Ep 132: Creators, Subscriptions and The Money of It All with Jonny Mack, Hypersub

[00:01] Welcome to Boys Club Interviews. This is a show where we bring on people much smarter than us to talk about the new internet. 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. Just Boys Club. Hello. Hey. Welcome to Boys Club. This is a podcast where we sometimes bring on smart people to talk about stuff that's [00:30] Sometimes we talk about our feelings and sometimes we report on what's happening in the internet news. [00:39] Crisp one liner there on what we're doing. We got some feedback. That was actually a really useful feedback. That was like, you should at the start of every podcast... [00:48] say what the podcast is and sort of set some expectations for what [00:52] you guys are doing and who you are and so that's our attempt to do that i don't i don't know that we i don't know that it was a slam dunk [00:59] Yeah, it needs work. It needs work. We had on a great guest today, Johnny Mac, founder of HyperSub, really smart dude thinking about creators, monetization of content. [01:14] on chain content, dare I say, on chain subscriptions. [01:19] But it was a great conversation. Ranged from OnlyFans... [01:23] two, [01:25] Google ads. [01:29] Part of what I enjoyed about the conversation, what I've been thinking about since we've got off the call was that there are a lot of people who are thinking about and talking about media, the media business more generally, not even separate from Web3 and on-chain stuff.

[01:55] and experimentation that's happening, which is great. One thing I really appreciated about Johnny and what they're doing is just really eyes wide open on... [02:05] what on-chain media needs to look like in order for it to be at all interesting on a consumer level. And I feel like that gets lost in a lot of conversations, especially in Crypto and Web 3 when they're like, on-chain media, on-chain media. I'm like, there's a big piece that's missing around why normal people outside of the crypto community would care. And so I feel like that was addressed in the conversation. Yeah, totally. I edited this one. And you... [02:32] Come at you. Come at him. [02:35] you really you don't let him off the hook i was like wow dina's kind of on one you want to know what it is uh caris swisher [02:42] nice i'm taking some cues from kara swisher what would kara swisher do well also part of what she said when we had kara swisher on the podcast last week if you have not listened to it go listen to it [02:51] Look at me, cross promotion. [02:54] Please subscribe to this channel if you enjoy these podcasts while we're here. But one of the things she said, which is a lesson that I'm taking, is... [03:02] People who are confident and self-assured and [03:06] not insecure. Yeah. [03:08] when you push them on things, they react [03:12] Like, I think she told an anecdote about Jon Stewart where she was saying that she was like, you're hey, Jon Stewart, you become irrelevant. And he was like, yeah, you're kind of right. I have and whatever. And it was like a totally civil, productive conversation. And even though she was pushing on something that like for someone who was a really insecure, they would have maybe crumbled or been really defensive in the face of that. And she was like, she's she was just going to shoot him straight.

[03:35] Mm-hmm. [03:35] And he took it straight and... Totally. I think what she said in that was, [03:41] People who are confident and who are self-assured, as you're saying, when you say a truth that they're already thinking and already wondering if people are thinking about them, it's a relief. [03:53] Yes. Someone wants to hear that. And I think Johnny in this example is someone who's already thinking about the problems that exist within the business. And so to just put them out on the table and look at them and just discuss them in a productive, optimistic way. [04:08] I think he enjoyed. I think he did too. And also like he got on the call and I looked him in the eye and I was like, this is a dude that can handle it. And also like you're saying like, [04:16] He's a pragmatic founder type, [04:19] And he has been all around all of these problems day and night for the last six months. So – [04:25] That's why I felt like I could. And I guess not in every conversation, I maybe wouldn't feel comfortable, but I felt that. But I don't maybe did I was too much? I don't know. You're gonna have to listen and tell me. Hey, Natasha. So a question we get asked a lot is what do you look for in a crypto platform? So let's talk about it. Well, Dina, I look for a secure, no fuss platform that I can dive into right away. That's why I love today's sponsor Kraken. If you're waiting for the

