#2: Liam Killingstad - shitposting your way to a job, why investors write so well, and information cartography

All right, welcome to Jason Levin's Brain Blast number 2. We've got Liam Killingstad on. He runs FOS Insights at Front Office Sports. He was previously an energy and something analyst at Goldman Sachs. Fancy, fancy. We talk shitposting your way to a job, why investors are such good writers, and a lot more. This is our first live conversation, so we're just getting to know each other. Fun fact, immediately after this conversation, I challenged Liam to a duel to 10,000 followers, and he immediately went viral and gained 2,500 in less than a day. So this dude does not play around. He is serious but also hilarious. I hope you enjoy.

Do this real time since this is our first convo anyway, so it'll be— It'll be fun.

Yeah, agreed. Agreed. So yeah, man, I guess, where do we start? Let's tell the world, what's your story, man? How'd you get where you are?

Well, I guess I'll start with my name. Liam Killingstad, originally born and raised in Berlin, Germany, lived in about like 9, I think 10 countries in Europe growing up, moved to the States when I was 14. Went to Case West— well, I moved to Maryland, Annapolis, Maryland, right where the Naval Academy is, for high school. Played a bunch of sports there. Then went to Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, one of the longest names for a college that you can imagine, Technical Research University. Played baseball there for 4 years, studied finance and economics. After that, ended up at Goldman Sachs in their energy and infrastructure investment banking group. Was there for almost 3 years, kind of doing a bunch of project finance stuff. I can talk about that a little later. Um, it was in the trash-to-cash business is what we fondly called it. Um, yeah, then after about 3 years, was looking to make a change, trying to get into kind of consumer technology type stuff with a, with a skew towards sports and health and wellness. Did a bunch of independent consulting for funds in that space, was trying to figure out a way for to like inject myself into that industry. I was having a bunch of trouble having people not recognize me as anything other like an energy and infrastructure banker, and then ultimately ended up joining Front Office Sports to help them build out a paid product and have been doing a bunch of analysis for our Sunday newsletter, which is kind of like a long-form, uh, business breakdown type deal. Um, so yeah, that's, that's 26 years of my life in a nutshell right there.

Dope. So how'd you get introduced to Front Office Sports? How'd you get in contact with them?

Well, same way that all great love stories start. It was kind of just like a little bit of shitposting on Twitter. Um, I was at like, I don't know, seems like this is everyone's story, like maybe beginning of 2020. I was on a ski trip with a bunch of my friends, still working at GS, and I just noticed I I was a like Twitter lurker, maybe from like 2017 to 2019. Had an account since 2011 and then probably didn't touch it from 2011 until 2017. Um, just saw there's some like cool stuff going on, like some— that was when like the whole thread thing started and I was seeing a lot of like value out of that. And I was just like, oh, this is super interesting. By no means thought about like doing it myself or anything. I was just like, oh, this is an actual information asset that that can be useful or interesting. So kind of just like lurked a little bit more around there. Some would call me like, I don't know, in person, I'm the equivalent of a shitposter too. Like I, right? Like I toss jabs all the time. I'll probably make fun of you at some point during this conversation.

You are, I've been like going back and forth. I'm like, is this man just busting my balls or is he a passive aggressive guy or what?

No, it's definitely ball busting.

No, that's what I figured. I was just like, I, I feel like he's cool, so I'm gonna go with it. I like—

it's been really funny if I got on and I was just like an absolute asshole. He's like, oh wait, no, he's— he wasn't kidding.

Yeah, I mean, I already booked another podcast for a few days. Yeah, you know, that was good.

It was a good call, it was a good call. Um, but yeah, I kind of just was like, like looking at that, would— I don't know, I shitpost a little bit every once in a while. Tried the thread thing myself, actually got like Wrote a thread on Spencer Dinwiddie trying to tokenize his contract and got some like decent traction off of that. And then was engaging with a couple of accounts that I thought were interesting based off of the stuff that I was trying to like insert myself in from an industry standpoint. And that led to Adam White, our CEO, reaching out to me on Twitter and kind of just being like, start a conversation, everything, talking. Like very casual, asked if I was like kind of interested in the media space at all. I told him, fuck no. Uh, not even a little bit. And then we were going back and forth. I was talking to some funds potentially going to join. Um, and then he, I will give him credit. He like sold the position well or whatever. I had recently gotten like retweeted by, by Trung a bunch because as a shitposter, he also I just thought some of my stuff was funny sometimes. Um, and he was— Adam, uh, reached out to me and was like, okay, what would it take to make you trung for Front Office Sports? And I was like, that was a way better way of selling that than when you asked me the first time. Um, so we kind of talked and, uh, saw that there was like an interesting opportunity to kind of come in and do— disruptive is like a strong word, but like a new interesting spin on some of the, the work that they've been doing and try to think of like, how can you bring like, like banking level financial analysis to a consumer newsletter. Because there's like, obviously like a lot of aggregation and that type of stuff that goes on now. We were trying to look at like what one step further of that would look like. And that's what the initial rollout of the Sunday newsletter was, which I've been doing for 45 editions so far. So it's been an interesting, uh, interesting journey there. And then ultimately building out a subscription product that's kind of like worth Like, what, what do you have to build out to make it worth people paying for when they get good quality content for free from us already? So that was kind of the, uh, the relationship with, with Adam there. I, I was surprised that they were like cool hiring me because the way that— I'm serious— the way that we like talked, like, I— they were like trying to hire me and I was texting them memes. Like I have my meme folder of my recruiting process, basically. Let's see if I can find anything, but yeah, it's just like, I don't know. That's, uh, that's how that went. So it was really, it was really just, uh, um, a lot of people will go onto Twitter and try to very consciously build out a brand for themselves. I don't know if I have that in me. I'm just not serious enough. Well, that's not true. I'm just not serious enough on Twitter. Um, and I like living in the lane of like, I— if I'm inspired by something and feel like there's a reason to distill it down and try to put it into like a cool thread or something interesting, I will absolutely do it. But I'd much rather just like shill some dumb shit that like kind of ties into what I'm interested in and see if it's funny.

