Ann Barry (2:29)

So if you're looking to give your clients consistent results year in and year out. Go see the record for yourself@vanguard.com audio. That's vanguard.com audio.

John Curto (2:38)

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Ann Barry (2:42)

Now let's listen back to my conversation with Alexis Ohanian. All right, Alexis Ohanian, you're known as many things. Tech founder, venture capitalist. But let's start with what has been perhaps the most visible part of all the things you do, which is as an investor in women's sports. And what started as a rage Tweet almost in 2019, which was, look at this, look at this burgeoning industry. No one's paying attention, has blossomed into something else. And most recently had Athlos here in New York. Tell us about that. Tell us about that evolution.

Alexis Ohanian (3:12)

Yeah. So March of 2019, my tweet goes viral. And I basically noticed that a team in the nwsl, the American Women's Soccer League, had just sold for like three and a half million dollars. And this was the year of the Women's World Cup. This was not a sport that I followed, but I knew who Megan Rapinoe was, knew Alex Morgan was. I knew who the stars of the sport were. So they'd already transcended the sport. That's a great sign. And in Megan's case, she played for that team in Seattle. And the math didn't math, because I knew she alone should be worth at least $3 million in brand deals a year. And so the fact that the whole team was worth that much was assigned to me that there was an opportunity to just run an operation way more efficiently and effectively. And so I resolved at the end of this tweet storm. I basically laid out the vision to say, look, this is a multimillion dollar industry laying in plain sight, and I'm going to either start or buy an NWSL team. And who can help? And you know, the speakers viral. Most of the people responding were actually dunking on me, making the case that no one watches women's sports. You're an idiot. You're going to lose all your money, yada, yada, yada. But there were some really hardcore women soccer fans, which was great to see. I look for that heat, right? Building Reddit, you learn to have a spidey sense for things that are culturally, like, powerful in that there's a community of people who hate only because there's something they are intimidated by or something that is significant enough to garner their attention and their hate. So even, you know, even those signs of irrational hate were actually giving me confidence that there was something really interesting and compelling there. And so Alex Morgan famously responded to that tweet, and I reached out to her, and. And we spent time together probably a month later. And I just took notes and. And resolved to buy a team or start a team. I started talking to some existing team owners, but then ultimately decided to start with an expansion and obviously. Excuse me. And then obviously led me to Angel City, where I was founding control owner. And the one. There were a number of mistakes I made in lessons learned, but. But a big one was I should have just bought the NWSL.

Ann Barry (5:15)

Oh, interesting.

Alexis Ohanian (5:16)

2019. I could have bought it for $10 million, fired everyone, reset the entire culture, built it like a technology company. Right. Build software. I'm a product builder at the end of the day, to run all the internal. A hundred times more efficiently, effectively. And in the last few years, especially as AI has really commoditized software, I've just been thinking, God, I need I. That was the opportunity. And so when the Olympics were coming up, I simply looked and I said, okay, where are the athletes that transcend the sport? What are the most popular sports during the Olympics that also disappear during the. In between four years, just like women's soccer in between the World cup. And lo and behold, track and field was right there. Checked every box. And in addition to that, there was nothing. There is an existing league, but it's really like the accounting. It's like the accounting of the sport, because if you think this is such a global sport and it all funnels up to the Olympics, you have to get every discus thrower in the world, you know, properly registered and graded. And it's just a very different process. And what we saw with Athlos was an opportunity to really build this very dynamic, very high energy with the very, very, very best. Like, just the very best. Still sanctioned. It's this athletic sanctioned meet. It was last year. It was also again this year. So it's legit. It's for points. It's for your ranking that, you know, helps you with the Olympics. But we also set a record prize. When we doubled the top prize back then, it was $30,000. This was last year. We doubled it to 60,000 and instantly became the most important race outside the Olympics. And we've been building on that since and now are launching this Formula one league. So if you love, you know, Mercedes versus Ferrari.

Ann Barry (6:58)

Yes.

Alexis Ohanian (6:59)

You can imagine what team Nike versus Team Adidas might look like. And so we're really excited to build towards that, have multiple Meets next year. We're not ready to announce those locations. But instead of just one in New York, add a couple more and I can't wait for folks to see it and really elevate the sport. That is an amazing sport that is I guess a top Olympic sport and then just disappears. No reason why it should. And build it with software first. Which again I should have done if I could have gone back in time in 2019 with the NWSL.

