Gabe Whaley - Building MSCHF - [Invest Like the Best, EP.397]
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Two fund facts about our newest sponsorship partner, rap. First, they are the fastest growing fin tech company in history, reaching a level of revenue in five years that I can't quote exactly, but is eyebrow raising. Second, they're backed by more of my favorite past guests, at least sixteen of them when I counted.

Then probably any other company that i'm aware of, a list that includes ravi gup, dead aoa, josh, Christa, thrive key or boy, a foundation conventual at john Michael ovis brag garson. The list goes on and on. These facts demand the question why, having been personally obsessed with the great businesses through history, one clear lesson is that the best of them are run by disciplines Operators.

These Operators managed costs with incredible detail, and they are constantly thinking about how they can reinvest every dollar and every hour back into their business. This is rams mission to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and freeze up time for teams to work on more viable projects. First, on expenses, the average american business has a profit margin of seven point seven percent.

This means saving one percent on cost is the equivalent of making thirteen percent more revenue. The average ramp customer is able to save five percent on their expenses each year. Of course, every entrepreneurs looking for ways to grow revenue by fifty percent, they should just seriously seek to save five percent on their expenses.

Second on time. Unnecessary complexity is why most finance teams spend eighty percent of their time doing Operational work and only about twenty percent of their time on the strategic work. Rap may spend management very simple by handling your company's expenses, travel bill payments, render relationships and even accounting.

It's notable that some of the best in class businesses today, companies like airbnb, Andrew and shop fy and investors like coa capital invest equity, are all using RAM to manage their spend. They use IT to spend less. They use IT to automate T, D, S, financial processes, and they use IT to reinvest, save dollars and hours into growth at both classes and positive.

Some my businesses we've used ramp for years now for these exact reasons, go to ramp dot com slash best to sign up for free and get a two hundred and fifty dollar a welcome bonus that's R P dot com slash invest. On december fourth, i'll be hosting a panel discussion with Chris action of senses V P A product andivia narendra C E O of some zero for a discussion on A S impact on investing as an investor. And always, always look out for tools that can truly transform the way that we work as a business.

Alice sence has completely transformed the research process with cutting H A I technology and a vast collection of top tier reliable business content since I started using IT. It's been a game changer for my marker research, a positive sum I now rely on Alice sense daily, done covered insights and make smarter decisions. With the recent acquisition of tiguas, alphonse continues to be a best in class research platform, delivering even more powerful tools to help users make informed decisions faster.

What truly sets offense apart is its cutting A J, I imagine, completing your research five to ten times faster with search that delivers the most relevant results, helping you make high conviction decisions with confidence. Alice s provides access over three hundred million premium documents, including company filings, earning reports, releases and more from public and private companies. You can even upload and manage your own proprietary documents for similar integration with over ten thousand premium content sources.

And top broker research confirms that goldman sax alpha sense gives you the tools to make high conviction decisions with confidence. You can sign up for a pair discussion why the link and our shoonoo or had the alpha that sent stock com slash invest. Hello, and welcome, everyone.

I'm patro shona y, and this is just like the best. This show is an open ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you Better invest both your time and your money. Invest like the best is part of the colosse family of podcasts, and you can access all our podcasts, including edit transcripts showing tes and other resources to keep learning at join glosses.

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I guess is gave whaling founder and CEO of midriff. What began with viral internet pranks in two thousand and fourteen has evolved in to one of the most single or creative companies i've encounter. Mischiefs work ranges from microscope can bags literally the size of a grain of salt to tax offer that helps you file your returns by going on virtual dates with enemy characters.

Every two weeks, they release something new that chAllenges our assumptions about art, commerce and missive is hard to define, but gave says its goal is to monopolize a feeling where subversion is the rare constant. The most viral creation. The big red boots took over the internet in two thousand twenty three.

Our conversation exports have gave dropped out of west point and built a company that thrives on breaking rules. But it's also about bigger, the power of unbrightened creative expression and what happens when you build a business around IT. I hope this episode inspires you to think about what your version of mystery could be.

Please enjoy this fascinating discussion with gay. So one place we have to begin is just what this thing is. I was trying to put IT in a sentence for my friends, and what I came up with was an ode to subversive creativity.

cool. I wonder how .

you would describe, in more than a sense, what myself is just a levels up for anyone that hasn't heard of IT.

IT really depends on who i'm talking to. Cause missive means so many different things to so many different people. I think officially, for me, IT is my excuse and my friend's excuse to make whatever IT is that in our heads at any given moment. But if you ask someone in, like the art world, they're gonna compare IT to for Better, worse, banki or warhorse. This shop all for my learned a lot about the last year. If if someone in the fashion world, they'll make some persons to let supreme more baLanced a or luiz also things that I want a lot about the last few years, everyone's actually, when they look at myself, I think they just see a reflection of themselves in the world's day, inhabit a little bit. And that doesn't mean they always like IT, but that is what they see.

Another way of asking IT would be, what do you do over and over again, maybe even to spend some time getting into the structured process for creativity? One of the things you told me when we first met that I found fascine was how far in advance some of these things are baked, but maybe just describe like the repeated action that you take if you really .

had to think about like what we're doing here, we're manufacturing cultural output. And so with that, stand alone, that sort of removes the need for lake sticking to a category or having these arbitrary lane set up that dictating, define what you do over a long period of time for us, is just purely cultural output.

How can that live in whatever format, medium, device, make, make sense to resonate the most in culture, but now and like in the future? And so if you look back at our body of work, what that has yield IT is everything from most obviously very viral pieces of footwear, too. Maybe more interestingly, software that helps you do your taxes via going on virtual dates with the cute enemy grow in the cafe IT can be anything but the throw line that is IT altogether is this underlying feeling of the versions creativity? So how do we do that? We're constantly thinking.

We've assembled a group of people here who are not just thinking about these ideas, but they speak the language of these ideas. That's just part of like, a common understanding that we have here of seeing the world in terms of opportunities for the version. Most people look around this from their right now.

See, oh, here's a couple of water, and here's a roll of tape, and here's some paper and a pen and leave IT at that. But for us were like weight. I can take this tape and rapid d on this cup and turn the cup upside down with the water.

So in IT, which means you remove IT without filling water everywhere. That's how we see everything. It's an opportunity lake flip something upside down and give you a new perspective that other people react to.

I guess, to get back to your question though, with all these ideas, how do you like actually turn into something real? And I knew that would be a big chAllenge when we started because I think it's really easy for a creative, artistic person too, have their heads so far in the clouds in a good way that IT makes a very difficult to, like, actually do the dirty work. Tim, be productive till I create work to make new outputs. So we actually had to build up process and a system that would allow us to constantly, like, generate these ideas, document these ideas, that these ideas, and then ultimately sought them for production on a timeline that allows us to effectively organize our resources, organized our time, organized our abilities. And what that end up building is sort of like a creative switch shop here in brookline that we have all extremely consensually signed up to be a part of.

It's so funny when you literally walk into the building on your left hand side, you see lots of computer monitor, some code. IT feels almost like a start up. On the right hand side, you see like really walk .

as created world shop.