Yeah, I've been thinking about this a lot. Just like memes are— you have to understand a culture so well to like put out good memes, and just in general. And same with threads, man. Like, um, you know, it's, it's just like understanding a topic on a deep level and how it'll relate. Um, And I love the way that like, yeah, I've been just connecting with CEOs and founders on Twitter and shit, just from some of my silliest tweets. Like a guy with 30,000 followers told me, don't shitpost if you want to grow your audience. Like, keep it all serious. I don't know. I was like, no, like I'm not going to stop being funny or making myself laugh or making my friends laugh. Like just so I could grow an audience. I'm gonna keep like, this is my comedic outlet sometimes. So yeah.

Like what didn't I, didn't I like, I don't even remember. I just remember typing it and laughing to myself. The first thing I wrote in Wellness Guild was like, yeah dude, uh, I said, yeah, uh, I'm a certified yoga teacher.

And you're like, I'm pretty sure it's instructor, bro.

Oh yeah, that's what it was.

It was so good.

Like, I don't know, like, look, I think, right, if you're trying to, um, if you're— it's understanding audience too, right? Like, that's a big thing that Like, think about this. Uh, the first 3 years of my career, I was producing high-level content and materials. My audience were CFOs of companies that needed analysis on big decisions that they would make in those presentations. Memes, probably not like the best medium for conveying that information because they have a budget and they have a family that they need to feed. And these decisions are huge, whatever, $500 to billion capital decisions that they need to make. And like, you know what they want? Left-aligned decimal points and the correct grammatical stuff. And like, you know, I don't blame them. That's fine.

There's a time and place for that shit.

Yeah. But then like understanding one, the platform, right? Like Twitter can be any of those things. And I have spent a large portion of my life writing and communicating formally. And I think I have it down. I don't think I have to do it on Twitter and I don't want to. And Twitter is like a fun place for me to As stupid as it sounds, like, bro, I can, I can spin up a meme on Matic faster than just about anyone. Like, I, I really put myself up there with being able to like capture some of the cultural stuff pretty quick. And, and like, that's what I want to do there. So like, that's how I kind of try to, try to communicate. You see a lot of people leveraging it in different ways and doing an amazing job. Um, there's a point when I tried to do the, like, the thread thing, the like information posting, like probably a lot of the same people that we follow and all that. And it's just, I don't know, there, there's some very specific things where I would be willing to do those. And then everything else is a little bit more like, I'd rather like have my personality come through and let people know. And I've had great success networking posts, Front Office Sports and everything there. That's how I've. I started this thing where we do like an investor roundtable. We talked to a bunch of the biggest capital providers in sports from like high-end private equity all the way down to seed stage investing. And a bunch of them I'm friends with now on Twitter because I shitpost and they're just like, they think it's funny and they need, they need to follow me for their job. And they've told me in person, like it's more, they're glad they have to because they get good information plus. A laugh.

Yeah, dude, on the topic of threads, like, I think the 'this is what they did' kind of thread and that kind of shit is— I think it's, it's 2021 and the future is just like only— like, at least for me, it's only stuff that I did. Like, I'm gonna keep doing my interviews, keep doing articles and talk about that stuff, but I want to put out my frameworks. Like, I've lived a crazy life. Like, I've had some, some ups and downs. I want to put out that stuff, you know, things that I read.