[04:55] Plus, if you get stuck, they have an award-winning client support team that's available 24-7, along with a bunch of educational guides, articles, and videos to help you along the way. [05:25] legal backslash disclosures. Today's guest is Johnny Mack. Johnny is working right now on HyperSub, which is all about NFT subscriptions for creators, just generally working in and around creators and Web3. That's what he's thinking about all the time. So that's what we're going to be talking about today on the show. Welcome, Johnny. Thank you so much. I'm a huge fan of the [05:52] during an FTNYC and just had such a great conversation about building and the stages of our businesses. So excited to have you on. There's a lot for us to talk about. Many of the creators that are using HyperSub, we are big fans of. And so it's going to be a good conversation here. [06:08] So I will say, [06:09] Both Dina and I are coming in kind of skeptical. I'd say deeply skeptical. I'm deeply skeptical. Great. Great. Around subscriptions, around making money on chain generally, especially as a creator. So we're sort of like the change my mind meme. Do you know this one where the guy's like standing outside and he's got a poster that says change my mind? Of course. Yes. So that's a little bit where we're coming into this conversation. Sure. But also, obviously, we're working in media.

[06:39] businesses all day long. This is sort of the wave of new media is really anchored in this idea of subscriptions where creators really love it. But consumers, I don't know that they would say they love it. They do. [06:51] you know, subscribe to Substacks and Patreons and all these different various forms of subscriptions. So anyway, we're aware of sort of that tension. And then, of course, there's the Web3 element. So we'd love to get your take on the state of subscription businesses generally, what you think of sort of that model. And then we can go from there on on some of these other questions we have around it. Yeah, great. No, I love it. I'm somewhat skeptical myself. Like, I think that part of [07:16] what makes [07:17] building, I don't know, fun is you're constantly [07:21] taking an optimistic view and a pessimistic view [07:23] So I guess. [07:25] I share that [07:27] skepticism, just subscriptions and just even being on chain at all. It's a question that I constantly think about, which is like, why? [07:34] Why do something on chain? What's materially different about what we're doing, say, to [07:39] Patreon. And you can ask this question about almost every Web3 product. It's like, why do we need lens and workcasts when we have [07:47] Twitter? Why do we need Zora when we have whatever, Tumblr or [07:52] Facebook or whatever analogy you wanna make, on and on. [07:56] For me... [07:57] The thing... [07:58] like the real material differences between [08:02] on-chain subscriptions and off-chain, it really comes down to two things, which is that the subscriber data is public. [08:08] by virtue of the fact that it's on chain, and then the membership credential is public.

[08:13] And from these two differences flows, I think, like a whole new-- [08:16] world of [08:18] possibilities, possible interactions and [08:21] I'll give you an example. [08:23] Ted, our mutual friend, Ted, she has Club Ted, and [08:28] It's what I just call a membership club. So she does... [08:31] members-only poker nights. She does IRL events, dinners, [08:35] She has a very, very active group chat with a lot of amazing people in it. [08:39] that [08:40] are sharing kind of what they're working on, things they're thinking about. It's just a [08:45] It's become a kind of tight knit community [08:48] of folks who work in crypto and [08:52] What's been interesting to see is that there's these sort of like permissionless collaborations that have happened. [08:58] with artists and [09:00] potentially with brands as well. [09:02] And that's happened completely [09:04] outside of [09:05] of Hypersub. [09:07] That would have been very difficult to do if we were organized and oriented as kind of a Web2 company, because it would have been highly permissioned. [09:14] In order to even find out who the subscribers are, [09:17] in order to find out [09:19] how long they've been subscribed, how much money they've put into the system. [09:23] even to get access to the creator. [09:25] That's the other kind of novel piece about the NFT is that it creates this kind of direct economic relationship between [09:32] producer and consumer. [09:33] Whereas I think a lot of the Web2 platforms, they tell you, hey, this is your audience, but it's not really the creator's audience. It's the platform's audience.

