Sold His Company for $50 Million, Now He's Changing Messaging with Blockchain - Shane Mac - ECS EP35

When you're young and lucky, you can be a little arrogant. We raised $3 million from Foundry Group, Brad Feld, grew it to 100 million people, fastest growing social product on top of the social networks in under 2 years and sold it to BlackBerry for $50 million. There was a company called Zarli and that was the failure. We raised $42 million. Everyone and their mom invested. I got kicked in the face. I didn't realize how much I was struggling with my own loneliness. Alcohol. Created a company where 3 years in everyone hated like even being there because we weren't self-aware. We were not able to be honest that it wasn't working. Mm. I've really learned a lot about the ways I lie to myself. I'm also sober now. I've been sober for over 3 years. The greatest thing I've ever done. Your new company, it's a decentralized messaging protocol called XMTP, letting everyone in the world have secure communication that they can own and control.

Shane Mac, welcome to the podcast.

What's up, man? How are you?

I'm doing well, doing well. So we were talking earlier, uh, a little bit about your background, but, um, tell everybody where you're from and what kind of brought you to Nashville.

Yeah, I mean, I grew up in a little town called Bartonville, Illinois. It's outside of Peoria, in the middle of nowhere between Chicago and St. Louis. And my whole life, my parents didn't know any other vacation except Panama City Beach. So for 16 years in a row, we drove an RV down. I just sit up top.

Was it spring break or summer?

Spring break.

Oh, nice. I did that too.

We stayed at the Osprey Hotel. They had a shuckums night in this little oyster bar called Shuckums. Every single Wednesday on spring break had Peoria night, and our family felt like, you know, we're a big deal. We got Peoria night here in Panama City Beach. Oh, that's awesome. And we used to go with all my dad's coworkers and stuff, and we'd always stop in Nashville. And I always loved music. I always loved writing. I've always been a writer. And when I got to college, I went to Western Illinois, which is a little state school on the west side of Illinois that, you know, no one's ever heard of. But my mom was like, you should go to Nashville and be a songwriter. And my dad was like, you should get a real job. And he really thought I'd get in the trades or whatever, but I'd always been fascinated by technology. And I was always on the computer and building things and learning how to code. And I had a little eBay store when I was 13. I used to sell baseball bats because I was a baseball player and I was selling baseball bats on eBay. And long story short, I moved west. My brother was in Seattle. He convinced me to leave my home. He's like, man, you can do a lot of things in this world. You need to get out of Bartonville. And I moved home with my girlfriend at the time, right after college. He's like, you got to get out of here. And he convinced me. He knocked on my door at midnight one night. He's like, come over to your mom's house. I was like, what are you doing in town? And he's like, I'm here to talk to you. And he actually convinced me to pack up in October of 2008. And he's like, you need to leave. And I moved to Seattle. And, you know, it was an incredible journey.

And why Seattle?

He was there.

Okay. Yeah.

And I stumbled into amazing people. We could talk about that. And that got me into tech. And tech really changed my life. And I really loved being in technology. And then in 2019, my last company got acquired they were in New York City and they were like, we need you to move to New York City. I was like, man, I'm so— and I was burnt out. I've been doing it for almost 9 years. And, you know, I think when you're like a young founder CEO and you don't really know what you're doing, you're just trying so hard to stay above water. You're raising venture capital, you're running around San Francisco. And I was just burnt out. I was so burnt out. And from— for that time, we had an office in SF, New York, and London, and I used to fly there every month. And on the way home for 5 years, I stopped in Nashville every Thursday night Nice. I'd literally take a suitcase, go meet my buddy at the Rippy's on the corner. We go, hey man, what's up?

Yeah.

Stay for the weekend, fly back direct flight to San Francisco Sunday night. And I was doing that for 5 years and I just—

What timeframe was this from?

2013 to 2018.

Okay. So Nashville was just starting to pick up. It wasn't, it wasn't near as crazy as it is now. Those were some good times on Broadway.

Yeah, for sure. They didn't even have a direct flight to San Francisco when I first started.

Okay.

Yeah. And just great times. It was my, it was really at the, looking back, it was my escape cuz I was struggling so hard, like just being a young founder, CEO, not aware and just like trying to keep my head above water. Yeah. So I'd land here, I'd sprint for the weekend, have fun, fly back to San Francisco Sunday night. So when our company got acquired in 2019, they were like, we need you to move to New York. And I was like, listen, I can't— like, I can't imagine living in Manhattan right now, right? I was like, but I will come here every week and I'll get close to New York. And they were like, fine. So they wrote it out of the deal. They thought I was going to go to New Jersey. Be close to New York, and I went to Nashville. So I moved here in 2019, and then I did a 2-year lockup at that company, and I flew to New York every week for a year, and then COVID hit, and I've been here ever since.

Okay, so, so what was the company that, uh, was it a company that you founded before? What was that company?

It's called Assist. We were actually the first chatbot platform to ever be built on messaging.

Oh wow.

So we launched 2012. Some— I was, I was actually messing around with SMS because Before that, I did a startup called Gist, which was an SMS protocol called Twitter. Oh, 2006. And we were the first API partner on top of Twitter to ever— like, you're basically taking data out of Twitter and we were trying to add it on top of email. So when you're emailing people, you could see social data about them. At the time it was called social CRM. So we would aggregate Facebook and Twitter photos and everything on the sidebar and everyone thought it was really creepy at the time. Back then it was like, well, that's my Twitter, this is my Facebook, this is my LinkedIn. These are separate identities. So we kind of aggregate that all together. And that, that company, though, led me to really love messaging. So when I saw Twitter, I was like, I can text anybody in the world because it started as 23232. It didn't start as a website, started as an SMS protocol. So I'd always been like fascinated by like messaging and SMS, etc. And then that got bought by BlackBerry in 2009. And then I went and worked on BBM and BlackBerry Messenger was like really what opened my mind to messaging. And then I kind of was like, why doesn't every business in the world allow you to text them? And then my co-founder at the time, Robert, he was— he actually founded Geek Squad. He was the CTO of Best Buy for 10 years. He was the first Fortune 50 CEO in the world to bet their whole customer service on Twitter DMs in 2008.

Wow.

So this dude believed. And he was like— and then he was the one who told me, he said, hey, it's not about human chat though, it's about chatbots. And in 2012, when you say chat, now we're in 2024 and everyone's like, wow, chatbots are everything, right? People thought we were a joke. Our investors were like, no, what is a chatbot? You know, I'm like, it's just a thing you chat with. It's a little automated robot that kind of, you know, could do things for you. Right. And so the way we started was we bought the shortcode like Twitter did back in the day. Ours was 23434. And then we started aggregating APIs. So that you could text a chatbot and do things on the internet. So the first thing we ever integrated was Great Clips. And we were like, can I text and get a haircut? Never talk to a human and text, I need a haircut. It texts back, here's the 3 closest to you. 3-minute wait time, 13-minute wait time, 26-minute wait time.

Wow.

Text number 1, boom, you're on. And I remember Robert Stevens walked into the Great Clips. Robert Stevens is on the screen. We did it via text and he's like, this is the future. And I was like, huh? And I'd never— and we were just like kind of experimenting.

Yeah.

And then what happened was we just started integrating services. So we did flowers and haircuts and rides and Postmates API and the Uber API. So I'd call the founders. I was in SF, so I'd just call them and say, hey, can I get your API? And they're like, yeah, see what you can do with it. And so I met Resy. That's how I met Ben Leventhal, the CEO of Resy. And like, he's like, yeah, do whatever you want with messaging. And then we did Florist One Flowers and the CEO of 1-800-Flowers called. He's like, hey, how'd you do that? And we're like, it's an open API. You can just get flowers delivered. You just text flowers. And he's like, I want this for 1-800-Flowers. And he's like, I'll pay you to build it for us. And I'm like, how much? And we were like, we were going to be a consumer app, not an enterprise platform.

Right.

And I was like, he's like, $100 grand. I'm like, $100 grand? Time out. Well, let's, let's do something for 1-800-Flowers.

Right.

The same time Zuckerberg's opening up the Messenger platform for Messenger and WhatsApp. So the businesses can start getting on Messenger.

Mm-hmm.

2014. And all of a sudden, those two things collided. And we get, a friend of mine worked as the director of product on Messenger. We launched this little thing for the Florist One bot, and then they called and said, hey, you're building chatbots? We want to talk to you about commerce bots. And I'm like, I'm also talking to the CEO of 1-800-Flowers. And, uh, He wants us to build the 1-800-Flowers experience so they never have to call the call center again. And they're like, we want that experience. And so Zuckerberg, 2015, opens up the platform. We worked with them for about a year ahead of time to be their first partner ever to launch businesses and chatbots and AI on messaging. And he gets on stage, demos 1-800-Flowers, and says, you'll never have to call 1-800-Flowers again.

Wow.

And the CEO sat with me, Chris McCann, still a friend of mine. He's awesome. And he would've sat in the front row with Sheryl Sandberg and watched like, hey, the future isn't about phones and it's not about texting even humans. It's that you're gonna have these little agents and AI agents to basically do things for you.

Wow. So, you know, starting that company, you were talking about basically how brutal it was, the ups and downs. You know, a lot of people don't realize that about startups, the pain that the entrepreneur goes through and what that's like. You know, entrepreneurs, newers, are an interesting breed because, you know, we like risk, but, uh, we— it's almost like we're putting ourselves through a lot of pain. It's like pain and suffering, pain and suffering. Uh, talk about that a little bit because, you know, when you're starting something up and you're, you're building something big, it's an incredible grind. Uh, what was that journey like for you starting up that, that last company?

Yeah, for sure. Um, and I think, you know, when you're young and lucky, you can be a little arrogant, right? And I think my first startup I joined, I wasn't the CEO and founder of, and I was literally 21 years old, right out of college, and it was called Gist. And I met this guy T.A. McCann, 20 years older than me. I met him on Twitter through his assistant. That's literally how my career started out of Western Illinois. And I had no, like, credentials. I didn't go to Harvard, nothing. I was just building little widgets on top of Twitter.

Mm-hmm.

And I meet this guy, and long story short, his assistant wanted me to meet him. I'm in Seattle. I go meet him at a pool hall. We have beers for 4 hours. He's a legend in Seattle. And the company he wants to build is called Mindbox, which ended up being Gist. And What he— what I didn't know is he was one of the most influential people in Seattle tech. And the guy he was working for was Paul Allen, the founder of Microsoft. And Paul wrote us our first million-dollar check.

Wow.

We did this company. We grew it from— we raised $3 million from Foundry Group. Brad Feld is like a VC, phenomenal VC, and grew it to 100 million people, fastest growing social product on top of the social networks in under 2 years, and sold it to BlackBerry for $50 million in 2009. and I thought I knew what I was doing because that happened. But the reality was T.A. was the one running that company. He was the CEO. But we've built a great relationship. He invested in my next company. He believed in me. And I think I moved to San Francisco and I thought, you know, I got this figured out.

And you're like 24 at the time.

Yeah, 25, you know, I was 25, 26. And You know, I think the next story is actually probably important. There's a company called Zarli in between there before Assist in 2013, from 2010 to 2012. And that was the failure, right? We raised $42 million. Everyone and their mom invested. Kleiner Perkins led our round. Meg Whitman joined our board. All these famous people. It was like everyone and everybody. And I was the head of product and, um, working with these other 2 or 3 guys, Ian, Bo, and Eric. And, um, you know, it was the horizontal marketplace time. It was Uber, Postmates, Hotel Tonight, Airbnb. And we thought we'll be the Craigslist version where you don't have to pick one, you can— we can do them all. And the lesson there is, you know, I couldn't have picked a small enough vertical. Dog walking is a billion-dollar company, you know. We— and I remember we used to make fun of it, like, they're just gonna be a dog walking app. Like, yeah, Wag is huge, you know. We are dead. But that was my— that was the, like, I got kicked in the face and everyone hated their job. We created a company, we're 3 years in, everyone hated what they— like, even being there because we weren't self-aware. We were, we were not able to be honest that it wasn't working. We were so full of shit. We'd run around and be like, no, we're just going to make it. This is amazing. This is the greatest thing. We've raised $42 million. We got this and that and this. And we're so validated by everything outside of ourselves. So that led me to Assist. And I think Assist, I tried so hard to build a culture I was proud of, going through that lesson, man. But when it got hard, I didn't realize how much I was struggling with my own loneliness, alcohol. Like, I was just fueling the pain with alcohol, and I could justify it because every meeting every night, I could have a business dinner in New York, different person every day. Um, and the more venture I raised, I say it looks like my weight chart, you know, just gain— it's just like unhealthy.