Yeah, I gotta ask you about this. Lambda School stuff. Yeah, we'll get— well, we'll get to that. I want to comment on the point you just made. Yeah, I think I like kind of agree with you and kind of disagree with you in some sense. I— so I'm not— there's again, it's just like, right, what's your flavor and what are you willing to do? For me personally, stuff that— and I, and I think some people, I don't As a lot of people have, as you just said, like there are certain life experiences that I've had that like I could actually give like actionable life advice that would be pretty meaningful to some people. Like I know how to get hit by a car really well. I'll get into that later too. But no, like I was like one of the, I think I'm the first person from my university to get a first-year job in investment banking at Goldman, right? And like I had to go through that process entirely by myself as a Case Western grad. I like didn't have anyone at the company I could go to. There were no like alumni lunches or dinner or whatever. Like the process was on me. And like, I learned that on my own and like, that would be like a valuable kind of life lesson thing to share. Right. But it's not something that I'm just comfortable doing quite yet. Cause as a 26-year-old, I just don't, I don't want to share life lessons yet. Like me personally, I don't feel like I've earned that yet. And when I see people, especially doing like really generic stuff, I just, I don't know. Like it's again, if I believe that they have some competency there and everything. For me personally, it's something I'm not comfortable in. From a mental framework standpoint, that's way more interesting because like what informs the way you think is different to everyone. And just like the lens at which you look at the world is, is pretty interesting. Something that I started doing recently, which is super funny. My family lives out in California. Right by Santa Monica. And I was staying there and I had recently written a bunch about like what some of the consumer technology within fitness is, right? Something that you, you definitely know a lot about, but I was kind of just walking through the promenade in Santa Monica, which is like this big outdoor mall area. And I walked past an actual Theragun storefront, a Peloton storefront, a Tonal storefront. Some, um, drug delivery store. I'm forgetting which one, like Capsule or one of those. And I was like, oh shit. And I just started taking pictures of all of them. And I was like, wow, like, okay, cool. Now let me go see how many, like, luxury storefronts there are. And there was only, like, there's, like, Gucci, Rolex, Louis Vuitton, and, like, 3 other ones. And I was like, oh, the proportion of actual storefronts at this big fucking consumer mall of like health-related products to traditional luxury goods is like pretty close to 1:1. And I like wrote a quick little thread about that. And like, that's the type of stuff I'm interested in. Cause I was literally just walking around and I was like, I'm genuinely thinking about this. Like, this is a real life observation of something that's going on. I like know about this stuff. I can extrapolate on it later, but this is what I see right now. And I think it's kind of interesting.

Yeah, no, I agree, man. I definitely agree. I, uh, there's some threads that I like, I'm waiting to put out the same thing where it's like, I don't have enough cred to put that out, like those thoughts. And then it's like, I can't, like, I have, I have a thread folder, like save until you're uncancellable. Like that's a solid one. Like a whole list of those. Um, so we're gonna, we're gonna be—

uncancellable is very interestingly defined. We're about to figure out a bunch of that from however this Rogan shit Dude, I like— deals out.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, some people were talking about like, why doesn't he just make his own podcasting app and have people pay for it? But then Apple could just cancel you.

Like, I don't know. I, I also just think that like, he could, but also like, the— a lot of the point of what he does is that he does what he wants. And if— I think if he had wanted to build a podcasting platform, he would have done it already. I think he likes the fact that like, kind of the only infrastructure he has to worry about is like like the media side of it, which is what he likes anyway. Like, it's, it's great for him to be on platform, on a platform. Like, it's just— and I totally get that, right? Like, if you're— if you have to do the media, build the rails, have the company, like, think about how you want it to be run, it's just a lot. Like, there's reason that, um, I mean, there's a reason that, like, our CEO Adam doesn't write the newsletter anymore. Like, Sam Pard, like, stopped writing The Hustle. Like, There's like a, there's like a certain aspect of like, once like media becomes any, in any way, I don't want to say corporate, but like, like becomes something more than single entity, which like Brogan like really blurs the line of, um, like that you stop being the media itself and become like the entity. So for him, it's like kind of melded into one, but he gets to use platform, so he kind of is just the media. If he had to like run that company, that's like a different thing.

I saw a tweet from Nat Eliason. I don't know his background, but it was just like, all I need is a little more money and all I could do is just read and write the rest of my life.

I was like, that's an all-time Twitter follow. I love him.

Yeah. I was like, that's my life story right there. Like, all I want to do is just read, write podcasts and tweet.

And like, Naval just tweeted something. I just favorited it. Hold on.

I think.

Oh yeah, he says the best investors spend most of their time walking and reading. And I was like, that sounds fucking dope.

Yeah, man, that's, that's a life. Like, just chill out, read books, and be— yeah, that's it. Yo, what, uh, what books do you like to read?

Let's see, I'm gonna look at my— look at my shelf right now. I got a lot. So, okay, so information consumption is something that I think about a lot because I So hand up, I'm, uh, ADD and dyslexic, which is like kind of funny seeing as I'm a writer. Um, we actually have— and one of our head business writers is also dyslexic, which is really funny. So we always make jokes about it and we always spell dyslexic wrong when we remind people that we are dyslexic. Um, but yeah, information consumption is interesting. I think I try to get like a good balance of nonfiction and fiction. Although I'm not gonna lie, I fucking love tech history books. Like, yes, I'm reading Bad Blood right now on Theranos. Like, that shit is fucking wild. The, um, I'm also a big Audible guy because of the, uh, dyslexia. But hold on, I gotta pull this up. One of my favorite books I've read, I've recommended to everyone, it's, it's like crack, um, Billion Dollar Loser. Billion Dollar Loser and Billion Dollar Whale. So Billion Dollar Loser is about Adam Neumann and WeWork and kind of just takes you through the entire story from when he started to like his marital stuff to building the company huge to tricking people into thinking that is anything more than a leasing company, like to Masiyush. Like, it's just, it's crazy.

All right, I gotta read that. Have you read Chaos Monkeys?

It's on the list. It's on my shelf actually.

Oh, that one's funny as shit. And then I, uh, I'm reading Power Law right now, just the whole history of VC.

