The Liquidity Event Podcast: Episode 98

 

Episode 98: Manic Pixie Dream IPO

Hold onto your seats for another thrilling episode of the Liquidity Event Podcast! We’ve got a pandemic move update: founders and being clawed back to SF due to the AI boom. Then we’ve got fallen crypto industry titans in Bali and how optimizers are using Notion to plan their entire lives. Some CEOs claim employees are less productive at home but we say that’s bad management. And finally, Japanese company Pixie Dust files for a very tiny IPO. Get ready to be entertained and informed on the Liquidity Event Podcast!

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Airdate: 06/16/2023

Read the Full Transcript:

Presenter:

This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be considered tax or investment advice. Welcome to The Liquidity Event, a show about all things personal finance with a laser focus on equity compensation, hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn Fi. Each episode will take you through the week's news on FinTech, IPOs, SPACs, founder wins and fails, crypto, and whatever else these nerds think is interesting. Learn more and subscribe today at brooklynfi.com.

AJ:

Hello, and welcome to The Liquidity Event, we're your host AJ.

Shane:

And I'm Shane.

AJ:

And this is episode 98 being recorded on June 14th, airing on June 16th. How you doing, Shane?

Shane:

I'm great. Great. I'm in your house.

AJ:

So weird.

Shane:

I'm in Palm Springs.

AJ:

So weird.

Shane:

What's up, dog?

AJ:

We've got a great show for you today, folks. We'll be talking about how folks who moved during the pandemic are coming full circle and going back to the big cities they left. We'll be talking about some cool tech. We'll be talking about NIPO. We'll be talking about a slashed valuation of a popular tool that Shane loves that I don't really understand, and we'll be talking of course about work from home policies. So how's Palm Springs?

Shane:

It's great. Wait, are you talking about Reddit, the one you don't understand?

AJ:

Yeah.

Shane:

Oh, I can explain Reddit to you in six minutes. Just give me-

AJ:

I don't need you to mansplain Reddit to me. Thank you.

Shane:

Okay. I don't know how else to explain things while being a man, things are great. I love your house. I'm doing my best to not scuff my shoes on the floor here and not to leave long blonde hairs in the shower, but you got a fantastic pool. Love posting Instagram thought photos from the pool. Try to post some thirst straps from your pool this week. Yeah, having a good time. Having a great time.

AJ:

Do you make any friends on your neighbors? The neighbors are great there.

Shane:

I have not seen any other human beings here yet. When's the high season? I don't understand the high seasons.

AJ:

It's not now. It's too hot for people right now. No, the high season ended on May 1st.

Shane:

Oh, got it.

AJ:

The high season's like November 1st to May 1st. February is really when do you want to be there.

Shane:

How you doing? How's Brooklyn?

AJ:

I'm great. I'm having a New York Week. Last night I went to this Women in Tech event and Williamsburg on a rooftop, which was super fun. This morning I went into Manhattan to do a internet TV appearance to talk about credit scores on Cheddar, so shout out to Cheddar TV, Cheddar News for having me. That was fun. Yeah, I'm thriving in New York this week, although they're doing some pretty major construction across the street from my apartment, so apologies if you can hear that. Just gross noise in the background.

Shane:

Oh, you're in the clear. I don't hear a thing.

AJ:

Awesome. So let's-

Shane:

Great transition.

AJ:

Great transition. So speaking of being in the wrong place, we've got a few articles we wanted to tie together here. We're calling this the full circle on pandemic moves. So folks who have moved during the pandemic are changing their tunes a little bit. This first one, Americans are leaving Portugal as the golden visa honeymoon ends. We talked a little bit about this a couple weeks ago, but basically this is a Bloomberg piece of interviewing folks who actually did make the move to Portugal and all of the complaints that the Americans have with living in Portugal, such as they can't handle the European bureaucracy. They are having trouble learning the language, boohoo. Rents in Lisbon have been driven up almost 43% year over year, and apparently the honeymoon is not as rosy as they thought it would be. But you're thinking about moving to Portugal legitimately, right?

