← Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy![The Chainsmokers - Music & Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.430] — Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy cover](https://megaphone.imgix.net/podcasts/368f34fc-50a3-11f0-b2b9-5b9f31405f9f/image/bd372b8ccbcc87e002ff63c063ebb450.jpg?ixlib=rails-4.3.1&max-w=3000&max-h=3000&fit=crop&auto=format,compress)
Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy
The Chainsmokers - Music & Markets - [Invest Like the Best, EP.430]
01:17:32
Loading summary
Transcript169 lines
- [00:01]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Something I speak about frequently on Invest like the Best is the idea of life's work. A more fun way to think about it is that I'm looking for Maniacs on a Mission. This is the basis for our investment firm Positive Sum, and it's the reason why I am so enthusiastic about our presenting sponsor, Ramp. Not only are the founders Karim and Eric Life's work level founders certainly maniacs on a mission, they have created a product that is effectively an unlock for founders and finance team to do more of their life's work. By streamlining financial operations, saving everyone their most precious resource time, Ramp has built a command and control system for corporate cards and expense management. You can issue cards, manage approvals, make vendor payments of all kinds, and even automate closing your books all in one place. Speaking from my own experience using Ramp for my business, the product is wildly intuitive, simplistic and makes life so much easier that you'll feel bad for any company who hasn't yet made the switch. The Ramp team is relentless and the product continues to evolve to save you time that you would never have dreamed of getting back. To me. There is nothing more interesting than technologies that reduce friction for other entrepreneurs to be able to build the thing that they want to so much attention has gone to cloud computing, APIs and other ways of making life easy for founders. What Ramp has done and is doing is build yet another set of tools in this category. To get started, go to ramp.com cards issued by Celtic bank and Sutton bank member FDIC. Terms and conditions apply. Ridgeline is hosting their annual Basecamp conference this September 22nd through the 25th in Deer Valley, Utah. I will be there and sold over 50 top investment management firms from around the country. Now in its fourth year, Basecamp has become where the future of investment management is created. Ridgeline gets the most influential changemakers in the same room, learning and sharing ideas about the latest innovations that are drastically altering how this industry operates. It's truly a must attend event for anyone who wants to understand and be inspired by what's coming next for investment management. Again, I'll be there, but space is limited and attendance is curated. You can request an invitation by heading to ridgelineapps.com Ridgeline gets me so excited because every investment professional knows the core challenge that they solve. You love the core work of investing, but operational complexities eat up valuable time and energy. That's where Ridgeline comes in. It's an all in one operating system designed specifically for investment managers, and firms are flocking to Ridgeline for good reason you don't have to put up with the juggling multiple legacy systems and spinning endless quarter ends compiling reports. Ridgeline has created a comprehensive cloud platform that handles everything in real time. Visit ridgelineapps.com to schedule a demo. I'm excited to introduce our newest sponsor, Arcana. Arcana is the world's most advanced portfolio intelligence platform trusted by institutional investors. Managing trillions in assets under management, including Market Neutral, Long Short, Long only and Capital Allocators. Arcana enables portfolio managers, risk teams, analysts and CIOs to drill into exposures and idio, construct optimal portfolios and and decompose performance at incredible granularity. Arcana is the only real time intraday system in the market with extensive live scenario analysis, custom screening and tagging and a slate of one click lightning fast portfolio construction tools, mock portfolio trackers, reporting and single stock crowding. This is the kind of tool I wanted when I was managing public equities and I'm sure you'll benefit from the insights the system has to offer. Visit Arcana I.O. to request a demo and learn more. Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick o' Shaughnessy and this is Invest. Like the Best, this show is an open ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories and strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper, check out Colossus Review, our quarterly publication with in depth profiles of the people shaping business and investing. You can find Colossus Review along with all of our podcasts@joincolasis.com.
- [03:55]
Alex Taggart
Patrick O' Shaughnessy is the CEO of Positive Sum. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of Positive Sum. This podcast is for informational purposes only.
- [04:08]
Drew Taggart
And should not be relied upon as.
- [04:10]
Alex Taggart
A basis for investment decisions. Clients of Positive Sum may maintain positions in the securities discussed in this podcast. To learn more, visit Psum VC.
- [04:24]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
My guests today are Alex, Paul and Drew Taggart. You might know them as the Chainsmokers. We explore their fascinating evolution from scrappy DJs to global superstars to serious venture capitalists. With their fund Mantis, Drew and Alex share how the same high touch, relationship driven approach that built their music empire now defines their investment philosophy. Their frameworks for backing founders mirrors their artistic approach. They invest in obsessive individuals who will pursue their visions regardless of external validation, much as they've remained authentic to their sound despite industry pressures. We discuss parallels between creative iteration in music and venture investing, particularly around managing failure, maintaining intentionality in an age of abundance and the importance of taste as a differentiating factor. Please enjoy this fascinating discussion with the Chainsmokers, Alex Paul and Drew Taggart.
- [05:12]
Drew Taggart
How do you feel about models training on your content?
- [05:16]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I don't care.
- [05:17]
Drew Taggart
Yeah, I figured.
- [05:18]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Yeah, because it's like a cat out of the bag.
- [05:20]
Drew Taggart
We don't care about our music either. I asked, is there so much controversy around music and art?
- [05:25]
Alex Taggart
Trip Adler described, pretty successful company and he's starting something new. And he's like, you know, one of those founders where you're like, normally you'd be like, this is a really successful second time founder starting something in AI now. And I spoke to him, he was like, yeah, it's basically like licensing copyright rights that we find a way to protect and then get people paid. And I was just like, this feels.
- [05:47]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
It'S like I'm going to stand in front of a tsunami and I'm going to hold it off.
- [05:51]
Alex Taggart
Yeah. I was like, everything here is like hinged on government protection, protecting ip. And by the way, it's already too late.
- [05:56]
Drew Taggart
I'd compare like this phase in AI models training off of copyrighted data is the Napster moment where the record labels couldn't figure out a way to like sell music in the digital age. If they had been forward thinking and accepted that they would have created Spotify, we wouldn't be paying an extra 30% to a DSP. But they didn't. And it had this whole moment where it's like, you can't really stop this from happening, so just kind of embrace it and figure out how to like harness it. When it comes out the other side.
- [06:22]
Alex Taggart
One person will get sued.
- [06:24]
Drew Taggart
Yeah, like these models are going to train on this and there are going to be able to do these things that everyone's feared about them doing, but then we're going to be able to make better art or different art.
- [06:33]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Is there anything you do fear?
- [06:35]
Drew Taggart
Loaded question that I want to answer correctly. My first instinct to say no, because I feel specifically us, we're DJs. Fifteen years ago, the DJ producer Ben, and still to this day you've seen the memes about they're just pressing play or all of their music is software. And I remember the whole first wave of that democratization of like music software being available and accessible and the barriers to entry coming down and all of us being able to make stuff that we weren't able to create before unless we had like access to a crazy studio. And I remember everyone saying like that wasn't real music Here we are like 15 years later. Us and all our friends have had massive songs that have been culturally impactful, that play huge shows, that tons of people come and have a good time to and listen to music that make them feel euphoria or sadness or something amazing. It's like the still same impact of music has happened because a different set of tools. I'm excited to see what happens next and I'm excited to use those tools or for my kids to use those tools and to see how that enables people might not be able to express themselves with this medium.
- [07:39]
Alex Taggart
I would argue this is the same now, it will be worse in the future, but just lots of slopes get just a larger volume of stuff that gets made every day. To just point the 15 years ago, probably when Jaws like Ableton and Fruity Loops and all these things came into existence. Now on Spotify, when we like started, there was 10,000 songs uploaded every Friday. Now there's like 190,000 or something like that.
- [08:03]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
That's not that long.
- [08:05]
Alex Taggart
Yeah, yeah. And I imagine that in a few years it'll be a million. And that will definitely have like an impact about how hard it is to break through. Or maybe the importance of having a brand or an identity or standing for something will mean something even more. I just watched this Brian Eno interview with Zane Lowe and he was just talking about AI and is it scary to him and this. And he was like, no. Because at the end of the day it's still just a tool for now at least.
- [08:30]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Is it maybe the opposite that actually these tools make people like you that are willing to go the distance and want it the most and are maybe the most talented even more advantaged versus.
- [08:41]
Drew Taggart
Everybody else, who knows? I can't answer that question yet and hopefully not. To be honest, I think what we're all going to have to and not just us who are established, we have our way of making music. And then I think what it does is actually kind of the opposite is like it just allows more people to be able to make music and perform music and create an experience that other people connect to. I think music is just my personal favorite form of self expression that with these tools I'd assume that more people are going to be able to experience being able to express themselves that way and that's awesome. And perform it. And you can kind of look at the DJ as like a microcosm blip on the radar of a version of more accessibility, what that gets you. But you look at how big the scene is and how fun the Scene is now it's like, how is that a bad thing?
- [09:26]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How does it feel the most different now, creating a marginal new song versus when you started? What is the most felt creative process difference?
