Farzad Runs Into an Institutional Friction transcript

impossible to know got it i need to click confirmed um yeah oh this light been in my face since then there is not there's no light now i don't know i may thought maybe you were setting the mood for your therapy session yeah i need uh i need no this is tone goldilocks light zone what room are you at the desk that m usually sits at yeah i'm on the other end actually yeah well you know it's it's like this so just oh yeah yeah just classes yeah so i either sit here and stare at this wall [Music] but then whoever looks at me i have a nice background yep or i will kind of say love myself i look at yourself of you yeah yeah the lights better on the screen though if you have your back to the light versus looking at the screen and having the light if it's bright out yeah for me on what you're doing i should stop the recording my computer is insanely slow and i should just close figma delete slack and then just and then just walk away forever yeah throw your computer into the is it a river yeah another river i would love to um soon enough yeah right we worked with the with the thai company here um the telecom the enterprise yeah that project went down for six months five months let's call it five months we designed probably the world's first mega app that brings netflix netflix let's say spotify sn new york times then um let's sport ad let's just add sport on top of that and then um [Music] let's put e-commerce and then influences all of these into this one product right pulling off impossible in terms of just a design challenge yeah excuse the mess and we worked for i think the upfront payment came in three months late but we had to start the project because they were already under the fire um so we started anyway without getting the upfront and at that time i was also struggling i wanted to register the company in thailand uh so the payment goes here not sweden so partly my fault then uh the project kind of grows into a few more we take all on uh we work on all of them and we deliver the project and then the final payment gets four months delayed which at the end it puts me in a mental state where i go we're going to freeze all assets and then you're not going to have any access to the products until the payment's made like you know if it's enough and then they come back and say uh well you know that's the norm here you should just talk to other agencies that's how we do um okay it doesn't work with us yeah and i explained the differences between the agency like how we do it and how other agencies are doing and what you are getting and what would you what you would get from others then there's a reason you're working with us now [Music] all of this fine they send a payment after a month after us freezing the assets which means we put about 80 engineers out of work um they were kind of working with us in parallel and we suddenly kicked everybody out from the file because we never actually got paid for that project another a few days ago a week ago um the right hand of this conglomerates that kind of manages the or basically hire the right people to get projects going reaches out for a video conferencing tool and i go video conferencing you guys gonna compete globally with the video conferencing too yeah uh well since kobit started two really good startups popping up monthly um so here are the things you should probably do if you want to stand out on an enterprise level so i go um everybody is doing video conferencing or video thing for collaborating for creatives so design engineering whatever so this needs to be for decision makers executives um you need to do something that brings presentation into conversations and make a whole together making decisions on a call easier sounds great let me talk to the ceo ceo of the telecom company not the kangaroo this guy gets order from the the higher up and then but this guy he goes remember farzad he did the true thing um we should bring him to do the project then the ceo's reply is yes on work an idea no on parza and i'm like here we just we've already started a project because we like with this because the project went so well other than the payment problems which is not on my end it's on their end um but then they go no to fireside personally personally yeah i mean yes the tree drops and the product no to farza like how does that even freaking work um then i go this is good but yeah i dropped a message to the cpo i'm like i just got this he's a what is this um i go does the ceo doesn't he doesn't like me i mean we met a couple of times you know we had meetings that project went well at least the parts that it could go well was thanks to us everything else engineering issues and prioritization but why am i being uh the bad guy here yeah because he didn't like how you handled the contract the payment issue i mean how i handled a payment issue are you not paying me that whole thing it was it could have been solved so easily like how it should be i mean of course afros asked like how like it's such a standard for agencies where you go if you're four months past due date yeah i feel like it's time for me taking any extreme measures well i felt like you were getting taken advantage of probably yeah which i kind of felt like because they are you know this big enterprise i remember i sent in an email like chop chop um then they make an urgent urgent payment that the ceo signs but a cfo comes back to me and says basically who fires i think he is we send payment every tuesday and day past this i'm like it's been so many tuesdays since this last and the invoice i mean you do business like this you just you can't especially digitally like it's just ah good keep doing that you'll just drive your company into the ground but yeah nobody will work with you but again there's always people that will do bad work for no money so yeah and i mean these guys don't care this is uh yeah so what happened i mean so many things within it now is up in the air because suddenly this guy doesn't vibe with me because i i ended up not being like any other thai agency here that goes i haven't we haven't received the payment for the i haven't we haven't get we never got paid with the digital code passport they just stopped it right there and in like yeah and that wonderful and the person that was working on that project he just left because he just had enough with the company yeah and then that invoice ended up being on his table i'm like i'm not gonna go chase this invoice you know let's just happily put it aside and then we just forget about it yeah and now i'm in war mode so we are now fully fleshing out the concept because i hear the other i know a few people here since we started in and so we started reaching out to the companies here to get a better understanding and then they send a message to me hey this person just called me and they were thinking they were talking to me about some concepts for this video construction i recommended you i'm like i know but then they said no to me on a personal level which is like it yes to tree drops but notifiers that like uh what um now you just need to recruit someone to be the front of the company and they don't know that it's you pulling all the shots and then you can step away later when because that's what you want to do anyway see but it's so unnecessary because the other guy go we can actually collaborate through his agency um i mean yes to to the work and idea and no to him means basically no to us yeah um as a whole he just want to i guess like uh make an excuse to solve yeah um don't do business with idiots this is that's my take but you know you got to run a business so i get it but yeah i hated this [ __ ] like it doesn't make any sense and then this guy's got like a bug up his ass so he wants to make an example cool he can make an example of his company in the ground i don't you know what what what is the upside of working with people like this i guess i mean it's not people it's basically government here they are so big uh so this is the one that is in every industry yeah so this is just it's dealing it's effectively like dealing with a bureaucracy um and then people have like feudal like he he has like a patch effectively and he he's got turf and so he needs to make an example that this doesn't happen on my turf and so yeah that mentality just doesn't work really well on the internet like it's yeah i haven't it's interesting i get it though because um there is another challenge here which is if you understand you want to create a product that you can compete globally do they want to do that they're saying that they want to do that i mean that's the thing right so and then the reason why so many things within and now has changed because now suddenly the person that calls the shots basically that's the person that the budget goes through yeah um yeah if you don't vibe a lot of things we need to reconsider um which i don't know might be a good thing later but to answer to your question um the the man on top the the conglomerate ceo reaches out to them and say we need to compete on a sas level software and then the only the one product that we do really well is this video conferencing tool that we have internally or while we go and kind of go out with this um well they can't go out with this because you know they need to come up with something very new zoom is already doing it great um then we started designing some concepts and now we are thinking just you know [ __ ] it um we designed the entire thing we make a case for it we send it out to our vc friends and we just try to compete that way and once that thing is online we just send him a link and we go here it is i mean i prefer doing things that way then you have actually actual market exposure instead of like dealing with mafia bosses yeah because passport too yeah i don't know i mean this is the the internet works in ways where if you can get viable plausible stuff in in in front of people who could potentially get it made then you know you've got some amount of desire for the thing and then you can play off of that and then if the big incumbent movers they have a stranglehold now but like business practices like this long term don't work but i i don't again you're the the landscape in thailand and like it sounds like it's pretty incestuous everybody like how that guy got to where he's at is probably by being ruthless this way so like personal favors and a lot of this kind of stuff so it's it's a different kind of networking i guess um it's just down to do you want to continuously have these problems until you can get powerful enough to do the same thing yeah do you want to do the same thing yeah it's how you want to work i guess is what you're saying yeah yeah or how you want to play like is this is this the style of play that you think is going to produce the kind of work that you want to be involved with um because the playing field is like it's telling you what it is like these people are the people who hold the strings and so if they're and if you need their purse then you've either got to give them you've either gotta like muscle up and then make it so that they have an offer they can't refuse you know it's all these like [ __ ] you know power games and they're exhausting like i don't yeah it's not even doing the work no it's just the strategy to get to play the game yeah yeah so like there is something again though i don't know what the the alternate play is here if you want to play in this playing field like what is the right what is the way to to make an end run around all the politics like if you have something that is uh viable and pragmatic and is working for people like from an operational standpoint it's actually doing the job that it says it's going to be doing like you know it's it's uh what is it i was what i've been looking into a lot of legitimacy stuff um like the concept of legitimacy because in crypto there's like it's an open playing field so like what projects are legitimate what aren't like why are they legitimate why do people gravitate towards certain things versus other things um it's a similar kind of problem and like one of the things is legitimacy through performance like people are will gravitate towards things that solve problems and have like a connection to reality because they work helping them do something in the world yeah so reasonable definition or they'll you know legitimacy can also be by sort of brute force which is what it sounds like the the stack that you're working in it's more dictatorial it's more like this person has had legitimacy over a long period of time they get to call the shots because they've had it but the performance may be not there who knows it depends on the the rules of the game so anyways it's do you want to is this something that you is this the