IT feels very much like a dichotomy that's really interesting. And I want to talk about how I got to hear maybe going back to the very origin days of mystery. It's way organized. Now we'll come back to that process, go to the detail, but maybe talk us through like the origin, whether it's at bus feet or how are far back you want to take IT. And the first couple of things that you did, which or more but spoke more just you and a small group of people versus this big thing.

Yeah, yeah. This really all started with me just running away from real life. I think there's like a longer story here of dropping out of the military academy and not being able to hold down real jobs at a real call centers that I was expected to make eighty phone calls a day. All of these things just kind of weren't working out for me.

And I guess in protest or more accurate procrastination of these things in two thousand eleven, two thousand twelve, I started teaching myself how to make websites because I had these ideas for funny projects that I wanted to build, because they sort of made fun of this world that I was not allowed to really participate in at this. A bit of sheltered upbringing that ended up culminating in what point where you're even more sheltered. And so like by the time I got out as a twenty year old, I was seeing the real world for the first time and not really knowing like where my place was or like who my friends were or how I supposed to dress.

I talk to a lot of college can easily. And they ve ve already got all figured out there, more network than I am now. So for me, I had nothing.

I was a blank slate, and I really just didn't know where I belong. So I would make these websites that kind of made fun of everything that I was observing. And some of these websites, we get a ton of attention. And I started to learn about the relationship between, like, concept, production, execution and audiences purely by accident. One of the first things that ever did, if you use an iphone, you know that when someone's typing to you, you see the three dots animate.

So in two thousand and twelve, I made the first gift of those three dots formatted in a way where, if you saved IT to your camera and message IT to someone, or my message IT would resize itself to look perfectly as if someone, either and when, I never knew how to make a gift. So I taught myself how to make a gift in photoshop. And then I had to, like, figure out how to make that available by building a website for IT, where I could explain what I was, how IT works, how you should use IT, what its intention is.

And that was the first or second missiles ious mischief project, which is mystery now, because no one can sport missile's. But that thing got like a millions hits overnight. IT was, well, crazy things i've ever seen.

And this is back at a time where val was not so cheap these days. Friends can buy IT. Anybody can get lucky on tiktok.

It's a numbers game now, but back then that was magic. You get the right idea to generate the right audience, or not even the right audience, the right initial core. That could be five people, that could be one hundred people.

But if they saw something so compelling that they are no choice but to share IT, that was magic back then. And I got to experience that. And that was a crazy feeling. And as soon as I got that feeling, it's an addiction.

I don't do drugs, but that must be what drugs feel like because you get this high and then like anything else online, the world moves on, and then you find yourself and withdraw, and you need the higher. And so if you managed to channel that, list that, you've goten from this experience. If you're able to channel that with a desire to learn and a desire to create IT, create something really poor, and I think that's what is .

defended up, becoming what happened next, what was immediately after we'll call that the first era or something. So you a couple of these b .

site experiences can and I brought me to new york and I bought around a lot of jobs here in new york, trying to figure out how to crack this, because I knew deep down, and like my core, there has to be away for whatever this is to be sustainable. How can I basically find a way to do mystery forever? Because I can imagine a life where I do anything else.

It's not even that I want to is that I must. I don't have a choice. This has to happen. And so being in new york was a real blessing coming from the woods.

Carol, being in new york was wild every three blocks that you walk in a different world with a different type of person and a different culture and a different sense of style. The diversity of new york city was such an I opening experience for me that you really kind felt like anything was possible. And so between the years of and say, twenty thirteen to twenty seventeen, I continue doing these projects.

But I also started to meet other people who spoke the some more language. We all sort of like were aware of each other online because just not a lot of people think like this. Not a lot of people go that extra mile to deliver a punch line that you probably could just said.

And these people had very different background that were so complimented. I'm talking people who are like true software engineers and hackers, people who are like. Real artists and real crafts people who knew how to make things with their hands.

We would spend a lot of time talking, and I think the dream and the vision was always the same, which is, how do we only do this? Even not only that, if there is a world where we are only doing this, what can that become? Because there is no playbook for this.

There is no precedent for this. We are flying blind. But IT feels so fun, is such a fun thing to explore.

At the end of the day, all of this post down to how does this prefer itself? How do you make money? And there's a lot of different upset. You can go with this. And then I think people have tried different things in the past.

People have taken the gallery approach where you are a true artist and you get represented by a gallery, you create works and you show about our puzzle and you so artworks. People have taken the services approach, where you are effectively in agency with clients, and you do like design work and creative consulting, so that at night, when you have free time, maybe you can make something that fears somewhat spiritually fulfilling. People have taken the media approach, trying to like create content with the existing distribution on networks lake that flex.

But also maybe even like youtube, people have tried a lot of stuff. We had no idea what we are doing because none of us came from this world. So we did all which end up looking like we raised money from venture capital.

We gave present. We raised like a good amount. Yeah, that's a whole story. And of itself, we get there.

We got represented by the blue chip gallery who were creating content that's going to live on these networks. We even tried the client services thing for a hot second, and that failed spectacular. So we killed that. But IT was all sort of what is that perfect thread, the needle through line of doing the thing that you would do if money were no issue. And what do you need to do to make money?

My guess is when you started, you didn't have the ambition to make this historically important company or entity. In what direction has that evolved?

Yeah, I mean, back then, I was like a very selfish thing. We are just bandit. I mean, honestly, I was just IT looks like there's a lot of money floating around new york city.

How do we get just enough? Maybe we're smart some of that and let's make the best work of our lives and then inevitably will run out of money. But IT looks like that celebrated these days.

Maybe like there's a way to spend that too and then will run out of money and will just leave, just change our names and leave. That was the plan, but then things started to work and they were really working. So we raise somebody in twenty and fifty, and that gave us the ability to start making, like, our first physical products.

And somehow everything that we had learned from the prior five, six, seven years of creating things online, this visual experiences, or websites, or apps or whatever, that would get so much attention, these concepts would take a life of their own. Somehow that same phenomenon happened to the physical objects that we are creating. I think there was like a confluence of the nature of reality on the internet, with the nature of hy culture, with the nature of people's attention spans being way more voluted.

There were like a lot of different universal factors that were play that I think the timing lined up really well for us. But ultimately, IT was just working. People are buying the things that we were selling for Better, for worse.

They were reselling them, usually flag multiples higher than what we were selling them at. Our audiences were growing really, really fast because none of us came from any of these worlds. We started learning the playbooks of all of these world that we doubled, but on sort of like a flat spectrum.

So instead of someone coming from finance and then trying to transition to like another industry with all their finance dodge, we're just taking on both industries. At the same time, finance startups are manufacturing fabrication fashion like we're learning all of them as one collective discipline. And so I think without knowing Better, we pursue a strategy of just doing IT all.

Can we give an example of something YSL product just to like really nail home the sort of thing that you were doing in a purely digital sense and then your favorite early example of a physical product? And just like the vin yet of each of those story tell lots of stories, but just to ground people in those two.

yeah, yeah. Well, the imessage gift is definitely like a great first example. Another one would be, so the day that Donald trump announced that he was going to run for president, I guess this must have been twenty sixteen. They were like rumors in twenty fifteen, but I think this really went down in twenty sixteen. Obviously, that was just shocking to a lot of people.

