EYL #284 Can The Next Billion Dollar Social Media Platform Be Black Owned?

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Isaac Hayes the third. But something, my brother, How you doing?

Got you're doing? I'm doing? Next May this little bank pleasure? You got nothing? Thank you man?

Thanks guys, Yeah, long time, no see.

I know it's funny because like I think I see you guys like every every couple of weeks.

Now, I'm sure, sure, sure, we always find new things to talk about he was Yeah, he was just throwing blackout. Yes, I was talked about the creative economy. Yeah, of course you've been on Ernlesia, been on invest Fest stage.

Yeah, you've been on market mondays.

This is true. What else is there to do?

Now you have the red distinction of having two episodes on the Big Show, which is very rare.

Red territory feeling about this.

I feel honored because I'm catching you guys at the right time, because every time I turn on television, you have y'all all like really big programs like you know, I'm saying, y'all with a lot of a lot of dope people expand their brand, and I love it.

Well, you know, first and foremost we're on fan base. Yes, so yeah, you guys are. So that's that's.

Something that should be People will probably by now already know that. But if you didn't know, you know, we've been in communication and this is something that we are very vocal about as far as us wanting to support you, as far as giving you a platform that's that's beneficial, but also us being on your.

Platform as well.

Yeah, I appreciate that, and I mean I think it's probably one of the premier kind of like additions to what we've been building, Can you guys validate us in a different way by you know, your your financial literacy. There's a seriousness and a wealth of information that people really need beyond just dances and you.

Know, fun stuff.

But you guys are bringing real content to the platform, and I'm looking forward to actually expanding like this relationship beyond what anybody can think of, because I think you know your message is extremely.

Valuable, appreciate it in front of it. So if anybody that's under a rock they don't know.

Fan Base is a social media platform that allows any regular creator to earn money based off of subscriptions.

In a nutshell, right, yeah, I mean I'll say this. I mean, well, first, fan Base is a social networks, free to download, free to use. I say it all the time. So sometimes people get the notion that fambase might cost money. It doesn't cost any money to download

I'm not trying I'm raising seven want to raise billion dollars?

Okay, have you ever why haven't you going to venture capital route or angel or like just what made the crowdfunding situation appealing as opposed to trying to target vcs trying to target angels.

Maybe you did, I'm not sure, but I think there's two I think there's two major things that affected that decision. First and foremost was racial bias, like the ability for black startups to get funded, right, that was one of the first things.

And then secondly, we were in COVID.

Talk about racial bias though, because they might not fully understand.

So in twenty twenty three, black startups received I think zero point sixty nine percent of funding, right, and that was like so so so low. It was down from like one point five percent all capital. So out of all the capital that VC's investing, they invested almost a little over half of a percent into black founders in all areas. So when you think about that, that's like ninety nine point five percent going to other people that

Like they're not doing that for us, Like we're not getting those looks. That doesn't exist in our world.

So I mean when people are raised, right, you raise the ten, you're gonna raise the seven, they're seventeen.

A lot of people will look at well, why do we mean to seventeen?

Right?

They don't understand the capital or pop capital intensive.

This could be they know scaling, So what is the determined factor when you say this is the number we need to get to.

Right, you could have said, let's raise twenty seven. Right, was the realistic thing?

Or was from a scalability to the point, this is where we want to be at this point in our.

Coupoy So we came up with a three year plan. So up until this point we funded fan base and being able to build a company at a steady pace. But right now we have to wear in scale mode as opposed to startup mode. We're no longer a startup in my opinion. We're trying to scale the company. So to do that, we actually have to build functionality and build faster to keep up with the demands of what users want, especially if we want to capitalize on exactly

Our productivity.

So right now, let's say I have a team of twenty five developers, right we're going to be able to We're going to be able to triple that. So now we'll have seventy five developers. Will double that or triple that. We have seventy five developers that can actually help, you know,

This raise will give us the ability.

To catch those platforms without a doubt. Like with the development, I will be able to catch them. But then there's another thing that we want to do is go beyond the innovation that we see that other platforms are doing that they're just not capitalizing on and so they're missing that mark.

Is there a point in the development process, Because technology does move so fast as you're developing, you have to be almost precise with what you want to do, because if another platform does it, now it's like you're behind the wheel. Now you're the second person that or the third or the fourth uh fan base, I mean the fourth.

Platform that has something.

Now it feels like it's old and I have to figure out how to innovate again.

Is that a like how frustrating does that get?

That's not really frustrating because honestly, a lot of these platforms, what I've noticed is that they don't innovate the advantage that I think, which is which is so important about what we're building because as a black founded company that's not black only, which is extremely important that I have to say, because the media will try to say, oh, because it's built by somebody black, pie's exclusively for black people, and sometimes you get pigeonholed of that.

But what I noticed.