Shane:

Yeah, I have a lease, but just my landlord just canceled my lease-

AJ:

You have a lease. Okay.

Shane:

... in Mexico City, I actually don't have a lease anymore in Mexico City, so I got to figure that out. I have an application in for a golden visa, more like a digital nomad visa. It could be either Portugal or Spain. So we shall see where I land. Spain is seeming more and more appropriate given these articles that we're seeing coming out about the difficulties of the Portuguese government in honoring the applications that people are seeing. I can't tell if these are boomers that move from Michigan and don't know how to use computers or work with lawyers that are having trouble. But this article seems to say that you could really struggle to get your applications even honored by the Portuguese government and they've gone cold.

AJ:

Yeah, there were two. One person was complaining about they moved outside the city and they could drive to work and they couldn't get a driver's license after two years. That seems like a bureaucratic nightmare. And another person was saying that there wasn't an eye specialist to help them with their eye conditions. They had to come back to the states because they couldn't find a doctor. So feel like legitimate, non-bitchy American things to complain about.

Shane:

Yeah, for sure.

AJ:

I couldn't deal with the person.

Shane:

Especially when-

AJ:

People are like, I can't learn the language like that. I have zero sympathy for. Come on. That's inexcusable.

Shane:

Wait, the Portuguese language is one of my favorite languages because it's just drunk Russian trying to speak Spanish. Have you ever heard the Portuguese [inaudible 00:05:17]. I mean, obviously you've been to Portugal, so-

AJ:

It's beautiful. Yeah.

Shane:

You think it's beautiful?

AJ:

I haven't been to Portugal yet. Haven't been to Portugal yet.

Shane:

Oh, no, I thought you've been there. No. It sounds like a drunk Russian trying to speak Spanish [inaudible 00:05:29]. Yeah, super fun. But yeah, apparently Spanish speakers can pick it up really easy. Yeah, there was somebody else that was complaining that the weather is colder than they thought it was going to be, like, "Oh no."

AJ:

Oh, no.

Shane:

The Southern Mediterranean weather. I wonder if there's anywhere close by to Portugal like it's really warm. The Sahara Desert. It's like a $40 flight and you're in Morocco. I don't know. I don't know. It sounds like a lot of these people, it was their first time moving abroad as well, and they're just not as easily becoming a European citizen as they expected, which is the dream. Get that European passport and then you can live anywhere in Europe and Portugal, is just kind of like the steppingstone.

AJ:

It's your gateway to Europe.

Shane:

Exactly.

AJ:

We tell all of our clients, if you're thinking about making a big move before you go do it permanently, just go live there for a month. So you have a few weekends there, you get used to the pace of life before you make big moves. And you've done that a few times, right? You spent a couple months at places before making a more permanent move.

Shane:

Yes. Yeah, Mexico, I was spending time in Portugal last year before a woman convinced me to come down to Mexico, so I'll be back in Europe in a couple weeks continuing the exploration.

AJ:

Beautiful. Speaking of moving for love, we've got a New York Times article here called Their Crypto Company Collapsed, and they went to Bali. For love-

Shane:

Is there love going on this?

AJ:

I don't know, they love crypto so much. Their company's collapsed and they went to Bali. I'm going to let you go off on this one.

Shane:

Oh, yeah. I mean, the crypto has just been getting kicked in the teeth for the past year, and this is just another piece of fodder for people that love the downfall of the crypto. Yeah, I mean, it's like a hit piece on these two co-founders of Three Arrows Capital, the Singapore based cryptocurrency investment firm that went bust. And then what do they do after this went bust? I mean, you could read this in two different ways. I mean, they made a lot of money off of trading in the crypto space, pretty, what's the word I'm looking for? Speculative asset class that they were early to the game. They're both my age. They're both 35, 36, they made millions, and now they are trying to figure out what's going on, what's next for their life. Some guy surfing in Bali, one guy has this like $25 million house in Singapore.

