Greg’s an entrepreneur and VC currently running Late Checkout, a startup studio/agency trying to create startups by focusing on unbundling Reddit. He previously founded Islands (sold to WeWork).
In this episode, Ben and Greg Discuss...
- Community vs. Audience
- Experimentation using no-code
- The Studio model for building and launching products
Greg Isenberg - Late Checkout - Spotlight Podcast
Wed, 8/5 10:19AM • 47:45
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
community, people, build, unbundling, product, create, company, studio, code, products, twitter, talking, feel, spinks, b2b, reddit, business, founder, thought, launch
SPEAKERS
Ben Tossell, Greg Isenberg
Ben Tossell 00:00
Everybody, Stan here, founder of make fat, a platform teaching individuals and companies how to build custom software workflows and tools without writing code. This show explores the people behind the no code tools and the stories of folks using them to automate work and launch companies. All right, today we have Greg Eisenberg. Welcome to the show.
Greg Isenberg 00:22
Thanks, man. Good to be here. Yeah, it seems like it's been a while since we've sort of known of each other on the internet to Product Hunt, and all different things that you launch, or when you get us sort of 34 It's my second intro. Sure. So I've been building internet communities for the last 1015 years in a bunch of different verticals.
00:49
And right now, I'm the founder of a company called les Chieko, which is a product studio that builds internet communities. And we also have a fun where we acquire profitable internet communities. And we also have an agency that creates internet communities for a few brands. So that's what I do.
Ben Tossell 01:07
Awesome. What is What is it? What is a community? But what's the draft definition of the community to you? I think people, I mean, let's see. I mean, it was a kind of community at Protestant view years ago. And that means make sure people are talking about products, sharing products, and also like, pop communities bought stuff. And there's just loads of people essentially and product and people were asking me all the time about can you help us build a community? I've got this, I've got my business. I need to build a community. How do I do it? So I'm interested to see what your how you look at those those sorts of questions.
01:48
Yeah, I think you know, in 2020 community is such a hot topic when people say they want to like build community. What they're really saying most of the time is they want to build an audience. The thing is an audience and a community are two really different things. And audiences just you have a bunch of eyeballs at a thing. And they could be interested in the thing that you've built, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're, they feel sort of some sort of membership to this community that they feel like they had shared experiences with this community. And I think that's the big differentiator between audience and community. The the example, you know, I use I think David Spinks might have told it to me
02:35
was, if you think about,
02:38
you know, Brian chesky and Joe gebbia, the co founders of Airbnb, like, basically, you know, create a circle, put them in the middle co founders, Airbnb, those, you know, that's a community then it's like the first 10 employees, that's a community and it's like first hundred employees, that's a community then it's like, first hundred and 50 employees who are LGB you know, who are LGBT That's a community and you know, then it's alumni and you kind of like, could and then it's like alumni plus interest and you kind of just like keep going out and out. And the more out you go basically is the more audience you are and the more in you are go is more community you are.
03:15
That's kind of how I think about it.
Ben Tossell 03:17
Do you think that means it has to be a certain number or less, even if it's like sub communities within a community?
03:26
I mean, you can have a community of a billion people, you know, the greatest example is like, Christianity, for example. You know, if you meet, you know, religion is a great is, you know, we can learn a lot about how to live community. through what what, you know, different religions have done, I think, and so I don't think the number is the key thing. I think it's just speaking, speaking the same language as the other person, not the actual language on English. fringe, but I mean, you know, if you come across them on the internet or in the physical world that you can say something and you can talk about the interest that or you know, the topic, and that person will, number one, get you understand what you're saying. And number two, feel like that sense of being at home. I think that's what community really boils down to. It's like people go to product on and like, they see words that they understand. And they see people that they understand and they see like concepts that they can understand and they just kind of like feel like home, the amalgamation of all those little things.
Ben Tossell 04:38
Yes, I think. Yes. Just like uniting people in with like minded interests. Another piece, I think is a gray area for community versus audience. We've had this conversation on the podcast A while back. People like Yeah, that'd be when they came to me saying about, I want to build a community. I think it's like I actually just want to build a lot of people who love this thing I've built myself, who sent it for me, who like, do that work for me and talk about it. But not necessarily because I'm trying to build a connection between the people themselves. It's more like the one in the middle out to all the others rather than good sort of circles are together there. And they come together just buy products in the middle of other than the broadcast type of visual things.
