Jared Nusinoff - 00:00:00:
Basically, ads had led to low quality experiences being proliferated everywhere, which I think we all see day in and day out. There's still lots of amazing things online, but it's rewarded the wrong thing. How many YouTube views do you need? Need to make like $500 is YouTube views do you need? Need to make like $500 is like 10 million. It's pretty astronomical, the number of views you need and the amount of corruption you get to your experience to rely on ads. But now anyone can say, oh, you can pay me less than a penny because you have this money embedded in the Web, and it's not stuck in this product. Is it reasonable that a lot of these different services you could do 2050 X more earnings for the person who's creating it? And I believe the answer is 100% yes. I think we're in a bull market for Lightning experiences.
Kevin Rooke - 00:00:47:
Jared Nusinoff is the founder and CEO of Match, a Lightning powered platform helping anyone on the Internet earn more for the content they create. In our conversation, Jared explained exactly how Mash works. He explained how creators on the Internet are going to be able to benefit from Mash in the same way that retailers on the Internet have benefited from the likes of Shopify and Etsy, and how the Internet is going to change when native payments are ubiquitous. Jared also asked to have his Sat split sent to the Human Rights Foundation. So if you enjoy this show, if you learned something new, the best way you can support it and the Human Rights Foundation is by sending in sats over the Lightning Network. You can use any podcasting, 20 app. My favorite is Fountain, but there are many of them. If you want to earn some sats, the best way you can do that is by following me on Twitter every time I'm about to film with a guest. I'll send out a tweet one day before letting you know to ask questions for that guest over Fountain, and all those questions will be asked to the guest when I record, and I'll pick one of those questions, and I'll add that listener to the show. Splits for the upcoming episode. Real quick, before we get into today's show, today's show is sponsored by Voltage. Voltage is the industry standard and next generation provider for Lightning Network infrastructure. Today's show is also sponsored by Zebedee. That's Ze bede, and Zebedee is your portal into the world of bitcoin gaming. We'll have more from Voltage and Zebedee later in the show.
Kevin Rooke - 00:02:28:
Jared, thank you for joining me today. I'm so excited to talk about Mash and all the things you're building. But before we get into that, why don't we discuss your background? Because you've got an interesting background. You've we discuss your background? Because you've got an interesting background. You've worked, I believe, at Google, you've worked on an outdoor adventure company, and now you're building a company on the Lightning Network. Talk to me about how those three are connected, because on the surface, it seems like those were in very different spheres.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:02:57:
Well Kevin, it's great to be on. I know we've talked about it for a bit, so I want to appreciate your time and the time to share this with everyone who's listening. I've sort of gone down a variety of different paths throughout my career. A lot of it is first and foremost I got to do something that I actually really enjoy, that I think provides positive value to people. So my first job was leading canoe trips in the middle of the wilderness of Canada. So take people on three to ten day trips by canoe, bring all your stuff, set up your tents, move site to site, cook your food on a fire, and absolutely fell in love with sort of the freedom of the outdoors and freedom of your time to eat when you want to eat, sleep when technology, so as a kid I was selling things online like the late ninety s, and actually saw lots of the challenges with payments infrastructure back then, so it's sort of a touch point. And then I ended up at Google for seven and a half years and I saw very clearly as I was working a bit on display ads and I also spent a lot of time in consumer products for Google Fiber leader in their mobile efforts. The funding of disinformation online. How basically ads had led to low quality experiences being proliferated everywhere. Which I think we all see day in and day out. There's still lots of amazing things online, but it's rewarded the wrong things. And then sort of after my time at Google, I was in many ways disenfranchised with tech. I didn't see anything that really got me excited that I thought could create a really positive experience for people around the world. And so I went back to sort of my early career as like the summer job and said. Why can't I create an experience that is a real. Actual. Outdoor. Sort of a summer camp on wheels type of thing in Canada when I looked at what was happening in New Zealand and so I went on that journey to build it out. We were actually scaling. We had product Market fit. Product market fit for a bootstrap. Self funded business where I was buying buses in the first year. I drove them around the country with people from around the world and then had a bunch of guides. But it was March 2020 when I'm like, I shouldn't buy those four extra buses, which I'm very happy I didn't, and went down the path of learning about bitcoin and lightning and all these other things. And I saw that it gave us the technology and the opportunity to solve a lot of the problems online with monetization. And so I went just through a process of learning about all the different Lightning products, about the tech, exploring different experimentations and sort of mapping it back. And then now we're here with Mash.
Kevin Rooke - 00:05:46:
Yeah. So for listeners who aren't familiar, can you explain at a high level what Mash is building and how it works?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:05:52:
Sure. So Mash's mission is to remodel the web high level. And we're doing that by enabling anyone who creates content, little mini apps and tools online, whether it's video and education experiences or broader applications to charge based on usage, sort of pay as you enjoy for any amount. So the goal of that is to allow them to earn their value, earn what they provide to their users, which lots of people talk about is value for value. And the other side of that is we want to make it as easy as possible for any consumer, any user around the world, to get access to a Lightning wallet, to contribute to those people who create these amazing experiences. And so that leads to a product of an embedded Lightning wallet that is interoperable, where you can send money anywhere around the world and you can send the money and pay for experiences directly to those people who build, develop and create those content and experiences seamlessly.
Kevin Rooke - 00:06:58:
Right. And so when you think about this is like integrated with Lightning Network, what makes Lightning a necessary ingredient for this? Where if we look pretty Lightning Network, we've seen examples of companies building somewhat similar creator tools, things like Patreon and substantial and things where you can pay for Internet native goods. What makes Lightning kind of like that necessary ingredient here for Mash?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:07:29:
So I think there's a few things. One, which is sort of an aside to this is I am a bitcoin and I believe that supporting bitcoin is incredibly important. It's not the most important thing for humanity right now. But now I'll jump back to answering the actual question, which is, in the past, you had a minimum purchase amount. It was one time it required filling out a credit card or loading up credits into something. It wasn't global, it wasn't programmable. So you have this commitment barrier, this minimum amount to purchase, which then had chargebacks and costs. And most people couldn't even get on those networks. Like, why did Square become exist? It was none of these people had a way to actually even accept credit cards. And that's still the case for lots of industries and lots of individuals. It's incredibly expensive. But back to the why Lightning and why now? First is the properties of Lightning being programmable so you can have it be sent in a variety of different mechanisms. It being decentralized and interoperable. So you can now take your money, send it between different products, it's not locked in. So there is no minimum purchase. It's just an asset that you can use in different ways. And the third piece is what I like to call embedded density. And so it helps solve a cold start problem of now. In the past, it used to be all I have these tokens that can only use on this place. Like I have Fortnite credits that can only be used in Fortnite. And you had to have a minimum love for Fortnite to put your money in or a minimum love for Reddit to buy your flare or your emojis. But now anyone can say, oh, you can pay me less than a penny because you have this money embedded in the web and it's not stuck into this product. Or you can say I'm going to buy Bitcoin on Shopify because this wall now can let me do that. So you can use it so many more places and the power of that is going to explode over the next few years, I believe.