- [09:35]
Drew Taggart
I would say that's. That's less technological. It's more my own brain that I'm still trying to reckon with. Songwriting is, you're always trying to scratch this. It's not the same itch, but there is an itch you're trying to satiate. It's deep inside of you that makes you feel something that you haven't felt in other places, or maybe you feel that way because it's you making it that time. But as a massive music fan, I'm trying to, like, make something that respects all of the things that have inspired me my entire life that still makes me feel like, wow, this is my statement now. And you'd think that we'd have a formula now on how to, like, write a dance song at least, or write a pop song. Forget about trying to write, like, the truest song for you at that moment. It still can come from anywhere, and it's so difficult. And I think I would be surprised if any artist told you that they weren't rewriting their process every single time they go to do an album or a new batch of songs.
- [10:30]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Say a little bit more about the nature of those feelings that you're trying to get yourself to feel by making something. I think that's quite a cool.
- [10:36]
Drew Taggart
Well, if I could say it, I wouldn't need to make music. It's us tinkering around, and it's really cool having someone that you've made music with your entire life. Because what Chainsmokers music is, is what we both agree on is, like, fun and tasteful and we want to play out. But it's not just me or just Alex. It's like a reflection of our friendship and what we've gotten super stoked on listening to as music fans over the past 20 years.
- [11:03]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Is there a song that you remember making together where the creative process behind the song stands out the most in your MEM memory as, like, emblematic of what it's like to make something together?
- [11:13]
Alex Taggart
I mean, every song, I feel like, kind of is its own.
- [11:15]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
You told me about no Shade at Pity one time, and the process behind that, I thought it was so cool.
- [11:19]
Drew Taggart
That's like a day like today.
- [11:21]
Alex Taggart
Yeah. I mean, probably was like, almost like a year to this day. That was, like, an interesting song especially, Obviously, for me. I'd just gone through, like, a breakup or something. And we were, like, pulling a lot of inspiration from that. Just generally speaking, you know, like, you kind of go into the studio and you're like, what interesting concepts or things that are happening in our lives? Talk about or expand on or just talk about. And then, like, a lyric or something happens. And we were, like, thinking about New York City, which is obviously where we started. On a day like this, where it's like, 75, sunny out, winter's over. You know what I mean? And it's time to, like, be feral and enjoy the city.
- [11:59]
Drew Taggart
60 degrees, but everyone's got their shirts off. And the park pale is one of.
- [12:02]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
The best days of the year.
- [12:03]
Alex Taggart
Yeah. And, like, all those, like, bars, fun restaurants with the sidewalk space are just overflowing into the streets. And it's, like, hard to find something that isn't fun. And so it was kind of like using that as a metaphor for, like, coming out of a relationship. But then it's like, there's so many decisions and things you have to talk about. How long do we want the verses to be? Is it too wordy? Is it too dancy? Is it not dancy? That feeling of it? I wouldn't say that song was, like, a runaway success for us by any means. I do feel like people keep coming back to it. I feel like we have a lot of songs like that, where I'll get messages throughout the entire year. Once a week, someone will be like, dude, this song's really good. And you're like, do you just listen to this? You're my friend. I put this out nine months ago. I think that's what's cool about music, is everyone has these moments with songs, and I have them still with, like, older songs from, like, the 60s or 70s or 80s to, like, New songs that come out last week, where you're like, whoa, this dude's preaching, you know, and. Or it just resonates deeply in some way that it maybe didn't before just because of whatever mood or thing you're going through. So with songs like that, it's funny because he's like, we're talking about my breakup, but then we don't want to just make it about my breakup. We want to make something that's, like, an experience that everyone can kind of relate to. And then he's figuring out what clever ways to, like, fit this story into a visceral scene that relates to both of us, which is, like, a New York spring day. And I'm trying to keep feeding the song with personal, sad anecdotes.
- [13:26]
Drew Taggart
It's a funny process. Yeah.
- [13:27]
Alex Taggart
And then kind of goes back and forth in this way. I think Emily wrote that song with us, too. Obviously an amazing songwriter. It's fun. And then suddenly you're like, there it is. I feel like when you make a song that you're so excited about it to play it and to be like, is this it? Is this gonna resonate with everybody? But, like, at the end of the day, I think whether or not it met the standard of success for us on, like, a metric level, it, like, hit the mark as far as, like, a Chainsmoker song on, like, every level.
- [13:54]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
That's one of my favorite songs of yours, too.
- [13:56]
Alex Taggart
Yeah. Thank you. And I think that's a big part of what we've been re exploring in the last year, is dialing it back to the Chainsmoker fans and Chainsmoker sound, because I think going back to the AI Stuff, there's so many tools out there right now, so much software, so many ideas, so many genres, so much stuff happening every day, that you almost have to, like, constrain yourself a little bit to, like, have success. I forgot who was talking about this. The guitar has been the exact same instrument for, like, hundreds of years, and yet people are still finding new ways to play it and create sounds and feelings from it. And I feel like we go into our studio sometimes, and it's like, wow, we have 25 keyboards now. It almost hurts the experience versus helps it sometimes.
- [14:37]
Drew Taggart
There's no barriers to entry. Or less and less every day for music creation. What are we left with? The same way. It's like, I could play a guitar the same way and sing a song that some other guy can, but it might just hit different when that other guy does it or that girl does it based on their background or the way that they're holding it or the way that their voice inflects with that chord. Like, there's so much different that comes down to, like, brand. I hate to say brand when you're talking about art, but what is this thing that people are tuning into you to believe in? And someone brought up the point the other day. No artist knows what song they should play at their show. I don't know if you've ever heard that. No, I thought that was a really interesting point. And to Alex is talking about the success or lack thereof of a song like, no Shaded Pity. How do you define success in a age of abundance of art? How do you define success? With Osborne, we've have a bunch of songs over a billion streams We've had chart topping songs, but then what is the one thing that we do that no one else can do? Can that even be replicated by AI? Can that be replicated by another person? Because when that person does it, it will be them doing it and it'll be at a different time and they'll look different and it will feel different. And so when you think about AI, you can't be scared of it because it's just going to hit different for better or for worse. At some point we just got to focus on being the most chainsmokers as possible.
- [15:58]
Alex Taggart
Is art in a really bad place right now? Generally across the board, we have very few original movies being made. Avengers 25, slop everywhere.
- [16:08]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Everything's like optimized for various algorithms.
- [16:11]
Alex Taggart
Exactly what does that mean for art in general when anyone can do it and successful? Like are we in a golden age of creation or is it different? We work with ours all the time. And he plays a song and it's like, oh, this is like a interpolation of a song. And you're like, I have no problem with that stuff. I think it can be really interesting. But you're also like, it's already a hit. So I think when you have an artist like Fred again or someone come along, I think it has even bigger impact than maybe in the past because that originality is so refreshing.
- [16:41]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I find him unbelievable. My son and I are huge fans. We've watched all his various sets as fellow musicians in a similar category. What is it? How would you describe what he's done effectively to somebody else? Because it feels like the right example of this originality that we kind of all want more of.
- [16:58]
Drew Taggart
Fred's a great example. I mean there's a lot of standout artists of the past three or four years. I mean if you look at Adochi or Charli xcx, most notably probably Fred, they've all brought you into their world. It's bigger than just music. What's so cool about music right now? And those three artists in particular is they have songs that go viral, but like it's not traditional pop hits like when we came up 10 years ago. It's so much cooler now. It's so nuanced and just more niche than it was at a time. And we're seeing this in dance music especially where it's like the new stars of dance right now that are blowing out Madison Square Gardens or doing the basically festival sized crowds for their own shows. If you looked at them on their Spotify monthly listeners like we were talking about earlier, like, oh, this is an emerging artist, this is an opening act. That's what's so cool. And I think kind of wraps up the whole point about if everyone can be creative, it's like, what else can you give them? You need to bring people into something more than just. And I think that's something we struggle with a lot where it's like we're hyper focused on music and like we create this thing. We're like, I crushed it this time. This is going to be it. But like the world building of the whole thing is something that doesn't come naturally to every artist, which I think just be more and more important. And as a fan, I want world building. I want to participate. I think album is God. I want to sit in your world for 45 to an hour and 15 minutes. I want to put on the costume when I'm listening to something.
- [18:37]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I read this amazing post this morning about the need to build heavy things, not light things. Like light things being ephemeral. Make it fast, consume it fast, forget it fast. Something like the album approach or something that takes a long time, that takes a lot of time. Heart, effort, blood, sweat, tears is what we need more of.
- [18:55]
Alex Taggart
Such a good point. I think even like the commonality between a Fred and A Dochi and a Charlie. These are people that have been grinding. Dochi's video after she won the Grammys went viral because she was fired from her job. I'm just gonna double down on music. It was some crazy thing. Charlie X has been writing songs for hit artists for like 15 years. You know what I mean? Just in the background waiting, almost like fine tuning everything, waiting for this moment. And Fred similarly is literally a musical savant, but has been writing for Ed Sheeran and huge songwriters in the background. I mean, his story is equally as impressive. And then you have that compared to like the TikTok artists during COVID that made a viral 15 seconds of a song label sign them and then they're like, what did we just buy? I don't know what this is.
