Ep. 72. Feelings Check in: Trading your friends for money on friend.tech, personal feelings on building the TAM vs. expanding into new markets

[00:00] She's really affordable right now. Now's the time to buy. Bye, bye, bye, bye, bye. I love sell high. Welcome to the feelings check in a feelings first look at the news of the week. Takes no one asked for on topics everyone's talking about. I'm Natasha Hoskins. I'm Dina Burke. And this is boys club. Wait, is it just boys club? It's just boys club. The boys club podcast. No, no. [00:24] Just boys club. [00:25] Hi. Hey, how's it going? Good. Do you not? [00:29] What is Boys Club? [00:32] - Boys Club is a community [00:35] It is... [00:37] a media company. Actually, let me restart this. [00:41] Because I actually was sending out pitches for the Boys Club scene. I know. Literally what I thought you were going to say, because this has been the emails that we've been sending, is Boys Club is a... [00:52] magazine [00:53] about the internet or something. I've been saying we're [00:57] a social collective that thinks a lot about internet culture, culture, [01:02] And emerging tech. Nice. Nice. [01:04] I said a media company and internet culture magazine. Yeah. [01:08] Nice. We're a magazine this week. This week we are a magazine. [01:14] Okay, so this week we put out a little invite for an LA event that's going to be... [01:19] Very fun. Very fun. So we're doing a house party with our friends at Kraken in Venice, end of September, and [01:27] At this incredible house. Right off Abbott Kenny. LaTosha's gonna be doing her first ever DJ set. Yeah, it's kind of huge. It's kind of huge. It's kind of huge. So, Lincoln show notes. We're already at capacity. But, you know...

[01:41] We love a wait list and we love to tempt fate. [01:45] With how many people we can push through. So check that out. Also, we have a little bit of an ask. We do have an ask. If you enjoy this podcast, what should people do? [01:54] Please? [01:55] Like it. [01:56] rate it, subscribe. [02:00] It really helps. It really helps. Every time we do this, [02:03] We're so bad at the self-promotion of this podcast and it shows, but every time we do this, I... [02:09] think of the please clap. [02:12] Me? [02:13] I don't know. Oh my gosh. [02:15] when Jeb Bush was running for president, there's like this famous, [02:20] video of him speaking at an event and he goes, Oh, [02:24] Please clap. And then everybody claps. [02:27] And it's so cringe and so sad. And I feel that way every time. That's us. [02:35] We're going to do what we always do on Friday, which is we look at... [02:42] Something that's popped off in the past week. Mm-hmm. [02:44] And... [02:46] One of us takes the story and explains it to the other one. [02:49] so that they can get fully briefed on what happened in the crypto land or in the emerging tech land. So this week we're going to be talking about friend [02:57] tech, friend.tech or friend tech. I don't know. It's been all over the internet. It's been dominant on our corner of the internet, but... [03:05] I would be suspicious if it's traveled outside of our circles. Totally. [03:08] Very far. Very suspicious. I will say... [03:11] One quick story about the zine. We got really excited because we've been pitching and we've been chatting and trying to figure out who the right perfect person will be for the cover star.

[03:22] And... [03:24] We really wanted Pinky Dolls. [03:26] Thank you. [03:27] of we still do we do if anyone anywhere out there has a connection to pinky doll we'd be forever indebted to you forever indebted pinky doll of tiktok fame she [03:41] tweeted about friend.tech. [03:43] And we thought, great opportunity. [03:47] Let's slide into those DMs. She's into crypto. Perfect. And you got very excited. [03:55] because i was so excited and then i was like man i i feel like a grandma actually was the feeling where i was like i can't believe it wasn't her it was a fake account it was a fake it was a fake we've all been there though [04:05] One time, Brian Armstrong followed me and I was like, pfft. [04:09] Holy shit. [04:11] And then I was like, this is not Brian Armstrong. [04:15] We've all been there. Anyway, so friend.tech, our very tiny corner of the internet has been interested in it. [04:22] Okay, so stick around. We're going to talk about it. Hey, Natasha, if someone wants to get into crypto or is looking for a better way to trade, where should they go? Oh, Dina, I'm so glad you asked. The place to be is Kraken. It's more than a crypto platform. Kraken is your bridge to the new world of finance. A simple, gorgeous place to trade with a redesigned trading interface that's so easy to use. From degen to day trader, first timer to full timer, make your trades in just a few clicks. [04:52] backslash boys club sign up in just a few minutes and you can even get started with as little as $10. We love you cracking.

