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- [00:00]
Lucy
I took money from people in the end because I realized how useful people could be just in terms of introductions, etc. Like, they're very incentive aligned to help the company grow.
- [00:12]
Ryan Dice
How much more successful would you be if you had lunch once a week with insanely successful entrepreneurs who share their biggest secrets on how they think and achieve success? Grab your seat at the table because this is Business Lunch with Roland Frazier and Ryan Dice. Welcome to another episode of Business Lunch and today's a snackable episode with Roland where he's going to get into some more tactical strategies that you can start using to live a rich and happy life. If this is the first snackable episode you're hearing, I'd encourage you to go back and listen to some of the other episodes that Roland has put out. And if you want to get notified every time we release a new episode, go to the new businesslunchpodcast.com website and we'll send you detailed notes along with every episode. That's businesslunchpodcast.com www.businesslunchpodcast.com and you can sign up for the free email newsletter where you'll be able to get all the highlights and resources from the episodes.
- [01:05]
Interviewer
Thank you for coming out and being with us today. Really appreciate that.
- [01:09]
Lucy
Yeah, thanks for having me. And I heard that a lot of you guys are hungover, so thanks for being here.
- [01:14]
Interviewer
These are the people that really want to be here. That's great. So you've had a pretty cool entrepreneurial journey and not a lot of time. It's. It's pretty impressive. Would you kind of just give us the genesis? I know you interned at Facebook and then you were the first female designer at Snap, right? Yeah, and a lot of other cool things. But just to kind of give us the overview of the entrepreneurial journey to date.
- [01:39]
Lucy
Yeah, definitely. So I was always an entrepreneur. Growing up, I believe, like in kindergarten, I was selling Pokemon cards and colored pencils for money. I actually got sent to the principal's office and got threatened to, like, you know, get kicked out of the.
- [01:52]
Interviewer
And you're like, I'm so Pokemon cards.
- [01:53]
Lucy
Yeah, exactly. And then in around second grade, I started learning to code. So I was making bots and then just like using these bots to get rare items and neopets on, like, the actual site and then reselling them on forums for like, thousands of dollars. I figured out how to make a PayPal account via like a Visa debit card. And you didn't really have to verify anything back then, so I didn't Have a big account, but I had like money sitting on PayPal which I could use to spend on sites like ebay. And then just started making a bunch of like Internet marketing tools made of the first Twitter bots out there that would just like auto follow and unfollow people and targeted Internet marketers who would spend quite a lot of money on it. And then, yeah, I got into hackathons in college and that's when I discovered the startup world and that there were things that were even bigger than these like mini websites I was creating. So started diving into that and then decided to drop out of college and pursue my like, bigger entrepreneurship journey.
- [02:48]
Interviewer
I like it. I like it. And so in terms of going to Facebook, what was that like and what were you doing there in the end?
- [02:54]
Lucy
Yeah, so I was doing iOS engineering and worked on messenger and then afterwards I decided I wanted to start my own company. So I actually got the Thiel Fellowship and the deal was that like, I could do the Teal Fellowship if I left Facebook. So for people that don't know it's. It was called 20 under 20 back then. And Pirateal was giving kids $100,000 to drop out of school school and pursue their dreams because he wanted to make a point that you didn't need college.
- [03:20]
Interviewer
That's pretty cool. And then, and then how do you feel about that? Are you happy with that, that choice you've done okay?
- [03:26]
Lucy
Yeah, I'm very happy with that choice. I actually think everyone that pursued the Teal Fellowship ended up doing incredibly well. And I think it's because they got a head start in life. Like they entered Silicon Valley when they're like 18, 19 years old, were able to network with other like incredibly smart people. And realistically they just got like a three year head start with tons of resources.
- [03:44]
Interviewer
So. And you self educated on coding or did you go through courses or training or.
- [03:47]
Lucy
Yeah, so I self educated myself when I was younger, but I did study computer science at Carnegie Mellon.
- [03:52]
Interviewer
How important do you think it is to code these days?
- [03:57]
Lucy
I think the future is actually no code. Personally. There's a lot of no code tools out there right now. You can use Airtable, like, et cetera, to just hack things together. And you're even seeing like design software where you can press a button and it'll like essentially code the site for you. That being said, I think that knowing how to code is important or understanding the fundamentals because realistically, the best sites today and the best apps today, you still need a team of engineers and you will Know how much you should be spending on creating an app, what the actual time frame should be, et cetera. If you know how to code. If you are just a business person and you are hiring a team of engineers, you're going to get ripped off. Yeah, yeah.
