PoolTogether Community Podcast #18 with Sean from PoolTogether

This is the PoolTogether Community Podcast. PoolTogether is the world's number one no-loss prize savings account. You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit. You're listening to the PoolTogether Community Podcast. I'm your host, Hot Mike, aka Tim, aka Smells Like Teen Spirit, and I'm here with Loitering Sean from the PoolTogether community. Sean, thanks for making time for us on this wonderful Wednesday. How are you doing?

I'm doing great. Excited to be here.

Coming to us from the great white north of, of Canada. And

it is, it is snowing today. So, you know,

it's, it's almost May, Sean. When does it stop snowing for you?

Hopefully today.

Okay. Today could be the last day of snow. That's great.

I mean, it was, it's, it's crazy. And Canadians, Canadians, I think generally just have a very short memory when it comes to weather because it was beautiful 2 days ago and we're like, oh, it's so amazing. The weather's so nice. And then it gets this and we're like, oh, it's miserable. And then it'll get nice again tomorrow. And then we'll be like, oh, it's so amazing. The weather's so great.

So. Do people in your area wear shorts like no matter what, until it's like, um, you could lose limbs? Is that a thing? No.

I have worn shorts out in the freezing cold when I'm like taking out the trash or something. Yeah. But like not, not, not for like an everyday interaction.

Right. I want to create new stereotypes today on, on this podcast. New Canadian stereotypes. Do you have, when I, I got to spend some time in Alaska or the Ska as I call it, just like I got to spend time in Vancouver, which I call it the Couves. And do you have, do your cars have plugs in the front of them where you can like plug them in to heat them up. Is that a thing for you?

So, so it's not a thing for me, but it is a thing in a lovely town called Winnipeg. And generally in the, in the Canadian prairies, it gets so cold that if you don't plug in your car, that it won't start. And literally in like downtown Winnipeg, my family is originally from Winnipeg. I don't go a lot, but I have a love-hate relationship with Winnipeg. But, but, but in downtown Winnipeg, the parking meters all have plugs in them so that you can plug your car in to make sure that it'll start after you leave whatever you're doing downtown.

And then if you have a Tesla, it'll, it'll charge it. That's great. That's so good.

I mean, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a regular power plug, so it's not like the Superchargers. So, you know, it'll, you can charge it over the course of like 5 days.

Gotcha. Gotcha. And now, do you have a love-hate relationship with Winnipeg because of hockey? Oh, okay.

No. Oh, okay. I have a love-hate relationship with Winnipeg because in the winter, It is colder than any place I've ever been. And in the summers, it's muggier and more humid than any place I've ever been.

God, we got chat going on. People are freaking out about Alaska right now. And the question for me is, have I been to the Salty Dog? And Da Boom, no, I didn't go to the Salty Dog because I was like, that place is totally a tourist trap. And Da Boom went and put a dollar on the wall there. I was recently in a place that had a $20 bill on the wall and I'm like, that's pretty gutsy. Like somebody could just snatch that, but it had a lot of tape on it. So anyway, but that's the chat.

We have to, I have not been to Alaska, nor have I been to Northern Canada, but there's a, there's a place called Dawson City in, which is like as north as you get. I think it's in Yellowknife, but it might be in the Northwest Territories. So I apologize to anyone who's up there. But they have a bar and the tradition is they have a toe, a severed toe that they have preserved in salt. And you're supposed to take a shot and they throw the toe in and you kiss the toe while you do a shot. So, you know, you can go do that.

You're not serious. Like you kiss the actual toe?

Go Google it. It's a real thing.

And you'd like take the toe out of the salt or what? The toe's sticking out of the salt?

The toe, the toe is the, the, the, the, this toe is sitting in like a jar with like, that's covered in salt. And then you order the drink, they take the toe out, they drop it in the drink. You, uh, you, you do your shot, you kiss the toe, and then, uh, they put it back in the, uh, and they put it back in the salt and preserve it.

They dro— they drop the severed toe in your drink.

Yeah.

I've never seen Silence of the Lambs, but is everybody like the guy that goes, hello Clarice, Clarice, or something like that? That's like, that's like, I've never heard of that before. And my faith in humanity has plummeted. That is incredible. Wow.

Well, I mean, it, in, in like, so the legend goes, at least as far as I'm familiar with the legend goes, because I've never been there, so I haven't done that. Yeah. But the legend is that it's not a toe that was chopped off. It was a toe that actually fell off due to frostbite.

I mean, I kind of figured that actually, but like, so it is a real toe. It can't be a real toe. It can't be a real toe.

It's a real, it's a, it's a real honest to goodness human toe.

So I myself have kissed the Blarney Stone and I feel like it's a similar thing where you go to kiss the Blarney Stone for like in Ireland for like, you know, eloquence or something. But apparently people pee on the Blarney Stone cuz everybody kisses it. So not as gross, I think. What, what would you rather do? Would you rather kiss the toe or kiss the Blarney Stone?

Um, so I've actually been to the Blarney Stone. I don't remember if I kissed it or not, but I would, I, I would rather, I would rather kiss the toe. I mean, it's, it's, it's a legend, man. You got, if you go, you gotta go to Dawson City to kiss the top.

Okay. All right. Maybe we could do a PoolTogether retreat there. This, this podcast is off to an awesome start. This is really— so Sean, Sean, I want to hear your origin story. I would love to hear just about you and like, how'd you get into, how'd you find PoolTogether? Did PoolTogether find you? What's your background? Just gimme kind of like the elevator pitch for Sean. For Loitering Sean.