[04:59] - A hot new bombshell has entered the villa. - - She's arrived at its core. [05:07] It's an app that is for buying and selling shares. [05:11] of your friends. [05:13] Does that sound problematic to you? Yeah. [05:15] I don't really like it. [05:16] I gotta be honest. It is problematic, but it's also... [05:21] It's an app. An application. [05:24] It's technically, it's called a progressive web app. So you may have seen a couple tweets about it that was like, it's a PWA, which basically means you get to it through Safari, but then you kind of install it onto your homepage so that it looks like an app. Yes. But I think it's actually... [05:37] I am familiar. When we were building on call, we were talking a lot about a [05:42] P-W-A. [05:43] And I remember lots of conversations around that. So I am familiar. Part of the experience of Frentech is that it kind of has this janky onboarding. And part of that is due to it being a PWA. But I think there's no scenario where it could have been launched any other way. So I think it was... [06:01] And you see a lot of tweets that are people are like the PWA part of it is like the really cool part of it. So I don't know. That's like kind of for the, [06:08] nerds to decide. We're not going to be talking about that side of the story too much. Okay, so back to what it is. This is how friend tech works. [06:18] You're not on it. I am not on it. [06:20] I don't think I will go on it. [06:23] You're going to sit this one out. Knowing very little about it. Maybe I can say my take for the end, but I think I'm going to sit this one out. But I want to hear more before I make a judgment. Okay, you're coming in very biased to this conversation. Negatively biased? I can feel it already. Negatively biased. I have bad vibes around it.

[06:38] Is that because it hits on all of the seven deadly sins? [06:43] Honestly, the way that I feel about it is I... [06:47] I don't... [06:48] Let's save the take. Let's save the take. Okay. Go for it. I think you should hear the full story first. Great. I would love to have a take that's totally wrong and then learn from it, but I'm going to save myself from that embarrassment. No, no, no, no, no. Say your take. Okay. So as an observer on the outside who has not participated, [07:06] My understanding is that it's like this very financialized experience of a social app. [07:13] And [07:14] I honestly feel like I don't, [07:16] have... [07:17] enough disposable income to be participating in something like that. [07:21] And like, that makes that you're priced out. I'm priced out. And honestly, like it brings, like, it makes me feel bad. That's the feeling I have is, oh, I'm like thinking about money on this stupid little app. And I don't want to think about. [07:34] where I don't have enough money. [07:36] I want to think about all the money that I could spend everywhere in an imaginary land that I don't. [07:41] have to be confronted by. [07:43] It... [07:43] Like a bank account. Yeah, like a bank account. So anyway... [07:48] I get that. Change my mind. [07:53] I do think that's part of why it's taken off. Okay. Is because it plays to... [07:59] greed, it plays to vanity, it plays to all these things. Anyway, okay, so let's just go through the basics for people who maybe haven't [08:07] seen friend tech or...

[08:09] Maybe saw it, but didn't. [08:10] Partake. [08:11] There's many steps to how it works, so I'm just going to need you to bear with me while we go through it. Buckle up. First of all, you need an invite code from someone to get onto friend.tech. How did you get yours? [08:21] David Hoffman. He gave it to me. I asked him and then he said to me, [08:26] share for share or something like that which was you buy one share me i buy one share of you in exchange kind of as a joke in exchange for giving me oh okay okay but i got on and i was like i can't afford this man he's like four he's like five hundred dollars oh my gosh are you serious i think it wasn't at first when he was giving me that invite code but yeah now it's insane yeah david hoffman knew i was too poor [08:47] to give me the invite code. Okay, so get the invite code. [08:53] Then you go through this PWA, this progressive web app experience where you're like in Safari, you have to put it, [08:58] onto your homepage of your phone, a lot of people got tripped up there. The onboarding is kind of weird because of that. You connect your Twitter. It's really buggy at this point. I had to try and connect my Twitter like [09:09] five times and then the fifth time it worked and I didn't do anything differently. So, and that's the experience that a lot of people are having. Then you have to basically fill your wallet. [09:21] with ETH on base. [09:22] Okay. [09:23] This is an app that's built on base. Okay. And so you're transacting in ETH on base. [09:29] And then basically you're in and you're ready to [09:33] buy and sell shares. [09:35] of your friends [09:36] Or people that you... [09:38] Simp4. Okay. And then the real sort of unlock is that in buying their share you get dropped into a private

