1: implication that's on society. But it's it's it's one of
Speaker 1: those things where I think you have to start off
Speaker 1: as fun, but you have to be mindful once you
Speaker 1: start creating something that people actually want to play, right, um,
Speaker 1: and in thinking about how you how how that, how
Speaker 1: you can how those because each platform, right, there's different
Speaker 1: phases in which you have to think about different things.
Speaker 1: We don't have to worry about modification of elections out
Speaker 1: one hundred thousand or even a million users, right Like
Speaker 1: you don't need to really worry about that, Like you
Speaker 1: might hurt your brain thinking too much. But as you know,
Speaker 1: ten million, one hundred million users, it might be good
Speaker 1: to think about that. So there's you know, I think
Speaker 1: it's also a timing thing, but it's it's a it's
Speaker 1: definitely an important thing to be thinking about that and
Speaker 1: so many other things around social and there's a lot. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so I'm curious on your perspective on how the
Speaker 1: economic needs of a business dictate things that people may
Speaker 1: appreciate about the product. And so the example I'll give is,
Speaker 1: you know organic timelines versus you know, egalitarian timelines, and
Speaker 1: you know, but the ones that are driven by economic incentives.
Speaker 1: But you run in a business, right and while you
Speaker 1: may have a crowd of people who shake their fists
Speaker 1: because their timeline is no longer in order by you know,
Speaker 1: actual congruent like you know actual and you know the clock,
Speaker 1: there's an economic incentive to do it a different way.
Speaker 1: And so not necessarily with that particular instance, but how
Speaker 1: do you balance what might have been cool, might have
Speaker 1: been a feature, but a need to drive economy mix
Speaker 1: because it's still a business and if you're not paying
Speaker 1: for it, you're the product. Yeah, so this is this
Speaker 1: is I have a couple of thoughts here, and I
Speaker 1: think it's when it's very platform dependent and what that
Speaker 1: platform actually offers people. But I fundamentally believe that the biggest,
Speaker 1: one of the best things that could have happened and
Speaker 1: the worst thing that could have happened in the early
Speaker 1: parts of the app Store, when apps started just becoming
Speaker 1: a thing, the best thing and the worst thing was
Speaker 1: everybody started expecting products for free. So as a builder,
Speaker 1: as a business owner, right, we can put hundreds of thousands,
Speaker 1: millions of dollars into development. People might not use the product, right,
Speaker 1: people might use the product, I don't know, but guess what,
Speaker 1: Rather they use it or they don't use it. Everybody
Speaker 1: expects it for free, and unfortunately, right the millions of
Speaker 1: dollars needs to be you know, recouped in some form
Speaker 1: or fashion. And so I think what's happened is that
Speaker 1: because people we go on the free route and we
Speaker 1: see what companies have to do to monetize free based platforms,
Speaker 1: and I think people are more and more not liking that, right.
Speaker 1: And I think that on top of that, people are
Speaker 1: just are also just willing to pay for things. If
Speaker 1: the value proposition is clear or you you you you yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's the value proposition is clear, people are
Speaker 1: willing to pay for things. And so I think, you know,
Speaker 1: there was one point I thought about putting an app
Speaker 1: out in the app store for three hundred dollars. Initially,
Speaker 1: I think that people should be or builders companies. If
Speaker 1: they build something that people actually love, you can charge
Speaker 1: money for in the app store. You can charge money
Speaker 1: for it via a subscription. You could charge money for
Speaker 1: it versus a freemium model. Right. So, like if you
Speaker 1: look at something like Tender, Tender is a free product.
Speaker 1: It is, but it operates like a video game in
Speaker 1: the sense where hey, you know, after I don't know
Speaker 1: what it is nowadays, but like back in then it
Speaker 1: needs to be like fifty swipes, right, you know, if
Speaker 1: you want more swipes, you need to pay, or if
Speaker 1: you want to be able to to see who's who's
Speaker 1: swiped on you first, you know, pay the subscription. And
Speaker 1: that's a model that's working very well for Tender. I
Speaker 1: think they've they've crossed at least over you know, one
Speaker 1: point five billion dollars an annual recruiting revenue. And it's
Speaker 1: a product that's both free and paid. And so I
Speaker 1: think what I think that we need to move into
Speaker 1: a direction where we have more freemium models. Um. And
Speaker 1: so what that does is it makes up for the
Speaker 1: if the if you're if a person's not paying for
Speaker 1: the product, it doesn't mean you are the product. It
Speaker 1: just means that, due to network effects, somebody else in
Speaker 1: the network is paying for your ability to use the product. Right.