Yeah. Yeah. My name is Sean. Um, I'm not really anonymous. I used to be, my, my, my alias was Loitering Gorilla. And then, uh, I guess it was on a community podcast where someone was like, I'll just be Sean. And so I think it was Andy Kaufman. It was like, uh, no, uh, no, you should be Loitering Sean. I'm like, okay, I'll go with that. But, uh, but my name is Sean. I'm from Toronto, born and raised. Um, my, my origin story was once upon a time, my mom met my dad and they fell in love and got married. And then decided to have children. But no, so 16, almost 17 years ago after I graduated university, I started an advertising agency with my 2 brothers. And we were a, you know, it was really interesting because it was about 2006, 2005, 2006. And it was the beginning of this social media revolution. And I remember at the time, all of the conversation was Hey, people are having PVRs and they're going to fast forward commercials. What's advertising going to do? And that was the environment that we said, wow, there's this disrupt— there's all these disruptive technologies and there's new places that you— there's places where you can have one-to-one interactions and then continue these conversations online. Really be helpful to help brands have those conversations and realize this new space. And we were able to convince somehow some pretty big brands up here in Canada that We were worth a bet on. And we ran some campaigns early on that were extremely successful, uh, that allowed us to build some really strong and fundamental relationships and grow, uh, an agency across the country, across the country here. And then ultimately, slow, like expanded to the US a couple of times, but we're a primarily Canadian agency. And, uh, fast forward 16 years later, we've grown to be kind one of the larger independent agencies in Canada. We've worked with almost every major kind of like traditional brand, at least in some respect, on some level. And we've got a huge and great team and a huge growing client base. And I've kind of said, you know, after 16 years, I've said, you know, this is great. And we've got an amazing operational team that's kind of running the day-to-day. It's time to start exploring the next iteration of what social media was back in 2006. So I started, I guess I would say, I think it was 3 years ago. I think I wrote it in a newsletter, but 3 years ago I started dipping my toe into like crypto and DeFi 3 or 4 years ago. And I had a friend who was really connected to the Ethereum development team because Vitalik is from Chernobyl. And, you know, the ConsenSys, there's a lot of the ConsenSys guys were here and he was saying like, buy ETH, buy ETH, you gotta buy ETH, you gotta buy ETH. And I was just like, ah, I don't know, there's so much risk and I don't know what's happening. But like, I started learning about the space and seeing what the potential was, but I never bought ETH, or at least in a massive scale. And that was the biggest regret of my life because instead of, I'd be on my private jet right now had I done that. But after kind of that, that kind of ETH Bitcoin rise and then crash, I went back to focusing on the business for a while. And then when DeFi started hitting, I started to see new potentials in, new potentials in kind of Web3 and get really excited about it. And so I started digging a lot deeper into what is Web3 and what could it mean for the future? And what I found really started to blow my mind in terms of kind of the convergence of the metaverse with cryptocurrencies, with NFTs to create new forms of business models, new methods of community building and compensation and new ways of marketing communication. And I got really excited and I said, well, I really want to learn more. And I'm much more, you know, it's great to sit and read information and read things from that other people have said, but the best way to learn is by doing. And so I started digging deep into like, what are some of the most exciting use cases in kind of the crypto Web3 space right now? And that's when I found PoolTogether. I saw an article somewhere talking about prize-linked savings. And one of my major clients that I've spent a large part of my career working with was a bank. And so I was, I got introduced to the concept of prize league savings through them and started to understand their potential, even though they're not really big here. And so I saw PoolTogether and I'm like, geez, this is a concept that could rule the world. Like people love the idea of winning and especially winning big amounts of money with no risk to their initial capital. You know, we can really do some good for people who are unbanked and for people who don't know how to save and don't understand the concept of saving. There's a ton of potential here. So I kind of put up my hand, I guess back in November, and I'm like, hey guys, this is pretty cool. How can I help? And right away, right away the community was super welcoming and super open, gave me some Pool tokens just because I said hi. And then said, you know, hey, we're trying to launch this marketing working group. Maybe you can help with that. And that started my journey down PoolTogether.

Well, that is quite the, that's, yeah, that's quite the origin story. Um, and so how, how has it been with the marketing? Like, how has, how has, uh, you know, you started a marketing agency, it went, it went boom, it went, it went big time. You landed some great, you know, well, first of all, before we get into like, how's it been with the dApp, with PoolTogether and the marketing, like, can you, can you give me like a, A campaign, like a fave campaign that you've done? Like, like what's the Canadian version of like the Budweiser frogs?

The best campaign that we've ever done was for a bank called TD Bank. If you're in, if you're in the Eastern Seaboard of the US, you might be familiar with it. They're big in kind of New England, New York, down in Florida. They're big across Canada. And so we launched a campaign called TD Thanks You. There's been multiple iterations of it since. But the concept was that they said, you know, how can we leverage the power of, of, of, you know, media and social media to get people excited about what a bank can be? I will tell you, everybody hates banks. It doesn't matter what type of bank and what country you're in. Everybody hates banks. And so we came up with this concept of saying, well, what about if people, everyday people would go to an ATM or an automated teller machine or automatter. It's used in multiple different languages. And the ATM, instead of giving them money, it spoke to them and it knew about them on a personal level and then gave them something as a thank you for being a customer of the bank. And so we worked with branches all across Canada. We asked branch managers and we said, tell us, you know, the stories of customers who need the most, who have the most compelling stories or need the most things. And we got some Some really, really awesome stories of people who were just like, you know, a single mom who was putting her kids through school and couldn't afford to take them on vacation. We had another story of another mother whose daughter had cancer in Trinidad and Tobago, and she was working here and supporting her. And so we told them, we're like, hey, we're creating, we have this new ATM concept and we want you to come in and test it. And they came in and didn't know anything else about it. And then we gifted them a whole bunch of things. So we sent the mother and her kids to Disneyland. We sent the, we sent, we sent the lady back to, uh, back to Trinidad to take care of her daughter. And we did a bunch of other things like that and put it together into a 2.5 to 3 minute video that went insanely viral. I mean, now viral is a different term now. Now, like when I say, you know, we had an advertising brand, brand video about a bank that got 20 or 30 million views, that sounds like nothing, but at the time that was unprecedented. And we had, you know, it was, it's definitely the thing I'm the most proud of. It's, it's, I've never seen, it's really, you see the power of communications when you get, when you start to hit scale like that, uh, just by telling a story and doing it all organically.

That's great. That's sweet. Um, and you said it did multiple iterations?

Well, yeah. So, I mean, it was so successful that we've been doing it every year since we launched it. And we've kind of evolved it and changed it and moved it into more of a paid media environment. But the concept is still the same. Instead of a bank telling you how to save your money or how to optimize your money or how to do things better, just say thank you. And people really resonate with being appreciated for being who they are and for giving you their business.

That's great. Yeah. My buddy did, uh, was, uh, in the, in the US was an actor and he got like a big campaign where he was the banking. It was named BART. It was like the banking automated response, you know, and he came from big banks and then he started working at TD Bank and then he was like, they were trying to teach him how to be human because he came from the big banks. And I was really pumped for him because I thought he was going to be like the next Flo for like Progressive or something. Insurance, but it did. They canceled it. But, but it was very cool. And the whole point, and then I learned that I can get free pens at TD Bank in the US. So if ever I need a pen, I could just walk into TD Bank and they'll give me one. It's very sweet.

You could, you can also, you can also sort your pennies for free. They all have free change machines.

Yeah. Those things are massive. Yeah. That's really cool.

That was, that was a TD Bank US innovation that got, that got spread all across the country.

And, and they actually, when they filmed the commercial, they, they cared so much about their customers that they created like a little Tram that would take them to the net, the, the closest TD Bank location that wasn't filming. So they even like thought, it was just so impressive to me that they just like created the system so that people wouldn't be inconvenienced and they could still bank in downtown Manhattan or Midtown Manhattan. It was just like very cool. Anyway, this is not about TD Bank. This is about, it's about you, Sean, but that's, that's really great to hear. How was your marketing experience been at, at PoolTogether working in the, in, in a nascent DAO structure, working? with, uh, you know, an inaccessible platform, which is cryptocurrency. Um, how's it been? How you doing?