And the first thing that I did was I wanted bought the U R L friends who like trump ed 点 com， and I set IT up to auto forward to the facebook open graph U R, L that would load up anyone's list of friends who have liked Donald trump. This back when people is facebook. This was maybe one of the first truly recorded and stances of widespread cancel culture happening, because that U.

R L, in a matter of hours, was hitting the tens of millions of this. There were no tricks. All I did was I shared on my facebook, and I was like, checked this out.

Everyone started clicking IT and then sharing IT, saying, I just unfriended two hundred people. I just rented thirty people. I just in fronted everyone I went to high school with truly actually like alarming in hindsight, this was going to happen regardless.

So I didn't do anything to encourage, just expert ted a little bit. That's another example like a digital thing. It's not like i'm trying to make a website with a bunch of core graphics and parallax go.

No, it's not that that's just a rapper around a concept. It's about the concept. How can you use something digital lake change someone's perspective like give them that experience .

where the reality is baked itself into the concept, right?

And it's not even about going viral. Reality is not the goal. Reality is just, uh, distribution of the goal, you know what I mean.

And I think that's a big difference that people probably miss a lot with mystery where they're like all the point is going value is actually it's all about a communication of a concept. So it's like one digital thing. I guess I can tell you one more.

This is kind of funny. I guess I can tell you about this. I might not have ever spoken about this before. perfect.

There was a time where there was the early like A I personal assistance x dot A I where people like seeing amy at x dot A I and to emails and saying I would literally be emAiling with someone corporation a meeting there are yeah i'm see seeing my sister amy, she's going to help us find a time but and then i'm reading the dialogue and i'm like, oh my god, they just seed me onto a thread, would like a boat, and they expect me to enable the body. Just respectful. Actually, I was like, this is so stupid, I hate this.

So I made my own. I made my own competitor, was called regional same promise. You see see regional into your thread and regional we handle IT for you. The thing is, I never built about IT was just me basically like change to my computer for twenty four hours a day for literally water and food going through my mouths in a tube.

And I was read real time to everyone see seeing me into their email threads as A A I, but because they didn't know that IT wasn't A I, which really makes you think the day that we all realized there is no A I assistance, there are just people overseas. Yes, exactly. Looking back, and i've talked to some people and like they are vote about that.

They're like all I was like a performance art peace and I guess that was the interesting thing about that, though is I got to see into the crazies proprietary email chains. I got to see til like dot email email chains. I got to see until like corporate email chains, like air card people would lose their jobs.

If anyone found out the information that I had access to, I got see, see into craggs less casual encounter email chains of a guy looking for a blow job in times square, really wild. So anyways, those are some examples. Es of digital interventions, mister. They're like predecessors to a lot of the things that we've done now that where I would say like anything that we do, digital now is significantly more complex and high production value and typically designed to like handle scale from the beginning.

What do you think is a perfect example of an early physical product that had some of the same features of the purely digital?

I'll just tell you, like the first two, so the first one, and this was crazy because again, we're like not fashion people or hide people or sneaker people by any means, were truly just outsiders to all of these spaces. But we had this idea to take a nike air max and inject water into the air bubbles, because then you can say you're walking on water leg, jesus.

And so we were like, okay, well, which nike issue should have be? And we narrowed down to the classic nike air max ninety seven or White. And we had IT here in our studio.

Some of us had some needles, I don't know why, but we took the needles, got some water injected to the water into air bubble. And we looked at and were like, oh my god, IT actually looks really good. And there's the whole like walk on water thing.

But then we're like, okay, if we're going to do this, how do we built as much symbolic into this as possible? Well, okay, how many do we make? Lets make twelve one fridge to cycle what we Price.

Said that what is the by over s where jesus walked on water? It's matthei. Fourteen, five, okay, one thousand, four, twenty five dollars.

Let's add this cross emulate that you can buy off of amazon to the shoe laces because it'll just make a look good. Let's create packaging where when you open the box, the interior is a waters' pe. So IT looks like the shoe is actually walking on water.

We basically took a no holds bar approach to just jm, packing as much religious symbolic into the product as possible. We actually didn't really know was going to happen, just looking at the shoe itself and the imagery of all the contacts that we designed around IT. IT was very compelling.

We had the right feeling, and I think that our biggest predict, even to date of. Is this gonna perform while or not? Is just do we still get that feeling there's a sort of shared electricity that choice through all of us when we see IT. And we're like, 哦， okay, this is gonna interesting.

We built a website for IT and like we do for everything, is always like a big spoke website because that's the best way to control every aspect of the story possible versus an instagram poster, youtube video, where they control the constraints in the dimensions, in the timing and everything. And we set the product life for sale, and the twelve sold out immediately. And that was the most money we'd ever made in our lives, like twenty five thousand dollars.

And we're looking at the shop of file. Oh my god, we're rich. This is crazy. But in the meantime, we checked the site traffic and is just continuing to crime is climbing, liming, climbing, climbing.

And then we're checking the news and the thing is all over the news and then someone messages us and is like weight, you guys are on late night, was set mires right now and they sent us the clip and set mires is talking with the shoe in this background. He is like talking about the issue and how this is like taking over the internet. And then he closes out by saying, don't forget, jesus rose from the grave three days later.

And when he said that we all looked at each other like, oh my god, let's do IT again in three days. So over the next three days, we went and bought every single nike and max and ninety seven, all right in new york city, went to every single store. I remember going into the flight club and I was like, I have five credit cards.

I will take, how many do you have and they're like for really them. Like, yes, we ended up getting sixty seven pairs, brought them back to the studio, made all of them, and three days got the packaging and we're ready to go. Three days later, we set alive again to go for sale.

And we're just praying like let this sell please. We know one of these stuck holding the bag on sixty seven pairs. They sold out instantly again. So we're again, some like a hundred thousand dollars in our bank account.

And this is where like my recollection of the story gets little bit hazy because it's sort of like in the movies where time slows down a little bit and everything's kind of blurry and hazy. I remember that guys were like, not really celebrating, but yelling and dumping around, like, pulling their hair. Like, oh my god, this actually happened.

Like, is this real? Are we dreaming? Like, IT doesn't seem real. But I was the one stop on the computer and the shop of a apparently during the thirty seconds between when the shoes sold out, and thirty seconds later, I started increasing the inventory on the back end, until thirty seconds later, we had a million dollars in sales.

And then I shut down the store and I close my computer, and I looked at the guys, and I like, we have to make seven hundred pairs as fast as possible. There was eleven thirty in the morning on a tuesday. I remember we walked down to the only bar that was open at that time in workplan.

We had a drink for an hour in silence. No one talks. We are not celebrating, but we also weren't fighting. Then we walked back in science to the studio and as soon as we got through the door, credit cards started flying and phones started dating. We are hitting up every big box retailer er in the tristate area, we needed to buy seven hundred pairs of the issues, make all of them and deliver on the sales that we had done because you just never seen anything like done. And while the guys did that, I hold on the first fight to service is going .

to raise money .

yeah so similar sort of feeling vive and energy from like the digital outputs that we had cut our teeth on getting started. But when IT comes to a physical product is just so much more visual because you're like touching things with your hands, putting things in boxes, you're shipping them to roll people and there's real money involved. It's intoxicates.