[09:48] chat with him. Okay. [09:50] and all of the other shareholders of this person. So there is some... [09:57] utility in... Quotes. There were air quotes just for the listener. There were air quotes, but if you were really [10:03] Jones and the pitch David Hoffman on something. [10:07] You could spend 500 bucks, get into his private chat room and maybe have a better chance of breaking through the noise of his inbox. [10:14] We need Pinky Doll on here. On Frontech. I would buy a share. Shares of her. Yeah. To pitch her on being the cover of the scene. [10:21] Obviously, your share price fluctuates based on supply and demand. So it's going up, it's going down based on if people are buying you or people are selling you. [10:30] There's two other things that [10:31] are coming into play [10:33] especially around its hyper growth. [10:36] The first one is that you get points, quote unquote points, for inviting people [10:40] And this all happens in a dedicated tab that's called airdrop. Okay. So we know that people in crypto go absolutely out of their mind for the hint of an airdrop. Yes. And it's playing to that very much by having your invite and referral be tied to this idea of an airdrop. And then the second thing is that you get 5% of your trading fees on your own shares. Okay. [11:10] So you're incentivized to be... [11:13] pushing yourself. So [11:16] That's the mechanics of it. Just to give you a sense of where things stand.

[11:19] I want to read off the going rate for a few people that we know, a few notable folks. David Hoffman, as I mentioned, 0.26 ETH, $470 right now. Okay. So we're in real degen crypto Twitter land here. That's also why it's so unappealing to me. [11:35] Yeah, the leaderboard is all the crypto. [11:40] I wouldn't call them Thinbois. I think I'd call them crypto influencers like Kobe and this person. Oh, my God. Okay. You'll remember Ben.eth was the person from... [11:52] the psyop token story yeah their share is going for fifteen hundred dollars 0.841 i know [11:58] It's insane. Steph Alindsig. [12:01] 0.012 ETH. Wow, Steph! [12:05] I own one share of staff, so I'm pumping my bags here. Blake Finucane just joined yesterday. So she's got some ground to make up, but she's at... [12:13] She's really affordable right now. Now's the time to ape into Blake. Buy, buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. Buy low, sell high. Blake's at $1.78. So a strong buy signal for Blake Finucane. Frentech has made over a million dollars in fees since launching. Wow. Yeah, it's going really well. So a few little criticisms. Onboarding is really buggy. It feels very beta-y, which like it's fine. There's no privacy policy. And then a tiny bit more context. And then I want to get your take, which was that we have seen this show before. Okay. [12:43] crypto Twitter. There's something called [12:45] BitClout that was very much a phenomenon of the 2020 era of the bull market. Very similar

[12:53] Conceptually, but BitCloud was a lot more focused on celebrities and influencers. Okay. So... [12:59] It was super buzzy. It raised over like 100, I think, 130 million dollars from top tier funds. Andreessen, Sequoia, Coinbase Ventures. Was it more like social token vibes? Yeah. So you buy Ariana Grande's token and buy Joe Rogan's token. [13:19] Red flag. I would love actually like an on-chain record of anybody who's a fan of Joe Rogan. [13:25] That would be really helpful going about my day in my life. [13:30] Yeah, so it wasn't it wasn't often. [13:34] they basically just scraped the... [13:36] Twitter. And they pulled in the top 1500 most popular Twitter accounts and they preloaded them into the app. And so you had things where it was like Ariana Grande was selling for AK and she didn't consent that they could use her likeness and basically be profiting off of... [13:52] this weird gambling casino environment that they set up. So it had a, [13:56] that as its fatal error seems seems pretty fundamental fundamental yeah there wasn't really anything to do there except for speculate i think one of the key differences with friend tech is that there is this chat utility yeah which i think is a good build yeah i think it's a good build so anyway bit cloud is no longer a thing but there's a lot of people on crypto twitter who are like we've seen this show before and it ended poorly but i do think that there's some differences