05:33
Right. Yeah, I mean, I, I think, you know, a lot of people now I've seen on Twitter talking about like, how do I create a community and now there's just a lot of people trying to figure out how to do that. And the short answer is there's, you know, there is there are frameworks for for thinking about it, but there's not really like I mean, the whole thing is that you can't be cookie cutter with a community. That's a whole thing, right? Like, you can't make someone feel at home through a cookie cutter experience. That's why when I look at, like, these one size fits all products that like create, like, you know, create community. And it's like, kind of like a Facebook clone type product. And you can like white kind of, like, skin it the way you want. I'm I look at that. I'm like, that's not gonna work. You know, like, just because you, you know, let's just say you're targeting like moms in Iowa. Like, just because you like take this Facebook loan and say like mom's in Iowa and have like, a bunch of features doesn't mean like, your community a that doesn't mean that's a community and B, it doesn't mean that you're going to actually get people to do do it. Yeah, I actually, I actually think the number one thing that people should do when they're thinking about how to create a community is Start by creating content. And and think of you know, for a few reasons number one, it really like clarifies your thought. Number two, you're able to build relationships really easily. Like you put out a tweet, you put out blog posts, you put up videos, and then you get this like inbound from that community. And that's really cool. And, and, and then, yeah, I think that you know, it's just a fast way to do it and you can do it does it while you're sleeping. People will read your you know, it's four in the morning people are reading your article.
Ben Tossell 07:36
Yeah. I think that's interesting. Like, some people go out to purposely build the community or try to and others don't necessarily. And people always ask me what my talking about almost 30,000 followers, which is insane to me to think why would you think and one of those kind of stuff I'm doing and I've never really had a strategy about Twitter. You can see it I've got like two sentences, some of them are like, tipsters, every tuple sort of a center format of yellows, in essence, or certain Gremlins. But it's got thoughts and then cross sections, interests, and composite and stuff. They're creating, define the blank market people. So even when before make that start, I guess it was like a launch ideas without code. And that was just things but now it is making them better just doing what I'm interested in the idea of code Topix, and then people started noticing and coming together in this, there's no code thing. And then within native sub communities of world trying to get memberships, quickly trying to do market because we use set up a forum. Like you said, we try to discourse we Find some, we found this doing all these old things. It doesn't matter if you get it for one or the other, necessarily some of the features for what you're trying to do. And some of them just provide just by providing the product features enable those connections. And the the central thing that should come together monzo example I like is when people were always in thinking like, none of them have official communities. But everyone who's using webflow connects themselves to the figma figma or web flow community. And like I said, a different thing if you said that anyone who said he said, well look at web flow and look at someone who's sort of potentially forum at Nomad list or something. So, click on a community specific thing isn't involved others Just to sort of show there isn't that cookie cutter difference it's over shared interest that that's the piece so you've got to really get put out that content you can package it in different ways to get those people to notice it or realize that there's something together I suppose.
10:24
Yeah, I mean, I think on the content side like you know, what you did with like no code I think is a smart because like, even if it wasn't intentional, you're just kind of like saying how you felt about stuff because it positions you as sort of like the center of gravity in that in the you know, are one of the centers of gravity in that space and then I'm just I'm sure people would just come to you check your Twitter bio, your bio started like clicking around or interacting with you building relationships. I mean, look at product on like, Primetime started in the analog from as far as I understand product branches, like basically brunches in San Francisco, and an email list. So, you know, and with Ryan being like, the center of gravity. And in those days, like, you know, a small center of gravity, right, like he just, he basically just started like, amalgamating friends and friends of friends. And it just grew and grew and grew. But I think what he identified really well was that, you know, like you said, like, the makers, like, they didn't really have a home, you know, yeah, there was no home for them on the internet. And it's not it's a specific type of maker to it's ones that are like, you know, super interested in what's new in terms of products, product junkies or whatever. And I think that's a really also an interesting point. When you're trying to think about
11:55
what type of community Do you want to create
11:59
you know, you You can either do what you did, really, which is create a community around something that really didn't, didn't really exist that much a few years ago. And it's been like a new trend. And so you know, there was an opportunity. Or you have to be really, really well defined in terms of like, who the person is or who the group of people is. And then how do you build relationships? And then how do you effectively create a product that these people feel like they can make it a part of their daily habit?