- [19:38]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
That's all I got.
- [19:38]
Alex Taggart
Totally. And it's not to say that those artists can't break out and do great things. Like Addison Rae, I think is doing a really great job of building a really amazing career right now.
- [19:47]
Drew Taggart
I don't know Addison and haven't worked with her, but everything I hear about our songwriter friends that are in the studio that she gets the world building piece of this.
- [19:55]
Alex Taggart
Yeah, you can tell.
- [19:56]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What does world building mean? Just like define what that means defining.
- [19:59]
Drew Taggart
An aesthetic and a mood and an attitude that you can participate in when you listen to the music. That's how I would see it. Some people do this super thought out. Probably have boards and plans and branding and insane creative direction. I think some people are just are themselves. They just kind of build it inherently.
- [20:18]
Alex Taggart
Travis Scott is Rage, but I would.
- [20:21]
Drew Taggart
Say like Zach Bryan, as far as lack of branding goes, Zack Bryan is Zach Bryan. When you go see a show, when you hear it and the amount of songs he puts out, the type of videos that he films, I'm just like, this is just a down to earth guy singing. I guess they call Rust belt country. Brilliant songwriting and no frills. You're just getting good ass music. And I feel like Fred against might be the DJ version of that. This guy's just making really cool, innovative music and doesn't care how it's packed.
- [20:50]
Alex Taggart
He's so happy all the time. How is he this happy?
- [20:54]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
There's this moment in the boiler room set that he did where a fan knocks the cable out and it stops the whole thing. And his reaction to it, he like instantly smiles and is happy about it and then somehow uses it, weaves it into the music somehow. It was like one of these moments where I thought, oh my God, I.
- [21:12]
Drew Taggart
Know the moment you're talking about. It's adorable.
- [21:13]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
It's amazing.
- [21:14]
Drew Taggart
Guy's so embarrassed that he does it.
- [21:16]
Alex Taggart
And his reaction, they start dancing together.
- [21:18]
Drew Taggart
It's really nice.
- [21:19]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
You use the word itch before.
- [21:21]
Drew Taggart
Yeah.
- [21:22]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
So many of my questions for you guys are metaphorical for other people building, creating stuff. We both are passionate about people that build companies. We'll talk about that plenty today too. But this getting in touch with the itch is actually a non trivial part of making anything great. And I would love to hear from both of you how you originally found yours as a source of inspiration for people that want to find their itch. I think most people don't even ever know what the itch is. Where did it come from for both of you?
- [21:49]
Alex Taggart
I didn't grow up wanting to be a musician necessarily. I always had a really close relationship with music, but it was never like a viable career path in my mind. For me. I was always like a very visual, creative type person. I was obsessed with Nike commercials back in like the 90s and 2000s. I would actually like record them on to like a VHS tape because I was so inspired by like the feeling you got after you watch them and like visually the storytelling and obviously the Personas that they had involved was super cool. I was a huge NBA fan as a kid, I think most kids are. And I started painting a lot when I was younger, and I think it was like, trying to, like, find a language. What is that language that I can speak that conveys these feelings that I get from watching these Nike commercials as you get older. My dad was an art dealer, and he was fairly successful with it before he passed away. And I think that when he passed away, like, changed a lot of how I, like, thought about the world and, like, what my opportunity was going to be within it. And I kind of, like, knew on some level it was an out hustle, outwork mentality of things. I wouldn't say growing up, I looked at the world like, I want to be a musician or I want to be a businessman. I only knew about the art world because that's. My dad was in it. And so it kind of felt like that probably like growing up on a farm where you're just like, I'm going to be a farmer. It's what I know. And you go out into the world and experience different things and different opportunities. And I think the itch for me is about where your, like, passions lie. What do you actually like spending your time doing, and what do you find yourself being drawn to? I think New York, going to school here was the perfect place for someone, like, with my adhd, because you're getting pulled into so many different directions of events and experiences, the art world. But you also have to, like, survive here. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere sort of mentality. And I always found that piece super inspiring. But I don't know, it's a tough thing because, like, the itch to me is, I'd say, like, it was something that was far away in the distance that I could, like, see, but didn't actually have the ability to do anything. And then when we finally started, obviously, really building the chain smokers and things started to work, it was like, oh, my God, this is the feeling that I've been, like, seeking out this whole time. And I've just been applying maximum pressure, grasping at different opportunities. So I think that's why you meet these young founders. Not necessarily being like, I've always wanted to build this product is great mentality. Of course, someone that's, like, worldly, I think, offers just a more interesting perspective to me about, like, how they go about being successful in whatever it is they're passionate about, because it's not just a straight line anymore. I think there's so many things that shape a great founder or shape a great company. I think it's more important to have that paranoia deep within you that forces you to, like, live in fear your whole life or something that, like, allows you to be successful. So it's tough for me because the itch, it was just like a survival thing or, like, proving people wrong more than I just want to do things. I stopped painting when I was, like, 15 or something. It wasn't like, a sad day for me. I'm moving on. Yeah, I'm out of paint. Like, I just don't really want to do this anymore. It's more of a mentality thing of how you, like, search, but it was.
- [25:01]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
A feeling you were chasing. There was some vector there that you could totally.
- [25:05]
Alex Taggart
It was a feeling of that. I felt like I was being chased also by people's expectation of what they thought, how things were going to end up. Growing up in New York, too, you, like, have a lot of people go on to be super successful much faster. Sometimes you're like, oh, my God. Half my friends have jobs at Great Banks now and again. I'm like a nightlife promoter. You know, like, sucks. Also, like, in high school. I mean, I wasn't like a loser in high school, but I wasn't like, the super popular kid.
- [25:30]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Yeah.
- [25:30]
Alex Taggart
No offense to any of my friends listening, but some of y' all peaked in ninth grade, and I'm just glad that wasn't me.
- [25:38]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
To tweak the question slightly because I want to hear the itch answer for you too. I'm curious how the notion of happiness versus dissatisfaction versus paranoia figures into your head.
- [25:46]
Drew Taggart
I'm trying to figure that out with my therapist now. I grew up in Maine, and I later in life now. I'm very thankful to have grown up in Maine. You know, I grew up in a small, pretty liberal society that everyone kind of did everything. Everyone was small town, everyone was in theater. Everyone that also played varsity sports was super studious and all that stuff. So it was really, like, great community to grow up in, but I felt super trapped. There was something inside me from a young age that was like, there's so much more going on in the world. My mom is a super curious person. I think I inherited a lot that from her genetically and through her parenting. My mom is just a great explorer and still to this day, like, loves learning and seeing more things, and I always wanted that. And there wasn't a lot of opportunity to leave Maine as I was a kid. And I think music was the thing that Illuminated everything for me. It was super passionate about playing music from a really young age. And then as soon as I kind of developed my own musical stage, I was very obsessed with what I hadn't heard before. And I think that's what eventually brought me to dance music, is because I had this transformative experience when I was 16, and I did an exchange program in Argentina, and I heard the beginning of David Guetta and, like, Daft Punk for the first time, and this artist, Trenton Muller, who I fell in love with. And I heard these sounds that were just. I had never seen colors like that. That, in a nutshell, is like, my pursu. The itch that I'm always trying to scratch. I'm trying to hear something new. And it's quite torturous, to be honest, because once you've done something, you're like, yeah, okay, that's happened. And how do you innovate? It's like, innovator's dilemma. Like, how do I continue to create something that my fans really feel connected to and that I feel connected to and, like, really respect the core identity that is me and the music and this thing that I've built that's also innovative, that feels like is still me and gets me excited to go up and play new songs, and my fans feel like it's fresh. And I think. And it's a pretty, like, torturous pursuit that drives me crazy a lot of time. And we have. I won't name names, but there are some artists in our genre and other genres that have just seemed to make the same song again and again and again. And I think for a while, we were kind of like, all right, we don't need to hear this person's new song because.
- [27:58]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Heard it already.
- [27:58]
Drew Taggart
Yeah, I heard it already. But we look at what that looks like over 10 to 15 years, and you're like, oh, my God, they're the only person that does that sound. And all these fans are just amassing and telling their friends and all this thing. Like, you look at someone like the Grateful Dead, and you look like, what's that become like? They're maybe the best people at making fans over time, incredible musicians. But they've created this experience that's replicable, that people can tell. That people can rely on and tell their friends about, and has great ethos. And I think that's really interesting to think about as we're like, what does the rest of Chainsmokers look like for us?
- [28:33]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How do you think about, like, a tech idea, like, product market fit for you going forward, like, obviously you've had it in the past, just measured by streams or popularity or something. But if you think about it perspectively, and you were to like, redefine what success would mean, how much is it for the audience versus for yourselves? It's such an interesting question.