Is that, oh, when I started getting into this space and seeing that my idea is what we had and a lot of the things that we filed like seven eight patents.

For some of the functionality that we've done.

So when I saw that, I was like, Oh, it isn't the these guys are smarter any smarter than us. They just got the money but what they do is they put a product out there and say, here, guys, play with it, make this cool stuff cool or you want dms, oh they want, give them that. Oh okay, they want retweets, Give them that. So it's just money. It's not about innovation. We're the ones that come up kids black culture. We're the ones that come up with all these things that people talk about all the time

So seventeen million, what does that do to the landscape of like black startup tech companies? Like is this something that can be used as a landmark? Is how will this change the dynamic for black entrepreneurs that are intact that's trying to raise capitals?

So from a social media standpoint, it'll be pretty impressive because in tech there are a lot of startups that are founded by black.

People that often receive funding and they raise lots of money.

But two of the most important things that I see are the control of the company and the equity of the company. So I can name I'm not gonna name name, but I can name companies where companies start ups to raise one hundred million dollars, but ninety nine percent of the company is owned by institutional investors and then they force.

The founder out and great.

You get to walk away and say, Okay, I made twenty thirty million in tech, I'm a tech founder, but you didn't make a dent. My idea with equity, crowdfunding and the way that I decided to do fanmas is I wanted something that I could be intentional about and build and create generational wealth by allowing people to invest, but also people be able to monetize their content. So from the social media standpoint, this is we never been here before. And I talk about this like I was

And do that because we have it.

I looked, I've been researching the companies right now in existence. I can only find nine black founded social media apps in existence, and at them all nine, there's only one that is not directly geared towards the black community.

That's fan base.

I'm building this as if I'm building something for the entire planning as opposed to that and then on the on the you know, the equity crowd fromding side. This is unprecedented because I'm the first black men to race ten million in the REGCF space, which is a level where we were at before where I raised the ten and it's seventeen. It's something called a reggae plus round, and so that's a whole different level of investment, a whole different level of compliance and stuff that we had.

To do with the Secso I'm proud to do this. So this is this is unprecedented.

It should, it should really shape the mold and really and really change the way that people think about how they scale and build their companies because I see often at times people don't have the money to really retain ownership of their company. So I'm trying to retain as much ownership of this. So then down the lot, if we do need to raise let's say three or four dred millionum, Right, there's the equity to be able to do that, but also give people the opportunity to invest.

I say, Yeah, one of the things you talked about was the SEC approval process, and that was really unprecedented. We had a conversation and then like two weeks later was like, I can't believe it.

It happens so fast.

Yeah, talk about that because a lot of people number one, probably don't even know what the SEC does and how I guess your work ethic and how the company has been raised prior to that point, how it helped in that prooval process.

So well, the first thing I'll say is a lot of people that want to raise capital is the way you construct your business.

Because me doing this, people have.

Asked me like, okay, cool, just can you look me up with start engine so I can go raise money?

Like it's just that easy. I'm like, it don't work like that.

Before I even made it, to start Engine, I had to you know, form my company, I you know, incorporated in Delaware to c Corp. And creating stock and all these things that existed, you know what I'm saying. Then I had to make sure that our accounting was together, and I prepared all this. I filed trademarks for fan Base just before any code was ever written, before I've.

Even met my CTO.

I just wanted to prepare the actual business infrastructure of the company because now I'm coming from a place of the music business. I'm coming from a place of learning from the mistakes that my father made. Like, okay, ownership, you got to make sure that that's locked in the beginning. So then now we get to the point where we

So let alone then be successful with that process.

So I credit my COO, CTO and our CFO for keeping us really you know, dialed in on.

How we raise our capital. Because when you try to go for.

A rex CF round, it's a lot less leaning. Y'all you have to do is a financial review, you know what I'm saying with the SEC to comply. It's not really you know, that complicated. When you're going to reggae, which the difference between REGCF and reggae is, and a reggae and a RECCF and crowdfunding, you can only raise up to five million in the calendar year, right and the most that someone can invest in that route is

Engine, and they were warning us. They were like, hey, look, you know this whole process with the SEC, it takes like six months because every time you submit, they always got some questions. They always want you to do something. And we filed to be able to you know, launch around, and the SEC responded with no objection, which is like, you know, a non review.

I'm sorry, non review. And they were like they were surprised. They're like, scd ain't in a question like y'all can go ahead and launch around and that's just unheard of, and that just speaks to how we've heldled our business.

Like I'm very you know, I.

Hate to say that I have this anxiety as a black person entering into a space that is not often accepted by black people. But even one of the things that I do at fan Base is I don't even take a salary, Like I've not paid myself a dime to run fan Base since I lount the company, because it's like, who cares about paying myself one hundred thousand, two hundred thousand dollars if that could go towards development.

To the SEC and see all our filings.

So all our financials, everything has to be open to the public because you have to give them so much visiblity.