Gotcha.

Um, but I was trying so hard and I was really proud of the culture we'd built.

Sure.

We cared so much about the team, so much about the employees. But the reality is we were 10 years early on chatbots. And it was hard because we were so fucking early. Yeah. We were so early, but there was all these validation things. Zuckerberg is like, the future is AI and messaging. Apple Business Chat opened. We launched the first Phillies chatbot to order beer in seat at the Phillies stadium. Went from 3 orders in the app to 80 orders in one night. Per section. Biggest shift ever. Tim Cook's on the Apple earnings call saying, we love what's going on at the Phillies and business messaging's the future and whatever. And there's all these signals, but the consumer wasn't there yet and the bots weren't good enough. And I think for me, that struggle behind the scenes while also everyone externally thinking we're doing great, while also I've never really made any money in my life, right? The companies I wasn't the CEO of, like I didn't, You know, you sell for $50 million, you know, I made enough to move to San Francisco.

Yeah, right.

And so you're kind of like, shit, everyone sees me as this young CEO, I'm kind of broke. And you're just in that struggle, that identity struggle, like trying to really just be a good CEO. Um, and that spiral for me was harder than I thought, and I was so good at masking it for myself. My ability to lie to myself was on the highest level in the world, and I think I've really learned a lot about the ways I lie to myself. And like, I'm also sober now, you know, I've been sober for over 3 years and I think the greatest thing I've ever done.

Nice. Yeah. So you're talking about building a culture within a company and you're still proud of that culture you built, right?

Yeah.

Okay. So I think culture within companies is underrated in many, many ways. A lot of, a lot of people start companies and have this ego like, it's me, it's me, it's me. But you're only as good as your people. And, um, what did you do to really build that culture? And, you know, I know you were lying to yourself in a way, but you were also being true to yourself in a way too, because you were trying You were, you were, you were giving so much to the organization, but you weren't necessarily taking care of yourself. So there was, you know, very good, good intentions behind that. Within the company though, what culture did you create and, uh, what did you do to, to make that happen?

Yeah, I think about this a lot, um, and I am really proud of it. And I also try to take it into the company we're building now. I think what we created was My goal is to give people their time back internally and externally. And Robert Stevens said to me, which is my co-founder, he said, you can't make people happy, but you can make them productive and they can choose to be happy. And I was always like, interesting. So instead of doing nap rooms and free lunch and all these things that Twitter and Facebook and all our VCs were telling us to do, I was, I was like, how do we actually make people the most productive versions of themselves? And how do we have a culture that is built on the rituals that we do that we never miss? And so first thing I did, I gave everyone a personal assistant.

Hmm.

So at the time it was pretty radical. 2015, 2016 era. I was looking at virtual assistant platforms externally and I met my assistant, Michelle. She was a military spouse. I was like, hey, how many military spouses like are there in the country that don't like— that could be assistants? She's like, 300,000 are unemployed. It's the largest unemployment sector in the United States. And so I was like, why don't we give every person in the company an assistant? And then it equalized the leadership. It wasn't Shane, the CEO, with an assistant. It was like everyone has access to an assistant and we could do one assistant per every like 5 employees. And so then people learned the culture was learning how to give away your job. Learning how to give away your Legos, learning how to let go of your ego, learning how to say I don't know. And we used to really practice those rituals of like really being more self-honest, raising our hands, being able to say I don't know, not letting our ego make bad decisions, how to ask better questions. And creating that environment started with like little things like that. But actually what most people are bad at is using an assistant because they think I'm here to do the job, let's do it myself, right? And teaching people to let go, teaching people to give things away, teaching people to help bring others up, to help them do things. I remember guy, Stéphane, he has these really fancy cuffs. He's from Monaco and grew up in just like a really, really wealthy family. And he would do these presentations. He did like 5 slides of the Steve Jobs original iPhone presentation. So his demo skills are next level. But one day he tripped up and someone was like asking a really hard question and he just froze and he couldn't take over. And I stopped everyone. I said, Stéphane, All I want you to do right now is just stop, breathe, and say, I don't know, I have no idea. And he did it. And I said, everyone here, let's just say, let's just practice. And it was so cheesy, but it was visceral and everyone remembered it and felt it. And to this day, if I text Stefan and I say, what did you learn working as an assistant? He'll text me back and say, I don't know.

That's awesome.

Yeah. And I think just that honest reflection of all of us and ability to just be open and honest about what we don't know allows us to actually know what we're great at and be more proud about what we do.

No, that's really great, man. Yeah, the— we battled that a lot. I guess you're making me think about it as far as like, okay, well, how can I apply that to, to my company? And how do we encourage people to say, I don't know? I guess my partners and I, we do say all the time, if you don't know, just tell us. But, um, it is good to like really put a focus on making it okay and letting people know why it's okay. Not to, not to divert responsibility, but actually to be responsible. Because ultimately, by saying that, you're actually taking responsibility in a way. Like, I, I don't know, but I'm not saying I don't want to fix it. I just, I just don't know.

Totally. The, the thing I'll say is the biggest lesson I learned is the language I was using as a leader was wrong. And so, um, the Apple thing I was talking about, we were launching this thing with Apple. It was at the Phillies Stadium, huge deal. Every seat in the stadium is lined with the QR code. and you scan the QR code on the phone, you literally open iMessage, you text 2 Bud Lights and a Yuengling, Apple Pay, beer's delivered. Big, big deal for Apple. The execs were there, this other partner we're working with, and this lady named Amanda on our team is running, is running the show. And I thought I'd practiced language. I'm really trying to be more curious, ask better questions, et cetera. And the former head of the largest ship in the Navy, David Marquet, he was a friend of mine and he was also like a coach of mine, wrote a book called, uh, Turn the Ship Around, fast, fantastic leadership book. He flew in and I'll never forget this. We were there and a bunch of shit went wrong. Everything failed. And what happened was the partner we were working with, their APIs didn't work. And, but we had built a backup plan because I told our team 6 months earlier, imagine this live chat partner has no incentive to make us successful at this chatbot. So let's make sure that we have our own version of this so we can actually talk to customers if needed. And we'll plug it in. So this guy, Carlo, little Italian guy smoking. I was like, did you build that backup platform? He's like, of course, boss. You know, he's just does that. I'm like, holy shit. So we have this thing, turn it on. I go to lunch with David. I'm like, hey, I'll be back. I'm like, Amanda, we just need to train the delivery people on this new software because they were trained on this other company's. I'm at lunch, sit down. The first 3 minutes there, I get a call from Amanda. She's like, hey, there's a problem. This other company is trying to plug their stuff back in, doesn't think we're like kicking them out and all this stuff. And I don't know how to like keep them away just so we make it happen. And Apple doesn't know, but like they're fine. And, uh, so I'm like, do you need me to come back? She's like, no, no, no. I'm like, are you sure? She's like, yes. I'm like, Amanda, I will, I will drop everything. I'm literally at lunch 5 minutes away. I'm with David. David's here just to watch us, you know, hopefully launch this thing. He thought it was gonna be a successful launch. Maybe it goes wrong. And like, if you need me to come back, I will come back. Do you understand?

Yes.

Do you need me to come? No. I said, okay. I hung up. David looks at me, and I think it's because we've been friends for a while. He said, what'd you do wrong? I was like, I thought I was really empathetic. I told her very seriously, like, I would definitely come back. I'll do— he said, call her back, and what I want you to say is, Amanda, on a scale of 1 to 5, how much would you like me to be there?

Hmm.

And I picked up my phone, said, hey man, I just want to ask something. On a scale of 1 to 5, how much would you like me to be there? She said, 5.

Whoa.

And he said, binary questions to high performers lead to them never telling you the truth that they need help. And he said, you need to never ask binary questions again as a leader. And he said, the trick to doing that is to ask how, not what. And if you say, how much would you like him to be there? How could this go wrong? You can't ask a binary question with how. And since that fucking moment, dude, I like, I thought I'd been studying questions. I started a podcast called Ask in 2008. I thought I was the most curious and smart question asker in the world. Everything about my leadership changed. And I always think about how am I creating the environment where they actually can't really tell me what they're thinking?

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah. We've been going through a lot with our company recently and, oh, it's been 9 years. We've been going through a lot. But, you know, like recently the whole leadership aspect has, has really kind of been, been my focus. Like, how can I be a good leader? To everybody.

Yeah.

And I'm asking the questions, like, I think as I'm kind of looking through it, like, the most important thing to me is making sure the employees, my team members, know that I have their back as long as I know they're doing their best to do the right thing. And, you know, I've gotten some good feedback on it. Recently. They've seen me go to bat for them at high-pressure stuff. And it seems like whenever you go through things as a company, those tough situations— I mean, over COVID, we were almost bankrupt, sold my 1970 K5 Blazer just to make sure we had an extra $20,000 for payroll, which is crazy how how bad it got for a minute. And, but it does seem like as a leader being there for people and knowing them, knowing that you actually have their back allows them to really reach their full potential. What do you think about that?

Totally. And I think there's also how many ways and different ways to show up and be there for them.

Yeah.

There's the really knowing, like, actually, I need to take on the risk here. I need to make this decision for you.

Yes.

And sometimes you have to do that.

Yeah.

Right? But other times it's actually learning how to listen and really not just listening to respond, but listening to hear them. And I think learning to actually let them tell you the thing they're scared to say. To learn that you actually are so proud that they said it. And next time it's easier for them to say. And those two things I think are a real struggle, 'cause I try to never step in and do things with people. But there are moments, I remember David Marquet said, "Hey, on the Navy ship, it's called Turn the Ship Around." And he said for 6 months he would never make a command. And he made no decisions for 6 months. And that became the highest performing ship in the Navy.

Wow.

But he said, "The one thing I would always do is if we needed to shoot a nuclear weapon and it was gonna kill someone, I would pull the trigger." and you need to know what you'll do to pull the trigger, that you don't want to put that risk and burden on someone else as a leader, and then create the environment for the ability for everyone else to make decisions. And how do you make more leaders that can make decisions is really the way I try to think about our company.

Yeah, that's awesome. Uh, in that company, what was the biggest thing that you, uh, had to overcome? And, oh, like the, the biggest obstacle at the moment that you overcame and how did you do it?

It's a good question. Um, I think it comes down to what I was saying earlier about the ability to tell the team that it's actually not working and realizing that that's actually what you can rally behind. There was a moment about 3 or 4 years in where we had built the most sophisticated chatbots at the time. They weren't TreeFlows. They could make decisions. They could failover and come back. They could get back on track. You could basically change your mind and keep going versus chatbots at the time would say like, I don't know, sorry, like Siri, you know, Siri for 10 years. I mean, built some really cool technology, but the business was actually only in call centers. The business was Macy's wanted chatbots to take 7% of the queries away to help them save money. But I and Robert wanted to be cool. We wanted to sell flowers, to make marketing, to do sales, to drive haircuts, to And so all of the use cases that we launched with were— and Zuckerberg too, right? He was like, I want to make commerce on Messenger. I want to sell things through Everlane. The AI bot will follow up and say, hey, Ed, you want new t-shirts? Yeah, new t-shirts.

Boom.

And 2 years into selling to the CMO, we realized that none of it was working. We were in experimental budget doing innovation shit and the innovation teams and everyone's excited, but nothing was happening. Mm-hmm. But the actual business and the— actually, the reason we got acquired was going to the service side. And luckily, my, my co-founder founded Geek Squad and deeply cared about service and really understood service at a deep level. And we were able to go through that. But I think that ability— I think you underestimate how hard strategy shifts are and take. I mean, it took a year unraveling. You know, they're still doing— well, should we actually kill the Sephora bot? It's kind of cool. They have our QR codes in every Sephora store saying, Hey, and book a makeup appointment on messaging, and it's pretty cool. Should we kill that or should we keep it? And the ability to say, actually, we need to tell them it's over. Killing things. And I think the founder's only real thing that a founder can do that most people can't is subtract. Most people are there to do their job, right, and do more and be paid to do more, and they want to do more. And I think that lesson in that, realizing how hard it is. But it took— I thought it would take us a couple of months. We'll shift the strategy and go over here.

Yeah.

And a year later, we're like, should we shut down the, the Fandango bot for selling movie tickets? Yeah. And you're like, yeah, we should. And I think realizing it wasn't working, we were so early, we were just way too early. And even Facebook can make it work. And then, you know, when I realized we were pretty fucked is when Facebook's calling us, asking us for advice.

Hmm.