kind of headache that you want to keep running into or yeah um i mean i do there is no in and i would never raise money if i didn't want to do enterprises i'll actually just keep thinking about it for ofc2 since we're doing roadmap but um i think the only place that vc money would make sense or this type of thing if i'm no i do want to experiment in this space which is a enterprise-backed enterprise phasing solution yeah um yeah yeah so why yeah have we talked about this like what's like forever ago yeah i don't remember like what's your sort of felt sense for why you're interested in exploring that area i think 34 projects kind of showed me i can't do this okay the tree enterprise products that we designed it's a space where there are no competitors because all of the startups are kind of focusing from the other end of the the growth of their products which is solve a problem for a small team then a bit bigger team than at the end you might it might ski like slack doesn't scale to enterprise they would never be able to sell that solution to bigger companies that's why microsoft is owning them and i feel like microsoft their enterprise solutions ibm's enterprise solutions could use a competitor uh design-wise wow that sounds too big just design-wise i think yeah growing something with that a level of influence there's so many people in that stack um do you so but again why do you want to be influential do you want like what's your what motivates you not just like like logically it makes sense that like you could give them competition yeah um but what is it like do you like competition is it like a big fish like yeah i mean tree drops works with its enterprises but with these enterprise-facing companies and governments all we ever needed was like their knowledge just tell us about all the problems and if you have the resources that can actually happen for an enterprise to come out with a startup with the consumer-facing product that just that's not a space where they can operate or even understand but they can easily build a solution for themselves the same thing that we are doing it with ofc where we are solving problems for ourselves and we kind of companies and people like ourselves if enterprises do that and then if they understand a kind of a um let's say uh inan being a platform where enterprises could come and collaborate with startups on joint ventures um you could build a enterprise-facing sas solution that is that can be adopted first by your enterprise where we get the success story and by enterprises like you which is under discongloramide so we can by just building a solution that we can implement see how it's being used see how it's being worked um and with their access of having so many enterprises under their portfolio that could benefit from such solution and all of these enterprise kind of sales are just back doors relationships there is no onboarding things there is no churn issues with this type of it all makes why why do this easy i think it's easier it's easier than starting you're for who for my myself okay i think this is a much easier path to take to i feel like building sas solutions for small i mean ofc is a very big challenge ofc is a bigger challenge than in it is yeah because it's just so difficult to build solutions for small to medium-sized startups because everybody is in that space yeah it's crowded so you're looking for less crowded territory to play in with meaningful products to play you know what i mean like with with um what can we touch with ofc that we are not instantly kind of creating competitors for ourselves that six months later we've influenced a new solution that can't happen with enterprises it's all relationship based the same way it's so damn difficult for me to get into like into their head because they have no product understanding so they don't know what's even good like my challenge with this thing is um if this person doesn't understand how good we are on a product level and i can't show you how good we are on a business level because the product that we first designed hasn't reached market yet so at this point we're just looking painting beautiful pictures on the screen for him yeah yeah um [Music] but if i just need to um yeah so it's very relationship based i've talked to and it was so inspirational kind of talked to kevin at base 10 and how he came up with space 10 and his relationship with ikea it just makes sense it's just probably after agency this is the second thing that is most intellectually creatively intellectually um emulating yeah yeah okay so there's a skill set involved here and like um a way of doing business and like people that you can provide service to that would be in alignment with what you want to grow and it's less competitive because it requires a sufficient level of complexity like most people can't do this most organizations aren't in a position to do this um well then the question becomes what area within enterprise and like government like do you want to focus is it telecommunications and like all of them i mean that's the beauty of this right um last week we talked about the difference between tree drops and inner tree just being getting paid for the design work and for the execution if you're able to just do it once inun basically becomes a place where governments and enterprises would reach execution on a product that they need in order to continue evolving and not disappearing top of a product would be um i mean we the only things that we looked at so far are business intelligence type of solutions that kind of streamlines data and transparently shares the right information to the right people among the company so there are no meaningful information getting lost in translations um i mean a lot of these enterprise problems that we've been solving you're looking at they're all nothing complicated um i mean the complication is in the the content the the relationships yeah and these people are so entrenched that like trying to get them to change is like a huge lift um unless you're offering if unless you have figured out a way to and there's an energy there that wishes to be released um this is what i'm trying to feel into like is there so there's untapped potential to like build plumbing but if the the entrenched parties don't want to move like yeah i mean they want to move because they keep touching on this but they keep failing okay so they don't know how to see the problem and you're helping them see the problem and the solution well like look at it through this lens you know like giving them metaphors to be like this is how the world is this is how we work we're in touch with the world and then this is how it could work right so there's an educational part of this i guess that you're probably personally doing a lot of in pitches and conversations and these kinds of things yeah yeah but i mean there are so many gatekeepers to people's calendars they're just crazy um where do you see yourself being the most interested so i feel like if you can focus on one area because it's super rewarding to you and you get your foot in the door what like you said it just takes one big fish but this is like gonna it's a longer um courting like period where you have to get to know people and if it's an industry area that you are it gets you going like you're just like i want to get up and work on the problem you can map the whole space and talk to everybody you'll find like you're going to be doing some research then figure out how it works and eventually you'll find the right person and you'll get your foot in the door and then after that you can pivot any other industry like you're just like okay we did that here here's how we did it we can do it for you too yeah but the one like i mean it's the thing with like entrepreneurship like years and years ago before i even thought about actually starting something i talked to i didn't really know any entrepreneurs and my dad he knew someone that through business and he's like i'll connect you to this guy um it's funny like i grew up networking because my dad like did this so i talked to him and he the biggest thing that he said which you two probably know if you don't love what you're doing and you start a business or a project and no one's telling that you that you have to do it he's like you're not going to do it or it's going to be horrible it's like you have to love it so i don't know it's kind of that message again start with something that you love that you can't get enough of because you're not going to burn out i mean you could you have to be careful because maybe it's so tasty um but it's a good starting place because if you don't if you go into something like an area that you think you love and the experience in that place is not good and you don't like what you're doing there's no way in hell you'd be able to do it somewhere else where you're like i don't even care about the yeah it's a good starting point i think it's a love and hate kind of a thing um where would you start i mean this was the start um it's six months of worth of conversations yeah uh i think a few things was um [Music] i was at that point financially under pressure yeah so i had no other choice other than putting pressure on them if i didn't um i wouldn't burn that bridge and i knew because they basically dropped the message in line to me um could you talk to this guy no the cpo left the company and he he kind of said he would never recommend me to anybody after the work after what i did with him with the payment which wasn't his fault but i'm like this is this is too much for me to handle so let me give you a taste of that pressure um but he was already under the pressure from all of this is just one person which is the cfo of the company being standing the line um that's what i'm wondering if you could talk to him and just level with him as like a businessman and be like can we talk like because i think our interests are aligned here somewhere yeah it's completely unreal unreasonable kind of i don't know like for me opinion on somebody based on like putting pressure on us and then we go hey we're not like these other agencies you either pay or we just break because um he doesn't know that though yeah and he comes from a background not to take his side at all but he comes from like a culture where like dave was saying like he has to maintain his image and like if he's letting letting you do this to him then he looks bad he loses face so he can't have that like i mean yeah it's not that this is excusable then but there's potentially a way i don't know you know what i'm saying dave i get it i mean so well we just need to some like i cannot have him i cannot give him a phone call um like why would i i don't want to be on that position where i'm trying to explain myself or something that is a what is the stance in which you can come to this guy and be like hey like we can help each other here like it's uh uh i understand i was under this pressure you were under your pressure i'm here to do business like these kinds of things make it hard to do business right like what do you need to make it so that we can continue our working relationship because we've been doing this for a while right like and it is coming to him as a peer if if and how that's possible if he requires some sacrifice or some like you know what i i don't know what that is right i have trouble working in these environments because they infuriate me um but like if you want the business then it's a question about like can you continue this relationship and broker a deal with this person like get to understand where they're coming from so that that you can understand where it could be a cultural thing like you've been doing business in this way this has worked you know i don't i don't know there's like something to be brokered here or you know it's you can come in like you want to clear this misunderstanding up because what matters to you is getting work done not yeah i don't know there's a i i don't know enough about like how things are done there and like what the types of personalities are involved here but there's always something that you can do it's again it's figuring out the relationships yeah or like for this guy if it's specifically not you yeah um i mean that's sort of a low blow like he's like kind of playing not dirty but it's it's immature um basically he said yes to the pitch no to me which means um you know he's probably worried that we gonna pull off the same things if the payments are delayed and would because you can't do business like that like yeah well that's a problem because yeah the ceo i'm chatting with him and he goes i'm like where did that come from it goes uh all the payment stuff so i'm like that's a bit that's a problem that can be solved isn't it and he goes no but then it would be the