I have to ask a question that's probably hard to answer with words everybody said IT. But IT feels key to this, which is you talk about as a language before that everyone kind of speaks the nature of the feeling. When you know you have something, what else can you say about IT that is, in the things you create that allows this sort of thing to happen? Because it's amazing how consistent IT is across the body of work.

And i'm going to start diving into different theory or the fashionable or they're all different, but you've been able to do IT in enough places. Now this is not random. Maybe now is the time to talk about the process that leads to one of these outputs because I just want to understand more about what is in built in that show and the million of the things that you've done that just have this quality to capture imagination.

Yeah, yeah. If I knew how articular ly like, the people would probably try to figure out by now anything they are trying to and not to dumb IT down. But I think a big part of IT is, at the end of the day, I don't even think what we do is that profound or new.

It's actually like pretty simple that takes something that people are generally familiar with, whether IT is a shoe or an existing artwork or an existing system that I message dots. These are systems that people are already deeply familiar with. We just have to like tweet IT a little bit, inject our point of view into IT and then push IT back at you.

And so really, at the end of the day, I think the greatest mistake projects our ones that are this multi le mire that are just reflecting a slightly distorted version of your own reality back at you. And we have a pretty good sense of when we've done that well. And we have a good idea even before he goes out to the world.

This is tapping into not the right guys, because mr. Ve actually doesn't exist in the site guys, because we do these things here in advance. There's a term that often comes up and like conversations around warhorses do shop of like cultural already, mads, which is the idea of taking and existing object and culture that is known for one thing and then putting him in a new context that will give you a new meaning.

So just jumped that with the toilet. Toilets are designed for what we all know toilets do. But then he like what is in a gallery setting or a museum setting, and really just shocked everyone. I think we do that in a way, but in a way that's more relevant to just like the way that the world works right now.

What did you do at our puzzle of the A. T.

M? So this is actually a funny story, because there was never about going to art puzzle. And this was never about us being in the art world.

This was about us finding the best way to distribute an idea that we had. So we had this idea while back of creating an A T M machine with a digital leader board as part of the A T M machine, totally Normal, functioning A T M. You can withdraw cash.

You can check your baLance. But the twist is, if you do any of those things, IT will take your photo. And then thank you.

On a leader board with other people based on who has the most amount of money permanent in their bank account. So this game of flying, the function of, well, we're like, okay, this is amazing. We have to do this, but the concept is never enough for us.

You also have to think about, like, where does this concept show up? How does this show up? So we're like, okay, this could go maybe somewhere in burkina outside of our studio. Maybe we find a way to put IT in time square for like the full traffic there.

But then the more that we can thinking about IT, like we've heard of art, buzzer, mahamat and IT seems to sort of be like the armed pit of the rich people will. And the more that we like poor into a real like this really seems like the best place for the A T. M. machine.

So how do we get IT there? What is art puzzle? We don't even know what IT is actually, right? So we find our puzzle or common whatever, and start called calling the people who run art vesle.

Actually, I remember calling their head of north amErica or something. And I was like, okay, i'm with this group called this shift. We have this art piece that we want to display. IT your art fair.

How do we get a booth? And they sort of like laugh me off saying, like, doesn't know how works. Only galleries get the booth here.

Artisans, cious semana pieces. I don't like, okay, sounds good. So two weeks later, I come back and i've incorporate in my galaxy.

Don't like we have a gallery, we'll pay, we'll do IT how much this is a cost, we'll do IT. Then they're like, no, no, no. Again, that's not how works.

We have like a prevented list of galleries that are known to us a long time in advance. Oh my god. Well, he just told me that where is the list of galleries? So I got the list of galleries.

And this is where I start learning about the art world from the beginning of that ecosystem, between the art fares and the art advisers and the blue chip galleries, and the more experimental galleries and the museums and the auction sis. It's a very interesting ecosystem of and lies and deceit. But back to the original point of the story, I start called, calling all these galleries because I realized I need to go and through them.

And so i'm called, calling. I don't know how much you paying out in the art world like the goal and pace and houser and worth and White cube and zor, like all I was just going down from the top of list and none of those penned up. But somehow there a different avenue.

I ended up meeting a manual partin who represents a lot of our to set a lot of people from a year with like martial catalan who had the banana at our bozzle a few years prior. So of course he was gonna take our call because IT makes sense that our good friends with martial anyways. And I was like, yes, let's do IT.

The ATM machine sounds great. So we take the ATM machine. We get in touch puzzle. Funny thing. The first day is the most exclusive preview day for, I guess, the richest but sadist people.

They were so not into this project, they would walk past IT and you know when like someone walks past you but you know their paying attention. But they're clearly not looking at you like they're working really, really hard to not make I contact. That was R A T M machine that whole first day.

People are just not having IT. But as the week progressed, IT started to open up a little and more to the public with each day, until, I guess, like the three IT was fully open to the public. And by that point, the thing was truly like the talk of the town.

IT was the piece of our bozzle miami two to the point where the fair made us relocated because the crowd was getting so big. IT was blocking fire escapes. They assigned five extra security guards just to like man the crowd, because the cloud was also like getting, not broughty necessarily, but they were bumping into the art of the other galleries, which is not good.

And then the most interesting thing happened, which was a new group behavior started to occur around this, a machine. There was always a big crowd around IT. And people won't. They would like mustard, the bravery, they would go do IT.

And at that point is a performance you are performing in front of a captive audience willing to sort of like show where you stand among the wealthy and the poor. And what end up happening was there were two types of people who would engage, and two types of responses that these people would get. There would be like Normal people, like students, sorry, Younger people who go up.

And they would have a remaining account baLance of twenty seven dollars. And when they would do that and get sung till the bottom of the leader board in front of everybody, the crowd would erupt into applause, kind of a wholesome thing. We see you, you see us.

We are one in the same. And then you just suppose that with the really rich people who are also, if you're engaging with this IT really says all that you need to know about this type of person, the wealth est person who engage with this actually did IT twice. He was probably like late, dirty, early forties athletic build he had on a suit with a oxford shirt.

That may be, he wasn't button one too many times. Five o'clock shadow, gold chain, gucci loafers and A A very attractive girl on his arms. He came and swept and locked in like five and half million.

And the couple turns around to the audience, expecting the same reaction and its cricket complete silence honestly. So express atingle awkward. But that's not the end.

Three hours later, they come back and he swipes again and clocks in at nine and a half million, and then turns around and still the same reaction. And so maybe at the end the day, the outcome of the experiment was quite horsing. That was good, which is, I think Normal people get IT.

One of the progressions that are most interested in for mischief is that the first sort of isolated thing? You buy some shoes, you do something here outside the door or sitting, you send IT in packages. And it's pretty tight loop as you've entered more world are fashion, maybe hospitality, other big things where there's all these different stakeholders you've described me before that you get sucked into and begin to be shaped by the world.

And I think there's lots of perversions that you've learned about in these worlds. Maybe go to fashion next. Since we talked about art there for a minute, how does that feel to enter into like an alternate reality where there's all these different rules and there's all these different players? And what do you learn? And how do you avoid getting sucked into the game and staying as the outsider.

not by choice? We're all outsiders because just somehow we never land IT inside of these institutions. It's not like we really made a conscious decision that was just never accepted. So you don't really know what you're signing up for when you start to get not just accepted by these worlds, but pulled, I will say it's fun.