Ann Barry (7:29)

So let me ask you a question about the Athlos building in particular, Alexis. Is that specific to women's sports or do you think that is just a sport which has been under, focused on, under invested in and the gender element actually wouldn't matter. You could just as easily do it with the guys.

Alexis Ohanian (7:50)

We, we will at some point add men. The reason why we started with women and this is a great sport in that men and women routinely compete together. You know, it's a there events like mixed relays that are really exciting and really compelling. The reason we started with the women was a business decision, you know, in part because of all the success I've had as a, you know, founding owner of now a handful of women's teams. Not just Angel City, but also just recently bought the LA franchise in League One. So women's volleyball bought a 10% stake in the Chelsea Women's Football Club. The, the CMOs all want to know what I'm doing next in women's sports. It's funny, when I, I bought the first team in Tigers team golf league, TGL y the LA Golf Club, these CMOs were like, oh, that's cool. But actually like are you going to have women? Because that's really what we want to invest in. So. And it's coming, I can't say when but so for sure there's an appetite today. And look, five years ago, six years ago, we had to bring people on board and really stoke those flames of interest. Today the interest is there. And so starting women first with Athlos made sense from a business standpoint because that's how we could, you know, we announced it in April last year. We did our first meet five months later.

Ann Barry (9:02)

It's really fast. Yeah, that whole thing's coming down so quick.

Alexis Ohanian (9:05)

You know, that's. But, but with a women led meet, that's how you can get Toyota, Tiffany & Co. I mean tier one brands and a handful of others within five months. Yeah, and then we ran it back last month so about a year later and we, we brought those brands back. But we also added instacart and cash app essential water. Like more and more to come, they're hungry for women's sports. This is an opportunity. And then it's also a business decision. Because if you look at follower counts, the women of track and field, the top athletes, have a much bigger presence than the men. And it's just simple math. No Lyles. We, we love Noah. He was there at the event having a great time. But, you know, there aren't enough stars on the men's side in terms of their following to justify the early costs. And so again, we wanted to make this as effective a business as possible. And in the sport of track and field, it actually makes more sense to start with the.

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Ann Barry (10:27)

Apply. You know, it's interesting to hear you focus on the investment side of it, Alexis, because one thing that when I think about your journey through women's sports, at the beginning, you did get some heat for virtue signaling. You did have people saying, is this because, you know, you're married to the most amazing woman athlete, right, Ever. You're a girl, dad. You're a proud girl. Girl, dad. And it's interesting now, it feels so you've moved beyond people saying that, you know, the business model is proven, but does it irritate you? Do you feel as though you're still having folks looking at you saying, well, which, what is this? Is this sort of philanthropy repackaged as.

Alexis Ohanian (11:02)

Business? It's interesting at this point, it's really just people who haven't been paying attention who think it's philanthropy. It's. It. It's actually really funny. It's the most common type of person I hear that from are actually tech folks. Oh, interesting, because I think they're just a little slow on this sort of stuff. These, these bigger cultural.

Ann Barry (11:21)

Shifts.

Alexis Ohanian (11:21)

Interesting. And, and so I'm happy to correct them. But, but yeah, and I got plenty of tweets. I saved them all. You know, things like go woke, go broke. You're an idiot. You know, no one cares about women's sports. And, and, and I do think, especially given you got to remember, I resigned in protest from the.

Ann Barry (11:37)

Red. I want to talk about that.

Alexis Ohanian (11:38)

In the summer of 2020. And. And I did so very intentionally to push for change. And, you know, this has been well reported on, that I couldn't get in the boardroom. Whether it was around subreddits like watch people d. Really racist, hateful communities, and. And by resigning the way I did, you know, that shined a spotlight and sure enough got the change that I couldn't get in the.

Ann Barry (12:00)

Boardroom. And clarify, Alexis, you specifically wanted.

Alexis Ohanian (12:03)

Someone. Oh, yes. And to be.

Ann Barry (12:05)

Replaced.