same on the next project too um this is a timeline for invoices to be paid here am i four months four five months how how unreasonable i mean that's how he runs the thing like so i mean this is the size of it okay this is like 350 000 employees um i don't even know who runs this who makes a call on if you guys if this is the biggest thing untrue to be in order to become a tech company and you need to build this relationship with some of these agencies are doing the work for you how is this de prioritized financially because they haven't had to worry about this because they can throw their weight around they control the purse strings so if you want to do business with them you and you want money from them and you don't have leverage then you get paid when you get paid like and he gets to run like if the cfo is running the culture of the money then that's how the culture of the money works and so you're coming in and being like [ __ ] your culture pay me and i get why you're doing that but he's like i run a this is how i do it he runs a culture with 350 000 you know and you're coming in and you're you're [ __ ] poking him in the eye he's like [ __ ] this guy get him out of my sight i don't want to look at him like so why does he want to work with you because if you're just going to be a pain in his ass all the time right you're just a pain in his ass so you can do this in a way that's like i i don't know like what lev you had the leverage that you had was you built assets that they need to do work and then you held those assets hostage so you were in a hostage like and he's like this fucker's a terrorist like i don't want to work with terrorists so like i'll work with they do good work but [ __ ] that guy particularly so like this is you know i you know you can you can pull back from these things there is some mechanism that you can smooth this over and like figure out you know because you're you're working with like a large incumbent power that it's like working with a container ship for them to change like quickly is unlikely because they have tons of stuff that is in progress right they've got stacks on stacks on stacks and how they got to a place where they can't pay people you know readily who knows the number of decisions that that got them there is over years and years and how their accounting methods work and how like you know this is what is up with that too like i think companies do this as a business practice though like that's not it's been it's not great and then it's accepted somehow because they can because that's the way it is it's inertia so like big incumbent organizations like they fall into these categories because you have a lot of people through the stack i don't know what the particular instance of this thing is like following the rules because they have a big organization like organizational machine and there are lots of cogs in that machine and if if you don't play along with their machine their machine breaks so like and it causes all sorts of bugs and haywire [ __ ] so like yeah i don't know you just disagree with the code yeah but i mean if i didn't and this is exactly right right if they don't understand the difference between us and others we are so replaceable but we are not in in southeast asia for sure uh they don't know that though yeah they don't appreciate yeah so how do we find a good partner that gets it uh this is pretty much out of the two partners that can pull in and off um well it may be that you need to go smaller than and build up reputational because it's like cred if you're talking about any time like you're trying to unseat an incumbent yeah especially like this kind of world i mean it's the same thing with governments the stuff you're interested in is like the power players like the people that control ever they control everything yeah so the yeah it's it's hard like the thing he always took i used to get really upset about this because i just couldn't believe like how is this happening why is this happening i was journaling about this the other day like my interest in going into government and healthcare is because i thought that was the place where it was like a sacred duty to help people and like make the world a better place and i was so wrong like that is not the place where that happens they don't they these big entities they may have set off to do that but they're not doing that anymore they don't have the ability to do it because they're not able to communicate really effectively yeah with how broad they are so um yeah then it becomes not wanting to bring the thing down but wanting to do it better basically so how do you help them do it better is it helping them do it better is it creating another alternative that can grow and replace it um when do they start to take notice like what you're doing because if they don't want to partner and like it's not or they only will partner on their terms it's not going to change anything and you want to change something so yeah there's an on ramp here somewhere it's just you got to get creative now basically i mean yeah you're i mean you're hitting a wall there's also a thing here too where in the web 3 world the collective voice can be stronger than these big corporate entities because most people don't like them they don't like the way it's being handled most of the people that work there don't like it either they're just there because that's where the money is and they need a job basically um yeah there's just inertia all the way up and down the stack nobody wants to rock the boat nobody wants the things to change because they're everybody's life gets harder if things change so that's true that's the inertia that you're fighting against and if you do it too fast then people are like no what are you doing like we don't work at that pace like but you should work at that pace because it's better like that but but they don't so like this is where change is scary too silicon valley has just you know and then the tech industry has has just they figured out that you can do end runs around the big institutions by offering things from the bottom up so like how slack gets into organizations they they make it so easy for just regular people who who work at these places to come and use their product and then they they have effectively a movement within the system by like the proxy of having so many people who are using the thing that they can push it up into the organization and then management has to accept it because so many people are using it from below right so they they this is the bottom up like uh uh sort of infectious approach right um the top down approach unless you can throw around a shitload of weight like typically doesn't work uh microsoft can do that because they're huge they're microsoft right um so if you're you're basically if you were trying to get into these organizations and sort of capture mindshare or whatever it is you can think about it like a lot of the business practices are like sort of war based like you're running a guerrilla war against an incumbent that has an enormous standing military yeah so you have to like poke and move and and you have to be like you have to take advantage of the the resources that you have on the ground which are you know brokering these deals at any point if you step in a trap you have no leverage you have no money they can use that against you they can just starve you you're done like because you can't this is this is like there's an equivalent in like stock trading and stuff too the the the market can stay insane longer than you can stay solvent like it'll just it doesn't care like so this this like landscape you're able to move through networks pretty easily because you've done a lot of work right but some of this work is not legible to the people that you're trying to work with they just don't they don't get why you are important if you can get them into a project you can show them that like the the results come from the type of work you're doing but yeah i don't know so this this is like a big one yeah this one's tough like figuring out like approach my i mean i'm not a great example because i have zero tolerance for any of this [ __ ] like you know um not zero tolerance like i like working with people and i like getting them into a situation where it's workable but i i also like to ship things and see how they work in the real world with real people um so yeah that i'm coming from that context like where i've run into frictions like this my parents both worked in governments so and militaries and so i saw how frustrating it was to get anything done and like yeah move these big container ships so this is where like frontier stuff like the tech stack in web 3 is providing the ability for lots of coordination rapid coordination across problem spaces where these things are just like if you're not participating it doesn't matter there's like 50 other people who want to play so like the energy that wants to be released in these places is like it's palpable um that's it that's what pioneer territory tends to feel like so there's the possibility of being able to grow something in that environment like that supersedes this entire structure that can get you legitimacy so that you can come in as a leveraged player like this is what the opportunities are there right you can use the the like skill sets and your ability to coordinate and like hyper focus on something and then like get people on your side so that like and you don't need an inordinate amount of capital from venture capital to do this because people who want the thing to exist will show up and throw in their effort so like i'm not pitching this to you i'm saying that as as a field of play to be able to play with bigger incumbents the place to probably pull together the like the like citizenry the the leverage that you might need to make these moves web 3 is probably the place to do this but it'll take some amount of effort over years to be able to to and it it starts with small projects so it's it's having a different relationship it's bypassing the concept of venture capital and like moving into something where you have a more direct relationship with the the money out there and the people's interest it is also it's a it's a place where you have to function more like a nation which means you need to function more like a politician or somebody who influences citizenry rather than influences firms and you like the relational stuff so it's probably a good fit but it's across there's you have to [ __ ] you have to find a way to get in there right and i'm telling you that if you were to figure out these mental models and work in that environment you would you would experience a significant reduction in the stress in trying to get things moving in the world but there's a leap to take there um and whether or not that makes any sense you've got a lot of stuff in motion i don't know i think that you're going to keep running into these problems but you'll still you'll continue to build network and you'll continue to build influence but it's it's very slow like lower than you're gonna like right i think part of what's going on in your life right now farzad is that you're growing out of what you have been doing yeah because you've figured it out you've mastered it and you're like okay i want to do something different something bigger and then yeah the bigger thing is like it's a it's a different game though to unseat it because it's easy to easy relatively easy um in comparison like the big like powers that be they're just like i don't even know how to think about it um it's a different game it's just a different game because it's so it's like a tangled mess of like hair or something and you're like try to undo it there's no like it's not possible or like a necklace chain when it gets knotted and you're just like i like sometimes you have to cut the chunk of hair out or throw the necklace like you're just like i don't it's it's yeah it took decades to get that way yeah like and the likelihood that you're going to be able to move it in any conceivable way unless you have potent leverage like something that is so workable and so intoxicating that people are just like yeah [ __ ] this we're going towards that because it's obvious right but everything in these large-scale organizations is inertia against that because they have a defensible position why would they give it up the irony is that they need people like us who are like what are you doing like you're not even paying attention you're not serving the purpose that you could be serving if you say you're serving but they don't even know how to talk to people who have different ideas anymore because it's kind of scary foreign i don't know what to do yeah so half the job is like translating going in there and being like this is the way and then