- [28:54]
Drew Taggart
A lot of artists are probably struggled with this question, us included. I'm trying to figure that out all of the time. Part of me wants to just get out of my own way and just be like, fuck it. Like, I just have to make stuff. There have been a couple records we made. This record called Don't Lie that our fans didn't connect to and didn't connect commercially. Came out just what, six months ago. And when I hear that song, I'm like, fuck, yeah, I did the goddamn thing on that. From, like a writing production as like a pop kid. I'm like, kim Petras, awesome artist. Sounds amazing. Honestly, the whole vibe of the record, I just hear it and I'm very proud of it. But there's something about it that just didn't connect. Was it the marketing? Was it just like that song from us? Was it that song in general? Maybe that didn't have the essence of Alex and I in it enough. Maybe it didn't feel like we meant it enough. For some reason, our fans didn't connect to that song.
- [29:47]
Alex Taggart
That other piece of the puzzle is what we're trying to figure out now. It's like, how do we show people we really care about this music without looking like some gen Z on TikTok doing stupid videos that work for some people, but it isn't us. A lot of it comes down to language, how you present yourself. And I think the same thing for, like, companies and product market fit. What is the story you're telling? Why should people care? How are you sharing it with the world? And if you don't care about it, then why? Why would anyone else?
- [30:16]
Drew Taggart
Intentionality matters more than ever. Your fans want to know that, like, you love this thing that you created in a world of slop.
- [30:24]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
How do you show them that? Is it just the quality of the work?
- [30:28]
Drew Taggart
I don't know. I'm really confused about this part. Especially in this day and age where I see artists that aren't us, that have a different vibe or are from a different generation, do it so effortlessly. I think presenting stuff as art is always super important. One of my favorite bands is this band called Turnstile. They're a hardcore band from Baltimore. It just reminds me of so much stuff that I grew up on, but feels fresh and repackaged and like the videos are amazing and the rollout and there's so much intentionality behind it. I'm realizing a lot of the projects that I'm really gravitating to are encapsulating all of that stuff. I don't know that we've ever intentionally gone after that. We've just kind of been like, we're making tunes, we're going to do all the shows we can. And like that inherently became us.
- [31:14]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
This really interesting thing about you guys to me is not just work ethic, your work ethic. We could talk about that. It's obviously prodigious. It's incredible the amount of stuff that you guys do. But it's this combination of the work ethic as a means to build relationships with more people. It seems like everyone I know has some experience of you guys. They've met you somehow. Like somebody met everyone. You know, nice interaction with them. Like there's a high degree of accessibility that seems to come with the work ethic that allows for these relationships. How do you think about work ethic plus relationships as like a key part of what defines you guys?
- [31:48]
Drew Taggart
First of all, you have to want to do that. We loved to throw parties and we love to choose the music and we love to curate the vibe. That was why we became DJs pretty down the middle. That was always really inherently us. I mean, we love making music, we love starting businesses, we love helping other businesses. The first thing that we kind of went after was capitalizing on this desire to create a fun ass time for people. And I think that is what we've continued to do at all levels. And we're hyper curious and it's I think very gratifying for us to be able to pull people into our world. Personally, it makes me really happy when you can include someone that's not typically included in a lot of their either social dynamic or work setting or whatever when they come to our show or to hang out with us backstage. If you can make 30 to 90 seconds and really like listen to someone and look at them in the eye and offer them a drink in your environment or anything there, I mean, that's the little like bits of magic that you get to pass around and hopefully they keep passing on to somebody else. And I think that's kind of the soul of what we do. Do that for 13 years. It feels like you've met everybody or people feel like they've had a great connection with you or with each other at your thing. That's a nice. I like, I think we like being those guys.
- [33:10]
Alex Taggart
I was like I said earlier, not most popular kid in high school, but not the worst either. Not the worst. But I think that's like my whole attitude was like, I was just friends with everybody, nice person, varsity basketball team I'd hung out with to like the art kids later. And it ironically was school president. And I never thought that was ever like a goal.
- [33:28]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Everyone likes you.
- [33:28]
Alex Taggart
Yeah. Like, you should obviously do this. Like, everyone would totally vote. You're friends with everybody. And I feel like that was like such an interesting experience in life. There wasn't like, we don't talk to that person because they're like this. Because it's like I always felt plenty of times I wasn't cool or whatever. And it meant so much to me when someone like came out of their way to like make you feel acknowledged or comfortable in something. And I felt like if you could continue to challenge myself to like be that person in all sorts of different scenarios. And it wasn't like with this long term goal. That's like Billy Madison when he's like, calls Steve Buscemi and he apologizes and then Steve Buscemi saves him later. No. And he's like, thank God I called that guy. It's not like that sort of thinking where you're like, one day this guy's going to put money in my fund. It's more like it doesn't matter if you're the CEO or an sdr, like a huge company or whatever. It's like just come and be a part of world and like if you bring great energy, like that's super interesting and exciting to me. And I think we feed off of that experience that we give people. Like Drew said, and we play Vegas hundreds and hundreds of times and people are like, how are you still doing this? And it's like, because every weekend there's like a new group of people coming, experiencing this for the first time and they're so excited and you sometimes forget how lucky you are to be in that position. And also like the kindness that people have showed us in the past from like radio stations that supported us early on when they didn't need to. Life is so long. And I think if you take a second to listen. I've read this interest, I think Chuang Fan, I'm hoping pronouncing his name right, posted this interesting blog post from this wedding photographer who's been like shooting weddings 30 years or something. It was like 21 insights that she's noticed about bride and grooms and different people that attend weddings and the personalities that they have. Some of them felt a bit over the top, but, like, a lot of them were like, that's a super interesting observation. And I think if you, like, study people and study relationships, that's kind of all it is. We're all just interacting with each other. That's fundamentally what business is. It's fundamentally what relationships are. And so if you can, like, put yourself in a position where people enjoy being around you and feels seen when you're with them, I think that's amazing. And it's something we definitely struggle with. As you get busier too. I'm taking calls in, like, August right now, and it kills my soul to be like, I would love to speak to you in September. It's just getting older and shit.
- [35:48]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
If I think about Chainsmokers Inc. Like, the enterprise around the art, what does it look like and how has it evolved? And this is maybe like a good bridge question into talking about investing and businesses and stuff. But if you just think about your business first and foremost, how much are you thinking about it? How much is it intentional looking a certain way versus just more of a like a residual thing that has evolved alongside your music?
- [36:13]
Drew Taggart
It's evolving as we're trying to simplify it as much as possible. I mean that in the ways of, like, just really looking at how we spend our time, how we enjoy spending our time, what we're getting the most out of, and stripping away everything else. I think when our career was on the rise for the first time, I mean, we were so curious and we wanted to do for all the reasons we've told you about us in our past, whatever, wanted to try all these different things that he has to way too much. And I think that through doing that, we found the things that resonate with our core. Making the music that we make is still the number one. Our last two things will be venture and music. And we genuinely are in love with both of those things. And I think sometimes I regret having a situation where we have both, but if I had to pick one, I don't know which one I would pick. And I think just trying to build processes through both of them. Both of those businesses that, like, we can do them in, I don't want to say effortless ways, but the ones that are most synced to who we inherently are. Everything we said about intentionality and creating art, that's really you. How do we open that process up so we can do that the easiest? What's are we striving to evolve now.
- [37:24]
Alex Taggart
When we raise money for our funds? I get asked that question a lot. And I always say that chamber is the sun in our solar system because it's like everything circles around that. And if it's a really strong sun, it shines more light and creates more abundance and opportunity across Mantis and whatever with Tequila company and other things. Whereas, like, I don't know if a strong Mantis saves our music career. You know what I mean?
- [37:48]
Drew Taggart
But in turn of events, yeah.
- [37:50]
Alex Taggart
But what separated us, differentiated us early on and kind of to Drew's point is what we're trying to turn back the hands of time now is that, like, we did run Chainsaw Works like a business as much as we obviously care so deeply about the music and the creative aspect of it. But it was also, like, this is a really unique opportunity that we want to make sure we're taking full advantage of. And whether that was doing too many things, playing too many shows, or whatever, really control the business. I mean, there is not a credit card statement that I have not gone through line by line still to this day, week by week. There's not a production budget that I haven't seen for a single show. The way that we organized our team, it set us up for success in a lot of ways. I mean, Covid for some artists was pretty devastating. Whereas for us, we were like, let's raise a fund. Yeah. Yeah, Great. And so I think the problem with that, though, was that we became the CEOs of chain smokers. And I think this relates to, like, probably a lot of successful founders journeys. I was talking to the founder of the company who's crushing it right now. He was like, all I do is hr. He's like, I don't build shit anymore. All I do is hire people, and it fucking sucks. And I was like, kind of know what you're going through. We're on so many calls about internal politics. I think we're actually making really solid strides to fix that, to go back to being chain smokers instead of the CEOs of the chain smokers.
- [39:12]
Drew Taggart
There's so many parallels between investing and working with these companies and our own business. And it's really fun to have our own business because it's so easy to be the therapist for somebody else and have an X ray into, like, what they could be doing better, how to get out of their own way. And then when it's you, it's like, this is how it's always done. And I came up with this, you have all this shit in the way. And so it's been a great mirror investing in these other businesses and then kind of looking at our own and being like, how are we hitting these roadblocks or bottlenecks in our own situation? But that key one being like be the founder, the CTO or whatever you're like best at. Like, you don't have to be the CEO of your business. Hire someone that's great at that, that's going to deal with that. If you're the best product person, you're the best visionary at the company. Don't be the CEO.
