EYL #188 Black Owned Social Media Platform

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And so I tell people all the time, do you want a million followers or do you want a million dollars a million follow I know people with five, ten, fifteen million followers broke can't even pay their bills, but fifty thousand people paying you two dollars a month is one hundred grand a month, one point two million dollars a year. I know y'all heard about bad Baby, catch me outside. She made fifty five million dollars off OnlyFans, right, I said, she made fifty five million dollars off one

It was like six posts. But I was like, see.

I was like, she hit all her content because she knows she makes Instagram. Instagram doesn't make her. She's like, I have sixteen million followers. This serves me no purpose at all. So she archived all her content and she put a link tree and said you can stream my song, watch my music video, and come to my only fans. Because what is this sixteen million people doing for me.

My graduates from my school being forced back drop drop drop back drop.

All right, guys, welcome back, e y l South.

This is gonna be a legendary episode, something that the public has asked for and something that we've been in communication for a long time.

A lot of people they they lack patients. They're like, why don't you get fan based on I'm like, what we keep talking about. It's down. We are for the culture. Everything just has to happen in the right time.

But you did do our guys ask cash is shows inside the whole, shout inside the vote.

So Isaac Hayes the third.

Legendary situation fandis this is something that if you're not familiar with it, we're gonna I'm gonna let you explain it because I don't want to do it any disservice. But it's a social media app that's designed for monetization.

Yeah right, yeah, absolutely, And.

It works similar to like a lot of the other social media apps where you can like interact with your photo, video stories, live live short form audio chat, audio chat. So it's like a combination of a lot of different social media.

Apps, every media vertical you can think of subscription service in one.

Yeah.

So we're gonna have no conversation.

We're gonna talk about the process, your thought process that even developing the app, of course, raising money for the app, marketing the app, the business model where do you see it going?

You know, the whole the whole gambit. But first and fall, thank you for joining us, appreciate it, Thank you guys for having me. This is like my favorite interview before it starts, my favorite before it's like everybody like, but I told people I was coming in there, like I want to come. I love those guys, you understand, like I watched earlierly, so this is the one showed that everybody I know watch it.

So they got to make sure that they watched this one.

Absolutely the Holy g of financial absolutely.

So all right, So where does it start?

Obviously, if you didn't catch it by his name, his dad is Isaac Hayes, legendary vocalists and performer. So where did this start with you? You never wanted to go into music and followed your dad's footsteps. What made you wanted to be an entrepreneur in text based?

So I was a producer, like I started producing in ninety nine, and then I decided that I wanted to license my music, and so I started licensing my music for television and film and did that for like ten or fifteen years. And after my dad passed, somebody my family wanted someone to run the estate, and so my family named me the manager of his estate.

So I had been managing his estate.

But while simultaneously, you know, like I said, A simultaneously licensing my music for TV and film. The idea to develop an app came out of left field, came out. It came from It came from my connection to Memphis, Tennessee. So I was born in Memphis, left Memphis at an early age and moved to Atlanta. But just me being on social media all the time, this young kid went viral for dancing in a Spider Man costume and a

So it was March twenty eighteen.

So anyway, I left that conversation like, Yo, this kid is like he don't know how to.

Make no money and he doesn't own Spider Man.

And whenever Marvel and Disney want to shut down him monetizing their property, they can.

But people need to learn. People need to be able.

To subscribe to him like you subscribe to like Netflix, and learn how to dance like him. If he wants to teach people to dances, he does, and charge people for those dances.

And so that's when I was like, yo, we need that.

And it was like and then only Fans was out at the same time, and I remember only fans, Yeah, legendary, and so I remember seeing I remember saying like, yo, when the strippers find out about this one?

Oh so you you was on it before it became what it became.

Yeah, no, because because I because one of the things that I did, the first things I did when I thought of the name fan base, I trademarked it.

So I hadn't built anything.

I trademarked the name fan base in the in the form of an application that's downloaded with software for subscription based whatever.

Very important Yeah, the details on how you trademarkets very important.

Yeah.

So yeah, you got to get the class and the territory and I did all that so because I don't ever want to take an idea to fruition and then not be able to fully execute it because a lot of people, you know, rappers have a name, can't use a name, right, somebody have a product, can't use the product.

Yeah.

So, I mean creating a tough company obviously takes capital, and he did something very brilliant. Never signed a publishing deal when you were producing, right, and so you were able to license. The content that you were making was born in jail. So is that the basis or the foundation of where you got capital to create it?

Yes, okay, And so being a pre do so I never did a public deal because my dad had terrible relationships with publishers. So I was able to go to my pro which are like being my ass cap, the performing rights people that collect your money and ask for a loan. And I asked for a loan of like one hundred thousand, and I got another one hundred thousand. I just I could pull from it whenever I wanted to. And that's the thing mailbox money is like, you know, I say, you got to make money while you sleep.

So that was a cool thing about me.