[09:43] The platform owns the audience, the platform owns the payment rails. [09:46] And so I think creators are just in kind of a low leverage situation and they're typically pretty constrained on the kinds of things that they can do. [09:55] With the NFT, they're kind of emancipated from the platform. So that NFT contract is owned by Ted. That's hers. [10:01] she could do whatever she wants with it, and she has. And some of that has been kind of within and with HyperSub, and some of it, some of it's been completely outside of HyperSub. And so it's like, [10:11] When I think about this frontier that we're on, [10:14] and like where it's going, it's in that direction. It's where there's more creator autonomy, there's more creator agency and they can, [10:21] They can have they can create like novel experiences. [10:25] that they kind of can't do today because they're gated on what the platform supports. How does that land? It totally lands. And I think that it paints a really optimistic picture and future. And I would love to see that world. I think what comes up for me is that [10:41] One, it feels... [10:42] small, it feels like I don't know that there's enough [10:45] money in that ecosystem to, I think it's great for creators like Ted. And I think there's, I'm sure there's some great examples of folks that are making money [10:53] And I actually do want to get into the details of the nuts and bolts of that. But I think the other thing that comes up for me in that explanation is that I feel as though subscriptions and subscription based businesses are businesses and creators love them because they're not. [11:10] they represent consistent revenue. And when you're looking at a P&L, when you're looking at your sort of business and projection and forecasting, like, great, I love subscriptions, right? It's money in every month and I can count on it. And of course, there's churn and...

[11:22] but it's something that every business honestly is seeking out. It's kind of the Holy Grail. I [11:28] and just always wanting to put ourselves in the consumer... [11:31] shoes, especially when it comes to looking at and evaluating Web3 native businesses, because I do think that consumers love them less. I think that subscription fatigue is [11:42] real [11:43] I do, as a company, subscribe to a few sub stacks. And there's a few things that we subscribe to. But honestly, with every new subscription that I'm making, I'm like, I'm the meme that's like, I don't know how many more subscriptions I have. I'm like, the tired guy. Yeah, let me speak to that. So I know you guys are a big fan of Acquired. I am too. One episode that I think-- [12:04] it's like the best is Costco. [12:07] The best. The best episode in the history podcast. So good. Oh my God. You just gave Dina a window to do her favorite thing in the world, which is talk about the Costco acquired episode. So I'm like the guy with like his hand around the back of the neck of the girl at the party or the baseball game. And I'm like caught, you know, like the acquired episode of Costco. Me too. I'm that guy to everybody. The thing that's... [12:32] that's struck like that, that just struck me so much with that episode is they constantly go back to this idea of outsized member benefit. [12:40] and how the whole business is oriented around driving value to that membership. There's so much more margin to make more margins. They have so much more headroom to charge more. [12:51] and they don't because they want to continue creating value for the membership.

[12:55] Why? Because that's where all that's where the massive margins are. That's the real business. [13:00] And the thing that inspired me about that is, it created kind of a framework for me to see what we're doing, which is like, [13:06] So what I like to say is like our success is path dependent. The very first person who needs to get value is the subscriber. [13:12] They need to get outsized value. [13:14] It's not like, oh, I get to read your blog or listen to your music or whatever. They need [13:18] really, really outsized value. [13:22] If that's happening, they will continue to pay into the subscription, and that will make creators happy. [13:27] So if you have very, very happy subscribers, you're going to have happy creators. And if we have happy subscribers and creators, then of course, [13:33] We're going to be happy. [13:35] So to me, [13:36] And this is why I really like Ted's [13:39] membership because she gets this and she she creates that value and people continue to pay in. [13:44] Others, other creators on HyperSub understand this as well, but like [13:49] If that's not happening, people are going to churn and the whole thing falls apart. [13:54] So, [13:55] I will be... [13:56] candid and say, like, we're in the very early innings of this and we'll see. One of the features we're going to actually launch tomorrow is MRR churn and renewals. Churn and renewals are just the inverse of each other. [14:08] But to me, this is like [14:09] where the rubber meets the road. [14:11] of the people that have minted subscriptions, [14:14] How many of them [14:16] Re-Mint. [14:17] how many of them stay versus how many of them churn? Because that's the ultimate score. That's what determines if whether or not you're creating value. [14:24] So this is why I'm also so like,