Ben Tossell 12:36
Yeah, I always wanted this conversation. Don't be like, what do you think it has to be a product first or community first, or vice versa? But actually talking about it now, it seems like it's almost neither. It's like you've got to make yourself that center of gravity for something first, and then You put out the content fight like for that community to find you, and you define them. And then you start, like, discussing stuff. And then it becomes like a community and then you can create something on top of it. I wonder. And we're wondering if you do the same when it's time to change it? Because you can build something so quickly. Is it a case of
13:27
Yeah, well, I think.
13:30
Yeah, I mean, I think you know, we're the interesting thing about where my world and community and where your world now and no code kind of overlaps is that a lot of community builders are non technical people. And they, and no code, the whole noco movement basically makes it faster than ever to test if a particular question Unity is a thing. So the question is, and one of the things we do really is like, how do you like, throw a ton of experiments, you know, against the wall, using things using no code tools. And just be like buy Facebook ads, see if see if it, you know, it resonates with people or start posting it on Reddit and like asking the mods to promote it or getting, you know, tick tock influencers to share it, but like, you know, throwing up these landing pages is, you know, and or communities as quick as possible. And, and seeing and seeing, like, how it feels. And so I think, yeah, I definitely see you know, we launched Give me an example like we launched, you know, in April via no code a website Do you probably need a haircut calm, which literally went viral, you know, millions of people saw you know thousands and thousands of dollars of booked revenue for you know, people of color stylist who needed money and people who needed haircuts. I mean, it was it was perfect, right like, and we were able to create that community
15:20
quickly
15:23
and use product on actually where we initially launched it. And so it's, it's just an it's a really, really, I think it's really it's the best time that I've been alive where I you know, in terms of like how easy it is to conceptualize a con you know, community concept and design a community concept and put it out there and then get people to it, and then get people to say
15:49
what what part of you probably need a hacker you define as the community
Ben Tossell 15:56
It may not look that way. For other people on the outside Thinking was just like, a product product or service almost was like, yeah, platform to do stuff and book things. So where's the community? From your point of view? Yes.
16:12
Yeah, so on this side, it's on the, it's not on the demand side, it's, it's on the consumer facing side, but it's on the actual supply side. So it's, you know, people of color might want to place that or stylists are actually looking for, that's a community of people actually looking for, you know, connection and meaning and, and want to share tips and tricks and actually share a lot of struggles, similar struggles in the industry. So, you know, and so, you know, there's kind of, you know, two pieces to it. It's the first is that particular group and then the second piece to it is this movement around I guess it's like passion economy, but basically like a lot of these stylists and barbers actually want to create create their own businesses. So we've we've been able to do that for them where they don't have to go into their barber shops or or, or salons anymore. They can actually just work full time virtually from the comfort of their apartment because they're making more money actually. And, and then they also get the sense of communion with other stylists.
17:26
Yeah, it's interesting, I think.
Ben Tossell 17:29
I think we can sort of standard or just be automatic. I think community has to be like this group of users that use your product or your service or who think things like social or social networks. Almost make it feel like maybe that's what you need is I guess, your audience of people who they're the community, the ones you're selling to. would like and I was looking past, what what actually might be where you should focus on building The community which is provide those services and things for for people. That's interesting. I thought like, I know he thought about it that way.
18:10
Yeah, I think we often think about community is always consumer facing, which isn't exactly the case. In fact, some of the most interesting can community use cases are supply side marketplaces. I'll give you one example. Like, Uber drivers. Know Lyft drivers, like, you know, is there a community of Uber drivers of Uber consumers and lift consumers? Probably not. It's commoditized thing you know, you press a button, a car shows up, I wouldn't call it a community. But is there a community of like, Uber drivers and Williamsburg or or Brooklyn or whatever? like yeah, maybe maybe they do have a shared experiences and they maybe might want to connect?
18:56
Yeah, that's the point.
Ben Tossell 18:59
Yes, It's, yeah. But then if I saw David Spinks do something about the framework of breaking down communities or someone didn't recently know if this like physical muscle know, all these things, I think, is without a lot of things in the marketplace, you can see, okay, these are the things to consider or look into and make sure that this thing happens. And this thing happened. The look on the face of a Community Blueprint, no blueprint, which is like, how do you consider that actually community is not necessarily consumers, it might be businesses, or it might be people you're the past to get to the end person. And then, yes, frameworks have given. Yes.
