Jordan Mix on Permissionless Projects and Tweeting Your Way Into A Job

Sup nerds, welcome to the Jason Levin Show where I talk to the craziest viral marketers blowing up the internet.

Crazy.

What are you waiting for? Let's go blow up the internet. Sup nerds, today I'm talking with my good friend Jordan Mix. He is a designer, an engineer, and a partner at Late Checkout with Greg Eisenberg. Jordan is one of the most internet savvy, very online individuals that I know. He's also a super high agency dude. What that means, he could do anything. I swear to God. You tell him to design a pair of sneakers, he can go do that and then ends up meeting an NBA player. Real story. Tell him to go buy businesses, he does that. The dude is a high agency machine and he is a pro at permissionless projects. You're going to hear all about that and more in this conversation.

Yeah, I literally just tweeted this and screen recorded me with my iPhone just talking over this and Greg then DM'd me and now I'm a partner at Late Checkout, so it's sick. Um, shoot your shot on the internet, people.

You're always one cold DM away from a new life. That's what I always say.

Absolutely. I think that's one thing that I love about the internet too, is just like parasocial relationships and a lot of people have the most parasocial, there's the most parasocial relationships right now than there ever has been. Yeah, because of podcasts and because of all these things, like it's just one directional and it's wild when you meet someone that you have a parasocial relationship with.

Yeah, I think parasocial relationships get a very bad rep because you think of parasocial relationships at first, it gives you the idea of some creepy dude or Jason Levin here, but I've turned a lot of my parasocial relationships into friendships. Right? Dude, totally. So like, I, I guess you could say I had a parasocial relationship with Greg and then I sent him a DM, right? I had followed his work, sent him a DM, and now we're homies, right? And like the other day, ran into Mike Solana on the street in the middle of Central Park. Like he recognized me, I recognized him, we dab off, say hello because I had him on my podcast, right? So you get to build these. Yeah, the parasocial relationship to real life relationship pipeline is really real if you're willing to work on it and make it happen. There is a real way to do that. And I don't think everybody realizes that. Some people are just content with having the parasocial relationship and—

Yeah, totally.

I've never been like that. I'm not content with that. I want to go meet my fucking heroes. I don't want to, I don't want to just have them in my head. I want to go meet my heroes and work with them, become friends with them.

Yeah, I think some people are content on it. I also think other people just are scared of getting swatted or rejected, so they say that they're not interested in it. Like one of my buddies is like a huge Joe Pomp, Joe Pompliano fan. And he's like, if I could work for anyone, I would work for Joe Pomp. I was like, I'm pretty sure Joe Pomp has zero or three people that work for him. If you actually wanted to go work for him, like you can definitely do that. Like he's, we've DM'd before. Yeah, I've met him. You've met him? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yo, Adam, I'm gonna connect you with Jason Levin Levin. We're gonna hook, we're gonna hook you up with Joe Pomp and we're gonna do a live permissionless apprenticeship right here, baby.

Yeah, exactly. I think a lot of people are definitely scared and, or they just think, I don't know if they think it's impossible sometimes or they're scared or what. I think something that helped me a lot is when I was 14 and first getting on Twitter, I would just tweet at rappers that I liked and they were super engaging back, like Lil B or whatever. Hoodie Allen was one of 'em, or Mac Miller, for example, like liking or replying, like they all built their audiences very heavily on Twitter. In the early 2010s or so and were super engaging with their audience. You don't see it as much anymore, but Tyler, Creator, Kid Cudi, all of them were just totally engaging with their audiences. You could get in contact with anyone. I was able to get comments, DMs back when I was like 14. I was like, oh shit, the sky's the limit if I'm doing this right now.

Totally. Yeah. And I think it's still, it's not like we're not out of that era. It's very much still attainable to, to do that. If you're trying to make, quote unquote, make money on the internet, I think the best way is just collaborate and be in the DMs and like opportunities will come. Uh, I think a lot of people focus on like, how do I scale this thing? Or how do I divorce my time from my money? Like, bro, you, you need some money first.

Like, you need some money, you need an audience, you need leverage before you could start divorcing your time from your money.

Yeah, it's like dudes with a bunch of time will be like, I need to divorce my time from money. I'm just like, if you're trying to get money, the best way to do it is to sell services. You learn the problems intimately, you network, so you're building a network that of people that pay you, you're getting testimonials, you're getting reps. It's the best way, hands down. You're getting started.