like getting them to look at how it works but why would they want to see that like because seeing how it works would mean that they have to change it and change is terrifying so yeah but that's the part right we are saying you won't need to do any changes to your existing one come out here this is where we meet and this is probably a good practice for them to go and say they [ __ ] that up he made it so painful at that time where everybody else kind of bended over and here we are saying well you need to i mean before and now i understand too that before they would never go with the terms that we wanted uh to make this a thing even if that little thing pissed them off that much um so i guess sooner or later this should come up anywhere yeah it popped up like because your expectation for how this works and their expectation for how this work it wasn't coordinated early days and so it became it came as a surprise to both of you um that's the good thing though like you wouldn't if this was somehow disguised more yeah and you got into like it's like getting into a relationship with someone and then like a romantic relationship and then they change completely and you're like what the [ __ ] yes this happens and people are like i don't know how to work with this person like they were someone else like a total other person like for a year and now they're just like what this is just how i am and you're like well [ __ ] hell like i just invested like i live with them like all this stuff i mean it's better to have it happen early like first few weeks or months and you're like oh cool yeah this isn't going to work um yeah i don't know the dating metaphor keeps coming back to me because it kind of makes sense like it's relationships you're looking for something that makes sense to you and that you can like work with and work through and if it's not a good fit like it's the thing where you can't really change people some people are are willing to be changed like i feel like dave and i when we met each other we were open we didn't know what we were open to but there's like a give and take yeah um so that's more of like a quality of personality i guess or character where you're like okay this company or this person that i want to work with is more reasonable like i can talk with them um you might not agree with me now but they're willing to maybe admit i can't understand what you're saying but i want to like sort of thing like that's sort of there's some concession there where you have a conversation with them like the things that you're doing now aren't working and i have some concept of how to make them better but i won't know until we work together if that works right like so we need to partner up on this thing small projects yeah to be able to to see if the methodology that i'm proposing like has any actuality in the world um but that requires both parties to be open to the possibility of change and ideally eager for the experimentation and failure that it takes to find a path towards change um like change is implicit it's always happening but like when you you get a sufficient amount of resource and you stabilize like these big organizations do they can choose to ignore change because they've got such a distortion field around you know the the the world that they've built but this is how these things fall apart like you go look through history over and over and over and over again you get this thing like incumbents they solidify they build walls whatever um things stop like uh relating to reality and then some small incumbent or new methodology or mindset comes in and just dismantles the whole [ __ ] thing um the likelihood that you are going to be the one person that does this with a small team is really low um it just it's it the probability is just tiny but you can up that probability if you're coming with like you know christianity into some place and it's intoxicating and then people are like you know this is slack again it's that model like uh have you tried this thing this thing's great and then everybody's using it and then it's in your organization and be like oh [ __ ] i guess this is you know so this is these methods i don't know it's it's what is best suited to your style of social design effectively like and currently you're working with the style of you are personally influential because you can work with people hands-on and you are offering them a world view that is very polished and looks nice and can make them look good but that can only take you so far right because once that runs out of steam then you've got engineering you've got finance you've got hr you've got you know and then the whole stack above you you've got to work with and if you don't have answers for all of that stuff it is you versus all those [ __ ] and they will wait you out they just will they'll be like yeah that's fine this guy keeps bothering us so you can keep coming up with new methodologies but without partners and without like where's your army because they've got 350 000 people and you have the number of people you've got so if you don't have leverage you're [ __ ] you're they're just gonna starve you so anyways art of war what would the leverage be other than the number of people yeah i was just thinking about that too number of people works or some like web 3 is potentially apt here because like someone i was having a conversation um with on twitter about basically social technology which is what we're interested in and looking for expression through web3 and we're talking about culture being human social communication connective um behaviors human behavior and then tooling as like or technology as a tooling to facilitate that behavior so we got into it a little bit um because i was saying that all technology helps facilitate human culture and he's like well what if it doesn't i was like give me an example so we're like trying to work things out um but he gave me a quote by peter thiel about how technology is a tool that helps introduce leverage basically it helps you get something done uh eat more easy uh easily or quicker or something like that so yeah i mean there's it's a compression of energy effectively in that sense though there's a lot of tools like not necessarily digital tools but there's potentially uh mental models as like a tool like there's a way of thinking about this there's something here that can help sort of yeah i guess is it context like there's a way of looking at the problem um where the more solutions will jump out to you i think yeah i mean you have to work it then this is where i would come back to where we started with like why are you interested in this so i get like conceptually like i mean you want to help people be better people is basically like help them do what they need to do whether it's through a corporation or a government no like what what's the underlying thing um i feel like we are living in the world so if we cannot influence if we cannot kind of feedback them or kind of try to shape it our lives will never change yeah okay so you want to help you want to give people tools to help change the world or i think everything gonna turn into tools with how these corporations and governments will be operating in the future yeah have more of a voice be able to be more interactive with their world basically um i don't think it's um it's more of a designing better systems where things are much easily noticeable and more transparently shared because if you can solve a problem in in a corporate you can easily solve that in an in government it's the same complex issues if one tool works there that helps to kind of surface the most important issues um adjust the glands that would just bring so much alignments in between so many different stakeholders all of the problems with the enterprises that we've seen is just misalignments in they have only a piece of the information it's so easily visualizable if that's even a world do you know me so if you're interested in social coordination yeah you said alignment um i think that's where all of the bad decisions and injustice come from um yeah web 3 adds social coordination tools to the tech stack that's the whole point of it yeah so what happens with this is like yeah uh it is it is inherently based on the concept of like mutually agreeing on a consensus reality and the blockchain does this so everybody can see the same thing like so if everybody can say this see the same thing then you are operating from like an agreed upon reality and in a a consensus environment you can collaborate and then it becomes how what are the tools in this consensus environment to collaborate they don't exist yet they're being built right now so like what happens is you know over the course of ten years you get four trillion dollars worth of like value and interest pouring into an area that is completely decentralized because people are they agree that it exists and then they because that it exists they're like i am seeing what you are seeing like we may see it differently but let's do an experiment to see if it works like this so everybody is like moving to experiment and moving to try things and what is popping up in this environment is it's rapidly moving people are running into problems and they have to invent new methods of coordinating together so it's a lab for social coordination and currently that lab needs more and more designers because these methods have not been solved yet and a lot of the stuff is being pulled from like existing app infrastructure and interfaces and all this stuff but the tech stack below it is a lot different because anyone can play anyone like you do not need to be a bank you do not need to be a government and you can play with the tools of banks and governments so like what this means is it is the best place to role play being a politician because the these people are citizens they're not users they're not they're they're not customers they are both those things but they're first and foremost because they have stakes in the game they are now citizens they're like i don't want that to work that way so somebody needs to propose a method for having the system to work better in one of these little like organizations right so like and that proposal is going to find what people know like listening to the like exposing methods so that the the the communities and the citizens of these organizations can have a voice so that there is a conversation between leadership and the people who live in the thing right this is what you're talking about this is the the stratum that you get to play in right yeah but it's super [ __ ] early like sue so early that's fine though because you can get an idea of how things work and how they develop and how they land so that you can rapidly develop your skills i don't know like the governmental thing you're saying where representation in these systems is non-existent now you have oligarchs you have technocrats you have plutocrats you have all of these people who have shored up their power and to do this it requires an immense amount of effort an immense amount of money an immense amount of influence things that normal people can't ever get anywhere near and like the the concepts of democracy are falling apart right they don't they they don't work in the environment that we're in anymore because the the tooling was developed like hundreds of years ago and we have like instant communication and networked ability so we need governance that is innately networked that is networked from the start everybody is connected everybody can see everything so that's our playing field if everybody can see everything and everything is connected and that's the starting point then you can build tools on top of that reality but if you're building tools on a reality where everybody is fighting each other and like nobody wants to change that's not what the world looks like right now so anyways i don't know i'm we're starting from this end of it i'm starting from this end of it and i'm hoping in one year two years it would meet in a year uh because it seems i'm making no [ __ ] progress in this just because somebody doesn't like this now the whole thing is on on ice or you know wherever you are um [Music] and uh i'm just so sick that one person can do this how is that even a thing like a one person can make a broken system it's broken it means that there's a choke point in the system that like in a decentralized system or a more decentralized system not fully this wouldn't be possible because you have 15 other routes like oh you as a choke point are unimportant to me because i'm going to go work with people who actually want to do something right i don't my proposal to you is to like set aside like 20 of your time or something like that for exploring web 3 projects like with your team like figuring out like