Speaker 1: I think that's a more it's just basic business and
Speaker 1: hopefully you know, I think Hopefully that becomes more of
Speaker 1: a standard because far the longest time, I think just
Speaker 1: what happened was like, you know, even back in the day,
Speaker 1: Snapchat was like, oh, we'll charge money for filtering, right, like,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna do advertising, We're not gonna do media.
Speaker 1: And like people, I'm not favorite filters. I love youth
Speaker 1: and filters, but I don't want to favorite filters. And
Speaker 1: it's like, well, you know, just as though we are businesses,
Speaker 1: we also have to answer to the market, and the
Speaker 1: market don't want something. We just can't make it, make
Speaker 1: it happen. You know, when you're building consumer phacing applications,
Speaker 1: there are certain metrics that indicate if you're finding success
Speaker 1: long before you make it to an afrotech dot com headline.
Speaker 1: You could prioritize engagement rates, video views, sign up completion rates,
Speaker 1: but there are other metrics that can be even more important.
Speaker 1: Vernon speaks on it, it was like an intimate happy hour,
Speaker 1: and for us, the metrics were about retention day twenty eight. Retention.
Speaker 1: We're obviously looking at day three, day seven, but day
Speaker 1: twenty eight is really where you see the make or break,
Speaker 1: because after day twenty eight usually you'll you'll see eighty
Speaker 1: to ninety percent of that cohort stick. Well, well, you
Speaker 1: know months later, right, and so we're looking heavily at
Speaker 1: day twenty eight retention, we're looking heavily at times spent.
Speaker 1: So I think some of four of the more recent
Speaker 1: metrics around click were like, uh, you know, time spent
Speaker 1: was around I think three hours and thirty six minutes
Speaker 1: a week, right, And so like you look deeper in
Speaker 1: those metrics, you say, well, how you know, how many
Speaker 1: times do they open the app? How many times are
Speaker 1: they hopping into a chat room? And of those times
Speaker 1: that they hop into a chat room, or are these
Speaker 1: you know, thirty or forty chats where you're doing ten
Speaker 1: minute conversations or think it's like two chats where you
Speaker 1: have an hour and a half conversation each. And so
Speaker 1: we try to look at that data in different different
Speaker 1: ways to understand and it more. But we care a
Speaker 1: lot about time spent and retention. I think, but jot,
Speaker 1: which is you know, very very different. It's asynchronous first, right,
Speaker 1: you're putting out a thought in sixty characters or less.
Speaker 1: It disappears twenty four hours later, and you can't see
Speaker 1: your friends stuff until you post right, and so with
Speaker 1: JO we're looking at we're looking at time spent, which
Speaker 1: is good, but our more important metrics are still retention
Speaker 1: day twenty, day three, day seven, day twenty eight. With
Speaker 1: a product like job, day twenty eight still matters, but
Speaker 1: day three and day seven can tell you a lot
Speaker 1: very quickly, just because it's so much the barrier to entry.
Speaker 1: To use it does not require a conversation. It just
Speaker 1: requires letting out whatever is in your mind. And so
Speaker 1: we think about the retention and then K factor, which
Speaker 1: is really really important, and so K factor is really
Speaker 1: the I think the tech took that term from from medicine,
Speaker 1: which is like the rate in which a virus virus spreads.