Uh, well, so I would say that immediately, you know, I've all my life, I have heard everybody in every new industry that we've always entered, people always say, well, my industry is different. When we started working, when we started working with, uh, with technology companies, they'd be like, well, technology is different than financial. When we started working with CPG, consumer packaged goods companies, they'd be like, well, CPG is different than TPG is different than technology. When we started working with, I'm trying to think of all the examples. We started working with like retailers. They'd say, well, retail is different. But the truth is, and I always say, marketing is marketing and all you're trying to do is get to a human insight and then build compelling messages around that human insight. And so when I got to, when I started here, I'm like, Well, marketing is marketing. So you just need to understand who we're talking about, understand what drives them, what motivates them, get to that human insight that can allow us to see what is their unrecognized needs. If you talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, and then start to build messaging around them and target them in the most effective way. And immediately everybody was like, well, Web3 is different. Web3 is different. And Web3 is different in a lot of different ways. And it really took a long time to learn that even though that fundamental thing is accurate, you still need to know who your customer is and why they act the way they act. And what is that underlying cue and insight that's going to drive them to take an action? The tools that your toolkit, the tools in your toolkit to A, find that out and B, communicate with them are very, very different. So like in the world of traditional marketing, data is a massive, massive thing these days. And, you know, everything that you do is tracked either by cookies or by database interactions. And the leader, kind of leading platforms, Facebook, Google, Amazon, they have so much data that they offer brands the ability to target and micro-target once you start to understand who your consumers are. But in crypto, you don't know who your consumer is because people use your product with a wallet, not with a sign-in. And in crypto, if you start to capture data about people, they're hypersensitive about it. And so understanding the sensitivities around data and how to build those personas and work with those people to get that, to get to the, to the right target groups and the right ideas is a very, very different challenge. Although the action is the same. The method to get there is very, very different. And then Web3 as well is super community-oriented. So like, you know, in traditional business world, you deal in hierarchies. There's, you know, a chief executive officer who has a chief marketing officer that builds a strategy and is accountable for their results. And then they hire people that can execute against that strategy. And those teams hire agencies that can help you against that vision. But in a DAO structure, there isn't that accountability, and let alone there isn't necessarily that expertise that you're, that everyone's like, this is that one person who knows everything and they're going to be accountable to everything. And so everything needs to be shared with the community and everyone's community and everyone's inputs are not only valued, but they're important because they've come from such a diverse set of skill sets and experiences. And so, it's great to hear perspectives from engineering, from sales, from customer service, from community management. And they all have, they all have impact on how you can build things and what you can do. And it slows you down a little bit. You can't operate as fast necessarily, but it's, it definitely increases the quality of the product that you can start to, start to produce as you start to deliver messages.

So, what you just said got me off on a tangent. Thank you, ADHD or ADD, whatever. But, but I was talking to a political— somebody who did political campaigns. And they, speaking of data, they, they, they would like, and this is before the Cambridge Analytica stuff that happened, where they would just get user data from Facebook. And they would find that people who like KitKat and Nike on Facebook had an overwhelming tendency to support, to back a certain political candidate. And so what they would do is they would target everyone who didn't back that political candidate, but who liked KitKat and Nikes, and they would just throw money at it and they would convert those people because for some reason, from, for some inexplicable reason, there was this correlation. And so there's this current debate about like free speech and then like, uh, and I totally understand that about like on Twitter and Elon acquiring Twitter and free speech and all that. But there is this like manipulative advertising through data that I feel like people are still trying to explain, um, that can get us down roads that are like, you know, craziness. So I don't know if you have any thoughts on that or if you can explain how you exploited that, Sean. Did you work with Cambridge Analytica?

I will not, and I never would. In my world, the key thing that we focus on, there's a lot of tangents to go down, Tim. You asked a very wide range of questions. But from the traditional marketing perspective, the focus is, at least for the brands that I've worked with, the focus is not about trying to be nefarious or trying to convince someone to do something that they don't want to do. The objective is to identify people who have a propensity to be interested in what you're saying, and then make sure that your message is only seen by those people and not people who aren't interested in what you have to say. And it's not necessarily saying, hey, I'm trying to convince someone to buy a KitKat when they're not interested in a chocolate bar. It's trying to say, hey, if someone's going to buy a KitKat or a Snickers, I prefer them to have a KitKat. But all of it is centered around what's called first-party data. So everything that you, that, that happened, at least in Canada, is a little bit different than the States. The States actually has much more lax, the States, at least from my experience, has the most relaxed data laws in the world. Um, definitely, uh, at least like, you know, I, I'm familiar with Europe and Canada and the States, and the States is definitely the most relaxed, uh, relative to, to all of Europe and Canada and the States. But, and so in Canada, it's, so the US, you can get a lot more data more freely and there are bigger data aggregators that drop cookies through apps and information and do things a bit more nefariously, which is, you know, part of why crypto is so important and why it's really important for people to not only control their data, but control who gets access to it and where and why and why, you know, blockchains and wallets become even more important. But, but it becomes around first-party data and saying, okay, so if you are already buying my computer, what else can I know about you? And what other products might you be interested in? Because I already know that you have this computer and I already know that you like cars. Well, maybe you'd be interested in this racing simulator. And, and so it's, and so it's gathering and there's so many interactions that happen already in a first-party environment. The brands that I've been working with are trying to gather those first-party data interactions. So it's people who are already coming and engaging with you to make sure they can track and optimize and best service their customers. But data is certainly a big challenge and a big issue because the biggest thing is that people don't understand that every time that they engage digitally, they create a data footprint. And that data footprint is captured by somebody and you aren't getting compensated for it. And, you know, I saw there's tweets about Elon buying Twitter where it's like, Elon Musk just paid $44 billion for your data and you got $0 for it. And like, that's a true statement, right? So it's, it just comes back to the value and the value proposition of Web3 and who owns data and why.

Apparently, I'm thinking, I'm hearing that there's There's some like shorting of Tesla right now because he bought a lot of it, like half of it on margin on Tesla. So if you tank Tesla, then he has to do something else or I don't know. I think that's funny. But no, I totally get that. How do you do marketing in a dataless environment such as crypto? Or I mean, there is data, right? There is stuff that you can get, but it is, I feel like you have to go dataless or you have to zig When everyone else, when like traditional marketing does the data thing, you just kind of have to do, what did they do before they had Cambridge Analytica, before there was all this stuff? Do you see any analogs to crypto in your other work where you're like, actually it's really similar to skeet shooting. Like skeet shooting is really the crypto world. So we need to take a play out of the skeet shooters marketing playbook. I really am into skeet shooting.