- [04:39]
Interviewer
So how do you do that if. I mean, you partner with a coder? I guess. What's. How does the person who wants to go and do and develop some software app or something like that build a team without getting ripped off?
- [04:51]
Lucy
Yeah. So if you wanted to actually learn how to code, there's a lot of online resources that are free out there. I think App Academy is, like, one of the best out there if you wanted to, like, actually dive into coding yourself. Otherwise, I would highly recommend finding someone technical to partner up with. Like, students from MIT will gladly do it.
- [05:10]
Interviewer
And you, I think, was it at. At Quora that you met your partner for Scale?
- [05:15]
Lucy
Yes.
- [05:15]
Interviewer
Would you tell us a little bit about that story and then how that came to be?
- [05:19]
Lucy
So we were just both young dropouts, essentially. Well, he hadn't dropped out or gone.
- [05:23]
Interviewer
You got paid to drop out, so that's okay.
- [05:25]
Lucy
Yeah, I got. He was a tech lead there, and we were just like, okay, we're the youngest people at this company. We're like crushing it. We would just have lunch together every single day, and we were like, yeah, let's start a company together one day. And then I was at Snap and I was just getting bored working on projects on the side every weekend. So I hit map and I'm like, okay, now I want to do a company. Y Combinator applications are coming up. We should just do it. So we were just coding random things like during, like, winter break or something, and then applied to yc and we applied with, like, several different ideas, but which neither. We didn't work on any of the ideas we actually applied with, but they had up accepting us because of our history.
- [06:06]
Interviewer
So it went. So Scale AI went through Y Combinator.
- [06:09]
Lucy
Yes.
- [06:09]
Interviewer
What did you think of that? Well, actually, first, would you tell everybody, just in case they don't know, what is Y Combinator? And then why did you choose that route? And would you do it again?
- [06:17]
Lucy
Yeah. So Y Combinator is probably the best accelerator program in the world. Like, Twitch came out of it, Dropbox came out of it, et cetera. They created several unicorns. I enjoyed the experience. I think that, like, if you're a B2B company, it gives you an unfair advantage because it's just like, you can sell to all the other YC companies.
- [06:34]
Interviewer
Right.
- [06:35]
Lucy
And it's just like ongoing, infinite network of companies that have funding that can spend on your product. So if you are a B2B company that has a product that's useful for any company out there, like it's a no brainer to do. Would I do it again? The answer is actually no on my end because it's a lot of dilution. Like they take a large percentage.
- [06:57]
Interviewer
What is the percentage they take?
- [06:59]
Lucy
I think it's new now. It used to be 124,7%. They have a new deal where they invest 500k but like a portion of it is on an uncapped note, which is good and bad in a lot of ways. Like technically you get more of the money for less dilution, but they're doing that because they want to squeeze into your next round and get more ownership. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [07:22]
Interviewer
How did, how did the partnership come about for scale and then. And evolve?
- [07:28]
Lucy
Yeah. So I like, we just decided to be co founders and then started. We got an OIC and then I ended up raising some money in Los Angeles too from this guy Paige Craig. He coined the term Silicon beach. And then we just started building. Yeah.
- [07:45]
Interviewer
And when you're talking about going into business like that, a lot of people I think have challenges with, well, how do we know who gets what percentage and work that out and then how do we work together?
- [07:56]
Lucy
I mean we were both so early, we were both technical, we were very complimentary. So it was just very 50, 50. And I'd actually highly suggest it be 50, 50 for anyone that's just starting out. I think the only exception is if you've already raised money. Right. Like if you've already raised money and then you bring on someone, then it's absolutely fair to give them a lower percentage. And it's just like what capacity they are joining you in. Like if you're adding them as a co founder post fundraising, what's typical is 10% or like a CTO, etc. If you're hiring like an engineer, I would say be equity generous. Give them like 1 through 5% for your first engineer, depending on like how much you've raised.
- [08:33]
Interviewer
And would you. And is that typically done through options? Do you find that's kind of the best way or.
- [08:38]
Lucy
Yeah, yeah.
- [08:38]
Interviewer
Okay. And you've done a lot of fundraising. You had written a, an article on it and it couldn't pull it up, which is got me totally hanging because it was like I wrote this long thing on exactly how you do fundraising. Would you share with us how Would you go about doing that if you didn't have any connections right now?