So let's jump into Late Checkout. Is that cool? All right, sweet. So for context, for the listeners, I first met Greg from Late Checkout, the founder of Late Checkout, 3 years ago. Cold DM'd him. He hopped on the phone that night. The next morning we worked on a project, worked with them for a bit, and just stayed friends. And then I randomly meet Jordan on Twitter after he posts a really cool sneaker design. And then within a few weeks you're working with Greg. And tell the story, man. Like, how did this come about and what's been going on as partner? Because it's been amazing to see. So let's hear it.

Thank you. Yeah, it was definitely a huge serendipitous and blessing to, to be able to make the transition. So I started my career in medical device entrepreneurship. I did mechanical engineering, built a medical device, raised $6 million, took that from Zero to FDA, which was a great experience and I never want to do it again. Um, so I built an agency after that for health, like for medtech innovation for hospital systems specifically. So we were like doing medtech innovation for hospital systems, spinning out new companies as an additional revenue stream for them. So we grew that to like mid-seven figures, 30 people across two 2 locations, Nashville and Houston. And I just, it wasn't the business that I should have started. It's the business that I could have started. And I was just unfulfilled and unfulfilled for 2 or 3 years of, I found Jack Butcher's stuff in like early 2020. I was like, this is a language I didn't know I knew, visualize value. And I tried to apply this build once, sell twice thing back to this agency that I was running. And it got more profitable, but I didn't get happier. And I felt like I was living this double life with people on the internet that were just like, literally so aligned where their story was the marketing and then their marketing was the story. And I was like, dude, I'm, I long for just a harmonious, like not 9 to 5 and then I turn it off and then study the internet and try to apply it back to 9 to 5. So entrepreneurship looks like very different and like different levels of fulfillment for each person. So in 2023, I started this little brand called, at the end of 2022, but 2023 started this little brand called Do Within. Because I wanted to do cool people, do cool things with cool people in cool places. And Greg was on my cool person list. So I was like, I'm just going to start ripping permissionless projects to these cool people. And so I did that, tweeted from an 18 follower account, Do Within, faceless, and he liked it and reposted it, went viral. He was like, who are you? I want to learn more. And we were on a FaceTime within 15 minutes of me tweeting that. And it was January 2nd.

And how did you go from that to now being partner of Late Checkout and what does your day-to-day look like? What are your responsibilities?

Yeah, so I started with a, on a project as like an entrepreneur in residence or like a nerd in residence as we call it. And I was working on You Probably Need a Robot, but then I was also using a lot of my like past experiences building those two businesses across the holding company. And so it, it just was a natural extension of I should join the holding company and help all of the businesses just level up across the board in a strategic growth hiring and just being like a right hand. We have Theo as well, who's an unbelievable operator and he's doing LCA, our innovation agency and dispatch and like managing like hiring and stuff. And then I'm helping Greg. On like growing the business, biz dev, acquisitions, zero to one incubations, et cetera. It's a blast, man. It's a really cool engine that I tried to build by myself at my previous agency, but it was in the wrong sector and with the wrong people. So it's amazing to be in a garden where the soil is fertile and we're building a holding company that builds holding companies.

Dude, I'm so happy for you. When we met, you were still at the medical agency and trying to figure out your, your way to get outta there. And this has been amazing to see. Makes me very happy. I love what you're saying, man. Being and working in harmony. This is exactly how I felt. So I was a data engineer at Amex and doing all the internet freelance, right? I had growing my Twitter and so inharmonious, just like absolute boring and boring all day, every, like, and then just Twitter on the side doing the fun stuff and then making more writing than coding, leave that behind. And now just full harmony, work-life integration 24/7. And I was freelancing for the last 3 years and I told myself I would never work a 9 to 5, work a W-2 again. And then Product Hunt pulled me in freelance. Thanks to Greg, actually, Greg made the intro to Ryan. And I loved it so much that they convinced me to be a W-2 and it's, I get to be here, I get to build stuff and feel completely in harmony. And they love my memeing, they love my goofiness. I love what we're doing. So dude, being in harmony, working in harmony. I, I hope if you're listening to this, yeah, I hope if you're listening to this, know that it's possible. It just takes a little while to find it. It takes a little while, some serendipity and like A lot of hard work of finding the right fit and a lot of failing at the wrong fit to figure out what's right. It's possible though.