- [39:52]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Can you tell the Mantis origin story? So what was the first conversation you had about it? What were you trying to do with it? Why did you do it first place?
- [40:00]
Drew Taggart
Before Mantis creating a venture tech fund, we've done a plethora of businesses. We're very avid investors both privately and publicly. The tech world in just public markets, in real estate. And I think at the time of our rise to I guess culturals like Ice Time, which was probably 2016 to 2015 to probably 2018, we met a lot of the class of founders. That was Drew Houston from Dropbox, Brian Chesky did Airbnb, Michael Seibel who was at YC at the time. And these guys were like really amazing and opened our eyes to what private tech investing looked like. We didn't really know what venture capital was at the time and we saw through their eyes like a lot of them. It was simple as like you guys can invest in like all of these brands based on like who you are. People want cool people on the cap table and started with something as simple as that idea. And then as we got to befriend these people and get an insight into how they ran their businesses, we realized we kind of had more in common with them than we did with most other musicians. We growth hacked our first promotional platform, crowdsourced our first tour. We've always been doing the most to kind of try and get our music out there. And when we work with a lot of other artists, we found the majority of them were like pretty disorganized and we're just in pursuit in a different way than we were. And I think there was some kind of sense of familiarity and comfort and like mindedness that we found with tech founders that pulled us deeper into the space. So we did a bunch of private investing just yourselves, ourselves, deal by deal, whatever conceptualized the idea to start the fund. And then like Alex said, when Covid happened, we were Kind of putting it together in 2019 before COVID happened. But I don't know what would have happened if Covid didn't happen. Because we were also prioritizing writing an album at that time. And all of a sudden we had time to raise a fund on Zoom and write an album in the studio.
- [41:55]
Alex Taggart
Naturally, entertainer athletes have these platforms that people are drawn to for different reasons. And I think when it relates to investing, you're seeing a lot of cpg, social creator economy type stuff. And initially for us that was like cool. I remember my business manager Josh was like, basically you invest and you just hopefully make a bunch of passive income. Oh, how sick is that? You know what I mean? He also prefaces like, you probably will lose your money, but like you could.
- [42:20]
Drew Taggart
Which we did. A lot of times we were really.
- [42:22]
Alex Taggart
Drawn to that entrepreneurial spirit. We're go getters. We worked 24 7. There's something that we could do now. We're going to do it now, not five days from now as we begin to connect with these founders. And I remember getting your first quarterly updates. I remember responding to one and I was like, I could help you with that. And they were like, nobody responds to these. And I was like, what? And then it was like these little ways that we were able to like make a real difference in these companies. And then to Drew's point, the people like Brian Chesky and Steve Huffman and the Kahn brothers were like, why are you investing in fucking water companies?
- [42:51]
Drew Taggart
A water company is doing quite well.
- [42:53]
Alex Taggart
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a few good ones and we've made some good decisions. But there's a whole world of opportunity investing out there into like really exciting companies. And I remember like doing the Uber series S thought I was like in early, I think I've made like $6,000 on this investment. But at the time like I was like, this is the coolest company ever. Like, it's actually changed my life and my friends lives. I want to find more stuff like this vers another beverage company or something like that. We were very lucky with Poppy. And Poppy to its credit, reinvented what the soda category looked like and will probably look like in the future. That was a really nice blend of technology and forward thinking and messaging and then as it relates to marketing and distribution. Whereas I think a lot of like CPG is just distribution and kind of marketing, tech investing.
- [43:38]
Drew Taggart
You just get a front seat view of the future. It's the most stimulating show you could watch. It favors the optimistic, which we're artists like, to dream about things that don't exist yet and building a world. And I think we didn't know it would be a lot of cybersecurity platforms, but now we got to secure all those things.
- [43:57]
Alex Taggart
Kind of reminds me of being in like a year assembly in middle school, high school, where like every now and again they would bring in like a professional. They would speak about their career to the audience for like an hour. And you'd be like, that guy actually did this shit. This is really interesting and exciting to me to learn from versus, like, events like a teacher. That's just like, here is my perspective on something that happened or a career in venture. You get to sit down for half an hour, an hour, hopefully many, many times with like a founder that's like, I've studied this space, I've lived and breathed this business, and I'm going to tell you everything about it right now. For someone like me, that's the coolest thing. To spend five or six hours a day learning from an experienced person in a technologically exciting area. Obviously, the evolution of Mantis has, like, changed. I don't want to say changed dramatically, just evolved a lot. I mean, I remember, like, on our first partner call, they were like, so how much are we going to raise? And someone was like, 100 million. And I was like, is that a lot? Kind of feels like a lot turned.
- [44:51]
Drew Taggart
Out to be a lot.
- [44:52]
Alex Taggart
I just want to start, and I think a big part of anything is just start doing it. That, to me, is probably one of the things that sets us apart and makes our partnership so unique, is that we push each other into these areas that you're like, maybe on your own, you'd be like, I don't know where to begin, so I'm not going to begin. You know? And that's the cold start problem, obviously, is the hardest part of any process. But I think with us, we're very comfortable putting ourselves in those uncomfortable situations, but also because of how we interact with people and the relationships we've had, we're just listeners, you know? And we spent the better part of those three years doing 10 hours of calls a day with any investor or founder that would speak to us and just asking questions and like, learning through their experiences, mistakes they made or the things we should think about. And a lot of it began to contradict each other by the end of it. But there were definitely some patterns and things there. And I think through those conversations, we were like, wait a minute. This does feel like an extension of what being a good Investor means is an extension of what made us good in Chainsmokers. And it gave me a lot of confidence that we were right to get into this space. But I think fighting the preconceived conceptions and rightfully so, a lot of them about being a celebrity investors and I've told this before, but it's like on fund announced date it wasn't a positive vibe, you know, like people weren't like finally chainsmokers or it was the opposite. People were not stoked about it at all. To me, we saw that as as much as it was like a hill we were going to have to climb. The bar was clearly low. So it was like maybe we don't have to do that much to be that much better. But it was also like a market opportunity. It was like, wait a minute, people think we're going to be fucking useless and that this is based on a lot of other people that have come before us and their experience with them. If we do this right, it's a lot of white space for us to be unique and different. That's the kind of product market fit that we found in our music early on. And that I think gave us the confidence to start Mantis and take it really seriously.
- [46:45]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What are the things that most map over from what has worked for building Chainsmokers into what you're feeling early on is working as investors.
- [46:53]
Alex Taggart
Being comfortable Losing is a weird one. No one wants to lose. But I think it's a power law game. You build a career off of a couple of huge songs hopefully. And then there's lots of hopefully other lots of great music. But only very few artists like a Drake will just constantly deliver smash songs for 10, 15 years or Bruno Mars is probably the most notable one. From a percentage basis you have to learn from each song and iterate and grow and be comfortable with that. And it's like venture is very much the same thing. You're going to hopefully back a couple of extraordinary companies, but most of your companies won't go on to be super successful. And you can't think you're a terrible investor. Each of those opportunities paved the way for hopefully more future success comes.
- [47:39]
Drew Taggart
I've been thinking a lot recently about how the relationship between an artist and a record label is basically the same as a founder and their investor. And I think about how we are now in the other seat and we are now on the label side investing in these companies. I think how I think about we've been really fortunate to work with. We've been at Columbia Disruptor for nine years, and they've done an incredible job for us. But you see all the ailments of people, like, having a bad relationship with their label. And I think a lot of times we try to think about how to, okay, cool, now we're on the label side. We are an investor. What can we do to support these founders? And that's become a brand for our fun is like, we want to be the utility player because every company is different, every founder is different, everyone's needs are different. How can we help you? And I think that's the same for every single artist with their label, where it's a lot of art labels that want to be helpful, but they just don't know how. And all you can really do when you're in that position is get in the game and be like, what can I do? Be straight up. This is my area expertise. I don't know that person, but I know a guy who does. I'm going to try to make an email intro for you. Like, we don't hire that type of employee, but I'm going to hit up these three recruiters. Just putting in the effort and showing these people that you support them. And to Alex's point, things that felt like tasks that we saw our founders need from us, that felt so far out of our grasp were actually much more attainable. You realize there was a level of high touch responsiveness that us, primarily Alex, I mean, we don't have to go into the history of how we built the chainsmokers and how instrumental Alex's thoroughness in being in touch with people has been to our success, but just being the partner that, like, we see every artist wishing they had at a label.
- [49:19]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I have a collaboration question. I told each of my kids this morning on the drive to school that they come up with one question for you guys. My daughter's question was about the song Jungle with a Lock, which is her favorite. I guess she wanted to know how one of those works, which in this world is so common. Like, you see multiple DJs, collaboration, et cetera. Literally how two people independently can do the thing, come together to work on a shared thing.