So it was good. Um, I think my favorite book that I've read in the past 5 years probably is Super Pumped by Mike Isaac. It's the story of Uber and it kind of got me into a recent project that I've been working on. So if you don't know, uh, like kind of Bill Gurley was the big investor behind, like the biggest name investor behind Uber, uh, leading kind of the venture the benchmark effort on their investment. And he's just like, fat, fascinating, right? Like, I love— on the information diet again, I love reading stuff written by really good investors. I don't know why, it's just like a genre that just like clicks for me. So Bill Gurley has a really good blog called Above the Crowd. It's called Above the Crowd because he's actually 6'9" and a tech investor and like right, like double entendre, like I'm literally so fucking tall that I see above the crowd, but also like kind of just observing the landscape as a pretty prolific tech investor kind of understanding. He's famous for understanding marketplaces.

No, it seems like the smartest people, like at least the best, I mean, I love reading investors' writing, whether it's Munger or Naval or whoever, they just know how to Live life and like invest their time. Like if you're good at investing money, you're probably good at investing time as well and like balancing risk and doing that kind of stuff.

So yeah, for sure. I think, yeah, a project that I've been working on recently is, so I call it, it actually comes from Patrick O'Shaughnessy, this idea of kind of information cartography. So like you pick a topic or an industry or something, right. And you want to be able to build a map. Of where all the important information in that subject field has come from. So I am doing like, in my free time, I'll kind of go in and I'm trying, I'm going to see if I can read in the next like 4 years, if I can read every single important investment memo ever, like by my standard, important investment memo ever written and kind of catalog them accordingly. So like have maybe like a little summary. Then, um, classifying them by like investing type, how good I think they are.

Did they—

did those theses end up coming true? Were they way off? Why were they off? Um, which has been kind of a fun exercise and also teaches you every fucking function you need to know in Airtable. Um, nice.

One sec, I need to put the dog in his crate.

No, you're good, you're good.

Yo, so the way I'm imagining you doing that is like that Charlie meme, Charlie Kelly from Always Sunny, just—

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It'll be cooler than that.

Maybe not. Yeah. Um, but yeah, so like, that's— and then I do the same thing. Like, I am far— like, the person that I— I've got a couple of people that I really want to meet. Like, you know that question, like, if you could have dinner with anyone dead or alive? Like, Let me ask you, if you had to answer that question, can you name like one or two? Mine are weird.

Dead or alive? Um, I used to say Kanye. Uh, it's not as much anymore. I feel like Da Vinci would be dope, um, if I could like speak— like if we could speak the same language.

Yeah, you get to— you get to make that assumption. That's fair.

Um, Steve Jobs, but he'd probably like spit in my food and tell me I'm an asshole.

Dude, it sounds like you need to have dinner with Walter Isaacson, like the dude who does the biographies for all of them. Like, yeah. It'd be like a close proxy.

Yeah, exactly. Um, there's this guy, uh, the— have you listened to the podcast How to Take Over the World? Yeah, yeah, yeah, dude, he'd be, he'd be a cool guy. I feel like he could just teach me so much cool stuff.

Yeah, yeah, he was on, uh, he was— I'm thinking the right guy, right? He's— he does— he produces the My First Million. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know, dude. All you gotta do is pay $5,000 and he'll Do you listen to that episode when they were trying to convince him to be a consultant?

Yeah, yeah, hopefully.

Easy peasy.

Exactly. Uh, who would you have dinner with though?

All right, my list is super random. Uh, do you follow The Ringer at all? Bill Simmons media company? Yeah, yeah. So like Ryan Rosillo from The Ringer, I like, I think he's the funniest person on the planet. Uh, so I'd love to just hang out with him. Like, he's my sense of dry humor and I just, I'm like, I wanna, I just wanna sit down with him and talk one time. Like, feel like we'd be such good friends. Maybe one day. Um, yeah, there's that. Bill Gurley's one. Um, freaking Harry Stebbings, like 20 Minute VC. I think he's fucking ridiculous. Like, he's— it's such a great thing. Patrick O'Shaughnessy. It's really honestly like, it's all these fucking podcasters that I listen to. Yeah. So like, if you do well, maybe one day I'll be able to say you were one of the people and I did technically eat right before I started this.

So, yo, and I ate right before I started this too.

So it's like an async COVID dinner. This is wild.

Yo, that's, that's crazy. I love it. Um, who else would be cool? I feel like, um, I used to would have said like Donald Glover. I think he's just so interesting.

My bro— my bro— my brother would say the same thing. My brother loves Donald Glover, which I think is great too. Uh, oh, Virgil Abloh is another one. I wrote a, I think that's like the best thing I've ever written, actually. I wrote a, like right after he passed away, like a longer, like analytical piece on like why Off-White was like so brilliant, all the stuff that he did.

So explain the thesis. Cause I like, I mean, it's cool, but it just says Off-White on it.

So basically he operated on this design philosophy that if you can, you can take anything and make a 2% change to it, and that makes it original enough to, to to qualify as being its own thing, which is like a kind of novel concept. Like, right. You think about, like, I guess in fashion, that's a little bit of a novel thing. If you think about, again, like technology companies and everything and disruption, like they're really right. There's so many of these different things. I always think of marketplaces, like everyone's kind of taking the same idea of like, let's make a verticalized LinkedIn of X, Y, and Z. Right. And some of them are fucking brilliant business ideas. Like, they really are, and they are worth becoming their own businesses. And this idea of like remixing within that, within that like required band of how much you need to change it, he had it so, so small and yet so distinct from his own brand that I thought that was such like an interesting, cool mechanism for being able to do that. So that was like one like big takeaway for me specifically in terms of that. Also him and, uh, I need to get this, the date right, but him and Kanye interned together.