Is so much transparency for around like this.

So how do you figure about your valuation?

Because you have said something about I think you your company for one hundred and fifty millions, I'm.

That under sixty how does that determine?

So initially before, when you when equity crowdfunding first started, you could just name evaluation right, and they were like And then ironically when I get there, they were like, oh, we have some rules now now you have to actually find companies that are comparable to your product in the marketplace. And then you can say, okay, since this company raised this capital at this valuation, you may do the same.

So there's those are three big differences.

And so the fact that we were generating revenue, we had already had a certain number of users, and we were able to compare to other other products and the microplanes like Patriotic use Patreon as an example. I used this other, this other app called fan House, which ironically FanHouse got venture capital backed.

They raised thirty five million, forty million.

Dollars in a Series A seed round, and they were out of business in eighteen months. But they don't look like me I'm just I'm just I'm saying this for a reason that you know, we have to go above and beyond.

But they spent that money in.

Eighteen months and had to and they were acquired by another company, and that company just went and raised forty million dollars and I'm like, it's cool though I know they you know, I already know what I'm up against, but I'm cool with that.

So as you calculate the amount of users, there's.

A threshold that you had to because I always say, you talk about billion dollar company, this is a billion dollar company.

What's the threashold as far as users?

Because what you said is important, being probable and having revenues important old company.

We're just all Reddit go public? Right, they lived been probable in nineteen years?

Yeah, right, which is when you're thinking about it, like, wait, nineteen year, how they But.

You have all those things.

So what's the threshold of users revenue that you have to see to say, all right, this is when we reached out.

A billion dollar evaluation?

So typically in social media, your valuation is based on total users in the m a year because what would happened before is like let's say a company like Instagram, that you would scale your company because of these companies are based on advertising.

They would scale it up to enough users where they knew that they could go ahead and then turn on advertising, and then they could try to begin to make the company profitable. So that's the old model.

The old model was build an app, get a bunch of people on it, and then flip the advertising switch, and then start to make money.

I didn't want to enter.

The space that way because I always felt like advertising what I was seeing experiencing in social media is that advertising was actually limiting the way that people could be visible on social and people.

Care more about being seen than actually making money.

So the fact that advertising the limits that I didn't want to put the limitation of being a company that ran ads. So it changes the way that we're able to value our company. But we still have users. So right now fan base has a little over almost a little under, about five hundred and ninety five thousand users right with no serious like major marketing push. Again, I talked about all these things that sound like I'm saying them very calmly, but these are all things that just

Us get there. So that's always also going to increase evaluation. Again, tomorrow, if Cardi b come on fan Base tomorrow should bring a million people. Fan Base is a million dollar company.

It's like it works like that, Like that's really what users increase the value of a social media platform. Which is scary because I always talk about like, well, so you're telling me that I say all the times you tell me I can invest money in fan Base, then use it and then increase the value of the asset that I own by simply coming to use it. That's like you're literally it should almost be unfair because if I was, and I say this before, I don't understand

How fast we skill uses.

And it's also the velocity in which it's done. So if it takes me five years to get to a million users, that ain't good. If it takes me five months, that changes everything. It's also the velocity in what you raised. You know, you raise your your yarb.

You said something about marketing and advertising in a media space.

We brought this up about some of the difficulties that transpire when trying to find at partners or even having sponsorships or advertising in our media space, but the social media space, especially fan base. What's that process like for you as far as getting people to come on the app to have advertising. So what we have to we have to be careful about how we do that process because advertising is something that I don't necessarily want to add to the platform because we're already in a position

Was watching the Eli interview the other day and.

I could tell like he he was blaming the fact that advertisers also, you know, are leader, we're leaving X.

But it's also like the environment in what you curate for users the experience is also advertisers don't want to be on a platform, or there's a bunch of hate speech, you know what I'm saying, racism, pornography, and that's kind of like what X is at this point. So it's kind of hard. And he says, oh, well, you can just you know, you can decide where you want your ass to run. Which is two it's two sides of of of of a problem.

One, he's admitting that corporations like Facebook can control the visibility.

That you have in your content.

The advertiser comes on there says, I don't want any LGBTQ content showing next to my content. Then they can turn the LGBTQ down, or they can turn the black down to run their ads, they can make their money, they can turn it back up. So if you ever see a dip and you're engaging on social media, like well, you'll see this in November.

Anybody that talks about politics, you're engaged gonna.

Be a flat lined around November because they're gonna make sure that you have no effect on being able to influence an election anymore. They say, okay, you're not gonna you can post something like zero views is gonna go down, And I see this problem with the creators all the time.

And so then, but he's also admitting that.

