Alexis Ohanian relaunches Digg with Kevin Rose and joins Frank McCourt's TikTok bid

thinking add quick uh raise their uh Alexis is a big backer of adquick and Alexis is joining the chat so uh we'll bring him in and we'll do an ad Qui ad read adquick is out of home advertising Made Easy and measurable say goodbye to the headaches of out of home advertising only ad quick combines technology out of home expertise and data to enable efficient seamless ading across the globe let's go welcome to the stream Alexis thank you for being here how you doing gentlemen sorry I you're all good was running late from the pediatrician not not for me yeah uh but for my youngest hey of course we understand we have kids business dads too thank you for leading the important Family First always always I'm sorry it was it was a tough one too because it was one of those immunization days and I'm the parent who does the pain doctor visits my wife does the sort of the mid normal ones that's rough poor lot of hand squeezing so should we start with should we start with Tik Tok or dig yeah there's a few things to talk about aren't there yeah yeah busy week for you I love it I love it uh well we just watched the Dig video announcement and we have to find out who shot that video for you because the cinematography was fantastic the reveal when they pull s to the side of the of the top and they reveal your face there perfect storytelling movie Magic uh so yeah break it down how' this come come around is this just like a crazy uh group chat idea that then just got out of control and now you're just doing it um gosh how did it start you know I I had never spoken to Kevin Rose until like five or six years ago no way and and when we started talking we just realized we had so much in common I I I I learned I had in all of that animosity and jealousy a tremendous amount of respect for him that it probably took me a little bit more maturity to appreciate and we just vibed and then every now and then he would text me and be like hey dude do you think I should buy dig.

com and resurrect the thing and I was like yeah sure go for it um in in the way that one supports a friend thinking about a thing uh that seems a little outlandish and a little crazy but you know it had gone through a few different owners and actually um when it was first on sale I had debated buying it when the company went bankrupt I told Kevin this later I was like I debated actually buying it and then just redirecting it to Reddit yeah yeah like this one last Fu but I'm so happy I didn't do that and and then I don't know five months ago he was like dude I'm gonna do it and and I would love to do it with you and I said that sounds like a great idea that's amazing that sounds like a fantastic talk about then there you go talk about like the compe the actual competitive Dynam DC between you guys back in the day cuz looking at like even looking at the video you guys were clearly battling for cover stories on on on magazines and things like that crushing us it wasn't even in my mind I thought it was a battle Yeah uh and this was a sign of being a first-time CEO and frankly being focused on the wrong things in this regard but I was so jealous of the fact that he was he was the Silicon Valley poster child remember you know we were in the first spatchy combinator which was in Cambridge Massachusetts working out of an apartment in Medford and then Somerville we had raised a total of $72,000 at demo day and you know here was Kevin Rose who was this Tech celebrity who had Millions raised from True Silicon Valley VCS and and yes was on the covers of magazines was was getting so much press and I felt like I I didn't feel like we were getting a fraction of that press and that coverage and and was very jealous and again I I think focused on the wrong stuff but it just felt like he was an easy he was an easy target and and look in his defense he was first dig did come first in in our defense and I have the email to prove it we did not know about it when we started Reddit it was about a month into the company we' already launched yeah that we' finally learned about dig so shame on us for not doing enough competitive analysis but they had about a seven Monon eight-month Head Start and um what can I say we won the long run but now now we both get a second second chance second chance to do it again second chance so so so what are you envisioning for the product have you announced anything or are you ready to think about what will be different I mean I'm sure you don't just want to re resurrect it exactly as it was maybe for V1 let's say okay the goal for V1 is just get a thing back online that makes people feel nostalgic for dig where where it left off maybe not version four but just before that and then modernizing some of the obvious stuff y um but look this will not be you know the first version that gets out there is not going to be feature complete with some of the big you know Forum platforms out there but it's going to hit the Nostalgia notes and then you know some of the stuff we've talked about publicly is and this is what was going on in the in the chat which was you know technology it's cliche but in the last couple of years we've all had our brains melted by what software can do um and AI in particular and just even simply some of these these foundational uh large language models are capable of doing some really dope stuff that if you were building a text-based forum software today and you built it from first principles and you said okay well what are the most important parts of this platform for the most valuable users you know it's it's the less than 1% of your user base that's actually doing the heaviest lifting of Community Management and and so how do you start there by saying how do we build the best tools using AI so that you don't spend your job being a janitor having to go through