Yeah, you gotta take L's. You gotta take L's.

Yes.

And know what you don't want too.

Yeah.

Like those two things, know what you don't want first and then find out what you want and take mad L's.

So many L's. I posted this the other day, just like, dude, I, so I was at University of Michigan. I started there. And I was growing this e-commerce business selling stickers on the internet. I sold like $40,000 worth of stickers by the time I was like 17, 18. And I was like, wow, I'm going to grow this shit. I'm going to grow it, drop out. And I want to go this digital nomad life, but I'm smoking weed like crazy at the time, getting stoned and don't focus on the business at all. Just party boy, travel around and go broke. Take the massive L, look like an idiot to everyone. Dropped out of the number 2 business school in the country and looked like a complete bozo for like years. And that's why I don't mind looking like an idiot on the internet sometimes, cuz I've already looked so much worse. And there's something to be said about taking Ls early as well, because it sets you up for the rest of your life to take big chances cuz you're used to it. So take the Ls early, give your parents some gray hairs.

Yeah. No Ls, no lessons, baby.

Ooh, bro, that's sharp. I like that, man. I like that. You got these hat designs. I know you had some prototypes. You got 'em with you?

Yeah, I've got 'em on the desk right here. Just talking about L. The design is fire, but the, the height is just so Luigi. That height. I'm just like Luigi out here, bro. It's just mad. So we're back to the factory with this one. But yeah, I just wanna do within billboard, bro. Like, this is a sick hat if you need to bail water out of a boat.

Dude, you could scoop some water out. You look like a trucker, man. Very piñata trucker almost, actually, that I could—

yeah, it's just, dude, it's just not, it's just not for me, my guy.

Yeah. Like, I get it.

It's wild. This is the first time I wore it on cam too.

It's big.

That's, it's definitely, that's freaky, bro.

It's definitely big. I love the idea of clothing as billboards. You tweet about this a lot. I got my Mean Lord jersey right behind me. A lot of people have been asking for it lately, so I just bought it off at Amazon and edited it myself with a custom last name and stuff for, I, I don't know how to make money off it. I don't know how to sell that because it's like on Amazon. I guess I could figure out a way, but then I would need to get the names customized every time. And that just sounds like a lot of operational work that I don't, that's not worth the money. So I've just been pointing people to the Amazon link. You should do like a, uh, shirts. Those are easy. The Memelord shirts are easier. I could just sell those, drop ship them, but I don't know how to do it with the last name without just like having to do it myself.

Yeah, you gotta, you gotta get the, you gotta get the manufacturing in order.

Yeah.

I have a big gripe with print on demand.

Um, it's not quality. I get it. Yeah.

It sucks, bro. Yeah. As someone who likes brands and high quality stuff and like different cuts. The print on demand quality just drives me up a wall. So that's why I went like fully custom with these hats is if I'm going to do it, we're doing it, baby.

Yeah.

Doing tech packs and we're talking to manufacturers.

Nice. Yeah, I think I could probably just get these bought, bulk buy them, but that has my last name on the other side, which I think is really sick. If you're wearing a jersey, you better have your last name on it. So yeah, at the same time, I I guess I could just sell plain Memelord ones and that would be a way to do it, but, and just buy bulk and maybe I'm looking at throwing some events, some Memelord related events this summer. So maybe give those out as prizes or sell them out, some competitions of some sort that's going down.

Yeah. Make a 5 with Cyber Patterns on the back.

Oh dude, I got black shirts that say Fine Patterns and then another black shirt that just says Memelord. And that is a hit. Every time I wear that, it gets stares and it's really funny. And people have already started buying that. I just threw that one up on Redbubble. That's just, that one's dropshipped.

But yeah, that's, yeah, it's a trap though too. Like these businesses are huge loss leaders. Like I'm not trying to be in a D2C e-commerce like game at all.

No.

But like I posted those and they got more traction than I thought, like 40 people. Were asking for, 40 or 50 people. Dude, I, I was like, I'll make 100 of these.

Yeah.

Let's go.

Yeah, exactly. I really am not trying to be a D2C e-commerce guy, but if people want the clothes, I want to give it to them. And similarly, the books right there, it's pretty disgusting how little a print book makes when you're not printing, when you're not doing Amazon and you're not doing like massive Bulk orders, like not much, you know, a couple bucks, a few bucks. Yeah. But that being said, I mean, your book's only $6.

It's only $16.