- [49:45]
Drew Taggart
I mean, it's always different. And we've done tons of collabs, we worked with tons of writers, tons of producers. We're kind of always collaborating with people. And it's always your job is to get into the room with this person that hopefully you have mutual respect for each other's music. You see some kind of vision that your sounds could work together. Or you have some great idea around what the song could be together, whatever. There's some basis for you guys doing a session together. Hopefully your job is like a great songwriter, producer, just artist is like, how do we get on the same page as quickly as possible? Which is kind of a fascinating thing about songwriting that is like you get in the room with someone and sometimes I try to preempt this. Like I try to figure out where this person is at before we get together. I think Alex and I just being the type of people we are, like, we don't have a lot of time and we want to make the most out of every session having three beat starts of an idea which could just be like a small piece of music. Chords that feel a certain type of way, or a vocal that's really great of the drop. Or the dance part's like not great. And maybe that would be great if that person came and did the drop. And this goes both ways. Typically we're pretty specific about the lyrics. We like to write them. And Jungle actually is one of the only songs recently that we did not write. I don't think I wrote anything on that top line of that song. That's maybe like 5% of Chainsmoker songs. But A Lock brought that song to us and we like, let's make this like a big sounding Donk140BPM record, which also doesn't sound. Is an arcore sound. It's like an opportunity for us to go and make something that doesn't fit in the typical Chainsmokers bucket.
- [51:25]
Alex Taggart
So I feel like we got that top line. It was fairly stripped back from him and we were like, this is cool because you don't write. You listen to it and you're like, I like it. But the fact that we didn't write it kind of adds this level of friction. But you kind of put it to the side. Because music is very subjective in terms of how you're feeling in that moment, that day. Are you frustrated? Are you in a rush? And I think we played it a couple of times for different friends of ours. And everyone was like, this is set. And you're like, I know. You know what I mean. And you're kind of like. And we love him and obviously he's massive artist, especially in Brazil, which is like a really important mark to us. And like, you look at these things being like, well, this is a guy we get along great with, has a tremendous fan base.
- [52:06]
Drew Taggart
This will be fun.
- [52:07]
Alex Taggart
Yeah, like. Like, what is there to lose here, really? Like, we do like this top line, if we can produce it in a way that feels interesting and connects back to us, I think that's where in the past than the few times we've done it, people are like, I love this song. And you're like, what does it mean to you? And you're like, you know, it sucks when you're like, it doesn't mean anything. You know what I mean? Like, we didn't write this. And that's why I think we're really not drawn to that type of thing, because we really want to be able to tell people why this song's important, has meaning and purpose, and it does have meaning and purpose to someone. But, yeah, it was like, a fun one to make. And then getting to finally get to play it. I think we played it at Il Saintnique for the first time. And he has, like, a whole vibe. I'm sure if you've seen him online, like, he's looks like he's living in 2080 stylistically, and he's done some incredibly big shows. I think he's like, one of the other than Anita, like, the most.
- [52:54]
Drew Taggart
Yeah, he's huge. Brazil, and I just went to Carnival with him. Blast in Bahia. It's crazy. Play for 2 million people on a bus that drives through the street for five hours.
- [53:06]
Alex Taggart
That's what, like, is exciting about collaboration, I think, in general is a taste.
- [53:10]
Drew Taggart
Of other parts of the world, how.
- [53:12]
Alex Taggart
Other people approach their art, even the team from a promotional standpoint, like, how are you selling this record? Or what tricks do you have up your sleeves? Or who are the directors that you like to work with for music videos? It's exciting. Like, Zurb the song Addicted, that was his second big song. And you felt like you were a small chapter and will probably be a really long, successful career for him. But it was like, we're a big feature of that. The same way that Coldplay is for us or Halsey is for us, and we are for them. And I think that's a really interesting way to build a career and also give you fresh perspective about how you're approaching your process and your music similarly. You sit down and you're like, man, everything must be great for you. And it's like, you sit down with an artist like, dude, I'm stressed the fuck out. Like, I'm upset about this.
- [53:56]
Drew Taggart
And you're like, well, it looks amazing.
- [53:57]
Alex Taggart
Yeah. Oh, so we're all kind of not happy, really, or stressed about stuff. And it's nice to see that. And I think that's probably why founders? I feel like in venture, there's that trope or a motif that's just like founders love founders and most venture capitalists, or they love venture capitalists that were founders of some sort. Because you understand the process and struggle a bit more than someone who hasn't gone through that journey.
- [54:19]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
On that specific point, you mentioned what it takes to win early on and growth. Hacking your way on the promo thing or the early things that drove some of the initial success. What were those things? And I'm sure this is something you're looking for in people and in companies. The ability to scrap their way from nothing to something and then build on that. What were those things that you were referring to? A couple times.
- [54:41]
Alex Taggart
I think we're just really scrappy. I quit my day job. He moved down from Maine and lived on his ex girlfriend's couch, which is probably really uncomfortable. We're just like, this is it. We have to put all of our eggs in this basket. And that will hopefully push us to work that extra few hours every day and stuff.
- [54:59]
Drew Taggart
Yeah, there's definitely something to that. Like, I was like, $150,000 in debt. You had a. Yeah, yeah.
- [55:06]
Alex Taggart
My boss was like, you're what? He was like, don't do this. You can come back.
- [55:10]
Drew Taggart
Yeah. When this doesn't work out. Yeah.
- [55:12]
Alex Taggart
You know, it's appreciated, but didn't want to go back. But I think that was a big part of it. I think for us, we spent a lot of time trying different things. I think that iterative process, but also being, like, really honest about it. I remember making some song that sounded very much like an Avicii tonally song. And then. And we were like, this is Fire. But then we were like, is it though? Because it's just Avicii, but not Avicii.
- [55:36]
Drew Taggart
The beginning of our career, we were, like, trying to emulate people like that. Zed and Avicii and Skrillex and Calvin Harris and David Guetta and Swedish House Mafia. There were so much exciting things happening in dance music. I was a novice producer. You were just getting into it. We DJ gigs around the city, and we grew up on indie music. And so we would go on this website called Hype Machine. I don't know if you ever. It's like the first viral chart of the Internet, and it was all music that wasn't being officially released. There was tons of dance remixes. Remixes in general were like a new concept. So we go on High Machine and we would look at the top 50 tracks, and they were all tracks that we love. They didn't have a presence in dance music. A lot of the DJs we just mentioned were remixing, Rihanna, Lady Gaga, whatever was on the pop radio at that time. And we were like, well, we love indie music, and we grew up on indie music and hardcore music and all this stuff that doesn't really have a presence in the dance world. These songs are already trending. Alex would go into basically find contact information for every artist that was on this chart and send them a hilarious personalized email. We would get a response, and in the beginning, we were just taking what we could get. No one really to respond to us. He'd give me the stems, I would do this remix. And then he would go into the back end of Hype Machine. He would find every writer that wrote for every blog that Hype Machine scraped music from, and he would send them a hilarious personalized email. And what we realized is all of these kids were just college kids that wanted to be closer to music. And here they're getting these blanket press releases that are just generic. No one reads them, whatever. Coming from a label not even attached to personal email, versus Alex being the guy who made the song, sending you the song. It's a song that you're already posting about, so it's relevant. It's a dance remix, which is the most trendy new sound at the time. So he gave people a lot of reason to. And then he wrote this really fucking funny email that everyone related to. And within three emails, they felt like they had a personal connection with us, which they did. And I think within the first year of our career, we went from 0 to 30 number ones on Hype Machine. That took us out of DJing at Pink Elephant and Great Times 2012 club scene in New York. But we're doing colleges here and there. And that kind of was our first step. And eventually that process of building up distribution channel with all of these blogs transferred into. Then we started putting out original music, and we had to do it with radio. You do a show in San Francisco, okay, well, you got to drive to San Jose that morning, and any DJ that wants to talk to you from every station, you go and form a relationship with them. And then you go to Oakland and you do that there. And then you go to San Francisco and do San Francisco at night, and then you go do your shows, and the next day you fly to Chicago and you do the same type of thing, and you get a couple extra spins for those things. And you got everyone kind of like rooting for you. I Think that's the kind of grit that we want to see with our founders is like, do you have the tenacity? How bad do you want this? Sometimes, like this stuff, people think you just put a hit song out and it becomes a hit. But, you know, I think all the things we talked to you about today are all those little pieces that you don't see people doing. Or once it's successful and you try to like trace back to how it started, you're like, oh, well, they just put it out and the whole thing worked. And it's like, no, you can't look at this shit retroactively. There's a grind story behind everybody. People grind to product market fit. It's like sometimes they just stumble on it and they make it and it goes and it works forever. But usually, like, I'm sure if you talk to any, like, long lasting, successful CEO or founder, there's been moments they're like, fuck, my strategy is not working anymore and I have to go back to like eating shit, making phone calls, begging people, finessing relationships to like, get myself through the next hurdle.
- [59:17]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
It seems to me like so much of the ability to do that grind requires that you love some core element of the thing you're doing. I mean, you've talked about it with music all day today. If a song doesn't work, it's fine. You still love making music, you're gonna make another one. How much does that matter to you when you're talking to a founder? Like, maybe the broader way of asking the question is what are the things in the first conversation with the founder that are non negotiables for you that you have to see to be interested.