- [08:58]
Lucy
Yeah. So we just created major fomo. What I did was I looked at friends who knew investors and asked them to send the investor, like, like hype me up essentially, right? And say, like, you have to meet Lucy, blah, blah, or I'll send a forwardable to them and then they forward it to the investor and then we get intro. But like, once it's hyped up, I align all the meetings all at once. Start off with like the investors I care less about. That I view as like a practice round because, like, they're going to ask questions and then I can like reform my pitch and then have all the, like, investors that can write larger checks in the end and then kind of just say like, oh yeah, like I'm really busy because I actually have like all these other meetings or I'm going to be on Sand Hill Road these dates. So like, it's best to meet at this time. And then like, suddenly they know that you're talking to other investors without you saying who exactly you're talking to, which you don't actually want to reveal because they will back channel. So if you're like, oh, I'm talking to like this person that's a coil and then they end up pasting, like it will cost other investors to pass versus, like, if you leave it like up hanging, like, everyone's going to try to figure it out, but that creates insane fomo and like, there's not one person they go to where, like, if they end up passing on you, like, they know.
- [10:08]
Interviewer
So when you have the conversations with the investors, how do you prep for that? What do you, what do you do to get ready for that conversation? Including, do you show them a deck, do you show them a demo, a wireframe, what do you do?
- [10:22]
Lucy
Yeah, so in general, I like to send the materials beforehand. I think that having a naturally flowing conversation is much better because you want to get the investors talking. Because once they're talking more than you, they are already convinced and they're convincing themselves to invest versus, like, if you walk through a deck during an investor meeting, like, you're doing most of the talking and they're probably falling asleep.
- [10:42]
Interviewer
Right?
- [10:43]
Lucy
Yeah.
- [10:43]
Interviewer
Yeah. So, so you ask them questions or like, how do you get them talking more?
- [10:48]
Lucy
Honestly, Like, I just let them talk and I don't interrupt until there's silence.
- [10:54]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [10:54]
Lucy
And then I'll follow up with maybe a question or a point that I know that they'll like based off of they said, okay, now.
- [11:01]
Interviewer
So there's all these different structures for raising money too. You could sell direct equity. You can do a safe, you can do convertible notes. Do you have one of those things that you think works better than the other or that.
- [11:12]
Lucy
Yeah, I think safes are the best way to go for your first round of funding because it's cheap. You don't really need to use lawyers because the YC safe is just so standard and it's fast. Right.
- [11:22]
Interviewer
Would you give everybody just an outline of what a safe is and kind of how that works?
- [11:26]
Lucy
And so legally, obviously promise for future equity essentially when the round converts into a priced round.
- [11:32]
Interviewer
Yeah. Awesome. And, and then when you're, when you're doing those pitches, do you already have your team together or do you try to raise money so that you have enough to attract a team to say that I'm funded now, so don't worry, you can come over here.
- [11:45]
Lucy
And I always think it's really sketchy when someone puts together a deck of their team when the team isn't actually full time or hired. I think that's a really big red flag for investors. Whenever I've raised, I've just been like, hey, I'm a solo founder or hey, I have a co founder.
- [12:00]
Interviewer
Okay. And when you're talking to people who are going to be on the team, what kinds of questions do you think it's really good to ask to be sure that you're getting the right people?
- [12:08]
Lucy
In general, I think I want to see what their work ethic is. Like obviously if I'm like interviewing an engineer, I'll give them engineering questions. If I'm interviewing a marketer, I figure out like just how good they are. I'll do like reference checks with 10 other people. That being said, I don't look for like all perfect reference checks. I do think that like a lot of people are just very polarizing. So I see like, are there at least some good reference checks? But I try to like evaluate their skillset and like whether they're willing to grind the first like two years, let's say, because I think work life balance is incredibly difficult to have your first like two years while you're trying to like build up the company.
- [12:42]
Interviewer
Yeah. And as far as finding those people, do you like search firms? What do you think about using a cert like a professional search firm or recruiter?
- [12:51]
Lucy
I do not because I generally think the best talent the second they like even mention they're going to quit. They already have like 10 companies on them. Right. So they're not going to have to even need to use a search firm. Like the best people you're going to get are like, you convince them to drop out of college. You like convince them to quit their job where they're already excelling at.
- [13:11]
Interviewer
How do you find those people if you're sitting out here and don't know how to find those people?