It's like I'm watching Real Housewives and married to medicine and loving hip hop and my beats and playing NBAT be the All Star Game, Like I would hear my music all the time, and I just go to the mailbox and be a check for you know, twenty thousand whatever, fifty thousand, you know, every quarter. So I'm like, okay, cool. So when I came up with the idea, I was like, well, let me just pull from this. I'm you know, when I started managing my dad's the state, I said, just

So talk about the loan. How did that work?

So you took a loan from the record companies and then they recouped.

That from my pr Yeah, they recoup it from from what's paid so as ay.

So it's it's not like a year.

You probably get paid like a year after, like nine months after something airs. So whenever your song is played on the radio or it is on a television show or a movie, about nine months after it airs is when you actually get the money for it.

That's like it's out the ghost face. He said. Waiting on these royalties take too long. It's like waiting on babies.

It's like, yeah, so that's when you So when you when your joint hit, you know, you got nine months before you get the check. So that's a long it's a long gap. So yeah, I was able to just you know, take in advance.

And then they charge like a percentage.

Of no, because it's not it's not a publishing deal. It's just the money I was gonna get paid anyway. It's just they just keep collecting it till it comes back. So you spoke about your dad's a state. That's I mean that's pretty expensive catalog, Yes, especially in music. I know he did voiceovers even in.

South Park, right, it's so so like, I mean, you're into music at the time, but managing the state is a totally different thing.

So where did you like figure out the skills to manage that.

So most of it, most of managing the state revolves or my dad to say, will revolve around publishing and masters and so I've been doing that. So it's like you want to license his name it was in likeness or a song or anything like that. That's that's very, very simple. So it wasn't a hard thing to do. The only thing the only hard thing to do is probably is expand the brand, and you need relationships to

Du hold I'm coming.

So he wrote that song. So we wrote, yeah, him and David Porter. So we just got that song back like last month. And even since we did that, like it's already like licenses coming in. But think about like how many how much money has been made off that record, and then think of all this sampling and all that stuff.

So again, yeah, I.

Feel like once I heard that, you made me think of Malcolm Nuts in the movie, like when he's at the whole.

That's the song that's playing everything. And listen, there was crazy.

There were songs they used, they used hold on them And this is the crazy thing because the publishers are trying to get us to do new deals, and I'm like the numbers that they were sending us. Was like, na, man, there's there's no way you can offer us this. If I say they offered us like two million, right, I was liked. I just heard this song on an oil cookie commercial for Christmas.

They played it.

When the Lakers won the championship, they played it. They had a Toyota truck commercial. It's a bunch of different, you know, different commercials that I hear in it. That's publishing, so it doesn't matter who does the song. So I was like, Nah, y'all not feeling Offersta and we have. We haven't even gotten to his artist catalog where even

Just right the sample or the lyric, the sample, the musical. So he produced the record, He wrote and produced. He wrote, Yeah, the writer and producer and artist.

So he was a songwriter first and then he became an artist because Otis Redding died and then Sam and Dave got they got taken back. They were on loan from Atlantic and it was a bad deal with Stacks, so they had no artists, so they had to rebuild their catalog and they asked everybody to do an album. They had like twenty nine. They had twenty eight artists

And that album was Hot Buttered Soul.

So that's the album where you know he did walk on By and it's like the first time you ever heard like soul artists and orchestra's merge or organs and bass and all that stuff together with orchestras and stuff.

So like that.

He even had to go to Detroit to record the strings because there were no people that can play strings in Memphis. So imagine going to like Motown to put your sound with they sound and come back. And really, I always state my dad is the inventor of modern day R and B because you can't imagine R and B without flutes and strings.

And you think of marriag jr. Blige when you think of like.

Mask off by Future or whatever when you hear flutes and hip hop is like Isaca is the first person to put flutes and strings on top of like organs and gritty guitars and stuff like that.

So when the publisher companies are coming at you now, are they now trying to renew the deals? Obviously fifty six years not gonna happen in this dayage, but are they doing like short term leases on the content is.

Five years ironically, and this will go this, This will transition a lot into tech. What they're doing now, they're trying to buy catalogs, and I know you hear all the time people are buying catalogs, right, And I'm like, why these people selling their catalogs? It doesn't make sense to me because I understand the value of the music. And so I tell I think about this, and I say, well, how many people on Earth have a smartphone? And it's

Three billion?

Okay, no, it's five hundred twenty five million people. It's so it's left so seven percent of the available market of people that could have a music streaming service on their phone have it. So in my mind, I'm like they said, by twenty thirty, it'll be like a billion people on streaming services. So in the next eight years, the streaming revenue is gonna double or triple, So why are you I wouldn't sell shit? And it's the same

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So, all right, so let's get into this conversation off fan base. What's the first steps that you took to get the company off the ground and how much money was it actually to actually get the company off the ground.

So do you don't have a tech background? Right?

No?

All right?

So you have an idea, but you don't necessarily know how to actually go about it. So what's the first thing that you did to actually get an app? Because a lot of people have ideas about app they don't even know how to go about it.