And like we're their best partner. Like, Shane, what are you seeing out there? What should we do here? You know, because, because they knew, we all knew it wasn't really working yet. Yeah. And then in 2017, LLMs happened and my co-founder smartly was like, we need to get out because we have a good business on the call center side. But the LLMs are the real deal. This is the chatbot technology we didn't have. Yeah. And we have all these customers. We are most of the Fortune 500. We were Apple and Facebook's show pony. Like we were that like application layer on top of the network.

Yeah.

And we'd go to all the enterprise. We did all the sales for them. We're like, go and talk to Macy's, talk to T-Mobile, talk to everyone. And I think that moment when LLMs happened, Robert's a visionary and he really saw the future and he's like, hey, this is the tech we didn't have and unraveling what we have and like this. And he was right. The thing happening now is real. This is the LLMs and this is the chatbot moment.

Wish you were good.

And we were 7 years, you know, we were 7 years. And luckily we actually were able to get out and Varanth, this public company, acquired us for $50 million and like, you know, they were a call center company wanting to get into messaging and AI. They were like the old school— they're a public company who just did phones, you know, press 1 to, you know, we're better than that.

Yeah.

So it's like good lesson in that. But I think the self-awareness that we were for a couple of moments there, really, it felt like— I think the hardest thing that I've learned, and I'll try to wrap this up, is when it kind of works, you can fool yourself. And when it's— it was kind of working.

Yep.

You could book a ticket with Fandango, you could book a makeup, but no one loved it, right? No one actually cared. It wasn't driving Sephora's business, right? And so it was cute, and we could have kept going down that path and like felt great about ourselves.

Yeah.

And that's what we did at Zarli, the company before. It kind of worked. I could get coffee delivered 50% of the time. Like, we can make it get to 70%. And the reality was you needed to build Uber and make it work 100% of the time.

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think that was a hard lesson.

You said the only thing founders can do is subtract. I think that's what you said. Yeah. That's very, very true. And when I look at kind of how our companies have grown, I love when we cut an idea we thought was good It's actually, I don't know if it's weird, but I love it. 'Cause I'm like, yes, I'm free of these chains that's been holding us back and just try to charge forward. It's actually, when you said it, I'm like, oh yeah, I've like, that's actually, I love that. Not that I like failing, but you know, by the time you're subtracting something, you've fought, you've gone to war, you've done everything you possibly can to make this thing work. And to me, it's like freeing. And it goes to kind of what you were saying, I don't know. It's okay to say this didn't work. We gave 110%. You know, one of my old fight trainers, Lloyd Irvin, says, as long as you give 110%, win or lose, you're still a champion. And I believe that. And ultimately, in our companies, you know, the big picture is really what matters if we're going to a certain place. So if you know, if my great brilliant idea was, uh, ended up falling flat on its face, you know, if you have an ego with it, you're like, well, no, you gotta, you know, you can drive your company into the ground. But if you have that big picture approach, to me it's freeing. I've had so— I've been wrong so many times. It's like, you know, it's like my record's probably not that good, but overall with the company we've gotten to a certain point, and it's because we've been able to cut and then get focused and aligned and just charge forward. So yeah, when you said that, it made me think, gosh, that's very true. And to me it feels freeing because, you know, those chains of, oh, I've got to do this one thing, or this is this project, we've got so much money into it, we've got to make this one thing work. Well, you know, but does it really matter for big picture if you've got a better idea?

Where did that come from for you to let go of the opportunity cost and just say like, let's cut it?

Ah, you, you know, I think in my head I, I always try to do the right thing. I know it sounds simple, but like, I'm like, what's the right thing to do? Ego aside, what's the right thing to do? And so, um, it's just one of the things that I, I guess I just do naturally. I don't know.

I mean, you know, it's natural, but I'm saying like, that's, I do think people like have energy around, like they're just not scared to Cut it.

Yeah, I, I don't have fear around that. I really don't. And I love it, actually. I'm like, I'm thinking about times in my career where it's like, nope, let's go. Everybody's like, what? I'm like, come on, let's go, we got something else to do. But, um, yeah, it's cool that you said that because it got me thinking about it. And, you know, as, as founders, uh, you know, we do get to do those things and you know, if you have a great team, like our team will walk through a wall for us, man. I mean, I've got so many great people working for us. I mean, we've got so many great people working for us. It is, it's just—

I even like how you switch your language there.

Oh yeah, well, it's, it is we.

I think I've got—

we have great people working for us. And, you know, recently it's been kind of consuming me how grateful I am Yeah, for everybody, because it's everybody, even the people in this room. It's everybody that's making this machine work. And for me personally, you know, it is not me that's making all this shit happen. It's not. I've got great people in the room. I've got great people at the, at the hospital all around me. I've got great partners. We have a great full team. It's, I mean, it is everybody. You know, another interesting thing with leadership is, it's who you have around you. But for me, it's been the mentors, and the older dudes that I can call. So our board is, you know, I think everybody is right on my scientific advisory board, all 70 and up.

Totally.

But they're awesome, like old-school gangster scientists that heads of NIH, you know, different points. And, you know, we can go to them and, and with problems, and normally it's scientific problems, you know, so which is what I love to talk about. But when shit's hitting the fan, those guys are like gangsters. Wow, thank you, you know, the sweet Old man is giving me excellent, excellent advice. It's like, hey, what do you think about— I'm kind of like shy bringing it to him because it's internal, a little embarrassing or whatever, you know, and I don't want to bring drama to them, but I need their help. And, you know, having that network, that's what's made us successful. It really is. We have just amazing, amazing people. So that's my rant.

But I love it. It's actually crazy. I woke up, you know, a couple of years ago and I was like, all of my, like, closest friends are in their 50s and, you know, I'm in my 30s and I don't know how it happened. I just like when I was younger and I was an old soul, I just lucked out. And I was thinking about T.A. and I think about Robert and, you know, Robert just turned 53. And, and then I'm looking at our board now. Like you said, I feel like the luckiest guy in the world. I, you know, we have one guy on our board externally. His name is Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures in New York. Fred was on the board of Twitter. Fred's on the board of Coinbase. And to even— he's in his 60s— to just be able to every day text with Fred and learn from Fred. And it's those insecure things, right? I'm like, the thing I'm like, I don't know if I should take this to Fred. And I'm like worried that he's going to be like mad or disappointed or whatever. And he never is, right?

He's just helpful. Yes.

And he's so thoughtful. And I'm like, I'm like not like if I'm scared of being let down, it like is 10 times better than I ever thought it could be. And then he's proactive to me, like, hey, I want to help you think this because there's probably something you might not be seeing here. Um, and I'm like, okay. He'll like reach out, like, I know you said you're gonna make this decision, let me just tell you about that decision, about what could go wrong. I'm like, thanks for that. And I don't know, I just feel the same way. I feel so grateful and lucky to work with the people that have such wisdom and experience and their own awareness. He's like, I know how I'll be wrong and I know how I won't be wrong, but I can tell you stories I have of like the technical things of like what is probably right and wrong. And just having someone who knows that, like, they don't know where the future is going, but also I know how to run a company in the ground. Right?

Right.

Like that. It's like the awareness plus the expertise is the magic. And I just don't find a ton of people with that. Um, confidence.

Well, isn't it cool though, like, you're talking about your board, uh, because I guess we share that. It, it really is comforting in a way, because I can only speak for myself as we're trying to cure cancer, you know. It's, uh, yeah, that this book right here is, uh, Immunotherapy Principles and Practice. It's a textbook for immunotherapy for cancer. And Franco Marencola, one of the authors, is on my SAB, and the comfort in being able to reach out to someone like that. And then I think to myself, gosh, I don't know. I mean, it's a little worthiness conversation. Like, is, you know, yeah, I guess I'm saying it out loud. Am I worthy to be able to work with him? Like, why is he wanting to work with us? I mean, not that we're doing great work, but you know, those internal, I don't think people talk about the internal, doubts that they might have.

Totally.

But that's what I, I experience. And, um, you know, it's hard for me sometimes to reach out, but I'm just so grateful to be able to have that wisdom, uh, from people like that and the rest of the people on our board. And, you know, I think the worry, the insecurity though, that I was just talking about is what holds a lot of people back from actually getting it because they never actually— yes, I have that insecurity, but I'm still doing it. Yeah, I'm still calling Franco and saying, hey, will you join our board? Hey, I'm still calling this guy and say, hey, you know, I'm still calling them with questions and stuff, even though internally I have a little struggle, um, because I haven't built that— I hate to say, well, no, it's self-worth or whatever it is that makes me feel confident enough to feel like I deserve that.

Yeah.

And, um, but our company now our company definitely deserves it. But internally, you know, that's a conversation that I have. I think a lot of people have those conversations. Those conversations hold them back.

It's funny for other people too to realize that the irony is that my insecurity and need for validation drives my success, right? Which is hilarious, right? It's like, that is like, for like, I think most founders are deeply insecure, and over time you really grow into that and you're honest about it, and that leads to more confidence, more awareness, less insecurity. But it's just there, and it's fine. Uh, it was funny when you were talking, it made me think of that moment in my last company. You asked what was the hardest thing. You know, one of the hardest things was when I convinced the founder of Geek Squad to be my co-founder, and I was CEO.

That's awesome.

I was 25.

That's awesome.

And he went from a mentor to being a partner, and that year and a half was hard. Harder than I actually have probably ever even talked about.

Yeah, tell me about it, man.

And he's, you know, one of You know, he's the guy I talk to every day now. He's one of my best friends in the world. And we went— we made it through it. But I was so needing validation from him. Am I doing a good job as CEO? Is this what you would do? What would you do? And he'd be like, you're CEO, you know, run the company. I'm here to learn from you too. I'm like— and every decision I'd be like, wonder, is Robert going to think this? What? And it was just— it was almost debilitating. I was so nervous about him thinking I was a great CEO. That I almost couldn't run the company effectively. And over time, he, he really— him created the confidence in me and the space in me and what he really saw in me. And he almost did the subtraction for me. He's like, Shane, you're great at product and you're great at these relationships. I can run this company. If you're in the office, we're losing money. He's like, go to Facebook, go to Apple, go talk to them. Focus on product, integration, partnerships. Just get them and go recruit. Build the greatest team. Let's build a culture. I got everything else.

That's awesome.

And he gave me the constraint, which then gave us the partnership and grew into the relationship that it is. But that was, that shift of me just mentor, oh, I'm like, he's like, I joined this company. I'm here. Let's go. You know, I'm like, okay, yeah, let's go. But that actually has changed my life because he really was the genius of our positioning and helped me stop running around San Francisco pounding my chest. I'd be like, messaging's bigger than search. He's like, listen, dude, even if we were bigger than search and you're going to be bigger than Google, don't say that. You sound like a pompous asshole, right? He's like, let's say like, I don't know, chatbots are kind of dumb and we call AI, AI, eventually intelligent. He's like, let's lower the bar. Overex— and like, he really is that thinker.

Yeah.

And it really— and I was like, yeah, fuck these VCs. I'll go build the company. Thank you for the money. We'll go do a great thing. And but, but I was not there. I was like really just running around SF like, oh, we raised money. We got a bunch of people at our company. You know, it's like doing all this.

You feel like a duck, right?

Like you're smooth on the surface, but under the water, it's kind of duck sitting under the water, just paddling a million miles an hour. No, no, everything's great over here. Just burning cash, you know, like, so. Can I ask a question about the cancer?

Sure.

I love statements that when you hear them, you're always like, wow, that's bold. And so cure— I want to cure cancer is like a bold statement. Bitcoin could be the currency of the world, 2010, right? And you're like, that sounds ludicrous. Yeah, but I've heard that in 20 to 30 years— I know nothing about this. I'm actually curious.

Sure.

That cancer could not exist. Is that true? Or is it— or like, we know the path towards there not being cancer.

I think that— I don't know who made that statement to you. I had to see what they're talking about. Most of it's not true.

Got it.