- [59:39]
Alex Taggart
I mean, I feel like, I mean, Alex Gordon Redpoint said this to me in like a really simple way, which is just invest in people that are going to do this idea no matter what. Even if it fails, they're going to start it again from a different angle, I think. Then the question becomes, is this a step function better, or is this something that can potentially reshape the way that an economy or business or software or platform or service is used? Union Square Ventures does a really good job of how they think about investing at the edge of ideas. And then those ideas hopefully become more central. And then the TAM question answers itself. Because if you figure that out, it's gonna be humongous. That obsession is really important to us. And even like going back to the anecdote just now, like, we weren't just like, dance music's big, we were like obsessed with dance music. I mean, I was downloading off blogs before we even learned to produce with drew hundreds of songs a day that I would just like put in a folder. Cause I just loved discovering new music. And I also threw parties everywhere here in New York City for like six, seven, eight years. So I also understood how to fill a room. I understood as a club owner, you don't give a shit about what the DJ is playing. You just want your club to be filled. Making money. So we understood the business side of how to be successful as the chain smokers within a venue and what was important to them. And so we like really had all of these pieces understanding the same way that sometimes advantageous to invest in a founder is a specialist from that field. Hey, I was working at Salesforce. This is a problem that I always had and now I'm starting that company and I think it's a problem that a lot of other people have and I've experienced it firsthand and I know the solution that I need to build. I think that really resonates with me versus the opportunistic. AI is hot right now. I'm just going to build an AI company or something like that. And I think you might have short term success, but as anyone who's been successful tells you, it's a very long road of getting kicked in the nuts a lot and you kind of have to just love it so much that you almost enjoy the misery of those moments and know that it's just part of the process. Ultimately going through this with a company of ours right now that's doing a really terrific job. They just signed their first big enterprise customer. They've spent the last four months building out integration. And I really like admire how this is a guy that would 100%. He's going to bring BYO, bring your own cloud to the forefront. This is his life's mission. I think he's built a really compelling platform. He's a really compelling enterprise customer. But he's spent, his team have been like, what do you need? What is not working? How do we make this perfect? We really want to learn through this experience with you as our first enterprise user, how to make this successful versus being like, who else wants this? And he's really being intentional. The same with us where it was, let's just keep doing a million remixes. We would listen to these songs and be like, does this meet the requirements of what we love and think is a great indie song that should get remixed? Because it wasn't like always this is the number one. Sometimes it was the 15th song, but we were like, this song is sick and we need to remix this song. And I think that intentionality is super important.
- [62:42]
Drew Taggart
You really want to find someone that, like, has that experience, knows exactly what they need to solve for. But you really have to be careful to make sure that that person, like, what did they do before they worked at this company? Where do they come from? Do they have a self starter mentality? What have they done? Did they just go and work here for a long time? A while? What did you do before this that makes me believe that you're going to be able to like, fuck shit up when it gets hard? Keep rethinking things. Keep having the tenacity that gets you through the hurdles that we see.
- [63:06]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What is most different between how you're investing today versus when you started Mantis? What's evolved the most in your style? Your preferences, the process, the team on.
- [63:16]
Alex Taggart
The practice of investing, like from ownership and stage, the discipline that goes into, like, making the sense make dollars. And I think that's a really important piece that comes with experience. The same way that you've had been lucky to have conversations with Peter Fenton and Bill Gurley and Alfred Lynn and Prolific Invest and there were certain commonalities. We were just like, you're going to think this. It's not the truth, but you're gonna do it anyways. And then you'll be where I am right now, you know?
- [63:43]
Drew Taggart
So true.
- [63:43]
Alex Taggart
Yeah. And they're totally right. Yeah. If we're lucky. The funny thing is, if anything, I feel like I've reverted back to where I think we're the strongest investor. Our goal at Mantis is to be the sixth man on every championship team. I want to work with the best investors who are investing in the best founders, and I want to absorb the things that both those parties are doing to like, understand how to make better decisions and build a better firm. And that doesn't mean we're not contrarian thinkers and we're certainly not followers. But information is so readily available everywhere right now. You do see the best companies generally gravitating towards a specific group of investors that have been winning for a long time now.
- [64:25]
Drew Taggart
Or identifying the new ones.
- [64:26]
Alex Taggart
Yeah. Or specific individuals within those funds more so than the brand of the fund itself. And for us, you kind of just know when there's really interesting, exciting founder. There's like a hysteria around them. In a lot of ways, I think there's that part of investing which I find myself reverting. Back to I think some people might call like a signal investor but at the same time I think it's just this pattern where it's like the space, the founder, the team, the investors, the perspective of where they came from before and the problem they're solving now. And you're just like, I don't know if they're going to be successful, but this has a all of the ingredients of a company we should be investing into. And then there's the founders, where you're like, I'm going out in the woods on my own a little bit here. I don't think this idea is so radically weird that no one else is going to be interested in this, but there's going to be a lot more alchemy than science initially. And those ones are kind of like the company I just brought up, Nuon before where I think is really exciting as an investor. We're testing hypothesis right now about where we think the future is going and this guy has the right pedigree. We have some solid people around the cap table with us, but the momentum to get this ball moving is going to be a lot harder than the other company, which is just, hey, if Sequoia invested, someone is going to do that a even if it's just for no reason. I think that's what you have to learn through experience is how do you see through all the noise and bullshit of hype versus reality versus zerp periods. And we've really seen a lot in the last six years. And it really changed my perspective on when you want to throw yourself into something and when something's not real in venture because I think there's so many stages of oh my God, we got our company marked up to Series A. We must be really good. There's so much further for this company before you see any liquidity or success. It's interesting how you don't want to get caught up in that part of the puzzle where you're like, well, I'm creating my IRR looks pretty solid right now. And it's like, what's your dpi? That's really the question you need to be asking your and we're all chasing that game of who is our customer? Is it the founders or is it our LPs? The answer is both, obviously. But you walk this tightrope where you're trying to decide where you think you should be putting the most time in. For us, when we started, we were writing 2550 K checks into companies. That was all we could get and it was about proving ourselves and building a reputation. A lot of those companies are doing really well. It was like squeezing into a really important hot round with great investors and great founders. And now that we're looking for bigger allocation, we're still having success, but it's a different conversation now where you can't just be like, yeah, we're going to.
- [67:05]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Put nice to have you.
- [67:06]
Alex Taggart
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's been really interesting. And also like, we have a team of people now that are extraordinary and everyone has their own identity and perspective on how they want to invest and evaluate things. And I feel like my job has always been to try to reel them in. Like how we're trying to treat the chain smokers now. Dumbing it down, keeping it more simple than confusing, because it's so hard to get wrapped up in the minutiae of everything. And I've talked myself out of really good deals for that reason.
- [67:34]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
It reminds me of my son's question, himself an aspiring music maker.
- [67:38]
Drew Taggart
Great.
- [67:38]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I thought it was a really interesting question in the car this morning, which was, how do they know what is the next skill that they need to improve?
- [67:47]
Alex Taggart
Oh, that's a really good question.
- [67:48]
Drew Taggart
This is definitely your kid.
- [67:50]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Yeah, exactly right.
- [67:51]
Drew Taggart
The dad proud.
- [67:52]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I thought that was so interesting because there's so many. I'm sure there's 15 things you could go get better at any given point in time. That's where he is too. He's trying to figure out. He's 11. He's trying to figure out what he's good at and what he needs to get better at. And so that's what he wants.
- [68:06]
Drew Taggart
Well, you can tell him I'm going to be thinking about that for the rest of the week. Right now I'm trying to think about back to the question of dumbing things down. It's like we always feel like we're learning new stuff and there's new practices. I mean, like, making music is a never ending ladder. My drum teacher told me that when I was like 9 years old. And it's the most true thing I've learned about my musical journey. And I think now at this point, you know, we're always learning new things. But like, with the abundance of things that we have learned, how do they not get in the way of our success? Because there is something beautiful about a young artist that has their whole life to make their first album. There's a level of like, they're just a little bit naive because of that. They're not overthinking. You know, I'M part of the singing. Like, when I make records that sound like this, it feels like me, and it makes me feel some type of way when I hear it. That should be the visual. And this artist is really cool. Maybe they'll do my cover art. We're just making music at the end.
- [69:01]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
It's, like, hard and soul over mind or.
- [69:03]
Drew Taggart
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And I'm trying to, like. I think we're both trying to, like, reconnect with that as much as possible. I mean, that's the innovator's dilemma too. Once you've reached this point, you're like, which way do I go? Do I keep trying to, like, ride the wave of this thing that's kind of moved past me, but I can hang on to it? Or do you just be steadfast in the thing that is inherently you and there's not really a right answer? There's a bunch of success stories for either side, but me personally, I'm trying to, like, not let the lessons that I've learned get in the way. Yeah, yeah.