Speaker 1: It is long before COVID. It was just like, how
Speaker 1: do you how does you know if each The whole
Speaker 1: point of K factor is like if does one user
Speaker 1: become two users? Right, or does one user become you know, three,
Speaker 1: or whatever the case may be for an early stage product,
Speaker 1: well for a late stage product. I remember talking to
Speaker 1: the founder of Door to Action years ago. It's like,
Speaker 1: you're usually gonna have a K factor around point three,
Speaker 1: eight point four eight when you're much later, but that
Speaker 1: is not the case when your social networks early, your
Speaker 1: social network when it's early, the K factors should really
Speaker 1: be uh, you know two or above, right, like if
Speaker 1: people if if you get on, if you get on
Speaker 1: job will and you don't send it to you only
Speaker 1: send it to like one friend. And K factor is
Speaker 1: not about how many invites you sent, it's the rate
Speaker 1: of invites that were accepted and people signed up. So
Speaker 1: if you sent four but two accepted, then you know,
Speaker 1: like that's actually what matters. And so if you know,
Speaker 1: I think the perfect example was early Cuphouse, right, like
Speaker 1: people were K factor people were each person wasn't bringing
Speaker 1: on one person, they were bringing on four people on average,
Speaker 1: five people on average. And that's how you have this
Speaker 1: like Crazil crazy, you know, viral moment and so you know,
Speaker 1: I yeah, it's for different platforms, requires different things. For Job,
Speaker 1: it's retention, it's it's K factor, it's time spent. And
Speaker 1: outside of that, it's really about looking top of funnel
Speaker 1: at downloads. And so I'll just say this one last
Speaker 1: thing about downloads, like build a social network nowadays. There
Speaker 1: was a time in twenty twenty where me and a
Speaker 1: group of fifty random gen z did the Imaufi movement
Speaker 1: where we captured Twitter's attention for thirty six hours and
Speaker 1: we raised over three hundred. People thought we had a
Speaker 1: real product, and we funneled all we funneled all this
Speaker 1: interest and all this energy. Explain what that is so
Speaker 1: people we wouldn't know. Yeah, so so so we basically
Speaker 1: h we basically me and fifty gen z had i
Speaker 1: emog malth emog i emog. We had created a viral
Speaker 1: little website that let people retweet like you would sign up,
Speaker 1: give us your information. It was a lackey website and
Speaker 1: then you once you finish, it was like getting their
Speaker 1: early access. People don't even know what they were getting
Speaker 1: early access to retweet, right, So that's a viral people
Speaker 1: started sharing. So within less than thirty six hours, there's
Speaker 1: over fifty thousand people signed up. Right. We did a
Speaker 1: merch drop in a minute. In twenty eight seconds, we
Speaker 1: sold over ten thousand dollars worth of merch. There was
Speaker 1: vcson every in all fifty of our dms asking to
Speaker 1: us to lead a round of something they didn't know about,
Speaker 1: just because we could capture attention. And at the end
Speaker 1: of it, we ended up raising I think about three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty k or four hunder k for different
Speaker 1: Black Lives Matter organizations at that time. But it was
Speaker 1: basically a weekend project where we capture people's attention. And
Speaker 1: you see this with companies like Mischief and others where
Speaker 1: when you're looking at top of I correlate that to
Speaker 1: the aspect of getting top of funnel downs for anybody
Speaker 1: out there who might be thinking about building a consumer product,
Speaker 1: you have to create viral moments. This is why most
Speaker 1: products from airbuds to Sincerely or anything else that's currently
Speaker 1: popping off that's probably gonna raise like ten to twenty
Speaker 1: million dollars in the next couple of weeks, they've captured
Speaker 1: viral moments through either TikTok or their You know, Mischief
Speaker 1: is constantly get a different influence to where those little
Speaker 1: red boots and post about it and it creates a
Speaker 1: moment where people want to talk about something. But you
Speaker 1: have to be willing to do wacky, weird stuff to
Speaker 1: capture people's attention in a world where they're inundated by everything, right,
Speaker 1: because if you don't get the top of funnel, every
Speaker 1: viral moment needs a catalyst, just like every virus needs
Speaker 1: a catalyst. You got to start it off and kick
Speaker 1: it off. I'm glad you brought up Clubhouse a second ago,
Speaker 1: as a part of that success was we were all
Speaker 1: locked in the house because they happen during COVID, and
Speaker 1: some of that has proven out other than the fact
Speaker 1: that you know, maybe they've got some issues getting rolling
Speaker 1: out cool features in et cetera. But part of that
Speaker 1: is proving out because we're outside now and they aren't
Speaker 1: as popular as they were. But I'm using that example
Speaker 1: because you raised money during COVID, and what was the
Speaker 1: opera tunity you saw during that time that made it
Speaker 1: still the right time to raise capital when everyone else
Speaker 1: was well, everybody was uncertain and what the future looked like.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, every everybody was so uncertain. And not just
Speaker 1: on Twitter, but if I was, I was talking to
Speaker 1: friends and advisors and everybody's like, you know, that was
Speaker 1: out of good time to raise money, YadA YadA, YadA. Um.