You know, the problem with cancer is cancer is not a disease, it's many different diseases. So our approach is going to be truly understanding the mechanism in which cancer evades the immune system. How does cancer evade the immune system? Because we all have cancer cells in us, and our immune system's killing these cancer cells. Because once you can really uncover how cancer truly evades the immune system, you can then know how to unlock the immune system to attack it. I mean, we can tell in the lab right now what tumor will respond to the current immunotherapies and what won't. Uh, you can have a— we call it the, uh, the immune desert, uh, of the, of the cancer, to where it's not even— no matter what you do And so then a lot of the research changed from changing a tumor from cold, meaning it's not gonna respond, to hot, meaning that it could respond. And some of that, those studies and stuff haven't gone as, as well. But do I think it's possible? Absolutely, absolutely. Under the current regulatory system that we have, it's gonna be difficult, but that's where we've hacked the whole damn system because we have full licensing in Mexico, cellular manufacturing license. We don't have to go to US clinical trials. And so our model, we call it our crystal ball. We have fully licensed lab in Mexico, one of the best in the world. We have just amazing, amazing technology, but we also have patients. So we can do these combination immunotherapies that you could never even do with the FDA, where instead of just doing a CAR T-cell, which by the way, by the time that treatment got approved, it's $600,000. Our goal is to offer it in Mexico for under $50,000. But when our pharma company brings it to America, then, you know, then it'll be more because that's how the system works. But I don't want— we don't want just one. It takes you 15 years to get one drug through, 10 to 15 years to get one drug through. You need combinations of these drugs. So with the current regulatory system, it would take— that would take 30 years just to try the idea when in Mexico with our licensing, we can do all of these conversations and probably have it figured out in like 3 years. I really think we're gonna have a lot figured out. And then we have this, I call it, you know, the profitable version part of the company. That's the stem cell part. I didn't even want to do stem cells. Like, ah, it's kind of basic science. And like, oh, stem cells. and we were able to partner with somebody, and I knew it would help us build our cancer vaccine lab. And, uh, Joe Rogan's an old friend. Joe started talking about it, and we do have the best stem cell that's out there for the public. Uh, it's called a hypoxic stem cell. But that whole thing funded the muscular cells, musculoskeletal, you know, neck and disc injections, knees, shoulders, etc. Has funded all of our cancer research. And I didn't even want to do, that's kind of funny, I didn't even want to do the stem cells at first. And it's what really made us. So.

Love that.

Yeah, it's a long answer to your question, but.

No, it's great. I know nothing about it. I just, you know, cancer obviously touches all of us. And so it's one of those ones where trying to understand it more and just know that there's other options out there, that there's other paths forward. That if, you know, in a, in an infinite time cycle, like, there is a cure for this?

Yeah, there— yes, I think there, there can be. I, I question how much cancer evolves. Um, when the reason Franco said he can— he thinks we can cure 3/4, that leaves that other, you know, 1/4.

Yeah.

Uh, but yeah, I think most, if If the big financial incentive of pharma to do what they do— the perfect cancer drug is a drug that extends life 3 months, you have a billion-dollar drug— you have to take away that incentive. And I really want to turn the whole fucking system upside down and shake it because I, you know, like, no, like, I want to cure cancer. We want to cure cancer. Absolutely. So when you ask that question, I'm not saying there's, you know, we're not gonna— no, I mean, that's, that is the goal.

Totally.

I would be lying if I said— I shouldn't say It's not that I don't think that we can do 100%. I think realistically, which is still pretty big, you know, 3/4 is still pretty big of curing cancer. Right now we're not curing 5% at the metastatic level. Yeah, you know, so, um, but I'm very optimistic about the future of medicine, especially with now getting to the bioethical issues of engineering CRISPR and those type of things. Um, we have some of the best scientists working with us on that. So, um, you know, we're kind of at the forefront of all that, and it's really, really exciting. So I'm a Christian, so I pray constantly. I'm like, God, am I doing the right thing? You know, want to make sure that I don't overstep the playing guidelines. But, um, I, yeah, I'm very, very optimistic, uh, in in the future of medicine. I think, yeah, we could live within 10 years. I think we should be doing 150 years, you know, with the way science is, is pushing and all the cellular treatments.

Amazing.

So your new company, tell me about the new decentralized app.

Uh, yeah, it's a decentralized messaging protocol called XMTP. And so we're building, um, you know, think of WhatsApp or iMessage the ability to build the most open and secure messaging protocol in the world that can last forever. And what that means is today, if I was going to message you, right, and it's on iMessage, that's on Apple servers, right? That's on Facebook servers, on WhatsApp. And in the future, there's a decentralized network all over the world. And when I send a message to you, there's a decentralized network of servers that's delivering that message from A to B, and we have the best encryption and privacy and security in the world. And we're inspired by like Signal. I don't know if you've ever heard of the Signal app, but signal-level encryption, and it's decentralized. And so where we started was in the crypto industry, everyone's sending billions of dollars between wallet addresses. And this guy Robert Leschner, about 4 years ago now, he's like, I have $11 billion in this smart contract. I know every single person's address who put money in it, and I can't message 95% of them because all I have is their wallet address. Why can't I send an encrypted message like email to these wallet addresses? And we're like, huh? And like, well, I was like, why can't you? He's like, because there's no encrypted messaging layer for wallets. And I'm like, why not? He's like, well, people have tried and whatever. And he's like, but we need to be able to reach the wallet. And so it just made me think like HTTP is a protocol for URLs, you know, browsers. SMTP is the protocol of email. So the reason Gmail can talk to Outlook is because there's an interoperable protocol called SMTP, but it's not secure. There's no encryption. And then the last 15 years have been centralized into silos where everyone lives inside of iMessage and WhatsApp and Telegram and Signal. And you can't get out. You can't own your messages. They own your messages. Facebook owns your messages.

Okay.

And so we were like, can you actually own your communication like you own your crypto? So the private key is able to own my messages. And so we went to the big players, walked into Coinbase, said, hey, inside of the Coinbase app, why can't we just add on the top right here, why don't we just add an inbox? So if I can get money sent to my wallet address, Why can't I get secure communication? And now you can. And so what's cool is you're able to have secure communication and secure money in the same applications. And now you can send— this is my dad. I can send him some money. I can send $5. Boom. Send. You can send money.

That's good. For free.

Instantly. Anywhere in the world with any token— USDC, Bitcoin, ETH, doesn't matter— bridges on any chain, right? So I'm inside a Coinbase wallet and I just said, Dad, send USDC on Coinbase's base chain, no fee. I'll just send him $5. So just sent my dad $5 and it goes in. And now you have secure communication and secure money all in one application. Apple Pay, Cash App, Venmo, they can't pay across borders. And so what happens is you don't have the interoperable and global money rail inside of the messaging applications. And so we're basically bringing together secure messaging and secure money. But the cool thing is, is that it's fully interoperable. So we have hundreds of applications now built on top of XMTP. So if I go into this one called Converse, this is, uh, This is like the WhatsApp or Telegram for XNTB. And that message I just sent my dad shows up here. And what's cool about that is if you want to leave WhatsApp, you can. But in the future, if I don't like Coinbase Wallet, I can go to the new application and my private key, I just log in, all my messages show up.

It's like basically like Bitcoin that'll show up in a bunch of different wallets. Exactly.

Except it's your messaging data, not your commerce money data. And so you can own your money like you own your crypto, or you can own your messages like you own your crypto.

That's awesome. How are you rolling it out?

So we're focused on— right.

When did you start? First of all, when did you start this?

Right when my lockup ended. So May 2021. Okay. And really, really step one was build the most secure and open messaging protocol in the world where developers want to build on top of it. So we've been focused on that for about 3 years. Our V3 of the upgrade of the protocol happened 6 weeks ago, which puts us on par with Signal, right? So now we have—

and by on par with Signal, what do you mean?

So post-forward secrecy, post-compromise security, so the ability to not, um, track between sender and recipient. So you can basically know that if anything ever gets compromised, my messages are secure.

Uh-huh.

And the encryption level, we use MLS, which is Messaging Layer Security, which is an IETF standard that allows you to have the most secure encryption in the world. And so it's an encryption thing. It's also a way to protect the device. So the messages aren't stored in the network. And so there's just a lot of like really nerdy stuff like that.

Interesting. And your app is on the blockchain though, which is obviously different than the other apps.

So the messages aren't on the blockchain?

The messages are not.

No, they're on a distributed node network around the world.

Okay.

The blockchain in the future is actually where you'll be, um, the nodes will run.

Okay. Right.

And so that is more—

that'll be even more secure.

What's that?

It'll be even more secure at that point, right?

The decentralization makes it more secure, right? And so imagine a country decides they don't like encryption and they want to read all our communication. Yes. Well, in this world, if there's servers running all over the world, the network can last forever because if people want to surveillance our communication and they shut down the ability for people to have encrypted communication or privacy, then the network will still run. And so I think it's about more about the ability to have a communication network that's sustainable. It can last forever.

Amazing. Amazing. How, how's the, how's the reception to that right now?

So it's been amazing. And we've been focused on just the Ethereum community. So in Ethereum, we are the largest messaging network in Ethereum, working with major partners inside of the Coinbase app. You go into Coinbase now, you hit the inbox, boom, all your messages. You can now use it for communication, sending money globally. You can also play games and do things inside of it. Literally, there's a Wordle app. You can look at Wordle, wager with your friends, do all this cool stuff. There's a lot of other applications, family, the Lens social community, there's an app called Converse. And there's this developer community thriving to allow wall-to-wall communication within crypto. But what's happening is, it's good for the crypto community, but I actually feel like in the future, messaging is going to be how most people in the world use crypto. Because they understand WhatsApp, they understand iMessage. So our goal now is to to make crypto as easy to use as iMessage. Because right now it's so hard. Wallets are hard, seed phrases are hard, L2s are hard. All this stuff is honestly so confusing. Bridging is hard, swapping is hard. No one needs to know. What I need to be able to do is send USDC from me to Ed. You could send me some Bitcoin if you want. If it had to bridge, it had to swap, it was different chains, it doesn't matter.

Exactly.

And so we need to make crypto as easy to use as iMessage. And we are now getting to a point where the applications were seen. I mean, I use, I use this app right here as an iMessage replacement. It's called Converse and it looks like iMessage, has group messaging, has all my people. I can literally invite you to message me here. And so I have world-class security. No one owns it because we all own the network together because it's a global decentralized network. And It'll last forever because not one company owns it. Wow.

So you said the rollout so far has been on ERC-20, uh, the Ethereum community.

Yeah, we don't— we're not— we don't run out— we don't have a token, so we don't have an ERC-20.

Okay, sorry, the Ethereum community.

Yeah, rather.

Um, the goal obviously is to get it out, you know, and compete with Signal and WhatsApp, but be the app that's decentralized or the messaging platform that's decentralized. How are you getting kind of the word out? What's your marketing plan behind it?

Yeah. So, I think of it in the 3 phases. So, step 1 is build the most secure open protocol in the world. Step 2 is inspire developers to trust to build on top of it because it's open. And then step 3 is build an incredible application that is like an iMessage and Telegram or WhatsApp, but everyone in the world wants to use. I think we're just moving from the first two, which was the Coinbase's build. All these developers are building apps on top of it and they're the ones marketing it, right? Coinbase is saying, use us for messaging and money. And they're going out and pushing the message. We're just the protocol. We're just like, we're like SMTP and email. Gmail is the one saying, use Gmail.

Yeah.

So building that network effect. So What I think is the interesting next phase is as crypto becomes a global cultural and societal movement, I want messaging. And I think we believe messaging will be the user interface for which most people in the world use crypto. So, I don't think you kill Craigslist or you kill email. I don't actually think we kill Telegram or WhatsApp. I think those have ubiquity. I think we do things that aren't possible. And we make the ability to use crypto in an experience that is also the ability to feel like WhatsApp and Telegram because you have a native financial rail crypto mixed with an experience that is secure communication. And also we have better security than the Telegrams of the world.

And so their wallet is basically connected to the messenger.

So this is how it's exactly every single every single person at the core has a wallet address. And so when you have wallets as your core network, everyone can now take action, mints and money, do everything globally, fully interoperable. Where today you don't have that, it's all phone number based. And so another thing about the network that's more private and secure is you don't have a phone number to sign up, right? You can sign up with a private key, you can have 10 different inboxes.

All right, we can figure this shit out, Man, it's going to be really big.

And so that's good. We're moving into the consumer layer, which is— it's not about are we going to be better than WhatsApp. WhatsApp is ubiquitous in the world. It's what do we do different to make crypto accessible to everyone in the world that includes secure communication. And now when you bring together secure money and secure communication, what can you do? And the answer is every group chat in the world is going to be a little microeconomy. I'm going to set the the group to say our group runs in USDC on the base chain and everyone who's interacting in that group, we actually have the thing we're working on. You can tip inside of this. So if I said, hey, here's my 5 favorite places in Mexico, you can just double tap it instead of just doing an emoji. It's actually tipping in USDC. Everyone should tip. And now every group, you can play games, you can bet with your friends, you can play, you know, imagine you do all these things that you're on your day now because everyone has a native wallet built into it. And you can show up with any money you want. So if I show up with USDC, you show up with Degen, she shows up with Bitcoin, the bridging and swapping happens in the background. Yeah, we all just get to play games, interact, exchange value, pay you back for dinner, do all the things we do.