[14:26] for this one which was about this idea of bootstrapping community with incentives. [14:32] In this case, they're drawing people in with this idea of tokens and speculation, which plays to people's ego and greed and all these other things. But I think they're staying for the... [14:42] group chat. And so just to give credit to them, I think it's actually a really smart design strategy. Yeah. All that said, I think my big takeaway is that [14:50] It feels super dystopian and I think it's fun to experiment with it here and [14:56] amongst friends, but I would be really scared to think about what it would do to society at large if it was unleashed more broadly. Yeah. Like what's my like seven year old going to do with this? [15:09] Right. Mom's worth 12 bucks. [15:13] So anyway, that's my take. What's your take after hearing all that? I'm off two minds. There's one, there's part of me that loves a casino. [15:23] I just love it. [15:24] As you were talking, I was like, oh, this is why I love crypto. I was like... [15:28] I... [15:29] Love going to Vegas. [15:30] And this is... [15:33] Vegas. [15:34] On the blockchain. And that's fun and cool and sort of interesting. And there's something so natively internet about it that I love. [15:46] On the other hand, I hate the idea of having some sort of... [15:51] financial... [15:54] measurement [15:56] of

[15:57] Of your worth. My worth. And also by like the cast of characters that you laid out who are like really winning on this type of platform. Um. [16:06] And... [16:07] I don't see myself winning on this type of platform, which makes me feel like, [16:12] is there something wrong with me or is there something wrong with the platform? And I don't know. It sort of like gets me into, [16:19] in the headspace of... [16:21] There's other internet native platforms where women win, but they're primarily platforms where women are [16:27] objectified, even empowered in being objectified. [16:31] And... [16:33] Sex work is work. Like, it's not about that. I'm getting your take now. There's an unequal exchange of value when women are monetizing their... [16:42] themselves. They have to do more than what these dudes have to do. [16:46] on something like Front Tech. That feels like the reality. [16:50] This is forming in real time. So permission to say something that's wrong. Permission granted. Okay. There is... [16:59] sort of these well-worn paths on the internet [17:02] for... [17:04] individuals to monetize. [17:06] And those paths are... [17:08] are different. [17:10] depending on if you're a dude or if you're a woman. [17:13] - Thank you. [17:14] And this is huge, broad strokes. We're not... [17:18] talking about all experiences of the world, but high level. [17:23] You look at a lot of dudes who Joe Rogan, great example, other dudes that have monetized their own persona.

[17:32] online. [17:34] by [17:36] sharing their thoughts. [17:37] and experiences and that [17:40] has benefited them really well. [17:43] And there's a lot of dudes who it hasn't worked for, but there's a archetype of a type of person. [17:49] that has found a way to monetize. [17:52] for their own purpose. [17:54] persona online. [17:56] And I think what you're observing, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that Frentek is a tiny microcosm distillation of that type of dude who... [18:04] is able to monetize [18:06] Because he's an influencer and just kind of talk shit online. Talk shit online. Exactly. And that's happening. Then there's a well-worn path for women where... [18:17] You start an OnlyFan. [18:19] Or you are super hot and that grows your following on Instagram and you can... [18:25] use sponsorship to monetize spawn con spawn con [18:29] Fifty. [18:30] AG1, let's fucking go. Like, that's another... [18:34] path and everybody should do what they want to do. And I think there's good, [18:39] and bad examples of both of these lanes. It's not an observation of good or bad. It just feels like something like Frentech exacerbates that [18:48] reality of the internet. [18:50] In a very clear way to me. [18:53] And... [18:55] I'm not on there. Because it's all dudes on the leaderboard? Because it's all dudes on the leaderboard. And all they're doing is chatting with each other. And I don't know. That's maybe a hot take. I think it's just like anytime someone is monetizing for their persona...

