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- [00:00]
A
As I'm sure you're very well aware, a lot of people criticize Pump Fun and like similar platforms, saying it's gambling or it's the meme coin Casino. And I wondered what your response is to those critics.
- [00:11]
B
I know, just, like, have a higher iq, I guess.
- [00:17]
A
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Unchained, your no hype resource for all things crypto. I'm your host, Laura Shin. This is the September 11, 2025 episode of Unchained. The crypto world is buzzing. On October 1st and 2nd, 25,000 people will be at token 2049 Singapore, the largest crypto event in the world, featuring headline speakers like Eric Trump, Vlad Tenev, Tom Lee, Balaji Srinivasan, and Arthur Hayes. Visit asia.token2049.com now to get 15% off tickets with the code Unchained. Today's guest is Noah Tweedell, co founder of PumpFun. Welcome, Noah.
- [00:56]
B
Hey, how's it going?
- [00:58]
A
I'm really good. I'm so excited to chat with you guys. PumpFun is clearly one of the biggest crypto successes in the last couple years. It's become one of the fastest companies to reach not only profitability, but also rake in huge amounts of revenue. You recently crossed $840 million in revenue. Your company also recently raised $1.2 billion. In an ICO, you have even bigger ambitions to compete with social media giants. But I want to talk about, like, the kind of the recent period, because, you know, it's like, not only have you had this wild ride the last couple of years, but it's, like, been sort of condensed this summer, I would say, with multiple ups and downs. You know, obviously this ICO sold out quickly. At the same time, the platform was, like, losing market share and then got overtaken by. By let's Bonk. Then the Token kind of dropped precipitously, but then recently published has now flipped let's Bonk Again to regain the majority of market share. Now more than 80% of coins on Solana are being minted on Pump Fun again. And it feels like you're kind of on this upward trajectory. You've made a bunch of new announcements. So I was just curious, like, how are you feeling at this moment in time? Like, what are your general thoughts on everything that's happened?
- [02:10]
B
I mean, that's a cool question, because I think, like, I mean, obviously the past sort of couple months were sort of pretty crazy, I guess, from the outside perspective. But I mean, this company now, I mean, has been alive or existed since even before sort of 2023, right. So we've had a humongous amount of sort of ups and downs. Like really sort of like all the way down. Like, this is completely over. Like this company is going to shut down to sort of. This is going to. This is doing sort of super well and then continue sort of pushing it out. So I think it was from the outside, I know it sounds. Seems sort of very extreme, but sort of internally it was like, I want to say like two cliches, just like a normal day. But it almost was. It was just like, yeah, this is just like the next sort of chaotic thing which is sort of hitting us. But I mean, that itself was like, it was a pretty unique scenario, right, because the whole obviously sort of the development team, which we have had to build out this whole sort of ICO platform for sort of pump fun. And that took a lot of time, right? And I mean, as you can see, so during the whole ICO process, our sort of system was the only one which sort of upheld the sort of onslaught of everything going on. So that was super busy to sort of working on that. But it was the point I'm trying to get at. The two week period before this was happening was obviously extremely chaotic and sort of full on, sort of heads down to make sure there was sort of no mistakes. And quite literally the whole sort of development company was very much focused on getting this over the line, right? So that's when the whole sort of dog thing sort of happened and we were sort of very much just focused on a different thing.
- [03:42]
A
And then once by dog, you just. You mean let's bonk.
- [03:46]
B
Yeah, correct. Yeah. And then so we're on sort of there and then obviously there's sort of token launches. And I mean, I'll just be honest here, like myself, Arlon and Dylan, the sort of three founders, like, we hadn't had a holiday in literally like one and a half years. Like we were working sort of seven days a week. We still are, but we told ourselves like, no matter what happens after this token launch, let's just take like a week or something off to sort of like just like relax a bit. So that's what we did. And I think that's when the whole sort of like chaos sort of chaos sort of went down. But then we sort of, as soon as we were back in the office, we were like, okay, let's just like execute on this plan and then sort of get it over the line, so.
- [04:23]
A
Oh, okay. So during that period when people were like, they raised all this Money, but there's no communication. You guys were actually on vacation?
- [04:29]
B
Yeah, pretty much, yeah. I mean obviously there was like calls going on like, oh, we should do something, which we were. But again, we did just want to sort of take a bit of a break because I can't explain the sort of craziness which has sort of happened in our lives over this sort of past sort of two to two to three year period, so.
- [04:45]
A
Oh yeah, no, I'm sure. I mean just looking at it from the outside, it's very obvious. Well, let's talk about some of the recent announcements. You know, you just announced Project Ascend, which at least from the announcement it seemed like there's going to be multiple parts to it, but the overall goal is to make projects and their communities more aligned. But let's talk about the dynamic fee model which was I think know, the main, one of the main pieces of that. So you just out, you know, launched this dynamic fees v1 and it's this tiered creator fee structure on Pump Swap, you know, where the, the tiers are M market cap and the higher market cap coins have this lower creator fee. So like describe a little bit more like the problems that you're seeing that you were trying to solve with this new structure.
- [05:28]
B
Yeah, so I mean I think this sort of goes down in sort of a deeper, deeper question which, which I, which I want to answer is like Pump Fun is we don't want, I mean, okay, look, it's obviously a crypto company right now, but our long term ambitions for this company is we don't want it, we don't want to be a crypto company. And I think we sort of made that clear in our sort of sort of announcement. I mean we do obviously want to cater towards the sort of crypto native users and sort of continue growing that out and everything. But we want to become a company which has an impact globally, right. Either through be that sort of through financial means or through sort of social means, which is really what we're sort of working on. And if you look at the sort of leading social media platforms of today, like Instagram, Twitter, I mean Twitch I guess you could argue or say is like a social platform. TikTok, all that sort of stuff is all these sort of platforms work for sort of one main reason and that's they, that's because they reward the creators, right? And they reward the creators to continue to sort of produce content just like YouTube as well. And that thesis was always to like to win this game or to win like globally with the best possible product, you have to build a product which is not just like 2x better, 3x better, but like 100x better. And that was the idea with these, with these sort of creative fees that we would heavily, heavily incentivize sort of content creators on the platform to one just start creating content in general and then to be rewarded for it a lot more than anyone else. And I think it's been really, really interesting to see, like, just the statistics I've been sort of looking at over the past couple of days. Like streaming has sort of gone through the roof, like DMs, which is obviously prevalent on the mobile app, also sort of just like going up in like a sort of a direct line upwards. I think it sort of speaks to it. Again, if you actually go on Pump Fun right now and you look at some of these streamers, I was looking at past couple of days, people who've been streaming for like 12 minutes and have made like $150, right? Which that isn't that much, but if you think about it, this is with 10 viewers, 15 viewers, and this money is just sort of flowing in and this is like, I believe, like quite literally like a 100x better product than what's sort of out there in the sort of traditional sort of world, if that makes sense.
- [07:30]
A
So, yeah, yeah, I mean, like, so I don't know what those, you know, particular streamers were streaming about, but like, most entry level jobs are not going to pay you $150 for 12 minutes of work.
- [07:43]
B
And again, these are just like streams even just talking, nothing like too crazy. And I thought it was really cool to see, especially when like the. So it takes time to create like quality content creators. Like the content creators like Mr. Beast and all these sort of famous people, like, they need like time to nourish and obviously start making money to be able to reinvest into their businesses. And I think as time goes on, I think hopefully we'll see larger and larger content creators having more and more of like a, an impact, basically.
- [08:07]
A
Yeah. So basically it's like you're trying to give enough of a financial incentive that like people who are unknown have a chance to like, keep going, to try to break through.