- [13:18]
Lucy
One way I found those people was I figured out like every single student at like Stanford, MIT, etc. Back in the day when Facebook was popular. And then I added their email to like my Facebook account so I can access these like student groups that I would just post job listings in colleges I didn't go to. And I've done a lot of like technical interviewing and I just knew like which colleges I thought had the best engineers. So I like targeted those colleges. But I would say like really infiltrating student groups and infiltrating like great companies. So I would like go to lunch at certain companies, like Stripe, et cetera, and like just make friends with every single person and kind of figure out from there who is like there for four years, et cetera, thinking about leaving. If you really wanted a good cold, you can go on LinkedIn and like look at who's been four years at a certain company or three years even, because they're about to like their golden handcuffs are almost gone. Because almost every company has like a standard one year cliff, four year vest.
- [14:18]
Interviewer
Can anybody go to lunch at Stripe or do we have to know somebody?
- [14:20]
Lucy
If they know somebody, yeah.
- [14:22]
Interviewer
Who should we call? No, I'm just kidding. So you, you also have gotten into venture investing yourself through back end capital?
- [14:30]
Lucy
Yes.
- [14:31]
Interviewer
Can you tell us a little bit about how that came about and how it works?
- [14:33]
Lucy
Yeah, so it came about because I was just like, okay, I've done everything from like founding a company, product engineering, etc. I want to try venture. Right. Also my like lead investor, Excel for series A was like, hey, like we want to just give you some money to like play around and do venture with and like you'll get the carry, etc. So I did that and I was doing a really good job. So I ended up just raising a fund and then investing in early stage companies. So I focused on precede and seed. I think that's my specialty. Like I like betting on people versus traction because sometimes there's traction, but like there's an upper limit like tam. Right.
- [15:07]
Interviewer
How do you vet the investments that it's gonna.
- [15:10]
Lucy
Yeah. So my thesis is invest in technical people. Because if you have a team of, like, let's say an engineer and a designer. They never need to hire a single person. They have, like, indefinite Runway to continuously pivot. So as long as they persevere and never give up, they will probably figure out something. Like, I have a very good friend who I met in the Teal fellowship back in 2014, and he's been pivoting and finally raised a giant round, like, this month. And, like, finally figured it out because he never gave up because he was technically, like, he could just live off ramen for the rest of his life.
- [15:43]
Interviewer
That's great. And for the fun, do you like some of the tools like AngelList provides for fun so that all the backend is taken care of? Or do you think it's better to have your own team? Or what are your thoughts?
- [15:55]
Lucy
Yes, I've done both. Like, fun one, I used AngelList and fun two. I had my own team. I would do Angelist again.
- [16:02]
Interviewer
Yeah, it's a lot of work.
- [16:04]
Lucy
Yeah, it's easy. Yeah.
- [16:05]
Interviewer
And. And then as far as peak picking, did you have someone to kind of do the ops for the fund or are you doing everything?
- [16:13]
Lucy
Back when we were on AngelList, I was just doing everything because AngelList was essentially the ops. And then for fun too, we hired someone to help out with some of the ops.
- [16:20]
Interviewer
Okay. And for one of the things that you have, what are some of the companies you've invested in with back end? Is that fund still open?
- [16:28]
Lucy
It's still open. It's not open. Like, you can't invest in it anymore. But, like, we are still doubling down on current investments.
- [16:33]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [16:34]
Lucy
So Ramp is probably our, like, big winner. Like a multiple billions, maybe 7, 8 billion the last round. And we invested in paid. Ramp is a, like, credit card for companies essentially. So it helps you save money and figures out, like, where you can save. And then we invested in pave, which is like compensation transparency, so you know how much to pay others. That is also like a unicorn right now.
- [16:57]
Interviewer
How much to pay others?
- [16:58]
Lucy
Yeah, so like, it's like, okay, so like, you're an engineer, right? Like, you're a series B company hiring an engineer of this status. Like, how much are other companies offering, like, similar profiles?
- [17:09]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [17:10]
Lucy
Main street, which finds you savings on companies, which is awesome. Yeah, just a bunch of random companies. We invested in Cross Mint at a great valuation. This is actually a company that we like, essentially incubated because we started our own thing similar to Y Combinator, except, like, our thing was we provide housing, we give you less money, but we take less equity. They just raised at a $70 million valuation, I believe. And that was. It's like a Moonpay competitor on Solana.
- [17:38]
Interviewer
If somebody wants to get into investing, whether it's through funds or trying to get into those rounds, what do you think is the best route for them?