[19:06] It demonstrates something about the Internet and demonstrates something about society and the way that we care about. [19:13] how we are perceived... [19:14] that [19:16] illuminates things that are problematic about it. Yeah. [19:19] I don't know. That's my feeling. Cool take. [19:22] Yeah. [19:22] So that's it. I like that take. Okay. I like that take. Cool. Anyway, I'm going to sit this one out. Honestly, just because I can't take it. I can't take... [19:30] the [19:32] Pressure. Price action on myself. [19:36] Huh. [19:36] Okay. Kraken is a crypto OG. They have more than 10 million clients around the world that trust them with their crypto needs. They're one of the largest crypto platforms out there with some of the highest security standards in the industry. So you can rest easy that your funds and your privacy are safe for the keeping. And if you need help along the way, as we all do sometimes, Kraken's award-winning client support team is available 24-7 every day of the year. [20:06] hit them up a few times with very dumb questions about our account and they were so nice and so patient. It just takes a few minutes to get started today at kraken.com backslash boys club. [20:16] Okay, feelings this week are a lot of feelings around... [20:21] pressure for growth. Yeah. [20:23] - Okay. [20:24] And... [20:27] that pressure for growth, there's a tension in that, which is that [20:33] the TAM [20:35] the total addressable market.

[20:37] for Boys Club. [20:38] in the current market. [20:40] is [20:42] pretty small in terms of [20:45] people, mostly women, who are [20:48] interested in [20:50] primarily crypto... [20:52] And... [20:54] Emerging tech, but mostly crypto and... [20:57] And... [20:59] relate to our... [21:02] kind of chaotic and unapologetically feminine worldview. And so the TAM for that type of person is constrained. I think that we can kind of see it. And I don't think that we've saturated it, but I think that we have a good handle on that market. Yeah. [21:18] And that's... [21:20] And the reason why it's constrained or rather that we can see sort of the ceiling on it is because... [21:26] Mostly because of the market. It sucks. And so new people aren't interested and excited and coming into the space. And so we're in community with the other people either deeply devoted to crypto, like really obsessed with it and love it and we love them. [21:41] and or they're working in this space. [21:43] I mean, we're like, [21:44] have a really strong network with those. [21:47] mostly women. And [21:50] I think for us as we're thinking about boys club as a business, [21:54] having a constraint on our [21:56] Tam [21:58] is a constraint on our business. And so... [22:02] were thinking a lot about [22:04] where growth... [22:05] can come from.

[22:07] And... [22:09] That means... [22:12] Either two things. [22:13] One. [22:15] building the TAM ourselves. [22:18] Block by block. Which I think block by block. Or two is moving into different categories. [22:25] to try and pull... [22:27] people into... [22:29] Boys Club and you have to do that by... [22:32] going adjacent to crypto... [22:34] to emerging tech and AI and [22:37] clean energy. I don't know that we'd ever go there, but like longevity. So there's a tension there. [22:44] Yeah. [22:45] - [22:46] Yeah, I think that there's... [22:50] a real value to... [22:54] doubling down on [22:56] Crypto? [22:57] And... [22:58] keeping a niche... [23:00] in this space and trying to grow the interest base for that type of content. [23:06] and that type of learning and community and experience and whatever, um, [23:10] My hope is that we can do that while we're collecting some other stuff on the fringes that make sense. And it's actually, yes, maybe... [23:19] Maybe crypto and emerging technology, but also like... [23:22] There's a persona of Boys Club... [23:25] that [23:26] is a fuller expression of a type of person than just their interest in crypto. That I think we can really naturally [23:35] explore and... [23:37] create content around and pull people in and like memes are a great example of that and

[23:42] how we're experimenting on different social platforms around like internet culture more generally. Um, [23:48] I think is like a really... [23:49] natural and native way for us to try to grow and expand our audience. [23:55] But I think that that's the thing that's keeping me up at night the most is how do we grow the audience around Boys Club in... [24:02] a way that feels authentic and true to us and true to our audience, our existing audience. And, and, [24:11] It's tough because... And doesn't stray from... [24:15] too far from our core, which is crypto. Exactly. [24:18] Exactly. And the stakes feel higher and higher, the bigger and bigger your audience gets where you're like, whoa, every single little adjustment, every single test, everything that we're doing in public. [24:29] feels significant to us. And like, of course, no one's paying as close attention to everything we're doing as we are. So we're like so ever present to all of it. [24:37] But I do think there's something that [24:43] with every decision, uh, [24:46] it has an impact. And... [24:48] Obviously, you're hoping that that impact is [24:50] in the right direction. [24:52] But... [24:53] It's tough to not feel like you might alienate people when you expand the conversation to other things. Yeah. But also that might not be the right growth strategy to expand into other conversations. Totally. It might... [25:05] like that strategically could [25:08] not [25:10] not be right. Totally. Or I'm listening to...