Kevin Rooke - 00:09:28:
Right, and so you can kind of take your money from one service to another too, right? Like I can earn on service A and then spend on service B, right? There's no limitations or silos.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:09:42:
Exactly. So let's say you were earning with Mash for some reason. Pretty soon you'll be able to plug in your note and the money will flow right to you and then you can send your money anywhere else. Or a consumer can take their money from, let's say, another wallet like Zebedee, send it into Mash, activate a wallet and then start using it without having any sort of onramp requirement. It's about full interoperability. Or we can just connect with them and just pull invoices from them. So we have this really cool demo where we want to go with this. Obviously it's a hard build, but that's really powerful that you can have coordinators rather than intermediaries love.
Kevin Rooke - 00:10:23:
It for listeners who don't know. I've been behind the scenes testing out Mash's embeddable widget right now on my site and I'm hoping to have in the next week or so. Don't hold me to a deadline listeners, but I'm hoping to have transcripts of every episode of this podcast where you can read through full transcripts and you can pay through Match. So that'll be pretty cool. Looking forward to testing that one out shortly. But I want to get into one thing I'm noticing now in the lightning space is there are a lot of creator tools or wallets payment platforms. The words kind of blur together a little bit enlightening because it seems like a lot of things can do a lot of different applications. How do you think about differentiating yourself from browser extensions, wallets payment platforms? There's a few of them in the space. We have Albie, we have Zebedee mostly like a gaming focus one. We have fountain for podcasters. How does mash fit in? Where's your niche.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:11:36:
First? I think we're so early in this new change of how the internet is going to be funded and so I look at it as there's all the companies today and thousands more. They can exist and support lots of different experiences and features and whether they're going to build on top of something like Mash or they're going to interoperate with another experience like Albie or they're just going to be able to send funds between them. I think we're so, so early. The other just talking about a little bit about the different products that you mentioned. So I don't want to speak about what different companies do because I don't go into detail or follow them per se. My understanding is they're an extension that allows consumers to connect a note or get a wallet and pay for things that have different protocols installed on the site. So there's definitely a similarity there in terms of the belief in value for value and paying for quality. And then Zebedee, they're focused on gaming and allowing games to embed whether it's play to earn or bitcoin directly in their games for different actions and events. And I think that's actually the most similar one to what Mash is doing. Where we're allowing any app developer and builder to really monetize a different type of interaction or experience in a lot of different ways and then developers to build experiences on top of that to monetize the consumer wallet piece is just an enabler for them and to help them have users rather than rely on only the number of people with certain nodes or a wallet that might not connect and provide the right interactions to make it seamless and enjoyable to contribute while you're engaging or like pay as you enjoy without three clicks every time. The other part that you mentioned is things are purpose built. Like, I think the best products are built for a specific type of use case. And again, I don't know the plans or the goals or the strategies of all these companies. You might have blue wallet for in person retail purchases, et cetera, et cetera. That's very different than what we're doing. And I think there's lots of landscape available to provide really cool things that have never existed before.
Kevin Rooke - 00:13:48:
Yeah, totally. It is kind of shocking how early we are today. I still can't have a conversation about Lightning with a non bitcoin error and have any of this stuff makes sense. So you're right, we are very, very early still. I want to think though, about at a time when Lightning is mature and everyone's using it and you have a bunch of creators on the platform.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:14:16:
What.
Kevin Rooke - 00:14:17:
Different types of creators do you think will be earning on Match? If you can kind of segment the internet into all the different kinds of content we have today? We have podcasters, we have news outlets, we have YouTubers, all these different kind of sub niches. Who's going to be the first one to adopt Mash?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:14:38:
So I sort of try and break it up into two high level categories. There's the bitcoiners across the board who want to experiment with Lightning, whether it's selling transcripts, selling access to an email, a voting widget or tool for people to express their interest in something, a community jar, a way to engage in a circular economy there and there's a lot of really interesting experimentation where we can learn a lot of new things. The other side. If we try to segment the current Internet or the potential Internet. Whether it's news and information guides. Whether it's video. Audio written. Or whether it's different apps and tools like a calculator or converter for code. Or a map creator. Emoji meme creator or a little game for getting jokes and lots more that don't exist. But they never have been able to monetize of which I could talk at length about the different things I think will exist. But we need to see what happens and where people's interests lie. I think the tools that provide them and it's really about what provides significant value to a user. Those are the ones that are going to convert first where a user is willing to pay for something because they enjoy it. It could be educational serialized content or it could be that map maker, that fantasy map maker like Incarnate that I've been looking at as like premium mods or downloading sims content. There's so many different things and it's just about I think we can almost define where it starts in some ways. Let's say there's ten categories of the Internet and there's three that are really good fits. If we build the best product for one of them, I think we can learn a lot and engage from there and then shift over. That was pretty abstract, but I just think it's such a broad landscape and we're going to build some but then allow developers to build on top of us to help uncover all of those because we're never going to be smart enough to figure out every single nation vertical. We're not experts in everything that we never can be.