It reads really rough for this white dude. Honestly, that's just like, yeah, I'm just getting back, focusing my chakras and doing a lot of yoga and doing a lot of surfing. Okay. All right. I think a billion dollars got deleted under your management, so I don't know what else you do though. I mean, you were dealing with retail investors. They didn't have to be accredited investors. The SEC just announced they're moving forward with a crackdown on Coinbase, crypto is really on the way up. Regulations were really light. Anybody could get involved in the space, and as long as everything was going up into the right, nobody really cared. And now Gary Gensler just announced a lawsuit against Coinbase. Coinbase is claiming that they tried to register certain assets on their exchange with the SEC, but there was no way for them to actually get them listed or get them disclosed.

And the SEC is leveraging, or is alleging that Brian and his team at Coinbase never even tried. So we'll see what happens when it goes to court if it does go to court. Just another article about the downfall of a asset class that potentially has no use case, but was quite the buzz for about two, three years. As opposed to AI, which has nothing but use cases popping up left and right these days, and we're seeing a tenfold increase in the VC funding flowing into it. I don't know. Quite a tale of two techs. What do you think?

AJ:

I was just thinking, yeah, I haven't seen a lot of crypto and AI being merged for any new companies. Have you seen anything like that? Any creative AI applications for the blockchain? I don't think I've seen anything like that. So AI seems to be looking towards the future.

Shane:

Yeah. What AI is doing towards valuations, upwardly, I mean, we have this article later about how Minstrel AI is already worth 260 million, four weeks into founding. I think crypto, adding that to your pitch deck might have an opposite effect on your valuation at this point. I don't know. I'm not a VC, but yeah, I haven't seen a lot, I wonder how long that stadium in LA will be called crypto.com.

AJ:

Yeah, I think it was like a 25-year lease, but we'll see if that lasts.

Shane:

Jesus Christ.

AJ:

If someone wants to come. In 25-year naming rights, I believe.

Shane:

Well, yeah, pets.com would just now be losing their lease on a stadium after 25 years, been found in the 19-

AJ:

On a [inaudible 00:10:20] stadium.

Shane:

For reference.

AJ:

Speaking of California, we've got this, another similar article here. We love this shit. We love the work from abroad, work from home articles. They fled San Francisco, the AI boom, pulled them back, not really a hit piece. It's kind of a white people hit piece. These folks moved to Bend, Oregon from San Francisco and they were like, "Okay, now we're in AI and now we need co-founders, and we're not really having luck sitting at the coffee shop in Bend, Oregon or going hiking, meeting our technical co-founder for our AI startup." So they went back to San Francisco. So there's a reason people flock to cities and this, what, $10 billion, all the money that's poured into AI, I imagine some of that's going to be spent on San Francisco office buildings to get these companies off the ground, staffed up and building their products.

Shane:

I kind of feel for these people. Anecdotally, I had a prospect call with a former employee of a startup that's heading towards an IPO and the return to office mandate came in. He was in New York, the office was in San Francisco. He was the head of machine learning, and he just said, "No, San Francisco sucks."

AJ:

No thanks.

Shane:

Yeah. I mean, this company is doing very well. And he was like, you know what? No, I'm the former head of machine learning. It turns out having a machine learning background means I can do whatever the hell I want these days. It's having five years of experience in crypto in 2018. So yeah, he just said, "No, I'm not going back to San Francisco." Quit his job and he's doing well outside of that. So I would not be surprised if more of these mandates to return to office. The call is not heated. The fires of Gondor are lit and Rohan does not show up in this case. But at the same time, I do think that a concentration in one city, rubbing shoulders, being face-to-face does create a lot of ideas. It's hard to found a company remotely for sure. I don't think you and I would've ever co-founded Brooklyn Fi remotely, for sure.

AJ:

No, no. It was a lot of in [inaudible 00:12:25], especially when you're getting to know someone. I mean, we've had great success with working from home because we get our folks together in person. They meet each other, they collaborate, but to come up with an ideas that are going to move something forward to fuck around and find out, move fast, break stuff, it's really hard to move fast and break stuff over Zoom, right?