I'm into hockey, Tim. I'm always into hockey. So gimme hockey references. But so what I would say is that, so let's start before social media and the idea of data, your data footprint being present every time you engage online. And sometimes even when you don't engage online, I'll digress quickly because it's important to know, like there's things called beacons that stores, that retail stores can put in place. That sit and try to scan for your, every time your phone tries to connect to the, to a Wi-Fi, it grabs Wi-Fi networks. You know, if you look, if you open up your Wi-Fi thing and it's like, connect to this Wi-Fi network, and it shows you all the Wi-Fi networks that are there, you're technically, your phone is sending out a signal consistently saying, saying, hey, what Wi-Fi information is here? And so people have created beacons to say, hey, every time a phone pings and asks me, let me count that as somebody who's walking by. And your phone has a unique identifier so that you can, you can then marry networks of beacons to understand people's digital footprint in the physical world. And so it's not just for, it's not just your own digital activity that you choose to take. Sometimes your data is, is, is being provided just by walking through the store. Yeah.

Like, like places where they're doing a lot of this is like in sports stadiums or arenas. So like you might be waiting in line for the restroom and so they can show you an ad like on displays. Specifically, or if we're at an airport.

It goes even more than that, right? So like, there'll be, there are providers that will put beacons in sports stadiums and then put beacons in Walmarts, and they'll be able to marry your unique MAC ID. So they won't know who you are, but they'll know that a phone went to a Raptors game. And then after the phone went to Walmart, and then they'll be able to cluster behaviors by saying, look, this many people went to this place and then went to this place after seeing X stimulus. And so it creates another level of data analysis to better optimize messaging. And so before all that existed, and to be honest, it's a scary proposition, but I will also preface to say we are now probably, I'd say, 10 years into the maturity of data. And most places are still really, really bad at it. There is just too much data and it comes in too many different forms and sizes. for them to truly be able to capture it, format it into the same place, analyze it, and then put actions on top of it. There are, everybody's trying, but it's not as prevalent as you think. Now, that being said, before kind of this data persona-driven individualistic model, the previous model was what I call spray and pray. So you literally just try to find the most attended thing possible with the most amount of people. You create one type of advertisement that you normally would spend $500,000 to $1 million creating, and then you blast it out to that medium. So, you know, this was back when like Seinfeld, I don't know if the audience remembers Seinfeld, maybe I'm aging myself, but this is back when like Seinfeld was popular or the Super Bowl where like you buy an ad and you just blast it out and you hope that, you know, you're going to hit 200 million, 500 million people, and then a percentage of those people are going to comprehend what you're saying and they're going to come to your place and learn more about you. The Web3 iteration that I see happening, and again, I don't know the answer because all of this is happening dynamically, and the, but to me, the big difference in Web3 is that people are volunteer, people have control over what data they want to provide. So whereas In the Web2 world, Facebook has my data, Twitter has my data, Instagram has my data, and they can do whatever they want with it. I don't have any control to say, hey, I don't want these brands having access to my information, or I don't want these specific people having access to my information. But in the Web3 world, I get control of that data. So I get to say, hey, I'm interested in a prize savings account. And so anybody who's looking for a price savings account, make sure that they know that I'm interested so that they can send me some messages. And now all of a sudden I'm in control and I get to choose what I want to consume and where, and I get to see things on my terms. And that to me is the biggest difference in Web3 versus Web2 and how data is going to evolve and handle things.

Yeah, I think there's a point, there's an important distinction here, uh, between like we, even within Web3, like when we say the term Web3, we're talking about the decentralized web. But when you're entering crypto, I'm talking about blockchain.

Yes.

Yeah. Okay. Okay. Well, if you're, but, but a lot of the normies, including yours truly, get, got involved with crypto primarily through centralized exchanges. Primarily through, you know, Coinbase is gonna be an onboarder to many people into crypto, into the blockchain. Now you're buying and selling within the Coinbase pool of things. So you're like, you're not, I don't think you're like truly on the blockchain or whatever, I don't know. But you can then go into Coinbase Wallet and you can go purchase an NFT. But I think a lot of these NFTs are very much helpful in onboarding normies into crypto because people want that, whatever Justin Bieber just bought, they want something like that. You know, I talked to middle and high school students and they think that if they got an NFT, they're an instant millionaire and they want it, they want one, you know, but these people aren't, the normies aren't necessarily, they're coming from data hungry Facebook land where they don't care. Just don't charge me for it. Don't charge a subscription. Just take my data and show me ads, it's fine, to this Web3 nefarious world where scammers abound, phishing abounds, all this stuff. So there is like this, like, I feel there's grades, there's levels to— most of these people don't use VPNs, whereas like a lot of people in PoolTogether community use VPNs, you know, like, so there are grades to this, I think. I'm just not sure how to identify that. I don't know what you do with that.

So I think it's important to recognize a couple things. First of all, we're in very, very early days. Like, yes, blockchain and Web3 are technically, you know, 10, 15 years old, but we're talking about like, if you look at the, if you look at the, at even just the market cap of all cryptocurrencies, the majority of value that has been created in the Web3 space has occurred in the last 3 years. And it's not until you start to get lots of interest that you start to get protocols, that you start to get protocols and applications that are built for end users to take control and have value of. So you're right, you know, you're right that like right now, if I want to listen to music, my best course of action is to listen to music on Spotify or Apple Music or Amazon Music, but I could also buy music NFTs. and listen to those music NFTs. And right now, the market, there are marketplaces that exist that I can buy that. And when I own those NFTs, nobody has access to my data about when I listen and how often I listen to, and I'm in control. Whereas if I listen on Amazon or Spotify or Apple Music, they all have the, they have all the information about who I'm listening to, when, where, and why. And so as more people start to get into music NFTs, then the ecosystem to discover new music NFTs and the value propositions that are created around Spotify will start to be built and they'll be offered towards consumers in a UX framework. Because really what you're talking about, at least what I think you're talking about, which is the biggest challenge of Web3, is it's just not easy for people to figure out. Like, try talking to someone about the metaverse or blockchain or DeFi or cryptocurrencies, and they're all super interested. I think you and I, Tim, were having this conversation the other day and like after 15 minutes they're just like, Oh, it's just way too much for me, man. I just want to go buy my NFT. But, you know, to get mass adoption, we have to get to that point.