Yeah.

And we have always tried this for years, but because it didn't have a native financial rail built in, it's never really worked. Yeah, but now it flips it on its head. So I think the next phase of this is killer applications. Developers building on top of this to go get consumer attention that makes crypto feel like using iMessage and to be able to do things that we just couldn't do. And so then I think you become as big as WhatsApp and Telegram because crypto becomes that big and it is a global phenomenon that everyone understands and we can be the layer by which people understand it.

Well, yes, yes, exactly. You can become a layer by which people understand it because if you have you know, some of the same things as Signal has, you know, some of the same security aspects.

And we're inspired by them. We always say inspired by Signal, wired by crypto. Yeah, right. Like, we tried to adhere to— they've really been a huge advocate for private, secure communication globally for the past decade, and we really have taken a lot of inspiration from them to say, okay, how do we be as secure as Signal and also make sure that we're native to on-chain? How do you bring those together?

How's— what's the government's response been to this? They're like, what are y'all doing here? This could really shake up the entire system.

No, I think we think a lot about that. You know, we're working with Coinbase, we're going to DC a lot, having conversations. And, you know, in America, the reason we want to do the company here is because the First Amendment, freedom of speech. Yeah, we believe in protected communication. And I think you have to think about the application layer. So the application layer still has to adhere to the laws of the countries, right? So Coinbase is a US company. Their inbox needs to adhere to the laws of the country.

Right.

And at the protocol layer, we just want to make sure it's really private, secure, so that privacy is a human right and that everyone knows that they have world-class encryption like WhatsApp, like iMessage, like Signal, et cetera. And so I think we're just looking to really work work with regulators. How do we make this a more private thing for our citizens? How do we make this a more secure network? And then in a world where you could have multiple applications, applications built on top of XMT need to adhere to the laws of their country.

Sure.

So, uh, that's a— it's a really interesting conversation. Like, we're excited to like just do the company here, be a US-based company, really work with the regulation to create the most secure and private messaging network in the world.

Yeah, and I know you want to. It's— you know, the reality is you pull this off, which I actually think I'm— for what I hear, you absolutely can. It's disruptive, man. This is awesome. I mean, because ultimately you're like Venmo mixed with, uh, you know, this crypto Venmo. Uh, it's crypto Venmo with, you know, chat. And I mean, it's, it's, it's a really good idea. And if you have the security of Signal, yet it's a crypto version, yeah, it's actually going to push out crypto. You think about like, what did Venmo do? Well, you know, they tie your bank account to it. It makes it easy to transfer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Well, I mean, crypto is just as easy. If you have a way to bring that app in, those wallets in rather, to the Messenger chat, Uh, yeah, you've just solved a big problem.

I don't know. Yeah, I think the developer innovation opportunity to build applications that have messaging and money at the core, that everyone in the app has both.

Yeah.

And it works globally because messaging works globally but money doesn't. And then money is just starting to work globally, and it's interoperable money with crypto, but so hard to use. So we're at this moment where you have been in crypto for almost 13 years now. It's like 13 years in, it feels like we're at the Lycos Excite AltaVista moment, right? And the consumer layer now is about to happen. And all that infrastructure has been built. And when I see things where I'm literally using an app that looks exactly like iMessage, but I can send you USDC instantly for free anywhere in the world. I'm like, it's here.

Yeah.

But no one knows yet. And that's, that's, it's powerful and it's cool. And I think there's a lot of inspiring things. There's a lot of things we need to figure out. There's a lot of questions we need to ask. How could this go wrong? I try to invert things.

Yeah.

Like, I want to do the right thing. The other thing I would ask is like, how could this go really wrong? Right. I mean, to think about that, I was one of the first API developers at Twitter and I, you know, I don't think anyone had bad intentions then, but we sat around. I remember sitting with the whole Twitter crew or the original OGs and, you know, We're like, this is the greatest thing in the world. Everyone's been talking to everyone.

This is amazing.

We're all so optimistic. And it turns out a lot of shit can go wrong. Yeah, a lot of shit can go wrong if you actually connect everyone in the world and algorithms kind of run everyone's silo and we only see our little mirror of ourselves. I think we need to be asking a lot of those questions now about crypto communication, security, privacy. And I hope that we can, you know, get ahead of things that could go wrong in the future and really make it a better, a better technology.

Yeah, things will go wrong, but it makes me think like Victor Hugo, an idea whose time has come can't be stopped. I mean, that's, that's the power of an idea. And I think that that's, uh, that's actually where we're at right now.

Totally.

With, with this.

And if you think about Bob, this, and this lady who worked for us was from Bahrain, and she just talked about, you know, just saying that she was lesbian in Bahrain over any messaging app with an authoritarian regime gets her killed. And then I was like, phew. And she's like, so if there's a backdoor to any network, there's a front door. And the front door for us is the backdoor for you. And for me, it's my life. And then, you know, in Oklahoma, there was a lady talking about abortion who ended up in jail. And because it was on Facebook Messenger. And I think those stories are just going to keep coming. Right. And so giving people choice, letting people own their communication, If you don't like this app anymore, you can change. You're not locked in. You know, you're not tied to the big tech silos and the big tech surveillance engine. And I think that really is the opportunity to like let people own and control their communication like they can own and control their money.

Yeah. I mean, you know, but ultimately you're looking at all the things that can go wrong and you're thinking, yeah, you want to do everything by the book and, you know, of course, want to follow the laws of the countries, of course. But the reality is what you're doing is good versus evil. I really do believe this because, you know, people can say what they want to about Elon Musk, but in many ways it's a good versus evil type thing in my opinion. Because, um, you don't have to agree with him, but he's bucking a system that has power. I'm going to say tyrannical power over all of us. And you know, when you do stuff like that, there's, there's risk because you're doing the right thing, but evil wants something else. So you're going to be in a hell of a fight to make stuff like this happen. I know it's just— you're talking to DC, all that stuff. But what you're doing is so big because it changes the game. If I can go to TJ where my hospital is and go to whatever the Circle K or whatever the convenience store is, OXXO there, and just transfer money, we don't need the banking system. We don't need— and that's been the vision and goal of crypto, of course, for a long time. Banks that have been chaining and enslaving people for, uh, for centuries. But that's the freedom of Bitcoin. And, uh, you have a solution. Really, I mean, I, I haven't heard about it, so now I'm like pretty excited because yeah, that's, that's the idea. That's the one whose time has come, you know, and it can't be stopped. You might get fucked up No offense, I'm not saying you're corny, but they might try whatever. But man, the idea is what ultimately matters. These ideas that we're doing are bigger than us. You know, they can change the world. They can save people's lives. They can keep people from being attacked by their government. They can uphold freedom of speech. You know, in America, we have the strongest freedom of speech laws in the world, but they're under attack right now. And, uh, your app has the ability to free that up, man. It's beautiful.

Yeah, you know, I think for me, I always think about what's the core truth that I believe that will allow me to always fight for this. And I think privacy is a human right, and I think our communication and our relationships should be between the people that they're between. And so our conversation right now is being recorded because we choose do that.

Sure.

But I want to be able to have a relationship, and if that lives in messaging, which almost every person in the world now does, because 50% of internet use is just message, then those conversations or relationships should be private between those people. And I just agree. I grew up on this. I've been on messaging since day one, and I believe that messaging is how my whole career was built. It's how all my relationships are built, and those should be private between us. And so, um, you know, the The reason to decentralize it is because to build something at global scale means that I don't know the laws of every country. And so you have to have something that is just so simple and it's an encrypted protocol for the world and applications need to follow the laws of their country. And so that's kind of, you know, that's our goal and our mission. And our mission is simple. It's to create the most open and secure messaging protocol that can last forever.

That's beautiful. So talk about the team that you've built. To, to make this happen?

Yeah, we're, we're a, we're a small team. We're probably like 20 people and we've raised about $50 million from Andreessen Horowitz and Union Square Ventures, Lightspeed, Faction, and a lot of other great people in crypto industry. And most of our team is people building encryption, secure communication, you know, come out of the WhatsApp and Apple and iMessage and worked on cryptography and stuff like that. And the other is focused on decentralization. So how do you really decentralize a network? How do you make sure you can have a network that can be a global network of node operators running? You know, they say to be fully decentralized is if our company shuts down, the network can keep operating.

Sure.

So our company name is Ephemera, and Ephemera actually is about collectibles and things you have in life that are only like have a temporary meaning. And what that means though is it's a reminder that companies don't always live forever, but the network has to. And you know, for us to be able to build Ephemera and work on the protocol XMTP, XMTP has to be owned by all of us that are using it and all the node operators in the community. And it's a reminder that the government looks at the regulation of decentralization and says, can your company shut down and the network keep running? And if that's true, then it can be decentralized.

Hmm. It's pretty powerful. I mean, so I'm actually, I actually do, but I'm not sure everyone listening understands what you've created with this. Big vision, biggest impact on the world, how would you explain that?

I think if you think about how HTTP allowed everyone to use the internet and SMTP allowed everyone to use email and allow everyone in the world to communicate, to me XMTP is about letting everyone in the world have secure communication that they can own and control.

Mm-hmm.

And today our secure communication is owned by whoever's platform gives it to us for free. Mm-hmm. And the ability to own and control our communication is as important in the world as owning and controlling our money.

Why?

I'll speak for myself. I think it's actually hard to answer this question in America. We can say like America is coming after our communication and it's, it's coming after our freedoms. But I actually feel like on a broad scale of things in the world, we're doing pretty great.

Got it. Pretty good.

And as a white guy living in America, doing pretty great. And I don't have a lot of like fears of that, to be honest. I understand things happening and the feelings behind it. But I think globally, the ability to create something that allows everyone in the world to communicate securely and safely, where your life is at risk by just believing in something taboo or believing in something of how you feel or living in an authoritarian country, I feel like I can't even comprehend like those types of things. And I do think that surveillance of countries wanting to use more data and AI in this world we're moving into is going to get a lot crazier. And so, um, for us to just know that we have secure and private communication that we can own and that users have choice to be able to move in between communication networks or applications and not have to lose all of their relationships. Um, you know, I watched that whole developer community for the last 15 years. We all built on top of Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Google, everyone. And the only true thing that you knew was going to happen is that you were going to get cut off at some point. Yeah, right. And they control the APIs, they control the business, they control the price, uh, and they have 100% take rate, you know, they take all the money and we're basically giving up all of our data to be marketed to. And that model needed to change too. And so I think if you can align the incentives correctly for a decentralized network of communication as well as create something where the whole world gets more security and privacy than they have today, it's just a net good for society. Yeah.

And the idea that if you make it big enough and have the crypto— I'm going to call it plug-in, but the wallet plug-in is what you call it.

Um, crypto is just native to it, right? It's built with crypto native to everything.

Yeah, I mean, that, that frees up transactions, you know, all over the world.

Moving money around the world is so hard. I have a friend in Nashville who's Australian. He's a big artist here. And his sister said, hey, we're buying mom a gift. It's $275. Will you split it with me? And he was showing me how hard it is to send the $125 to support the gift for his mom to Australia. And I think the problem with crypto though, and crypto needs to like, we need to take some, some self-awareness and some criticism because it's chest pumping and crypto and meme coins and make money and all this. I don't think that's it at all. And actually, the brand of crypto is pretty global, but also easy to criticize because it's all this make money quick, rich schemes and these meme coins and all this stuff. And everyone gets excited and then everyone tries it and no one knows how to use it. It's too hard to use, etc. But the, the rail of interoperable money and attention actually becoming currencies is a huge thing. It's so foundational to like, and, and disruptive and hard to wrap your head around. And when that becomes simple to use and I can move money in and out of whatever I think is the most interesting and the attention of what's gaining traction, or, you know, geographic states become network states and these things are happening where You know, I think it's hard to actually comprehend how transformational this is going to be. And if that's true, I do think that interoperable money and the ability for anyone in the world to interact and move money in and out of systems or in and out of attention or in and out of companies or in and out of, you know, ownership or what that token even represents and stands for, it could own something else like this building. That idea of interoperable ownership and money is so big that I think is going to be one of the greatest things that like in 20 to 30 years we look back in the world just running on like, you know, a financial— a native financial rail that's global. Yeah, fully interoperable, not designed by any geographic country. And the ability for value to move in and out of that is just going to be pervasive. And so I think The two things in the world that you need are secure communication and secure money. And so I think those two coming together is just, you know, a cool opportunity.