We just added actually $18 with $4 shipping. So price is a feature. So none of you poor meme lords out there. And now this is for the meme marketers making some money. But yeah, dude, I love giving away free books. It's a good feeling. I gave away 3 books. I was at an AI demo that we hosted a couple nights ago. In SF, and I gave away a book to 3 select people. One had launched a meme app, one was working on an AI app and they were doing meme marketing, and then the other was just this maniac, bro. Like, he was a maniac who was launching one app, working on another, and doesn't have a big following, but just a fucking maniac. And I loved it. And I just gave him one and all 3 posted pictures and then that drove some more sales. It was like, that was not— I was just so happy to give it to them and have them read it. And of course, yeah, some people are going to post pictures. Sometimes I give people a book and they don't post pictures, whatever. It's all good. Sometimes they don't buy it. Also, what I'm saying is it's a lot more money just to sell the digital books, but I link everybody towards the print books because the physical book is such a better experience. It's beautiful. It's so much better, especially for memes. You got to have the physical book and see that stuff in person, but Yeah, we see so much stuff digitally that physical, it just hits so different. It really does. I think it's special, dude. I tweeted this the other day. The more AI girlfriend apps I see launching, the more bullish I am on IRL community.

Truly. Yeah.

People are getting lonelier and lonelier. Greg's tweet went viral the other day about that, about my AI girlfriend.

Yeah.

Um, But yeah, people are getting lonely and very bullish on IRL communities. Have you seen, uh, GetRiver? Have you checked that out?

Yeah, I talked to them actually.

I was on the phone with her today. We just set ours up for Product Hunt. Gonna be setting it up for Memelord stuff as well. You think?

She's a legend, dude.

I really respect what she's done where she just started by building context for listeners. GetRiver is this platform that lets creators or big communities create a community and then let people apply to host meetups around the world. And so it's, it takes, it makes it scalable where the creator can't be at every single one. And so Tim Ferriss, All In Pod, some other ones are doing it now. We're doing it with Product Hunt. I'm going to have some Memelord stuff around the country. And yeah, really big fan. Do you, are you going to test it out for like checkout or Greg stuff?

Yeah, we'd like to, we've definitely been thinking more about like IRL stuff. The pr— this, the problem with IRL is it's really expensive to plan this big thing that you don't have the known outcome for. So that's why I really like how GitRiver is doing this because they're basically allowing you to do MVP meetups at scale, where it's, if you can find a host in a city, you can host a, you can host a meetup for free. And yeah, and then that's an, um, if I'm a creator, I'm doing that. That's what we're thinking about for Greg. I'm doing that. And then the highest attended one, we're gonna do the whole like Late Checkout Con there, or like that's the place to invest when you have like your raving fans in a location. And I think brand and activations and all of this stuff is going to start using digital tracing and these pop-up communities to do early indication of, if I'm Nike, like where should there's the sneaker first drop. Maybe if I'm dropping a new running sneaker, it's gonna be in like Boulder, Colorado where there's the Run Club, or I think there's some creator on, I think it's Mighty Network called Slow AF Run Club. It's a huge running group now. Yeah, exactly. Like, I'm so slow. I'm not running, bro.

Same.

Yeah, cuz I'm not running. I only run unless there's like a ball involved. Yeah. Unless there's, I'm dribbling a ball, I'm not running. But yeah, so I think that the IRL, URL, close that loop connection, I'm, I'm very amped on.

I'm really excited as well. It makes it scalable. I went to one of Greg's meetups up in New York. It was very fun. Very good vibes. What was that? It was a few months ago. Rooftop, I guess 6-ish months ago. It, it's a pretty magical thing that you could be on the internet and you just tell people, come through. And Greg lives in Miami. He doesn't even live in New York. He just shows up, pops into a friend's apartment rooftop. 50 to 100 people are there that applied to come in and it's just like a magical thing, man. Like you could just show up anywhere. I love the way you're thinking about GetRiver as MVPs for future events, like a late checkout con. Thinking similarly, like we should which events are popping the most, that's where we go send the CEO. We put the CEO, that's where we go throw more events we invest in. So definitely love the way you're thinking about that. And yeah, I'm seeing Ray, the founder of GetRiver on Monday. I'll actually be randomly up in Boston for a wedding and she lives there. So exciting.

Sick.

Very exciting.

Yeah, she's, she's the real deal for sure.