You are able to learn from like a firehose so quickly about the social dynamics, the hierarchy of the power players, how the products in the manufacturing, in the distribution works, what are the cultural symbols that are important? What are the pockets of these people? How do they Operate? Where do they hang out in the city? Where do they hang out globally? How do they view each other?

What's the existing drama within all these worlds is actually like, really, really fascinating. I think the cooler thing is, from our vantage point, we're able to see all of these words at the same time and taking choose what's meaningful to us and also what's not meaningful to us and maybe what's harmful to us. But you do have to be careful because it's a vanity thing at the end of the day, you're like being accepted by people and high positions that we're just not from those places.

So part of IT IT does feel good. IT feels good to be accepted. IT feels good to be recognized, feels good to be validated for being good at something.

And it's a slippery slow, because we have to remind ourself, we didn't do this to be validated. We never did this to be accepted by these worlds. We did IT because we think it's all absurd, all of IT.

And so how do we keep our sanity? Like, how are we able to look in the near each morning and still see who we were originally? There is a new person that we could become. And IT does get heart that is tRicky.

Is IT fair to say that there is both from an ingredient sense, some nal ism and some like incredible hope and general.

I think you know that it's nyalong m in the sense nothing matters and we're not necessarily going to make the world a Better place, but maybe this will easier fall. And if that sense, it's a little bit hopeful too. We're not mean spirit.

We're not Edwards necessarily trying to like take the piece out of an institution or something like that. I think there's just a hidden wave seeing the world. Some version can be a higher form of creative output. IT just feels us for some reason, there isn't even necessarily like a higher calling beyond our personal desire to make the most creative work of our lives.

Let's talk about process in detail now. How, if I take anything that's coming off the line next week, how far back as I go, who contributes ideas and how what role do you play? How does the team work together? And as much details you can like, what is the process?

The most important thing that I think i've done here was create a system where people are not afraid to have ideas. So if you think of any other creative workplace or creative industry, typically, like junior people are pitching to senior people, jobs are on the line. Pride is on the line.

You're afraid to be wrong. You're afraid to be judged for a bad idea. To me, those are like the killers of creative v.

So from the beginning, I did a lot of work, accurate, the right type of people where ego is not an obstacle to having a good idea, or preventing someone else from having a good idea. Creating an environment where people can feel a little bit reckless, they can make mistakes, they can make a mess. And that's very straight forward.

You look around at the space, IT feels like you can make a mistake. Being in a warehouse is really important, actually, if we are in a White box. And so how you want, wanted, message up.

And then creating also this culture where IT doesn't feel like it's just my ideas getting made or the ideas that I like. That really boils down to creating a certain sense of codes and sensibilities that we also agree on culturally. And you see that come through on the work.

So that was the most important thing that I ever did, because at the end of the day, the people who come up with the ideas that miss chief are actually everyone. You can work on the finance team. You can be our general council.

You can be on the manufacturing production team. Anyone here can come up with a good idea. Anyone is capable of coming up with a good idea. And in fact, it's more valuable to get good ideas from people who aren't in the business of good ideas because their vantage point is real versus people who there are, people whose jobs are to come up with ideas, but they don't exist in a space that they can actually flag on its fake, which is to exist in real spaces.

And then as a result, you create ideas that are able to exist in these spaces as well in a way that's very interactive and almost experiential in a way. So that's the wide part. But then breast taxes, you brainstorm rigorous ly multiple times a week.

They are tied on the same schedule every single time. There's a curriculum plan in advance. It's almost like designing a school curriculum. So like every quarter, there are topics and concentrations and themes that we think are important for mistake in the future and then also topics concentration, the team said.

We have no idea about just to like chAllenging ourselves with new information and keep chAllenging ourselves to not just exist in our own bubble that we've created. The brain forms happen. Every ideas documented. We have an entirely library of these ideas.

And then over, i'd say, like a three to six months period, all these ideas are run through a fairly long tail wedding process that involves evaluation based on Normal things like, can we afford to do this? How much money are we gonna lose doing this? Will we make money on this? Is that even possible or does not need further research? But then also things like, does this shape the personality of mischel in the way that we want? It's almost like mister visit child and were like raising IT.

As soon as we land on concepts that we feel really good about, we actually put them in a pile and then forget about them. And that part is what makes this take six months, because then we will open that pile six months later. Look at them and be like, okay, I already forgot about these ideas, but now that i'm looking at them again, do I still feel very excited about them? Have they survived the test of time? And if they do, then they are ready to thought for production.

And typically, i've done about twelve months in events. So even now, we know all of next year's calendar already. Where are you working on IT?

You've talking me before about the value of rules. I think something you said was rules are interesting because they'd let you know where people before you drew the line say everything you've learned to think about rules in the role that they play.

That line is specifically something I remember writing down when I was at west point, because there were just so many rules. They typically, I drove most people crazy while they were there because, I mean, it's the army. If you break rules, you're going to a get a lot of trouble.

This is simple as that. and. There are so many rules, for everything is impossible to not break a rule. But for me, and maybe this is my problem, but every rule was an opportunity to, like, create some sort of absurdity that I thought was just really entertaining, even if I meant I had to do, like a thousand pushes for IT. This is my coping mechanism.

I'm going to put a copy of the communist manifesto on my bookshop during the inspection, just to see what happens. And of course, you get destroyed for that. But so funny. And so very similarly with miss you, you look at these institutions, you look at how these words of people Operate and like different worlds and different concentrations, and you understand whether the lines are but we really see the lines as like opportunities, not constraints. They're just creative opportunities.

So you're playing with boundaries.

Is the mother yeah I think in the most, I guess, concrete sense of the world, we even look at the law as a creative opportunity. And when you really think about the law, hopefully all of us know this by now. The law is clearly not objective and IT is not set in stone, and IT can be changed on a wm based on who is empower at any given moment. So for us, we actually we embraced that as a very creative opportunity to maybe change the way that the law is interpreted or even like create new laws. And I think that's very interesting actually.

I want you not hold back and answer this question. What impression and lessons to do? Learn interacting with the world of venture investors?

Honest answer, just like any other industry, there are good ones. And then like not so good ones. I think this is less about venture investors and more just the nature of all of these different variables that have descended on the world in the last, i'd say, five to ten years of a lot of capital and hype being way more valuable than like long term sustainability.

And I think venture capital, in many ways, became like a sort of quick fix to someone's vanity. And when we realize that were like, what we should raise money because we can like play this game. But what I didn't realize is a there are good ones, people who are down to embrace the long term vision, even one as big as shift, and also like have our back through all of the crazy things that we've been through.

And I think we've had really, really good ones. But i'll see the bad part, which is, I think V, C, and also taken general, are just so self important and so insult, collect their world that they forget about the rest of the world and how real people think, like what real people care about. Maybe that's fine because I think most people in various industries do that too.

The other parties generally, these people don't really have good taste. And so there was a time where I think mr. Ff was being pretty celebrated by silicon valley, at least in the early days.

Like every early stage company, when you raise money is like, wow, this is the next hot thing and whatever. But then we like started doing things that maybe didn't really speak to the tech world or the V C. World as much I was speaking to like other worlds.