[14:27] bullish on this sort of like permissionless collaboration. [14:30] interoperability between all these systems so that you can offer [14:34] unique experiences across platforms. [14:37] These are the kinds of things that we're going to have to do in order to create outsized member benefits. [14:42] The other thing I'd say is that like, [14:44] I don't know if like individual creators are going to be the canonical units. You know, it might be where you have these, you know, [14:53] almost like emergent labels or like collections, you know, where, and there's a couple of people doing this now. There's one called Artcaster and it's this guy on Farcaster and he basically just, [15:04] works with a different artist every single month. [15:06] And it's called Artcaster. You subscribe to it and then you get a unique NFT every single month. So you could imagine similar kinds of like curatorial subscriptions emerging where it's not an individual person. It's the taste of like one or many people. It's really interesting you said that. There's a few things that you said in there that I want to dig into. First, when you were talking about Costco. [15:25] One of the things that you said that I think is a challenge for a lot of people, you said the real business is the membership. And they had to get to that's where the margins are. That's where the core, the heartbeat of that business is. And that's what laser focus they need to make sure continues month over month, essentially, and is growing month over month. And I think for a lot of both individual creators and... [15:46] businesses like ours, [15:48] A lot of what we're doing every single day is asking ourselves, where's the real business here? Like, where's the moneymaker? Where's the thing that's pumping revenue to everything else? And I think that's a real challenge for a lot of people to get to because there's so much noise around signaling of where else there could be money. That's like one thought I had. The other thing that I think that was really interesting that you said that we've actually been talking about recently is...

[16:11] the idea of [16:12] as Boys Club and as [16:14] content creators, like one lane for us is content creation. And then the other lane for us is curation. What are we interested in? What are we reading? Who do we want to highlight? How and how do those things sort of have [16:25] a relationship to one another that is beneficial to the bottom line of the business. And I do think that's where some of the on-chain magic can happen, where [16:36] referral incentives, stuff that you guys are doing, stuff that Zora is doing, starts to have this really interesting effect to actual revenue for the business. So, [16:44] I'd love to better understand [16:46] the referral mechanisms that you guys are building and sort of also just zooming out like the broader [16:51] ecosystem of referrals that is possible because of on-chain attribution and if we could just dig into that a little bit. [16:57] Yep. Awesome. Yeah. I mean, I think it's the fundamental question for all of a business is like, what's the thing? What is the, what's the goose that lays the golden egg? [17:06] When I worked at Google, there were all kinds of different businesses and everybody was very clear. [17:13] This is all subsidized by ads. [17:16] Ads is the goose that lays the golden egg. So there were a lot of teams that were like free to do whatever they wanted and could iterate. And then if you worked on ads, [17:23] It was just like, [17:24] don't touch it. Just like don't move anything. [17:29] So I guess when I think about that, I would say [17:33] home in on the thing that scales, like home in on the thing that's going to make money while you sleep and home in on the thing [17:39] that [17:41] has the biggest margins.

[17:42] And I don't think it's any accident actually that Costco landed on the membership. Like the margins on the membership are... [17:49] I mean, the acquired guy is just, it's like orgasmic the way that they describe it. You know, they're like these margins, they're like 99, they're like better than SAS margins. [17:57] And so I think subscriptions, on-chain subscriptions, have those properties. You know, it's relative to say doing events, [18:04] doing publications, doing lots of other things where you're kind of trading hours for dollars in a lot of ways. It's really hard to scale. Totally. [18:12] subscriptions, [18:13] you know, [18:14] That's way less the case. As far as referrals, rewards, these are the kind of two unique mechanisms we have for sharing some of the upside. So, [18:24] Referrals are on-chain referrals. They're very much like Web2 referrals. The difference is that the payouts happen at mint time and there's no platform sweeps. There's no net 30, net 60. There's it's not trusted, anything like that. Basically the creator of a hyper sub subscription NFT decides. [18:45] what they want to reward to people who refer subscribers, and it might be [18:51] It might be 2% of the subscription purchase. It might be 20%. It's completely up to them. [18:58] So let's say Alice says she's going to give 10% to a referrer. [19:02] Uh, [19:02] Bob shares Alice's referral link with Charlie. Charlie then uses the link to mint. He mints $100 worth of time on the NFT. [19:11] Alice gets 90%.