Yeah, for sure. I think, and the other thing is like the two, like, how do you shut down crypto? If you wanted to shut down crypto, what do you do? You do 2 things. You shut down Twitter and you shut down Discord. And suddenly crypto's got nothing. Like there's no, I mean, maybe Telegram, but like, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not on Telegram. Like, I feel like everybody kind of left Telegram because it's not easy. Like the tools that crypto uses, the tools that went use are still centralized generally. I know we're getting there, but there are ways in those services, Discord and Twitter, especially Twitter, you can still use that data-hungry way to market to people still. So, but I do say as marketers, we're seeing it coming where more and more things are decentralized, more and more people are getting smarter about where, who holds their data and how it's being used. More and more people are learning about using VPNs and being able to use those. Yeah. More and more people are learning about wallet security, which makes marketing in the data way, like in the data hungry way, more difficult. But like, Sean, we also, I mean, you and I are really passionate. Like we are metaverse curious, you know? And what's crazy about this is like we have kids who have grown up in the metaverse on Minecraft and in Roblox and on Fortnite. And these things aren't actually even connected to Web3. They're just, they're the metaverse, right? It is the metaverse. But now we're talking about, oh, the metaverse, it's all new and ugh. But it's like, no, these kids have been doing this since like 10 years ago. Like Roblox and Minecraft have been around for ages, but it's the metaverse.

Yeah, but that's a great question though. Who's gonna control the metaverse? Who's gonna own it? Is it gonna be centralized corporations like Roblox, like Meta, like Minecraft? Or is it going to be decentralized platforms and decentralized metaverses? Like you just, again, you shared with me yesterday that Bored Apes is creating a metaverse and they're going to do it in a decentralized way. So which version of the metaverse are we going to see? I don't know. That all depends on how well they build it and what value proposition the users are going to get. But I believe what my underlying, and also I'll take it back from a PoolTogether perspective. I think that PoolTogether Because people are still in the centralized world and there's data available to us, we need to use that data as best we can until it disappears. Because pooled together as a protocol, to me, should be a trillion-dollar TVL, and it should be doing it sooner than later. Like, I think it's phenomenal what everyone has built, and I am blown away by this community. There are so many talented and amazing people here, but we've got to like, We're blowing our shot by growing our TVL by millions. Like we got to be growing our TVL by tens of millions, by hundreds of millions. And we got to do it, start doing it sooner than later. And so using the tool, the Web2 toolkits while they exist, I don't see a problem with that. But being aware and ready and monitoring the new Web3 options that are going to come online, I think we need to be ready for that and think about that as well. Hey, so when you say— Sorry, I diverged away from metaverse back to PoolTogether.

No, we'll come back to it. We'll come back to it. But when you say trillion-dollar PoolTogether, trillion-dollar TVL for PoolTogether, that cannot be, Sean, that cannot be through a prize savings account, right? When you say that you have dreams, there's gotta be visions of like, you know, you've got, like I say that PoolTogether's really good at recruiting for Web3. Like we're really a good talent pool. I think that PoolTogether could, can harness innovation. I think we could do crypto startups. I think that would be awesome in that. I think there has to be a diversified portfolio of products for that trillion-dollar TVL. Am I right or am I right? Come on.

I mean, you're right, but how big is premium bonds right now in the UK?

I have absolutely no clue.

It's insanely massive. It's in the hundreds of billions pooled together. That's just in the UK, and that's operating in an environment That is yielding interest rates that are historically low, like 0.5%, 1% interest rates. And they're turning that into a product and they're distributing massive, massive returns with billions of dollars locked in an environment that's that slow. PoolTogether is looking at unstables, you know, 2.5% to 3.5% return. And that yield is only going to increase as more and more people get interested in it. And as the opportunities to invest and fund crypto and DeFi get bigger. So like, sure, no one builds a single SKU empire, but the value proposition on the protocol, on this individual PrizeLink savings account protocol alone, for global people who don't right now understand the value of savings and don't want to say, hey, I got $100, I can go put it in my bank and make a quarter of a penny. every year, or I got $100, I can go put it in PoolTogether and hopefully win $1,000 a day. I don't see why— how people don't like that, that often.

So you said 2 to 3% on PoolTogether. Where'd you get that?

That is my understanding of what PoolTogether is yielding through the Treasury Working Group and its management of its stakes.

Oh, okay. I see what you're saying. But you're not talking about users like somebody who's a depositor.

No, no, no, no. I'm saying that PrizeLink Savings is earning 0.5% to 1%. Got it. And they're distributing prize packages in the millions, in the millions of pounds.

Got it.

PoolTogether, although has a lower TVL, is able to generate a much bigger prize pool with a lesser amount. So if PoolTogether could match Premium Bonds in their TVL, PoolTogether would be able to give 2 to 3 times more in prizes and dollars than Premium Bonds.

Got it. Got it. Got it. Okay. So back to the metaverse. What are you excited about? What are you seeing? What are your What are your thoughts on the power of metaverse for marketing for even traditional brands, but just generally, what's, how can we harness the power of the metaverse, Sean?

Yeah, I mean, that's a truly, that's a billion-dollar question. That's what every brand on the planet right now is sitting there asking themselves because they're like, look, what is the metaverse first of all, right? Like, is the metaverse virtual reality worlds or are there augmented reality worlds or are we in the metaverse right now, Tim, doing this podcast? And, you know, the answer, at least the answer that I think is that the metaverse exists on a continuum. And on one side of the continuum is the Zoom calls that exist that you have with your coworkers and colleagues at work. And on the other side are these decentralized virtual spaces that can be accessed by either augmented reality, by either augmented reality or just by computer screen. That essentially exist as a continual website. So instead of clicking on links and moving to different places, you walk between different places and you can interact with everyone else who's consuming that content at the same time, which enables much greater levels of community, much greater levels of peer-to-peer conversation, and much greater levels of potential value add to bring people from all over the world who have similar interests to congregate around specific things. And so like, I think the opportunities in the metaverse are vast, but I think truly that the metaverse is transformational from a media perspective. And I think that eventually all, you know, whether again, depending on what you define as the metaverse, but eventually all media will be consumed by the metaverse, which means it's a fundamental game changer on how to communicate with people.

Yeah, I mean, I totally agree. I think that the metaverse is phone face. Like you go, you get on the subway and everybody's on their phones. Like you get on an elevator, you reach for your phone. At least I do because I have a problem because I'm addicted. But you got a watch on, you got your Apple Watch and you look at your pings and you, you know, there's, I think that's the gateway, especially when I talk with students, like they're using Snapchat. Like that's, they do these, It's like that is the metaverse. It's like not real reality that you're in. So I do think that like social media marketing is basically that stuff. It's in the metaverse. But yeah, I mean, more and more of our time is gonna be in this stuff. And then we have in the Discord chat, we've got AR versus VR versus XR, which I have no clue what XR is, Taliskai, if you could let me know. Just cross reality.