We were talking, I believe, before the podcast about the possibility of Bitcoin backing the US dollar. Or talk about that a little bit. What, what could that do?

Yeah, I mean, I have you know, no knowledge or insight here. I think back to when I learned about it. So I was on a train in San Francisco. This is the benefit of living in San Francisco. I was on Caltrain going down to Menlo Park, and this guy actually taps me on the shoulder, Adam Draper, and I didn't know who he was. And he showed me an app called Path. It was like a private Facebook at the time. Guy from Facebook started it. It was one of those things that blew up in Silicon Valley but never really made it out. And he holds it. He goes, is this you? I was like, Yeah, it's me. And he goes, oh, that's my buddy Jeff Morris. You were with him last night. Jeff posted this photo. And I was like, whoa, crazy. I was like, who are you? He's like, I'm Adam Draper. And he's like, you know, started talking and he said, have you heard of Bitcoin? I'm like, kind of. Is it real? You know, like, what is that? He's like, I think Bitcoin will be the most valuable thing probably in the world. And the idea of a whole Bitcoin in 10 years won't exist. And I'll never forget it. I don't even know what that meant. I was like, I don't know what a Bitcoin is. I don't know how it's not going to exist, right? He's like, no, I just mean it'll— it's a non-inflatable currency, so there's only 21 million. So like, as it grows, we'll just keep making it denominated by less. So it'll be like a millionth of a Bitcoin. It'll be like the dollar, whatever. And I was like, fascinating. But his belief, he said, listen, if it works, the idea of a whole Bitcoin in the future doesn't exist. But if it doesn't work, just think of it as a science project. But you should probably you know, be in it and buy some, but forget about it for 10 years. And turns out Adam Draper is the first investor in Coinbase. His dad, Tim Draper, bought 30,000 Bitcoin off the government for $19 million.

Oh my gosh.

And it's one of the most legendary VCs in the world, Tim Draper. And, um, Adam also has a fund called Boost. And Boost is an incredible fund that was one of the first to ever do the classes for, uh, accelerator for Bitcoin companies back in 2010, '11, '12, 2013. And it's funny, he actually texted me yesterday like, I feel like this is the moment for Bitcoin. I should fly to Nashville. I was like, stay with me, buddy. And so that happened and it was so transformational. And like, I learned such a lesson of holding something for a decade, believing in like someone else's confidence and his expertise allowed me to hold because honestly, you know, that was $100 of Bitcoin at the time. And if it went to $1,000— 2011?

Yeah. So you're at like $2, $1?

That was $100.

That was $100 then.

Yeah, it was $100. And I think I checked it the other day, actually. I was like, how much was it? Like, like $99. And I think what's interesting is it's not about the buy-in. It's about not selling, right? It's about how do you have the conviction? And without someone like that, how do you, how do you not sell at $1,000 when you made a 10x, right? That's the real— when people are like, oh, if I bought Bitcoin a long time ago, I'm like, would you have held for a decade? You know, because that's like the crazy, the crazy believers in it. It takes those belief systems of people like that Yeah. And so at the time, he believed in it so deeply, and that was 13 years ago. And so when I say things now, it doesn't sound crazy at all. The idea that this way to just make sure that you don't inflate your money in a world where all we do is actually not in a bad way, just the fiat system is built on it controlling inflation and growing your economy and printing your money.

Yeah.

And every country in the world to be able to have an off-ramp where you can just protect your own money, to me is like— it started to be more clear even in the last few months. I'm like, holy shit, this is actually— this just logically makes sense. It's like, okay, if everyone's country just inflates their money, then we probably should protect our own money. And so it's in self-interest then. And I'm like, that's when you really see big changes. And then I start seeing people talking about this, and I'm like, if someone steps off the ledge here and says, hey, we're going to put 1% of our financial reserves I'm like, this could just be the domino. Like, what's the black swan event that is like, oh, oh, this is, this is just land. There's not a— they're not making more of it. Like all the things you kind of say. And then, you know, there's a lot of things. There's a book called Soft War, but, um, that's about how like wars in the future could be actually fought because of block space. And if you're not going to acquire land, interesting, you're going to acquire assets. And if assets are Bitcoin, and then it's actually an energy game, it's who can get the most block space. I mean, it's crazy. You're like, and I'm like, okay, that might be a little over my head, but I'm like, I see the impact.

Yeah.

And so I feel like we're at that moment where it feels, I'm so excited because now feels like that era in 2011 San Francisco where it was the beginning innovation, it was the founding innovation. But now it's like the utility of it. We're starting to understand it more. It's starting to get usable. And the consumer layer, I think, is starting to happen where it's not just these get-rich-quick schemes. It's actually blockchain technology is something that's fundamental for how the world will interact. We have an interoperable world with airlines and flying and passports and now messaging. But it never was for money. And I think now it's going to happen.

Well, you know, you think about access to money, access to loans throughout the world is difficult. And what I think about is like, okay, let's think about the poorer countries. Guys like you or I could fund loan programs with crypto in these countries. It's not a lot of money to us, but could be a, you know, it's like those micro loans that you've seen people do. But, you know, we could do stuff like that on the blockchain. What holds us back is the banking system, you know? And I don't like the fractional reserve banking system. I think the worst thing we could have done was go off the gold standard. If you look at what our debt's done since then, I mean, it just skyrocketed. No matter if it's a Republican or Democrat president, everybody just spends more money. And then Republicans run on, oh, we're not gonna spend any more money. You know, we're not gonna, raise the debt. And, you know, Democrats don't seem to really care. And, you know, the Keynesian philosophy is that you can just inflate the money. And oh, it's not gonna, you know, it's not gonna cause inflation though. Yeah, I got in a big debate over COVID when I was upset that Trump was doing the $6 trillion. I'm like, inflation is gonna go crazy. And I had people just attack me. You don't understand economics. Printing money doesn't cause inflation. And I'm like, you're crazy. Like, you have drank the Kool-Aid if you don't think that printing money causes inflation. But, you know, I told you I worked on a couple Ron Paul campaigns, so, you know, Ron Paul, libertarian philosophies, like a lot of Austrian economics, you know, Ludwig von Mises, Frederick von Hayek. So you have the idea of sound money and Bitcoin is really based on that idea. You don't have the inflation. You have a finite amount and it's a science project. It was a science project. But it was a science project on a philosophy. And we're seeing that come to fruition now. And I'm really excited about it because I think it, I think it will change the world. I think it'll bring a lot of people. I mean, we're already doing pretty good worldwide with poverty. It's lower than it's ever been. But I think that we're going to solve a lot of those problems because of Bitcoin. Um, we could solve our nation's debt with Bitcoin if we were really smart about it. I think maybe not fully solve it, but we could make a dent in the debt that we have. To me, it's the biggest risk of our country right now.

I mean, I think we're doing a trillion dollars every 100 days in loan payments or something. I mean, I don't know what the actual, whatever the thing, it's so, it's so feels exponential and like hard to even understand how you would roll it back. That you're kind of like, what's the hedge against this? Right? You're like, Bitcoin. And I think you have to think about it like that because it's like, I don't know, I'm, you know, and I look at it very like cautiously and try to be like, ask hard questions about, you know, what I don't understand about it. But it's, you know, because people say like, no, this is how it is, etc. And they're like, if you know, if you read a lot of What's the Bridgewater CEO? Ray Dalio, right? Like his book, right? It's just, he's like, this is the problem. This is like the downfall of every empire is just overprint money, inflate the money, and, um, you can't roll it back, right? Um, and I think that's a thing that I don't, I don't have a ton of knowledge on, but it just like logically, I'm like, that seems like this could be a problem, right? You look at him like logically.

Yeah, yeah, a lot, a lot of logic seems to get thrown out the door right now.

Yeah. But it's like that is where incentives of groups is very hard, right? I was like Warren Buffett said, if I wanted to solve the debt crisis, I would just make getting reelected based on if the debt went down. Yeah, or something like that.

Something like, yeah, like if it— yeah, exactly. And they had to have a balanced budget or something.

Yeah, totally. It's like, and if it— and then you're up for reelection if actually you come in under, under budget.

Yes.

And stuff like that. So it just shows you the difficulty of groups and the groupthink around, you know, things like this and trying to like, when everyone I understand has their thing they're trying to get funded, right? They just have a ton of things to fund. And it's an interesting challenge. Like, yeah, as a system, as a society.

Well, you know, when Richard Nixon took us off the gold standard, like his famous quote was, we're all Keynes now. You know, referencing John Maynard Keynes. Keynes basically— well, him and, um, him and Ludwig von Mises had, you know, a lot of debates back in the day, and Keynes evidently won because you have, you know, a Keynesian economic system that we're, we're under. But, uh, Bitcoin is sound— well, I say sound money, I'm going to call it sound money. But it's, it's not inflationary money. Um, and yeah, it has the potential to revolutionize the entire world. I mean, you think about the banking system, not getting into conspiracy theories, but the usury system really puts people in a lot, a lot of trouble. And I wish from a libertarian— and I'm not like a Peter deal libertarian, um, not that— I'm gonna call it extreme. But, uh, you know, I do think that the people should solve problems and not the government. And, you know, you're from San Francisco, so you know a lot of— I'm sure, like, you run billionaire circles and those type of things. I mean, my thought is, first billion that I have I'm going to put up to make sure every kid in Davidson County doesn't have to pay for college. They go to a state school. I just want to pay for it. And I was doing the math. I'm like, yeah, it cost me like— I'm doing the math right, uh, the interest that I'm making off my money, I could, I could do that. But I, I think that a lot of the problems can be solved with— without the government solving those problems and with all the wealthy people actually coming together, you know, with a plan. Because you're not going to figure it out with taxes. I mean, they can just print money. Taxes don't even matter. I mean, taxes matter, but they don't matter because they've shown that they, they will just print money no matter what. We're $35 trillion in debt. So you actually, from being from San Francisco, probably are in a lot more of those circles than I've, I've been in. And are those conversations talked about? Like, if, if one billionaire picked a city to take care of, we could probably solve a lot of the little problems without having to have a, a tax debate.

I don't think I'm in a lot of those conversations, to be honest.

No.

Um, and the conversations I am in politically, you know, moving to Nashville, what I've really learned is I have really great friends on the left and I have really great friends on the right. And being that I built communication tools and systems and worked on the last era of social platforms, I feel like my real, like, personal ambition right now is to try to, like, bring back the overlap of the conversation and listening and understanding of each other. To realize the more we have in common than different.

Right.

And that's really what I do in Nashville. I mean, my— one of my greatest friends is a really far-left guy in San Francisco, and one of my greatest friends here is a pretty far-right guy in Nashville. And both of them are actually the same guy with different dads, right? And they really actually agree on a lot more than they think, right? And the, the extreme version of both their consumption became the views of their the world because of like the internet silos and more like extreme views are what get views. But I'm just really trying to find the common ground and bring us back to conversations around even these topics. And, you know, I have been in some of these conversations, but my personal interest is really finding the things that are more alike about us than different these days. Yeah, it's really my personal kind of goal and what I've really been trying to do and hosting people. I flew in people from New York and SF and hosted something here. And, um, just feeling and seeing the human side of all of us more and realizing that, like, we're, we're really all just kind of, like, operating from something we consume, some personal beliefs, some personal bias and baggage, and then fears of, like, how do we protect our families and our lives and ourselves and our inner worth and stuff like that. Um, but I've been kind of— it's been awesome, like, seeing those conversations start to happen that aren't right and wrong, that aren't me versus you, and are actually in the gray area of understanding and listening and being like, actually, we're kind of on the same page.

Yeah, absolutely.

So that's been my real personal mission over the last few years.

Well, I think we, like right now, the algorithm has us, there's confirmation bias on whatever we're looking at. We're like, see, see, this side sucks.

That side sucks.

One, one post I got called a right-wing Trump supporter and, quote, a left-wing libtard. Same post. And it's like, there's a lot of nuance.

Yeah.

And we've— we as a society, in many ways, we seem to have forgot that, that we actually do have more in common than we have against each other. I bet you even if you line up let's say Republicans and Democrats, we might agree on 80%. 80% is pretty damn good.