[19:12] Bob gets 10. That happens immediately at mint time. The money just streams into Bob's wallet. So I refer a lot of people in HyperSub. If you can go and look at the internal transactions on my wallet, there's just money flowing in. [19:25] pretty frequently. [19:26] That's how that works. Subscriber rewards [19:29] is another kind of novel sort of crypto [19:33] mechanism wherein the creator [19:36] can allocate a percentage of the revenue that they're willing to share with [19:42] the subscribers themselves. So for example, let's say Alice says, I'm going to share 10% of all my revenue with everybody who subscribes. [19:51] So that goes into an on-chain pool. And so every $100 that flows into the subscription contract, 10 goes into a pool. [19:59] The question is, [20:00] How does that $10 get distributed? [20:03] And the way that we configured this for V1 [20:07] is that [20:09] the earlier you subscribe and the longer period of time you subscribe for, [20:13] the larger your percentage ownership of that pool will be. [20:18] So this is to incentivize people to subscribe early because they get this big multiplier on the ownership and for a long period of time. [20:27] In V2, [20:28] this will be configurable by the creator. [20:31] So, [20:32] This operates a little bit like a bonding curve, not in terms of the price, but in terms of the exposure. [20:39] It's not because it's not tradable. [20:42] but it has a similar property, which is that it pays to be early.

[20:46] Now, the creator themselves will get to decide what that means. Is early like the first month or is it the first year? That's up for them to decide. [20:55] The way that I think about these is like fundamentally these are distribution budgets. [21:01] If there's some creator that are like, [21:03] I'm going to share like [21:04] 0%. [21:05] or 2%, and I'm not going to give any referral rewards at all. [21:10] That's fine. They don't need the distribution. They don't they don't have this need to bootstrap. Maybe they already have distribution elsewhere. [21:17] But for those who are like, [21:18] oh, yeah, I want to make this more of a community thing. And I really want to incentivize people to share. And I want to and I want to cut people in on the upside of this project. [21:27] in a way that they're now incentivized to see it grow. [21:31] then they can absolutely do that. [21:32] again, going back to how is this really different from [21:36] the Web 2 alternatives, I'd say that's like another [21:39] novel kind of mechanism. What came up for me and you talking about that is that you need to hit the OnlyFans [21:45] - You girls, let's bring it up. - That's where the money seems to be. Mostly because it's like, [21:54] you're looking for [21:55] like zealots, like you're looking for like real connection. [21:59] with that creator. Anyway, so that might be a conversation for another podcast. But I do want to... [22:06] Girls Club. [22:07] that's where the real business is okay so one thing that maybe we have told you in the past but we've never at boys club have never done a membership fee it's something that

[22:22] basically comes up in every conversation when we're having sort of strategic conversations. People are like, you should do a membership NFC or you should do a membership... [22:28] you should have membership be built into sort of your experience of voice club. And we've never done that. We've never charged anyone any money. [22:35] for being a part of boys club and [22:38] um, [22:39] part of the reason why was [22:42] it felt like as soon as you charged folks money for being a part of boys club, [22:47] the expectations and the relationship with the people in the community change. [22:51] And they're [22:53] is [22:54] Um, [22:55] you kind of like you're [22:57] your... [22:58] jumping on a treadmill to provide that value. What you said in my first question, it's like, it all comes back to subscriber value and making sure that the subscriber or the consumer feels an outsized value in their subscription. And it's like, for [23:10] for Boys Club were like the outsized value. What does that mean? That means just more and more and more and more and more. And I think that I could anticipate a world if we were to do something like a subscription or a membership for Boys Club that [23:24] I'd start to feel really burnt out where you're always on the back foot and always trying to be like, okay, how are we, people are going to be happy, how are we going to give more value, more value for value. And like, I'm such a people pleaser. And I'm like, I just want everyone to feel happy. And I wouldn't ever want anyone to feel happy. [23:38] bad or like we've ripped them off. Like that's, that's always what I've had. Like so many antibodies around that we just could never even entertain it. And so I'm wondering if like creator individual crater burnout, [23:50] happens. I could see when you're talking about like sort of more collectives and them doing subscription that that makes a lot of sense to me where