You get you can pick and choose where your content goes, but you can't necessarily control what the user is going to say. So you can still say I can want my ads, I want my ass to show next to a particular genre, like I want my ass to show next to people that like sports, which it doesn't mean that somebody's not gonna get on there and say something racist or post something foul or whatever or misleading. So advertising is tricky. That's why I don't like it, because

You participating in this, because we control the pockets.

So why the model as far as getting money to creators from day one, Why is that so important and it just works?

How is it going to change the landscape of social media? Well, the first thing I think about is just ruption. So if you're not pissing people off, then you're doing something wrong.

You know, movie stars get their TV shows canceled, you know, inserrated rap shits getting getting take off, and now she needs to go independent because she can own her content and all that kind of stuff. So for me, it's like if I don't, if I don't create an environment or an infrastructure where the community can own and monetize from day one, it actually puts no limits because it

What they want to pay for. And we're seeing that with younger kids anyway.

And that's another thing too, is saying like the future is you know I was talking about when you see kys and not Kai is twenty twenty one, twenty two years old. He has about eighty five thousand subscribers making four hundred thousand dollars a month. I can't see that as a human being and not say I could do this as an athlete. I could do this as a musician. I don't have to be a gamer. It doesn't matter. People going going to see the cond of that they want.

I mean, it's it's pretty evident, right, that's the way we can see if guys are we can see it what the athletes bringing their own platforms right with just Lebron and you the podcast, Now Dreymond comes to mind. What do you think is gonna take for that drastic change for people to say, all right, we're not going to be with the just traditional ways of social media. Something like fan base makes too much sense for us not to be part of.

I think the first person that And I'm looking at Kai now because again it's it's so it's so interesting to me that he's making more money streaming with subscribers than rappers are making recording an album, putting it out and going and doing shows. Like it's like, you can still do that, but there's still a lifestyle and a personality that's involved every We're all human, so we all

Hold on, I'm not finna, I'm not finished.

I'm nothing to do all this extra shit when I can just really create and live and exist on social media and have fun and then and then monetize and still you know, have the same, you know, the same experience.

So do you think that this will be beneficial for the every average day person, right, because everybody's nott it'll be constantant.

Yeah.

So the average person that has a thousand followers, they're not gonna make a lot of money.

So why does fan base make sense to them?

Go first?

Okay, so I'm going to say this because I'm going to talk about the investment portion real quick. When I first started to on startings and the minimum to invest in fan base was two hundred and forty five dollars, right, the minimum to investment fan base now is three hundred and ninety nine dollars. The minimum to invest starting dot comflash fan base shout out. But what I say is more important that is that there are hundreds no, thousands of users on fan base that have made the money

Like we I see people making that amount of money.

I see a user, you know, make there's a user that's made ten thousand dollars this year that has less than thirty five hundred followers, an extra ten thousand dollars a year, Like the average American's out is forty thousand dollars. You're making a quarter of what you would have to do to get to make the bare metium as a salary in this country just making content. And it's not it's not like you have to sit live and stream all day long. You post content. People subscribing, they make

I'm can feed Feed myself.

I don't have to get it, and then that's just that's like one hundred subscribers again, But if you know, you get five thousand people, five thousand people are a small number of people, and there's six billion people on the planet. For five thousand people paying you two thousand and fifty cents a month, it's twelve thousand, five hundred a month, one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year. That's more than ninety seven percent of American to make.

We spoke two years ago from you're a person and from all the signs right, people are making money right flunctuates depending on the user, how many people probowers they have, the companies make going and it's probable.

I asked you the end, so I ask you now mergers and acquisitions is always a part of business. Have the phone's been ringing?

Even more so as you continue to innovate, as you continue to what I disrupt social media in a sense where you can start revolutionizing.

They have the phone calls been coming in just for no.

I'm gonna tell you why, because fan base is a I always say there's two phases to success in building businesses. It's to beat them phase and it's the join them phase. We're still in beat them. They're still sitting back like I'm going to see here really going to raise the.

Seventeen million dollars and really like change the game and the way that he does. One thing people, One thing that Trump's grace is green is money. And so I and I think I've had the best, like you know, example in someone seeing the way that Tyler Perry built his business.

At first it was all beat him. They was like, oh well, now we got to join him. You know, at some point in the beginning, there were no deals, but then it was TBS and there was a Lion's Game. There was owned and then it became Netflix and Amazon and now it's like okay, cool, it's BT's like okay, here, so fan base is always until we get the we're going to be in the beat up phase because this is this is majorly disruptive in the way that I

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Limit into how fast you know or how big these companies can get. When you're looking at Facebook as a market cap.

Of two point two trillion dollars, I'm not even thinking about two trillion. I mean, granted, like.

Cool, I think Facebook is something that's like a one in a lifetime, you know company, But there's still companies. Even if you remove Instagram from Facebook, it's still the three hundred billion dollar company.

You know what I'm saying.

If you're looking at TikTok separated from bite dad to still probably one hundred two hundred billion dollar.