- [17:47]
Lucy
Yeah. So if you know people, obviously a fund is less risk and you get management fees. So let's say you raise like a billion dollar fund. You're getting like 20% in management fees essentially. So that's like 200 million for you to manage the fund but also pay yourself.
- [18:00]
Interviewer
Right.
- [18:00]
Lucy
That's a lot of money. I personally think that if you're well connected, SPVs make the most sense. So you find out a company in like a series D that might IPO soon, so you have like a shorter timeframe on liquidity. You get a large allocation because they're already raising like let's say tens of millions or hundreds of millions. So it's not hard to get like a 1 to $2 million allocation and then you run an SPV on it, you charge management fees and carry on it's. And you can run through like as many of these as you want.
- [18:27]
Interviewer
That's great. What are some of the best companies you think that present opportunities to invest in right now?
- [18:34]
Lucy
Huh?
- [18:34]
Interviewer
Not specific companies, but like categorically categories.
- [18:37]
Lucy
I would say like AI is super hot and Web three is still super hot.
- [18:42]
Interviewer
Okay, and what does Web three mean to you? Like, because you hear that thrown around a whole lot.
- [18:46]
Lucy
Yeah, I think it's decentralization and just like ownership of your fans. I think it's cutting out the middlemen because like, for example, like credit card processors, right? Like they can charge a lot of money and if you can cut that out then suddenly woohoo, everything is great. Escrow services, like if you can cut that out, then you suddenly save a ton of fees also.
- [19:05]
Interviewer
Who's doing that right right now?
- [19:06]
Lucy
Who's doing that right right now? I actually don't think There are many Web3 companies that are like Web3 isn't popular yet because everyone is trying to take this like very web 3 approach that web 2 users don't understand. For example, like in the creator economy a lot of people are doing social tokens and like you can buy your favorite creators tokens and stake them, etc. And like people are like, I don't understand what that means.
- [19:30]
Interviewer
Right. And it's hard, we got to share all these accounts up and. Yeah, not easy, right?
- [19:34]
Lucy
Yeah. Like I think who's doing it right would be actually, like, probably pretty big brands like Dolce and Gabbana just launched an nft, but this NFT is tied to Utility. So, like, they are throwing parties around the world. You get invited to their exclusive fashion shows. They have, like, vacation trips to take you on. You get exclusive merchandise because you own this nft. So, like, for a lot of people, that's, like, easy to understand. I think Royal is really interesting. So they're like a music NFT platform where, like, artists can sell a percentage of their songs and then their fans can earn royalties on it. Which also makes sense because, like. Okay, like, if you're betting on the artist, essentially. Right.
- [20:12]
Interviewer
Does that tap into, like, ASKAP and BMI and all those royalty organizations? Do they connect those?
- [20:17]
Lucy
I believe so, yeah.
- [20:18]
Interviewer
Okay, cool.
- [20:19]
Lucy
And then I would say, like, even the monkeys, like Board Ape Yacht Club is doing it right in a sense that they are throwing parties around the world and having big performers like Snoop Dogg, where. I like, I personally had friends that really wanted to go to a Board A party during NFT Week and like, buy an ape that costs $200,000 just to go to this party.
- [20:38]
Interviewer
That's funny.
- [20:39]
Lucy
Yeah.
- [20:39]
Interviewer
But they kind of hold their value. Right?
- [20:41]
Lucy
So, yeah. Yeah. I like, view it as like a more expensive Soho House.
- [20:44]
Interviewer
That's funny. What about the kind of the crash in crypto right now? What do you see happening with that? Is that going to.
- [20:50]
Lucy
I think crypto is always cyclical. Like, I think it's going to go back up eventually because there is a lot of reasons why Web3 and blockchain technologies are useful.
- [20:59]
Interviewer
Yeah. You have a new venture that I think you started in April, and I was a little confused because I saw Moment some places and I saw Passes some places.
- [21:08]
Lucy
Yeah. So basically there's another company called Moment, and they owned a trademark, so we were forced to rebrand. But I like Passes because it immediately tells you the utility and you don't think about it as NFTs. And we're taking an approach of like, not even mentioning NFTs on a platform because I think that, like, a lot of people are turned off by the idea because there's so many people that did projects that were essentially rug pulls. Like they launched an art piece, they sold it, and then they disappeared. And it's just like a random piece of art that you can do nothing with. That's not even like a nice piece of art.
- [21:41]
Interviewer
Right.