an inbox of waiting through things that are violations of community Norms or just violations of the terms and actually you know and and if you talked to enough of these folks and Kevin slightly ran ads uh polling thousands of them to just say what are the things you wish you had what are the things that should exist and it turns out you know even again using today's technology you can solve a lot of those problems out the gate so that as say a volunteer community manager you're now spending the bulk of your time not doing janitor work but actually like doing the fun part of community building right coming up with cool contests you know highlighting memes and and great submissions from the community and uh and so that that's what I would expect to come pretty quickly first version yeah do you think that X you know killing links uh you know we all kind of understand that it that it probably makes sense for X as a business right but it's disappointing as a user is that part of what's creating an opportunity for dig uh to come back and and potentially Thrive it's you know had not thought of that it is so annoying that we all have to put it in the second tweet but but to your point it does make sense um from their standpoint look at at the end of the day if you build a community platform well enough I'd imagine you know at least a majority more than half of the content that will be talked about will be stuff from the community right at Reddit they were self-posts and that was just an invention by some random redditor who guessed how to sort of hack and make self-referential links but but I do think there is an opening as you as you mention it yeah there there is an opening for like more traditional just link sharing like here is some cool thing on the internet go go take a look and you know what actually as I'm thinking about it live the other wild Trend you've seen this guy levels who's building who code vibing the flight simulator yeah like we have not fully processed apps as content I love it yeah and that that might be because right how does one get to that app well it's going to have to be a URL at least for the time being and so maybe that's maybe that's the other secular shift we're seeing is that people are going to be spinning up entire apps as content that we'll obviously need a place to get to and and links yeah uh related to that uh obviously Beach heads are super important when you're building a platform that can kind of anyone could use it Reddit now has reddits for all sorts of different communities uh what was the first Beach head for Reddit and how are you thinking about early Beach heads that could be interesting communities for dig to kind of latch on to early on I think the Reddit Beach head was Alexis yeah it was just you right kind guys it no I mean it was you were weren't you like the first 20 users like well I mean I mean it in both ways right you were in in defense of that strategy it was 2005 so you got to understand we had to convince people that you would want to come here to this site this Spartan site and submit a link for other people to vote on but um but we didn't have comments so it wasn't like we were like congratulating one another for our great posts but yes the first months we had a bunch of alt accounts we were posting under to make it look like there were different people not just nothing over that's my username over and over again posting LS um but then you know again it was also it's hard to learn lessons from because back then it was actually novel and so like the First Community needed to be uh our programming because we started it with a bunch of other developers as our early adopters and then we realized normies would not want to see like an llang tutorial on the homepage so so we shov we we we created those communities as a way just to basically keep the front page looking a little bit more open to everyone but I do think I think the first Beach head for dig relaunched ends up being the look I'm 41 almost 42 it's like the it's like the old head Nostalgia for a vibesyoutube stalgia for that so I assume it's going to be a lot of the like older Geeks Who were you know Big Dig fans who love you know video games and comics and uh you know a few other things that I like the idea this just general idea of the Vintage internet right there's so much demand for vintage broadly in consumer products vintage vintage cars right records Etc Pokemon cards right we got to ask you about ask chromatic I was just playing on my chromatic here before there we go I do actually take this with me everywhere I go um but yeah it makes sense you know before we get into Tik Tok I wanted to ask you how would you if if you were in control of X as as somebody who built you know a one of the biggest social you know Platforms in the world and and Reddit if you were in control of X how would you control the sort of dynamic where this quote unquote slop content is what uh this sort of stated vers revealed preference issue right where on X uh people say they want to to learn and get informed but then the videos that actually you know get real engagement are you know uh some type of meme or it's or it's JD Vance H how would you approach it because I think every xuser given at least our corner of X we Tech native many people are building similar products everybody's got an opinion what's what's yours how would you is X perfect in its current state or do you see ways that uh that you would improve it so full disclosure you know launched a a it's not a television series but a Content series offseason on X in partnership with X I probably use if you looked at my tracking uh on my apps I'm sure I use x more than any other social media platform today totally so I am why and but why the best question right why because the people and trends that I care most about in our little insular world like that's where