Yeah, you know, it's for sure good. And it's been so difficult. I think what I realized, you know, when I moved here, I was like, oh, we hate what the other side ignores or doesn't see. And when I realized that, I was like, we're not even— we're not even we're not even talking about the same things. And then like, it's like everything that one person hated about the other, they're not even— they haven't even read the thing that they hate, right? And I'm like, this is insane. And it's so hard for— I have so much empathy for everyone because like, you know, those silos and those algorithms are very powerful to reconfirm our own bias and what we see. And knowing that I, you know, have been building on top of those systems and thinking about algorithms chatbots and automation for, you know, 15 years. And it's, um, yeah, it's probably why we're not building a social network. Like, I just have no interest in like building social and more just like personal, intimate, our most valuable relationships. How do you protect our attention? How do we protect our communication? And so I don't know, I think about it a lot. I'm just trying to, trying to bring the overlap of the Venn diagram back together a little bit.

That's good.

I feel like it really, really blew, blew apart.

Yeah. You know, when Trump was in office, 2016, I like a lot of Trump's policies. I was actually, didn't support him in 2016 though, but I do like some of his policies. And you're talking about build the wall, build the wall. And when I'd give speeches, I would say we should be building bridges, not walls. And I mean that not, I think we have to have a strong border, don't get me wrong. Not saying that we don't actually, and I don't love what's happened. But the point being the importance of being connected with other people, we should look to, you know, figuratively build bridges with people and connect and find commonalities and not create walls. And I think the messaging of that was really rough because, like I said, I actually agree with a lot of what he, his policy. But I think the wording of it means something else to other people. And he, and he, he of course knows, he knows what he's doing. And I think that causes division. I would call Trump, and I am supporting Trump now, but I've called him the, the divider in chief. Sorry, my brain slipped. I've been calling him the divider-in-chief for years, you know, because he divided. And, you know, people started fighting in 2016, 2017. I told my parents, my family, friends, I said, he's going to cause— there's no way they're going to let him be president in 2020. I could see the whole thing. There's no way that he could be president in 2020. Something's going to happen that last year. There's no way. They're either going to assassinate him, they're going to put some crazy pandemic. I was like, laying off, there's no way. And then we got the pandemic. And this whole cycle, every— though I haven't liked the attacks on him, for instance. And it's all led to— I mean, this has been predictable to me, but I bring it back to him inciting inside people, this anger that they can't deal with. And I say all this because it's a weird thing. I'm supporting Trump, but I could point out what I think caused the visceral that he's experienced and the fact that, uh, you know, people on the other side have gone so wild and crazy to where they would actually want to kill the guy. Um, but to me, I'm like, of course they would want to kill him. They can't handle what he's saying. It's going to, uh, cause this crazy emotion with their illogical and thinking that, you know, even seeing comments that it's okay. Oh, we wish you would have, you know, bad things. We wish you would have died and all this stuff. It's like, so I say all that. Because to bring it all back together, I feel like we have to acknowledge a lot of different things and not allow those acknowledgments to put us in buckets that misinterpret what we actually mean by it, if that makes sense.

Yeah. I mean, for me, I just feel like, how do you stop being so divisive? Right? That's the question I would ask.

How do you stop being so divisive? How do you build bridges, not walls? I agree with that. I absolutely agree with that. And I get torn with it, with what we're dealing with right now. Um, how do you, how do you bring people together when the other side just wants to take you down? You know, that's a tough one too. I think about what I would do in that situation. I wouldn't—

I don't know if it's sides. I think it's extremes. And I think what happened was the internet actually rewarded the extremes. So the people that were the moderate or actually on different sides, but actually had things to say that weren't extreme, just stopped talking because actually the extremes became the voice. And so I think there's probably more overlap than we think.

Yeah.

And the ability to do what you're saying, which is build bridges and not walls.

Yeah. Yeah. It's been tough, man. I look at society right now, somewhat in some areas it's not, you don't have a lot of hope, but then you think about the project that you're doing that gives me hope. I feel like I know what it means. It's a dream. It's amazing. What we're doing gives me hope because on the health side, it's the right thing. It's dangerous. I faced the same You know, to me, what you're doing is good versus evil. I feel like what I'm doing is good versus evil. I've never taken an outside investor, never taken a grant, you know, all self-funded. 'Cause I don't want to be manipulated in a certain way. I'm not saying somebody taking money's bad, but you know.

For sure.

It's a no, like we're doing it for the right reasons. And so I have hope with that. But, you know, just 2 weeks ago, we almost had a president that got his head shot off. And I think about what life would be like right now, if that would have happened. And, you know, we've got to figure out a way to really bring, as you were just saying, you're, you want to bring people together. I do too. I think part of the way it starts is through open open conversation and not judging the other side so harshly that they retract and try to fight back. It's like, well, you and I might have different opinions on stuff. That's okay. You know, I don't dislike you no matter what, you know, like, it's, no matter what your opinion is, you know, who are you as a person? Who do I see you as a person? Your politics don't— they're not your identity as a human being. They're not your heart. You know, a lot of times our politics are a way that we, we see making the world better. Hopefully that's what it is. Like, the side that we— say the side, it's even saying that— the side that we pick is, uh, you know, we feel like this is the better thing for all people. That's how I look at, like, what I'm thinking is What's better big picture? You know, and I think that people that have a different view, they're like, well, what's better big picture? And so if it's really coming from a good place, why do we attack that? Why don't we say, let's have an exchange of ideas. Maybe you could change my mind. Maybe I could change your mind.

Totally. It takes listening and on a human level to hear each other's struggles and fears underneath the headline. Right. The headlines are us projecting sometimes our own insecurities and fears and stuff. But below that is usually a very human connection that is the same thing. Yeah, us trying to just support our community, support our family, do something better for the world, and be a better human.

Yeah. About human connection, uh, it reminds me the opposite of addiction. There was a study that was done, uh, and soldiers from Vietnam came back and those that were addicted when they were in Vietnam that didn't have families, they all stayed addicts. Those that had families got off of it. And the quote that came from that is the opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is human connection.

Yeah. It's one of the best quotes of addiction.

Yeah, absolutely.

So I think addictions, that human connection and just addiction runs in many forms. There's substance, but there is, now we're just addicted to devices and you can distract ourselves with anything. And they're so isolating and lonely and the loneliness feeds addiction and like the anxiety. It's just a bad loop. And that quote is very, very powerful. Even looking at my family, you know, I didn't share earlier, but it wasn't until I looked at my family and the history of my family tree— because when you deal with addiction and alcohol, and, you know, for me, I always struggled with that. I just, I was always drinking a lot, and I could always justify it. And it wasn't until I looked at my family tree that I felt like it wasn't a me problem. That's the problem with all addiction. You're like, it's a, it's a— they call it It's an ism, I, self, me. You think it's me, but you're not that important. And actually, I mapped out my last 3 generations of my family, and 50% of my family had died from alcohol or addiction.

Oh, wow.

50%. Half my family got massacred by addiction. And they say this quote, "Pain and addiction runs through families until someone stops to feel it." And I looked at this chart, I could show it to you, and I drew it out on my iPad. And it's red for people who died, yellow for people who are still alive but struggling or have recognized that they have addiction. And what was fascinating about it was I went back to my uncle died from drinking, my aunt died of liver failure, my other aunt died from fentanyl. This is my mom and dad's brother and sisters. My mom was saying grandma and grandpa were just always fighting, and there's just no connection. And then with the stories we tell ourselves about it— so you were talking about your friend earlier about his father, uh, grandpa passing away or getting killed. So I'll tell this story because it's, you know, the lies and the jokes and the humor that we'll tell ourselves to try to ease the pain. So my whole life, grandpa died accidentally falling down the stairs. Make playing a trick on Grandma. That's the story my whole life. I've always like, oh, how'd Grandpa Daniel die, you know? And at my uncle's funeral 2 years ago, I was going through this box and I pulled up this newspaper clipping, and I still have it on my phone, a picture of it. And it says, literally in like the '50s, they write like not an obituary, like someone passed away, like detail. And it says Daniel Daniel was found hanging at the bottom of the stairs. Uh, South Peoria man Daniel dies of suicide. And I'm like, holy shit. Like, our whole— like, we don't— we don't— we can't even say it, right? But our half our family has died because of the absence of, like, connection and addiction and abuse and all this, and, like, generational addiction and pain and suffering is just like, just blasting through our family.

Yeah.

And no one talks about it. And when I mapped it out, it gave me hope because I was like, oh, I need to— this is the reason to stop drinking is not because I can't just— I can just tackle this myself. It's that this thing has actually been the like one of the craziest, like, massacres for my family.

Yeah.

And I— when I look at that chart, I look at it quite a bit, that little drawing of the last 3 generations, and it's half red, and you're just like, fuck, you know? And so it actually weirdly gives me hope to know that it's bigger than me, and like, I need to basically get a handle on this because this thing is actually— I need— I want the next 3 trees of this generation to actually not have red on it, right?

Absolutely.

Yeah, yeah.

Addiction's wild, man. I mean, I was, uh, gosh, 20— 2008, around there, I tore my LCL, PCL, meniscus, and, uh, you know, we had team doctors. And so they gave me prescription opiates. And so started taking those and was on for about 2 years and just taking more and more and more as the time kind of went on. And I went to stop, went through withdrawal. And I couldn't get off of it. For about 6 months, I was trying to stop and the withdrawal would get me and it was just a circle. 'Cause all it would take is a pill to make me feel normal again, you know, just getting back to that normalcy. And so I went to a therapist and I said, "Hey, you know, I feel like I'm completely functional running my companies, but I'd rather have a clear brain and deal with the pain than a foggy brain and no pain whatsoever." And he said, "America's behind the times when it comes to opiate withdrawal. Google ibogaine." So I Google ibogaine and it was illegal in America. It was legal in Mexico. And so I was skeptical, like, what's going on here? Is this real or not? It sounds kind of fake. But then I watched a couple of documentaries and I was like, I believe those people. So I took a plane to Mexico City, took a bus a couple hours south to a place called Tepoztlán, Mexico, ibogaine at this clinic that was really just like a house retreat. Home 72 hours later, never had a withdrawal, never had a craving.

Wow.

And so that was an experience with, you know, but it was, I felt pretty helpless because I couldn't stop.

Yeah.

And it was affecting my life. I was functional running my companies, but, you know, my brain just wasn't wasn't all there. And I think, you know, I drink wine. I'm a wine drinker. But for sure, you know, my brain's a little more foggy when I drink the night before. You know, if you're doing it every single night, you're not going to operate at that level that you need. And, you know, breaking the chains of actual addiction that your family's gone through, especially in the times that we're, that we're living through right now. Fentanyl is going through the roof. You know, I was doing the math, um, I don't remember specifically. Let's see, if about 30,000 people under the age of 40— there's less than 30,000 people under the age of 40 that died of COVID Um, it's a small number. Maybe it was under the age of 30. But comparatively, I was comparing those that have died of overdoses in the same amount of time and it's like 10x.

Crazy.

It's wild. And so—

Yeah, the fentanyl stuff's scary. I mean, it impacted, you know, my aunt went from, it was opioids, right? It was just a surgery, right? And then it was just after the surgery and then it was, that ran out and then it was heroin. And then it was fentanyl, and then it was a funeral, you know. And like, I'll never forget my mom calling me and telling me that I was— I actually had had a really bad accident. I had to get a rib removed, and I was in the, uh, the cardiovascular ICU in San Francisco. My mom visited me for a week. My poor mother. I remember just a week long she was with me, and then she went home on Saturday and her sister died on Sunday. And then I wasn't supposed to fly, but I ended up flying home just to go to the funeral and you know, I was on opioids, right? I was on these like crazy pain meds. But I was very aware. I was like, I never— luckily, I kind of only took them for a few days because I needed it. I mean, it was like the most— losing a rib hurts.

I can only imagine.

But like, I remember just like, it was just one of those moments of just like, shit, like, this is how it started. Like, this is just, you know, the thing that's really helping me right now.

Yeah.

Which is, you know, a lot of addiction is that it really at one point does really help you.

Absolutely. When you think about what those people, uh, did, the, the Sackler family with the, uh, with the OxyContin. Yeah, I've seen those documentaries. It's— I mean, that's as evil as, as you can get. It actually got my grandfather too. And I look back, my grandfather hurt his back at 83 years old, was given OxyContin, and he was mad about taking it. And I look back now and he was addicted. And he had a bleeding in his stomach, a small bleeding. And instead of getting it fixed, he says, "Time to check out," 'cause he was tired of dealing with the back pain and the opiates. And actually I just realized that maybe a year ago. I'm like, "Wait a second." I was putting it together. Like, that's when the OxyContin push was going on. That's what Grandpa was talking about. But yeah, the human connection point of the addiction though is so— it's not really talked about because that's what we're all wanting ultimately, connection with other human beings, authentic relationships, being able to share vulnerable things and not being judged harshly. I feel so blessed to have a great group of friends and wonderful family that I can share with. But, um, you know, I don't think a lot of, a lot of people understand the importance of that, or maybe they just don't have it.