- [21:41]
Lucy
So for us, we're like, okay, let's tie it to Utility. Like, it's Going to give you merchandise, access, live events, digital membership to exclusive content and just call it like fan club memberships. And that's something that like everyone can easily grasp and we just have all the benefits of web3 without like people knowing it's web3.
- [22:00]
Interviewer
So. So because there wasn't I, I joined the waitlist, but. But there's not a lot about it. Can you tell us what is it? If you were, if you're pitching that. If these are your investors and you're pitching passes.
- [22:12]
Lucy
Yeah. So essentially it's just a paid exclusive membership club. So let's say I am like Miley Cyrus, someone can buy my nft, which is essentially a pass.
- [22:24]
Interviewer
Do you have to have it pre created or does it meant there or how does that work?
- [22:28]
Lucy
Yes. So it mints on a site. So you just press a button and we'll mint one. Different membership tiers and depending on what membership tier you have, you get different access to different perks.
- [22:37]
Interviewer
Works.
- [22:38]
Lucy
So on the baseline, let's say exclusive content, so behind the scenes footage, etc, you can message me and DM me and if you want to like tip me in crypto you can. Or in dollars. But it's beneficial to tip in crypto because like let's say I had a super fan, right, and they really wanted to get to me, they could tip a million dollars and then I'll notice them. And then the cool thing about NFTs is that it's interoperable. So if I wanted to offer like a meet and greet, I can use another website like Ticket Fairy Token Proof. And instead of meet and greet specifically for my NFT holders, I can do merch drops specifically for them. And the great thing is I get like way more data on my fans. Like let's say these passes were tied to tickets to my concert. Traditionally if a person were buying a ticket to every single one of my concert, I might think they're super fan. But I wouldn't actually know they attended or not because they could be reselling the tickets and scalping. Now if they're like selling the passes, I know exactly who they're selling it to too. And I know they're a ticket scalper. But on top of that, like normally Ticketmaster would take the fees, right? I could set a 10% royalty fee on my passes. So every time it transferred. Now it's not Ticketmaster taking the fees, I'm getting the money back. So that's a lot more money for me. What's also cool is I can see like every other thing that's happening in their wallet. So I can see like, okay, they have a bunch of Millennium NFTs. So like, for whatever reason, my fans are also anym fans. So I can do a collab with selenium or. Wow. They're spending a lot of money on this like one eyelash brand. I create my own eyelash brand.
- [24:05]
Interviewer
That's cool.
- [24:06]
Lucy
Yeah, it makes everything super transparent. And this is data that like they just didn't have before.
- [24:11]
Interviewer
What is the. Like if you were designing, if you were consulting with someone about designing the ideal nft, what would you advise them to do in terms of utility and smart contracts and all that kind of stuff?
- [24:26]
Lucy
Yeah. So in terms of utility, I think they should definitely tie it to in real life events somehow.
- [24:32]
Interviewer
Because I think that in person event.
- [24:33]
Lucy
Yeah, I think that's easier to swallow because people are willing to already pay for tickets to in person events. I think sites like Patreon Only Fans, etcetera, Are making it make more sense to tie it to a digital membership as well. But like, if you can have both, that's awesome. Right? I would also just say merchandise drops because it's like Bored Ape Yacht Club merchandise drops, just sell out instantly. And like you have a skateboard that like you could have bought on a merch shop for $100 that's now selling for thousands of dollars and people are still buying it.
- [25:03]
Interviewer
Right.
- [25:04]
Lucy
There's just like an indefinite amount of things you can do. Like I would probably tie it to like maybe a lifetime discount to something, so then it holds value for life as well. So it's like, okay, you own this NFT, like you get like 50% off McDonald's for life. If you're like a big McDonald's fan like that NFT is going to resell for a ton. I think Coachella actually did a really good job of this, where they sold NFTs that gave you like essentially lifetime artist guest passes. And now those NFTs are going for a million dollars or so. And every time it resells, Coachella is probably getting like 100, 200k tickback. So they're like making money indefinitely for it. And the crazy thing is it was priced at the point where you could buy artist guest passes for life and it wouldn't add up to the cost of nft. But I think that people like the flex, they like the art, and it's just an easier concept to swallow in their head, like, oh, I get lifetime passes. And to them also, maybe they'll even make money on the NFT by reselling it as it gains value in the future. Right. So, like, then the total cost is either $0 or profitable to them, which is actually already happened with the people who have resold it. Meanwhile, Coachella is just making tons of money from, like the initial sale on the royalty fees.