Well, I mean, I think I educated myself through mentors. So there's my three mentors and tech immediately, Joel Berk's Barry Gibbings and Justin Dawkins, and so the three of them have a company called Collapse Capital. So Jewel Berks had a company called part Pick that she saw the Amazon and exited. And Barry Gibbons had a vent a startup, a tech startup, and Justin is their partner, and they have a company called Collab Capital where they invest in people.

So they're okay, okay, okay.

So I just had all that information and I just started researching and then I'm kind of one of those kind of do it do it off, I need to do it all type of people. So even the deck, like I had somebody, they gave me somebody that builds decks, but I said, send me the deck in Keynote and then I just started clicking buttons and I built my deck and learned how to use Keynote. Now, so now I'm a keynote whiz. So I'm the kind of person that is just figure it out on my own if

All I need I need.

I know what the colors are supposed to be, so all I need is somebody to build it. So that was the part that was very very.

Hard for me. Yeah, it was. It was. It was a challenge.

But again, and I had somebody that was working with me on this, which is really weird. It was this young lady that was working with me on the app and she was kind of like guiding me through it. But then she just disappeared and I was like, Okay, now I'm really out here, like I'm dolo. So my attorney at the time introduced me to my now CTO and and he built the app. Very talented god by

So when you meet him and you're putting the plants together, how long before the actual completion of the idea.

So it's about six months.

So we built it from We built the MVP from like July to December.

MVP middle viable products, And that's just like.

The most important things that need to be part of the situation.

Yeah, because so typically, and this comes from people in black tech, is like we don't get to write our ideas down on a napkin and slide it over to somebody say okay, I'll fund that for twenty million dollars, because because along the way, you know, I would hear from from other people in tech and say, man, like these dudes got twenty million dollars and spend all the money on some other bullshit and never even built an MVP,

That's done. And I was like, oh, and I was on Facebook, that's done. I was like oh.

And I saw Twitter and I was like I got on Twitter and oh eight nobody was on there. And I left and then I came back like the end of O nine, and I thought about it. I was like, Oh, this is going to be the news before the news, so somebody get to shooting. This is how I think somebody get to shooting. It'll be on Twitter before the news. Even though they were shooting at the club. And that's kind of what you see now. I checked Twitter. Twitter is my news before anything, so that's you know, I

So websites are done.

I haven't been to a website in ten years because I can see TMZ and ESPN and you know, some funny comedians and all this kind of stuff all at the same time. So I just knew that that was what the future of social media is gonna be. So that's what that's what led me to thinking about fan base.

So all right, so you get the CTO, he builds it. You hadn't mentioned the equity, So did you give him equity as opposed to paying him or so.

So the first thing, and this is when I knew I was onto something. I paid them directly right just to build it. But I made sure that on the code. How was it to cost the building It costs like two hundred thous what costs initially about one hundred thousand to build it just to do that, And and the fact that if this was done in the state, it probably would have cost me like three I couldn't have built this in America because it's the time and the

We did that. Yeah, yeah, we so we had not to cut you off.

But we had an app that he was building for DJs, and we realiz that it was going to cost like five hundred thousand buildings in America, but in India except they said we can get it done for like fifty thousand man, so we ended up paying You paid one guy like twenty thousand. Yeah, we paid him like twenty thousand and eight. They it was terrible, you know, telling was wrong, it didn't work properly, everything was bad, and

And then we hired another Indian to go find.

This the guy in India, Yeah, he was in the jungle, and paid him like five thousand.

Right, we paid a flight for him. So the next thing he tried to find was in the jungle. So then we paid it his flight to go find him. But he end never ran.

Off on He ran off on this so we got burnt pretty bad. We lost about thirty thousand dollars.

Wow.

Yeah, never got any kind of proble.

Mean, And what I tell people about when I tell people about India, it's not a knock to get India, it's it's on the other side of the plane. So the times is off. Argentina is just like an hour head. And Argentina is just like they hungry, like they like yo, we can cold, just as good as Facebook and all these major corporations and so and it was just fortunate that Ramiro lives in Atlanta, so his company is based here in Atlanta. So equity was not a part of

The technology officers, yeah.

They have to have some skin in the game that they're attached to the product just as much as you. So you guys are in it together, so that they just look at like they don't take it as a check, like, oh, here's a check, here's your app. Because then when you go to raise money, somebod's gonna ask you we who's gonna help you build this? And if you don't have

Was that the first time, as you were obviously finding Romero he's building it. Is this the first time you're thinking, all right, this is my company, I'm gonna allow other people to have shares in this equity In the situation.

No, so we were still we were still going to go the route. Initially, I just left it alone because I didn't want anybody to know that I was attached to it, because of the stigma that.

That Unfortunately.

When my companies, Yeah, when white people build something, it's a perceived it's for all people. But when black people build something, it's perceived it's only for black people. And fan base, its fan base is for every single user on the planet. So I just wanted to stay as far away as I possibly could. So I did that, and I wanted a proof of concept without without corrupting the data. So I didn't tell anybody I built it.

What was that feeling like?

Right, you had the idea, you built it, you don't tell anybody's all word of mouth. What's that feeling like? Because every time we tell people like celebrate all the ones. Right, once you start seeing people making money on your idea, what's the feeling like at that time for you?