Company've just got every one six. Yeah. So I'm like, do you understand? Like how how okay? So now so think of that.

So think of now one hundred and sixty billion dollar company that's owned.

By people that look like us.

We ain't never been there before. I don't even know who the richest black person on the planet is.

I'm I'm never like nineteen billion. What's the rich nineteen billion? Who didn't know? Yeah, like nineteen billion. So I'm just saying, like, yo, we never, we never. And my point is.

For us to to really build and make and transform wealth not only is it.

And my goal is not to be worth more than nineteen billion.

My goal is to create ten or fifteen other people that are worth are multi billionaires.

Because technology is the fastest way.

I heard Robert and Smith say this. He's like technology is a fastest way to do a wealth in this texture, It's like all these eight of the top ten richest people on the planet are in technology Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Elon with Tesla and acts like it's like, yo, those are all the people only people from Bernard Orna is the number one guy and he owned every other brand in existence, and you know, and then Berkshire Hathaway.

You know what I'm saying. But it's technology.

So we're in a We're in an unprecedented amount of time a time because ownership and equity in these in these tech companies. These are companies that can be worth one hundred billion, you know, like one hundred billion dollars, one hundred and sixty billion dollars. It's totally achievable. We've never been there before. And I think, you know, I think we have the the the unique opportunity to gain I was telling I was telling people here today, I was like, Yo, we get this wrong.

You can't don't blame.

Me because it's literally here for us to take advantage of. And that's why, you know, the rays that we're doing was so important because it gives there's no excuses. Once I raise seventeen million dollars. I give everybody everything that they want. I give every If you want certain songs, you want, certain functionalities, you want, certain features you want, I can give you that in a year, Like by the end of the year, I can give you most of the things that you want, and then we get

So so let me ask you this, how what's the path to profitability? Like how do you make money in the long term even for investors right to know like, Okay, I'm investing in this company and then essentially they're going to be profitable or so on, go public because you say you don't like advertisers, So the subscription based model, that's the only way that you're going to plan and make money.

No, that's not the only way. There's not there's I can't. I can't tell you every other way we're going to make money because there are other things there. There's there's layers on top of layers that are built in ways that you get you can do this, But I'm keeping those a secret because again, nobody thinks of this stuff.

So it's like, okay, cool.

To explain to people that invest in aguity, crowdfunding and startups this way. You're investing in a period of time where you know ninety nine percent of the general public never gets this opportunity because these opportunities have been available to.

Accredited investors for so long.

And I talk about that that's so important because that is say that has nothing to do with the race at that point, Like the credit industry rule has been in effect since nineteen thirty three, and so up until twenty fifteen, you know, eighty eighty three years or however long it was, you couldn't invest. So now, when you're investing in seed stage companies, you ride the lacke of the company. So I say, you're with us to the moon or to the ground, right, And it's a risk

And everybody can have ten thousand and fifty thousand dollars, but four ninety nine.

People don't spend four ninety nine at Mastros or some steakhouse or at the strip club or whatever it is. And that might spend four ninety nine like two or three times this month. Do you understand what I'm saying? Because people are say like, okay, what people don't really have money, Like the black community spends two point two

So how people exit companies.

So when you hear these conversations about these entertainers, celebrities, people that are investing in startups. When when William was talking about how he was in Beats and here he was an investor in Beats and then he got paid when they sold to Apple. So that's the same way. It's either an acquisition or you go public. So when you hear people like okay, coinbase goes public whatever, then they cash out their shares. So those are the two

Off into the sunset with a bag.

You know, are you finding that because I would imagine that a lot of the people who are using crowd card or using it for the first time, are you finding yourself having to go through an education process for some of the investors or are people because of the time and obviously the financial revolution that's happened, they're coming here with a different knowledge.

Base when coming to no You know, the irony in that is that most people, I always say, politics and finance. You guys probably know this more than anything.

It's like.

When you guys start talking about some of the stuff you're talking about, ninety nine of a sudden of the people get intimidated and just turn off. You really have it's your responsibility to learn where you guys learn just as much as anything, Just as much as I learned about tech and and and investing in startups. It's your job to educate yourself on those things. And the same thing in politics, people feel like they're you're talking over their heads, so they don't want to They don't want

And the way that I communicate is definitely.

Something that I feel like everybody can understand when I when I use you know, when I like when I say you'll go, you'll go buy some some crazy tennis shoes, but you can spend that and actually have equity ownership in the company and explain how the process works and how you actually you know, you actually grow with the startup.

All this stuff is new, So I don't.

Mind sharing that information to people so that they're it's more than transparent, it's educational. I love putting us on I love telling people like, yo, this is the way to go this is how we do this, because not only for what fan base does, but for anybody that wants to fund their businesses. I've shared, I've recommend it now. I think five four or five companies to start engine. I think three of them gone to raising millions, raising million plus dollars. The other ones kind of almost met

So as far as challenges, like, what are some challenges or threats into space fear.