Dude, she started so organically too. She just started hosting All In Pod. Meetups on Luma, which is another events platform. Yeah. She just started hosting them because she loved the All In Pod and listened every week. And she was like, this kind of blows. Like, Luma's good, but you can't like do it scalable. And then when she tried to go into other cities, then people would like take the email list and abuse it. And so she built this platform where the hosts don't get the email list, but they still get the benefits. And now what we're also thinking about, would love to hear your thoughts on it, is incentivizing the hosts. And so obviously, yeah, you could pay a host. but how else can you make it very cool?

Right?

She was talking about, do you do a host group chat? Do you do a host-only event? Do you do host weekly calls where they get a call with Greg? Do they get a call with the CEO or product on? Something else we're thinking about, giving affiliate badges on Twitter to the product on host, right? It's only $50 a month to go give an affiliate badge. And these people would, they'd be known as the product on host in their city, which is Very cool. So that was another kind of gamification fun part of it.

Yeah. How are you guys thinking about, yeah, I'm fully in and love, love that idea. How are you thinking about localization of Product Hunt?

Yeah. So the way that we're thinking about it is tight-knit meetups, tight-knit, sorry, events are one thing and meetups are another. So tight-knit events in big cities like SF, New York, Miami. And maybe whatever cities pop for meetups, but those tight-knit events are invite-only, small. This was probably going to be one of our last big AI demos this past week. Like we're going small for our events. Like we're doing an invite-only event, climbing an AI demo in SF in a couple of weeks, in a few weeks. And the point is to have YC founders, A16Z back people, like who are, they invested in product on like small kind of thing. And then we do the meetups, which are big as well for the whole community. But the point is we want to get the craziest, coolest, weirdest startups launching our product on as much as possible. So you got like the small tight knit where people are talking and like very build close connections. And you also got the big stuff. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I think there's a big opportunity for the like localization. Cause I don't know anyone who's launched anything on Product Hunt in Nashville, but I know that there has, I know that there has been, I guess I know a couple, but there hasn't been a, it's just interesting how My First Million did their meetup and it's just, they just have such ra— raving fans and it's All In very similar where it's just like these people, it's like this weird corner of the internet and then it gets even like weirder when you meet people in real life and these people are just so hungry to talk about like that stuff because their real life is different than their internet life for a lot of people. And that goes back to the parasocial relationship thing where I think that's why people feel lonely and divided is 'cause they talk to their IRL people about stuff that they actually don't care that much about.

Yeah. Yeah, dude. I'm like, because, yeah, I'm working on something right now where introducing people and the way that we're thinking about it is like, what content do you like? I think that is a better decision maker of will you vibe with somebody? Your information diet is the best vibe check because it shows what you're thinking about. We live in a society now that information is so decentralized. It's not like our grandparents with NBC and Fox. They only had 3 channels. We have 500 billion channels to choose from. So what are you watching? What memes? What's, what, what social media do you use? What social media do you use could be better than what hometown are you from? Honestly.

Oh, for sure. No doubt. Yeah.

Yeah, that is a better vibe check at this point. Like, why does it not have that on Tinder or a dating app, right? Is which social media app do you spend the most time on? Hell, link it up to my Apple thing that shows me screen time so I can't lie, right? Like a TikTok, two, two people use TikTok, probably a better match than a person who uses TikTok and one who uses Twitter. I don't know. Maybe that's just my opinion.

Yeah. Bookmarks, baby. Whatever bookmark, whatever your latest bookmarks are, that's who's on your Tinder feed now.

Yeah.

It's bookmark the dating app.

I like that. I like that. I love how Twitter is now showing you bookmarks, your bookmarks in your feed. Have you noticed that?

Really?

Yeah.

The pin. Yeah. Revisit this.

Yeah. I'm so bullish on X, AKA Twitter, AKA whatever the fuck it's called. So bullish. So excited.

Yeah, it's gonna be, I was listening to the NIA podcast, Not Investment Advice, Jack, Trung, Bilal, huge fan of that pod. Very underrated. Whenever there's big news, they always have really unique takes.

And a lot of Red Bull.

They were talking about, yeah, a lot of Red Bull, dude. I got the Celsius game going.

Ooh, I like Red Bull better, man. Those things, Red Bull makes me feel better. Celsius is These, I don't know, these things get you juiced.