19:45
Yeah, I mean, Spinks is like, one of my favorite people on you know, you know, in terms of like, writing about me and talking about community. I wish there were more people I you know, I there's a few I fall I'm curious, do you have any people that you think that you can think of that are really, you know, sort of good and insightful community people that share a lot of knowledge on on it.
Ben Tossell 20:13
Besides things? No, I think Rosie Sherry who does the community at indie hackers is awesome job and like, you can see that through to the community there and call it obviously did a great job there initially. I don't know about like people talking about Ashley. She has a she has a substack about Rosie and it talks about like all community stuff every week. So she does like a little breakdown every week of community based things. But yeah, I think so many people talk about community and just there isn't enough. People who have the right like knowledge, who then told him about community or saying These are the experiences that like I saw I went through it's almost just like Yeah, got the community because it's like a milk for your company. And there's no real good places or areas to go where that knowledge is actually shared and it's like practical tips. I think this guy will Harry dry who does the boxing examples? Twitter, and he just does don't live marketing here like copywriting tactics or on Twitter. And it feels like it should be someone who does like the community visit or someone just like, given up small
21:42
stuff.
21:47
Sounds like sounds like there's an opportunity there for you know, just as I try and have an opportunity with makers, there's probably an opportunity for community makers.
Ben Tossell 21:57
Yeah, I'm gonna say that he got the time and a half Then going on,
22:03
man.
Ben Tossell 22:06
Let's talk about Actually, I'll throw in a question that someone said on Twitter about community stuff, which is, what are some of the common mistakes? I see new communities and I guess we touched on a few of those pieces of it. Yeah, I
22:22
think you know, the way I've always seen communities is kind of like a perfect party, a perfect house party. Where you know, you get in and you're not the first one. That's for sure. Yeah. It's all it's all packed. There's like a perfect amount of people. And you walk in your favorite song is playing. If you're hungry, there might be like some of your favorite food over there. Maybe the DJs over there and you really like like that by? You see some you know, good mix of like new people you see a good mix of like familiar faces.
23:06
And you just like feel really good.
23:09
You know, a community is
23:14
basically a perfect party. It means you know, there's a lot of there's like those old people and new people that positive it is in people like, you know, hurting other people and, and being negative about stuff. And it's, there's routines, you know, maybe the routine is it's, you know, a daily or weekly thing. But like, you know, using product times as example, it's like, I go check it every day because I the routine is seeing what's new. So some, you know, and we're using we've talked about religion before like, you know, Christianity, you know, you might pray, you know, every Sunday, you know, Islam you might pray five times a day, you know, think about, you know, how do you enable routines into and rituals into communities is an important part of, of it staying top of mind.
24:15
So, I think that, you know, those are things that come to mind.
Ben Tossell 24:18
Yeah, I love that none of you at my house party have been in welcome because it could be that that's just something you need to create in your onboarding of someone new in the community. It doesn't mean that. But if it's 20 people that is the right number for your community, doesn't mean that there just needs to be 20 people that just needs to be able to walk into the day our week is, this is the kind of environment we are and this is how we sort of interacting and it's it's almost educating people to get to the point of this tool, having an illness so we make a ton of things. But we know there's a lot of good And then there's a lot of things to do. And I assume poorly, that people just go and figure it out. And it's like, click around and do stuff, because that's what I do. So I just got to click, find my stuff, and then sort of badge in and be like, yeah, I'm here. And oh, yeah, this is cool. That's cool. But people don't always do that. And we know we need to work on this. But everyone knows that. That magazines like just said, this is introducing to what sort about how to interact and do stuff here. Get some of your easy tools to use. Here's some of the hard words in the call tutorials that people were talking about. And also by leaving on Sunday, everyone ship something and then share about it, talk about it because then use that. Yeah, I think that's about someone that stepped down and made sure that the financial thing yeah So what do you think we first like, collected on Twitter about the podcast? In couple of days I think because people are talking about the abundance of nuisances and all of a sudden in the last month or two probably a little bit off even just like subscribe to so many newsletters and stop reading everything having a dedicated folder for newsletters. Would you like to send out but sometimes we try things and I just don't have time. I find writing difficult myself. So William, maybe you've got a sense of wonder how like how important is a certain type of product, someone selling that helps you give them something, give you that regular platform to do that, that cadence of ships from the wonderful See more of a shift from just writing into if you prefer to do loom videos, so every week, you open up his media the movie, like he didn't podcasts or videos or so that that one was going to see more of that, do you think?