Well, I mean the first challenge is actually and I gotta I gotta say this again because I'm learning, I learned this process and I'm actually sharing the information that I'm just learning now. So when you when you apply for reggae reggae crowdfunding, they're different rules. So the REGCF space is a lot more lenient. So when I did the REXCF, when I raised at Timmy and in the REXCF, I could go on.

Radio, I could go on TV. I could just say whatever I wanted to say and do what I wanted to do. When you move up to the REGA.

Space, you are prohibited from going on live television, so any lock So I could never go on seeing it in Bloomberg or whatever, or live radio and promoting a raise.

You can't do that. You can only promote the raise where there's a clickable link to.

The rais and a clickable link to that filing that I say, that's a disclosure of all the stuff that you did.

So that makes it very very hard.

I'm fortunate to be able to be on a program like this or this is on the internet and on the web right, But the thing that makes that so difficult is like those rules I'm from nineteen ninety five, Like the equity crowdfundy came on in twenty fifteen, and I'm still having to bude by rules that were.

From nineteen ninety five. So hopefully the SEC see some way to.

Change that, because it's really hard to raise this type of capital without being able to have other ways other than just knowing people or spending an enormous amount of money creating ads and marketing. I could go run ads on Facebook and Instagram, but a lot of times you spend two hundred thousand dollars for every million that you're raised, So even I would still spend spending a million dollars just to raise the money that I need and running

To do that.

Other than that, I think we have to prepare for the things that we don't know. The other I think I don't. I always know that they're challenges, but I don't look at them as challenges. I just look at them as puzzles that I have to solve, or things that I have to learn, or obstacles that you have to overcome. It's not like it's not like I'm stuck. I believe that capital again, I comfantly believe that capital is probably the biggest hurdle to most anyone building their businesses.

The money. So as you're scaling, you got to build a team.

Yeah, right, So to talk about that process because not only are you the founder and CEO of it, but you're also making sure that everything here is running smoothly. You got to have a process and in the innovation too, So how do you how are you balancing all these roles with us?

So well, you have to kind of like delegate. You have to actually delegate responsibility. So I've done a lot of delegating responsibility my my CTO COO Romero Cannabis, brilliant guy Silvanna, who is our finance director, who's our terim CFO, and then underneath them, they're building teams.

So it's my job. Like I'm a visionary. I accept my role as a visionary.

I'm the big idea is that you know overall general direction of what Families is going to do, But I trust the people that I've brought on board to handle those fine details. But I also educate myself on that process, especially the way that we did it through equity crowdfulding. I say this all the time thereculary crowdfundling. I know more about my business than most people do because I got to know the finances.

I got to know the corporate structure.

I got to know the taxes and the legal I got to know all these sec rules and regulations and all these things that most people never think about. They just go get money from some investor and they'll realize they're screwed up or what they own. So this raise is also going to help us actually attract more talent. I think, you know, we need we need to be able to hire people that are worth two hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year of salary, Like we need

You know what I'm saying. It's not like, you know, we I think the team can build anything.

But it doesn't hurt to be able to say, oh, you're the guy that builds algorithms on TikTok or used to work there, Yeah, come over here and build ours, you know, and we can we'll be able to actually get talent that competes in all these other companies to be able to do that, And that's the most important thing.

I think people know. We always say I always say people you know, they.

Say, well do you have you know, well what about the algorithm or what about And I'm like, yo, like you don't understand how much all this costs so and able to do that.

I'm not.

I'm not some guy that can go get forty five million bucks and buy Ferrari and say I'm a tech founder and not do anything with it. Like I would spend that money very meticulously. And I again, I know I being in Atlanta also stretches our paper crazy because we're not in San Francisco, where you know, you got to pay people two hundred fifty thousand dollar salaries just a walking there. The real estate so crazy expensive, and I'm isolated. I like the fact that I'm here. I

I really love this, So I don't mind missing out on going to all the cool stuff.

This is what I do every day all day because I know how important it is for the opportunity for us to put ourselves in position with generational wealth and monoculization.

So I take it super serious.

So like for social media, you know, engagement, that's like a big thing as far as you know, driving and putting you in the algorithm.

So just social media landscape, talk about engagement, like where did that even come from? How is that game rigged? How the whole engagement play and then how does your platform relate to that when it comes to engagement.

So so typically so social media was really based off following, right, followers. When you think of my space, you think of Facebook or friends, you know, stuff like that. And that was when we were in a time where social media was so much more personal. And I think we're forgetting that this is a young person's game. And so I was

In college, all that kind of stuff is there.

And there wasn't so much about engagement as we moved into the as video entered into social media, it's views, right, it's in those views scale you're following. But what happens with advertising is that now that you add video to social media. And again I'm saying the quiet part out loud. It's just simply think of this. Every single person that's on social media that can put video on their page.