And then you started to like some some tension and lose that early fan base. And there was a uh ha moment where else realizing i'm really paying attention to their feedback, i'm seeing what they're saying online, reading twitter and linked in and seeing people do the big threads analyzing what our new move was and what they think we're doing wrong. And I was like, holy should I almost fell for this? I almost started creating exclusively for that world because of where the money came from.

So I deleted my link to and twitter and facebook. I got off called turkey some instagram to private. And I was like, I will never let, not even just be possible, like, I will never let any specific world have damage influence on the things that I used to do.

If you think back on the project that got the biggest, which one comes to mind?

Definitely the big read boots, for Better, for worse, say more um a year ago, we made these big read boot start just look like a hasta boy I mean, that's IT is nothing really that profound about IT. But I think we made them at a time where there were a few things happening, one in the fashion space, there was this movement towards the absurd, absurd pieces. So that was happening additionally in the fashion space.

And sort of just like in general, we live at a time where people aren't sharing new information, they're actually just sharing content of them, reacting to new information. That's another thing that was going on. We were sort of at the peak of the hype cycle around sneakers and footwear we sell and all that as well and were at a time where lake the algorithms, what dictates reality.

But the alternative is still true, which is when human being see something that resonates with them, they will find a way to share or share the reaction to IT. And then one other thing was there had been a lot of talk of A I and metaverse. I don't know.

The big read boots looked like IT was photoshopped onto people like IT existed in the strange, uncanny value. Is that real or not real? So all of these factors combined to create this perfect storm that we had.

No idea was coming. We made them, and we only made a couple hundred pairs. I remember looking at some my partner here running around in the studio, what I really like this look kind of cool.

Let's make them. But nobody, he's going to buy this. And they were really expensive to make as we made them at a really high level of quality.

So like we'll make a couple hundred. And what is salomon? I think that would be cool. Like I think people will talk about IT in. It's interesting IT cuts so big, everything hit the algorithm smile upon IT.

And then as soon as people realized that they're like weight, if I do content with the bigger boot, i've got to get one hundred interviews that I usually get. And then in addition of that, people were sharing IT. Like the old days, people were literally like finding screen shots of this boot online and sharing IT with their friends on their platforms. So you're getting old school variable period, emotionally driven sharing with new school variety, the algorithm smt upon this, creating the perfect storm of a pretty like iconic image, not in the sense that I think it's important or not, but is just so recognizable. Never seen anything like IT.

Have you ever felt the feeling like the sharp fy store feeling with the jesus shoes?

The feeling is we've looked at each other when it's happening in the past in the lake, literally what we say to each other, others are at bucket up because this is no longer in our hands. We don't control this anymore. That is taking a life of its own.

The narrative tive is gna change. It's going to find different audiences. They're going to reshape IT to fit their perfect image. That's what happened with the bigger boot at the beginning, the first few days of IT starting to really pop off.

IT existed in this finish underground creative fashion spaces, a cool underground thing that not that many people knew about, that you could style creatively. And that was cool. And we're like, this is amazing.

We want to be in these underground spaces. But then IT hit mains tripps so fast that IT became basically like a tool to go viral. And i'm not saying that's a good or bad thing.

I just change shapes. IT had a different meaning at that point. And you just can't control IT when IT happens. You don't control IT. You just pray.

How do you think about the fact that if you would turn that store back on with the jesus bit or something may be so ten, talk a bit about supply and demand and that line and if that something you mess with to or what you think about IT and have learned about IT, there's so much for now about luxury products and always having supply the one less than demand. How do you think about this topic?

The up close micro perspective, not selling enough compared to your demand make sense when you want to hold that over for a later or something. But for us is not really about that. It's about every two weeks really something new and they're all gna Spike at different levels.

Some are gonna bigger than others. But we're at a point right now, they will all be A A Spike. But every time you do a Spike, IT builds off the family foundation that was left by the prior Spike because there is continuity, there is retention.

And so when you zoom out from the past five years, it's actually just one big upwards curve because you're building up what was held over from the prior. Now the tRicky thing for us when we're doing that is we are not selling out quickly of big red boots so that we hold over an audience to sell them bigger birds. Again, we are holding them over and then we need to educate them to be OK with the idea that the next thing after the big grard boots is anime dating tax service software.

And we turn a tony people from that because they're like, I was here for the issues. Why are you sending me turbo tax confederate and my dating cafe? But what that does is where building the world for ourselves that we want to exist, where creativity is that ultimate north star from a value perspective. And so supply and demand isn't as much of a tool toll que move more of the same. It's more of a way to generate attention that helps us distribute an idea and a concept that can hopefully educate a significant enough percentage of those people to stick around with us further ride.

He said something to me before I ve loved, which i've used the last thing, which is that you can't define my strip. This is you couldn't at the beginning, but you can think about how you are trying to monopolize a certain feeling for the person interactive with my trip. How do you describe that feeling that you're trying to monopolize? And I love that framing. Anyone can asked that question themselves.

I love that IT will be different things to different people. But I think there is this feeling of subversion. There is a feeling of levity. It's kind of funny, but like not funny in the way that like you see on saturday night live.

And hopefully IT also just makes you pause and think a little bit like a interesting I never thought of IT that way, but it's totally true. This is just a reflection of a phenomenon that art exists. And then at the end of the day, hopefully you just see IT and embrace the idea of pure and bride creativity.

That's what IT is at the end of the day, is the idea that nothing that you see in front of you is what IT may seem. IT can be an opportunity for something like so much more and hopefully like people are seeing what we do, and they feel inspired to break some rules, make something or do IT in a different way. The rules are all thc.

One of the things that so important here is protecting that creativity. And I know sometimes you do that with legal work, with technology work, with capital that can fund these things. Protecting that core, like raw thing, seems like the heritage that you're building up. If you are giving a sermon on how to protect one's creativity based on everything that you've learned in all the times you you felt the sirens ong pulling you away from IT and wanting a certain world, give them what they want versus express yourself creatively from all that added together, what would you say about protecting lone's own creative potential?

It's a tRicky one and it's something that I couldn't even say i've nail perfectly. It's something that i'm just constantly working on. And every time you feel at slipping, you have to like be so alert, acknowledged and deal with that immediately.

But they're like tactical things that you do. And this is probably all the N B, A business school self help bug type stuff. Choose the right people, fire wrong people, set right vision.

These things you're cheesy, but they're true. There's more to IT as well. How do you create an environment where fear isn't the primary motivator for someone to get their job done?

How do you create a physical environment where people feel like they can make mistakes? How do you celebrate the act of creation and not the act of viral? For example, we never celebrate when something hits.

We don't celebrate when something goes live, if anything will. The day before, just technology during the active crater, which is thus the most holy act. A lot of these little things build up to preservation of this feeling.

Why is IT a holy act? It's created for us.

We make stuff from nothing. IT is literally like an act of god. There was nothing, and then there was something.

It's been that feeling ever since the beginning, even making my first website. I was such a you, rk, a moment for me, or was like, holy shit, wasn't there. And then I literarily spoke. And now that is, that's a crazy feeling. We can never forget that feeling.

The star contrast is west point in my mind, what is the most good and bad things that you remember or take from the couple years that you were there? I think you laugh right before the abati service. exactly.

I so I did the hardest st part, which was the first year, and then I stuck around for one more year, which was about how IT takes to quit. So I mean, personally, I probably needed my ask a little bit. I wasn't a fully formed human being yet.