It's wild. That's an aside. But they were talking about the rebrand of X and it's just chess, not checkers. The, it really is gonna be the everything app. I really do think that. And micropayments and all of the things, it'll take time, but the rebrand was necessary now. To have that time, like we're still calling it Twitter, right? But it will fade and decay away to where X will prevail. And there's a lot of things like the AI stuff is trash on X right now, but once they figure it out, they're going to make it go public again. It's just going to be like, Elon Musk is the smartest entrepreneur of all time. $150 billion market cap after he bought it for $44 billion. Like you can just read the headlines already.

Yeah.

Once payments and crypto and all that stuff become a thing.

I completely agree. I think people will look at people like ourselves and especially people like Greg who've been doing it for a decade. People who have been making money on Twitter before there was peer-to-peer payments as just like, they will be like, how is that even possible? It's like, how did, how did people make money before the internet? Wait, you made money by sending a Stripe link in your DMs? That's the weirdest thing ever. You didn't have a buy button on your Twitter to just buy with the money in your account or the connected? What? People are going to be like weirded out by that in 10 years. Like the teenagers, the teenage Silicon Valley hustlers are just going to think that I'm some freaking old head weirdo in 10 years, an OG.

Yeah. Do you use Farcaster?

Nah.

Or Warpcast?

I've tried Farcaster, man. And I'm just not that deep. Into crypto and I think it's cool.

Yeah, me either.

And I, I do think it's cool, but I'm just not that deep into crypto to care, to be honest.

Yeah. I want to be, I wish there wasn't such a barrier to entry or like a learning curve. It just feels like another thing to sign up for right now. But some of the application stuff that I've seen looks really interesting. The iframes and like the apps within the feed.

Yeah.

But dude, I don't even know how, I don't know where to start with that.

So I was a crypto journalist. I was a journalist at The Defiant, and I'm so much happier not being in crypto. Like I might've definitely lost out on some big Ws on some of these meme coins or whatever this, this bull run, but like not having any money in crypto and not being stressed out buying NFTs and sending money and worrying about just more peaceful. I was talking to another founder about this who founded a crypto company and like now is not out of it. It's just so peaceful. Like I feel so relaxed. I'm not like dependent on hype waves and I like that, man. Playing long-term games.

Same. Yeah. The world's a market already, but then when you marketize the market, it's just everything, price go up, number go up, blah, blah, blah. It's constant news. It's tough. It's really draining and the infrastructure is exhausting too. So that's, I'm, you You're not out of, are you completely out of crypto?

I am completely, utterly out of crypto. I've sold it all and I'm just straight in USD, man. I'm hanging.

I didn't, I do not support, but I do respect.

Yeah, I got a, your decision, dude. I got a wedding coming up and a honeymoon and yeah, I, I just want safe money right now.

I got a story for you. I sold. Yeah, I got married in 2018, but I sold in 2017 a bunch that I should not have sold. Yeah, I might've made a mistake, but at the time, you gotta do you, man.

I do.

You gotta do you. I, but I do like it. I own Bitcoin long term. I agree.

But I also am just such a, if you're listening to this, do the opposite of what I say.

Like, bro, I, I own, well, that's the problem. You can't trade.

Yeah. I owned Nvidia. In 2015 and then sold it because I thought I made a gain. Yeah. I only bought it because my roommate was a big gamer and had these giant PCs and started talking about NVIDIA nonstop. I was like, oh, graphics are important. I know video editing, it's obviously going to get better. And so I bought NVIDIA and massive gain, but it was only like $500 because I was 18. Like, I was like, oh man. Yeah, I'm just—

I did the same thing with Bitcoin. 2012, I had 10 coins at $80.

2012, bro, you were early. Shit. Shit, man.

Yeah. My friend was into some shady things and that's how I knew about it.

We all had that friend.

We bought it on Mt. We, yeah, we bought it on Mt. Gox and it was so shady. So we would've probably lost it all in the Mt. Gox crash. But yeah, he had a hun— he had 125 Bitcoin at a dollar.

Oh dude, did he sell it?

No, it's— no, he lost it. He lost it on Mt. Gox. I sold mine at a gain, like when it ran up to $150, like overnight, I was like, I gotta get my mom's rent money out of this Chinese crypto platform.

For real. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think you gotta do what feels right. I like my cash sitting in a nice 5% APY Wells Fargo account. And I take, I have a risky job. I got a lot of equity in multiple companies and I'd rather prefer that and let my money sit and make money for me than go play the market. You know, I'm gonna lose on the market, bro. I just suck at it. I just wanna bet on myself.