[23:58] I'm like, okay, there's a lot of people who are pouring into this thing. And yeah, just wondering if you've encountered that. I feel like I'm in like debate class. I'm like keeping little notes. [24:09] These are such good questions. One thing I say is. [24:12] that [24:14] whatever you offer in a hypersub, it should integrate into your existing workflow. It should not be new work. [24:19] It should, like I said, it should integrate to what you're already doing. [24:22] I get really nervous when people are like, I'm going to do all these new things for my hyper sub subscribers. I'm like, no, no, don't do that. [24:31] Just if you make art, [24:32] and you're publishing art frequently, [24:35] than just under promise and over deliver. Julie, Crystal Spaceship, she's an illustrator, and Branson, [24:41] salon, oxen. [24:43] These are people who just keep it very simple. [24:46] You know, it's essentially three things. It's a monthly subscriber edition, which is. [24:51] It's not an open edition and it's not a limited edition. [24:54] It's a piece that has an addition size commensurate with a number of active subscribers in any given month. But it's one piece of art. It's a raffle for a one of one. [25:02] And it's a group chat. [25:03] That's it. [25:04] It's those three things. And Oxen was basically the first user we had [25:08] And he's just been chugging along. [25:11] doing that every month, easy peasy. [25:13] He does lots and lots of other things. It's a fairly low lift for him. [25:17] And he's made... [25:19] something like $100,000 on HyperSub. [25:22] So... [25:23] Wow. To me, to me, this is. Dina's sold. Dina's like, wait, let's dig into, what does that look like month on month?

[25:29] I mean, you don't have to say him exactly if we don't want to talk about his business, but what are you seeing averages-wise? [25:35] Yeah, yeah. So let me come back to that because all this is public. It's all on Dune. We can all go and slice and dice it. And I want to do that. But like, I think what you've brought up is like such an important point that like, and it's actually like an existential risk to what we're doing. We have to be doing a better job of like getting this out in terms of playbooks. [25:53] guides, like how to make the most of this. We just launched this accelerator program. This is going to be a big piece of what we're driving home. It has to be sustainable. I think a lot of it depends on the framing. Nick from UFO thinks of their hyper sub as like an NPR. [26:07] kind of supporter pass which is we're just doing our thing we're going to keep doing our thing it's free for everybody we don't want to gate any of this we want to continue to maximize distribution [26:17] And if you want to support us, you can and we're going to give you a little bit extra stuff. You're going to maybe get a shirt, maybe you'll get a zine, some stickers, some art, some NFT drops, maybe other people. [26:29] will want to do some stuff for you. They'll want to do targeted offers and discounts for you because they know you're a UFO. You have a UFO supporter pass. [26:36] that sort of thing. I love that framing. It prevents them from falling into the trap that you've described, which is I got to do all this stuff or people are going to be pissed. The framing is, hey, look, just like NPR, you know, you're going to get a fucking tote bag and a t-shirt at the end of the year. You know what I mean? And we'll throw some stickers at you, but we're going to just keep doing our thing. Yeah.

[26:54] And I think that that unlocks some blatant demand. Like I'm a big Boys Club fan. I'd be like, hell yeah, I'm totally down to give you guys like 100 bucks a year or whatever. And I don't expect a whole lot from it, but I just like what you're doing. And I want-- I mean, I remember for a few years in New York, you'd walk around New York City. Everybody had that fucking New Yorker tote bag with the type. You know? Yeah. I was like, how do you get one of those? You got to be a subscriber. It becomes this like status thing. I completely agree with what you're saying. [27:20] That exists, that's a risk. [27:22] But I don't think that's like, [27:24] the only possible outcome. It depends a lot on how you design it and how you think about it. All right. [27:29] Money. Money. Yeah, Dune. [27:32] Dune.com slash fabric slash protocol. Okay. It's time for a more open, inclusive, and transparent financial system. A system that serves nearly everyone, everywhere, all the time. That's why we love today's sponsor, Kraken. Kraken is a crypto platform that provides a super simple on-ramp to the world of crypto with a 24-7 support team. Crypto transcends physical and imaginary borders. No matter where you are, you can send funds easily and quickly to almost any part of the world. Plus, forget about waiting times and waiting lines. [28:02] So since, let's say since mid-November,