I've never heard of XR either. But I will say in terms of, but I will say in terms of VR, I think that VR has a fundamental problem. And I actually heard this from a podcast that I was listening to with Chris Dixon, which is there are only 2 companies that have the ability to produce VR headsets, Facebook Oculus and Samsung. There is no way you're going to drive innovation at a scale that is necessary for user adoption when you only have 2 companies that can control the means of creation for something as game-changing as, as VR. Um, but, uh, but, but yes, I'm very curious what XR is. I haven't heard it and I love to learn new things all the time.

Yeah, that's what I thought. It's just that it's combining the two. It's like when you, when you want, and this is what an Oculus does or whatever a Meta, now it's called a Meta Rift. Um, but when you're wearing the Oculus, you can switch out and like see what you're looking at. Like you can make the unit. So it's just going in between like augmented reality and virtual reality, but I, I love Oculus, there's this wow factor to be able to use it in like the immersiveness. I played this game called Superhot, which I loved on the computer, but in VR it is mind-blowing. It is just incredible to the point when, when I take the mask off or the headset off, I like duck because I'm scared of reality is going to move fast. If you've ever played Superhot, it's like bullet time puzzler. It's really fun, but it's so good. But the thing is, as I have an Oculus at home, I have one right here. Somebody let me borrow it and I haven't taken it out in weeks. There's like this barrier to entry. There's this friction with the Oculus. There's not like a killer app for me because I, Superhot's great, but I'm not going into it. But the same thing with metaverse, like the only reason I'm in the metaverse is to play ice poker right now. I go to Decentraland and I play ice poker because I love, I freaking love poker. And I also don't want to lose my money to gambling or to, well, poker is a game of skill, whatever. So, so I play ice poker and it's really fun. But there's not a lot right now to me that's pulling me into the metaverse. But brands have this FOMO, like Bud Light's gotta be in the metaverse. American Eagle's gotta be in the metaverse. All these brands are just, they have to be there, but they have no clue what they want. They, it's like a website, like back, like we have to have a website. We have no clue what we wanna do with it, but we just know we have to have it for like, you know, for the investors to know that we're innovative or something. So what do you do in the metaverse as a big brand?

I'll flip that on its head. I agree with you. They have no idea what they're doing, but their motivation is 100% not, we need to do it so that we can tell investors we're in the metaverse. They need to do it because, at least this is my pitch to them, because I would like to help big— I would love to help bring big brands into the metaverse. My pitch to them is, this is fundamentally the evolution of media. And you have, if you're going to participate in media once it actually changes, then you've got to be able to develop an understanding, the muscle to communicate with people in that world. You got to be part of it to be learning along with us because everybody's fucking, excuse my language, everybody's learning right now. Like we're all figuring it out. Even the trillion-dollar, even the billion-dollar valued companies, we're all figuring it out together. And if you just sit on the sidelines and wait for it to mature, Then anyone else who's a native to it is going to figure it out and be way better at communicating through it than you are for a very long time until you build that muscle. So it's a relatively low-cost nano. And yeah, you're not going to derive a ton of business value from it today, but the business value that you're going to derive from being there today when your competitors aren't are going to more than pay for itself in 5 to 7 to 10 years, to even maybe even 2 years when maturity hits and we start to see centralization around key concepts, whether it's a centralized metaverse or decentralized metaverse between platforms, between wallets, between all of these things. If you don't understand that now and you don't understand how to work with people, you're screwed. Like, you're like, you know, it's, it's, it's, I don't know if, I don't know if you, if the guy Kawasaki is a great venture capitalist who shares a lot of stuff and he's like Western Union, like why did PayPal exist? Western Union should have been PayPal. But why, why was it not? Because Western Union didn't think that the internet could act as a medium for transferring funds. And that's the same thing. You don't know what you don't know until you're in it.

Yeah. And maybe this is why, I don't know, maybe this is why I'm, I'm, I, I'm such a hipster or whatever. Like, I just, I don't like to like things when everybody likes them. So like, there's this show called Severance that everybody says I need to watch or some, something like that. I'm not going to watch it. 'Cause everybody's already like into it and they say it's awesome. It's too late. It's too late. I'm not gonna go watch it. But the same thing is like, I'm in crypto and I love that, like in Web3, it's like this black box. It's like this, like no one knows what's going on. There's a lot of FOMO and I'm in it, right? So I'm like, I feel all, all cool. But as soon as like Bud Light or whatever, these big brands come in, I'm like, really? Like, really, Justin Bieber? Can you just not, can you just leave the Bored Apes alone? Like, can you? And I understand there's this like, we want, we want, we want big money. We want the brands to come in 'cause it pumps our bags, right? We want, We want this adoption. We want, so yes, I want adoption, but I want adoption in like a not gross way. And I feel like big brands for me are like gross or something. And I shouldn't be saying this as a marketer, but that's how I feel. Like, that's what I feel. And so it's like, and so I want like big brands. This is how I want big brands to approach it. I want big brands to, to, to see how it fits them through like having, I don't know, influencers or whatever. Like do the research and like, like come to it in a, in a way that's like revolutionary. And it's like, of course that's what you're doing rather than we're gonna build a bar in Decentraland and you can get a free shirt, which I feel like is phoning it in. And so I feel like you, yeah, maybe I'm just putting too much pressure and you're totally right. And just, no, just try stuff, experiment, mess around as a big brand and see what you can do. Go ahead.

Yeah, so my response to that is I think you're bang on, right? Like think about like, so you talk about brands being in places that they're not supposed to be or not welcome. But like, think again, think about in the world of Web2, if I were to tell you that like, you know, GoPro spends a ton of money advertising around extreme sports, would you be like, screw GoPro, they're this big company, what the hell are they doing advertising around extreme sports? Or would you say, no, GoPro found their niche and how to communicate to people authentically to get people excited about buying GoPros and then recording themselves using, doing extreme sports using GoPros. And as a result, they've amassed a mass audience that do that and created communities around that. And, but if they, but they didn't start doing that. They started with traditional advertising. They started in a bunch of different places. They tried a bunch of things. Not a lot of people saw it because like, why would they? But the thing that started to hit and they started to lean into, that's when they started to get an audience and they started to get known for it and they started to become native to it. And so like, yeah, you can build a bar in Decentraland and offer people a place to hang out and free shirts. But I guarantee you, I mean, have you been to the bar? It's Coors Light or Bud Light or—

No, I refuse to go, Sean. I'm not going there. I'm not. That's LLM.

And how many other, how many other people like you are not going? Probably most, I would say. And so the key is that's valuable learning for the brand because it's saying, I shouldn't be doing this. I need to figure out another way in. But if you don't start, if you don't try doing something, then you're not going to know what's, what's going to work.

Wait, are you telling me I'm still an early adopter if I go to the bar? I'm going to go there right now. Never mind. I'm back in. No, but

like, like with your GoPro, if we send everyone to the bar, if we send everyone to the bar, then they're just going to keep building more bars.