[25:13] The Nike episode of Acquired. It's very long. They do not pay her. They don't pay her as much as she talks about it. She's not sponsored by Acquired. [25:21] We're not supposed to be acquired, but they're talking about how... [25:25] And this is a hilariously disproportionate example that I'm going to tell right now that is the delusions of grandeur that we would have to think that we're even majorly to Lulu. But I think it is. I don't know. It's kind of an interesting story. [25:43] And... [25:45] totally just say just just come out okay but i just feel so dumb it's fine everybody knows the origin story okay okay [25:52] Okay. Okay. So they're talking about, uh, [25:56] the origins of Nike and a big part of the story was about this running coach who was at Oregon who joined forces with Phil Knight to start Nike. And when they first started Nike in the 60s or whatever, [26:09] No one ran. Yeah. [26:11] exercise even in that way and in particular running wasn't [26:16] a thing. There wasn't even the word for jogging. Yeah. And then... [26:20] This dude, the coach who... [26:24] who partnered with Phil Knight to build Nike, he wrote this now iconic book about [26:28] running... [26:30] as exercise and jogging and it started this movement in America around jogging and running as fitness for pleasure, not necessarily because you're [26:41] Training for a marathon. Training for a marathon or professional athlete. It was this reframing of the idea that everyone's an athlete and...

[26:49] you can run for all sorts of different reasons, endorphins, fitness for fun or whatever it is. And that's what we're doing for crypto. They grew the Tam. They grew the Tam. They grew the, they created the Tam. Yeah. They created the Tam of running shoes by creating this movement around running. And, [27:04] Yeah, I mean, it's... [27:06] again, hilarious and not at all proportionate, but when I'm thinking about us and... [27:11] RTAM [27:14] There it is. The act of building it. [27:16] actually is a lot [27:18] more powerful if you're able to do that. Yeah. Then dipping into other things. [27:22] categories of conversation to try and pull people in. I love that. That totally makes sense. I think one other thing that I'll say about this is that [27:31] We have tried and we don't know that it feels natural to us. Like we did the episode of the AI podcast and it's a lot harder and maybe we'll keep doing that. And that's an active conversation, but yeah, [27:43] to [27:44] Bring the boys club. [27:46] flavor [27:48] to something. [27:49] which is funny and irreverent and, [27:52] deeply feminine and a very distinct voice and point of view, you really have to like know the content and be in it. We deeply know skincare. We deeply know crypto. We deeply know pop culture. These are areas that are like natural and funny and fun for us to play in because... [28:09] They are... [28:10] woven into the fabric of who we are. And it's really, really hard to do that in areas that you aren't quite as comfortable, or you're trying to figure it out, or you're learning, or you're not in it every day and living and breathing it. And that is something that we've been confronted with on the AI.

[28:27] conversation is [28:30] it requires like an immersion into the thing to have your own spin and personality and boys club. [28:36] worldview on it. And if we can't show up fully in the way that we want to as boys club in these other areas, [28:44] it's going to not land. It's going to not land. Totally. But after what you just said, I'm like, we just got to grow the Tam. [28:51] We just got to go with Tam. [28:54] Okay. Okay. Right. Dina, where are we going to be in September? We are going to be at Permissionless in Austin, Texas. Permissionless too. It's happening. And we're curating the culture track for the conference. So if you're into the stuff we talk about here, you should come and have a good time with us. So email your boss. [29:13] Tell them that you need to go and buy your ticket now. They will never be as cheap as they are today. And we also have a promo code in our Discord for Boys Club members. Come hang in Austin. [29:26] Friends. [29:28] This is where we make an ask. We're in our call to action era. It's CTA times. Rate and review this podcast. Subscribe to our newsletter. And if you're feeling extra generous... [29:40] Send it to one friend. Thank you for listening. We love you. Bye.