Oh?

It was enormous because I just because in my mind the calculations I'm learning about, like Okay, how much can you scale this? How far can this idea go? That every single person on the planet has the ability to turn themselves into their own business because that's what you're doing. You're democratizing access to distribution for every single user on the planet. And that's enormous for brands and every single person.

So let me ask you this, as far as the app, can you just explain every single aspect of the app and details where you can give like a a perspective of people that might not be familiar with it.

Well, okay, yeah, So so fan base is photo, video, livestream and audio and long form content that's monetizable for every single user on the planet, so you can have so you can it's free to dol, free to use. But you can also simultaneously have subscribers at the same time, so you can have follower you have one hundred thousand subscribers and one hundred thousand followers and twenty thousand subscribers

How much is it.

It's like it's four ninety nine a month per person you subscribe to.

So per person subscribe to. So if I subscribe to.

Little Wing, I'm paying five dollars. If I subscribe to Earn your Legion, I'm paying five dollars.

If every single time it's a five dollars yall, we couldn't do that.

And this is important to say because I know that the conversation of subscriptions has become so mainstream the last two or three years. Fan Base was the first native application to allow a user to have a follower and a subscriber at the same time, and the reason I know we were first because Apple wouldn't let us do it.

But you get five people for one profile.

So fast forward to Instagram aligned subscriptions.

And I was like, wait a minute.

I was like, that means Apples changed it their way because now you can subscribe to whoever you want to on Instagram and I was like, that didn't exist before we did it. And I remember Rameiro saying, that's a good thing because you're cause that means you're doing something that nobody's been done. Whenever you run into a barrier in tech, that means oh, nobody's done it. But he's like, but we can work our way around that. And that was the workaround we came up with.

So when they're creating content, content creators, everybody is right, I know, especially like on Instagram you have five hundred thousand followers, a million followers, Not everybody sees that content.

What's that like for fanbase?

Right?

Is it the same out Like everybody that follows me will be updated on what I'm doing. Yeah, it doesn't matter if I'm free or subscription. I'ld still be something that could be unlocked it from subscription.

You know, it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter because that that is the goal is for us to allow anybody to make as much money as it possibly can.

Right.

So on current social media platforms like Instagram, and I'm very critical of that. Instagram was fun until about twenty fourteen, right, and that's when they started running ads, and so because you would go viral, you could wind up with a million followers in a day.

It was popping.

Somebody might say something, you know, go viral and it's like, yo, I got like three hundred thousand followers in a day. Right, It doesn't work that way anymore. That's because Instagram and Facebook are built around advertising, and so I tell people all the time, and people are like, I never thought of that. I was like, why would Instagram you reach a million people? When they charge people to reach a

She cheat.

You could charge ten million of posts and never work again, like ten million here, ten millionaire. They're not doing that. If you go to Beyonce's page right now and click on the video portion of her page, her videos have like three four million views, five million views max. May other ones that go viral because it went viral, so might have eleven million, eighteen million, But most of the videos are like three to four million, which is like three or four percent.

So let's talk about this algorithm. What is an algorithm?

Because every social media, every single one of them, has an algorithm to TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, to Instagram. My understanding is that as the apps get bigger, the algorithm is needed because it filters out who they think would be more engaged with it and it's easier to navigate as opposed to like just getting it to every single person. Yeah, that may be true, that may not be true. Does

Well the purpose of algorithms. They can serve many purposes. One is to actually moderate content, right, So content moderation is key.

In the early days of social media.

You might see someone that you might someone might be able to post a hashtag that says like big booty bitches, right, and it's like, okay, it's vulgar, but people might go viral. But you don't want brands and people to get on your platform and see big booty bitches. So the algorithm might see that and be like, if it has big booty bitches in the hashtag, then we're gonna hide that content.

Is that a shadow of a nipple? We ain't got time for all that shit.

So so algorithms are designed to take a lot of the human workload off of what's being done. They're also designed to help boost visibility of content or make the content more engaging for the benefit of the business. So the TikTok algorithm is very, very simple. It really is based off how long you hover on a piece of

Yes, so if that's I'm thinking, so for fan base, it would be more advantageous to actually have it boost the content because of more visibility.

Well, there's we don't have algorithms. We don't have algorithms that boost content. It's simply if you have a million followers on fan base, some closer piece of content, then we're going to send it to a million people. I don't want to because once I start controlling the amount of visibility on the content that you receive, then I become you know what I said, I didn't want to be because it's about maximizing visibility to turn the And this is a good a good thing to talk about.

That's it. Fifty thousand people.

In fact, when bad Baby, I know y'all heard about Bad Baby, catch me outside, she made fifty five million dollars off OnlyFans, right, right. And the first thing, there's two things that I did. First thing I did is went subscriber page. Not not because I wanted to. I wanted to see what he did market research, yeah, no, absolutely, but to see what she posted that got that and I was surprised. Number One, she wasn't naked on any

And it's gonna be a little controversial.

