You need to come on mine and that's how we're gonna do it, which is the right argument, right? The problem is, those platforms have fucking eyeballs. Everybody's a big shot when Instagram's fucking giving you the algorithm and Facebook is giving you the awareness, but when you go over to a new platform and now you're asking your audience for their money and there's nobody actually there, that model has been a real difficult model to happen.
There's a very big reason why there is still no platform for content that is working that way in a world where influencers have been real now for 13 years. Don't let this current state of Instagram like trick you. Long before Instagram, there's been influencers on YouTube now for 12 years, there's been influencers for a very long time in a lot of places http://casino-games.my/virtual-casino-games/. When you ask people to pay for content, that shit better be real, 'cause it's unlimited fucking content out there, and second of all, everybody thinks that they can move them, but every one of these A listers over the last five years digitally have done some version of their own app, have been given equity in some new startup that has the same exact business model as you, and none of them have popped because when you try to drive people away from a free platform where there's a lot of other people to a place where you have to play for yours, people get exposed for not meaning that much. So I think the biggest thing you need to, and then of course, you're doing the other move that a lot of people do, which is like to bring seven or eight people that have a look, have an audience, well, maybe that momentum can carry through. The problem is, when people start going to a paid place, they start trying to get their audience to come and pay them over here, which starts making them lose their audience in the free place. And that attention was the currency they had in the first place, and so they start losing on both sides. There's a very systematic reason why this model has not worked consistently for the last seven years, including companies that have had $20 to $30 million in funding. So I would just say, please do me a favor and like really really go do the homework on the 10 to 15 that have died over the last four to five years so you don't make the same mistakes, because I don't believe that you may not figure it out, I just know it's a lot harder than people think. 'Cause the theory of Facebook and YouTube is fucking you is ridiculous, they're the people that put you on in the first place. You're not paying YouTube and Facebook and Instagram for those hundreds of millions of potential views, so you gotta think about that. - [Male Speaker] Thanks. - You got it, brother. Hey, man. - What's up? A quick question. - What's your name? - Eugene. So I'm a serial entrepreneur, and then I went into corporate America, made at most a six figure income, and then I just walked away from that to go back into tech 'caused I couldn't breathe, basically. And so I just thought of an ad site company. Basically, what we do is we do marketing for small businesses. We take their customers and we, hundreds of customers that come in the door every single day, and we turn them into a marketing resource. So we get them to promote on social media for discounts and free stuff, or you know, drive Yelp reviews and things of that nature. So it's built, our entire platform is built on top of the Facebook Messenger application. - Love it. - And so a lot of the conversation is altered by AI, all of that stuff. - [Gary] Understood. - So I just wanted to kinda get your viewpoint on that, that process. - I like a lot of what I'm hearing. I like the small business part, I like the practicality of it, like the long tail in that world has not been exposed, Facebook continues to think about it every day. You know, it's where Google makes its money, the long tail is extremely profitable. And a lot of people aren't focusing on it. The only thing I would tell you that made me kind of think that I would, if I was an investor or a partner, I'd be like hey. Incentivized actions to help a business usually ultimately break.
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People are fancy. Everybody likes to put founder in their Instagram profile like it means something. Like if I have basketball player in my fucking Instagram account, doesn't mean I play in the NBA, motherfucker. (audience laughter) And so that's the problem right now.