Shane:

Yes. I think working remotely is a mid-career move. It is not, in my opinion, in early career move. We do have some new associates at the firm that are working remotely, but it's like, I don't know, I think it works, one's in New York and one's in Arkansas. They have very two different backgrounds, or I'm sorry, one's in Mississippi and one's in New York, so-

AJ:

And one's in Arizona.

Shane:

Right? Yeah.

AJ:

Anyways.

Shane:

We have third one now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that was not his first job though, out of school, the Arizona boy. I'm talking about first jobs.

AJ:

Yep. What's up, James?

Shane:

Before I forget, I do want to circle back to this joke that I had written for the crypto.

AJ:

You missed a joke. Oh, please. Let's roll the tape back. Sorry folks. Bear with us. Shane had a joke that he didn't get in, so please go ahead.

Shane:

Wait, wait. I'm just reviewing my notes here, and the lead up to the joke is definitely going to make it pop for sure. Well, you and I have talked, your dad has been in Puerto Rico and your dad said there's like a lot of crypto guys in Puerto Rico. So there's like three home bases apparently. According to this article, it's like Bali and Miami. We've done multiple discovery calls with people in Puerto Rico and Miami for crypto companies that wanted back outsourced accounting or wanted personal financial planning. But Puerto Rico's on that list, so I think it's Bali, Puerto Rico, Miami, and prison, or the four main places for these people to gather in their crypto start. All right, got it. All right, let's keep moving.

AJ:

All right, we got it. Thanks for the joke. Speaking of working from home and productivity, we got this Fortune article. I'm reading the headline because I don't like the headline. The American Worker Productivity is declining at the fastest rate in 75 years. It could see CEOs go to war against work from home. Well let it be said here, folks, that these co-CEOs are not going to war against work from home. We are pro work from home. We are pro flexibility. Yeah. It was an economist from EY or some young, it's called like EY, Patagonia or something. It's like they're one of their research divisions. So the article is saying productivity plummeted or plunged, but it was only by 2.7%. So productivity is down 3%, and this is news, is what I got from here. Yep. CEOs don't want their workers working from home because they've all rented very expensive office spaces in San Francisco, New York, Denver, Seattle, et cetera.

Shane:

Yeah. Is it even that the productivity has dropped or the year-over-year growth of productivity has dropped?

AJ:

He said US productivity plunged 2.7% in the first quarter compared to last. Oh, you're right. No, it's compared to last year. So that's even the growth of productivity. So this is literally nothing.

Shane:

And it's like point-

AJ:

So it's 0.9%.

Shane:

Yeah, that's a 0.9% year-over-year drop like, okay, thanks for the clickbait here fortune.com. CEOs going to war. All right. Let's take a look here at the stats here, 0.9% worker productivity drop year-over-year. Okay, got it. Got it. I mean, everyone wants to talk about work from home. Nobody wants to go back to the office. So I think that's why we see tons of articles like this. But yeah, I mean, this is nothing burger to me. I think that we had probably one of the biggest productivity jumps of all time from 2020, '21, '22. So we're like, we're coming off all time productivity highs, especially in 2022 when we were still pretty much in the pandemic. Is my take on that is we were still kind of wearing masks and we still weren't doing a ton of travel in Q1 of 2022 that summer last year. A lot of travel took back off as we're going to talk about revenge spending in travel here in a little bit. But yeah, I mean we're essentially off the S and P's all time high when it comes to worker productivity. So I think this is a nothing burger for me.

AJ:

Also that all time high of productivity in, I don't know, July of 2020 was not healthy for anyone. That was incredibly disruptive. We were just talking about this last weekend. We were working what, 16-hour days to try to get tax returns done that were extended based on laws that changed every five minutes. No, thank you. I'm not going back to that. I'm happy for it to be down 0.9%. Thank you very much.

Shane:

2023, so far for me, AJ, has been the best year of my life probably, and I'm not sure if it's because it's been a great year or if, because the last five years have been a fucking nightmare.

AJ:

Let's unpack that a little bit. Let's unpack that a little bit. Yeah, so pandemic not so great. So let's see. There's a couple factors there. It could be getting older. It could be founding Brooklyn Fi alongside myself. So Brooklyn Fi ruined your life is potentially what's going on.