Yeah.

Where? Uh, it was in Italy. Um, let me get this date. I gotta pull it up. It's wild. They're in Milan. Uh, they, yeah, they interned at Fendi in like 2007 together, obviously.

So like, like it was, yeah, it was already famous. Yeah.

Yeah. He was, he was famous, but it was like him going, it was like kind of the precursor to him doing all the stuff with the Yeezys and everything. And that was kind of like, right, that was when Virgil was still doing Pyrex, his first brand, and then kind of went off and did Off-White, became the creative director for LVMH and stuff.

But you know, that 2% rule though, Twitter has taught me so much about that. Like, I used to think that I needed some novel brilliant idea, like, you know, And I still struggle with that. Yeah.

I feel, I feel like you're, you're right. You are absolutely right. And I struggle with the, like, I don't, maybe that's one of the reasons that I don't do the threads and stuff so much. Like I have a problem where if it's like not a very original idea or whatever, I'm kind of just like, I feel gross, which is, which again, it's wrong. Like it's objectively wrong because no ideas are that original. Like, yeah. But yeah, well, and then one of the reasons that I thought I really liked my Virgil Abloh piece was like, I did a fuck ton of research and like, I couldn't find anything like what I had written when I was researching. So like, that was another example of why I really liked it. And then I kind of, I don't know, like fashion is one of the tangential things that I'm like pretty interested by just in general, not for anything other than just kind of like my scroll time.

Nice. What brands?

Uh, I, I do some design work of my own with a buddy.

Oh shit, can you, uh, can you pull some shit up?

I can show you right now. We made these.

Oh dope, nice black and gold.

I like it. Yeah, there we go.

Nice. For people listening, nice pair of white Nikes with Yeah, I know, it's a, it's a brand that a buddy started called Rage to Live.

Uh, it's kind of, uh, basically a bunch of proceeds go to different, um, organizations and everything. It's a friend who has a rare form of cancer that kind of has just lived an absolutely ridiculously crazy life, and, and him and I are both kind of into this stuff and we wanted to work on a project together. So it's cool. We essentially— it— I mean, a lot of it is the, uh, the Virgil Abloh theory of kind of a licensed brand that isn't that different from a lot of other stuff. It's kind of, uh, imagine if, um, Antisocial Social Club was like for charity, like a little bit like that. Got you. But we, yeah, we just fuck around with it. It's fun, right? Like, you need a creative outlet for some stuff, even if what you do is technically creative, which is what I do.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, I saw this tweet the other day. It was like, the reason why people love Web3 so much is because everybody just gets to create shit and it's It's fun. Like, it is, it is, it's bringing so much creation to the world, whether it's NFTs or whatever.

I got a question for you. So what, so what pod episode is this?

Uh, episode, like, uh, yeah, it's, uh, it's the second one.

Yeah, that's what I thought.

Okay. Yeah.

So question, why are you doing this?

Because, uh, a few reasons. One, I want excuses to talk to cool people like yourself and always get into those. And like, same reason with my newsletter is like, I've like, what I found is like, people are just down to talk if you like are gonna either record or like put it out there. Like, and it's just awesome. So yeah, that's one reason. Another, I, yeah, I just always wanted to do it and I figured why not? I was on Austin's podcast, Austin Winters, and he was just like, yeah, I think everybody should have one just to have a record of their conversations with people. And I was like, yeah, you're 100% right. I mean, how many conversations have I had in my life that I don't remember anything and there might've been some novel insight and it'd be so cool to pass this shit down to, I mean, who knows if You know, I'm not thinking about kids right now, but one day, I don't know. But yeah. Yeah. So a lot of reasons also, like it'd be cool to fucking grow it into a cool podcast. And I think I could do that like over 5, 7 years. So I'm in it for the long haul.

Yeah. The nice thing with, so I agree wholeheartedly because one thing that I noticed, so I've been doing right. Once again, I actually want to take a quick step back just on this like content conversation and then like information. Diet type of, type of thing that we're talking about. The first 3 years of my career in banking, I learned so much, but there's like an issue in the infrastructure of learning there because you're essentially head down all the time. You're either like working really hard in spreadsheets and like trying to learn, in my case, like a bunch of like engineering types type stuff for energy projects. And you do, you learn a shit ton really fast, but you're head down and you're kind of not taking the time to produce anything other than what's being told to you, which like has its pros and cons. And the only time that you're really networking is if you're like politicking, which is kind of inherently the wrong way to do it. If you're trying to build out like a network that matters. So I did that for 3 years, like got good on the technical side and kind of just like You learn how to work like really, really hard, obscenely hard. Um, finally you learn how to work really hard without a crazy amount of upside. Um, just in terms of like, right. You, it's like a, there's no like marginal benefit really to how hard you work. Cause you're in like a pool. You can be the top of your pool, but like, does that really matter? You're not like building equity in anything really, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah. That, Big facts. Like, I love shit that compounds, man.

Yeah. Then I kind of get in on this side of the media, this side of the media spectrum. And it's very different because a lot of what you're doing is upward facing, like trying to understand audiences, building out different products, different, like each piece of media that you, that you build is a different product. It's a different SKU.

I've never thought about that.