Speaker 1: We you know we even had like we had only
Speaker 1: raised like fifty K and angel money, which is not
Speaker 1: a lowed when you're living in San Francisco and you
Speaker 1: dropped out of college a year before that, it's just
Speaker 1: not much to live off of UM and so we
Speaker 1: we we were we were pretty much completely out of
Speaker 1: money UM and we were we had like two acquisition offers,
Speaker 1: which would have been great. But the thought process, the
Speaker 1: thing I was thinking back to what we said earlier
Speaker 1: in this interview was like social is like geistel and
Speaker 1: so we had spent a lot of time building a
Speaker 1: product around connecting people in person on college campuses, and
Speaker 1: it was working and we had great retention. We had
Speaker 1: tens of thousand users. Still could have raised any money.
Speaker 1: I think we know why. But the point is that
Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute, I really care about
Speaker 1: allowing people to be their authentic selves. I really care
Speaker 1: about community. And so on that eight weeks, me, me
Speaker 1: and a friend went out to the mountains in South
Speaker 1: Carolina and we just started building. In that eight weeks,
Speaker 1: we were trying a bunch of different ideas and I
Speaker 1: was like, you know what, we can connect people through
Speaker 1: video and audio. And I actually know that The last person,
Speaker 1: one of the last people I met in San Francisco
Speaker 1: was Paul Davidson before you put out Clubhouse. So I
Speaker 1: was already understood and we had a zoom like the
Speaker 1: week the week before he released it that one and
Speaker 1: he was talking about this aspect of building products with
Speaker 1: just one button, and I was like, there's gonna be
Speaker 1: a moment. You know, if everybody starts talking about it
Speaker 1: now is the time, then you sometimes you've already missed
Speaker 1: the boat versus just saying, you know what, I can
Speaker 1: create the time. And it felt like the Zeke guys people,
Speaker 1: we're gonna build things that allow people to communicate and
Speaker 1: interact with this new found where we lived in where
Speaker 1: we're just in our houses and we weren't able to
Speaker 1: travel and we didn't really want to meet people in person.
Speaker 1: Clubhouse was one of them, Locker room was one of them,
Speaker 1: Real Time was one of them. There was a lot
Speaker 1: of different different products around that time, but I felt
Speaker 1: like I just felt like it was the time for
Speaker 1: that product for the market. And usually capital follows. We
Speaker 1: noticed vcs. They'll tend to say, oh, well, you know
Speaker 1: those just say whatever, whatever the thing is right, and
Speaker 1: then when it changes, that change didn't just come out
Speaker 1: of nowhere. Came out of something. Yes, we can talk
Speaker 1: about zero interest rates or whatever, but it also came
Speaker 1: out of consumers wanting something new and actually gravitating towards
Speaker 1: that so much that I had a market pool to say, oh,
Speaker 1: you know what this is consumers, we're funding again, so
Speaker 1: and sos worth doing this. But if you you know,
Speaker 1: if I listened to I spent four or five years
Speaker 1: building consumer products that just weren't getting funded because it
Speaker 1: wasn't the time. Even though it was the time another
Speaker 1: product or getting funded, It's just way harder to raise
Speaker 1: money while you're black. And so I just was like,
Speaker 1: I just to me, I just felt like it's the
Speaker 1: right time to be building what we're building, That's all
Speaker 1: that matters. And secondly, talking to talking to some of
Speaker 1: the best investors right like Sam Altman came in and
Speaker 1: came into our round, founder open Ai. A lot of
Speaker 1: people think Alexis had like was the first catalyst and
Speaker 1: then everything else changed. Alexis is the last last check
Speaker 1: at nat Troncha Capital. Before Alexis, we had Sam Altman,
Speaker 1: we had the founder Kickstarter, Nancy Stricker, the founder of
Speaker 1: meet Up, the founder of coruntry World, the largest anime
Speaker 1: platform in the world, you know, the founder of Twitch. Like.