Kevin Rooke - 00:16:46:
Right? What do you think will be some of the constraints in getting to those first three different segments on the Internet? Like what's the challenge you guys are going to face? I guess if we're thinking these are not necessarily Bitcoiners, how do you educate? How do you onboard these people to.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:17:06:
Adopt mash, have a conversation, show them the value versus what they have now? They experiment. Case studies show that they're earning 20 to 50 x more than the alternative and keep on going. And so it sounds simple. It's not easy to do because if you try and cold email 1000 people, you're not getting lots of responses no matter how amazing it is. I don't know about you, but or everyone here, how much their inbox is full with just please unsubscribe my entire domain responses. But I think part of it is coming here and sharing with people to have folks experiment with us who want to try it out. And that's what we're doing right now. Since we made an announcement of our fundraise recently the inbound has been incredible. And so if you haven't got an email back from me yet, even though it's been over a week, at least two weeks, I am working on it. And so, yeah, it's just have conversations, learn, get it live.
Kevin Rooke - 00:18:11:
Yeah. Is there any magic to the idea of funding with Fiat is something you can do on Mash right now? I believe you can fund with a credit card. You can kind of like load your wallet. Is that something you think is like an important thing to get non bitcoiners into the loop and kind of on board without having to worry about the technical details of bitcoin and Lightning?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:18:38:
I think there's two pieces to that. So there's like this match that we're trying to coordinate and facilitate where it's this app, this experience, this tool, this content is awesome and someone wants to access it and pay for it. And if we limit it to only people who have, let's say, a Lightning node, or who only have this wallet or X, Y and Z as a funding mechanism, now, imagine you're that builder or creator. You're going to say, what percent of people are not going to be able to pay me easily? And so that's worth stopping there. But it's not launched yet. We want to have it that right. Now, you buy a wallet, which effectively is like you're buying software that runs the Lightning wallet for you to have access to funds. Or you have a wallet and we give you a bitcoin bonus that you get instantly available so you can use it without interruption. But we want to have a way where you can actually just send money right in from anywhere else or connect a note on your side, or connect a different wallet where they're interoperating based on different protocols that are available and exist today. And so we've spent a lot of time building our platform in a way that we ideally don't even we just coordinate invoices, which is like in the back end what Lightning does. We're not actually doing anything beyond that.
Kevin Rooke - 00:19:53:
Yeah, that makes sense. So we talked about the types of creators that might be first to adopt Mash and kind of like what that progression might look like. Who's not going to be affected by this? Is there anyone on the Internet immune to this kind of monetization? Is there any business model that kind of can still persist and succeed by not doing this direct audience funding monetization business model?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:20:29:
I think there's two pieces. There's flavors of direct funding and is it a core business model or is it an add on or a premium version model? I want to hit a few different segments. There's like the big bundles, the Netflix Is of the world or the Disney's of the world, and they sort of do it with like in app payments and different games and different things that they might be a part of whether it's like maybe that doesn't apply to Netflix, but I don't think this impacts them very much. There's, let's say newspapers in large outlets now if you have compelling journalism and information that people will pay for, whether it's like a substance that people engage with, I look at that as a prepay experience for that creator and builder is actually tremendously more valuable to them to earn a living in lots of cases, not all. And then we get back to certain undifferentiated content or generalized news or generalized updates or whether it's like you're reposting Reuters content with a little bit on top of it. The delta in what one group might provide versus another isn't differentiated enough to monetize directly from consumers. So I think there's like the things that get lots of views, the millions upon millions of views that ads actually can make sense and isn't necessarily super differentiated, won't necessarily switch over. But there might be micro niches below it that are way better at what they do for a very specific target audience. So, like, the best parallel newspapers are great, let's say for the average person, regardless of what I'm saying is analogy, regardless of what you think about the trustworthiness of that content and then a substant by X person is tremendously valuable for a much smaller set, but that person would make way more money doing that. So there's going to be non bundling going on.
Kevin Rooke - 00:22:19:
Right. So in a way, is this similar to how companies like Shopify and Etsy have given niche creators of physical items or niche builders? They've given them a platform to monetize their business in a dramatically improved fashion and you guys are doing something similar for digital creators. Is that kind of a comparison I can make?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:22:48:
Yeah, I think you said it has better than what how I would have described it. But yes, there's a missing middle of the Internet and you have ad funded and you have subscription large upfront purchase and there's this other interactive value for quality, for payment type of world that is going to exist and we want to help power it. And then there's these add on engagement driven experiences where you can see some platforms will be impacted by they can control a group of builders and creators, where it's micro distributions, where we're going to take $20 a month and then we're going to decide, based on the attention you give each one, how much we distribute in the best ones from those platforms. If the distribution isn't good enough, we'll say, oh, I want to own and control my own experience, price it the right way, get paid based on quality, add all these different interactions for payments or different premium experiences and shift to my own world. So I think you'll see an unbundling of some of these types of whether it's educational content. I think that's a natural one.
Kevin Rooke - 00:24:04:
Yeah. So do you think does this unbundle traditional schools, do you think? How far does this idea of unbundling extend? If we have anyone can pay for any content on the Internet, what's the impact? I guess.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:24:23:
I haven't thought about the school one. I know a lot of people are tackling unbundling schools, so I'm not going to weigh in there. It's so far afield for my area of expertise. But what I think this does is when you start rewarding quality and the people who create quality experiences start earning more, they can invest more in quality experiences. People go to them more. The ones that are not quality get less views, less attention, people start avoiding them. SEO doesn't matter as much because they're using word of mouth or trusted sources of information for places to go to. And you can imagine a world where the Internet is the experiences that exist there are a lot more enjoyable and trustworthy and accessible.
Kevin Rooke - 00:25:12:
Right. What happens to the ad industry if Mash succeeds? What's going to be the impact on Google and Facebook? It's a huge ad machine right now that runs a lot of the content on the Internet. Is monetized that way? What are the biggest impacts that will be felt from that?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:25:36:
So I think ads will always exist and they do provide value in some cases for people to find things that are relevant to them and to get reminded. Ads aren't always good in the way they exist online, though, that's pretty bad. So I think you might see that adjusting where quality think of the brand image of the places showing these ads these days right now is you might see a much more curated ad experience where it only limits it to better experiences. Where it's not taking up 80% of the screen for everything except for the sites that always will have it because they're not providing anything of value. But I also think you'll see a shift of attention and users going to places with ads. I don't think this impacts like, let's say, direct response or like search result ads. I don't necessarily think it will impact brand ads in terms of where they can show and the frequency and the inventory of it. In terms of affiliate, I call it affiliate farming ads, which is the here's the top ten X go by them and it's only just like scraping Amazon content. I hope that industry goes away, but I don't think it will. Maybe for some sub segments it will, but the goal here is to help enable people who provide the actual useful information to earn versus the people who have AI scraping information and buying robot farms for links.