- [08:19]
B
Um, it's. So it's not only that, right? Because if, if you, if you become an Instagram content creator now, like, how many, how many users does Instagram have? Like, like billions, right? So even if you get like 10,000 followers on Instagram, it's like you make no money. Like, it's it's super, super hard to make money or to like generate any revenue. So one, we obviously want to, want to allow our content creators to be able to get increased sort of cash so they can sustain themselves and create bigger sort of brands. But two, and almost more importantly, what I think is so special, I pump and what I really love about it is is that the discoverability is that much better as well because there's sort of net less streamers. It's actually way more likely to be sort of seen because you're sort of cramming these like whatever, like 300, 400, 500 concurrent streamers to the sort of crypto audience which is sort of 5 million. So the sort of chance to fame or chance of success is a lot higher than all these other platforms. And obviously as the platform grows and network effects get bigger then this, this becomes more and more difficult to attain. But I almost think like right now it's like it's like the golden age to be able to sort of create something and then, and so it's kind of like, like Instagram at the start when everyone was sort of loving it people they were able to make a bunch of money or the way sort of Tinder was said, like oh, the start when Tinder used, everyone was able to sort of get matches. Right. But now it's turned into this sort of hyper capitalistic sort of way of just like getting you to spend money on sort of in app purchases instead of creating like something which actually works. Right.
- [09:39]
A
So yeah, well, so I was curious then. Yeah, because like when I go on the front page like I am, I'm honestly. And granted I know I'm not your target audience but like I was just wondering like yeah, this discoverability notion or like how your algorithm works or whatever, like when I go on there, I'm just looking at all these things and like some of the streams I went in, it's literally like a guy on a call, like selling something. And so I'm like wait, like why would I be watching this? Or like how are you choosing what goes up there? Like yeah, just talk a little bit about like how you think people can get discovered and.
- [10:08]
B
Yeah, yeah, so I mean with the live. So the main sort of discovery algorithm is probably on the front page for the coins. Like for the discovery algorithm for the, for the live streams is actually non existent right now. It's purely sorted by market cap. So there hasn't been much resources sort of sort of diverted into that, if that makes sense. But again like our thesis Is, and I think this is sort of followed is the better your stream is, the more attention it gets. The more attention your stream gets, the more, the higher the market cap is. And I think that's, that's how kind of like crypto works in general. Right. And I think that's this is sort of going to continue, continue over of how, of this whole, this whole new sort of social financial layer is going to work out.
- [10:46]
A
Okay, so you've also at this point done $75 million so far in buybacks. This is something that obviously the community has been excited about. You know, there is a talk, there is a fair amount of talk though about how these buybacks are discretionary so far rather than like something programmatic or like something where there's kind of like a set program around it and literally also just not manual. So do you intend to make them programmatic?
- [11:20]
B
I mean, again, this is like a broader question. I mean if you look at the sort of space right now, what buybacks are actually programmatic, again, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I'm actually not sure if the hyper liquid buybacks are programmatic like a lot of people like to insinuate. I'm pretty sure if those would want to be changed, they could be changed sort of very quickly. So that's the first thing need to sort of assess. And I think the way we sort of make our, we made our decision about the buybacks or Pump for me's decision about the buybacks is we sort of looked at sort of crypto and see what are the sort of successful, successful, successful companies out there. Right. You have like Binance, which obviously did like again I believe it was like 50% buyback. So like 50% of their fees were being used to directly buy back the BNB token for the first, I think believe at least a couple of years of solar development and then sort of hyper liquid, which sort of executed directly 100% of the way with these 100% buybacks, which I think kind of makes sense. But again, I think the way I like to see it is we see what has worked and we think that makes a lot of sense. But I can only comment about the past, which is we've done, I mean the start, obviously the buyback started with 25% and then the decision was made to sort of change that to 100% buybacks. And I think Pump looks up to the sort of biggest companies in crypto and wants to follow their lead.
- [12:33]
A
So, and I'm sorry when you say 100% you're talking about of the revenue or.
- [12:38]
B
Of the revenue, correct? Of the revenue.
- [12:39]
A
Okay. Yeah. And like, this is like a really funny thing to me because, you know, just if you think about it, you raised all this money and when you did that, you sold people this token. So like they basically paid you money for the token, but then now you are using money to then buy this thing that you sold back to them. But I guess it's, I mean, it's just like maybe just it's the fact that this happened in such a short period. So it's just like a funny.
- [13:07]
B
Again, addressing this as a whole, I think it's like arguably it's not a wise business decision to do buybacks either for Pump Fund, for Hyper Liquid, for Binance or any other centralized exchange. This is a very flawed ideology which somehow crypto has pushed towards the front. Imagine this would be like Amazon paying a sort of 20% dividend or like 100% dividend yield with all revenue generated since their inception. Right. There's no way these, these companies will be able to hit this sort of global scale by sort of giving this much back to sort of, to I guess all the, all the shareholders of it. Not that like the, the current sort of crypto stuff looks like that, especially the pump fund token. But I mean, again, I think it's just like it's seeing what works in crypto and people. I think the truth is there's like a lot of sort of misconceptions or problems which come around from sort of the equity and sort of token split and how these companies are sort of set up. So it's important to show belief and demonstrate that the people buying into stuff that there is potential value there or there is at least there is a possibility for buybacks, which happened in the past.
- [14:16]
A
Okay. Yeah. So you feel like it's like a particular problem in crypto. Maybe doesn't super make sense, but it does, I guess in terms of community alignment. But I do understand it creates.
- [14:28]
B
I mean, think about it. For every, every dollar which is spent on a buyback, obviously it does, it does make sense, depending on which, what kind of stakeholder you are. But this, this, that money could be used on marketing, it could be used on acquisitions, it could be used on hiring, it could be used on, or bonuses or all kinds of different things which would arguably allow the company to grow, sort of grow, grow longer and larger in the, in the sort of long term. So, but then looking at it in sort of more, more detail, again, I think obviously Pump Fund is in quite a unique situation where it already has quite a large amount of capital. So that's very much up to them how they sort of allocate the sort of resources. So.
- [15:07]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, yeah, because like another issue would be just like from a diversification perspective it's sort of like ftt, ftx. But I understand like there, there is a certain crypto thing of like everybody being aligned on the same page. So I understand how it feeds that narrative. Let's talk about the let's Bonk situation a little bit more. Why do you think it is that let's Bonk was able to take so much of Pump Funds Thunder for a few months?
- [15:33]
B
Again, this whole DOG thing, it's happened so many times before, right? If you look throughout Pump Fund's history, you've had stuff like, I mean at the very start you had Dexscreener launching a Pump Fund competitor. Then you had Justin sun launching a Pump Fund competitor. Then you had. I'm just thinking about all these different attempts which have sort of been made. I mean, Jupiter's obviously done one now and the DOG guys have done one then. I mean again, this is like of course CZ as well. They tried on sort of the BNB chain with their sort of one and they've done all these sort of large. And the same thing always happens, right? Like these competitors come up, they use massive amount of incentives to make their users make more money simply because they're buying, buying these tokens. Bunch of obviously traders who are very accustomed to the sort of financial markets go over because they know they can make more money. And then it sort of goes like the market share goes directly back down again as soon as the incentives run out, which they always do. And again that's why I think it speaks about Pump. We're not like a partnerships driven company or we're not like a company which is driven by just trying to quite literally manipulate the market in the sense or acting in really bad faith, which can come at the cost of the end users as well. We're here to. It's a product first company, right? Because at the end of the day the product always wins, right? Like if you have like, I mean, if you look at, I mean again this is like a kind of very simple simplistic way of looking at it, but just looking at the UI on pump or just like the features like a live streaming or the mobile app with the DMs with the, with the movers tab with all this different stuff which not a single other Sort of product has. This doesn't seem like a lot because it's not like, oh wow, like it's a one stop one. So everyone uses this one thing. But it's more like if there's like a 1% edge from coming from all these different little causes, this sort of stacks up, right? And this leads the product to be better in the end, getting the user over in the long term. So with this sort of stuff and competitors in general, I always refer back to the product and the best product always wins. And this isn't in crypto, this is worldwide, right. Your product has to be substantially better to win. And the everyday we're at Devco here, we're thinking of how do we sort of structure this in a way which is the best possible product for the end user in every single way. And all this sort of other stuff is just, just sort of noise to us. And even like obviously we did lose some market share. Like obviously we'll be like, oh yeah. But we realize like this isn't the end game. It's like we've just had this happen like literally 10 plus times at this point. So let's just go back at it and build a better product, right? And that's the only thing which matters. And again, I think honestly it was as mentioned before, it was just like a lack of focus in that short time period because. Just because of the high stress environment of the token launch.