Alexis Ohanian (12:06)

Yeah. Yeah. So. So in. In. In saying all these things I said and look like I'm out, I'm gonna spend the rest of my life building in a way that will be wildly successful and also align with my values. And, you know, I haven't had any luck convincing this board, so. So replace me with the director of color. Replace me with a black director. And I hope you all can make better decisions going forward, because I know they will be better for the business, they will be better for society and all that. And so I think it's. It's really poetic, actually, that literally one of the first things I did after that was Angel City, and, you know, being the founding controller of that team and doing it so publicly and the. The outsized success, not just of that, you know, it's the most valuable women's soccer team in America now. But. But what that sparked, right? That sparked a wave of investment in women's sports. And so I just feel so blessed. It is rare to have been at the forefront of one big movement, you know, social media, co founding, Reddit, but then immediately after, to have been so fortunate, to have then been at the forefront of another feels really good. And certainly, you know, given how much shit I took online, never offline, it's weird. No one has the smoke in person when they meet me. But online, it is so deeply satisfying to have done so well now at the forefront of something that, like I said five years ago, I was gonna do and do so in a way that, like I said, aligned to my values. And you'll recall, too, I mean, I. I just. I think there aren't too many folks left who get this twisted as philanthropy anymore, because ball don't lie like the revenue numbers don't lie. Sellout crowds don't lie. Viewership growth doesn't lie like it is. You basically just look like an asshole if you still think women's sports are not a real business. Because at this point, you know, in the. In the. The thing capitalism is that when you can unequivocally create value like this and capture attention like this. That's your mic. Drop it. It no longer needs to be about, oh, well, this is, you know, good for inspiring young girls or this is important for a healthy society or all this other stuff that I, look, I do care about. But at the end of the day, if you see this kind of real revenue growth and real attendance growth and real viewership growth and still think it's, you know, woke to support, you're just dumb or crazy. I don't. I mean, it's one or the other. You can pick. But. But you've now really, the level of cell phone at this point, it speaks for itself. And, and yeah, it does feel good to win. It does feel good to win on these issues that I obviously care really deeply about too. So. So I'm going to say good five.

Ann Barry (15:06)

Years. It's been a good five years. And I'm thinking Palmer, Lucky at the moment is doing the rounds. Right. The founder of.

Alexis Ohanian (15:12)

Anderil. Rightly.

Ann Barry (15:14)

So. Previously of Oculus, and he said, you know, I'm on a. I'm on an I told you so tour. I feel. Alexis, there's a version of I told you I'm touring all.

Alexis Ohanian (15:23)

This. Not, not as far along, not as far along as Palmer, but we're certainly tracking in that direction. And, and I think once we have a couple of billion dollar.

Ann Barry (15:35)

Teams.

Alexis Ohanian (15:35)

Yeah. In the portfolio, then you'll hear me. I'll be an asshole about.

Ann Barry (15:39)

It.

Alexis Ohanian (15:39)

Okay. I'll be.

Ann Barry (15:40)

Relentless. You'll be back here saying, I.

John Curto (15:41)

Told you right back out.

Ann Barry (15:43)

Here. I love it. So, yeah, I love.

Alexis Ohanian (15:44)

It. Still early days. Still early.

Ann Barry (15:46)

Days. Well, talk a little bit about what you've learned from the evolution of Reddit because you are investing again in social platforms. You're an investor. And dig. We'll come back to that. But if you look at the Reddit that you sort of left behind. Right. And the Reddit that's a public company, what are your thoughts on things like the licensing agreements with the large language models? What do you think about the community that you are so key to building, having their data now being sold to try and train the likes of Anthropic and.