- [26:10]
Interviewer
So. And the only thing I'm concerned about there is so, like, you sell it now, you're getting paid as they resell.
- [26:16]
Lucy
Yeah.
- [26:17]
Interviewer
But what happens when you're fully at capacity? And so let's say that we did it for an event here, so we have only so many seats that we can do when we have sold the full amount of seats. Now other people are selling that and we're making money off the resales, but we can't really issue any new things because we're out of capacity.
- [26:37]
Lucy
But you're not issuing new seats because when they resell it, they're giving up their seats.
- [26:41]
Interviewer
Right, but that's it. Right? You just. You kind of say, okay, when I'm calculating what is this going to be worth? Is this a good thing to do? You need to think about, okay, well, I can sell this many, and obviously you can sell as many bored apes, I guess, as you want. Right? Yeah, but so is it good for places that would have physical limitations like that, or.
- [27:00]
Lucy
No. So like, what you would do for this is let's say there's like 5,000 seats, right? You just sell 5,000 NFTs, and if they resell, then you're getting all the royalty fees and ticket resales. But, like, you're still only have 5,000 tickets.
- [27:13]
Interviewer
Right.
- [27:13]
Lucy
So like 5,000 passes, and it's only going to this 5,000 people.
- [27:16]
Interviewer
Right.
- [27:17]
Lucy
What I would do though, personally would be have some VIP access. So it's like 100 is the VIP and they get different perks, and that's super limited. Or just offer some NFTs that get you first rights to access. Imagine if you had an NFT that for life. You got to buy tickets to Burning Man. You got first access to Burning Man. People get stressed about Burning Man, Coachella. They would pay just to even be able to have first access to buy the normal pass.
- [27:49]
Interviewer
Right. That's. That's really cool. Who would you say are the competitors to passes?
- [27:56]
Lucy
I would say the closest competitors right now are actually Web2 platforms. So it'd be like Patreon, Onlyfans, et cetera.
- [28:03]
Interviewer
Ticketmaster.
- [28:05]
Lucy
Ticketmaster, yes. But we're not totally focused on ticketing, like, at the moment. We'd rather them plug into other websites like Ticket fairy or token proof to handle ticketing because NFTs are interoperable which is interesting. Like they could take the NFT and like take it to any other platform they want. Like for now we just want to focus on the like exclusive digital content and we'll help creators plug into the right platforms to offer merch drops, to offer like ticketing, etc.
- [28:30]
Interviewer
How do you keep track of what is. Because that's such a changing world. Everything in web 3, what do you read, consume, watch, listen to that helps you stay on top of things.
- [28:43]
Lucy
Honestly, I'm the type of person who just clicks random links. I think Twitter and like listening to the smartest people is awesome.
- [28:49]
Interviewer
Who are some of those people?
- [28:49]
Lucy
You think Vitalik is awesome? I really like I multi coin my lead investors. They're like on top of things. You have a 16Z who I think is like one of the best crypto funds out there. It's like Chris Dixon, Jane Lippincott on the consumer side, like just like thinking about consumer. Alfred Lynn is like a legend. There's just so many and I'm in these communities right. So I do go to these tech events and meet people and talk to people. I like crash random daos in New York and talk to people in there too.
- [29:23]
Interviewer
Nice. Okay. And in your new company you took some funding from was it anti fund?
- [29:29]
Lucy
Yes. So Jake Paul's financial.
- [29:31]
Interviewer
Yes, Logan was here last night.
- [29:32]
Lucy
Yep, I saw.
- [29:33]
Interviewer
What. So I think this will be good for people to hear. Why would you go out and take money from somebody else versus funding yourself in something like that? Because it's $8 million. It's not a ton of money. It's not, you know, it's not nothing but yeah.
- [29:48]
Lucy
So initially I was planning on self funding but I realized people were willing to invest at like any valuation I named. So I ended up saying I wanted to raise the $50 million valuation and it worked out. But I would say I would took money from people in the end because I realized how useful people could be just in terms of introductions. E they're very incentive aligned to help the company grow. Right. Versus if I funded it myself, like yes, I would own 100% but I wouldn't get the outside help. And I've gotten a lot of like helpful intros from my investors.
- [30:21]
Interviewer
Yeah, yeah. So in your kind of going crazy crazy fast at all the stuff that you do, you also find time to run 10 to 20 miles a day?