- [18:04]
A
Yeah, I mean it sort of feels like it might have been more visible in a way because you had launched the token at that time as well. It was just like so much attention on you guys, like even more than normal and then like a market price. So. But I did, you know, want to ask because I'm also noticing like I think Zora now is having like there, there's more like coin creation on Bas than Solana recently. And I wonder, do you think of them as a competitor again?
- [18:34]
B
No, no, not really. I mean, I think, look, I think I like the Zora team. I think they've actually created something pretty cool just because of like this sort of overarching narrative which, which I think like, well, not even narrative. Like for me, what I want to, what I want to do here is create a company which can work outside of crypto. And if you look at Zora and you open their mobile app, you see something quite special, right? Because they're not catering towards the sort of, the sort of average crypto user of charts and all this stuff. They're building something for, for, for the instant Creator like the normie for the normie, sort of generational, the normal normie user base which actually use it. So I think that that's quite cool. I'm not sure about that strategy. I mean again, like obviously they don't make too much revenue compared to us, right? So I think that does speak for about. I think everyone here is going to take a different path, right? And I think it's just by sort of having conviction your path and sort of following through on it. Like I think our, our, our sort of vision or where we sort of execute. This is. You focus very much on the user. You're, you're user obsessed, right? You really understand everything, what the user wants. Like you speak to users every day. You, you dig out and what are your problems? What do you want? What are you understanding this and I think it's risky and we've made this mistake before is if you try and build five years ahead for what the user's gonna look like in five years, you almost forget about your current user and that can cause the whole thing to sort of almost collapse or just not work at all and just lose. Right. So the trick here is about user obsession, but about users which are currently using the platform and not ones which are going to be using it in a couple years time.
- [19:57]
A
So even faster than let's bonk flipped Pump. Pump Fund recently took the top spot again nearly overnight. This happened in August and I wondered how did you guys manage to win back that market share?
- [20:09]
B
Yeah, so honestly I don't really want to. This is for me, this isn't like a relevant, this isn't like a top of mind issue for me right now. I don't see this as being something one we should spend time discussing or we should just address as a whole. I think if you're worried about this, if you're listening to this and you're worried about pump funds market share 1 I would just ask, look at the past, look what's happened in the history and then just believe in the team's execution, ability to sort of retake that. What I want to focus on is like not like, oh, how does one market share take the other market share. Who's got this sort of dominant space? It's more. So how does this company move already in like this in this sort of niche industry? We are. And how do we sort of leave that? Right. And I think that's like the overarching question because all this sort of like market share debates and oh, I can get my revenue up to like $3 million, a $5 million a day like that. To me that's not a success. That's not what we're here for. And I don't think that's what anyone working at the sort of pump firm Development co is either. Like everyone here working with us, we want to create a company which can have like a, which can have an impact which hasn't been seen before in crypto, right? And I think if you look at these companies, even at the largest ones, like sort of Coinbase and sort of Binance and obviously sort of okx and all these centralized exchanges and then the largest decentralized exchanges, for me, these companies are all failures. Like I don't think a single one of them really, really, really has, has like an impact globally which, which makes a difference, right? Like you look at this, you can sort of Coinbase, for example, like they built a bitcoin wallet. That's all they did. Like the product hasn't really changed since since sort of day one. And I think when looking at like a success case, you should be looking at companies which, which really truly like generationally change the world. You look at like Apple, you look at sort of all these have different social media stuff which like every single person is using like hours upon hours a day. Or you with your, maybe your laptop which you're using now, watching this podcast on, or your iPhone, you're watching this podcast on, you want to look at companies like that. And I just really want to stay away from this whole sort of crypto stuff because again, it's nice to look into it and obviously sort of helps with like moving the needle on small numbers. But like we're super young. Like I'm 21 years old and my co founders also 21 and so 22, 23. I think like we want to be working on this for like decades to come and really, and really and really have, have like an impact. So our thought, and this is, has been since the start of like, we didn't even set out to like create this to be found like a crypto native company. It was more so like how do we just create a company which has like a global impact? And that's really what I want to stress on and not like, oh, are we going to build another decentralized perpetual futures exchange? Are we going to build like another Stablecoin and all this other stuff which obviously we're going to do, right? Because I was like, why would you not do this if you have a good product? But the question should be how can you, like, change the world and I think that's really what we're focused on. So.
- [22:46]
A
Yeah, well, you know, so actually when I asked that question, I was sort of thinking like, so. So clearly you guys are working on two different timescales here. You have, you know, kind of your vision for the future. You have like, you know, your goal to take on Twitch and TikTok and YouTube. Like, you know, what you said before in your announcement, and yet at the same time, you just said, like, you're also, you know, wanting to make sure that you're in touch with the. Your users today.
- [23:12]
B
Of course.
- [23:13]
A
So, like, really. So really, when I asked that question, it was more like about that, like, about. Because you are kind of managing like two different things. You're managing your current audience or your current user and you want to, you know, keep them and, and like, you know, grow with them. So. So I don't know, like, you know, I, I did notice.
- [23:30]
B
Well, okay. To give some more background, like, the. The company is very much sort of like, I want to say split apart, but there is like two, two sort of verticals. It's. One is like the. This is like the future facing stuff like what, what is going to lead this, this market to, like, how do we grow this market and how do we. How do we turn this into something special? And that's like, stuff like obviously the live streaming, like, obviously the sort of DM stuff which is built directly into the mobile app, which sort of like, no one has sort of redone in crypto, except maybe Telegram before. And then you have stuff like the mobile app in general, which I think is quite amazing, right? Because with a mobile app you get like this K factor, which is substantially higher than anything else, right? Like, if you're just like, I don't know, just like hanging around with friends or like you're in the subway or whatever, and you have your sort of mobile app and you're using something like if you think about the best products in history, like, sort of Netflix and like Amazon, like all this sort of stuff. All this sort of stuff, like you didn't hear about it because of marketing. You heard it because you're like, your mom told you, your brother told you, your friends told you, right? And I think that that's really what we're sort of optimizing for here is like the focus of that side of the company essentially is like, how do you make a product as viral as possible and as sort of easy to spread, spread by word of mouth. And you obviously have the other side of things, of sort of retaining, retaining the current user base and sort of, sort of looking after them and executing on them. But, but again that I think, I don't want to say it's easy because obviously there are some challenges which sort of come with that. But I mean we've done it over the past year and a half and I have 100% conviction we're going to be able to continue doing this. For me, that isn't the challenge. I think it's a challenge, but it's not an interesting one. And I think the real challenge should be again, how do you grow this market out to serious size?