Yeah. I mean, it is, it really is. It's like how I have to think about every single Sunday article that I write.

Yeah.

It's like a different, based on the time of year, based on like what's going on in the markets, based on what we've previously written, like what is it that will get the highest market share of our audience to have a viscerally positive reaction? Which is just a totally different mindset from what I was doing for 3 years. And I think that That is way more conducive to you having a positive psychology about other people. And by positive psychology, I don't necessarily mean that you think about them positively. I mean that you're thinking about them at all. And that is like a really interesting way to look at the world. So that's something that I've kind of really enjoyed from, from that standpoint.

Oh, big facts. Like I've, yeah, I've met so many cool people on Twitter and just thinking and thinking about them in general, like I don't know, everybody wants to see each other grow, you know, in that way. And, you know, I don't like everybody I've met on Twitter and some people I probably resent, but like for the most part, yeah, no, I still want to see them grow and like do good shit, man. Like if they're, if they're good people generally, you know.

So yeah, I think, and then kind of on what you were saying with this, like getting back to the idea of like doing a podcast and everything, I think that a really Something that I've noticed is that I, I get, I did this, um, investor roundtable where I interviewed, like, I think in aggregate it was like 16 people from industry and kind of got their, like, look back on 2021, predictions for 2022. For all the ones that I didn't do in person, which was most of them, I like got them on a, I basically did a podcast episode with them. I recorded all of them. Which they were all cool with. And then I kind of like, we weren't going to publish them or anything, but I'll go back and look at them every once in a while. And one, look at it from the standpoint of like, yo Liam, like you cut them off like twice. You need to practice asking questions. And then other things being like, oh wow, I totally forgot this guy said X, Y, and Z about what he thought the TMT landscape would look like. This is super interesting. Like, let me think more about that. And doing that a couple of times has actually led me into some of the rabbit holes where I've like decided to write Articles or research pieces about, about stuff. So you're right. It is just nice. Again, like what I said, the information cartography, like you get to have then this kind of banked— it's banked content, but it's also, it's also banked bandwidth of your memory. You don't have to worry about trying to remember stuff. It's, it's organized. Dude.

That's a, that's a crazy idea that I really like as well. I, um, I'm talking to my friend Adam, who's a comedian, uh, stand-up comedian. I'm excited about that, um, just being able to talk about that side of the, side of the world, that business, the grueling, uh, the hopefully compounding thing that he's working on.

Um, yeah, I just got a really, I got a really funny message. So my, I work with our executive editor, and we, Front Office Sports, just So when I joined, we started this Sunday newsletter and recently we launched a Saturday newsletter. The Sunday is kind of like an in-depth business breakdown. The Saturday is a little bit of like a, let's find something interesting and write about it. And he sent me a pic. They've been doing really well. Like our newsletters do incredibly well. I can't like share any metric information or anything, but it's like, I've learned, I didn't know anything about any of this stuff when I joined, just in terms of like open rates and all that stuff. And I've like, having learned now, I'm like, oh shit, this is crazy. Um, and we have a huge, huge email list, but, um, the Saturday and Sunday for being such new properties are performing really well. And I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that like they are in the different types of SKUs that we have from our media standpoint. They're probably right now the most novel and interesting SKUs, but my editor just sent me, it's a picture of chat. It's a I'm going to show you and then I'll describe it, but it's this— oh, my background thing. I don't know if it'll work, but it's like one of those old ESPN graphics of, uh, Shaq and Kobe from like the 2002 Finals. And he says— he said, uh, Saturday and Sunday editions, and it's just their points per game averages being like absurd because of how, how those editions have performed. Um, that's nice. Nice.

So you played baseball in college, right?

You said yes, I did.

So why is baseball declining, like, in viewership? Like, why is that going on? Because I, I played baseball growing up. I love that shit.

Whoa, bro, easy. No, so I think, I mean, there's a couple of reasons. One, I mean, like, their TV deals are just, like, more difficult to get distribution on. They have so many regional sports network deals that, like, I don't know, they're— the business model is built to be regional. So I guess like depending on how you look at it, certain metrics are pretty steady from like the big regional networks still performing relatively well. Um, from a national standpoint, it's, it's just not there. Like the NFL and NBA are national leagues, baseball, the MLB isn't.

Um, and then I had an answer. That's the most intelligent answer I've heard. So good.

Yeah, we've— yeah, thank you.

Uh, everybody else just is like, oh, attention span. That's, that's the go-to answer.

Yeah, but that's a stupid answer because like, I don't— like, baseball, all sports have that issue because our attention spans— it's not attention span, it's like, it's, um, your attention is an economy that has different— like, you have like an entire attention GDP that you spend on differently. And like, I don't know, my attention GDP Like, Twitter gets a fuck ton of my attention, like GDP. Uh, I, as someone who works at a sports media company, I think on a relative basis I still watch more like Netflix and Hulu and HBO than I do sports. Um, not because I don't like sports or anything, because I fucking have so much attention to spare and Euphoria is that fucking good. Like, I don't— like, like, it's how it works. I'm actually writing This week I'm writing a report on like how some of these streaming services from like a sports and a regular way media standpoint have huge trouble, um, getting like long-term value out of their customers because of just the inability for people to kind of stay on platform. So it's something that I just started researching today, but it's, it's, it's interesting. I think that there's cool companies like, um, This is a good one. You should look it up. It's called Buzzer. And they essentially, you can watch, you can get like notifications of when teams that you follow there. I think they're just NBA right now. Teams that you follow are in like the fourth quarter or something. And it pops up and you can like watch accordingly on your phone. They have deals with like NBA League Pass and that type of stuff. And it's like, in my head, that's the way that I consume sports way more now. And I think there's going to be like, people always talk about like second screen experiences with sports, like how, you know, you're watching the game and you're interacting with people watching the game on Twitter, or you're betting or something like that. And, and I think that like that's going to merge into just like people being more interested in the secondary content that's derived off of the sports themselves than the sports themselves. I could totally see that happening.