how the game structures work and how they are different than what you're doing because if you i think that that that would be extraordinarily instructive to how you are you are like strategizing your moves can we help with that yeah we all we need to do is come up with a game to play together this is what i've been so structurally like how we're playing right now um well like even buzzard squad could meet with farzad in some like members of his team and there could be like a shared game for past the knowledge of what we know about game dynamics in web 3. like how do you teach someone that understands tech pretty solidly yeah and builds in this space i mean it's like an interesting design exercise so this could be a nice thing for buzzard and relational for our like a like launching like a design kind of like not guild but just an event about design so because we're talking about design it would be through this like angle and it's game we need something to work with we need a problem to but this is a good focus on just design because we haven't really focused explicitly on design because we're working with mostly engineers right now they're not bad designers but design has did okay um let's do your on-ramp so what's what's a game that we could play so design is conceptually changing in web 3 to some degree yeah so there that is the first step here um what is more important in the design process now is designing experimentation to express the thing so like putting like laying out screens is less important so i wasn't okay i'm just making sure that we're no no no um i think this is more of a conversation so the question is yeah how would you share what you know with farsad through a game just one to one designing a game together would be the easiest way to do this um and when i say game i mean uh some system of using web3 like componentry and technology in a like social coordination like setup um so like uh you know i've been talking to like you have one that that is text based you want to have like prompts and then people like write together in a big pool and then you know there is some like reason to do this over time it's collaborative you know so we're doing right now as far as that it's like a content generation um or exploration game where we've been working five of us in this squad and trying to figure out like what we've been doing and what we're making because we haven't it's not like super goal oriented it's harder to answer that question and write about like here's who we are and here's what we're doing because all five of us have completely different perspectives on what it is that we're doing and like how we're doing it so i designed like a pretty simple prompt and response kind of game where people are at answering questions from their perspective in a shared place in discord so we can understand better how each of us are individually seeing the project basically i guess um yeah that's just background yeah i mean that's different though than i can i mean are you interested like the thing we're about to to to do like a hackathon and launch of our first like thing coming up this week so this saturday we've like coordinated and then we're probably going to do a little bit more over the week everybody's coming up here to portland um the five of us and we're going to be in one place for the first time um ever ever uh so here maybe if i paint this picture you'll get a little bit like better understanding of what we're up to um so we had that ponder thing right and the premise was like i you know people need to collaborate and like more and more people are going to be working in you know obviously the multiplayer spaces and all this other stuff right um and there should be tooling that that helps people collaborate and i went and built you know like designed a tool that did that but that's not what the world wants the world wants protocols that allow that to happen right and so a protocol is basically like an agreement that all that people will operate within a certain medium together and the only way that the protocol exists is by collective agreement by enacting the protocol so in the case of email like there is a a protocol that says like if you structure your data in this way and it has to and from and the header and body and all that other stuff like i can build a client that can accept that anywhere and i can build a client that pushes it out anywhere but no one runs email right like everybody builds email together as a collective idea so we're moving into a phase now where like a lot of this stuff is up for grabs and it's like uh and you can add economic things to it so now when i send an email you know there can be a token attached to it there's all these economic levers to play with um so once i had a better understanding through working with the rest of us that like protocols are like where it's at like we have the opportunity to build all these new formats like new image formats new video formats new media in general right and that media is going to write to the blockchain because if it can write to the blockchain it can produce nfts those nfts can be traded you can track lineage you can see who worked on it you can like if it becomes valuable in the future future profits can come back to the person that made it like this is why the artists are losing their minds because finally they can capture some of the value of the work that they're creating right so that's a first that's a that's a toe hold into the mentality there are it will change most how everything works like any place that you are exchanging media any place that you are communicating this this fundamental concept is going to change all of that i see it as a printing press and printing presses need like i see it as as a movement to the concept from writing like being a scribe to print the idea that mechanical like pressing into paper allows you to distribute things widely this is one of those like the ability to capture on chain who did what where it came from transparently like okay so what is the paper and what is the printing press for that stuff we don't have those yet like and what are the formats a book a pamphlet you know these kinds of things that came with the printing press our versions of this are are interactive and holographic and video and audio and all of this stuff combined because it's all interrelated so we have this concept with relational that instead of files we're moving to blocks because now we live in a world where blocks and the blockchain are our new medium in which we are communicating and so we need to put our media onto the blockchain which is like a type of paper or cloth or material and so we need machines that can work with that material like we need we need things that can what is the ink in that system what is the printing press what is the you know the facts all of these things right how do you figure that out you have to do this through experimentation you can't just sit down and think it because we don't have enough information about the world to do that yet so games people want to play together so how do you stress test this gigantic new thing that we're playing with in tiny little things where there's a lot of energy that wants to play with this you look at the nfts people are flooding into it because it is so like resonant with them half of them like 90 of the people have no idea why they're doing this they just know that it is something that has been stuck inside them that now has an expression the same thing happened after the printing press like all of this information that was sitting in churches was then moved out into the world and then people could and this required like this new democratization of information required democracy to form to be able to handle the new blood of the thing so anyways all that basically where we're at now is we want to put text blocks on the blockchain right like minimally and they're effectively posts and stuff like this people are putting jpegs on the blockchain now there are native formats that have existed like svgs so like svg is just lines of code and the blockchain is just stuff you can write text to so you can now take an svg and write it straight onto the blockchain that's a native format what can you do with svgs like so a lot of like drawing apps draw in svg so what we want to do is have a uh like here's the technological thing i think you can just draw onto the blockchain so what is the interface to allow you to draw on the blockchain somebody's already worked a first piece of that out so we can pull that piece we don't need to develop it it's done like we'll pull that and now how do you make a game so that drawing on the blockchain can be seen as something that is possible to do we create a game world we're calling it exquisite land based on this game called exquisite corpse which is basically you know you fold a piece of paper into three somebody draws something they fold it you know that thing yeah so we're doing a bigger version of this where everybody gets a tile and the person who has a tile in this big open canvas uh can invite a friend or three friends with a token and then you own your tile and then over some course of a period we're gonna figure all this out on the fly we're gonna build it like people are gonna draw a canvas together by inviting each other by coming into this and at the end of it you can sell that thing as an nft so the collaborative like work that you did over the period for that canvas is now instantiated into an nft and then there is a wallet so any profits coming into that are then dispersed across all of the people who did that and like so you are making money together through drawing and we get to we get to so we get to play with governance we get to play with treasury we get to play with collaboration we get to play with the tech stack we are moving forward like what the format doodle format which is svg to blockchain we get to see how all of this stuff works and it's it's half of the work technologically is already done people have already done it we just stick it together and then we offer it so like and i want to see this exist because i like doodling things so that's an experiment we're going to try to build it this week and we're going to see what happens but so if there is a format or a style or whatever that can be instantiated into a block on the chain like as a piece of media like we're we want to do like projects that work like this where we cobble them together so like pascal has a version of this that he wants to do with 3d and there's a format that that pixar has put out that is just it's like all your shaders all of your it's all the math to make an object render on screen and you can just print that to the blockchain and then it's available across all the apps everywhere right like no one person owns the like visualization of that thing because it's now available for everybody to play with so every type of format that that is mathematical in nature that is just a like a text field can be worked in this way so anyways that's that's what we're doing i don't know if that helps you understand yeah i get it so [Music] there's got to be one of those that we can work on together is my point like some version of that that like because you've been playing with media forever so like some of that media can be brought into something where everybody can participate and you're offering them and it can move our file format forward so we want to work with you on that right and you can come participate and see what it's like to build these things so i guess the game would be because farzad's work is digital design so we're gonna we should design a game together we'll figure out what the parameters are but we'll get together and come like you can start with format first you can start with people first you can start with a a thing that like designers like to do is there a canvas kind of thing that we can make is there like you know is it icon design i mean there's all kinds of things yeah we can play with it if you're interested like yeah the people that make sense to have as part of this um get together like you bring your team we'll bring ours we should make sure it's not too big i guess um but um are there any components or anything in place in terms of like here is how we do this in here um is there any interface for what how with this game that you've been working on um kind of yeah like like how we work together like literally the the stuff that's on the screen yeah yeah um yeah there's a we're i mean you can come jam with us on that if you want like we're gonna be working all saturday um not as such like we're kind of pulling stuff off the shelf so there's like a library for like handling a map right because this thing is going to be a big map of svg blocks right so there's not