- [25:02]
A
And out of curiosity, because this question has come up before in the world of NFTs in particular, do you prioritize one of these demographics over the other? Do you prioritize creators or do you prioritize traders or yeah, like how do you segment your user base and who do you think?
- [25:20]
B
There's, there's no such thing as like prioritization. I mean, I look at it like, I mean you could, if you look at like current social, social media platforms, it's like, oh, do you like, there's like TikTok prioritize the sort of content creators or the sort of consumers? And I think the honest answer is it's like it's not very clear. And what kind of combines them together is the algorithm. That's a beautiful thing, right? The algorithm sort of mushes both the, the sort of the consumer and the sort of content creator and sort of creates this sort of market which, which, which intertwines both of them. So I think it's like, and this is like, this is like the most difficult question of them all, right? Like how do you, how do you create this sort of two sided marketplace of the sort of crypto natives and then the sort of forward looking like mixture between sort of Robinhood, Twitch and TikTok and sort of Pump fun as it is today. And I think it's like this is not a problem which you can solve of sort of one button. This is, this is a problem you solve by taking sort of rapid, small iterative changes which over time make the product 1% better every day.
- [26:15]
A
Okay, so in a moment we'll talk a little bit more about PumpFund's future plans. But first a quick word from the sponsors who make the show possible. Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr. Tom Lee, Vlad Tenev, Paolo Arduino, Balji Srinivasan, Arthur Hayes. These are just some of the headliners at Token20 Token 2049 Singapore. The largest crypto event in the world. Happening October 1st and 2nd. Over 25,000 attendees, 500 exhibitors and 300 speakers will converge for an unmissable week. Token 2049 will take over all five floors of Marina Bay Sands, transforming it into a pop up City with 1000 side events, nonstop networking and immersive experiences all leading into the Formula one Grand Prix weekend. Ticket prices are rising this week. Visit asia.token2049.com and use code UNCHAINED for 15% off tickets. Back to my conversation with Noah. So I actually wanted to return back to this project Ascend bit because I know you just announced that little piece of it, but I was curious like what do you feel are kind of the major issues, you know, that Pump Fund has now that you would like to, you know, tweak and improve on?
- [27:32]
B
Tweak? Any major issues? I would say discoverability, like finding, finding the best possible coins and always sort of being able to sort of navigate the site either on your sort of mobile app which you're using or on the sort of website. For me that's sort of super important. I feel like that's like a big thing. And then what else? I mean obviously like the, I mean, no, I mean that's kind of like a feature of the product, right? I mean like I presume like this is going to lead into something. So what, what do you want to sort of hear?
- [27:59]
A
No, no, I am curious to hear like what, what do you. I mean I do have a bunch of things that people have mentioned but I wondered how you think about it.
- [28:07]
B
Yeah, for sure. I mean I think that the, the, the big thing, like it's like you have to sort of split the, sort of what does the user want and then what does a business slash the overarching company want? And I think at the end of the day like it's important to know that these are the same things, right? These connect. Like if you look after your customer, you the sort of the company performs well even if the business is operating at a loss or just like sort of stagnant isn't really moving. If your customers are happy, you'll sort of win in the end game. Like the customer is always the most important thing. So I mean when we again like we speak to users, everyone on the team and like the founders, we speak to users a lot. So whenever we hear, whenever we sort of listen to users, like we hear their problems and those are the first things we sort of want to fix. So yeah, if you have anything specific, then more than happy to address that here.
- [28:54]
A
Yeah, I mean like, I feel like the community takeover bit was like kind of a first step and then now, you know, the way that you change the fee structure, like, is like basically what you, it seems to me, like what you are trying to incentivize is that you want people to not just do like the rug pulls, just like, you know, a get rich quick scheme, but like to actually create something that's more long lasting and that also has like a big community around it. Is that kind of a way to think about it?
- [29:19]
B
Of course, yeah, of course. Like you, you want coins to perform extraordinarily well, right? That's like, that's like the best possible everyone, right? Obviously the platform does well and then the users who bought into these coins obviously sort of benefit and it becomes a global success. So obviously we had a bunch of these different coins which sort of performed very well during sort of different large sort of world events basically. Right. And I think that sort of shows the sort of merit of these large communities getting together and these coins quite literally having an impact on the, in sort of general. So yeah, I mean, obviously the larger coin, the larger the coins, the better the coins do, the cooler it is. And then the CTO thing, I mean the idea here really was, was just to give optionality, right? Like if a developer leaves his coin and no longer works on it, like and a whole new community is coming in and really trying to support it and work on it, then we want to give them the tools to be able to sort of, sort of take over that coin. But the truth is like here as well, it's like, this is not, this is by no means a solved problem. And for all the users listening to this, like, we're working on this and again, just like every other angle of the product, like this is just like iterative improvements and it's like this. We obviously listen to suggestions and sort of try and try and like gorge that out and see what makes sense to sort of either make it and try and make it a better, better product at the end of it.
- [30:33]
A
So another, you know, kind of analysis that I've seen is that one of the issues that pump funds should probably try to solve for is that, you know, a certain portion of token discovery or like a meaningful portion is happening, you know, with bots or on wallet token feeds screener, like basically not on Pump Fund's homepage or in its app. And I wondered what you were trying to do to bring more attention to Pump Fund itself.
- [30:59]
B
I mean, again, I think it's like there's obviously some portion which is happening off the sort of front end, but I think that's like, that's almost beautiful in itself, right? Like, and that's like, that's like a really cool thing about Pump because if you look at stuff like these other sort of enclosed ecosystems of sort of Twitter and like, I mean, yeah, again, like Instagram, Snapchat, all that sort of stuff is like, you can't really see it on sort of multiple different sort of plans, angles on different side of things. So Pump is obviously one like a, you use it, you can trade on it on its front end and sort of consume it, consume its content. And again, there's obviously significant usage on the mobile app on the sort of front end and such and so forth. But I think it's also infrastructure, right? I think that's really beautiful about it as well. Like you have like Maxi, who Pump worked with, which allows like Pump fund coins to be sort of traded indirectly or like all these trading terminals and all these centralized exchanges that I know are coming out with these new terminals, like it becomes infrastructure. And the nice thing about this is kind of like hyper liquid, right? Every time a new sort of platform is built on top of it, it adds the network effects, right? Because if someone launches a coin on Pump, then it's seen on all these different venues simultaneously. And I think that's almost the beauty of crypto as a whole, is everything is so interoperable and sort of built on one another. It's no longer this sort of siloed off ecosystem of sort of Web2, which I think comes with its sort of blessings and a lot of curses. But I think in our case, I think it's, it's almost like a feature, not bug.
- [32:22]
A
I also saw sue back in July, Coinbase director Connor Grogan tweeted, quote, the great majority of tokens launched in Pump Fund, and let's bonk. Are today run by bots. The top accounts launch on average a new token every three minutes. You know, when I was reading that, I was just thinking like, this reminds me of how on crypto Twitter now there's like so many bots that are just adding like, I mean, yeah, it's natural, right?
- [32:45]
B
As soon as, as soon as there's a group of sort of, I mean individuals or real human beings who are sort of working together or, or using a product like bots come along and I think the, the real thing, and I've said that, said this Before I believe even publicly, the one thing you want to focus is like, obviously if people like buying to bots and they get like, hurt, that's not the same as like, if you buy, like if you're on Twitter and you're sort of seeing bots which are sort of spreading misinformation, it's obviously like a very, very bad thing you want to avoid. But the trick here is not to sort of go into this sort of fight with the bots because you'll never win that. Like, not even like all these are large tech companies with like hundreds of thousands of employees can fix this problem. So what you really need to lean into is you need to give the tools to your users to identify is this a bot or is this not a bot? And that's the real trick. So it's about sort of tooling and discoverability which kind of leans back into this sort of algorithm which can allow this to sort of grow out, right? So I think that's the thing. You've got to prioritize and really look after the users.
