Well, Alexis o'hanian. He co founded Read It. He's a serial entrepreneur. He's got a VC firm, the seven seven six Fund, He's got a foundation with a similar name. He's also all in on sports, co founder and leading investor at the Angel City Football Club, the women's soccer team based in LA We had a long ranging conversation earlier today. But sports that's where we began, you tweeted, I think just a few days. I love sports. Have you always loved sports?
Always? I did not always love women's sports, though, to be clear, I'm not. I jumped on this bandwagon really when I met my wife. That was the first time I even ever watched tennis as a sport. Yeah, but then really went whole hog in twenty nineteen, so I'm new to it.
Well, talk to us about Angel City in terms of how it came on your radar. I mean, there's a lot of well known actresses. Mia Ham's involved. There's a lot of incredible women behind it. What was it, I don't know the conversations you had with him that said I want to be a part of this.
Well, so back in twenty nineteen and I dug up these old tweets. It was March. I was just, you know, reading the news the US women's national team was fighting for pay equity, and I started looking at the numbers and I realized women's sports, and chiefly soccer, was being
so so undervalued. And again I only just come of this as a businessman, as an investor, and you know, seeing the amount of attention that team was able to capture, seeing the number of follows their biggest stars had on social media, right, this is these are facts over feelings. This is just the democratic nature of social media, which says you are someone I want to pay attention to, I will click follow. Showed that these women were incredibly popular.
They were individually capable of generating, you know, millions of dollars in brand deals. And yet the league, the NWSL, was still kind of a mess. I didn't even know it existed. I think a lot of sports fans didn't. It was showing its match is on lifetime Lifetime. No offense to Lifetime, but come on, you're not watching sports
on Lifetime. And at the time a team had sold for like three million dollars and it was the same team that Megan Rappino played on, and you don't have think the smartest guy in the room to realize Megan Rapino can generate at least a few million dollars a year in brand deals, and she is worth at least that much and soon money her entire team is only worth three millions. Someone was epically messing up, and so I started tweeting, and I just said, I was like, look,
this is a huge opportunity. I want to buy a team. Who do I talk to? I want to start a team? Who do I talk to? And you know, Twitter showed up in a big way. The diehard women soccer fans were like, all right, you know, don't just talk about it, be about it. And then there were also trolls who were like, you're going to waste all your money. This is stupid. No one cares what women's sports. So I started talking to existing owners. I realized pretty quickly I
didn't want to inherit someone else's team. I needed a blank slate. And because I was so proactively honestly tweeting about it, one of the owners of La FC, the men's club in la introduced me to Kara Julian Natt created who at the end of I think twenty nineteen were out to market and couldn't find anyone who wanted to invest, and so I said, well, look I'm doing this and getting connected to them. You know, they shared a similar vision and you know I wrote the check
off and running that's yeah, it was. It was kismet and I think tweeting, I mean seriously, and it's it's this show.
Is like it can work. It's like incredible and connecting people.
Yes, and look, I'm also the kind of person who likes being early and right. So I love calling my shots on Twitter because I love having those receipts later when everyone's like history, right, Yeah, bring the receipts baby.
Well okay, god, I feel like there's a million places I could go. Well does that show?
Do you?
Okay, I'm going to take a sidebar here, go for it. So social media, Twitter, TikTok. There's a lot of things that are on you know, everybody's radar about usefulness, the problems that are created, you know, elin and Twitter is a whole other story. What's your take on social media? Has it run its course?
Uh?
We and I love a lot?
Wow? Yes, okay, Look, it has transformed the world. There have been good outcomes. There have been bad outcomes, right, I very publicly left read it in protest a few years ago, and and I was thrilled. They didn't response. You know, they did finally ban hate communities, They did replace me with a black directory. They made changes as a result of my resignation that I was so happy
with at the end of the day. But I realized, for me, I think social media is very much going to occupy a space that our children's generation will look back on with a raised eyebrow. I mean, that's a big part of the reason I left. I got a she was three at the time. Now she's five and a half, a daughter who I think is gonna grow up with a very different experience on social media. And
so I think part of that is cultural. You're seeing a generation of young people and their parents who are like yo, Actually, maybe this was pretty terrible for you know, going through adolescents where everyone has a little like button and follower account floating above their heads, right, you know, adolescents measure. It's hard enough to go through that time, and then you now productize and weaponize it. Probably not
great long term. So I think you can already see the culture shifting, right, you can already see this generation looking to other platforms. I'm not an investor. You know the ascent in companies like be Real that are more about not living on your phone chasing hearts, but just sharing with people you actually care about, like what's going on in your life. I think you're gonna see that
cultural shift, and you're gonna see more technology. So I social media is not going anywhere, but it will evolve in the way that we use it, for sure.
I'm curious how your daughter and your wife influence you in terms of you know, equities, equality, women. Your daughter as an investor, yes, I made sure so I the owner of a professional sports team.