a lot of ui that needs to be done some buttons here and there and like we're getting a lot of that for free and then the actual drawing surface is like a thing that that somebody built and react like the react team built so we're just plopping that on top of it so you know the like specific movement between these things and stuff like that it's pretty simple like we're using stuff off the shelf this is where i'm saying like i don't there probably need to be some like design system and stuff but half of this i'm like yeah i don't know maybe i'm hoping that not a lot that's the idea but we'll know saturday we're actually doing no polish probably on saturday we're basically just sticking the plumbing together like uh getting the smart contracts working getting the game logic working getting the the surfaces so that like when you draw it turns into an svg and that svg gets written through a contract into a format that we can use all this stuff um after that we may need we'll have an idea of whether or not there's stuff that needs to be like turned into a design system or whatever the hell or like because there this is the thing too all of the information is going to be available and anybody can make a viewer anybody can make a new drawing app anybody can make whatever they want because it's all open source like because the contracts will take whatever front end going into it because it's a protocol i don't know if that makes any sense i'm thinking when i can be helpful in the process and how um [Music] because a lot of this now including the saturday one gonna be the engineering stuff yeah um once that's in a place where we go we have a basic understanding of how the relationship between all of the things that are on the screen and not on this screen then we can see how we yeah maybe next wednesday maybe because cj and sharooz are getting here on tuesday and we'll all be together in the house and then we could tentatively plan on having a design jam yeah why not yeah i don't know if you're around on i mean i don't know what the time looks like because we're going to be doing a time uh well on saturday because it would be good to see how it all comes together but yeah yeah i mean if you want if farzon's around it starts at around the same time that we usually start this call so you could have a night cap with us and watch the building if you want interesting uh yeah i wonder how long it would take me to pick it up since um i've been staying away from that whole thing it won't take you long yeah especially because once you see what is possible yeah we have it warm and it's alive yeah and you two speak the same language so you've got like dave is like a good explainer teacher i mean you've got all these people who are willing to tell you what's happening you just ask questions i mean that's part of what the kind of work that we're doing is that we're doing it in public live so that if anybody's like what the hell are you doing right now one of us can or all of us can stop and be like this is what we're doing we'll understand it better because we're explaining it um and we're recording everything so all that's useful um the idea is that it you should any like the the the overarching idea of the the project is that anybody can participate in this thing there's a role for people to play around right and if everybody is willingly participating in it because they want to make it better and they're able to work with everybody else then the thing comes out better like it because it becomes an expression of the people who worked on it together and now we haven't you know we're all interested in keeping it going if it's a game that's viable for people which i i hope if we've made something fun people will want to come play the thing we'll see it's a fun concept to start with too it's yeah it's ridiculous everybody understands it dude yeah hope so doodling together yeah i mean like there have been a few other experiments over time there was one like in the 80s that worked this way and then like john found one yesterday um reddit did a big shared canvas like in 2017 90 000 people drew on this thing together it's insane like you can monitor it i mean there needs to be a lot of moderator no people just they take care of themselves they work it out people know how to work [ __ ] out together do you give them a canvas and then there's wars and battles and you know agreements and it's like anarchy like civilization have been doing this forever i think figma did that once and then yeah i know people just stupid [ __ ] people coming and drawing like bunch of stupid people oh i'm sure yeah the uh when covid first hit and everyone was at home yeah what was it called like work from homeland or something there was some something like that wild canvas that was just like yeah yeah part of this is i don't know how we're i mean this is part of how we have to figure out governance like what is the kind of society that we're trying to build how open is it how like so you know each of these can we're going to like probably do like 16 canvases um with like a hundred tiles in each of them um and then we're gonna give people seeds so that like somebody who starts it like you know we'll do some that are random that go out into the internet and people can come and some that we're gonna pick like friends and and illustrators and stuff that we know and they can start the thing and then they get tokens that allow them to invite the next person their neighbor so there's a square and there's a square next to it and there's a token that you give to somebody else and you're now working together you have built a neighborhood there and you can see who invited who and who connected whom and like what it what happens with that game dynamic you know there's a bunch of different levers we can pull on this um but people want to collaborate and like invite people who are who want to play this is the idea some islands will just be absolute chaos that's fine we'll see what those look like we get a bunch of different experimental landscapes and then later if this we do it by season so that's the first season and then based on that season whatever we learned from it we've got now a community that that is potentially interested and if if it was fun for them we have a new season and so then we're like hey citizens of exquisite land how should we do the next season and like we've got all of this material from the first season like those things can be the the content for the next season like we like this land and this thing how do we connect the lands and then people will figure this stuff out all we need to do is to shepherd it and like keep the thing coordinated and you know until we can hand it off to the community this is my i i hope that this can work um it'll fall apart all over the place but whatever it's fine it's a tiny experiment remember the illustration on carbon money remember the illustration on the carbon landing page i remember it we were just talking about it last night yeah aren't we kind of all over it basically um interesting it's just a different model of coordination and collaboration and people want to do it you're just giving them the opportunity to do it then they bring the rest versus trying to sell them all the time on what's best for them which never works because they're just like yeah yeah i get it just show them give them an opportunity to play they'll do it this is how i'll get my first nft too i don't have any ft's i have one gorham.eth what nice that's it i've stayed away from it up until this point i want to make tools that make nfts and then i'll then i'll allow myself to have a very it's very you build it first build a tool first did you build a crypto thing to to kind of trade and i mean we're making assets that are tradable that's close enough and then there's all this infrastructure now like you can just tie into an auction house boom it's tradable what like [ __ ] four lines of code it's fine you don't have to build everything everything's everybody's building stuff you just tie into what they're already doing and if they've made it good and they've made it accessible then it's worth tying into this is the whole ethos here don't rebuild everything all the time every goddamn minute everybody rebuilding things over and over and over you can share in things that's part of the nice thing yeah it's nice like that as my grandma would say it is nice it's nice like that do the best do the best it's nice like that or it's not nice like that it's not nice like that it's really simple phrases it's on point yeah i mean she was great with these things dave said she was like one of the best marketers he's ever met she would knit these little booties uh they're just little crocheted booties for your feet because my family always gets cold feet and then it just became a thing where like babies get knitted blankets and the booties with them so the tiny little booties and then there'd be a wedding so the bridal party they'd all get like booties so that they had something um birthday like everything so everyone has these like what do you have which one do you have what color is it and she just mixes and matches colors and sometimes some of them come out really cool and you're like oh you've got a limited edition baba booty yeah and they're called baba booties and so like there's a name for it and like every time you see it you think of her and then every time somebody sees it they think of her and then you have a conversation about her marketing genius i want to learn how to do it so i can like bring because she's she's no longer on this planet with us so we can bring baba back to life we're still talking about her she's not even here marketing genius oh it's great it's like a it's a tangible expression of her love that keeps everybody together like it's a you know it's a relational tool i mean the impact when you do something meaningful right it feels nice very then you you get a taste of that and then doing anything else makes no sense it's just like how can i make more of this kind of thing so that you know differs for everybody but yeah i don't know right now like this feels like the the stuff that we're playing with feels like a live wire it feels alive that way yeah um we went to a hung out with a bunch of people in portland it was like everybody's making things everybody's involved everybody's participating it's not just a bunch of people sitting around networking trying to find out who knows what and how they can get an advantage and stuff it's just like what do you need my help with how can i show up and play like this is what the the energy is like around this stuff right now it won't last you know it won't it won't be forever it's like early days energy it'll it'll morph but there's the possibility of like retaining pockets of this kind of thing for a while i think because this time we know what happens when you just bring money into the situation and you sell it all off and then make everything just like another stupid opportunity to work so there's the upside potential here of like creating something where like continuing to play is the reason to build so and now we know how dave feels about work another super stupid opportunity to work i mean they're everywhere you want to work on something and like hate your life there are plenty of job openings true i don't know you end up being good at so many things too that you go which one should i actually pick yeah between that's what you're running into right now you can work wherever you want and you're picking the one that's the hardest and figuring out why it's the hardest it's just yeah causing pain for myself i also don't know why i get so bummed out when i get rejected like it was one time with uh with ash and i'm like there is no freaking way and that was his experience working with us um because tree drops is such a personal yeah so far at least shouldn't be um but all of the work that we are doing is just so so playful and then so so meaningful because we work directly with the founders and yeah there was one time we worked with this average's manager and we were just chatting for years on and off until i think i have something which was helping artists to create their own labels and send out their own songs to all of these streaming services and kind of owning it he's exp and we we kind of just uh interesting might be because there is a pattern here actually but those two projects i designed and i get because i know all of that or at least from my mind i go these are the some know the potential things that can come up if you take another direction this might save you a few headaches but that usually not appreciated or i'm wrong you know just either way but an ego we don't think we solved anything important during that project like worst thing that