- [30:31]
Lucy
Oh no, no. This was during COVID in Singapore. I was running 10 to 20 miles a day. I did two Barry's Boot Camp classes a day now, so that's. That probably equates to closer to six miles a day.
- [30:40]
Interviewer
Okay.
- [30:41]
Lucy
Yeah.
- [30:41]
Interviewer
And not five and a half hours of working out anymore.
- [30:43]
Lucy
No, not five and a half hours of working out. I work out two hours a day.
- [30:46]
Interviewer
Okay. I like it. What is, are you still living at, is it one museum place?
- [30:50]
Lucy
1,000.
- [30:50]
Interviewer
1,000, yeah. Okay. And I know you've got some famous people that live there. How does that feel? Do they seem normal neighbor like? Or you've got David Beckham.
- [31:00]
Lucy
Nice. I've reintroduced myself to David like 10 times because I apparently can't remember. Can't remember your name, but he's the.
- [31:06]
Interviewer
One in the elevator the last time. Very cool. So I guess just as a last question, is there anything that you think that you could share with us here? We're a bunch of intermediate to advanced marketers looking at Web3 versus other kinds of marketing. And you've built tools for us. I bet some of us have bought your Twitter follow unfollow and things like that back in the day. But is there anything that you would share as far as just kind of looking forward into the future that we might be thinking about in terms of resources, in terms of direction, in terms of focus, anything like that?
- [31:41]
Lucy
Yeah. Well, I think for marketers especially, like what's really interesting is you can hyper target people. So let's say you want to target like all music fans for whatever reason. You can literally google or essentially Google like who owns like these music NFTs. And then you can airdrop something into their wallets. And I check my wallet all the time for like random things that get airdropped in and people will literally like just see like, oh, I have this like random, I don't know, like water bottle nft. Let me like click it and then like it has a link to your website and suddenly you get like direct exposure to people that they're forced to look at. You can like essentially Google for anything. Like you can look up like high net worth individuals, like, like people who have like shopped at a certain place, et cetera. So it's like really hyper targeted marketing that I think is like probably better than spending on ads personally. Especially as like Ethereum 2.0 comes out. The gas fee should be a lot cheaper. But also on other chains like Solana, like let's say I want to target like fine art, like thank UX has like a lot of NFTs on Solana and I could just like find wallets that have it and like, drop in like my art fair NFTs. I don't know. That's great.
- [32:51]
Interviewer
That's actually really, really cool.
- [32:52]
Lucy
Yep.
- [32:52]
Interviewer
And are there any tools to help automate that or anything like that?
- [32:57]
Lucy
I mean, if you look up just like NFT wallet finders, I'm sure you'll find something. Okay, awesome.
- [33:03]
Interviewer
Well, thank you so much for taking the time to come and share with us. Let's give her a big hand.
- [33:20]
Roland Frazier
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What most people don't realize is you can acquire highly profitable businesses with no money out of your own pocket in pretty much any country in the world, regardless of your credit and without having to go find a bunch of investors or needing any experience. Look, I've been acquiring businesses for over 30 years now and I cover the whole process in my EPIC Investing Strategy training and I want to give it to you 100% free. Just visit businesslaunchpodcast.com EPIC to get your free access to my EPIC investing training right now, while it's available. Hey, Roland Frazier here. If you're looking for a way to grow your business exponentially to get more customers and ultimately increase your wealth, there's no faster way to do it than to acquire other businesses that already have the customers, products, services, teams and media that you want. If you want to double your sales, just acquire a company that has the same sales as yours. It sounds simple, but far too many people end up starting new businesses that fail and forget that they could skip all the hard stuff and just acquire one that already exists. There's a reason why private equity firms, family offices, big companies like Apple, Google, and some of the smartest entrepreneurs on the planet do not start new businesses from scratch. They acquire already successful businesses and when they do it, they instantly increase their sales, their profits. If they want market share, they increase that. They can get new products and services to offer all instantly. Hey look, 90% of new businesses fail 90%. Why not acquire an already successful business and increase your chances of success by 900%? What most people don't realize is you can acquire highly profitable businesses with no money out of your own pocket in pretty much any country in the world, regardless of your credit and without having to go find a bunch of investors or needing any experience. Look, I've been acquiring businesses for over 30 years now and I cover the whole process in my EPIC Investing Strategy training and I want to give it to you 100% free. Just visit businesslunchpodcast.com epic to get your free access to my EPIC investing training right now while it's available.