Shane:

No, that's not what I was-

AJ:

Or have we just finally hit critical mass where we can actually step back finally and aren't working like crazy people. So maybe our productivity has dropped, I don't know, 20% and we're 100%. It sounds like you're 100% happier.

Shane:

Yeah, no, I don't know about that. I mean, I worked a 14-hour day yesterday, but a lot of that was just stuff I wanted to work on. I think the zero to 15 of employees is the worst part of owning a business. Zero to five, zero to 15. I was talking to another entrepreneur about this, about going from one employee to two is a nightmare because you have to get 150% capacity and then you get 50% of your work to that new person, and then you're still at 100%, and if that person leaves and it goes back on your plate, but once you have 10 people and you got one-

AJ:

Or it doesn't work out, which is the worst. Yeah.

Shane:

And then I guess you have to get to a point, which is probably where we're at, where you've got 30 people. If somebody leaves, it's not the end of the world. The capacity spread is not that big of a deal. So yeah, I guess I do feel a psychological or a psychic income or more security knowing that we are at critical mass, but also I think just things are just kind of evening out for us. It's like I have a job again, the pandemic isn't what it used to be. We're working remotely. Our employees are happy. It's not just like the micro Brooklyn Fi space and our labs, but also the macro, the world might be getting a little bit back to normal, post pandemic.

AJ:

Yeah, I feel that.

Shane:

I don't know. I'll talk to my therapist about it.

AJ:

Okay, sounds good. You keep us posted on that one.

Shane:

Thanks for letting me indulge on the pod there.

AJ:

Speaking of having the best year of your life, who's going to know about it if you don't track it in notion is my question. People-

Shane:

Quick transition.

AJ:

... are using tool notion to track and plan their entire lives. I was going to make fun of this and talk shit about these people, but I actually love this. I love tracking. I love data. I love knowing that I'm drinking water. I love knowing how many times a week I'm going to the driving range, zero as I'm trying to learn how to play golf. Am I taking care of myself? Am I being productive? Am I getting all my things done on my to-do list? Am I planning my vacations? Am I going to hit all the spots that my friends told me to go to? I love this idea of a optimized list tool to track the things that make me happy and healthy.

Shane:

No-brainer of the week. I got you here. Whatever your hobby is, listener, whatever you're into, Google that hobby and then add the word camp to the end of your search results and make that a vacation, please. Because I went to surf camp, it was fucking dope. I even worked while I was there so I didn't have to take any quote unquote "PTO".

AJ:

Are you going back?

Shane:

I'm going back on Sunday for two weeks. I actually taking time-

AJ:

I did not approve this PTO. Just kidding. Listeners, I demanded this as PTO, I made Shane going to vacation.

Shane:

Yes. Yes. And everyone's excited about it, but also listener, whatever it is. AJ is a researching golf camp at least, which is a little bit more expensive than just swimming around on a board in the water in Mexico, but it's also going to be incredibly rewarding. I think you gets to focus on that thing. You get to really be outside of work. You're not like at some coffee shop in Miami, just like, "Hmm, I couldn't work from here." And then he cracked the laptop and he did six hours of work on vacation. Yeah. So whatever it is, equestrian camp, archery camp.

AJ:

Cooking camp.

Shane:

Oh wow. Good call.

AJ:

Cooking camp is cool.

Shane:

Yeah.

AJ:

Anyway.

Shane:

That's a very age, I think. Anyway, moving on. No-brainer week done. Yeah, the Notion thing. Yeah. Circling back to Notion, people using Notion, by the way, I love that we have MIT technology review articles in our podcasts. We're extremely smart people.

AJ:

Well, yeah. Shout out to Michael Kitsis, the guru of the financial planning industry for posting this and me commenting on it on LinkedIn and being like, "Yeah, we love Notion. Cool." Anyway.