That's right. I set aside a few bucks to personally invest. I mean it was via her trust. She doesn't know this, by the way, so hopefully she's not listening to the podcasts. I mean, she's five and a half. I'm not to hear. But yeah, it was important, right. I wanted her not just to be the youngest center in pro sports, which is kind of cool. Yeah, but you know, like any parent, you want to create, you want to give your children something and a legacy. And frankly, also I wanted to
give her what she was doing. So it was because of Olympia that really galvanized this in many ways because during the final the Women's World Cup that year, we were all watching at the home we were staying in Wimbledon, and I'd gotten Olympia in alex morgan Jersey and She's running around kicking her ball, and I'd commented to my wife, like any proud dad, it wouldn't it be nice one day if she played on the wom's national team, wouldn't
it be cool? And without missing a beat, Serena says, not until they pay her what she's worth, and I said, okay, challenge accept it, like all right. And so so you know this, this little three year old was part of the reason why I finally was like, no, I really this needs to happen, and so the least I could do is give her her due. And so yeah, look, I'm very aware of the fact that I am a now wealthy but a white dude who occupies space his entire life very differently than my wife has and my
daughter will, and so it has given me perspective. But I want to stress it is nothing about the moves I make or the things I do are charitable? What do you mean?
What is she thinking because you're an investor?
What I mean is none of this is None of this is because of charity. This is what I believe is going to lead to the most effective outcome long term.
One of the I really believe, and this is something I talk about with my team all the time at seven seven six and with CEOs that I counsel now, is I really believe the long term greedy mindset is just a very different way of thinking about building businesses, being more intentional about everything from the way you build teams to the way you deploy capital to the partners
that you decide to have. And I actually, like, I worry the one thing I don't want people to hear is like, oh, well, this dude has you know, a black wife, a black daughter, and now he cares about these things, right, Because I don't think you should need to have those things in order to care. You shouldn't need to have a daughter to care about women's sports.
But if you didn't, do you think, oh, you'd have gotten to this point.
Probably a lot slower, if at all. So no, I can't. So yes, it absolutely played a huge role in helping build my perspective in the same way. You know, it's a kind of education. You know, I didn't go to Harvard Business School, clearly, but my you know, I had a different kind of very formative education that's come from being in a relationship and then a marriage to someone like my wife, and having the lived experience of a daughter.
But some would say much richer and much more real.
Understand I think so oh one hundred percent, So I think so yes, I can't deny how formative it's been. But I just want to stress that it's not Do not take away from this that that has to be the reason why it's exciting. Women's sports is not exciting just because because a bunch of dudes have daughters and
now feel like, oh we got to support this. No, like, women's sports is exciting because it is a massive business opportunity that men and women, even dudes who don't have daughters, are going to be excited to pay attention to.
Since I have you, I'm going to get in trouble. Fin don't actually if your question, sorry, well we did social media. I know you talked about this with our TV cogs. Yeah, artificial intelligence. You knew I was going to ask. Sorry, sure, that's fine, I'm using what's more interesting right now? Well, okay, so what has better investment opportunities AI?
But interestingly enough, if we assume let's go down, let's I just think in ten year terms a gift and a curse. But so ten years down the road, AI continues to ascend. Like you can now spin up anything. I mean, it's the ability to generate let's say, content
is trivial. Right, we could sit here, you could have you could say you want a birth day song sung by Beyonce naming you and your favorite puppy, and like you could customize everything and mention like I don't know pizza because you love pizza?
Cool? Is that valuable?
I think so? And so you need to figure out that. You need to figure out the dollars so that artists get paid and all that stuff's going to get sort of stim But okay, imagine content is everywhere and anyone
can create all the content they want. It actually now comes full circle back to why having a decentralized global ledger is so important because with a blockchain, you can now prove the prominence and authenticity of the original the day one content and so weirdly, I think in the long term the proliferation of a actually makes a strong case for the blockchain because.
Blockchain, But what about crypto. You've invested in crypto, how do you feel about that at this point after the carnage of the lasts.
So I seeded coinbase in twenty twelve. I have been through every winter, and every winter I put on my parka and I go talk to people building and they build. And it's actually the best time to be investing in crypto because every cycle, the winter is the best time to be doing my job because when you're early, you know, this is when the noise is gone. This is when the builders are building things people actually want. They're not worrying about what the ETH price is today. They're just building.
They're shipping software, investing yes, absolutely.
And AI are you investing?
Yes? And So in another two three years will come out of this cryptocycle. It'll probably be I think gaming will be a big thrust of it. It'll be very consumer facing as well as infrastructure, and it's not going to use any of those words. You're never gonna hear about NFTs, nor should You're never gonna hear about crypt it's just going to be dope software that happens to be on chain, all right.
That, of course was Alexis o'hanian, co founder I've Reddit, founder of a VC firm, the seven seven sixth Fund. He's also got a foundation, the seven seven six Foundation, that aims to fight inequity, most recently giving about twenty million to young people of the next decade. It's all about working on climate. And then he's into sports, co founder and leading investor at Angel City football Club. Eva Longoria is invested in it. Jennifer Garner, I'm leaving out
Natalie Portmant. I mean, there's a lot of people who are involved in it, but interesting and I thought it was interesting when he had to say about blockchain. That is something I understand a little bit more, I feel like, and I can understand maybe the productivity by using it or the usage of it, and crypto is still I don't know some questions.
But it's great to get his perspective because he is one of those I was born on the Internet people co founding Reddit. I mean, he gets it, and I feel like that leads a lot of credibility to his commentary on things like the future of AI and crypto.
Right, exactly right, and looking at kind of where things are going. And you know, if you google on him, he's got some thoughts on TikTok and the social media space, which I do feel like, you know, we're all going through a little bit of I don't want to use the word revel but rethinking you know, privacy issues, how much time we use and some of the you know concerns right, and then there's the good side of like really connecting people in a really easy way.