you can say yeah yeah all right i understand we need another round for free and then same comment uh [ __ ] this this is pointless uh i don't know what type of expectations i'm trying to live up to on why am i doing this to myself oh it's fine it's probably not a good fit and then with this one the same thing and sometimes it gives you that type of energy like i did some stuff with spotify years ago and then they respond pissed me off so much i started three drops um and i feel like the same thing is happening now within where i need to go and then do all of the things that i need in order to put myself in a place where they go yeah we should probably work with you on this yeah you show your kind of your experience and your your network and your what you're capable of and um yeah it takes a long time to grow these bigger things too they've found a thing online um someone was talking about neither of us had known this that you can manufacture fast growing trees so that you can create wood products quicker and of course you know fast forward over a period of time buildings that are built with this kind of wood it's not as stable it's not as structurally sound so it starts they literally fall apart yeah because they because it was forced to grow fast versus wood that just grows normally so there's a there's a pace that seems to be set by some kind of like not i guess it's biological there's some sort of energetic flow to life and if you hack it which you can you can always hack these things it's not necessarily good because you could create something faster but the things that are things that you're trying to do that have a longer lasting impact it just takes time because you can't force it it has to naturally emerge naturally grow the the part of growth that that's important is that when you get to the place where you are operating at the scale that you wish to be you've grown into it it's a natural fit yeah then you're not taking on more than you can handle too because it'll break you otherwise it's interesting so there's another thing that popped up to me when you were talking about spotify and what happened there was that you responded to like an external stimulus i'm gonna go make three drops now there's an opportunity for you to not based on external like prodding just sit there and say what i'm going to do like because it makes sense to me and in alignment with these other people that i'm going to work with is this not because someone else did something and i'm reacting to it like yeah yeah it's of me like i yeah that stuff i don't know it feels different yeah um yeah i don't think tree drops was really like during the whole time a little um no but it's the spark that sets off the fire you know it's because the energy was there waiting to be expressed this was just the thing that triggered it it's then and again that word triggering like if you're triggered at the moment of conception like being able to look at what the energy that's being released and then talk to it like what what do you need right like there's a rejection there's a subtle shift because the same thing's coming up now this this company this guy is telling you no behaving in a certain way but you're not reacting to it well i'm gonna do this instead you're sitting and thinking about it so even that approach that's different that's i feel like that's a change in behavior that shows maturity there's information in the frustration like what is the frustration connected to what is it what needs to be expressed how does it need to be expressed what is a better way of going about this because the frustration is instructional and sometimes the instruction is like push harder but usually it's like i'm thinking about this in a way that is not suitable to the size of the task that i have at hand so i ran into a lot ponder was my version of this yeah build it fast it's [ __ ] easy everything's fine and i'm building something like i'm trying to manufacture i tried to manufacture something because it's the only thing i knew how to do uh in like a year or something like this when one i needed to learn for years what i'm even doing like where what the world is saying that it needs from me and what what relationship that i want from that right i got a long time i can play with anything so if i'm playing with things that that are in alignment with what i want to be doing in the world and it's fun and when i show up and provide the things that i know the people around me are like thanks for doing that like we couldn't have done it without you and vice versa like there is a there is a uh there is a balancing act there but like letting yourself do this is tough it's [ __ ] terrible like falling back and just letting the world like tell you what it's like work this way work this way like no i don't want to know about that i know how to do this really well like it's i don't know it's really it's even like so we're doing all these meetings we're moving into like a phase where we're about to like we're about to put pen to paper we're about to launch something right on a technology that that i think i understand but i don't really know and there's a lot of people out there and i don't know how much i want to be in the public anymore or how much i want to all of these things all my [ __ ] brain is just like run yeah or like [ __ ] suffer or whatever it is instead i'm just like okay this is because part of me is i'm growing right like these these things that i've been terrified to play with because i didn't have the people around me to help like to help think about the thing because the stuff is big it's enormous like if we're actually building a protocol or protocols with the rest of the internet the number of things that could be built on that stuff are infant they're just they're infinite there's a million so what is the relationship to something like that that's terrifying right like i had this experience with carbon mate people would start posting their work their livelihoods were based on the things that i was making so i made that a relationship between me and but that's i was just there showing up doing the work that that they were asking for me to do which is a change in relationship right like all i can do then is work on the skills to to to help shepherd that idea into the world right and that part of that skill is like taking care of me mentally so that i can better sense what the organization needs right so it comes back and back and back and back until you are centered because if you're centered and you know where you're going and why you're going there then you can move out into the world and operate as somebody with agency right like you know like your relationship and you can push on boundaries and you get triggered and then you have people around you to be like hey i'm feeling [ __ ] crazed like why help me look at this right and then you're getting closer to reality which brings you back to center which means the next decision you make is like a fruitful one but this is a it's a constant conversation and operating within change and you're pushing up against things that you cannot push through by yourself that's not how that's not how we work as people we have to do these things to you have to hold this for me for a little bit so that i can i cannot feel the potency of it so that i can look at it rationally or emotionally or whatever it is so i don't know the these these projects these endeavors this work it's it's how we grow it's the the type of thing that we express you know other people have accountants you know they you know they they they make excel spreadsheets and some people socially coordinate and some people do pole vault we decide to build things like this so i don't know that's their reality yeah i don't know it's there is like a sort of meta change in the way that i approach these things like it's not about money money will show up if it needs to if it's part of the thing that you need to play with it's not about power like if power shows up then are am i wise enough to be able to operate within its like influence if i'm not i don't want it it's [ __ ] keep it away from me it's terrifying and like can it be terrifying but i know that i've been doing the things and i have the people around me to center me in a way that operating with it is just like channeling the thing not owning it not keeping it not having it be something that represents me you know all these things so i don't know it's a work in progress how long time did you take after plunder before you jumped into this um i don't know before you jumped into ponder or no after ponder so kristen had met so ponder opened a bunch of doors to people who could see through the stupid thing that i the stupid box i put it in like designed it into because there were glimmers of what we were trying to do and then john in particular is like oh this has there's something to this and then kristen did a project kristen went and found all the people effectively and then we just decided to work on small projects game like little games that we play together where we just cooperate so like it wasn't too far after i mean probably a few months but once it got going the difference in approach was like so readily apparent and then it was a whole process of um me accepting that this can work where i'm not i don't need to be a hero that being a hero is the thing that gets in the way every time i was a hero because that narrative like works really well i'm like you don't have to you don't have to do anything other than what you can do right now over and over and over and like showing up in the smallest ways and talking about what i know and like participating as openly as i can and then like asking questions and then when i'm like flipped out asking for help like this was the work which is allowing us to now like collaborate in a way that that is like fluid right because it requires this like calming down and like accepting that there's a group of people around that just wants to just wants to do this together like that's enough it doesn't need to be beyond that and if if that's the kernel of what you're building that's a good thing to start stuff with so the ideas are showing up from what is possible within the group rather than what i would specifically like to accomplish this whole thing should be part of a manifesto it should be don't be a hero it makes so much sense heroes get killed they get eaten by dragons [ __ ] that [ __ ] no it makes so much sense because when you are trying to lead a team in the beginning you're like oh i'm a savior i'm gonna put up all of these fires and i'm like oh i'm not doing it let them do it but then you are not giving them the right tools to do it so you're like i'm at the end and i know and then you're like why don't you be a hero like i was and they're like [ __ ] that that's terrible yeah because you seem so happy yeah exactly yeah and then you it's it is much nicer to be a peer with other people who are working through their things and so that you can help each other like lift bigger weights i mean that's what it is like if you have five people picking up a log it's a lot easier than you've got one person straining and blowing their back out right like i mean that you i think with the you can only become peer with somebody that is as good as you or um yeah what's the ore or has an understanding of who is as open as i was gonna say open openness trumps ability because people who are compatible who can play with lots of projects and lots of people i mean there's an ability to be open yeah so there's your ability so if the skill of openness or that attribute like because if you're very very good at like doing independent work and doing lots of things but you can't work with other people then you are capped out by what you're individually capable of doing but if you can like drop into any group and provide perspective within that group that makes the group stronger and you can do this across many groups and it's less effort then you can accomplish an enormous amount more through this ability like because you can hop over here and you can work in the economics and you can hop over here and work in design and you can hop over here and work in social coordination and then you can hop over here and be a novice at like illustration while you have you're around a bunch of people who are willing to teach you and you're willing to do the work and then you can move over into something else where you're an expert and then you can move over here where you're novice and this movement around gets you a better view of the world which makes you a fuller person right but if you're just sitting by yourself all the time doing everything and being an expert up to your ability of being a solo contributor or whatever then you're gonna max out it requires