27:17
Yeah, I think, you know, the truth is, writing is really hard. As you mentioned, I still think it's a really, really, it's probably I still think it's actually the best way to distill your thoughts even if you're bad at it. There's something just being something about like staring at a blank piece of paper or looking at a blank document and just like struggling through the struggle, I think struggles and important part of like, you should people you should struggle, you know, a little bit and I think that'll, that'll give, you know, clear, clear, you know, people's concepts a lot. So I still think writing is really important, but I think that like education, First step, but then like Yeah, can you like take it to a loom? Can you take it to a podcast? Can you take it to a club house? Can you take it to zoom? You know, I just tweeted like, right before this, hey, I'm thinking about like starting a, you know, small zoom chats around the unbundling of Reddit, anyone in you know, anyone interested in joining and like, a lot a lot of people did. Which made me think that like, yeah, like, there's other forums, like, what are other forums? And how do people want to communicate? Like, clearly people do want to communicate in these small groups, you know? So, I think it's thinking about, you know, your community, what are the needs? And how can you like all of this is media right? Like so it's just had, how does your community want to consume media? And, and then how could you do something that's also different than your competition?
Ben Tossell 28:58
Yes. That's part of it in that say not so much noise, but there's so much so many different types of things like I could read yours on internet communities, I could read Rosie's on communities in general, I could be all in the hustle it would be different people different things, which what I find both of them valuable and a high signal. But then once there's so in books to read, because it's such a, that's again, another thing to consider. It's quite long, I suppose sometimes. Yeah, it almost becomes like too much. And then yeah, I think she's gonna be I think similar with actually products. And it's one of the reasons I we don't do monthly subscriptions. So December is a ceiling. So many people do so many the same thing. Whether It's Your Netflix, Spotify, whatever else you have so many things going on monthly. Like aren't people just fed up. There's so many newsletters. Somebody's monthly subscriptions just like well, just like on something different that takes the pressure off a bit of, I've got to read this thing every day or every week for users.
30:13
Well, that's a good insight. That's a good insight because, like, you understand how people are feeling in your community. It's like, yeah, I might be under, you know, I might be feeling like, there's too many subjects and I'm reading or newsletters and reading and so, and I and people might be feeling like, you know, they are missing that, you know, maybe it's like these virtual zoom chats where it's like, it's more of a jam session. And, and and just being really, you know, this is where it goes back to like, how are you at one with your community and really being at one with them? and serving, you know, people talk a lot about creations of communities. But what they really shouldn't be saying is the serving of communities. So as you're serving your community
31:09
really, really just understanding the pulse of that, and I think
31:13
it's different for everyone, I think and but I will say like, dramatically like, yeah, I mean, people are getting too many news letters, there is too much content out there. It is, feels a lot of the same. Audio is like, nice, because you can do other things. You know, I do think that people are missing like, interaction and meeting new people and they're looking for new ways. I think zoom is probably not the platform for that because people have zoom overload. So you know, those like fanatically You know, I think we were all feeling a lot of that. So I think it's just about packaging it up in a way. That is cool.
Ben Tossell 32:00
Yeah, nothing's Yeah, we're just gonna see what people do. And it's actually this got me thinking about your latest thing to check out. So I've been really interested in like, the startup studio model or like, product studio venture studio, whatever they used to be called, are called. But they never, they never used to be cool. Well, they used to pad like, Cool intentions, I feel nothing. Not a lot of care out of it. That was like, Oh, this is out there. And this came out of the studio. We should really elms didn't work for a venture scale or to be venture backed or venture related, I guess. Um, I've seen people and you most recently launched only like this mini miniature studio, which is you can have like a theme or an interest around something which you've got the community side, and then there's Okay, we like doing some client work because we want to pay the bills and chatter, like, work with different companies and everything else. But then there's always like, we can build stuff ourselves or whatever we want to build within this theme. And then there's the investment side, which is like, well, we can enable more people to build on this theme. And it always seems like that as a perfect combination of everything you'd want to do. For me, I think, at some point, I'll have some sort of studio has some sort of theme around, no code. Do you think there's gonna be more of this studio from what made you decide on this model and create a few different things at once, I suppose. Yeah.