So there is something to say about the discipline and the work, I think that you get from IT. I think the biggest thing is worst point to train you for what you're gona do later. They get you really comfortable with the impossible task.

So the best example is the rule for the academic curriculum. For every hour that you're in class, you're assigned three hours of homework. But west point doesn't run like a Normal college.

Where did you choose your schedule? And stuff like that know you're in class for seven hours a day. So if you do the math, the math doesn't add t out.

Not their problem. You just have to figure IT out. It's impossible, let's say you get in trouble.

You have to do a thousand push PS. Not many people can do a thousand push PS. Most people can. Not only a few in the world ever again, not their problem. You just have to find a way to get through IT.

And I think that was really valuable because midriff is used to taking on things where it's like there's not really a playbook on how to do this. It's not straightforward at all. And you just figure IT out, you roll your leaves up and you figure IT out.

And I think that was a really valuable thing for me personally. And then so easy. The leadership lessons are also, like, really good.

I remember being out in the field during your summers, out doing patrols for months. We were out in the field and there was a simulated moder attack. So you like, see if things find in, you hear the sounds and it's like we got ta get out of.

And I remember my platoon leader was like, I, we need to run this way. I grab all yourself. So like, you have a eighty pounds bag, you ve got your weapon, you're running.

And there was someone on the team who was a lot smaller. I think he was probably like seventy pounds. And SHE had a eighty pound bag as well.

And he had a pretty bad trip because we're just running. You gotta go. Without hesitation, he picks up her bag as well, hands or her weapon, and like, let's go.

So he shouders close to one hundred sixty pounds and books IT. And then once we like that to safety, hands back the bag, no questions asked, no issue. And I remember red singing that was like, I like that you take care of people, you don't make a big deal of IT, and then you move on.

I thought that was really good. Those were a couple of things that stuck with me. The bad things, I don't know.

I think it's all like pretty good experience. Actually it's more so, uh, if I stayed, I was gonna keep getting in trouble. That's what really bad things. What happened?

Do you think the fact you came out of that? Because I know prior to that, you really didn't have a lot of cultural experience. So I understanding as you not allowed to do a lot of stuff as a kid, played a lot of piano .

and we're incredibly focused.

Do you think that emerging as a twenty year old without any influence on you ended up being a major part of why you're able to?

I think I was huge because I arned about culture all at once on a flat spectrum. I was learning about urban outfitters, at the same time of learning about ku s, at the same time of learning about marvel. And also in grama just been bought and the social network had just come out.

I was getting all of these things as if they were part of the same corn curriculum. I do think that was very viable. And you just have such an open mind because you're like, the world is so big and I don't really know I belong here. I think that was everything .

actually the point you made about impossible tasks, the hours of homeworker pushups. What's the best anode e in the projects that you've done? Which project was the most impossible task that you've tackled and gone through? And I asked, because IT seems like every story i've heard, and i've heard so many now, people creating incredible things, this kind ends up being A R D. Key ingredient.

Yeah, yeah. I should have specified earlier. I think most people in their careers do at this wall, and they learn how to deal with the impossible task.

The thing about what point is like I got on day one as eighteen super valuable for us. I mean, myself, ff is the impossible task we shouldn't, right? Like on paper, this doesn't make any sense.

There's a good friend of mine who is actually he spent some time in VC, and I remember talking them in twenty twenty one. I was trying to figure out if I was going to reach for this or not. And he was like, honestly, I like you, but I don't think you can do IT and he has nothing to do with you and just doesn't work this way.

This kind of thing doesn't work. You need such a repeatable hit rate. You need such a strong understanding of audience and retention and a nose for cultural IT can't work.

I can't last. Actually, I hung out them a few weeks ago and he said, yeah, I remember that conversation. And honestly, if someone came to me today pitching what you were pitching, I would tell them the same thing, like, I shouldn't exist.

I agree IT shouldn't. This is the impossible thing. And then every project is also got IT and possibilities to. And you just figured that out.

tells what you learn about fashion.

I think fashion is two things. I think on one side, fashion is utility, basic needs, shelter, protection. And then the other side is fantasy costumes.

Human beings love costumes. Personally, I hate halloween, but people often love halloween. And then I go to these fashion run wishes, and they're celebrating.

This is crazy, right? IT does come down to fanta sy. And the fantasy is not just tied to atheism, but is also tied to value and legacy and symbolism and cultural already made. And because of that, I think this is such a rich space to plan, because also, IT is so tight to identity. These are symbols that are created by designers, that are created by brands that you wear on your body, and in some ways, that kind of serve the same function as a painting in your homework.

So I think is interesting when miss chiff sees that were like, okay, you can try to focus on creating things that are aesthetically pleasing, and that's one way to go, but you can also seek to exploit the tensions that people have between these objects, not just from anesthetic perspective, but also like a value perspective and identity perspective. Last summer, we made a handbag that was the size of a grain of salt, because we notice this pattern of the smaller the handbag gets, the more expensive IT seems to become. And we're like, well, let's make one really, really, really small. And that is, hold at auction for sixty four thousand dollars. So, most expensive handbag of all time by oil, for sure.

Do you do IT?

So my best friend from childhood, he's a post stock at columbia and biomedical engineering. So he helped us basically like identify and then modify a manufacturing process that allowed us to create this handbag of microscopy c level. We made IT. There was like an image of like a little Green back on a thumb that just spread like wild fire last summer. And IT said, everything that everyone is already thinking about, passion, which is IT, is absurd, but not in a headful way IT just IT is.

what do you make of the fact that only fans has orders of magnitude more revenue than patron?

We're just humans at the end of the day, that's all IT is there's nothing profound about IT is just whatever mah loves hierarchy of needs as all bullshit all human beings care about is being able to eat, sleep and reproduce and flex on your neighbor. That's like the true those are the only things that matter just as human beings. And obviously, only fans takes like a huge one of those. And then tiktok and syrian social media takes a huge one of those one games.

Have you were played into the flex on your neighbor very directly?

specifically? I was a, of course, yeah, yeah. There was a website that we made a long time ago where was first person social media footage of dining experiences at the first dining establishments in york city.

So like, imagine, like vertical videos, oh, I like carbon, here's my meal. Or like Norma, or eleven medicine, or proceed, or berna n and then we created a website that publish all of this footage so that you can download and post IT to your stories. So IT looks like you're eating at all these places. And people did IT. So many people use this.

One of my friends has this great saying, we're not searching for meaning, but for the feeling of being alive. Is that what you are chasing me? Think for ourselves.

for the people who are act with their stuff.

both .

definitely not meaning. I don't think we're smart enough to even know that first selves much as other people, the feeling of being alive yeah maybe the truth is I just don't even think we're that profound about IT at the end of the day, it's a lot simper. We see the world in a very particular way, and then we communicate in a very particular way.

And I think in some senses, music is the best analogue. I think this shift is a band, and we have a very particular sound. We have a particular set of instruments.

And we've been on tour for a few years now and it's going pretty good, which is great because when we first assembled, we are only playing a weddings to really like continue this analogy. But then I started to work. We just have a sound and people seem to be into IT.