I don't think you ever learn. I mean, I never learned. Like, and what you learn over time is that it's pretty simple. It's the ability to say out loud to another human being the thing I'm really scared to say. And that relieves so much pain. And actually, somebody said to me, you're only as sick as your secrets. And one of that line to me, it's one of those lines where you're like, holy crap. And actually, you know, I was going through a relationship and a hard time in the relationship. And this therapist, this guy I love, it's like the '60s, like '67. He might be like '77. He's an older guy, but he's so wise. And he said, Shane, here's the deal. If you tell her, it might end the relationship, but if you don't, it will. And he said, the secret is always the bomb. And so all the things we're so scared to say about anything are the thing that actually relieves and builds all the connection that we want.

Yeah.

And it's like, it's the hardest lesson that you'll always learn, and you'll never perfect, and you'll just always be like, oh, I can't, I don't know if I can tell them this.

Yeah.

And it all, and sometimes the other side, it's not safe. Sometimes it actually is too much for the other person and it does create the environment.

Sure.

Which is, I think, where you learn not to do that is because actually the person that you're telling the truth to isn't ready to or able to accept it. And that's actually probably when early on in your life you stop saying things. Yeah. And so it's, you know, it's not like you can just start saying whatever you want to everyone and, you know, everyone's ready for it. But that's the— I think that's the, that's the human struggle.

Yeah. I had a partner that was— he saw vulnerability as weakness.

Totally.

And I'm like, man, you know, I find my strength in my vulnerability.

That's weird. And probably what happened was he was vulnerable and his dad told him don't do that because you'll be a sissy. And that is the thing that then you protect yourself by not being vulnerable. Yeah, right. And we're all— it's just the cycle. And so it's unraveling all that shit. It's insane.

Yeah, well, it's so weird, you know, hearing this, like, you know, here we come. Like, Scotty, the guy on the far right there, um, you know, and I are all, you know, fighters. So, you know, it A lot of our friends are big fighters, etc. So we come from this what would be seemingly— well, it was a masculine sport, but, you know, we're both very open and, and share. And, uh, so it's always weird when, like, for instance, he saw it as like, oh, vulnerability is weakness. Why are you looking weak to people? And I'm like, I don't, I don't care, man. I, I'm not like— if they think less of me because I'm sharing my heart then they don't need to be in my network. You know, of course you got to be careful. There's times where, you know, you don't just completely vulnerable about everything. But to build authentic human connection, you've got to have vulnerability. You got to— what's the— you know, here's, here's what's been going on in my life. You know, I'm ashamed of this. Well, a lot of people just carry the shame around. And as you were just talking about, you've got to be able to let it go. I forgot the quote. We'll probably put it in the clip that you said about the secrets.

You're only as sick as your secrets.

You're only as sick as your secrets. That's really, really good.

Yeah. When someone said that to me and then with drinking and alcohol or addiction and I followed up, I said, but it's only a secret to me. And you're like, actually, everyone already knew.

Yeah.

Like that guy drinks too much, you know? And it's interesting to just the ways you, you know, that you'll even lie to yourself. I was talking to someone the other day. I said, my greatest lie to myself is I always say everything's great. I could have the worst day of my life and you'd be like, hey, what's up, man? How's things going? I'm like, man, things great, right? And actually what I've learned over time is my ability to say, honestly, it's one of those kind of a shitty day, is actually the thing to learn. And I'm a more— I'm a really optimistic person, usually pretty good energy, but like my ability to even say that versus always protecting myself with great is, you know, it sounds like being a little sissy right now or like a little vulnerable. But like that actually is the thing that that more authentic and honest self where, you know, people ask me now like, you know, how's your day? And I'm like, man, I'm stressed as shit, right? You know, and I never— and I drank my way through my last company, right? It's great. It's great. We're fucking almost out of money. You know, we're burning so much money. I got, you know, tons of employees and they're just sitting there in this like And, and luckily, to like will and almost killing myself and ending up, you know, I ended up in the hospital actually when we were almost out of money before we got acquired. Couldn't do this deal, deal fell through. I flew to Nashville. I don't know if I ever told this. I flew to Nashville, I landed, my buddy was getting married in Franklin, and I went to lunch with a friend before I went to the wedding. And he, he was like, are you okay? And I was like, dude, my whole face feels numb. And I couldn't feel my face. And he's like, dude, you're probably having a stroke. And we rushed me— this is like 2017— and he rushed me to Vanderbilt. And the thing about ER is if you have numbness, they think it's a stroke, so they admit you instantly. And so I got in instantly, and 8 hours later, CAT scan, MRI, all these things, nothing shows up. And the doc's like, how much do you work? How much do you— like, how stressed are you? And I was like, oh, probably the highest level right now, pretty much like running at fumes, 150 flights a year, probably drink a lot more than I should, just trying to stay alive, both work and myself. He's like, you're going to die if you keep it up. And I was like, hmm. And that was 2017. It took me, you know, 4 more years to really, I think, slow down and get, you know, our company got acquired and I had a couple of years to recoup and stuff. But, uh, I'll never remember that. I'll never forget that day. I call my buddy, I'm not gonna be at your wedding, you know. And I was in Vanderbilt Hospital and it's just stress. And then everyone else is like, I thought everything was great. You're like, yeah, me too.

Yeah, man. Yeah, I know that. I know that feeling. Um, it's funny that we almost kill ourselves over our businesses, our companies. I've been there. I, I have been there as well, uh, you know, um, yeah, multiple times to where, you know, I've had broke out in hives. I mean, we started on my arms.

Yeah, all my like soft spots would just be like rashes and I'd be like, oh, and I, I'm like, it's Tide, it's the detergent. I'm gonna change the detergent. And I'm like, I got 4 different terms.

I said the same thing, dude.

I'm there turning it out. I'm like, no, it's for sure the detergent. And then I'm like, getting worse.

Yeah.

And yeah, it's amazing. Well, you'll fool yourself.

Oh, it's— yeah, no, it's the, the, the amount of stress. And I've got a lot better with it. I don't feel like it's as stressful now as it used to be. You know, the first 6 months we actually lived in the hospital. So we were like— because we didn't know how to run a hospital, so I'm like, well, let's just live in here. Let's stay in one of the patient rooms and figure every, you know, like figure everything out. And, um, yeah, man, I mean, the stress as an entrepreneur really going for it when, you know, the weight of everything is on your shoulders, it's indescribable.

I mean, and you also have everyone else's, you know, job and their families. I think about, I didn't have family at the time, you know, and just thinking about you know, our COO and our, you know, my co-founder and his family and their kids. And I just always wore that and that amount of stress. And so I have so much empathy for founders and employees, just everyone in startups. I mean, they're kind of like an irrational vehicle themselves, you know, venture's an irrational thing. It's like just searching for exponential growth and they just cause chaos. And so you're just kind of like trying to keep the wheels on always. And I just, I don't know, I just really try hard to like, have so much heart and be there for other founders and employees and teams and people just building things that are really ambitious because the ambition has a dark side.

Oh yeah.

And be there for them. But also it really helps me because if I can show up more, you know, people now will say, man, you just— you sharing so honestly, just allowing me to— no one else, my investors don't do that. No one does that. And I say, call me with what you're scared to call your investors for. That's what I tell founders. But it's really good for me too. Yeah, it actually— it might be fully self-serving, right? It's like I actually needed that as well. And that is the cycle.

Well, it's one of my favorite quotes is, when in doubt, focus out. Like, when's the last time you felt bad feeding the homeless? Or when's the last time you felt bad doing something good for other people?

Totally.

And so that's— that goes to that, you know. Um, it really does. And I think it's good though. I like— I carry the weight of all my employees too, because I like But we should do that, I think, as owners, because they are relying on us. And, you know, hell or high water, I'm gonna make sure they're getting their paycheck and I don't have to lay anybody off.

Totally. You know, and if I do, they knew. What I learned over the last years of being a founder that has made my life better is to be so honest with them about where we are and not live in the, like, trying to protect them by making it seem like it's great because it's actually a disservice. And I protect them by them knowing for sure what they signed up for, clear on where we're at. I share our bank account balance, I share our money, I share where we're at. I tell them we're not there yet. You know, before we actually had any integrations, we're like, oh no, we've done a lot of great— we don't have product market fit. That's fine. When you like say things like that before, you know, when you're in the early days. And I think being more confident in that versus trying to actually like feed my own insecure self being like, it's fucking great, we're doing good. And that has helped a lot, I think, because then you're not living in the lie or the secret, and you're not trying to lie. I'm not saying lies.

I know what you're saying.

You're not living in the, like, the, the optimistic projection of it's working. Yeah, because then when it starts— because that starts to crumble, and then all of a sudden you're trying to actually pull a rabbit out of a hat. Yep. And that's where all the hell happens.

Well, I'll say like in Mexico, like our employees, we don't share our bank accounts or anything like that. And it's a different culture. But my goal is to make sure every employee is a millionaire by the time I'm done. So every employee I have, and which is a million dollars in Mexico is a lot more money than a million dollars is in America. And I mean, I'm talking about my cleaners, I'm talking about the maintenance guys, You know, the people that are grinding it out every day to make sure the hospital runs, the patients have clean everything, you know, the patient coordinators, uh, of course the doctors and stuff too. But like, yeah, I want everybody. That's like the— they don't even know this, and I, I don't want to, I don't want to say it out loud to get their hopes up, but that is, you know, what my goal is with that. I think, I think we're going to be able to do it. I think we're pretty daggum close. To really, you know, really taking off. So that's the— yeah, that's what I want for them. And I think, you know, there is that responsibility though, to make sure they're taken care of. When COVID happened, had to lay off— well, no, we didn't. We kept 200+ employees on for 3 months when we were completely closed. And we gave them like, hey, this is what's— this is where we're at, you know. Uh, if someone's in trouble, let us know and we'll do what we can after that 3 months. We're not sure that we're going to be able to, you know, survive cash-wise because we had— we were at our lowest cash flow position when COVID hit that we had been at in years because we had funded everything ourselves. So it was bad, man. And we don't get loans in Mexico, so, you know, like, this, this whole lab builds all cash, not financed. And so, which is kind of a, you know, maybe we should take some money one day, but, um, you know, I don't want the outside influence. And, uh, but the, I, you know, the employees to me are so important because they're like, they're like our family. They're the ones that are actually making this shit happen. They are. We just have the vision. And then you hire a bunch of great people and let them work. Make sure you have the right— we fire a lot of people too, don't get me wrong. Like, someone's not a good fit, you got to go. But if you're the right fit, you're willing to work hard, or if you're— if I see you're willing to work hard, you might be in the wrong position. I'll find a spot for you somewhere else, you know. And, uh, we had a mate— this is amazing— my maintenance manager um, who's overseeing the build-out. I found out 6 months after he was— he's like just started as a regular maintenance guy on this big renovation, 25 years old. I found out he started working in maintenance at our company because he wanted to work in our lab one day. That's what got— that's why he took the daggum job.

That's awesome.

And so it's just, you think about the impact with the companies that we build that we can have on a lot of people. So why not make it as amazing as possible for them? Why not? I mean, that's, that's what it's about, dude. That's what it's really about— helping people with our product or, you know, science, whatever. But it's also building those around, around us and teaching them other leadership skills, other ways of thinking, you know. Um, and, and to me, that's I mean, I don't know, that's, that's like, I'm as passionate about that as, as I am about the, the science, I think.

I mean, it's really all it is, right? It's just people. And I always just say that I think great leaders create more leaders, and that's my personal kind of drive.

That's really good. Great leaders create more leaders.

That's true.

Well, we need to create leaders, man. I love it. And, um, I really appreciate this conversation. Thank you for a while.

I learned a lot.

Oh, thanks. I do too, man. I'm, I'm pumped about what you're doing. Uh, I do see the potential, the real potential. Maybe I don't see it all, but like, I see a lot of it that can change the world. That's, that's what we need. We need a decentralized product, decentralized banking product that's connected to the app.

I think we just, we went 15 years, all of our communication centralized. Right? Facebook, Twitter, iMessage, everything just went inside of silos. And the next 15 years is about all of our communication decentralizing. Yeah, buddy. And I think it's just the two trends of the world are money and messaging. And I think they're the two biggest things on the internet and we should make them decentralized.

An idea whose time has come can't be stopped. So Shane, here we are.

Thank you, man.

Thank you, brother.