Shane:

I will say that there are a few new tools that are database-focused, like Airtable and Notion that have a strong learning curve for your no-code people, such as you and I, and most of our listeners, I'm assuming, not our clients, of course, who can code or at least can do low-code platforms. But these tools that are sitting on top of a database, while they do have a learning curve, you can leverage all that data once you get over that learning curve. We're seeing AI plugging into all these tools and being able to impersonate you. It's just a lot more useful than using Google Sheets or Word Docs or what have you, which are all sporadic. They don't talk to each other. They're not relational at all, like relational databases that we will sit underneath of these tools. So I'm just seeing a lot of articles and a lot of people that if you're willing to use these Airtable and Notion to organize your life, I think there's going to be dividends on the backside. And I'm also seeing a trend that it's not just B2B level stuff that's leveraging databases like B2B plugins and interactivity and APIs and whatnot, but also consumer based tools are getting.

AJ:

Yeah, and if you're not currently using AI tools in your job, we've talked about this before, you need to start familiarizing yourself with them because you're going to get left behind. We don't think your job is going to get replaced. We think you're going to be left behind if you don't know anything about AI. So what better way to learn about these tools and to use them than to plan your vacation with ChatGPT and Notion, and just get familiar with how to use them. So the next time your boss asks you like, "Hey, do you know anything about AI?" You could be like, "Oh yeah, let me show you this cool spreadsheet I built for my girl's trip going to Lisbon at the end of June."

Shane:

Yeah, I love that. Yeah. I love posting, asking ChatGPT for an itinerary, posting that into your Notion, and then also posting photos of all the things you're going to go see into that Notion and just having Notion as the centralized hub, and then next time you're going to want to go travel, you could pull your itin out and say, what did and didn't work, "Hey, book an itin based on what I did and didn't like from my last itin." And it'll even get more customized. Stuff like that. Great leverage of prior data.

AJ:

Yep. Love to leverage data.

Shane:

A database of you.

AJ:

Oh God.

Shane:

Database of AJ.

AJ:

Wait, quick question.

Shane:

I'm calling it.

AJ:

Do you use Oura Ring or Whoop or any of these personal health tracker things?

Shane:

Yeah, I remember I got an Apple Watch.

AJ:

Oh, right.

Shane:

The thing you think is the biggest turn off, I'm calling it on the podcast. Sorry. Any listener has an Apple Watch on. AJ thinks it's the unsexiest thing you can wear for men.

AJ:

I'm no longer sexually attracted to you if you have an Apple Watch.

Shane:

Immediately. So I only wear it to sleep in and I keep forgetting to put it on, of course. I don't even know where it is right now. Fucking Christ. Probably lost it. Shit,.

AJ:

So no answer.

Shane:

No, I've used it four times and I love that it shows me that 20% of my night I got deep sleep. It makes me feel good knowing that.

AJ:

Cool, I hear that people have sleep anxiety by not getting good enough sleep. They wake up and then the Apple Watch or the Oura or the Whoop is like, "You slept terribly." They're like, "What do you mean? I had great sleep." And then it creates this compounding effect of being nervous about not sleeping well. So that sounds like my personality. So I'm going to go ahead and not track my sleep. That sounds like something that I would be become afflicted with.

Shane:

Very much your personality.

AJ:

Anxiety about not being a high performing sleeper, which I already have.

Shane:

Well, yeah. I mean, I don't know. It would be nice to try to [inaudible 00:24:48]... Because everyone's what impacts your sleep is personalized to you, whether it's watching the sun go down, hits all of those circadian rhythm things, or not eating three hours before you go to bed or not drinking or whatever it is, or not exercising within three hours of going into bed. So I think that you need one of those things in order to track your sleep post those impacts, those causal effects or whatever. I'm not a scientist, so I don't know. I know you got sleep problems.

AJ:

I'm not a scientist, but I know that drinking is bad for sleep, and yet I continue to drink. So therefore I am my own worst enemy.

Shane:

I think the last sip I had before bed last night was a martini, just a little tipple before slip away.

AJ:

You enjoying my liquor cabinet too? Anyway, folks.

Shane:

No. It's not there.