Yo, people watch— like, I see personally, I watch more TikTok or YouTube highlights of sports than I do watch live sports. I don't, I don't have cable anymore, so yeah, totally. Yeah, any sports videos I'm watching is just me on the, on the, uh, stationary bike, just YouTube flipping, like just going through shit.

You said stationary bike, you didn't say Peloton. Is it not a Peloton?

No, no, I don't have a Peloton. It's downstairs. In the gym.

What's, uh, what's your, what's your workout routine? Yeah, fit stack looking like?

Yeah, I use Future. Um, I've been working out, uh, every day since December 3rd, which has been fucking hype.

It doesn't look like it.

Oh, thanks, bro. Thanks, bro. I only lost 15 pounds in the last fucking—

Wow, so you really look like shit.

Yeah, man, you know, I didn't put up, put on my, uh, my best outfits day, you know. So it's that black sweatshirt life, man.

Dude, I, I love the black sweatshirt life.

Oh my God, it's the way to go, man.

Yeah, I know, you'll never get an argument out of me, not a chance.

Yeah, yeah. So that's, that's it. I eat a shitload of protein bars, like probably too many. Um, and, uh, yeah, a lot of beef, a lot of, a lot of veggies, uh, like onions and peppers and kind of shit. Um, Yeah, I think tortillas are the answer to everything.

Like, my brother has like a bit that he does. I have a younger brother. Yeah. Um, and he literally, anytime someone makes any food, he's like, oh yeah, sure, can I get that in a wrap? Honestly, man, soup, cereal, like a banana, he's like, yeah, sure, banana, can I get that in a wrap? He's an idiot, but it makes me laugh. Makes me laugh every time. I guess so. I, I've given you a bunch of kind of like how some of the stuff in my past has informed some of my decisions, kind of how I operate, right? I played baseball in college. I was a closer. Um, so I just— and the way that they— we had this thing on our team where like the, the times in my life when I'm most stressed is when I don't have control over a situation. And as a like relief pitcher, you literally just sit the entire game and have no control over anything. So I would literally like, it would be like the second inning, it'd be 0-0, nothing, like game's just going. And I'm like pacing back and forth, like motherfucking everything. And our coaches were like, dude, you need to just go like take a nap in the locker room. So I got banned from the dugout for like the first 5 innings of games.

Oh geez, bro.

So I would have to go into like the trainer's room and like, like watch YouTube videos on my phone. Cause they wouldn't let me in the dugout. And I'm the same way with like work. Work, which is good and bad, but like, I just, I like need to be in it and all that stuff. And like, that informs kind of how I work and like what I like to work on and all that stuff. And I'm curious because you, like any good podcast guest, I LinkedIn stalked you and like have like tried to like in my head created a story of like what happened with, with you.

Yeah.

And I'm just curious about like how some of your stuff from, from your past has like like taking you on this path towards, towards like data science and now kind of getting into the Web3 stuff. And then yeah, like me. Yeah.

I'mma give my dog a motherfucking peanut butter ball.

So yeah, you're good.

All right. So you want the long story or short story?

We go in between.

Yeah. Let's, let's go in between the Goldilocks answer.

Yeah, there we go. Exactly.

A lot of stuff is not on my LinkedIn. I started off at University of Michigan and was partying a little too hard, and, uh, I was struggling with mental health stuff and just, you know, uh, it wasn't good. So I had to get my shit together. And so I left there, traveled, worked a bit, and, you know, worked on myself and came to Rutgers. I was studying English, um, and working in advertising a bit just on the side, like not real money, just side money kind of thing. And I was on Twitter trying to do like advertising stuff and, you know, it was nothing was great. And then I saw Lambda School. I was like, dude, I wanna learn how to code and I wanna make some money. And so I chose data science and then I got an Oura Ring and cuz I was sleeping like shit and I felt awful all the time. And so I did a data engineering study on my Oura Ring data.

I read it. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So I did that for a project. It was like the first project at Lambda School, so nothing too fancy. It was like a month in and that got some, you know, some good response on Twitter. And so I just started DMing people and asking to do interviews and meeting people, and that's kind of how it went from there. Yeah, that's the experience. And so I work at American Express now as a data engineer and Yeah, just grinding on this on the side.

So I've always thought I've like had like a love-hate relationship with Python, mainly because I just, I get so distracted with content that I've like done, like I've almost finished like so much DataCamp stuff. So I can like shittily hack together, like most like really shittily hack together most things if I wanted to. But I just don't do it. Cause like, I don't have, I don't have that like project or whatever that I, if I did, I would, and I just don't have it yet.