Kevin Rooke - 00:27:11:
Right. So quality content is going to see a massive uptick in how effective it can be to monetize. And then maybe some of the other the commoditized stuff may disappear, may not. It may just kind of float around and just kind of like maybe that doesn't have that much of a change to it that did it.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:27:35:
Yeah. And then there's also I try and see the logic of people who have money, want to have good stuff and are willing to pay for it. Ads are usually useful only to target people who have money, who will eventually click on that, learn about it, buy something online or offline, which is all tracked right now. Now, all the people who have the money, who can spend a little bit to enjoy something, and those people earn way more. How valuable are those ad slots.
Kevin Rooke - 00:28:05:
Right.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:28:06:
That still exists. I'm not going to prophesy the end of advertising online. It's going to be a huge driver of the economy. I just look at it being not as important for people who are building new things.
Kevin Rooke - 00:28:23:
Yeah. Now, when you're thinking about the opportunity size here, and if you're thinking about disrupting the way money and information moves on the internet, what framework do you use to think about how big that opportunity is?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:28:44:
It's almost as though if you're starting I think Shopify is a great example, and you say, I'm going to enable ecommerce online for any merchant or anyone who sells anything. How big is that? If you're asking that question five years ago. So I try and look at it as this massive, could this be massive? And I say yes, absolutely. We're talking about transformative change. And so to put it into like, perspective, it's like, oh, there's $600 billion in e commerce there's per year. There's $200 billion or a little bit less in display ads, people are spending $800 billion in content and media, which is like movies, music and games. Now imagine you allow that to proliferate where the indie hackers and the different miniature builders and the content creators can actually charge for their experiences and earn their value, instead spending four years and making twenty five k and giving up. Imagine that happens in the power laws, not this steep, what all of us as consumers get versus funded disinformation or abandoned projects. So I look as there's 20,000 new apps built a month launched on product hunt. Like, I'm just going through numbers here that are just, you know, there's 2 million people building bubble apps, 30 million developers, tons of doing side hustles. Imagine that like JSON image converter. That's amazing. Or that screenshot taker that I saw the other day could actually earn value versus subscription. I think you break that purchase barrier, that commitment barrier, and that's why I say at the beginning, which of these verticals do you target or where's the first ones? There's lots that this fits in and I think we'll get lots of answers really quickly.
Kevin Rooke - 00:30:32:
Are you thinking when you think about judging the opportunity size and then think about where that opportunity comes from, is that primarily from creating new opportunities for people to monetize where nonexisted? Or is it also pulling demand away from things like patreon and substates?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:30:57:
I. Think those models make a lot of sense for a lot of people and a lot of builders and creators, but don't for many that might have tried them in the past or they can be augmented by something that Mash enables. So it's less of pull from X product to Y product because I don't think those products meet the needs of lots of people very well. They're still subscription based, they're still a minimum purchase. Here is a separate world that is controlled with my special content. I'm talking about more generalized uses that can be used anywhere in the control of the builder and creator. And so I think there's a very big difference with that.
Kevin Rooke - 00:31:36:
Right now I want to talk about using the example of Shopify we've used a couple of times, shopify. How do we think about like I want to get a sense for the network effects here. And so if we're using an example of doing what Shopify did for Ecommerce, for digital creators, how do you think about the network effects and building a moat around the business? Because clearly Shopify has built a moat and it has a successful business and they're like I believe they're the largest company in Canada right now. How do you then think about building a sustainable moat and network effect around this product at such an early stage in the lifecycle of Lightning and at such an early stage in the monetization of internet native content?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:32:33:
So I thought about it at a high level a bit, which is but at the same time, day in and day out, we're focused on the nuts and bolts of providing value to the creators and builders and the consumers that are going to be part of this ecosystem. So I think that is step one. And then if there's this unique thing with Lightning where it's interoperable money, the money is not locked in. So we're always going to have to provide the best facilitation of those experiences between those two parties. But then you could say, okay, if you have this many wallets on the consumer side, then why would someone wants to earn for their value decide to go with someone else who doesn't have it? So they'll have a bootstrap problem. People switch money, but not because the money is not interoperable. It will be it's because there's a friction point that will solve earlier. The other one is we're actually build out all these different widgets and components and unique ways to monetize that people can implement in a variety of ways and let developers build on top of it. You might have an ecosystem advantage, but at the same time they'll be able to plug that in with other experiences because it's all about interoperability. That is the way I look at web three or web four, web five, whatever you want to call this thing, where you're not locked into an aggregator or a platform. And so if someone is unhappy with Mash, they're going to be able to remove the code and they're off to the races, whatever they want. And so it's always going to be about providing the best quality experience for both sides of this equation.
Kevin Rooke - 00:34:05:
Right? So I guess one way to almost enforce a bit of a moat around the business could just be like as you mentioned. If I and a million other creators all have mash embeddable widgets in our site. It's not likely that the next consumer. Marginal consumer. Is going to be setting up getting on different platform if they know that everyone's using Match and it's a seamless integration already. Is that kind of the idea.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:34:42:
So let's say every single podcaster in the world has Mash for these types of experiences and you decide as the last one you want to monetize with mesh for people to vote on the next guest and if that guest comes on, it goes to a donation or something like some sort of thing you're doing. Are you going to choose instead of Mash, you're choosing like Mush or, I don't know, another thing, or you're going to choose the one that already has all of the relevant users there, or one that doesn't have the same widgets and different monetization options. They don't have that widget, but that's the one you want. And so I think once you get to a certain build out, it becomes very difficult for people to do the go to market, build a product that's better without the learnings. It's like any startup, why doesn't YouTube or Google copy it, or Facebook or Amazon as well? They don't have the internal knowledge to drive and the sheer focus to get to a point where you're just providing so much tremendous differentiated value.