- [33:38]
A
So, yeah, okay, so you don't, you don't feel like that's something that again.
- [33:43]
B
Like all content is good content to the extent where it doesn't hurt or damage, damage sort of users, right? Like the, the truth is like the. Even a bot can create something funny or individualistic or something which, which can go viral, right? Like a lot of memes are like, at this point, like, I mean, half the world is AI generated, right? So I think. And this is only going to continue as time goes on. So it's not something you can just like stop with a sort of snap of your fingers. You really have to think about this on like, take a step back. Like, how do you solve this problem? And if the, if the user who's trading, who doesn't want to trade botcoins, then you got to help them not trade bot coins, right? Then their algorithm has to give them suggestions in a way where they don't trade. They don't trade bot coins any longer. That's what we're really sort of sort of focusing on because again, like trying to like individually sort of ban these bot coins or sort of stop them from getting distribution. It's really hard to do because obviously there's. With a product like ours, there's sort of, there is money on the line, right? So if the, the other parties can take sort of actions and you sort of get into this sort of like kind of a battle with them where it doesn't really make sense. You should be building a service which can allow every single user to identify what kind of stuff they want to buy into.
- [34:47]
A
So, yeah, and you know, a lot has been made about how the majority of people lose money on meme coins and on pump. Um, you know, I think the recent status, I was about 60%. So do you feel like that's a problem you need to solve or do you just feel like that is like a function?
- [35:04]
B
I mean, we, we don't, we don't, we don't want people to lose money. I think that's like a, that's like a, that's like obviously like, that's bad for us. If, if you, if you lose money, that's, that's like, that's not a good thing, right? That, that's like. We, we definitely don't want that to happen. But I mean, again, I think people also need to take this in context. Like, I reckon if you take the sort of win loss ratio of sort of pump and one, place it over perpetual futures, perpetual futures will be 100% worse. Like, I guarantee that. And then two, just take the win loss sort of percentage of just like taking it on like all like top 100 tokens in spot trading. I'm pretty sure like your odds, odds, odds will be worse there as well. And that's like, for many different reasons, right? Like you have like all these like founders doing all these very weird stuff, which I've sort of heard and sort of seen sort of firsthand. And you have sort of all these sort of VCs who are sort of invest into as well. And I think the beauty about pump and really why we sort of built this out was because we got frustrated like you sort of like a year ago, like you're buying these coins and it was like probably 50 people you've never even heard of or were so hidden away and so obfuscated who were selling your tokens that it would hurt you. And with Pump, you know what you're buying into, right? Like you're buying into whatever X coin and yeah, you enjoy it. And I think that you don't enjoy it, but it's not lying to you what it is. And I think that's almost beautiful and I really enjoy that.
- [36:17]
A
So let's talk for a moment about the crypto competition again. I know we sort of addressed it, but I want to address it from a different angle, which is I just wanted to hear how you think of Pump fund versus some of the different crypto competitors, you know, and we don't have to talk about. Let's talk if you don't want to. But, you know, I mentioned Zora, you said, like, they're going after normies. Like, what about believe? Like, you know, I just wanted you to hear. I wanted to hear you talk about what niche Pump Fund is trying to carve out, like, what the identity is that you're going after.
- [36:47]
B
I don't see these companies as competitors. Like, they obviously, like, they come in, like, they get like a bit of a hype cycle and they sort of go down again like that. That's a competitor is someone who come in and sort of maintain significant market share for sort of months or if not years on end. Like, that hasn't happened yet. So I really don't consider it like our competition I see as like the largest companies, companies in crypto and beyond. Like, I think it's like that that's who we're really competing against. Right. Like, the amount of, the amount of money which, which Pump is making is equatable, I would say, to some of the largest centralized exchanges on the planet right now. Right. Like, I think, I believe Pump even had like a more profitable quarter than Coinbase and stuff like that. And that really sort of starts, like, if you start seeing what's going on. And I mean, obviously Binance, they're in a division of their own, but. And you look at the smaller ones like Bitget, Mexi, qcoin, Kraken, I don't know. I obviously don't know their internal financial records, but I would probably bet money on the fact that Pump Fund is generating more revenue than them. And I think that's pretty interesting, especially when the development company only has 65 employees. 66. And I think if you research to see what's going on, I think that's sort of. That's sort of quite special. So, like, this sort of smaller stuff which takes like a couple percent of market share or a couple of decimal points of like, market share. Every, every here, now, again is like, not what. Not what you should be focusing on is like an investor. And if you're looking at Pump or, or a user, you should be thinking of like, wow, how does this company go from here to like, making. How does Pump go from making $2 million a day to $20 million a day to $50 million a day. And I think that's always like, our framing of how, of how, how the product was iterated. It's not like, oh, how do we increase our margins by like 10% or how do we increase our margins by 5%. It's like, how do we create a product which can spread by itself and get to like 10x or we are 100x or we are. And it's always about like, how do you figure out the next 10x and not how do you just sort of try and squeeze out a bit more money from your current users?
- [38:37]
A
So, yeah, so I also wanted to ask about your mobile app, which you launched back in the winter. I was curious how you've seen activity there differ from on desktop and also what the breakout is in terms of percentage of activity on each.
- [38:51]
B
For sure, yeah. So I mean the biggest thing is like retention. Like once you're on mobile, your retention is substantially higher. Right. Because it's like your own little enclosed ecosystem and it acts like a wallet, like a trading sort of partner and almost like a social application as well. So that thing we're sort of super excited about, the likelihood that someone shares the mobile app is also higher, I believe. I wouldn't sort of want to sort of put my bet on like I don't want to put my brand behind that either. Just have to double check if that's correct. But then I believe like for sort of front end usage. Again, I don't have the statistics in front of me, but I believe it's like 25% or so actually something very substantial. Like a lot of our development now is going into the, going into the mobile app because it's like we feel like desktop is kind of like a losing battle. Everyone's doing desktop, right? Like unis, all these like larger companies, I mean we see it as like a company but like all these, like larger sort of larger sort of like platforms, like all these centralized exchanges, like a lot of this stuff like Coinbase, a lot of it is like, especially when a lot of money is involved, is all on desktop. And I think that's a problem because that just like it inherently limits growth for the company and I think mobile really allows you to go get that sort of stratospheric upside which we're really looking for. So.
- [40:03]
A
Yeah, okay. And I was curious. So the UK's Financial Conduct Authority said Pump doesn't have permission to do business there. In general. There's, you know, some different laws around gambling, online casinos, they could potentially apply to Pump depending on the jurisdiction. And I wondered how you were thinking about that, like strategically or just, you.
- [40:23]
B
Know, it's top of mind. Right. Like we have like a massive legal team. I work with a bunch of different councils. Obviously our internal legal team as well, and like, yeah, you want me, you want to be on top of this and you want to make sure you're breaking absolutely no regulations. And if there is a disregard, you sort of fix that as soon as possible. And I think that's really important. Right, because it doesn't make any sense to run your business in a way where you get in trouble or have all these sort of run ins. Because that damages the product long term. Right. And it damages the business long term and it hurts your reputation. I think you mentioned we're actively looking into this stuff and whenever we see a problem, we'll change it or address it or make sure that doesn't happen again. Yeah.