Oh dude, of course. I honestly don't code that much. Like I do it for work and then everything else is just content. It's like, I think Naval had some writing about it. It's like, if you can't code, make content. And so I just do both. Cause I'm never gonna be like an incredible coder. Like that's just not, that's not in my future.

And it sounds like you don't want to either.

No, no, I don't. I'd rather, I'd rather do content. It's so much more fun and like creative. And I mean, if I was like as good at coding as I was at like writing and other things, like sure. But yeah, I'm just not. And my brain doesn't like, I'm not a math whiz or anything. I'm good enough like to, to get a job and do okay. So yeah, that's, that's where I'm at right now.

So no, I think that's cool. I think, yeah, on the, on the mental health side of that, like, it's, it's interesting. My, my brother and a close friend of mine had kind of similar things where they just like, I don't know, they went to college right away and they just, I don't know, like, you're kind of forced if you have the opportunity to, you're forced to go to college right away after high school. And a lot of times that's just like not the right choice. If I had I went and I was okay and I did fine. But if I had like had 2 years of literally doing anything, I would've just like picked, picked a very different path than I did. Probably not to say in any, in any way that I didn't enjoy or didn't like what I was doing or regret any of it. That's not the case. I just would've known myself better and kind of like skewed more towards stuff that I had a better sense that I was actually interested in and that type of stuff.

And I just think it's like a very Yeah, I don't think there's a good answer because like there's gap year programs, but a lot of them are like, you know, just go travel the world and do a bunch of BS. But, um, you know, I did, I did do that for a few months and we didn't like— I was supposed to work at like a yoga studio, so I went there a couple days a week, but the rest as an instructor, not a teacher. No, no, I was— that was before I got the instructor's license. I was cleaning, I was cleaning the yoga studio. That's, uh, that's— it was boring. Yeah, listening to some music and cleaning a USC. But, um, yeah, it's just like, uh, it's hard when you don't know how to do stuff, you know? Like, what are you gonna do as work? Um, it's crazy to think though, uh, if I— like, when I was on using Twitter in high school, I was just like shitposting and like making myself laugh and my friends laugh and had a lot of people like fucking around on there. But it's crazy to think like, what if I kept investing on that, you know, um, where would, where would that go? But I'm very happy with how everything went, you know.

Yeah, I think, I think too one of the big things is that like—

you pulling up my Twitter, bro? You, you stalking? Gotta dox me, my ass.

To dox you? No, I got a very rare, uh, email from my dad.

Oh shit, shit.

Am I gonna— I'm just seeing if I'm getting yelled at.

Okay, is that a— is it full name? Like, you know, like middle name?

No, but it— no, but it's in German, so we know that that's That's usually not a great sign.

Oh geez, bro. Geez.

Oh no, he just— he's, he's out skiing and he's, he's asking me if, if he's asking me if he should wax my skis, but he forgot that I literally just started recovering from tearing my Achilles. So the answer is no.

How'd you tear your Achilles? That sounds awful.

I was training for an Ironman and—

oh shit.

I was in the best shape of my life. It sucks. I was like, so I was 3 months out and it just, I had like a nagging injury and it never, never caught onto me. Well, it never, it, I never caught onto the fact that it was like an actual injury. It was kind of just like nagging. And then I went home for, what's the one? I always mix up Labor Day. Memorial Day's the one in May, right?

They're the same thing.

Yeah. Yeah. So. Memorial Day, I went back to Maryland right before my parents were moving out of like the house that we moved to from Europe to go see a bunch of my high school friends, hang out, and then come back. And I went, showed up, immediately they were like, yo, let's go hoop. Went freaking absolutely ruptured my Achilles in 30 seconds. It was so gross.

That sucks.

One of the worst injuries you can have.

I'm like Yeah, that murdered Ryan Howard's career, man. He was so good and then just—

no, that, that and him eating all those Subway subs, I'm telling you, did not help.

I mean, I think it gave him the power, bro. That's how he got those home runs, man.

I guarantee 1 million percent if he ate Jersey Mike's instead of Subway, he would not have torn his Achilles.

I didn't know where you were going with that, but that's all right. Now that I live in New Jersey, I agree. So you're right.

Where are you from originally?

I'm from Pennsylvania.

From Pennsylvania?

Yeah.

Yeah. Are you, are you Steelers fan?

No, no, Phillies and Eagles. I'm not, I'm not a huge football guy, but Phillies. Yeah, definitely.

Yeah, I was curious if you're a Steelers fan. I was just gonna hang up.

Yeah. Where else did you live in Europe?

Uh, so we kept like, our home base was in Berlin, and then my dad had a real estate company that kind of was doing developments all across Europe. His, his shtick was He saw a huge opportunity in helping build Berlin up after the, uh, after the Berlin Wall came down, so was part of that effort. And then we like— it was like the Czech Republic, Hungary, Spain, Norway, Sweden. Um, he's, he's originally like, like Norwegian, from Norway. Um, and then spent time— yeah, spent time in there, Malta, uh I think I said Hungary already.

Nice, nice. Good shit. Yeah, dude, I, I am out of things to talk about, man. I'm, I'm, I don't—

I'm out. Did I, did I tire you? Are you—

dude, I'm, I'm the wellness head guy, bro. I need sleep. Um, but you wanna— I could stop recording and you want to jam on some wellness skill stuff if you have time?

Yeah, real quick.

All right, dope.