[28:31] We've paid out [28:32] 115 [28:34] and change 115 ETH. [28:37] So that's [28:39] $350,000 about. [28:41] In the last... [28:43] - However many months. - Five months. [28:44] Yeah. The vast majority of that [28:47] Well, I don't know, actually. I was going to say a lot of that is auxin, but it's not. We should see a distribution of that. [28:54] An oxen is an individual creator. [28:56] Yeah, he's an artist. He was the first, he's the longest, and he's done some kind of big collections, what would have become big collections in the Farcaster ecosystem. [29:05] Cool. We've paid out just under 10 ETH to subscribers themselves. And then we've paid out... [29:11] 1.2 [29:12] to seven in referrals, which [29:15] The other dashboard I look at a lot is the 0xROB referral rewards market. [29:21] on Dune. [29:23] that tracks [29:24] us, boost, Zora, sound, paragraph. [29:29] base paint. And if you look at our referral reward, it's pretty much it's more than everyone else's combined. And the reason why is because the purchase price is so much higher. So the average subscription purchase is point oh five. [29:45] Okay, so there's money. There's a little bit of money. But what do we feel like is needed for this to feel big? Like you're clearly in early stage founder mode, you're looking for product market fit, you have some really good signals as evidenced by the student dashboard. And I think some of the more anecdotal stuff that you've told us, I know you're looking for a big business. What are the hurdles that you're seeing?

[30:07] besides some of the stuff that you've talked about earlier. [30:09] creators, those are the value creators in the whole system. You have to have people that are creating novel experiences, [30:16] that are providing outsized member benefit, you know, like [30:20] You have to have that. And so it's like we talk about having our Beeple moment. You know, it's like Alexander, who is on our team, used to work at OpenSea. And he talks about how OpenSea went from basically something that just nobody cared about to just being huge. And there were these series of moments where it was like everything would like... [30:38] 50x overnight, and then it would happen again and again and again. [30:42] And I think we need those moments. And I think the only way that we're going to get them is from... [30:49] like just legit creators doing legit shit. From an outsider's perspective, it seems like you've nailed a crypto native... [30:57] creator. [30:58] here who's working and already worked in and around NFTs and has probably trained their community to understand NFTs and that whole flow and transaction and all that good stuff. [31:07] there's, [31:08] Let's talk about the OnlyFans. [31:10] Ah, yeah, yeah, like what's the the hurdle for? [31:16] and guys and all genders. Whomever. It's girls. It's mostly girls. Let's be honest. What's the path for getting outside of this crypto thing? I do wanted to say one thing really quick that I've learned about OnlyFans as a business. Like, [31:32] Hand over fist. [31:34] incredible business making insane amount of money.

[31:38] untouchable in terms of getting out of that business like essentially no bank will ipo that business ever yeah they will not touch it with a 10-foot bowl and any money like saudi money russia [31:51] No one's going to touch that. [31:52] Because [31:53] you are opening up a surface area for insane risk around [31:58] illicit behavior that's not [32:00] Hot girls. So I just want to say [32:03] I could understand from your perspective, you being like, I actually don't want to build around e-girls because that's a business that I can't exit. I think there's a huge risk with that. Like, I thought it was funny when they were doing like a big push to get people non-e-girls. [32:17] adult entertainment comedians and stuff yeah and i was just like oh my god you guys like that ship has sailed like you know this is actually something that again going back to like when i when i worked at google i remember telling my mother-in-law that i worked there and she was like what do you do it's just it's just like a search page what do you mean you're a designer there like [32:37] what, you know, like maps and Gmail. And she had like no idea that Google made those things. I think pigeonholing is real. Like it's very, very, very easy to get pigeonholed into something. I mean, we see this all the time, even in crypto. [32:51] So I think that is that's the Hotel California of categories, which is you can go there, you can support it. But once you do that, I think you're. [33:01] you can't come back. You can't. Totally. Okay. Let's setting aside. Move on. Yeah. Let's setting aside them. I think even just, I guess my, my point in that was more like not crypto native communities or creators. So, so from a product perspective, I think that there's a few things that we need to do.