We've romanticized something, it's very easy to say, you can't say you're a professional singer because everybody would call you out, we can see it. You can't say you're a professional athlete. But you just put that word entrepreneur and co-founder and you are it, but you're not. You're renting that status. There's a big fucking difference between being an entrepreneur and being a successful entrepreneur. And unfortunately, we have confused the lines and it's putting people into really bad, bad habits during an easy time. If you're under 31 in this room, you've never been punched in the mouth professionally. Which to me means you're fucking soft. It's not your fault, you might be able to handle that punch, but you didn't live through 2000 and 2001 and 2008, definitely not 94. Like, you haven't been punched in the fucking mouth. And so like, if you've been doing something for two years right now, three years and you're not winning and it's this easy, you better rethink shit now. Yesterday. It means maybe you're number three and you should go find a one. It means maybe you're dreaming and playing lotto and you need to get practical. Because this has been the easiest fucking time to make money in the last 100 years. And if you haven't figured it out, you just might suck. I'm serious, it's true. Like it is cold, but honestly, I'd much rather give it to you cold, give you at least the thought to think about it 'cause it's fucking true cold, instead of fucking pandering to you, and then when you fucking crash and you're really hurting, all those people that said rah rah, you can do it, they're not around. And so please get practical. Please learn how to make money if you're a business person. And so that's where I'm at. I'd love to do some Q&A, thanks for having me. (applause) Respect. - [Male Speaker] So everybody that creates a channel can set their own price. People pay them directly. We split the revenue with them 50/50, and you can use crypto. - Okay. - [Male Speaker] I wanna know, you were early at YouTube. - [Gary] Yup. - [Male Speaker] You wanna be early at Reflections. - Probably not, but let's talk it through. So the first thing that's interesting is, what's the revenue share? - [Male Speaker] It's a 50/50 split, so Apple gets 30 cents for every dollar, we split the rest with the content creator. - So the 70 that's left, you mean? - [Male Speaker] Correct, 35 cent to the creator, 35 cent to us. - And so what are you doing to get my 35 cents? - [Male Speaker] So we're incentivizing influencers right now to sign up for the app and be a part of it, and then we will launch at South by Southwest. - Right, so you think that you're get seven or eight people that have a little bit of an audience and that they'll be able to then, because they're on it, get other people to jump on. - [Male Speaker] Yeah, so we had 100 users in it from LA. Some top influencers and some creators that I can't mention right now, but they are influencers. - You know, usually the reason, and I've seen a lot of apps like this, usually the reason this app scares me is because people underestimate, people love to say yo, you need to come on my thing, and I've seen this show over and over, because you're on YouTube or you're on Facebook or you're on Instagram and they're not paying you shit. It's so real, there's so much opportunity, and so if I could say anything before I go into Q&A, I really would love to make practicality and patience sexy. I really would. Because that actually changes your life. Like, that's actually good. Like, if you're sitting here and you're really in like some need of finances, I'm being dead serious with you. You go to Craigslist, it's free.
You drive your car, you take the TV. You put it on Facebook, you sell it for $60, you got $60. It's just, there's so much of it. And like, the people that listen to me and are like angry and have dirt under their nails and are ghetto like me that like love it, like love it. They're making like 3, 4, 5, $6,000 a month now. Shit adds up. Shit adds up. And so like, please, think about all the cool stuff that's out there, learn, by the way, I know that's what's being pushed down your throat 99.9% of the time, so I'm not even gonna speak to that. Let me talk to you about the 0.01% that's not. The Internet is amazing. Like, really crazy amazing, like we can't, we take it so for granted, all of us, including the smart ones in that have been part of it. We'll look back when, me, we're all grossly underestimating what's actually happening. The Internet is the middleman for everything. It will suffocate everything, all of it. Bookstores and taxi companies, they're just first. Everything. What do you think is gonna happen to mainstream media? It's all getting suffocated. Suffocated, retail, suffocated. Personal relationships, suffocated, real estate, suffocated, it's all getting suffocated. Which means you have all the same access as anybody else. You just do, it's just true. And the people in the middle that used to just be there because of establishment, they're gonna have to adjust and actually bring value or they're finished. And record companies and book publishers and real estate agents, they don't do a whole bunch once they're established, that's the truth. They create distribution, but that's become commoditized. And so you need to understand this truth, because when I look around here, people are gonna live for 40, 50, 60 years, like, what are you doing, like we got so much time. I get fearful when people are in their 40s, you know, and they think like it's a young man's game. Like, you're gonna be living here for another 70 years, technology's getting good, you're gonna be older than you think. You have so much time, and everybody's in such a rush. They're in a rush because they wanna prove something to somebody. Either their parents or to the contemporaries. And I'd really like to make it attractive to be like the person that went like, listen, I think being a tortoise is cool 'cause you get to win the fucking race. You know. Maybe your mom or dad thinks you're a loser right now, but like, it'd be much better if you won that debate instead of rushing into some dumb shit to make them think you're not a loser quicker. And that's all I see over and over and over again. And I just think that this conversation needs to be put in the system because look, there's a big difference between making money and raising money. And we have become way too romanticized about raising capital. Which has a need and I believe in it, and I'm a VC myself, but everybody's defaulted into it. Now, let me promise you something, knowing how to make money is always a good skill, always. And I think it's time that we start having a bigger conversation of teaching people that, but everybody's too fancy. You're too fancy. (audience laughter) It's true. |
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