- [41:03]
A
So, you know, on a related note, Twitch banned unlicensed gambling sites and that kind of gave like an opening to a live streaming platform, kik. And that's owned by Stake, which is an online casino. And KIK is home to a number of gambling streamers. And it sort of feels like, you know, I mean, you have been bringing on other streamers from kik actually, like Sol Jae Ki is probably the more, well, one of the more well known ones. And I wondered like, is that a niche that you're going after? Like, is that.
- [41:34]
B
No, no, not at all. Like, I, I, I, I think g, like gambling and pornography is like the worst industries to be involved in. I want to be clear. Pump is a trading product. Like when you, when you, when you trade on Pump, like it's, it's a skill, it's a skill based, it's a skill based activity. It's, it's, it's not gambling. And I think that's a, that goes really like, if you focus on sort of gambling, like the, the content is so boring. Like you just watch someone like spin slots. That's, that's not what you want, right? You want like someone who's like doing something fun or just think of the biggest YouTubers, right? That's kind of what, the kind of activity we're trying to sort of incentivize. But that does not dissuade us for try different niches. Not that we haven't actually gone into the sort of online gambling one I'm certain of, but stuff where it's like looking into stuff like, I know maybe it's like sports or gaming or all this different stuff, all these different sections. Because the way you see and identify if a product has PMF is simply like a B testing, right? You have to see which vertical is working, which vertical isn't working, and digging into it and Understanding the sort of the psychology and the usage of it. So it's about doing a bunch of a B testing and sort of identifying what niches work and then sort of expanding on that and what we believe, what we think is like and we've seen has been the most successful has been like the IRL stuff and that the streams have been sort of kicking off.
- [42:48]
A
So yeah, well, just, you know, in general, as you're looking to take on some of these more mainstream social media platforms that you mentioned before, you know, how do you think about how to do that? Like, how do you break out of crypto? You know, do you feel like this, this strategy that you started where you're bringing on sort of these, you know, moderately well known streamers is working well?
- [43:13]
B
No, again, like bringing on streamers, that's not like we've tried some of that, but again like a lot. At most, I would say like 99 + people percent of the streaming activity on Pump is organic, right? It's just like word of mouth and people using it and sort of speaking to them. And then what we do do, however, is when we see someone like coming on and they're sort of using the streaming platform and they're really enjoying it, we reach out to them, right? We put them in a group chat and we're like, hey, do you want to like, do you want to go to like Africa and do you want to take some pictures of zebras or something? Like we'll finance that trip, right, because we want to have like a cool, we want to have like allow us have a sort of cool, cool experience and sort of create better content. So we don't bring over streamers, but we do sort of open up the flow to creating better content. And that's for anyone listening as well. Like if you're interested in streaming, like reach out, like, we'll speak to you. We have like a fully dedicated streaming team who will help you out and sort of do all this sort of stuff, like. And again, I said this on the Delphi podcast the other day, but I think we spent about over a quarter million dollars on streaming equipment. This is like webcams, like microphones which you can walk around with, and cameras and all this stuff to give to these people so they can have a chance to sort of start streaming and get this off the ground. Because the truth is, Kik, I think kind of has pmf, but the PMF just comes from stakes, massive sort of gambling role. And it's like paying all these people to advocate for gambling basically. Right. That's not like a long term approach. What you really want to be going for is this bottom up approach where people are using the product because they love it. Right. Like, like the thing I'd more look at as a comparison here is like the TikTok streamers or like the Instagram live streamers. That's kind of more the audience we sort of want to go for because I think that that's like a whole lot more wholesome and a lot more rewarding and also again can just grow a lot more than focusing on a bunch of people like wanting to trade slots all day. So yeah.
- [45:00]
A
And out of all of the different activities people do on social media, why did you decide to focus on streaming?
- [45:06]
B
Honestly, user activity. So we just like again this goes back to sort of speaking to users a lot but not many people know this, but if you use pum, sometimes a Google Meets link will sort of pop up and be like, hey, if you join this for one hour you'll get like one Solana and then users will sort of go on there and then our engineers or team will sort of user interview them. And this was very early on the streaming. I mean there's obviously that whole controversy which happened. But even before that we saw what we were looking at, what users were doing. It was streaming in Telegram groups. There was like 15 people on Telegram watching like a stream together. And we thought this makes sense, like why don't we implement it? Very similar decision making process to why did we bring in the sort of DM feature. Right. Like what does everyone in crypto do? And outside of crypto they're all on Telegram, right? Like all your VC buddies are talking on Telegram or your, or like your, your trading friends are talking on Telegram. And if you can import something which is a lot more crypto native and create like a crypto like isolated, isolated ecosystem and build features for crypto traders. Like imagine like pubs directly built into sort of sort of typing or like stablecoin payments. All this sort of stuff like built into a messaging app for the user base which is sort of currently out there. I think that's sort of super special. So yeah, it's about like looking at what the users are doing and then sort of like building a product which is better for them than what they're currently doing. That's the kind of way I like to see it.
- [46:22]
A
So yeah, I mean basically it's like a way to kind of hang out with your friends digitally like in real time. Like you may not be physically in the room Together. But yeah, you're all doing.
- [46:32]
B
It's the same, it's the same here. I mean, even though it's like we communicated over telegram before this or every single trading group I'm in, especially the younger generations, I think is everyone's sort of perpetually online and I think that's like a really big thing. And the other thing is one thing I want to highlight here as well as, and I was mentioning this on the other podcast as well, but the people who use Pump, the younger generation, it's always super like the people between 18 and sort of 24 who are using this and sort of, sort of really focus on it. And I think it's like people are kind of fed up with all this sort of perp stuff, which is kind of like zero sum and just like not very social. It's not, it's quite like boring, not very entertaining. And then you, then you sort of see the stuff where it's like, like when Alan said like Pump wants to build the most fun place on the Internet, then like I couldn't agree more. I think, I think it makes a lot of sense. So.
- [47:16]
A
Yeah, and so when you talked about how like you also want to get into sports and gaming, like are you just, you know, watching who naturally comes on the platform and starts using it and then trying to pick out people who you feel like could cultivate those areas or like how it's not about.
- [47:33]
B
Picking them out, you do that anyways. Like anyone who's consistently streaming on Pump, we speak to and we look after them. Right? It's like the same thing which TikTok did as well is like not many people know this, but they would have whole cohorts, like hundreds of people who they would basically teach how to stream. They would just give them incentives and give them free food and all this stuff and literally they go to streaming boot camps. This is how you stream. This is how you make the good content. That's something which is going to happen anyways, basically. So that's no worries. But then it's more like understanding. Maybe the gaming streamer prefers a subscription based model. Or maybe the gaming streamer wants emote reactions. Or maybe the gaming streamer wants to be able to stream with multiple people at the same time. It's like speaking to these people and understanding what they want and then building that out. And it's not so easy doing that either because you can't just go to people and be like asking, hey, what do you want? Right. Like you need to go to them and it's like build a relationship with them and sort of speaking to them and sort of slowly understand what they want, not just ask them what they want, if that makes sense. So, yeah, okay.
- [48:33]
A
So I did also just want to ask some philosophical questions because, you know, I'm watching all this stuff happening, and it just seems so interesting. Like, you know, if you kind of think about almost like the history of the Internet, right? It's like, you know, Chris Dixon has this thing that, like, it starts with reading than writing, than owning for every version of the Internet up through web 3. And I was just curious, what do you think pump represents? Culturally, you're clearly enabling new behaviors, new types of activity. But what is that? How do you think about where you fit in the evolution of the history of the world or the Internet?