But I was like, see, I was like, she hit all her content because she knows she makes Instagram. Instagram doesn't make her. And that mentality came to her because she's white. And what I mean by that if she understands she runs shit. These apps don't run me. On the other hand, we said, these apps are in us. They take our pages, they throttle us down. We beg giving my page back. They kick Boosy off the Instagram every other week he begging to get his page back on.

Oh do you think that it to play devils out of the kid? Oh? Gods, now the kids.

My god nineteen Keys would say, it is a great form of promotion that's free, that you can reach. You might not be able to reach one hundred percent of your followers, but you can reach enough to tremendously boost your business.

You know, don't think so.

I believe that. But they're your followers. If I follow you, I want to see you.

No.

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I agree with you, right, but that's that.

But my point is the only thing that the only reason why it isn't done that way is because they're making money off you. What I tell people all the time is that if you're not making money directly from the platform, like the platform itself isn't hang you.

You're the product. There's no way.

And I was laughing the other day cause who was I talking I can't remember who I was talking to. And I was like, yeah, you know, I was like, they don't even let you reach your followers, even you know, you know, get a lot of money. They're like, well, yeah, they're not gonna let you build a business on top of their business, Like who won't let you do that?

And they're not, what's so you kind of did you kind of like we built the business on their business?

You do until they don't allow you to just they shadow you, block you, so they block you, or they just say we don't allow that. Like people, because I have there are a lot of people that are making money off bonuses, like off reels. They're like, oh, if I make if I get I can make up to thirty five thousand dollars. If I get three hundred and fifty million views, and I took out my calculator, I said, that's point zero zero zero one cent of you.

Point zero zeros.

It's like one hundredth of a percent per view, right, And they could decide and even remember that they're not on bonuses anymore. But if you're making that money month of a month and then in the program, your business is done.

Yeah, And it's not. It's not my design.

It's not my My design is not to My design is to let people build an infinite business off the tools that I give you the build it, and I just collect the fee. I just take a percentage, make you make your business as big as you want to build it. I'm not the business. My business is making you a business.

So do you take a percentage of the four ninety nine?

Yeah?

But there's also other ways to monetize, right, So like if I go live, is it flicks?

It's just gonna live. But Flix is like our version of short form like TikTok and rails, So I, oh, I do flicks or something like that. People could actually like give money while it's happening. Almost like people like YouTube has super chat or something like that. So, so we have subscriptions, and then we have a virtual currency we call love, and so love is purchased by the user to tip anybody on the platform or unlock content

That's a lot of money.

So I'm just thinking, like, if I'm an artist, you come from music, why would I just not put my I make a piece of art of music, and I put it directly there?

Is it?

Meaning?

If I'm getting fifty percent on each view or each listen, will it make more sense?

You get artists approaching you about this, Yeah, but most artists are tied into recording contracts and those people own that copyright, so they own the music video, they own the song, they own the master. But in this what I tell people all the time as an artist. For musicians, there are two ways of artists monetize their content. Primarily monetize their content through like music, like people buying your single, streaming your record, right, and then they monetize their audience

Continue to make money. And you just gave away your story for free.

So what's the business model? Fan base?

So, so the business model is subscriptions and virtual currency.

I mean, as far as the company's making, how does the company make money?

It makes it takes a percentage of we takecription, Yeah, twenty percent of anything. That so twenty percent of every penny, twenty percent of every dollar.

So for five dollars a month, you get a dollar.

Yeah, the creators get fifty cents.

Remember Apple, Apple and Google take thirty. We take twenty, okay, and then we pass fifty to the creator.

So they get to fifty.

Yeah, two fifty person scrap that? Yeah, all right?

Is the plan to also at one point have ads like all these other companies have.

Again, if I have to run ads, then I have to probably limit the visibility of content because at that point, how am I gonna make revenue If I don't limit Brands are gonna want to come to the people that are on the platform to make money. And I don't think we have to run ads well, I think there's ways to be creative in the way that you advertise without actually running ads. I don't want to say what it is because every time I say something, it literally

They're geo. They're geo fencing you.

You walking, If you walk into a lingerie store, you're gonna get an ad about some brawls, and if they hear you talking about it, they hear you talking about a certain car or a certain product, they gonna send you and you know, oh, go go to this car wash or you know, do you know want some new rims or you need you know, anything like that. That's how they targeted a marketing target. So I know they listen, trust me.

So there is a way. I just can't say it right now.

But because I say have to say, that's one of the problems with Twitter, right they can't find a way to make money and they don't run ads.

So elon, just say what he just said, he wants to turn into a subscription platform.

Well it's yeah, but I'm just saying it still hasn't been done yet, So there's no there's no proven model that a social media company can be extremely profitable just based off of subscriptions.

Yeah, I mean only fans. Only fans extremely profitable for the company.

Yeah.

Absolutely, They about to change the whole business model through because they were trying to get.

Away from that.

But they were But again, it's like it's the same thing. It's kind of like you're you can't cut off your source of revenue to maintain your business. And I think it's great for sex workers. I think it's terrible for people that want to establish their brand beyond, you know, being associated with sex work, which is why a lot of people shy away from the platform because it's hard because brands will not rock with you for that very reason.