Yeah. SPY and SPY and chill.

SPY and chill. Is that the motto?

I think that's the motto. Yeah.

What about—

not financial advice. None of this is financial advice.

This is.

Just hanging.

What about—

this is just two dudes hanging.

Invest in your own business and chill. I think that's it.

You can do that too. You can do that too. That you do that first. And then once you have money that your business doesn't need, you put SPY and chill.

Okay. Here's a business idea that I was talking about with a VC the other day that I think is an incubatable business. All right. I'm pitching you right now. This is happening. Live pitch on the Jason Levin Show. A media company to go sell to a prediction markets company. So think about basically like these prediction markets companies like Kalshi, their AUM, their assets that are flowing through are getting more and more, but their CAC is so high. Build a media company around prediction markets. Every day there's new shit popping up on the prediction markets, right? Taylor Swift, you could bet on that. You could bet on the president, all that. You build some street interviews around that, asking people all these random questions, and then you go build a newsletter maybe, and then sell it to Kalshi so they get a bunch of users. What's your thoughts on that? Do you think that's a decent business? And not investible, but like start it, hustle it for a year or two, and then sell it for a few mil. That's, that was the idea that we were talking about.

That's above my head, man.

What do you mean?

Prediction markets. What are we talking about?

Prediction markets?

Like betting on like the futures?

Oh no. So prediction markets, check out Kalshi. It's basically like, how do we spell it? K-A-L-S-H-I. You could bet on literally anything. Like, let's check out the homepage right now.

Okay. Yeah.

Okay.

I got you.

You find it? Taylor Swift's catalog returns to TikTok and it's totally legal, like now institutions are putting money on this stuff and I think they want, they obviously want as many users as possible. Their CAC is high 'cause they're a financial company. If you, if Stripe is buying IndieHackers a newsletter, right? Hmm. Maybe they'd be buying a newsletter.

Yeah. No, this is, this is good. So you do, this is the play for this HQ trivia. For this, where you just get, you have to create a viral as all get out polling app. Wordle meets BeReal meets HQ Trivia.

I like it. I like it, dude.

And that's the polling data.

All right. Hear this viral app. This is from the maniac that I met. I was telling you about the maniac, right? At this SFU event.

Yeah.

He started a dating app and you could only go on for a half hour a day from 8 to 8:30. And it, the idea is to build this viral event where everybody just like checks it at 8 o'clock to 8:30 to talk to their, like meet their new person or whatever. If you could build that into this viral machine and like the idea is also that a girl gets matched with 4 guys because of the ratio, like she could talk to 4 guys for every one. One, one girl or whatever, because girls obviously have the more command of the market. But I love the idea of an HQ trivia kind of thing for dating is hilarious. I, dude, I wonder, I can't believe there hasn't been an HQ trivia again.

There hasn't been like a popup like, like that.

Do you think it would work for memes? Say every day, every 8:00 PM, you have 3 minutes to make a meme about this. Winner gets $500.

Yeah. How do you, is that like voting? So you like open it up for whatever and then it closes and then everybody who submitted votes, you get one vote.

Yeah. And you scan through all the memes. Interesting.

That's wild.

How would you make money on it though?

I don't know if you could read all of them that quick, but yeah. I guess I, I love like that Alex Cohen guy has like meme roundups on events. Did you have him on the pod?

I did. I had him on the pod, uh, a couple days ago or a couple pods ago. Yeah, dude, it's so smart. Every time a big event happens, just fuck it. Here's the tornado memes. Fuck it. Here's the earthquake memes.

Yeah.

So easy.

It's a great service. Like I, I feel in servitude, like he's in servitude of me when I see those because I don't wanna read through all the memes. I just wanna see the best.

Yes. Yes.

Letter, bro.

Dude, I, I know.

That's a good newsletter. Meme Mail. Yeah.

Yeah.

Meme Mail.

I, I, that's hard. I agree. I, I agree. It is a service. Curation is a service sometimes. I think you can't just be a curator because that's just fucking lame. Not gonna lie. Dude, it is.

Go create something, bro.

Go create something. Come on. Seriously, a curation only newsletter? Go create something. What are you doing?

It's true.

If you're only a curator, go work in a museum. Come on.

But you can make a museum.