- [49:12]
B
I think it's what the young people are doing. I think right now, the world, and I've seen. Seen it sort of firsthand, is like in a really dark place, right? Like, the rich people are just getting even richer and the poor people are getting even poorer, right? And the wealth gap is just increasing more and more and more. And it's basically, it's almost impossible to escape out of this sort of system because it's so entrenched. And there's all this, like. And it's a very dystopian, right? Like, you look at stuff like TikTok and Instagram reels and people just like on this 10 hours a day, right? And it's like this stuff is like, don't forget, when you buy an iPhone, the first reason, the main reason, the only reason you're buying an iPhone is so that you spend money on that iPhone. That's the only reason an iPhone even exists, right? And I think then it sort of goes in like you open the Instagram app, and the only reason the Instagram app is so that you consume more content, so you watch more ads. And I think this. This creates like a really like, skewed sort of like a skewed, skewed world, which, like, yeah, just like kind of like brainwashes a lot of people and then causing. Causes a lot of harm. So I think it's like one. It kind of pumps and really highlights the fact that people want to escape this. They want to get out, and it really gives them the optionality to do so. And it might sound a bit crazy that this is sort of what meme coins are and what it has become now, but if you look at this and you speak to, I know, like, your interns or Your daughters, like sons, all this sort of stuff, like what do you do? And I think if they're somewhat sort of financially savvy or somewhat encrypted related or, or even general. I had friends like I hadn't spoken to in years were reaching out to me, like wait, you're the founder of Pump Fund? These people, like they had no idea what crypto was, right? And I think that really speaks for. And then there's obviously like the, the Black Mirror episode as well. And I think it, it really shows that is like the youth wants to like one create their own financial system and to kind of escape the sort of sounds like like the Matrix basically just like being, being stuck in it and just not being able to escape. And I think it's like a. I think people say the Internet has increased access for people and allowed people to live a better life and get more information. I think it's kind of true, but I also think it's kind of not true. It's really dark. At least back in the day you'd go outside or something. But now it's just Instagram TikTok. You just can't leave. And I think it's pretty messed up. So really the hope here is for Pump and what we want to help them do is, is create something where they. One, you can obviously consume content because people do enjoy that, but you can financially benefit from doing so anyways because if you're spending like hours upon hours upon hours of sort of consuming this content or at least likely to be able to sort of invest into that and sort of create a whole new market again I said this the other day as well. But like I really believe that every generation creates a whole new financial system. Like it really sort of, it sort of goes down in sort of layers, right? There's like the, there's like the boomers who create like the banks and there's like the sort of Silicon Valley people and now it's like the crypto people. Like it's always like the like history always rhymes but never repeats, right? And I think it sort of speaks to it. And now like the reason I like crypto and I think where this is like the next big company is going to come from is because this is where all the young people are like all the really young, smart, talented people are all building crypto. And I think that that sort of should highlight its long term success and nothing else.
- [52:28]
A
So yeah, I was also curious like do you feel like you're learning things about human behavior from watching how People use pump. Do you feel like you're seeing new behaviors or like you're seeing culture or society evolve? I'm curious just what you feel like.
- [52:47]
B
I mean, I think culture and society sort of, again, it just repeats itself in different ways. I think it's impossible to evolve. I think the human nature is the same, has always been that way for the past 3,000 years. So I think it's very hard to sort of engineer something which will create a whole new type of acting. I think you can take different ways of acting and sort of put it together. And could you argue that's a different one? I don't know. Maybe. But all I know is when I first started, even now, streaming and all this sort of social media way of, like, spreading the information of these coins is when you. When you watch these people, like, like a chart plus a stream, like, for me, that is like a whole new. Whole new form of content. And I think that was kind of the very special thing I saw.
- [53:29]
A
So, yeah, so I did want to ask because, as I'm sure you're very well aware, a lot of people criticize Pump Fund and like, similar platforms, saying it's gambling or it's the Meme Coin Casino. And I wondered what your response is to those critics.
- [53:44]
B
I know, just, like, have a higher iq, I guess.
- [53:48]
A
Wait, I'm sorry, say that again.
- [53:49]
B
I said have a higher iq. Look what's actually going on, understand it, read into it, and maybe use the product and really understand what's happening. And I think a lot of people, they're just, like, bad. And I think a lot of this is. This comes from the old people, right? The people who made their money on Polkadot or made their money on Ethereum or made their money on Bitcoin, they just like. And that's what I don't like about crypto either. It's like, super tribalized. And people just, like, they understand that, like, Polkadot was just a Meme Coin, which got launched like, five years ago. It's the same thing. It's literally the same thing. I think it's just like, oh, my God, all this sort of bad stuff. I'd say, like, you have to understand what's going on here, right? Like, this is like some of the. Like, I would say, like the. For our age, like, we're probably some of the most successful, like, we probably are the most successful entrepreneurs of anyone under sort of the age of 24 found it finding this sort of platform. And I think if that doesn't make your sort of Eyes open up, then I don't know what can really help you.
- [54:44]
A
So, yeah, and I was curious for you personally, like, do you consider yourself more like a crypto person or a meme coin person or a streaming person? Or, you know, I was curious just because, like, you could. You could say that Pump has kind of multiple ways that you could slice and dice it, or, like, are you a social media person? And I wondered what your personal affinity is for the very various, you know, lenses through which you could look at Pump.
- [55:09]
B
I mean, again, like, personal, like, I mean, look, I was in crypto for a while before we. Before I sort of founded Pump. Obviously, I'm like, again, I don't think there's, like, one sort of necessary. I think that. Okay, that's a unique thing as well. Right. So there's obviously three co founders of sort of Pump. I think everyone has that sort of unique ability or their unique talent or their unique niche which they're an expertise in. I think that's why we're such a brilliant team, because everyone sort of has their own angle of what they think the world sort of looks like. Right. And I think that allows us to create something which is almost like a jumble of a bunch of different stuff which is happening simultaneously. And I don't know, I think I'm super interested in finance. I'm interested in sort of social dynamics and how that can sort of impact stuff. But most of all, I do just generally enjoy it a lot. I do like creating stuff which people use and then can create these sort of changes in the way people think and how they act as well. So.
- [56:02]
A
Yeah, okay. And I wondered, you know, like, there's multiple different ways that you could go mainstream, and clearly you're trying out a number of these, you know, but as you do that, there's going to be this tension between pushing the envelope, you know, which, like, you kind of have to do if you're. If you want to create something new and edgy. But then also, you know, like, there's a certain point past which, like, if you go past that limit, then it might be, you know, somewhat damaging to your reputation or. Yeah. So, you know, what have you learned from, like, past incidents? Like those streaming incidents where, like, people were kind of, you know, threatening violence or, you know, whatever, just. Or just pretty much any of the other incidents that have happened? Because there's been a number where I know you guys were challenged. So. Yeah. How do you think about it?
- [56:52]
B
Yeah, so I think the biggest learning from this is, like, back when the Streaming thing sort of happened. It was like ship a product, it doesn't matter how bad it is, it doesn't matter how, it barely works. Just no consideration. Get it out in the world and make sure people use it and just try and see if people use it. So I think the biggest thing we've learned is just preparation and thinking about what's the worst case scenario. It's kind of like you need that one person in the room who's like, if this goes wrong, this could be something really bad. Right. And then we had like, obviously we shut down streaming as soon as something bad happened and then we had a whole moderation team which is sort of working on that now around the clock. There's tens of dozens of people online to monitor if anything is sort of going on. And this works sort of flawlessly so far and hopefully we'll sort of continue to catch any wrongdoings. And then you have stuff like new product releases, like the DM stuff. Obviously that comes with risks, right? People could be sending inappropriate messages, inappropriate images, like really like illegal and bad stuff. So moderation also has to be, has to be employed on that. So it's just like it sounds kind of like classic I guess, but just like learning from your past mistakes and then iterating on it and learning quickly because otherwise you're not going to make it very far. And in like. So, yeah, okay.