Have you thought about leaving it up to the creative to see how much they want to charge?

So?

Yes, and no, we can't the reason. So I've done an enormous amount of research on this, But what tends to happen is anything over like the seven eight dollars mark, subscriptions fall off about fifty percent month over a month. If I go into like if you going to only fans and you get there and it's a stack of folded clothes, you're out of there, like you're not. I came here to see boobs and so and she and she charged me like twenty five dollars.

That's just what's your call of charge?

That baby? She charged twenty four dollars, twenty four dollars twenty four a month.

Yeah, so it's working for.

Her, Oh no, because but it's it's it worked. I did I calculated it, it's still she made If you look at the image, she made like twenty five million dollars off messages, which is basically like unlocks, like what we're talking about, like how you can unlike.

Conscious took the content.

Yeah, but sixteen million off subscriptions, And even if I did it, when you do the math, it's still about fifty six thousand people that she made sixteen million dollars off of just fifty six thousand people. She made sixteen million dollars off of a year. That's a small town. So, I mean, it's so because like it's you don't want to do it.

But we see pretty much every subscription service started at a low tier and then they may offer another tier, not that they have to raise the price, but they just have an added to.

Is that maybe an option? Yeah, it's it's hard. It's hard to do. I'm not trying to get too much of the game away. There's a reason why I'm not going to. I'm going to tell you it's it's it's doable, but it's not as easy as people think it is, just because of where technology is now. But it's it's doable, and I think we can we can do it. I just know that people, and I'll tell people all the time. If you go on your phone and look at the subscription you have on your phone, like I probably got

People forget about that.

And then you'll have a subscriber for a year, two years, and they're just into what they're locked into your content.

That's what you want.

You want the want, the you want the acquisition, you want the purchase to not immediately hit you. And especially reasons why I did virtual currency and love and why I built fan base, Like I said, I didn't build fan base for me. I build fan base for the generation or two after me, right, because you know, those

So build whatever you want.

Kids are gonna want to be able to talk about their love life, their sex life, the music that they're listening to, the things that they're going through in spaces and places where their parents are not.

So let's talk about this funding conversation.

So you raised three point five million, I believe in the regc crowd six million, six million, two rounds.

So I raised three point four in the first REXCF and two point six in the second.

Oh so this is crowdfunding, right, yeah? Equity crowdfunding? What platform? Start engine starting? Oh, it's equity crowdfunding. Yeah so all right, So the equity crowdfunding is people who have ownership, right, yeah,

So you have.

Correct me if I'm over eight thousand investors. So what's the minimum to be able to invest? And obviously I don't know if obviously there's a.

Maximare So when you're doing a RecF, the minimum is is I mean somewhere and around the nature of about one hundred and fifty to two undred fifty dollars. For our raise was two fifty minimum to invest with two hundred and fifty six dollars and the maximum is one hundred grand one hundred thousand dollars.

Okay, So what's the marketing plan to make sure that people hear about it? They're interested in it? Obviously beyond you. It must be a marketing plan that's put behind it so we can have awareness. Are you going on social well social media to promote it? Are you using the other platforms?

So Dawn was Dawn was my coach, and I took a lot of what she said a little bit of what I do. Because most people that raise capital, like do equity crowdfunding, have to take it a portion of their raise and put it back into advertising the campaign.

I've never done that.

I've never running ad campaign to raise money for fan base. What I have done is use platforms like clubhouse, you know, or use the use the climate of the in of what people are going through right now to say there's an alternative to this. If you if you're tired of these platforms treating you the way that you're treated, then you can definitely own part of one platform and continue

The first goal was to.

Raise a million, and we did that in about I raised like three hundred thousand dollars in like the first two and a half weeks, and I did the Breakfast Club and then the day that I did the breakflub in that air, I raised like seven hundred thousand dollars unless an hour close that raise and had a wait list of like one point three million dollars.

So you just never and that was viral. You never know when you're going to go viral.

But also I think a key factor in doing when you're doing equity crowdfunding is letting people know how you're doing because it becomes a game to people, like people are watching it.

Oh he raised a little fifty.

Thousand dollars, I know he trying to raise like a million, two million, all right, and then they'll see you raise one hundred thousand, and they'll see you raised two hundred thousand. And that's what happened, and people were like, oh, man, I'm missed out because then went viral and to raise clothes at a million, I was able to open it back up and accept the wait list onto three point

Amounts of return. Right.

And so the credited investor, for those that don't know, is a person that makes over one hundred thousand dollars a year for two consecutive years, or has a networth of a million dollars minus their primary residents.

Right. So I give this example, and I tell people all the time. One of the seed.

Investors in uber or in Michael's Google him, he put five thousand dollars into uber in twenty ten, So I think the first you know half a million that they're raised, he put five g's an accredited investor. When the company ippiled in twenty nineteen, his five thousands worth twenty four million dollars. And I'm like, oh, okay, I'm not trying to be funny, but I know I know a lot of people with five j one thousand dollars. I know ten people with five hundred dollars. How come we can't?