That's right. But the thing with GoPro is GoPro fits the extreme sports because that's what you use a GoPro for. But if like McDonald's did extreme sports, I would think it'd be, it'd be a dissonance there. But maybe not. I don't know. You can find a fit.

You could probably find— That's exactly my point. If McDonald's went into extreme sports, then people wouldn't follow it. They wouldn't pay attention to it. And McDonald's would realize, hey, there's not room for me in extreme sports. So I'm going to exit and I'm going to move and I'm going to focus on something else that's going to be worthwhile for me. Right? Like there's, it's all about testing and feel like, ah, like there's a brand here. Tim Hortons that I've actually had the pleasure of working with. I didn't do this campaign though, but they're like, they're a coffee and donut chain. I called them their competitor. They'd be the equivalent of Dunkin' Donuts in the States. I don't know. They're in a couple of US states and Canada. But Tim Hortons, which was facing struggling donut sales, formed a partnership with Justin Bieber and created TimBiebs, where he created his own flavors of Tim Hortons. And they sold them in the store. And everybody in the country wanted to go to Tim Hortons to get some Timbeams. And it got to such an extent that Drake and Michael Bublé were tweeting about how upset they were that Tim Hortons wasn't collaborating with them because they wanted their own version of Timbeams. And they found that That niche, they found that opportunity because they kept trying and experimenting. And if you don't continue to try and experiment and learn and build muscles, then you're never going to be good at anything.

Yeah, no, I'm with you there. I just think that, yeah. Okay. No, I'm with you. I like the idea of like trying and experimenting. I'm just, uh, yes. Yes.

Yes. Talisker. Yes. Talisker. We do call them Timmy Hoes.

Oh, that's so good. Give it to me, ho-hos. That, but yeah, so I just—

not the ho-hos, just no, no, not the double, just the single.

No, I made that up. Yeah, it's gonna catch on now. Yeah, no, but I get it. I, I guess it's just, I just, I feel like it's, I guess it's the laziness. I guess it's just the, hey, let's just do it to do it, to have a thing. And I feel like some of that stuff is those attempts. But if you can find that, like, that spark, that, that zing, if you can find that Which I, I, and maybe the Bud Light bar in Decentraland was that. I didn't feel like it was, but I also didn't go there 'cause I was like, psh. And maybe I just need to go to, maybe I need to work on myself, Sean. Maybe that's what it is.

But, uh, but again, but what I, but what I'm saying is I'm actually agreeing with you. I don't think the Bud Light bar in Decentraland is the thing. But, but what if I also told you that Budweiser, there was a, there was a horse racing game on Ethereum. I don't remember the name of it. But Budweiser put their Clydesdales in it. And so they created an NFT of their Clydesdales and put their Clydesdales in it so that they raced in the virtual horse races just along other horses. Is that like, again, another attempt to be part of it that isn't just creating a bar and being there? Like, my point is you try multiple things until something, until you realize that you've got something that works. And then when you've got something that works, you lean into it and you scale it. And you make sure that your investments in your investments while you're trying, are relatively small scale, but hit with your overall strategy of trying to resonate with your customer.

And listen to me, I care about animals. And so if virtual horse racing can get rid of regular horse racing, I'm all for it. So I appreciate that. And I do, I do like that. And I didn't know about that. I know about like Pegaxy, or I don't know how to pronounce it, the horse racing thing. And like STEPN is like a new thing on SOL that everybody's flipping out on Solana with the running shoes.

Someone was asking about that today. They're like, is this a scam? I'm like, It's not a scam. It's just, you know, the currency that you're getting in exchange for running, it's just got to drive, it's just got to drive some value. And as long as there's value, then it's great. Anyway, sorry, I digress.

And then Nike's got these shoes, but they're virtual shoes that you can get a vial for that you can put into your shoe and then your shoe, but it's not like a real shoe. And so I feel like such a boomer. I just feel like such a boomer, like with this stuff where I'm like, I don't get it. I get ice poker. The STEPN thing though, I kind of see that it's like run to earn. Like you actually have to go out in IRL and run. But I also feel, anyway, yeah, it's just, it's an interesting space, this metaverse, this metaverse stuff. So Sean, do you have any plays or things that you're excited about in the world of NFTs, Web3, metaverse, things that have your interest?

So, I mean, other than like, so, so full disclosure, Tim, you and I, along with a bunch of other members of the PoolTogether community, have an NFT Together group where we, we, I guess, have all put some ETH in and are buying, speculating on NFTs. I highly, I find that highly enjoyable. I have no idea what we're buying or if any of the projects are any good, but it's been a really amazing experience. So. I'm excited about that. But otherwise, the key thing for NFTs and things that I love is it's all, I try to think back down to like, what is the utility and why is an end user going to want it? And I'm going to want it, going to get value from it. And so the one NFT project that I have been following that I think is super awesome is called Club CPG. They were started by Silicon Valley VCs and it's an NFT-gated community That gives access to, you know, you can't, buying a Club CPG NFT right now is about, I think the latest price was like 25 or 30 ETH. Like it's crazy expensive, but they give you access to all of the, like all of the leaders of Web3 from Silicon Valley who are creating deals and investing. And they have, and you get access to all of their conversations, all their insights. And now they've created this new thing called POP, which Tim just shared the link to, or that popped up. But it's specifically, they're building a fund and they're going to start investing and building things. I mean, the model is Club CPG is just a legacy name. It was the idea of trying to bring crypto, try to bring packaged goods into the crypto world. It's just more about innovations within Web3. I don't know what proof is, Talisker, but I'll say yes. No, the leaders of Web3 are not from Silicon Valley. It's the leaders of Web3 in Silicon Valley. There are other leaders of Web3 that are, that are way more decentralized. Right.

So there's this, there's this, this trend I'm seeing that like with, with the big tech companies, they hired from Ivy League schools. And so I didn't go to an Ivy League school, school. So I'm like, And so I, you know, I'm, I'm like poo-pooing that. And now I'm seeing a lot of like Web3 companies, a lot, a lot of protocols that hire straight from big tech, from Silicon Valley. So I'm seeing a lot of people from HubSpot or, you know, Facebook or Google that are now in leadership in these crypto companies. And I didn't work for any of those. So I'm like, so really, Sean, this whole conversation is just unearthing a lot of undealt, a lot of undealt with emotions. and bitterness in my life. So I really, I, thanks for talking to me about this. I appreciate it.

I was going to make some sort of joke about Scott, like bringing up old scars, but I had, I'm not witty enough to think of something funny. So I'm sorry.