Speaker 1: We had pretty much have been raising funding before we
Speaker 1: had our our bigger moment with our larger steed round
Speaker 1: but it just came from just keep going and building
Speaker 1: what we thought people would actually want, even though our
Speaker 1: business was completely irrelevant beforehand. In terms of IROL and
Speaker 1: college campuses, those were both done for in March to
Speaker 1: twenty twenty. Yeah, I mean, you've got some incredible, incredibly
Speaker 1: smart investors UM and particularly I mean you got again
Speaker 1: you named him Sam Altman, who's investing heavily and spending
Speaker 1: his time heavily in AIM. And they've seen a million ideas,
Speaker 1: particularly Sam tole me he ran hy combinators. I mean,
Speaker 1: they've seen a million ideas, really great ideas, and they
Speaker 1: passed on probably more way more than they took. Right,
Speaker 1: what was it about you that they said, we're making
Speaker 1: the beat if you can put yourself in the shoes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking about that because it's it's it's and we
Speaker 1: still never got into YC. So that's you know. But
Speaker 1: the thing about Sam is, like all these different people
Speaker 1: someone want to met through others, but for instance, Sam
Speaker 1: I met so before I dropped out of college. I
Speaker 1: would take the bus and I would take ride shares
Speaker 1: with random people on Facebook, like college ride share groups,
Speaker 1: and I would come up to the city. That's like
Speaker 1: a two to three hour thing. And I remember I
Speaker 1: had maybe like one hundred dollars in my account or something,
Speaker 1: and but my AirPods were broken. And I love listening
Speaker 1: to music. I make music, I make fashion, I do
Speaker 1: I do other things outside of just product, but it
Speaker 1: helps create better ideas. I needed to go to replace
Speaker 1: my AirPods. It was like sixty dollars and I was like,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna spend it. I don't care, right, Like,
Speaker 1: forty dollars should be enough for me to get back
Speaker 1: down to Santa Cruz and I ran into Sam Altman
Speaker 1: at the Apple Store. And I had been watching back
Speaker 1: in high schools, watching Why see Startup Schools, watching all
Speaker 1: these things, and so I have heavy, heavy facial recognition.
Speaker 1: The way I had met Sam, I did not ask
Speaker 1: talk to him about my company. I talked to him
Speaker 1: about what was first on my mind, which was YC
Speaker 1: and Black Founders and what is YC thinking about around that.
Speaker 1: I think that was something that kind of was like
Speaker 1: one that's different. Most people are not talking about that.
Speaker 1: This is not the climate of D D and I yet,
Speaker 1: so people were really even especially Black D and I,
Speaker 1: was a completely different thing. But like we were just
Speaker 1: having a real conversation about that. We talked a little
Speaker 1: bit about my company, and then we had just kept
Speaker 1: a relationship going for two years, and that's you know,
Speaker 1: when the time came, I just I gave him a call,
Speaker 1: I gave him a text. He's like I could talk
Speaker 1: to night. And we talked the next day and then
Speaker 1: he was like, hey, yeah, like I'll put in put
Speaker 1: in money. I mean, we literally got a recommendation from
Speaker 1: great people at YC. We got to our interview and
Speaker 1: still didn't get into YC. And people used to have
Speaker 1: my mind jacked up thinking I had to have an accelerate,
Speaker 1: I had to have this. But you know, Sam wasn't
Speaker 1: just the only person where it was a random running
Speaker 1: like that. The CPO tender, the founder Kickstarter, these were
Speaker 1: all like me hustling and randomly walking into these people
Speaker 1: are going to have ment where these people would be
Speaker 1: speaking and you know, sneaking backstage to talk to him.
Speaker 1: And so I think just being my full authentic self
Speaker 1: and just following the energy, despite what some idea of
Speaker 1: a rule of what you shouldn't say, what you can't say,
Speaker 1: what you shouldn't do, I think that's what's helped me
Speaker 1: stick stuck out in the minds of these people? But
Speaker 1: I'm sure they can answer that question a whole lot
Speaker 1: better than me. I'm just one account. Black tag Green
Speaker 1: Money is a production of Blackvity Afro Tech, a black
Speaker 1: effect podcast network. Can I Hire Media? You Just Produced
Speaker 1: by Morgan Dubond and me Well Lucas well additional production
Speaker 1: support by Sarah Ergony Rose McLucas. Special thank you to
Speaker 1: Michael David. Something That's a serranto. Learn more about my
Speaker 1: guest and other technistupen an innovators at afrotech dot com.
Speaker 1: Enjoying Black Tech Green Money. Share this with somebody, Go
Speaker 1: get your money. Peace of luck,