Kevin Rooke - 00:35:46:
And so even though all this is interoperable, right, this has been like a point of tension in my head for a little while thinking about how we can have something that's entirely interoperable, anyone can access it and we can also have businesses that can form sustainable business models. I'm like how's this going to work, but I see that a little more clearly now, that both can exist at the same time.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:36:11:
Yes, but think with the ramifications of that, it forces anyone building in the space to be that much better, to provide that much of a better experience for all parties. It's less of the oh, you got to the scale, I guess you're the platform winner. Every VC in the valley funds all the same ones. They don't fund the other ones. I don't know if that's the case though, but whatever. That's what some personalities have been saying, but I don't necessarily believe that anyways, let's scale that one up. They win the market. Right? It's like aggregation theory. You can still have that in some ways. But the person who is running those business, the people who are running those businesses just like anything, it is sort of a click away and if you don't continue to provide something amazing.
Kevin Rooke - 00:37:01:
So do you think that changes the way people build businesses? Because there is like it is a competition for quality and it's a much more level playing field for new participants. Do you think that changes like the structure of companies and the way companies are going to be building experiences for potential consumers?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:37:23:
Anything that involves value transfer? Yes. Interesting because if you're talking about value transfer and start value, are you going to be locked into this thing they can only use here or something that can talk to anything.
Kevin Rooke - 00:37:39:
Right.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:37:41:
So anything that touches this I think will be impacted.
Kevin Rooke - 00:37:48:
Yeah, one thing you mentioned early on was I believe it's pay as you Enjoy is kind of like the business model and the approach here. What makes that the right approach? There are a few different forms of value for value or different flavors of value for value on the internet today. One being the one we're doing with podcast now where listeners can simply send in sats as they enjoy the content without any expectations or any limitations, whatever. Right. Entirely voluntary. And then this is a pay as you enjoy model where it's more like I get the impression it's more like a paywall or you can access the content if you pay a certain amount. And I think there's a bunch of other different formats being tested right now. I think John Carvalho has a podcast where he does a crowdfunded paywall where everyone can contribute to unlocking an episode. What makes Pay as you Enjoy the right business model for you guys?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:38:56:
So Pay as you Enjoy actually is sort of meant to be a bucket that covers all of that. It could be like donate as you go or donate as you enjoy or boost whenever you want or community enjoyment that one fits for like usage based pricing which was the first structure that we put out. But all of those things that you mentioned and a lot more were enabling and we're working on and trying to make it as easy as you copy and paste a snippet of code and you've now added that to your experience for all of them on your site or on the site that we can spin up. So I think those are all Pay as you enjoy and Pay wall, that term has gotten a bad rep. So we're trying to avoid we're not trying to use that in how we talk about it, but it could be pay as you scroll down past a certain point and then after 2 seconds it unlocks and someone contributes. If they set up a budget or they can click and undo and they have control over their funds on the consumer side and then you remove any click. And so we're going to work on a lot of different interaction points that make it as seamless as possible for both parties, but that's all pay as you enjoy, in my eyes.
Kevin Rooke - 00:40:10:
Yeah. And do you think about in those different kind of verticals, whether it's a crowd wall or Paywall or whatever the term you want to use, or traditional value donations, which do you think will see the most adoption from for consumers? I guess it probably depends on the different use cases. But what are you most excited about? What are you most looking forward to?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:40:36:
So, like, the high level of what I'm most looking forward to is people who create awesome things, getting paid fairly, and it's way more than today, unless you're like right at the top of the curve. But in terms of, okay, let's say there's pay per use, pay for time, donate button, donate as you go, donate boost. There's a bunch of categories. It's hard to say what the mix is. I think those are all going to be very large. I don't think the Crown funding model, I think that will be the smallest that I'd probably anchor on Pay. I want to call it Paid Walls, but Pay per usage, access and time as being the largest because it's less voluntary, it's more of this thing so amazing, I'm definitely contributing it to it. And I think we're moving into that world where people aren't going to sacrifice their scarce time for something that's subpar.
Kevin Rooke - 00:41:35:
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Kevin Rooke - 00:42:03:
You can do so at Voltage Cloud. Okay, so we talked about how creators are going to be able to earn a fair share, right? Earn more than they could using Ads. And when I look around the Internet, I see ad rates on things like YouTube and podcasts, and they vary. But I've noticed maybe it's ten dollars to one hundred dollars per thousand views or something like that. Maybe it's lower on Google. When you think about growing that amount for a creator, how much can that amount grow by and how much can you take? Creators earnings from level X to five X? How do you think about where that ceiling is? Can you take from X to ten X, or 50 X, or 100 X? How do you think about that?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:42:57:
We've looked at a lot of different there's a lot of different tools online to see what those rates are. And it's like, how many YouTube views do you need to make? Like $500? Is it like 10 million? It's pretty astronomical, the number of views you need, and then the amount of corruption you get to your experience to rely on ads. But we look at even though it's not just brand ads, it's also affiliate marketing and sort of we look at a few things. One is, what are those rates for those segments? And then how good is this information experience that someone willing to pay for, engage in a variety of different ways. And so you can sort of compare the two. And when we were looking at it and then looking at data from, let's say, subscriptions or other paid for experiences, you could say, is it reasonable that a lot of these different services, you could do 2050 x more earnings for the person who's creating it? And I believe the answer is 100% yes. The other part of it is you can use something like Mash as an add on experience where you don't have to remove every ad. You can still have affiliate stuff for some and not for others and have like premium experiences. It doesn't have to be choose one or the other. We just think this is completely additive and some will remove all ads completely and somewhat.