But if you are a creator, then doing some curation here and there, your opinion, your curation, if you're a creator, is so much more valuable. It's so much more trusted if people like your taste better. I trust Greg's taste for his curation at the end of his newsletter because he's Greg. I wouldn't trust him if he was just some random schmuck who curates a newsletter.

Correct. Yeah.

People like—

I think you curate to create your taste and then you create to build your trust and then you can curate again. I don't know. I, I feel like you're anti-curation.

I'm anti-curation because people treat curation like it's some fucking art and it's not. You're just collecting links. That's all you're doing. And yeah, that's not art.

You gotta have taste though. If you're a good curator, you gotta have taste. Come on. Like Hidden New York, the meme page or the, like the, like tastemaking page, that page, Hidden New York.

No, no.

They're on Instagram. It's, there's like really dope, like, I guess, yeah. Uh, interior design. They built their business is insane now.

Yeah.

I think they're doing like probably 8 figures now. And they started as literally like a tastemaking page on Instagram. Look, and now they have like collabs with Solomon and all of these people.

Don't get me wrong, taste is cool, but Taste is easy. Maybe I say that as somebody who has taste, but I think taste is pretty simple. I think you also get—

you think it's simple?

I thought— I think you also get a lot better taste by being a creator than by curating. I think if you want real tasting, you go make shit and then you know what's good. But you do, even if you're not curating, consuming, you get taste, right? Is taste— do you think taste—

oh, correct.

Like I, I think my taste in music is great because I've listened to so much music. Maybe it's different for whoever, but.

Yeah, I think I agree. I agree with that. You've got to, you can consume and gain taste for sure. You gotta cure, I think you gotta curate for the feedback loop to really like refine the taste.

Yeah. Yeah.

I'm not like pro, I'm not telling everybody to go be a curator. I'm just saying, I think. There is value in curation and creation as curation as a service in some regards. Don't build a business around it. That's dumb.

I think it's a nice little side project that you could just do as a hobby in your free time, but that's about it. And maybe it turns into something, but only if you have a real thing. Like if I was gonna go curate a Cyberpunk Twitter that automated, automatically posts from the Cyberpunk subreddit and the Twitter is called Dope Cyberpunk Shit. And it's only the best posts from the subreddit or whatever. I think that I could build because I am the Cyberpunk-y kind of guy, or maybe it's the best memes or whatever. But is that as meaningful as going to create something? Probably not. Probably not as creative.

No, I think, 'cause that's tasteless curation.

All right, so let's say it's curation.

That's not selecting.

All right, fine. Let's say I'm selecting. The pics from r/cyberpunk, definitely still way less meaningful than going and making 'em myself. No doubt.

Yeah.

Like people couldn't have sold a curation of photos for $69 million. It was what he made.

Yeah. I think you gotta curate it and that's inspiration.

Did Picasso curate?

Oh yeah. You don't think that guy was a collector? He was a mental collector for sure. He was definitely inspired. Everyone's inspired. And that's a form of curation.

You think Picasso?

Oh, okay. Here we go. Here's the best, like, example of, like, why, like, a quote unquote, like, curation. Like, every chef, every musician, they all cook other people's dishes. They play other people's songs. As like a cover, and then that gives them their own taste. And like in an effort, that's like curation. You're curating from cultures and combining your experiences and tastes to create.

I think you should never wait to start creating. I think you should be creating and curating simultaneously from day one.

Yeah, I agree. I agree with that. I agree with that.

From the age of 5. Don't just play covers, start writing your own music. That is how I plan to pay for it. Adverse. Yeah, exactly.

Adverse.

Exactly. All right. I like it. I like it. That was a, dude, that was a deep discussion. My brain hurts, man.

Yeah, that was wild. I didn't think we were gonna debate curation versus creation.

My brain is hurting.

I don't think I was gonna, didn't think we were gonna debate curation versus creation.

It's a good debate though. I feel like there might be a cool design from that. We'll see what happens.

Yeah.

All right.

Let us know. Let us know, people, how, what side of the fence are you on? Curation or creation or both?

Yeah. Now's that time to add the why not both meme.

Yeah. But 'em both.

True. Cool, man. This was all like, I feel like we covered everything we needed to cover. That's about it. I don't know. I didn't have too much of an agenda, man. Like I just like getting on the phone with you and chopping up ideas. It's always a good time.

Likewise. I enjoyed it. Thanks for having me on.