- [69:35]
Alex Taggart
Skills are weird. I mean, I feel like I was thinking while Drew was talking about that and adventure, I was googling words like TAM on my first month of call. I was like, I don't know.
- [69:45]
Drew Taggart
We can say that now.
- [69:46]
Alex Taggart
What are these, like, fucking acronyms in here?
- [69:50]
Drew Taggart
A big tam's good, right?
- [69:51]
Alex Taggart
Yeah, yeah. And I'm just like, they made it wrong. And I feel like I'm constantly asking stupid questions. And honestly, I really am grateful to a lot of the people we've had a chance to get to work with and interact with, because we've approached this space with a lot of respect, and everyone's, I think, hopefully acknowledges that now. There is no dumb questions. I'm always like, explain this to me like a golden retriever. It's kind of something I say a lot as we've gone deeper into space. And obviously, like, engineering is a huge part of any tech platform. And I was like, I kind of want to, like, try to learn how to code a little bit, because I want to have at least a semblance of not just respect, but understanding of when I'm discussing these things, the different processes and stuff. And then now vibe coding and cursor and things like that exist. And you're like, okay, so I don't need to learn coding anymore. And now it's back to taste, which I feel like I'm pretty good at. But it's an interesting process, even in music. I played guitar growing up. Didn't carry on very long. And I remember, like, a few years into our career, and I was like, what if I have a kid one day and my kid's like, play closer for me. And I'm like, oh, I can't. That's so lame. So I was like, I'm gonna learn piano. So I took two hour lessons of piano five days a week, and I still do to this day. Now, the purpose was to be like, I can't claim to be a musician if I'm not. I can't play our music. Ridiculous. So I figured that. But in the process of practicing, learning, it opened up a whole understanding of how to communicate my ideas to Drew or whatever as we're discussing music. And it really, like, enabled me to be a much more critical, thoughtful musician in general. But I totally agree with Drew, because at the end of the day, where there is, like, an ignorance is bliss thing to a lot of this, where it's like, you can talk yourself out of any situation, part of the investor's role is to be like, how many miracles am I comfortable with? For me to back this, Is five miracles too much, or is it two or one? For things to go right and you have to, like, look at it through that lens and think, imagine that world. And I think, like, I'm probably a little bit more like this in terms of my angel portfolio stuff, where I'm just like, it, let's do it. We invested in this company, radiant and nuclear. I remember talking to them over there on the first call, and it was.
- [71:57]
Drew Taggart
Like, we can't do this, but fuck it.
- [71:59]
Alex Taggart
Yeah. And we're like, but if they do this and we didn't do it, they'd be really pissed off. And a lot of it's like, that sort of stuff, even though it sounds really stupid.
- [72:08]
Drew Taggart
I mean, outside the fun, inside the fun, we have a process, I swear.
- [72:11]
Alex Taggart
But as Doug has got as good as pedigree and Bob as anyone to, like, tackle this problem, it was just like, the timelines were like. And then in seven years, we'll be able to test the first one. And you're like, seven years, we'll test it. And you're like, all right, let's do it. You know what I mean? And now they're absolutely crushing it. It's obviously like, Monday morning quarterbacking it. But it was, like, funny when you look at those things and you're just like, we could have called Blake and Chad and had deep conversations with our friends that have experience in this space, and they all would have probably been like, don't fucking do this.
- [72:41]
Drew Taggart
Why? What I was saying the other day, like, I don't know if we would have invested in Poppy again, because we just don't. We do stay away from CPG. That was like a 30x, but again, completely like YOLO. There is, again, some level of naivety that you're just like, you gotta have faith. Venture favors optimism. And I hope we would have identified that Poppy had two incredible founders. But, like, maybe not. Maybe it was just like another soda.
- [73:08]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
I was talking to Alex once about some company in the portfolio. It wasn't like, over Zoom or something. It was live. And he started rattling off the KPIs of the company. I was like, wait, you know, the company's KPIs? And then he was able to do that for, like, a bizarre amount of the companies. And I asked him about it, and he said, yeah, no, I know, like, all the numbers for all the companies, which is surprising. Back to your point about, like, when you announced the venture fund, everyone's like, oh, these jackoffs have a venture fund now?
- [73:33]
Drew Taggart
And we're like, we got to know all the numbers.
- [73:35]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Exactly. But it's an amazing way that you bridged the two worlds. And obviously it's early days, like you said. You probably do both these things forever. Such an amazing history for me to hear. I've loved doing it. When I do these, I ask the same traditional closing question of everyone. I get to do it twice today. What is the kindest thing that anyone's ever done for each of you?
- [73:54]
Alex Taggart
It's so funny. I, first of all, obviously know that this is your final question. And I thought about this on my red Eye flight here for, like, so long. I was like, nobody's done any kind shit for me. I was like. I was like, I don't want to, like, single out anyone that significantly.
- [74:12]
Drew Taggart
I love how you're going to. Yeah, you're gonna say this with caveat. Like, I did think about this for 10 hours today.
- [74:17]
Alex Taggart
Truth is, people aren't that kind to me, at least in the ways that I've heard other people think through these things. I mean, obviously, extraordinary friends and people in my life. But I guess if I had to, like, I was trying to think of, like, a clever way to answer this, because, funny enough, I think it was an unkind thing. I had this homeroom advisor in sixth grade named Mrs. Park. I think she liked me, but I think she also understood that I was at this really interesting crossroads in my life. My dad had just passed away, 12 years old, super Young, impressionable age. As a young boy, I had a lot of friends, but I was also not like a banging student by any stretch. And she was just like very clearly. She was like, this is like the most important moment in your life and you will probably not even recognize it till it's too late, either in a positive or good way. But she's like, you are fully at a crossroads right now. One path will lead you down a road of success where you use this experience and pain and everything that comes with it to like motivate you through life in a really positive way. Or you'll just become a total fuck up and everything will be derailed and you'll go on to accomplish nothing. And obviously as a six year old, you're like, what? You're like, lady, it's like 8:15 in the morning. You know, like, I'm going through some shit. But it actually did really stick with me in a lot of ways from that moment forward as I thought about the different decisions I made in my life, whether consequential or consequential, would had this thing in the back of my mind, which path is this leading me towards? And really like motivated me to like get my shit together and become like a good human and a really good student and push myself. So ironically, I think it's funny when someone can offer new advice like that. And I think maybe too often in today's day and age, people are offering advice like this all the time. People just don't listen anymore. You kind of like acknowledge it, but you don't really think about fundamentally what it means. She was probably like in her 60s and this woman's obviously advised and taught whatever homeroom to hundreds and hundreds of kids. I'm not even probably the first kid she's had this experience with. I'm so grateful that she said that.
- [76:21]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Did you feel like when your dad passed away at a young age, like it snapped you awake in some way?
- [76:26]
Alex Taggart
I love my mom. She's still around. She's an amazing woman. And I had a really tough upbringing. They fought relentlessly. Insane fights are probably why I painted so much because I just didn't want to leave my room and interact and get in the mix of all that. And my dad passed away in the middle of the divorce. It was like a really dark period and to the point of what I just said. And it was like I had a lot of friends that came to my side and supported me then. And more than anything, I think as you get older, you kind of distort memories. And now when I look back on things, I had this completely different perspective now than I did when I was a 13 year old about like who my dad was and how he treated my mom and how she treated him and how my relationship was with him or him with my sister. After that moment it was just kind of like I have my family but I'm really on my own to be my own man. And it's a weird experience not having grown up at all with anyone to be like, dad, look at this. Or like am I doing this right? Or the dad that's like, hey, let me help you out with this or do that. And so it's been probably one of the strangely better things that has ever happened to me. But also I've never seen a functional relationship in my life, which is probably why I'm still single.
- [77:36]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
What's your answer for the kindest thing?
- [77:37]
Drew Taggart
The one that's coming up for me is my mom buying me a drum kit when I was five years old. You know what it's like to buy a drum kit for a five year old kid in 130-year-old house farmhouse in Maine. You're listening to me, trying to learn, listening to just smash drums which I played all the way until I went to college and my mom would sit in the kitchen doing grading papers and doing stuff that she had to do for work or making dinner, just listening to it and loved it. Watched my whole musical journey and always supported it. But yeah, crazy move for a parent. Just tortured herself. She really loved it. I've always been fascinated with business and with music. When I wanted to go to college for business, she really discouraged me from choosing a path that didn't include music in some way and it ended up that way. So thanks Mo.
- [78:32]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
Well, your guys story is one of my favorites at this intersection of two of my favorite things, music and business. I am so excited by the next chapter of what it might become and what it might look like and can't wait to watch. Thanks for doing this with me.
- [78:45]
Alex Taggart
Hell yeah. This is an honor.
- [78:46]
Drew Taggart
Thanks for having us. Yeah.
- [78:48]
Patrick O'Shaughnessy
If you enjoyed this episode, visit joincolas.com where you'll find every episode of this podcast, complete with hand edited transcripts. You can also subscribe to Colossus Review, our quarterly print, digital and private audio publication featuring in depth profiles of the founders, investors and companies that we admire most. Learn more@joincolasis.com subscribe Sam.