You are a television network.

So for that very reason, however you measure or monetize advertising with television, you can monitor and measure advertising on social media. So if you have seventeen or eighteen million followers on social media right now, you have the monetary equivalent of Sunday Night Football on NBC, you have that visibility. If you got one hundred million followers, right, you have,

Why you're doing this thing you're doing on your page whatever it is, and one hundred million people can see you. We're seventeen million people who.

Do that, hold this can for us and say hey, by the way, go buy this. And that's advertising to seventeen million people. And the difference is these programs come on one time a week, once a year, right, but imagine being able to reach seventeen million people twenty four hours a day, seven days a week. That's the quiet part out now that I al was saying, people are putting that portion together. It's like we're all moving. Social

I would I would.

I would much rather have a million people see my video and have ten thousand followers, and have a million followers that have ten thousand people see my video, which is happening now, which more people are like Yo, I got fifteen million followers, and every time I supposed a video, I get eighty six thousand views. I'll want to foot it.

Isn't that already how social media works. No, it's based off off of what they think you would interact with.

But no, but it's it is. It's based off it's based off the algorithm. And yet with the algorithm thinks that you're gonna interact with it.

Absolutely, but again it's still limited, like just by default. Anybody watching this program right now, right, anybody watching this program right now, go to your page and when you look at tap of somebody's profile on Instagram and say in notifications, when you want to see lives and see what it's saying, they'll say if you want to get notified some of the time, all.

The time, or never, it's already set the sum.

So that mean every time somebody you follow goes live, they're not notifying everybody that goes live by default. They're suppressing your content by default because again they have to limit your visibility. These platforms are in competition with users. They can't let you. You can go to look at anybody's you can go look at anybody's reals videos, go look at somebody who you follows following versus the amount

Get two million, million, six million views.

So you already know the people that want to see her content aren't seeing her content because that's her. Imagine being able to reach a hundred million people saying and go buy my album and go buy my solid.

That's see, that's the future.

The problem is the albatross of advertising that TikTok and Instagram are tied into. They just can't turn off the advertising switch and go to the monetization switch because ninety five percent of the income that is made of Facebook comes from advertising. TikTok enormous amount of money that TikTok made some advertising, so they're still going to have to play that game, right, there is no game when it's like, okay.

We work off a rev share model.

You have a following, you monetize a certain percentage of those subscribers, we get a percentage of that revenue. Now take that and multiply that times not one hundred million people, but five hundred million people or a billion people. And then now you say, okay, you got a trillion dollar company.

So in terms of importance and metrics, you said that engagement probably never one off as mine.

Sir. Yeah, yeah, I mean I think aagement is definitely what it's what it's what users want. I want to free that because that's what people want to experience.

So like on Instagram there is impressed, and even on YouTube to a certain staid, there's impression as is reached.

How do those metrics go inside? How do they work inside of fan base? Right?

Are those equally as important or is it just its engagement? It's huge, it's it's sore.

When so again, when you're talking about impressions, that that's another way that you actually calculate, like CPM and like the costs of in average, like all those things are done. See, all those metrics are based off how you advertise. If advertising is not the language that you're speaking, then you're not even we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna monetor and

I don't want to interrupt someone being Again, I get tagged in ten posts a day of some creators saying, man, I'm about to leave because I post all this content and nothing ever gets seen this. And this is before they even got to the fact that their content, that people's content has value. This before they even made a dollar. You got people wanted to play social media because they're not getting enough views. Forget about I gotta take now. I gotta take these views to get to the money.

Right? If you want to be famous, stay overrow on Instagram. You know what I'm saying.

If you want to be rich, then start charging for your content the moment that you created, like create an exclusive paywall, don't If you want to be both, fab is probably where you want to be because there's no there's no limit to the amount of of reach you're going to be able to have and there's no limits to the amount of monetization that you're going to be able to make.

How many users do you have right now? Five hundred and ninety five thousand, So how many users do you need to play Unicorn status?

It depends on the speed. So if I lo from five, so so i'll give I'll give you privately. Example, when in the pandemic and it's still it's still a rare thing, will in clubhouse in about four or five months, they went from five thousand users to a million users in like five or six months.

They that's when they went out and raise one hundred million out of billion out of evaluation because then because they got to a million users in like five or six months, So that velocity creating that you know, and then it's also what people are actually then here's another thing is also what what the market is willing to pay, right, So it's also what institutional investors are willing to pay.

If there's full of all that happens, right, and again, it's beat them until it's join them. So when so when institutional investors give fom like, okay, this trains left the station. We better get on board before we get left behind. Then they set your valuation, so there's no difference between. But there's no different between fan base and

Value that if we wanted to go to advertising route, there's a value that fan Base has just based off the users. So how are you tracking success at fan base right?