Kevin Rooke - 00:44:20:
Yeah, that makes sense. Okay, let's get into Mash, the company. And I want to get your sense for how you think about building startups. Because now you did your outdoor adventure company, you built that and now you're building Mash. And we're at an interesting point in the bitcoin market today where interest in the asset has kind of plummeted a bit and there's a lot of volatility and fear in the market, I guess, let's say. How do you think about building a bitcoin startup and then building a bitcoin startup knowing that you're going to have these moments of bear market and like fear and doubt? How does that change the way you build a startup?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:45:09:
So I think the first is I want to build the best team to do whatever I'm doing. People I want to work around, people who push me. People are incredibly intelligent and curious and driven. And how do you have to build a team like that? And step one is have a really big, important and achievable or believably achievable mission. And so that was step one. Then step two is fine, talk to those people, have a good reputation for people you've worked with in the past and have them join you and start building things awesome that people want to try and use and join. And now the other question is about, okay, bitcoin in a bear market or bitcoin not in a bear market. I think about it. There's the almost store of value or bitcoin as a monetary or asset or savings of vehicle bull versus bear market. And people think of that, what's the price of the asset or what institutions or countries have adopted it? I don't think we're in a bear market for lightning, maybe a bear market for funding lightning companies from some VCs, although I don't even know that's the case. That could not be.
Kevin Rooke - 00:46:17:
That's true.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:46:18:
We are a very rapidly, like, it's a very small but rapidly growing community of people who see this, who are building on top of it in a similar ethos, but different flavors of it for different products and users. And so the more products that are out there, the more interoperability, the more users that have access and try Lightning, the better. And also there's been socialization of Bitcoin over the past two to five years that's been really helpful. I think it will be really helpful to all of these companies. Lightning not so much. It's starting. So I think we're in a bull market for Lightning experiences, a bear market for personal savings, but that just means there's a fire sale if I get some currency down the line. So I'm absolutely fine with it.
Kevin Rooke - 00:47:03:
That makes sense. You're right. I think all the Lightning metrics are headed upwards right now. And maybe this is a point where I've kind of been frustrated a little bit because I haven't seen much acknowledgement of this differentiation between Lightning stuff and Bitcoin stuff and maybe even Lightning and Bitcoin and the rest of crypto. It seems like these are now headed in very different directions, have very different levels of adoption. We think about defy apps and things like that on other chains and like usage plummeting as soon as price comes down. And then we look over at Lightning and we go, price may be down 50, 60, 70% for Bitcoin, but usage remains at all time highs for a lot of apps continually setting new records. So I guess it may be just that. Do you think that these are just different economies forming and we're slowly realizing that they should be separated into different entities?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:48:04:
I think different frames of mind of thinking about it. What does a bear market means? One is like, what's the attention to web Three and crypto and D five? I guess follow the money, follow the incentives, they're going to get the attention and that's fine. And there's the size of the community building in a space maybe without all the media and the attention doesn't mean the community is not growing. It's been seeded. And so I just like to think of them as different things, as like a founder and someone who's working with an awesome team of folks to build these new use cases. And so there's new companies, new use cases being built. There's not just a few of them, there's tons that are building the space and there's way more people that are starting to wake up to it that are going to join. So there's more talent, there's so many more. Absolutely incredible. People that wouldn't have given it a thought are now starting to realize that this is the best kept secret in terms of changing the fabric of the Internet.
Kevin Rooke - 00:49:09:
When you think about times back to mash as a company and thinking about Bitcoin the asset. Do you think that Bitcoin the asset can give you an advantage maybe in moments like this where prices are down significantly. Maybe that's not so much the case. But over the long run. Do you think that having Bitcoin and being in the Bitcoin ecosystem can give you an advantage of staying focused and being able to build for a long time horizon. Knowing that this is something that can't be inflated away and this is like holding Bitcoin? Is that part of a strategy for lightning startups? What's your sense for how important Bitcoin the asset is to Mash and other lightning startups building in the space?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:50:00:
Bitcoin the asset needs to have value for people to want to have it, and while it's a spend and use it, and need to have positive perception. So that's going to as we grow, as you go outside of a community that understands it, I think that's going to be very important. In terms of storing, let's say, Bitcoin in the balance sheet. I feel like for security purposes, I shouldn't say, acknowledge or deny the question, but there are expenses that while some people would want to get paid in Bitcoin, their endline expenses are in fiat currency. And so we don't want to be in a situation as a company where we put the company at risk by risking all of our assets in something that's volatile relative to expenses, not volatile relative to what we believe long term value is. That being said. Having an allocation of funds into what we believe is the future monetary aspect of the world. The best savings vehicle. The best money ever conceivable that's been created and realized. Which is sort of the fact that it survived and it is what it is. And has such a high percentage of succeeding. Astronomically high. Relative to anyone who would have asked on year one. Is absolutely incredible. And so I think it's important. But then there's also if you built on other things, those other things are generally going to die. There's like a bunch of really good articles about tokens and they just go down to the lowest value to support the use case on the chain. And then there's no chain, there's no value, and then you start trading off security and you might as well just go to a database. I'm not saying that's for everything, but I haven't seen anything that it's not for. So based on the properties, I'm not saying the end outcome of the result based on the properties of what was created.
Kevin Rooke - 00:51:52:
Yeah. So I guess my question would be, like to clarify the last question. If there was Mash, and then there was a clone of Mash with their own token, and then there was a clone of Mash entirely operating on Fiat, does Bitcoin give Mash like an advantage of motor around it just because of the asset?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:52:18:
100%. So let's do mash with the Mash token. Okay, what do we need to secure in a blockchain? I couldn't for the life of me figure out what it is, but let's say that's the means, the value means of exchange. It's like just saying, put Bitcoin cash in. It just we pre mind it all ourselves. So trying to build up that network and having any credibility for anyone to use it and then explain to them what this new little token thing is. In it to any user, it's dead on arrival. The next one, which is Fiat. Try managing global interoperable payments that are censorship resistant, usable anywhere. It's not going to work. Now, could you take Fiat whether you like, you do value with Hedging in different countries and different things, to give users the actual value, or do, like, rapid transfers with the different partners yeah, absolutely. To get them on board and then help them understand and start riding the Bitcoin wave. If that's a marketing angle, we want to say if they get options, but really, it's about bitcoin. The other part of it is, when I go to Interoperability, it's embedded density. I can now take this in any country in the world, send it to different exchange, send it to a different product, send it to my own wallet, give it to a friend by an email address. These things do not exist. There is no community like this that believes in these types of principles. So in the long run, it's not just the asset, it's also the community that is order of magnitude, competitive advantage.