I know you have the right people. You've recruit the band members. What have you learned about doing that effectively? Like what is great recruiting abstracting way, the kind of person you're recruiting? What have you learned about getting ridiculous good at that.

the initial core group. So there's like a founding team of four others. We started dreaming together back in twenty eighteen, I think, and there was no sense of recruitment there.

IT was just the vibes, vibes. And we all had nothing to lose because we had nothing going for us. This was pure luck. But we're still so tight. And the land, even today, even though we grow in our own contexts, has changed and is just place in the world has changed.

But there is something so magical about being in a room with that initial group of people where you're just growing were just so remarkably on the same page, but had such complimental school sets. Nothing like IT. But then of course, like you have to grow and you have to like find your team.

And I think you place a lot of value on things that probably end up reflecting yourself a little bit. I think like attracts like. And for us, we have a high emphasis on the ability to lake roller, perhaps to be scrappy, to get through that impossible task.

We have a big emphasis on being a good person, which I know everyone says, but for us specifically, that means you're humble, you don't bring an ego. And what that usually ends up all the meaning is that people who are nerdy and introverted. So even though I think we're pretty well now, now you might even sake famous, if we really wanted, we could start showing up in these circles with these socialists at these clubs and parties.

But we don't. No one here does. No one here cares.

In fact, I think a lot of the people here, when some of our fr really pops off, they actually don't know because they don't even care if it's bigger, not they just care that they made IT. And I think that sensibility is really viable. That's why this place exists even today. And that's why we really haven't had many people quit. Never under five, I think, and five years people stick around.

Does IT feel like you add any sort of crossroads right now?

Yeah, yeah. He totally, he does. There are a few things that are going on when our contexts changed. Were not unknown underdog as much anymore. I wouldn't say we're establishment, but we're just a lot more well known that changes how we see the world a little bit and that also changes the type of work that we can do a little bit because we're just bigger.

The other part that, that also impacts IT changes a little bit about how we see ourselves and how we talk about ourselves and how we like communicate with others. There was a time where we were a huge black box. I would never be doing the same interview with you because there was value.

And like the secure acy when nobody knew who we were and they could not understand our intentions or motivations or like our goals. But now that were more visible, I think we're hitting a point where IT makes sense to share a little bit more and hops that other people see this and walk away rethinking their own perspective, unlike creativity and the active creation and doing things which I think is really good. So these are sort of the fills, official internal struggle, crossroads.

But then there are other crossroads too, in the world right now, I think reality is increasingly just a cheap tool. What I can said earlier back in the day, the act of going viral with black magic ten years ago, but it's not the case now. Now IT feels artificial, cheap, had a gross.

So we're thinking a lot more about almost how to suppress viral, actively fight that, which is a crazy thing to think about. That is not what a real business would say to do right now. It's continue to have as many free as you can no matter where they come from or what the intention is.

Just keep doing that for us, I think, is an important time for us to think about how do you make that a little bit harder for people? How do you create more secrets? So that's another crossers I were at. And then I guess from like a business point of view, we also have to think about the difference between quick short term cash and long term cultural importance where motivations are the opportunity to make money tomorrow exists.

But then we after reminder sales, was that the golf when we started or has our goal changed? What is that now? And I think we were ultimately navigating to is when we started this IT was always how do we create a world for ourselves, where we can just make all the stuff in our heads and then do with our friends. And I think that very much continues to be the case. And then the other part is for Better, for worse, we want to see this last as long as possible, and we don't really know what that means for what that looks like.

Very surprised by that when you started. Did you think that you would end up Carrying that? This thing last for a very long time. No.

no, not at all. Not at all. I think we like getting to a point where this can be important from a historical point of view.

But to do that, we need to ask a bit longer. Five years is not enough. Ten years is not enough IT probably needs to be closer to twenty years.

Sure, part of this is vanity driven for sure, but the other part is they think it's the highest calibre of personal chAllenge, which is how do you make sure that what you did was actually important? How do we make sure that we survive the test of time so that I was important enough for kids to actually learn about this in our school or their history classes in the same chapters of do shop and war hall? And maybe we're creating, like, a new area of study altogether.

Who knows, part of me, I also like getting older and like in my methods now, and I spend a lot of time talking to students. I'm so excited when they are inspired by what this shift does because unlike most kids in design school or art school or fashion school, like you get the degree and you go get the job and typically some sweats shop at like an ad agency or a fashion house or design studio, and you have to like political way up to creating more bullshit work that you don't really care about. So that may be in your spare time.

You do something that's creative ly fulfill when they see myself. Ff, they believe that is all possible. It's kind of cool. So i'd like to keep that going as long as I can.

A strange chAllenge for you. Imagine a open area of a big book's shelf in which I want to place an object of this chip, object that, when I look at IT, will remind me of everything you've told me today. Which objective you think would do that best?

It's got to be the tax software. It's the box set of our turbo tax competitor. It's got the city wrong in the booklet inside, but on the outside, it's just enemy. I think that is a really, really good example.

Where did that come from? You've mentioned that twice. Tell that story close here.

Yeah, it's sort of us all the right ingredients. There is a adversary which is turbotax and plenty don't pack with turbo tax their monopoly and their dark x patterns and how it's just a questioner at the end of the day. But they up saw you for like all these are of things through fear, plenty to impact there.

So good adversary. We also believe IT shouldn't cost you money to find your tax. So there's that as well. And then there's this other observation that everything is becoming enemy or everything is becoming, if you want to consider metaverse avatar ars games, like everything is setting in that direction more than things that we love to do here, more often than not as jm, two completely polar opposite worlds, and together to create something new and deadly to turbo tax. Three thousand, which is our version, are free competitor turbo tax.

You started on the internet in the days when I was heady and fresh and new, and microphone tier feels very different today. Do you think the internet still has a sense of place?

I don't know. Personally, IT feels a little bit depressing because I don't know if people are creating as much newness verses and the some so jeep and cynical, but I think people are just creating what their gods are telling to create. And the god's are tiktok, the god's are instagram.

And any moment where like the algorithm changes or like there's a new platform update, people change their be and then you look at what performs well and then you mimic IT, you copy IT. And then ultimately, like when you zoom out, everyone is just feeding into this renzi, which is a bomber. But I think everything moves in cycles.

And I also think at the end of the day, human beings are get deeply creative species. I'm bullishly that we're gonna figure IT out the pencil muslin in another direction. Before too long.

the last question asked everybody, what is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for you?

I don't know if it's kindest thing. But I remember this mean a lot to me and I mean a lot to a lot of us here. There's a very well known artist name, pa.

pv. SHE is represented italy at the piano very, very far along in her career. She's also represented by parton, who were represented by, and SHE wrote us a note, I think, six months into that time where we were starting get accepted by that world, I preface.

But her note said something along the lines of of all of the grades that i've gone to know over my career. Mistress is the one that seems to represent the future that they would wanted to see. But then he also accentuated with that. Make sure that you don't create for them at the same time, and that kind of stuck with us. That's just the first thing I came to mind when you asked a question.

gay. I think this thing that even your team have created is so singular. It's so obviously, uh, incredible form of self expression for you guys. I hope that people take a little bit and just wonder about what something similar could mean for them and go creates some .

stuff and hopefully someone creates like a competition and we have beef some .

things that would be good for business.

Thank you.

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