33:39
So I think there's gonna be a lot more studio models, especially as distributed and distributed companies become more and more of a thing. I think people are just going to band together and they're going to be passionate about Expo gonna be like, hey, like, you know, it's cheap, you know, no code, and it's true. To create stuff and most just like go do more stuff. And, you know, in tech, a lot of us, most of us are creatives. So we enjoy being involved in multiple projects, because that scratches our creative edge. So I think we're gonna see a lot more of it. I don't think anyone's nailed just yet the studio model. I think that'll take years. But I think, you know, what, what needs to happen is, you know, there's there's only dozens really of studios that exist, there needs to be thousands or 10s of thousands, just like companies. So I hope that that happens soon. And then, you know, why did you know we start, I started the checkout versus just like, going to start a company and raising you know, when I started islands, which was my last company, I had an idea people gave me $2 million on an idea. I built a team and launch a product, you know, Why not? Why not go do that again? Yeah. And the answer is twofold. The first is, first is I've seen entrepreneurs, you know, raise hundreds of millions of dollars from the world's best investors, hire the best teams, pivot their products, to be exactly where the market should be. And at the end, spend 510 years building these companies and at the end of it, you know, they probably would have done better working at Facebook, from a financial outcome. Yeah. There's a, you know, there's a reason why VCs do relatively well. You know, having multiple bets. Makes sense. You know, if you're creating a stock portfolio, being 100% in on one stock, obviously, we all know is not a good idea. So why are we doing that with our companies? Why are we putting 100% of our Net Worth 90% of our net worth whatever it is into our company. And I think that's something that, you know, I was like, I don't think so. I don't think I want to do that. Number two I believe that the opportunity right now in terms of unbundling Reddit, unbundling Facebook groups, and unbundling things like LinkedIn, there's just a tremendous amount of opportunity. And I feel like a kid in a candy shop. And so personally, I want to work on multiple things. Because I think there's a ton of opportunity and I think that, you know, if you launch a lot of things every year, you're gonna, you're gonna hit
36:44
and the end The end. The third thing is
36:48
I wanted to start something that was self funded. So we check out is self funded, and I wanted the freedom associated with that.
Ben Tossell 37:00
Awesome. Are you still up? You work as well? Or? No?
37:06
I am no longer at we work. Yeah.
Ben Tossell 37:10
Um, yeah, so I really like what you said about building a company like most people even land on the company that they end up building raising money for and having hundred employees because they were trying so many different other things like their creative outlet for Oh, I'm gonna build like this thing that thing with this and all this other thing didn't work there's this other thing that all of a sudden, okay now I've got to see this thing through for 710 years to whatever stage we can and I didn't company changes so as soon as challenges associated that look, the idea that it's okay to have different videos and pursuing different things with Maybe the same theme behind it, which is like, what you're doing, we could probably all the things you're gonna do probably related to communities. And similar to what I was doing before where I fell in love with all these ideas, but the theme was, it was all done with numbers. It wasn't necessarily. So maybe it's negligence again, more being built with no code than just built that way. Yeah, I think I just Yeah, I like the idea that this is when mayhem started, it was like, Wow, this is awesome, because people can pay me a membership fee. And I get to build new things all the time. All I want to do is remember to fill my screen. So I can just try a new product idea somehow, Oh, I'd love to be able to build an Airbnb style site. Okay, well, I just find it and film it. And then like maybe she told her that but it made me and have me have that creative off. see something that is cool. I'm trying to build it. And so I think more and more people should do that. And I think that's part of no code is that you can build something really quickly. You can throw it away. If it doesn't work, and you've got less emotional attachment. You can have so many more shots on goal expose. Initially s capital is one of our investors, and their investment model this like a profit share agreement is actually shared in the seat. Um, I wonder if there's some sort of like, combination of the two where the investment is in the studio and the studio has like free rein to do whatever they want. have tons of different products. So this is a theme behind it. And then it's all done through like, revenue sharing wonder if that like could spark something different.
39:52
Yeah, I mean, that's, I think that's another whole thing which is like studios are going to spawn new business models. You know, we're exploring in ourselves with this, how we structure our company and how our, our and our family of companies and how we actually
40:13
think about profit sharing as a part of that.
40:17
Which is like something that is traditionally, like in venture backed startups, like profit sharing is not really like a thing, you know. Yeah. But there's, you know,
40:29
there's
40:31
for some businesses, I think it makes a lot of sense. So I think that is one thing. The other thing is like what we're doing is we're actually spinning off our products into separate companies. And we might end up raising venture for but we might end up being the sole LP basically a sole investor in that business as well. So yeah,
Ben Tossell 40:55
awesome. What so what are you looking for, as part of lead tracker investing comm These are communities either or both. What was the criteria you look for them when acquiring a an internet community.