Kevin Rooke - 00:53:59:
Right? Yeah, I think you're 100% right there. And it also reduces a lot of the technical debt you have to take on to manage, especially Fiat world, the managing of money between all the different banks and counterparties and restrictions on who can send money to who and all the fees associated with it. It would be a nightmare just of complexity to think about.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:54:25:
I have to send money to some friends in the States frequently, and they just say, Send it on for a cash app. It's like, I can't do that. E transfer. I've interact. How do I send you money? It's like I'm pretending, doing like an international remittance that takes three days. I'm like wiring money to, like, wise.com and then sending it to their email address. They're signing up for an account. It's like, I have the guy $100. Yeah.
Kevin Rooke - 00:54:48:
It's just so much easier to send over. Lightning.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:54:50:
Yeah.
Kevin Rooke - 00:54:52:
I want to touch on one topic we've talked about a little bit is Web Three and Web Five, actually, as well. I want to hear what your high level assessment of these movements are, because I think Web Three, the term has mostly been something that other chains have kind of congregated around and said, oh, we're building the next Internet, or whatever. Right. We're going to build the web3.
Kevin Rooke - 00:55:20:
Bitcoinners have also taken to that and said, well, actually, maybe web three is built on lightning and then we have web five that just came out last week and this is now we got decentralized identity being built basically without any token involved, although Ion does plug into Bitcoin. What's your assessment of those two different movements and whether or not either is going to persist in the long run.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:55:53:
I can't even tell you. What is the metaverse, what is web three, what is web five, what is X? And there's a site called Epsilon Theory. Ben Hunt's, prolific author there, I think him and a few folks run it and they talk about narratives a lot. And it's almost like let's group all these things as the new hot thing. It's like AI companies that honestly were just using regex or just using people typing in words, and it was called AI. I look at that as a marketing or a bucketing or a way to create familiarity to people because we're in many ways pattern recognition animals and so all now the fancy cool stuff is just called web three or it's just called D Five, even just called web three or it's just called D Five, even though some of them are algorithmic ponzies. I don't even know how to describe what those things are, let alone say what the future holds. But if we think of some of the primitives of decentralized identity, I think it would be unfair of me to anyone listening to give a strong point of view given the amount of digging I've done on it. I haven't done my research as Bitcoin. Do your own research? I haven't done my own research enough to have a strong point of view to share.
Kevin Rooke - 00:57:09:
Fair enough. I guess a more broad question to ask would be do you think we're in need of or approaching a shift in the way the internet works? Do you think the fabric of the internet changes in the next few years? Maybe it's due to lightning, maybe it's due to decentralized identity, maybe it's due to something else. But I think the web one and web two movements were like clear changes in the way the internet worked for people. Do you think we're ready for another change? That this is going to be something that affects the fabric of the internet?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:57:51:
Yes, we're injecting value into the internet. That's only one of the things that are going on right now. A lot of it is also societal, whether you trust the sources of information or you trust the entities. So if you look at how hard and Facebook was five years ago versus it today and the impact it had on people's, let's say mental health or information sources, I think there's going to be the entire fabric is going to change and we're going to move away from the aggregator or platform controlled, platform locked in model to a much more decentralized model. So maybe it's more fragmented, unbundled, with different styles. But I couldn't tell you if this is a year away and rapid or 20 years away. But it's going to happen. It needs to happen.
Kevin Rooke - 00:58:43:
Yeah. So whether we call it web Three, web Five, or whatever it is, there is going to be a fundamental change to the way the Internet works for everyone.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:58:52:
Yes. These changes are happening faster and faster then I think they have ever happened before.
Kevin Rooke - 00:59:02:
Yeah. All right. This is really good stuff. I'm glad we got to go through all this. I want to get into a new segment that I do call the Lightning Round. Are you ready for it?
Jared Nusinoff - 00:59:13:
As ready as I'll ever be.
Kevin Rooke - 00:59:14:
Welcome to the Lightning Round, presented by Zebedee, your portal into the world of bitcoin gaming. The Zebedeey app offers a full featured lightning wallet, seamlessly integrated with your own personal gamer tag, so that you can earn bitcoin on all of Zebra's games on mobile and desktop. It's never been more fun to games on mobile and desktop. It's never been more fun to earn bitcoin, and Zebedee is your key to it all, to claim your personal game or tag and start earning some bitcoin of your own. Download the Zevi app today. First question for of your own. Download the Zevi app today. First question for you. Your background is in outdoor adventure. I want to hear a recommendation for the best outdoor adventure trip you've ever been on.
Jared Nusinoff - 00:59:59:
Okay, well, I won't say it's accessible for most. About probably five years ago, I flew up into the Northwest Territories, into the Mackenzie Mountains with five of my best friends, and we paddled the mountain river. So you have to float plane on like a puddle jumper. But I think it's like 400 km or 400 miles through the mountains and canyons in the middle of the Northwest Territories. So that's like the wildest experience I've ever been on. But if you're Ontario and Quebec in Canada, really, the lands of lakes and rivers. So if you want a paddle, I'd come here. I'm a river rat. But something accessible for most come here. I'm a river rat. But something accessible for most people is Baron Canyon on the east side of the park. Or you could go to the Mably default area, which is large, huge, beautiful lakes, and it's definitely a lot safer. Do not go. Do that other thing that I will not rename.
Kevin Rooke - 01:00:52:
I like it. Are there any books that have meaningfully changed your view of the world?
Jared Nusinoff - 01:01:00:
Well, I can say yes, the bitcoin standard, but that's probably a lot of people will say that. I want to say it changed my view. I'd say it hardened and sort of validated. changed my view. I'd say it hardened and sort of validated. It was the misbehavior of markets by mandelbrot. So he's a famous mathematician and so of markets by mandelbrot. So he's a famous mathematician and so I'd highly recommend it is sort of technical, but it helps people understand, I guess, power law, curves. It helps people understand sort of the randomness in markets versus drawing a line to predict where things will go. So I'm not a believer in technical analysis, things like that. And I think it's a really smart book that will open people's eyes on how to think about randomness.
Kevin Rooke - 01:01:47:
Do you think we will. See one of the major social networks entirely drop their ad funding model and adopt something like Mash or some direct audience funding model.