[33:17] in order to credibly claim having a user experience that's on par with any Web 2 [33:22] kind of counterpart. So like right now, if you go to a big creator and you can pitch them on better economics and on all this stuff, and I think at the end of it, they're gonna be like, you know what? Yeah, but there's this crypto onboarding problem that you really haven't solved yet. And I'm not gonna [33:36] I'm not going to have my audience [33:39] go into this cesspool of crypto. I'm not doing that. Totally. So the way that we're thinking about this is [33:44] And this is literally what we're going to be doing in the next, basically this quarter, which is first thing is monthly recurring credit card payments. [33:51] Second thing is cross-chain, cross-currency payments. So you just pay with whatever you have. It doesn't matter the [33:57] You don't have to bridge, you don't have to swap, you don't have to do this bullshit. Third thing is passkey wallets. So I created a Google account recently and it didn't ask me for a password. It asked me to create a passkey and banks are doing this now. A lot of companies are just going straight to passkeys. [34:14] Well, so are, so is crypto. So are the embedded wallet services. [34:19] So there's this convergence happening between these Web2 and Web3 worlds. [34:23] on account creation and it's oriented around passkeys. In other words, [34:27] If you ask an end user to create a passkey, that does not feel like a crypto thing anymore. It feels just like an account creation thing on the internet. What is a passkey? It's a stored on device. And so it's how you authenticate a user using it with the device. [34:44] Yeah. Yeah. I just spun up a rainbow wallet and that's all I used. And it was so like seamless. You don't have to futz around with a seed phrase. You don't, it's, you don't have to do any of that stuff. It's just like, it just works. So that's short term. Then the final thing, once those are done is we'll completely scrub the site and the brand. I mean, our brand stuff is kind of a mess as we were talking about earlier.

[35:08] will completely scrub all of that of any mention of the word NFT or crypto or whatever. [35:13] And so I think once that work is done and it'll be done this quarter, we'll be able to credibly claim that we're a peer to these other sort of creator platforms and there's no sort of crypto UX tax. [35:26] that you've historically had to pay. I think that's been the trade-off, which is like, hey, we have these better economics and we have this [35:32] these better primitives, but [35:35] The UX is... [35:36] a tire fire. [35:37] I believe strongly that once we have these things shipped, [35:41] that, you know, we'll be able to say it's not, it's on par. Like if you just walk through the account creation process, say us in a Patreon, like it's, it's as good. If you walk through the payment process, it's as good. For me, the crown jewel is I want someone to use HyperSub and to love HyperSub. [35:58] but who has a passionate hatred of crypto. [36:00] Once we achieve that, I'll be like, okay, we did our jobs. Yeah. Yeah. Amazing. I, this was such a fun conversation and I feel like I... [36:09] I'm slowly getting [36:10] Pilled. I'm like, okay, maybe, maybe, maybe there's something here for Boys Club. I think there's definitely, definitely a really interesting business that you're building. I think it's more like, we've always been like, huh, is there something for Boys Club? And yeah, anyway, I'm feeling convinced. And I just love the way that you think about these things. I think you have a really good sense of... [36:30] real people and actual problems that exist in the world and relating that back to the tooling. And it's always really fun to talk to people in this space who have eyes wide open on that problem, because it is rare. So thank you so much for coming on. Excited to have this episode out and excited to see what you continue to build.

[36:48] I really appreciate it. It's been great. I loved all the questions and the skepticism and pushing back. It helps me think. [36:57] better, deeper thoughts. So thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. [37:01] Thanks, Johnny.