41:10
Um, we're pretty opportunistic. The key thing here is that there is an element of community, like we talked about, that it generates revenue, and is profitable, that it's been around for more than a year. And, you know, sometimes we meet founders and they're just kind of like, I'm tired. I don't want to do this anymore. I, you know, I need a new life. And like, we're the new life, like, we believe that we can, like supercharge that community. And then we, you know, we'll make an offer. So that's, that's kind of like the criteria, you know, but we'll look at big, no big deals, we'll look at small deals. We'll look at everything in between.
Ben Tossell 41:58
Yeah, so leave Not to mention a the current analysis like any new client, any intact communities already.
42:07
We haven't. That being said, like we started the business a few months ago. I was I was reading this paper from Stanford around what a search fund is, I don't know, do you know if search funds
Ben Tossell 42:23
instant recently, I saw something come up. But
42:27
basically, it's like
42:29
a common fund that, you know, investors will give half a million 1,000,002 million dollars to someone who wants to buy a company. And they did this research on all these Stanford grads who did it over time and the average amount of time it takes for a founder of a search fund to acquire successfully a company. Keep in mind you have to do you have to do the deal sourcing you have to do the diligence. That has to It makes sense you have to get a term sheet that you need to get signed, then you need to do the, you know, the the definitive agreement, then the deal needs to close. Like there's a lot of steps in the process that usually takes 18 months. So it's a long time. That being said, like, you know, we're quicker or quicker than that. But you know, in terms of like finding the right fit, like, it's, you know, we've got a high bar.
Ben Tossell 43:30
Yeah, I guess that reminds me of like Andrew Wilkinson with his Berkshire Hathaway, the internet and just saying, Well, if Warren Buffett can do something and sad days, we want to be able to have something sorted in like 50 days or something. There's no need for 18 months. So what? With the bundling of Reddit, as we look at the big see going on right now with that on your podcast that says I didn't listen to you on and you just said he just did that. Um, and maybe they'll give away this as someone asked on Twitter, which is what? What b2b Reddit SERPs look right for unbundling? So think it's not as obvious to think about it to the consumer coming to the episode we were talking about. I wonder what you think about the b2b side of it?
44:29
Yeah, I mean, you know, people talk a lot about b2b and b2c at the end of the day, it's just people, like we're selling to people. So you know, there's just as there's opportunity to build like consumer facing stuff, there's opportunity for for companies, startups products to build things that are specifically designed for businesses. And I probably argue that BDC is probably going to see a rush of community founders in the next 18 months. And their 99% gonna focus on b2c. Why? Because it's just like, people like to build products for themselves, it's more fun that way. It's, you know, it's more boring to build b2b products but I think, um, you know, if you want to make a lot of money, if you want to make money, I think there's a lot tons of opportunity to apply some of this right, you know, community framer type stuff that we're talking about, and just just focus on, you know, how to, you know, how business owners or people in business could learn about certain things or earn more money or, you know, insert XYZ utility
45:47
and then just build build a community around that.
Ben Tossell 45:51
Yeah, no, so I think you did a lot with darlin satin on life is meant to be Have on to go jump on to Part of that was really dug deep on the right unbundling? And I mean, I didn't see that. That says it all the thing. Yeah, I really appreciate you coming on. And if you're not, if you've got any closing thoughts are with us people were let people know where they can find you then rapidly.
46:22
Yeah, I mean,
46:24
my my final thought really, you know because this audience is more of a no code audience is that the no code community is is probably one of the best positioned to take advantage of all the opportunity that's happening with the unbundling of Reddit. So, you know, I look forward to seeing what, what that community builds. And you can find me on Twitter, it's at Greg Eisenberg, my name, gr eg is E and big. And that's just some quick thoughts or you can find lots Your thoughts on on a substack that I post called late check out substack which I just post at some frequency when I have an idea. I want to get that off my chest.
Ben Tossell 47:12
Listen, well yeah, I'm glad for that. And while you're listening to everything you've been doing recently, so it's awesome to watch and I'm really excited to see what comes up a big check out soon. But yeah.
47:26
Thanks for thanks for catching up and chatting.
Ben Tossell 47:29
That was fun. Yeah, thanks so much for listening. You can find us online at maker pad.co or on Twitter at make Pat. We'd love to hear if you enjoyed this episode, and what we should do next.
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