Alexis Ohanian (16:18)

OpenAI. Yeah, it's interesting. There's someone's going to do the HBS case study on, you know, the early days of, of Reddit. I remember having these debates with my co founder about, you know, this nonprofit that Sam was building called OpenAI. Remember, this is like. So I came back as chairman in 2014, Sam had just helped us raise around the funding, it was about $50 million and take us independent from Condon AST, which was the company that bought us. And so, you know, on the surface I was like, great, you know, I got a bunch of come back. We got Sam on board. He knows his way around Silicon Valley. He's helped us fundraise. And it again, remember, it's like 2014, this was November of 14. So by, you know, 2015, maybe 16, we're having this conversation where I was debating with my co founder. I was like, gosh, you know, Sam has this nonprofit that he's been asking us to basically aggressively scrape Reddit for. And I remember, I remember saying like, dude, Sam is a very smart guy, incredibly cunning. We've known it since the start of yc, doesn't seem like the most philanthropically minded guy, but he has this non profit that he's really passionate about. He says it's such a long shot and he needs our data. And I really felt in my bones this was, again, this is a great lesson for me. And founders really need to learn to trust their instinct on this stuff. I was like, I don't think we should be giving this away to him. And I'm just like, I know in my bones we shouldn't be giving this thing away. But you got to realize in 2015, most folks in Silicon Valley thought OpenAI was a long shot. It just, it was doing some cool novel stuff, but it wasn't, it wasn't serious and it may have still been a part of YC research, Y combinator research at that point, I can't remember. But by, I don't know. So by the end of the year, by the end of 15 or maybe early 16, we're really starting to have this discussion where it felt crazy to me that we were just giving away all this data. And you know, again, I lost that debate and, and again, bravo, bravo, Sam. But it was one of these things where, you know, this is, this has been, I think there's a, this has been a long time going on in one form or another. And it is fascinating to me. I think Sam realized before anyone else, including us, including the founders, just how valuable that data was on Reddit, right. Because it was so well structured. It was, you know, voted on categoriz, realized back then it was all human. And so it was incredibly valuable. I think the big challenge now is going to be, and I've tweeted about this, I mean, I didn't invent dead Internet theory, but it definitely feels as though most of the social media we consume now is fake. Right? It's either bots or AI generated or AI assisted or in some way just fake. And I think this is going to be the big challenge for all these platforms, not just Reddit, but to figure out how do you have provably human content. And obviously this gets even harder when you have a platform built in anonymity because you're not going to ask the average Redditor to upload a driver's license or put in a credit card or any personally identifiable information just because culturally it was so taboo and it's pseudonymous. And so as I've started to meet with more and more founders, really kind of cracked founders of the bleeding edge, I'm starting to learn about all the tactics. They're using the sort of new age SEO to like literally buy the accounts of moderators enough to just take over a subreddit and then start slowly dripping in content that's supportive of their business and, and that flows directly into the lms, which then flows directly into your results when you ask, you know, chatgpt, what's the best smoker that I should buy for a.

Ann Barry (20:13)

Brisket?

Alexis Ohanian (20:13)

Yeah. And, and so now that you know, the very, very bleeding edge founders are realizing this, exploiting this, at some point something's going to have to give where the average consumer is now no longer trusting this data because it's not human. Right? It's been gamed, it's been manipulated. And so I'm already anticipating that next wave that figures out proof of humanity in a way that doesn't need a retina, in a way that feels like that's got a great user experience, that's giving people what I know they want. In an age of even more AI content everywhere, the fundamentally human stuff is going to do even better. Also why I'm even more bullish about sports because Hollywood and the music industry are going to get dramatically upended by this technology. But we're never going to take our kids to go see robots play football. There will be some robot sports like Combat, One on One, BattleBots to the death type stuff, stuff. But traditional sports is just going to be made more compelling, more interesting because of this technology. It's not going to replace it because you need it to be.

Ann Barry (21:20)

Human. So talk to us about what you're doing with Dig, because that I saw your involvement here and lay out paint the picture for what is you're doing and the reason I'm asking about it is you Love to found things. You like to be there at the starting line. That's your tagline. But this is about resuscitating something that's been around for a while and repurposing it. Talk to us about.

Alexis Ohanian (21:41)

It. This is my arch nemesis, CEO, former arch nemesis CEO Kevin Rose. And you know, he and I butted heads for half a decade while he was building Dig and I was building Reddit. Now obviously, we buried Dig. Sorry, Kevin. But I never actually had met.

Ann Barry (21:58)

Him. Oh.

Alexis Ohanian (22:00)

Wow. Five, six years ago, I finally met him. That's actually, that's not true. I mean, we had met like once at a party, but we had never. We had taken a couple photos together, but never actually had a real conversation with him. Right. So I didn't know him. He was just this kind of just say paper tiger. I guess that implies that he wasn't very powerful. That's not, It's. He was this almost like a caricature. Right? He was, he was the guy on the bullets of board where I was like, okay, I got to destroy this guy, right? He wasn't a full three dimensional.