Right? Because you're not accredited.

So the accredited investor rule came in in nineteen thirty five, and it was really a rule to lock out the good opportunities only for the rich people. So like, oh, you got to be rich in this because we don't want you to blow your life savings on a bad investment. We don't want you to take your retirement money and put it into this thing called Uber and it goes

But why not be able to take some money and run with it?

So, all right, VC, are you interested in getting venture capital? Did you have you tried to get VNCI traditional venture capital? What's your thoughts on venture to capital? And you investors?

So I took one venture capital meeting before we did equity crowdfunding, and it felt really like, we don't want you to let we don't want you to play in our field. And then it just so happened that again like COVID hit. And so I'm definitely interested in venture capital, but I'm interested in the right venture capital and then the right way that it's done. And so I think the benefit of working in the music business, and I say this all the time, is that I've seen the worst deals possible.

I've seen the worst.

Publishing bills, I've seen my friends get signed, the bad publish deals. I've seen the worst kind of business deals done for artists and labels. So a VC can't slide me a deal Because a lot of my friends that are into tech, they have their version of bad record deals, like they have versions of where they might have given up too much equity or too much power in their company and got voted out of the company like Steve Jobs did, like Steve's all the genius. How do you

So you got over eight thousand, and now the app is in one hundred and seventy countries, maybe.

More one hundred and thirty plus. Why why would that work?

As far as international investors are people from other countries able to invest?

So the only only two countries that you couldn't invest that started and had limitations on, and that was based on the country where the UK and Canada. Everywhere else is open. It was open for people to wes. We have international investors from overseas and stuff like that. I don't know what regulations prevent you from investing from Canada and the UK, and and those are the two places where people.

Were like, man, I want to invest, like I'm right here, like I'm right.

I'm not for y'all let me and I just I had no choice, you know, I had no control over that.

How many users is on the app right now?

Two hundred and fifty thousand.

What's your goal for users?

I mean, I want to get I want to get to a million users before the end of the summer. And we in the entire time we've we've you know, we've raised six million dollars. Even though we've raised six million dollars, I didn't we haven't done any marketing. So now we're getting to the point in the phase where we're going to do some marketing and do some strategic marketing.

But there's a plan to onboard a lot.

Of users and and you know, and really have a strong push through the summer. I want to get young. We got we have a creator advisory board of young talent that is geared toward what the app is going to do with creators, and then you know, audio rooms

To the community and vcs. So okay, so is it all right? I get the subscription side of it, but is it still a social side? Like what if you're going on you don't want to follow anybody to pay?

Yea, is it still a social It's free, it's free, it's free to follow.

There's there's tons of free companies.

Is it designed strictly for creatives or is it designed for just general public?

This is not for every user. It doesn't it doesn't matter. That's the thing about it. You're going to make money on fan base whether you want to or not. You don't never have to like enter your your debit card or whatever to get paid. You're gonna still go look at your revenue and see some money because somebody's gonna love what you do. That's what I mean by being transactional. Somebody's gonna be like, oh, I'll give you like a

It takes time. And obviously as you're building, other companies are building. So what's that process? Look, I mean it's tough.

I mean I think we because we don't have and when I tell people to look like I'll bring I'll do like small focus script when we have people come out office and I'll hand them the app and I'll say how much of this feel like? Current platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Clubhouse, and they'll say, man, this is like I say, on scale of one to ten, they be like eight or nine.

Revenue and create engagement.

So we focus on things like short form video because it's super super in gaging audio. Like when you think about platforms, like we in our data in our analytics, the average user spends about forty minutes a day on YouTube, twenty nine on Instagram, about ten to fifteen on TikTok. Because of the audio and video combined. On fan Base, people are spending about an hour and thirty minutes a day hour and twenty minutes a day on the app.

So we wanna I call them user tools.

We wanna build user tools that allow people to monetize and discover what their abilities are and make sure that those verticals are there while the things that people may want that are not so much geared towards like oh, we want more filters or we want carousels, like, we'll get there, But we have to focus on the things that I know that that the users want, because the users define a platform. You know, there were no there,

So your community will tell you what it wants and we listen.

So whatever whatever it gets sent in the most or of of most urgency, we develop the buildings of the platform.

Do y'all have a partnership program? I know like Snoopers.

I've seen Snoop promote the brand, perhaps an investor Charlotta Maine, is there like a part program or people hearing about it here say they meet you to talk to you about what the platform is based on, and they say, I want to be a.

Part of It's like, what's that process like for you?

Yeah?

I mean so it's more like, and again I say this all the time, it's more about people just saying, hey, like this is a real chance for us to own and monetize our content, because like, the users make the value of the platform. Everybody left Instagram tomorrow, Instagram me worth zero dollars and zero cents, right, and so they create the value, and so everybody we're in this moment where everybody's so frustrated with shadow banding and all that

So he's like, I'm going to fan base.

Right where I can you know, send it out and go there and be live. And what I noticed was whenever we make a move and I said this, I said this before, is like, initially when we were building subscriber based story story that you can put behind the paywall so you don't have stories for followers, and stories for subscribers. Instagram was going to call that functionality fan clubs. I was like, come on, y'all right, they copy everybody, so it's cool, right they want to call it fan clubs.