Because I know when we watch the reports that comes from Meta, the number one message they're looking at is monthly users. They're watching daily average Dailly users. If that number it doesn't come in as expected, we want to see a pullback. Right, How would you what metric are you guys using to measure success? I guess on a daily is it Is it the same process for you?

It's it's it's m au it's.

But it's also our ability to kind of like fine tune our model. Like this model of monetization that I think is is so new that people don't understand that it's available for anybody to use. But I measure our success on our ability to build our products, remain well within our budget and just continue to grow. Because once you start building a community, and somebody that I even I was always afraid about this and never really thought about it like this, But once you start to build

So I measure our success by our ability to.

Effectively execute our revenue model and then continue to keep people on the platform. Now, one thing I say about fan base, because we do have audio that makes us a little bit unique is that audio and I talk about the audio creator space, and I think that's something that people are missing out on, and I think people want to tap into more because it only requires one of your senses. Things that require less of your attention

You know what I'm saying.

I think audiobooks are so good because like I can drive and listen to an audiobook or stuff like that. So I measured that also by retention. So people are spending forty five minutes. At one point, people were spending like an hour and a half a day off ABI And I mean you go, you'll go to websites and you'll go to current websites.

And people who spend in four minutes on Nike, you dot com, like you know, four minutes on TMZ, seven minutes looking at the articles or whatever. When you can hold when you can keep again for advertising, When I can keep you on the platform for hour and a half forty five minutes a day, we're up there with you. That's that's YouTube stickiness. It's watched on Yeah.

So all right, my brother, I'm gonna let you close it out with this. What in ten years from now right?

Yeah?

Where do you see yourself?

Where do you see fan base?

And where do you see they create an economy?

Okay, where I see Where do I see myself? I see myself probably if I'm going to be, if if I'm what I think about, how I speak about affirmative I see myself as a successful Uh, tech found of that has founded multiple startups, that owns some sports franchise that's in Atlanta that needs to win a championship. I don't know which, but we need, you know, the Hawks need to tie I like basketball.

We need we need a chip.

So I would say I see myself as a multi billionaire startup founder that owns the Atlanta Hawks, that will do whatever it takes to bring a chip to the city. I see fan Base as a multi billion dollar company just coming out of an acquisition or going public on the stock market and cashing out for all the investors. And I think the creator economy is going to be a trillion dollar business because I just I just I think that everything is going to go from the director person.

The chips and stuff they built with the black blob. Yeah, bro, I was saying, well there goes your job. He said something.

I was like, that's they are them jobs is gone, he said, I can't.

He said something that the chip does.

I was like, Oh, they that whole that whole sector is gone like it like like complete sectors of the industry that are wiped out. And we're seeing we're already getting we're seeing massive layoffs and all these tech companies already and the music business and TV and film like those three sectors they're laying.

People off already.

So ten years Oh yeah, hey, I gonna be if you know, if you don't have your own director consumer Clayton, I don't know.

I don't know who will be working with who, I don't know what.

But my suggestion is, as I always say, start monetizing your content in some way because at least you'll be ahead of the curve. I know people want to be famous, I know people want to be seen, but you also got to understand that all this energy that we put into the stuff that we do has value.

Monetize it. And you can do that on fan base And so what's the website that what's that?

Oh start engine dot com slash fan base to invest again. I'm going to tell you guys, like I don't this is probably one of the most pivotal times in technology and.

Social media that I've ever seen.

Because we're right here and I'm specifically speaking to black culture, right if I had that, you know, if I was like if I if I'm here and I'm having that conversation with black culture, I'm telling you that we you know, we make all these platforms have their value. Like we give these platforms the things that make them cool.

If you listen to.

You cannot market and promote anything as being cool without the assistance of black culture.

So somebody wears it.

If somebody does it, it becomes the thing that everybody wants and everybody buys. And there's a value to that that there's no infrastructure underneath it, there's no foundation as opposed to being the oil, which I always feel like Black culture has always been the oil to corporate America's infrastructure. So I was like, Okay, we're the record label, but you all the salts and all the dances and all that, y'all pump this through this, but we don't want y'all

We're raising seventeen million. I say this number all the.

Time because the average investment that we get that we that we've been getting in this race. We've already raised three hundred thousand. So we've already just started like a week week and a half ago. We've alread raised a right in one thousand. And what's more important about that is how fast we raise the capital. I don't doubt the ability that we'll raise seventeen million dollars, But is it gonna take me a year, or is it gonna take me two months, or it's gonna need two years.

We have we have to do this. I'm looking like, yo, if.

We don't do this, don't blame me, because you know, I think we I think I've done more than enough to say that we can do it?

Can you having my brother appreciation you as always? Thank you guy, may show that you download the fan base app. Yeah, Mari and Donald shout out in best bet ata all right for sure? Yeah sure yeah.

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