Ann Barry (22:26)

Human. He was your motivating.

Alexis Ohanian (22:28)

Force. Yes. Yeah.

Ann Barry (22:29)

Exactly.

Alexis Ohanian (22:30)

Okay. And, and so I finally had a conversation with him. It was actually in a podcast. It was his pod just having a conversation. And I was so smitten with him. And I was like, this dude is so smart, this dude. We, and we both have two daughters now. Like, it was, it was really eye opening. And I, I came to realize this guy who was my CEO rival for, you know, a big part of my life, actually could be a friend and actually was someone who I really respected. And it goes back to that spectrum of love and hate. Right? And, and, and so we just started talking and about a year ago, he said, hey, you know What? I'm buying dig.com. i want to resurrect it. I want to do it with you. And we've been having more and more conversations, anticipating this next wave of social because it was already clear loop through the Turing test. What happens when you can no longer trust all that human content online is actually human? And so then how would you reimagine a community platform in 2025, knowing everything we know now, building for the last two decades with an AI default world, and how would that shape how you move? Certainly the biggest opportunity out the gate was how do we build moderator tools using AI to assist so that the work of these volunteers is far more delightful than it is arduous. Because right now it's flipped. Right now it's like 90% of your time is janitorial work that doesn't feel good and 10% is actually like community building time. So how do we flip that? And then also how do we figure out proving humanity from the earliest days in a way that again, feels good? And so we're still in closed beta. We've been opening up to a few thousand people active on the platform every day. And the way we got those first, you know, Kevin's got a big fan base and you know, we just charged people for registering their handle. So again, 99.9% verifiably human. Right. That's an easy first wave to do because you're getting their credit card info and basically letting Stripe make sure they're human. But, but we're really intentionally thinking here and we've got, there's some clever ideas I can't, I don't want to talk about all of them yet. But we have some very clever ways to build this into the user experience so that you're having fun using Digg and at the same time you're giving us more and more confidence about your humanity. And then as a consumer, we want to give you thresholds if you, this is the deep end of my pool. But like, you'll know all this stuff. So I guess like bonds get rated or credit gets rated, right? With like a, B, aaa. Okay. Imagine a similar version of that for a user account. So you can be fluffy bunny 12, which is, you know, let's say an A plus certified, like an A plus confident human versus like, you know, purple turtle 16 is like a C minus. I'm, I'm making up.

Ann Barry (25:18)

These. But you're not sure if they're a real person or.

Alexis Ohanian (25:20)

Not. Yes. As in they haven't, they haven't performed enough, they haven't done enough of the things that we're looking for as dig to give them a high enough grade. And so the way that ends.

Ann Barry (25:29)

Up making those bonds, they're junk contributors. There you.

Alexis Ohanian (25:33)

Go. Yes. And so, and so what does that mean is, you know, your viewing experience of Digg can ultimately be self serve to your level of comfort. And so if you want to view Digg with a high risk tolerance, right, so you just like give me everything I got. You can just say that, right? It's think of it like a slider. Whereas let's say you want to do some good research on a stock that you like. I don't conflating too many metaphors here. You're researching a bread maker and you need to know every one of these people is real. And you don't want to be reading compromised reviews of bread makers lest you make a bad choice. You're sorting for just the A grade and higher like really verified humans who, who have that. And so we've got some ideas for how to pull that off. But again, it all comes down to user experience. And I'm excited because I've, I don't know, I've gotten more and more confident the more time I've spent with Kevin that we've seen so much. And in many ways Kevin was really at the forefront. Digg did launch before Reddit. I didn't know about them when we started and when I was designing it, but Digg did launch first and between the two of us, we've spent what, 30, 40 years combined building and designing and developing online communities and couldn't think of a better person to work on this with. Excited, excited for, to keep rolling out to more.