I'm like yeah.

I was like, look at this company is raised six million dollars influencing a nine hundred billion dollar market cap company because they know that they've underserved an audience for years, and there's somebody that's stepping in the void to actually feel that that place for users and really allows them to take full advantage of their following.

So what's next for fan base? Like, what's your what's your six month, twelve month vision?

Yeah, a million users. Series A.

We've been getting calls about Series A and I happily accept the phone calls and I think they're they're great and people are interested in So we're just gonna continue to have conversation with vcs and if the right partner comes along, because it's just it's just about the right partner. It's about a person that believes in what we're building, believes in the culture of what we're building, and then

One last thing before we wrap.

You mentioned earlier that she was reluctant to shut that out because you didn't want to be looked at as like a black She did come out, y'all vocal and basically, so why did you decide.

To do that?

And do you think that people look at fan base as a.

Black app So two reasons.

One at the same time, the Black Lives Matter move happened when you were in middle of COVID and George for what happened, and the protests were going on, and all of a sudden, the tech community, the business community was acceptant, accepting of recognizing the effect that black culture and black people have on the economy and how we've been locked, you know, economically.

Out of you know, those those systems.

And then to most tech startups, you really you really invest also in the company, but you invest in the founder. And I think for me, I wanted the people to know me and understand that who you were investing in and what product you were getting and the person that had the passion behind what you were doing and what I was doing. So I was very very you know,

But when somebody black builds something, there's real luck to that.

But what we also know is that wherever the culture goes, everybody follows. It doesn't matter wherever the party is. And I say that, I say, I treat fan base like a nightclub. I said, it's like, right now, fan base is like ten thirty, Like it's cool.

You can get right to the bar, it's some girls in here. It's really cool.

Whatever but once it hits like one am, everybody's gonna pull up at the same time. It's gonna be like, oh, it's the hottest club in the country. And fan base is the is the rule and not the exception. Companies like Instagram are the exception. Companies like Clubhouse are the exception.

So how can people follow you? How can they sign up to the app? What's all the information can they is the still raising money?

No so we've closed both of our rounds.

I can't tell if I'm going to raise another round to the public because that's illegal.

Everybody said, are you gonna raise on the round?

Can't say you can only announce a raise once a raise is live. So if I do, I'll come back here and tell y'all. I know a lot of people hear about it, and come do that. I'll do that. You can find me on fan Base. It's on iOS and Android. It's free to download, free to you. That's what I tell everybody. It's like, it doesn't it doesn't cost anything to use the platform at all. And I'm isaacase three on those platform So I aac h A y s and number three on Instagram, Twitter and fan Base,

Base because that's that's where we at.

And Twitter and twitters, and I say this Twitter to all the people that do make content. Your stories on Instagram and Twitter are your most valuable pieces of IP. That's where you can get the most traction and the most potential varility of what you.

Do everywhere else TikTok.

They're the most disloyal audience by way of they they just want people want to see this videos and be entertained, so they're not really attached to the user. They just want to be entertained, like what you got to do for fifteen seconds in this or one minute in this

But Twitter also because again it's the.

Only evergreen social media platform in my opinion, every social media platform has a lifespan, right including fan mase who have a lifespan. So all these platforms are defined by the generation that use them. Twitter is defined by what's happening right now, like who won the game?

Who got divorced? Who? What? What is what's going on in Congress? Like right now?

So I think it's evergreen, and that's why a lot of young kids use Twitter. Like young people flock the Twitter. They're still like what's happening at the Yeah, that's what makes that's that's the genius. That's when I say every app you have that aha moment like oh this is like you know, this is like the dark night where if something happens, it's like multiple angles of what's going on. So this is my version of what happened. This is my version, and it all comes together and paints this

You know what I'm saying.

He gonna make it pop, hes gonna he gonna put I think he's gonna bring those I said. I think he gonna bring Doge into Twitter. So if you got Doge, even though it's in the toilet right now, fall onto it. The Doge Father. Yeah, the Doge Father. I think he's gonna blow that up. But yeah, that's where you can That's where you can find me. Though I'm on fan base, y'all, but y'all should come to Fambly, y'all should start doing like we need to find a way to get y'all

Hey, I love it absolutely, Troy House, keep up.

Shout everybody on fan base, Shout to everybody on that other company, you know, Shout everybody on patri you all our patrons, everybody in EYL University, all our earners, over twelve thousand people that are subscribed and executing on if it may, but not only that, passing it on to the next generation and changing lives forever. So shout out to all of y'all, Shout to everybody in the merch team, Shout out to the entire.

Atlanta, the city of Atlanta.

We are here, obviously, this is our second home, UH Studios, obviously looking impeccable. Uh so, shout out to Mike and Ben and Smitty our team down here.

Love is love.

Thank you guys rocking with us to see you next week.

Peace, Peace, my graduates from my school being forced back. Drop Bag Drop, Mike Drop.

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