Jared Nusinoff - 01:02:03:
Platforms and companies have a very difficult time cannibalizing themselves, especially at scale. So I don't see any of them dropping their ad funded models, but I could see an acceleration for the types of use cases they provide of enabling different types of paid for experiences, whether it's YouTube premium, I can't even know the name even though I get the advertisement five times a day.
Kevin Rooke - 01:02:27:
I guess Twitter has Twitter blue, right? They have a little pay to get rid of ads or something.
Jared Nusinoff - 01:02:33:
Yes, but those are like one time remove this thing, it's not pay for this because it's ten x better. So I think they will do it but I'll be maybe a smaller part of the business than we think it will be unless they create new things like twitter buying the subset competitor get review. I have no idea how big that business is or how big the subscription model is versus generic views and advertising, but I see most of this activity happening off of those platforms.
Kevin Rooke - 01:03:01:
Right, interesting. What is something that you believe that few bitcoiners agree with you on?
Jared Nusinoff - 01:03:13:
It's hard because I don't know how to qualify. Like what is a bitcoinner? I have to think about this for a second. Oh, I don't believe in now as of like maybe people will say it now because of where the market, the exchange rate is. I don't believe that cycles or havings matter anymore. I look at it as both the size of the asset class in terms of fiat currency, the adoption by institutions, the fact that miners hold their funds. But really the big thing is the percent of mine bitcoin as a percent of the total. It used to be I forget the percentages off the top of my head, but if you're doing 20% inflation per year versus zero 5% inflation or going from one to zero 5%, it sort of becomes immaterial except for a psychological push. But I don't think it matters anymore. I think we're going to go past this having date and nothing, there's going to be no impact other than my Twitter feed will fill up for a few days and then a few days after.
Kevin Rooke - 01:04:24:
Yeah. I mean, I think that's interesting. I think you're right in the sense that a lot of bitcoin will disagree, but I think there is a point to be made. Like maybe the last having didn't even have an impact because bitcoin was mostly fluttering around what, 810 thousand after the having for a couple of months after. In fact we saw a MicroStrategy buying bitcoin and then square buying bitcoin and that was actually a lot tighter linked to the actual rise in price than the having from three or four months prior to that. So who knows, maybe it wasn't even impactful this time around.
Jared Nusinoff - 01:05:06:
I could maybe get behind that. I'd have to do a little look back.
Kevin Rooke - 01:05:11:
Yeah. MicroStrategy was August 11, I believe they announced their first buy. And Twitter was September. Not Twitter. Square was September. And then the price we really picked up in October, November, and it's like the having was back in May. That was, like, six months ago.
Jared Nusinoff - 01:05:29:
But maybe it takes a bit of time to reverberate through the miners and through the system. I don't know. It's also one of these things that no one can prove. I think I just tweeted yesterday, correlation equals causation as a joke because it's hard to prove anything. Absolute fact.
Kevin Rooke - 01:05:48:
Right.
Jared Nusinoff - 01:05:49:
We see patterns, and hopefully we're right most of the time.
Kevin Rooke - 01:05:52:
Yeah. Okay, final question. If you had to hold all of your wealth in one asset, it couldn't be Bitcoin. You got to hold it for ten years. Which asset are you picking?
Jared Nusinoff - 01:06:08:
I have two questions. One is, do I have a home to live in? And do I have a salary to pay for things? You know how liquid the money is?
Kevin Rooke - 01:06:18:
I would say use your current situation. Do you have a home to live in, or do you have a
Jared Nusinoff - 01:06:27:
salary to depend on? Does MicroStrategy count? Or as a Bitcoin salary to depend on? Does MicroStrategy count? Or as a Bitcoin holdings or an.
Kevin Rooke - 01:06:28:
ETF, you could choose to invest in MicroStrategy if you want.
Jared Nusinoff - 01:06:33:
Okay, so what do I believe that has the not your keys, not your coin, but, like, over ten years? Sure. I'll go micro strategy. Unless Square announces that they amped up their balance now I'll go MicroStrategy.
Kevin Rooke - 01:06:47:
Yeah.
Kevin Rooke - 01:06:48:
I can't beat down recently.
Kevin Rooke - 01:06:50:
That may prove to be I think they're trading below the net holdings they have. So that actually may be like a I mean, it is technically a levered position on Bitcoin, but it may be that you're actually getting more than what you deserve because they've been beaten down so hard in the last couple of weeks.
Jared Nusinoff - 01:07:10:
That is true. I'm trying to think of what is the biggest is the leveraged position, which I'm not worried is the biggest is the leveraged position, which I'm not worried about. I don't think there's any risk in five years of being liquidated, or I get 50% of the value instead of 150% of the value. So I'll take that risk, although it's not redeemable and I don't hold it. So the ETF might be better. Actually, the biggest risk, I think, with MicroStrategy is, like, political risk for biggest risk, I think, with MicroStrategy is, like, political risk for Michael Sailor. What happens if Michael Sailor is not in charge of MicroStrategy anymore? That is the biggest risk factor that it might just put me into, like, an ETF in Canada for Bitcoin. So I'm flip flopping here. I don't have an answer. I need
Kevin Rooke - 01:08:00:
to look through that. Yeah, no, it's a tricky question. All to look through that. Yeah, no, it's a tricky question. All right, well, listen, this was an incredible conversation. I'm glad we got to go through all this in detail. I think people are going to really like what you're building, and I'm excited to launch the transcripts on my own. Site for this episode and for all the other episodes of the show. Real quick, before we go, where can people go to learn more about you and Match?
Jared Nusinoff - 01:08:21:
Sure. So you can check out Mash's website if you want to earn money@getmash.com. If you are consumer wants to try out the wallet, you can sort of go there and find your way around or go to Getmash.com wallet. I'm on Twitter, Jared. J-A-R-E-D-N-X-X or the company at getmash. And I'm trying to think, is there anything else that I show? Enough of our cool stuff.
Kevin Rooke - 01:08:49:
I think we're good there. Got a website and Twitter and yeah.
Jared Nusinoff - 01:08:55:
I just wanted to I've had a great conversation with you. I appreciate all the thorough, detailed questions and always happy.
Kevin Rooke - 01:09:01:
Yeah, well, thank you for taking the time and I really hope we can do it again soon.
Jared Nusinoff - 01:09:05:
Awesome. Sounds great.
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