Ann Barry (26:53)

Folks. So my last question for you, Alexis, sort of wraps this all together, which is you're simultaneously in these worlds of what's coming next. That's your world of venture and investing. Looking forward, what is the unimaginable? And you're sort of looking for that. You're also in this world of let's take dig and bring it back to life in a, in a better, newer, more maybe AI infused, but also AI resilient fashion. Right. You're digging deep into sports, but now thinking about the software to power the league baseball cards, collectibles is a big thing that I know you're involved.

Alexis Ohanian (27:25)

In. Very.

Ann Barry (27:26)

True. How, how much of your time are you spending now? Which is more about trying to grab a hold of nostalgia, digitize parts of it or optimize it with tech versus the truly brand new. You never would have thought that this existed 18 months.

Alexis Ohanian (27:45)

Ago. Excuse me. This is just a nice way of saying I'm not doing anything.

Ann Barry (27:50)

New. No, it's a way of saying Stoke Space, for example, is one of your.

Alexis Ohanian (27:55)

Investments. That's a forward thinking one for.

Ann Barry (27:57)

Sure. Tell us what that is versus earbuds, for example. Like you take those.

Alexis Ohanian (28:01)

Two. I think, I think, you know, we are undeniably just leaping forward with technology right now. And so that will allow for companies to, to meet us early like Stoke did five years ago. They're now billion dollar company, that is they're going to go head to head with SpaceX next year doing 100% reusable rockets. So even the second stage, so the part that holds everything will be able to land itself. And so that is going to dramatically bring down the cost per kilogram of getting things up into space and back. And that is going to unlock a tremendous number of new businesses that can now live aboard that capsule and hopefully help us have a better life here on Earth. I think the space industry as a whole is way, way, way closer and bigger than we realize in a lot of really exciting ways. And so, you know, getting to meet a guy like Andy is so exciting because I could never conceive of inventing something like this, let alone or building a company like he is. But the 776 proposition works for founders like him. And then similarly, Gilles, who's the founder of airbuds, you know, this is a, I think this is a generational response to social media culture, especially the most toxic elements. So AirBuds is a way to passively share what you're listening to. So Spotify, Apple, whatever you listen to that music, those songs get shared in real time with your friends, like actual people, you know, and like they can react to it. And it has become very popular. Millions of high school and college age kids are using it as a way to connect outside of school. That doesn't involve gamifying youth, right? It's not about chasing followers or likes or digital hugs, all that stuff. It is simply, here's what I'm vibing to. You can react to it and maybe let's talk about it. And, and I think this generation has seen the worst parts of social culture and that gamification and are like, you know what? Not for me. And, and we've seen different manifestations of it. Be real and others have kind of come and gone. What I love about this is music has been a big part of our species for a very long time. And even in the modern era there has been, I mean, if you remember, okay, you won't remember this, but I will remember this. The aim culture of leaving those away messages with what song you were listening to, right? Like this is an echo from my own youth, which was many decades ago. But where this new generation, because of the ubiquity of streaming, because of sort of the pain from the previous culture of social media, are looking for this outlet now more than ever. And as much as AI is going to transform that industry of music, I think really compelling, amazing artists are still going to thrive, right? Taylor is still going to sell out stadiums, I'm still taking my daughters to see Taylor Swift. Amazing artists are still going to thrive. But we'll need even more solves for discovery when there's so much more to be listening to. And again, I think it comes back to some part human and some part.

Ann Barry (31:03)

Technology. Alexis, you're going to come back. You're going to tell us about the latest on day. You're going to take another victory lap on women's sports. So thank you very much for your time. Thank you.

Alexis Ohanian (31:12)

Sir. Thank you.

Ann Barry (31:13)

Man. Thank.

Alexis Ohanian (31:13)

You. Always good to see.

Ann Barry (31:14)

You. Well, big thanks to Alexis Ohanian for joining me. I hope everyone has a wonderful New Year's Day. We'll be here on Friday with a look back at another conversation. That's with Michael Lewis on the 15th anniversary of his brilliant book the Big Short. That's it for today's Brew Markets.

John Curto (31:31)

Daily. Brew Markets Daily is hosted by Anne Barry and produced by John Curto, Tarkab Delatif and Emily Miller. Technical direction by Felicia Edwards. Rosemary Minkler is our audio engineer. And the president of Morning Brew Inc. Is Devin.