Okay. So you got, you got crypto packaged goods. You have other stuff that you're, that you care about. What else? I know you've got other

stuff. I mean, like, well, I mean, I'm very high on PoolTogether. I think that, I think that the marketing working group, although moving slowly, continues to push towards Building out a sustainable marketing and customer acquisition model that can help us hit TVL growth that is going to change the game. I think that there's a lot of discussions that need to be had around and things that are being developed about like one-time prizes. I don't, I don't like, but I think that I'm super high on PoolTogether. And then the other thing that I find super, super interesting is something called SimWin Sports. And as a sports fan of any type of sport, I find it super interesting, but they want to bring sports to the metaverse. And the way that they want to do that is they have franchises and the franchises they're selling to owners that are selling for $1 to $2 million a franchise. And they have a whole list of celebrity owners that are celebrities. And then each team Hires a general manager and coaches in the respective sport they play. And then individuals can create NFTs every year, a set number of NFTs as athletes. And then they can engage in certain activities to upskill their athletes and make their athletes more valuable. And then the teams go through a draft and draft the athletes onto the teams. And then the coaches, and then they go out and play simulations of games with their athletes at their relative rankings. And the coaches set strategies and they play, it's like real-time game simulation, but picking strategies in the games. And then there's winners and losers of the games and there's a season and there's a championship. And then they livestream all that data and information and are creating fantasy and betting markets so that people can actually participate in live sports in the metaverse. And people can become individual athletes in the metaverse and sign contracts with teams and build compensation from them as teams sell tickets for people to watch and build their own brands. And so it's literally recreating the sporting environment in the metaverse, which I find super, super interesting.

You gotta love the creativity. It's just like, when you, if you were like, hey, how would, how would you incorporate sports into the metaverse or not into crypto? I'd be like, oh, We would totally do tickets for NFTs. Like, that's like, I just see that happening. Like, I want to go to a Mets game, go Mets, and I want to have an NFT of the game that I went to. And that NFT is going to unlock things for me in the park and then special things while I'm watching games and all that. Like, I would love that. But this is just, no, let's put it all virtual, like all in the metaverse or all in, you know, it's like—

The entire thing in the metaverse.

Yeah. So it just keeps going.

And Cookie said it right. Like, that's what I'm super excited about is I'm on the whitelist. I want to mint an NFT and I want to power it up and I want to act as an athlete and go and sign a big league contract and make sure that I can perform and be an all-star and get compensated that way with my NFTs. It's going to be super interesting. Yeah.

Let me finish with this question, Sean, because we could talk all day. I know you and me, we have long talks and And just dream dreams and stuff. But like, I, I, where do you, where do people get time for this stuff? Like that, I feel like is the currency of crypto is like attention. Like there are so many things to spend time on. There are so many things to pay attention to. And it sounds like this SimWin Sports is great, but you gotta put so much time into it to like make a team and like be on a team and do this and do that and bet and all this. Like, how does one prioritize? Like, where do you get the time for this stuff? How do you navigate managing your schedule in crypto?

I manage it, or like, I like, so how do I manage it, or how does one manage it? Like, in other words, my initial answer is saying, you like the Mets, you spend time to go and watch the Mets. Professional athletes spend time building their bodies and honing their skills. If people are invested, it's what they want to do and how they choose to do it. But how do I manage, or is that what you're asking? Or are you asking how do I manage my time between all of these different things that are going on and how do I prioritize where I'm looking at?

Yeah, I'm asking you how you do it so that I, that, and I'm assuming that's how you suggest others do it or offer it as a model for someone. That's basically my, the bent of my question.

Yeah, I don't know if I would recommend how I would do it to anyone else because I don't, um, I don't, I don't sleep a lot. And between all of the different projects and work that I've got going on, I get pulled in a lot of directions. And frankly, like, I, I feel I'm not, I don't give every, I don't have the time to give everything the 100% that it deserves, right? That it deserves. I think it's about generally looking at what setting your objectives long-term and saying, look, is this an interest professionally? Am I trying to make money off of this? Is this an interest like hobby-wise? Am I trying to just find something fun to build my time with and join a community of like-minded peers? And then make the proper time to say, this is where I want it. This is how I'm going to invest my time and what I'm going to get out of it. And then make that cost-benefit analysis for everything that you do. Because yeah, like every time I talk to someone else in crypto and DeFi and I ask them about projects, there's a new project that's exciting, but I'm also someone who likes to understand it and like understand everything before I get in. And so anytime I see something new, I got to spend time thinking about it and figuring it out. And then it's just like, do I want to spend that time figuring it out or not? And yeah, that's the, I mean, I don't know if I've, I don't, it's a tough question, Tim. I don't have a good answer.

No, no, no. I think that, I think that's right. I think, I think you prioritize it based on like, I mean, I do a lot of gut. I do a lot of like, like I like ice poker. It's tanking right now, but I love poker. I love the experience of it. It's fun. I see a lot of potential in it with like World Series of Poker, that sort of thing. So I get into it and it's like, it kind of meets the needs for me. It's same thing with PoolTogether. Like the community is killer, it's smashing. It's, I love these people in this group. And so it's really fun for me to stick around and like innovate on the product. And it's fun to build something with a community. So I stick around there, you know? And then, yes, you're right. I mean, I have like 27,000 Discords that I'm in. I really am only in like 4 or 3. And you just kind of vote with, you vote with your feet. 'Cause if this were in the metaverse, you would vote with your little Nike sneakers with the vials in 'em. That's how you, you vote for what's, what's valuable. So, but dude, Sean, I think we should end it here. Anything else you want to talk about that we didn't cover that you want to plug?

Go, go Raptors. I think that they, I mean, we'll see how this ages, but they, they, I am, I am potentially excited that they could be the first team in NBA history to come back from a 3-0 deficit. Go Leafs. They're probably going to make a first round exit. Go Blue Jays. They, they should, they're exciting. I love sports.

Dude, you're such a, you're such a Canadian loyal, loyalist. I don't know if that's political by saying that, but yeah.

No, the loyalists are technically like, I don't know if you meant that on purpose or not, but that was the term that, that the Canadians got when the Canadians that wanted to stay loyal to the British crown got when, when the US wanted to revolt and And fought their War of Independence.

Yeah, I didn't mean that. I just meant more of a Romanian toast. Yeah, yeah, great.

So a good double entendre there. But, but, but no, otherwise, otherwise, anyone in the community that's listening, guys, I sincerely value every single one of you and all of the conversations that we've had. I look forward to many more, and I look forward to hitting that $100 million TVL growth target. like $100 million a month of TVL growth target together, because there's, there's so much more to come.

Go team, go team. Well, thanks, Sean. You've been listening. This has been the Pull Together Community Podcast with Tim and Sean. It's been a pleasure and we'll see you next week, or we'll, we'll hear you next week. Thanks, Discord chat. It was bumping in the chat. Okay, bye. Thanks for listening to the Pull Together Community You can visit pooltogether.com to deposit, and we'd love to hear what you thought about today's episode. So visit the Pool Together Discord and let us know.