AJ:

Speaking of martinis, the Reddit C-suite is not having martinis because Fidelity just decreased their valuation of their stake in Reddit by 41%. So Reddit was poised to go public at 2021. They've been thinking about an IPO in 2023, but they're having some trouble. There's actually a Reddit strike on Monday. Do you want to tell us what's going on with Reddit?

Shane:

Yeah, so I thought about doing a ton of research on this because I do use Reddit, and then I decided not to. I will tell you what I do now. So I guess there's an official Reddit app and all of these people... The official app is always the worst version of an app, whether it's Twitter or Reddit. I mean, I guess Instagram is the only one where people have not gotten access to, not the only one, but an example of one where people usually just use Instagram. I don't actually don't know, but there are certain parts-

AJ:

You need LinkedIn bio and you need all these other things. You need all these other third party apps to use Instagram properly. So that's a good example.

Shane:

Yeah, so Reddit and it's pushed towards an IPO has shut down all the third-party apps. So I guess there's one called Apollo maybe, and the CEO like did not stick the landing when he had made all these announcements. And Reddit is a very fickle community. It's a bunch of, I will say, internet native people, and we all know how fickle they can be and how upset they can be and how lack of loyalty there is when you're anonymous, but Reddit's been around 12, 15 years at this point. It's time to go public. It's time to tighten up. They've done some layoffs. They're shutting down third-party apps in an effort to make sure that all the revenue gets pointed at app.

AJ:

Wait, did they shut them down or they're just charging for access to the API?

Shane:

I think it's a mixture of shutting down third-party apps and then also charging for API access for other apps. So on June 12th, two days ago, a lot of these sub-Reddits, they have moderators that are volunteers and that there's lots of jokes about how these people that volunteer to moderate on the internet are not your most extroverted people on the app. So they decided to shut down their mods for that day or their sub-Reddits for that day, which is essentially a forum on that platform.

AJ:

Cool. Cool.

Shane:

So it went dark. There was no content on Reddit for one day, which was an illusion of control. It was essentially a digital strike.

AJ:

Did you miss it? Did you feel the effects of this?

Shane:

I was like, "Oh, rats." And I opened Instagram.

AJ:

Yeah. Okay, cool. Right, right, right.

Shane:

So yeah.

AJ:

Speaking of opening Instagram, did you know that Amazon is in talks to offer a low cost or free mobile service to Prime customers? Amazon has entered the chat, watch out T-Mobile and Verizon, Cricket. Who else are the other big wireless players here? Amazon's going into the mobile space. I think this is great for consumers. Amazon's only going to get bigger. They're really good at rolling shit out, and I'm long on this. I think this is cool.

Shane:

Let the flywheel fly, baby. Let's bring down prices in the healthcare and the cell phone space. There has not been any innovation in the cell phone space. It's still hard to get service in a lot of people's houses. I struggle to get cell phone service in my house, which is insane in the middle of a downtown area, and yet the prices go up for these services. So yeah, bring it in. Let Amazon lead the-

AJ:

Mobile's too expensive.

Shane:

... jet blue of mobile.

AJ:

Let's do it. I want to end with some pixie dust. I'm going to sprinkle some pixie dust on this podcast. We've got a Japanese company called Pixie Dust filing a pretty small IPO. They're raising $19 million here in the US. They are aiming to create [inaudible 00:29:19]... They have this patented technology called Wave Technology that I don't quite understand, but I love the name and they are partnering with researchers at a Japanese university, the University of Tsukuba, to commercialize this technology. I have no idea what the tech does. They're raising a little bit of money here in the US, but I look forward to hearing more from Pixie Dust. Thanks for tuning in this week, folks.

Shane:

Bye.

AJ:

See you next week. Bye.

Shane:

See you.

Presenter:

Thanks for listening to The Liquidity Event, hosted by AJ and Shane of Brooklyn Fi. Head on over to brooklynfi.com where you can subscribe to the podcast or YouTube channel, or if you want to learn about their full service financial planning, tax, and investment firm, specializing in tech professionals and creatives on the path to financial independence. We'll see you next time on The Liquidity Event.