- [57:58]
A
And you know, so just going back to like your big mission that you know, you announced when you were doing the ico, do you have like kind of, even if it's a vague roadmap of like how it is that you want to try to take on the likes of TikTok or.
- [58:15]
B
No, no, no, again, I would throw this like roadmap fallacy away and I would, I would encourage everyone to do this as well. That this, this is not how this sort of stuff works. There's not like a ten step plan of how to become the biggest company in the world that just doesn't exist. Right. And I think again I said this previously as well, but if you look at like the best companies in the world, I mean like, like WhatsApp for example, I made that example last time. Like it hasn't changed, like the product since launch is exactly the same product. There's like very, very few differences which have, which have allowed it to grow to a sort of large scale. So the way these companies grow is actually by having small, just like very niche changes. Like, I know, like WhatsApp, different languages or for example, it costs money at the start, they then made it free and then they did stuff where it's like, okay, up to a thousand people can be in a group chat. These very small niches can unlock sort of next levels of growth. I think that's the next thing we're really trying to sort of, sort of push out basically. And there's no such thing as a roadmap. It's just like constant iteration and just like rapid improvement as fast as possible. And again, just like speaking to users, understanding what the users want and then also combining that with some kind of forward looking vision which I think the world is going to look like, which is going to be this sort of like the bank and the platform which, which becomes like the next biggest thing will be like this combination of what all the zoomers are using today. Right. It's like you have your, like you chat with people there, like you consume your content there and you sort of have your finances there. At the same time it's like this bigger sort of envision engrossed into one larger product.
- [59:42]
A
Okay, so if I were going to summarize kind of like what this might look like some number of years in the future, we won't name how many. It's basically there's communities that are aligned around creators and whatever content creators are putting out, but both the creators themselves and the communities can benefit financially. And whatever it is that the creators are putting out has a little bit of this real time component through the streaming and then on top of that there's like a bank.
- [60:18]
B
You have your life savings on this app as well. Right? It's like imagine like you sort of swap between TikTok, you swap between Robinhood and you sort of also got your bank which you can like pay for at the grocery store, all in like one mega application.
- [60:30]
A
Oh, wow. Okay, that's super interesting. It is like the Everything app kind of.
- [60:35]
B
Yeah. Quite legibility. But like if you think about the Everything apps which are sort of built out today, they're sort of focused on one niche and they like they're again, they're kind of like old people. Ish. It sounds silly, but nobody really uses Facebook anymore. This stuff is sort of like faded into relevancy and then our generational bit above is like this Instagram generation there and it's like the TikTok self which the 8 year olds are watching, I guess. And the question is what is the thing which will hit the sort of next level of the, like the 18 year olds at the next generation basically. So yeah.
- [61:05]
A
And then one Question. And maybe this is like resolved by the generational issue, but because of this sort of judgment and stigma that we see around meme coins. Like, I wondered if you guys have any thoughts or if you're like trying to strategize about how to overcome that with mainstream people.
- [61:21]
B
I mean, again, like, we've like purposely like try to stay away from describing ourselves as a meme coin platform because that's. Although it is used as that, what we've built is a tool which can be used for anything you want. If people were only uploading YouTube videos or YouTube esque videos on Pump, then it would be like a video sharing platform. Right. So I think that's kind of the beauty of this. It's like infrastructure. Right. It allows anyone to sort of. Well, not infrastructure, but it's like a social media platform which allows you to do with it what you want. Right. And it's like, it's super interoperable. So I think I don't want to sort of say Pump is a meme coin thing. Pump is a short form video trading platform. Pump is a livestream trading platform where pump up is a messaging app. It's whatever you want it to be. And I think that's what you see to happen to these sort of larger, these, these large applications as well, where it really creates something which is like, you can use it in the way you want. Like Twitter is probably used for like thousands of different reasons. Like you already have historians looking at it, trying to understand like different opinions from specialized instruments. Maybe it's like people who just want to watch and scroll and watch people sort of, I know, play music or whatever. There's just like so many different use cases for. And I think it's the same with everything. And I think it's very dangerous to sort of lock yourself into one. So we just try and ignore it. Because I want to create something which really has, which is a tool for everyone basically. So yeah, okay.
- [62:43]
A
And this is just like me spitballing, but I was sort of thinking like, you know, you're. You have this like streaming component which is like a real time thing.
- [62:53]
B
Yep.
- [62:53]
A
Which is sort of like you could think of it as an event. But then, you know, we have prediction markets which, you know, they're called event contracts. And I wondered like, is there a way to do like some kind of mashup there?
- [63:04]
B
No, just like again, like I think everyone's on this like prediction market sort of hype train or something. Like the prediction markets don't work. I mean, they do Work, but like they don't make any money. Like, this is not, this is not like a business. Like, this doesn't really exist. Like, there's not a single prediction market in the world which is, I mean, I don't know too much of the details, but like, I think our daily volume is like sometimes in the billions. And like these prediction markets have like monthly volumes of like 100 million. And I think that really just shows you where like the interests of the users and like taking this whole thing, oh, let's combine it together. Like, prediction markets are literally just like a glorified sort of VC narrative. Like that's all they are. Like in my experience, at least until something significantly changes. These are not revenue generating businesses and not businesses which have an impact. They might get an opinion because a lot of people see them for a brief period of time, but they're not something which people actually use. And I think this speaks about it a lot. If you look at the different CEOs for different companies in the world, you'll see the best products and the best companies. You don't really see the CEOs running around preaching about the future vision because the product is just doing itself and you see other people. Again, I'm not going to name any names, but if you look into it, the more the CEO has to tell the vision of the platform, the less it's working. And I think that sort of speaks about the world in general. So I think it's, again, the most important thing about is building something which the users want to use.
- [64:31]
A
Okay, well, last question for me, and I'm only asking because I feel like people will be mad if I don't ask, is just like any news about the airdrop that you want to talk about?
- [64:41]
B
Again, I would refer to our sort of public communication. So yeah, again, everything will be announced. Obviously it's sort of there and everything. So just like look at our Twitter. I promise you everything will be accurately addressed. So please don't stress.
- [64:56]
A
Okay, well, you said that you wanted to come on here and talk about how you were going to bring this app out of crypto into the mainstream. So is there anything on that subject or any other subject that you didn't get to say that you would want to say?
- [65:09]
B
Well, I think again, I would just say the biggest takeaway I would take away from this is if you look at products throughout history, a lot of them, they don't start off as the things which they become. If you look at YouTube or even Facebook and these larger companies, even Facebook it was hated. Everyone hated Facebook. They thought it was. There's this ran by this horrible guy who was just an evil person, all this sort of stuff. So it was really, really disliked. And again, what Meta has become now is probably. You couldn't even. You could barely imagine it like 20 years ago. So I think it's just like the biggest thing is look where the talent is going, understand that this stuff changes over time and then just like. Yeah, I think long term dedication is also a really big thing, which can have a really big impact. So. Yeah.
- [66:02]
A
Okay. All right, well, where can people learn more about you and Pump Fun?
- [66:08]
B
Twitter, I guess. Yeah, just like Twitter is probably the best way to reach out to us. So. Yeah.
- [66:13]
A
Okay. Well, it's been a pleasure having you on Unchained.
- [66:16]
B
Thank you so much.
- [66:18]
A
Thanks so much for joining us today. To learn more About Noah and PumpFun, check out the show notes for this episode. Unchained is produced by me, Laura Shin, without from that Hildred, Juana Ranovich, Pima Jimdar and Margaret Curria. Thanks for listening.