too much energy like you can still you know it's just the the idea of this is the the concept of of moving from genius to cenius which is like an individual genius to the genius of a scene of people around you and then then you have an enormous amount of creative output from one of these places this is where the geniuses come from brian eno wrote about this it's a good thing to read ryan who brian eno ryan yeah he has a bunch of writing on like how he approaches art he has a a journal that he published um from his i think he was doing a bunch of work in the 90s with a bunch of huge bands and stuff like this um yeah [Music] changing direction on this stuff is like part of maturing as as a person as an artist as a business person all these things it's hard like that no one ever tells you that like everything you knew up to a certain point it's great it'll help you succeed and then you have to unlearn all of it and then like use it in a slightly different way across a bunch of other stuff it's like this necessity for growth i guess some people don't get past this one i think it's a great humbling moment maybe basically learning humility allows you to work with a lot more people it's so damn difficult to find good people like it's always been very easy to hire good designers and build a very good creative team engineering yeah a little bit yeah i feel like it's getting there takes a different relationship to the thing sometimes it's very easy to understand who is a very very good designer and just looking at it not even a good designer or a person that can become a great designer they're also very easy to notice but um [Music] yeah i'm making so many bad decisions with like i see a person and i go this potential the same thing that i think i see in designers i kind of assume that i can do the same thing with marketing or i can do with operational financial um but recently i realized i'm not as playful as i am with the designers with the as i'm with the quality and that's probably why they're not growing as fast um but yeah yeah i don't know this one's a relationship thing again like you know how how do you it's the openness stuff right like how do you [Music] i don't for me it's a like can we present an opportunity so that the people who are most suited to the type of thing that we want like you know so say say we want somebody who's good at marketing whatever that means like to have an opportunity to be able to tell the story of something that wishes to exist in the world and so if they have skills that like you know how how can they grow a marketing story which is just telling the truth of what we're doing in an interesting and compelling way right like somebody somebody who cares deeply about the craft of that i don't need to know how it works but if they can show up and participate in the thing we've got a general philosophy that is like show up like um if you're willing to play together without like you don't need to be an expert here none of us are experts in anything we're doing like there's an open invite that stuff needs to be done and we're going to figure out like what wishes to be done and then if you can do a piece of that go do it that's fine like it's an invitation to play rather than like uh uh an assignment or or like a job role or something like that you're able to grow your own position within the organism like that that only you could fill and sometimes some people are very good at like creating positions that are standardized and could be filled by somebody else or whatever but yeah i don't know it's allowing for a more bespoke character to develop and again it's back to this thing that like a super high-end marketer that is very good at doing like a style of marketing um may not be the right person to play in this stupid doodle thing that we're doing it's more important that like we cobble it together and we understand how it all works and you have an opportunity to to express abilities in like an open way and then talk about what you're doing have like a philosophical discussion about like is this the kind of thing that we wish the community to and then do it i don't know so there's like it's a different i don't know you're collaborating like a band or something but yeah it's it's it's a different model to like hiring somebody and then working with them on objectives yeah um there are limits to that style of work it works well for certain types of things though creativity not so much like the funneling of artistic projects and you know the the like co-creation of things i don't know it requires this like collaborative mindset there's still a professionalism involved they're still like people who like to do the craft will show up and do it well because that feels good right so like offering them an opportunity so that they can they can express what they've learned that they've spent a lot of time like practicing and you know i i like people who have a sort of or i tend towards people who have a philosophical understanding of the craft that they participate in why do they do this why does marketing exist have you thought about it like why would you do it in this way versus that way not because it it produces better numbers what do the numbers mean have you thought about the numbers yeah what are they telling you like is that just what you do because when you're a marketing professional people tell you that if you make numbers go up you're a good one why why are you a good one is that good how do you know it's good have you have you considered these things you know if there's an on-ramp to talk about these kinds of things there's a better potential that all of us can be better at what we do preaching a lot today yeah it's such a moving service this morning yeah sorry or evening i don't know i'm practicing for what i don't know it's helpful my my monologuing show on youtube i've been preaching in my head so much in the past couple of days i mean like whenever this happens i'm a very very quiet person or i've become very quiet so i haven't had any conversations for the past week thinking about why this is happening and what's going on like are you just deep in i just get i just stop i just basically stop with everything yeah when i hit uh because i have no clear i mean i guess we have a direction with how we're gonna go about this next but i'm just um communication wise it just becomes too exhausting so i just stopped and then just because it's just so loud inside yeah yeah um so i've been just trying to figure out a way to quiet this give yourself a break yep just be like it's fine this is how it goes yeah there's nothing to fight like just you know and then you can choose to believe some of it or choose not to like it's just you know i don't know this is this is where i get to with these things it's just like pummeling me and i'm like okay what all of you people want in my head oh you're all screaming at me about something like what have i missed and like you know can you give me a break so i can think about it sometimes that works sometimes there's like a little thing in there like the body needs to move or you need to talk to somebody or yeah okay like before in the past it was like i knew whenever i hit this point what i need to do but it's so frustrating that it doesn't work anymore so you go i did this it worked like now i need to go figure out the new thing that works for this because before it was such a good mental state where i whenever i'm kind of reaching this kind of i don't know challenge i don't call it a challenge just whatever this is um a blockage yeah it's like a fork in the road that you're like all right what like what do i do here like i got that i mean it's a mental growth that i'm kind of not finding it easy to kind of grow past it and whenever i reaches this i know i'm the problem so i'm just trying to figure out what about my way of thinking that i need to change just get past this and if i don't i'm just doing this and i've been doing this kind of for a few months now so i feel like there is something i need to figure out what that is i need to find a meaning kind of a peaceful new daily routine to just process it i can't write um it's too much um i'll walk but then it's too loud i play music it's still too loud i turn off the music and i just walk doesn't work i can't exercise still that's frustrating yeah and um yeah it's just difficult to yeah it's just all weird these are like really uncomfortable and like i only have my experience personally on this and like so i'm going through a similar one right now um i just have a lot more tools that i've developed because what i figured out is that you for the rest of your life you run into these yeah growing this is just part of it so like having tools to work with this stuff and like you're saying you're trying a bunch of different stuff and none of it sticks um this is why practicing when you're not growing or when you're not explicitly stuck is it prepares you to be in this position for later this is why you do the meditation and or whatever works for you right like for me shigong is the place where i can offload some of this energy i can just move it around so that i can get like just five minutes where it's come and like and in that five minutes there are usually there's something that's like go look at this like go search on the internet for x go talk to kristen you don't know why just do that and then that gets you moving and maybe that opens up something else and whatever i also do like i'll listen to philosophy on youtube and stuff and like usually i know what i'm looking for right there's something that pops up you know having these like texts or something to read that is something that is a lot bigger than the small problems of right now like look into other people have felt these things throughout all of time right so there are there are places to look for this um yeah i don't know like trying to get a into a place where your body is relaxed even though the first like 10 20 30 minutes of it might be hell because you don't want to calm down like one part of your your ego wants to stay in fight or flight so yesterday i just did not want to [ __ ] do qigong like all of me i'm like ready to [ __ ] kill something i'm just like i hate this my body is [ __ ] weird and whatever so i'm like okay i back off i like to do five minutes i couldn't i couldn't stay there with it went and i like wrote some stuff i needed to do some work i did that and then i got tired and you know i was done with that piece of work and i'm like qigong again that's what we do and i go in there and then another hard five minutes but then i get back into the flow i'm like oh i remember this is why this is where like i can calm down and then it's just moving the energies and then there is a moment in there and it it's taken a long time for me to get here but it is over and over again doing the thing that has the potential for giving you the space and like in the short term it may be just sitting there and just letting it cascade over you sitting with the like just the onslaught right like being like okay i'm gonna be uncomfortable that's just how it is now i'm uncomfortable and when you stop fighting the discomfort and trying to find another thing you have the opportunity like the ego stops like thrashing just for a little bit and that's enough so i don't know this is not advice it's just things that have worked for me i guess everybody's internal warrior is different the anger is definitely there yeah i feel like i'm just quietly calmly waiting for something to show up as i can just flip the [ __ ] out sometimes what you need yeah i don't know if you can this is the i really think that especially men but because i can speak from that place needs some mechanism for working with these energies yeah this is what martial arts is for everyone does but i do think men maybe some women it's probably like testosterone or something it's like a hormonal thing where you've got that feeling and you it has to be processed yeah i mean everyone has this so everyone has the ability to be angry no matter what your gender is but yeah men have just channeling the energy of war that's it just it's just channeling the energy of war it's in you gotta understand it i can get intense in uh during my exercises whenever i'm in this type of state oh yeah so i just go for a run and i would just run for the whole day i would just stop at a 7-eleven just take something and just continue for the rest of the day and i would come home my feet are bleeding and i would do it for a few days put myself through a physical pain and then my mind lets go yeah but if i can't do this then i'm like yeah i don't know there's a few other things like i you kind of part of it is like not waiting it out but there's like some energy thing like i just went through