the news is made that's where in order to do my job well that's how I rationalize it to myself as a builder as a tech Builder as an it's work it's a work app I mean it's work no it's obviously not but when I'm doom scrolling I I comfort myself saying like no actually this is helping me identify Trends and things totally and and I know that it could be better and it probably I think it's more fundamental and if you could apply this in different ways to I think Instagram has its version of it Tik Tok has its version of it the the algorithm rewards the thing that pushes to uh extremes because it gets it generates outrage and people love gaming systems especially when those systems mean more attention and more money and so you see it across all these Platforms in some some places it's a little bit more benign because YouTube is longer form content you know it doesn't feel as aggressive but there's definitely a flavor of it there yep um but I think as long as what you're optimizing for is me opening my phone and you as the developer or head of product try trying to get me to spend as much time as possible you're going to eventually end up with some version of the algo feeding you more of the stuff that gets more of the attention and the outrage and whatever which just feeds more I think Community platforms have the best shot that I've seen because what you're signing up for there truly is the intent of I like this community right when a community website gets to scale and I'll never forget so I started rgaming and to this day the culture of r/ gaming is a reflection of me an old gamer because what I was talking about r/ gaming was more nostalgic even back then in 2005 than what was the new game and at some point The Gaming Community on Reddit said listen old man we want to know about new titles so we're going to create r/ games which is much more about new releases and and you could see a cultural Rift in something that seemed pretty obvious but like or or maybe subtle uh but to the people in it was really important so I think if you're subscribing to based on community you're coming in with a different set of expectations and so you have a chance to build something that doesn't necessarily lead to the can you make a thing that'll piss as many people off as possible which is what Twitter does so well and I've got I've got friends who who I think kind of make a living ship posting and it's an incredible art form and and I have to commend them on it but like it's a sympt the the reason that exists and is so so viable is it's a symptom of the platform just rewarding you know what gets you to you know stay in the app for longer yeah that makes sense talk I mean we got to hear about we got to hear about the Tik Tok bid uh there needs to be a decision made by by April you're entering the mix we love to see it uh break down kind of like your guys's angle what you want to do with the platform postacquisition and and maybe some of the other people involved sure well look I you know Frank mccort's the big dog here he he called me up and I was like hey I'd love to get you involved and and he already had his instincts were around building something on Shane you know using this and the massive user base of Tik Tok to you know basically overnight not literally but overnight bring a bunch of people into this world where they now actually control like say their reputation online to a certain extent because they they have the the sort of currency they've created there with that account and that identity um look it seems like Elon even replied to my tweet saying there are more people bidding on Tik Tok than not at this point and I was touche that's right there's a lot of people why not I support them all to be clear I support them all I want not doing it yet I don't care if you have five if you have five trillion dollars I if you're an American I support you buying Tik Tok well that's exactly and that that was my that was my reply as long as it ends up outside of the control of the Chinese Communist party great it's a win like obviously i' I'd rather us win but any of those options that's not Chinese controlled as a win and I've I've been outspoken about this for years and it is what it is um but I do think there's something really interesting about you know we're at this point where and look I've been a day one seated coinbase in 2012 like eth pre-sale like I I have I've wanted to believe in a version of this future for a long time and right now you've got amazing CEOs like Brian Armstrong who've brought us so far so far into making it even just a standard and and a store of value and I'm Bitcoin really specifically but like can we get to that next point where we have a technology that just sort of underpins a lot of people's lives casually and and again no one's going to use any of these apps because of the technology they're going to use it because of what it does for them and you either spend years building it up and you know everyone's got a version of it everyone's doing but nothing's really broken through or come close yet this is such a fun hack to getting mass mass adoption for this technology that was the thing that was most interesting to me and you know I wouldn't be surprised if it look if it did come to fruition you know there's still lots of things to figure out and solve for um but there are enough bright Minds who are already in my inbox uh who are very excited on the on the crypto front uh to lend their axes so uh so look I again as long as it ends up in American hands I'm thrilled um but I'd obviously love for us to take a stab at it and really see what it takes to bring over a bunch of neens to uh the onchain world that'd be great we have five minutes uh I wanted to know are there any underrated reddits Reddit communities that you think might be worth taking a little tour into like live no no not right now just uh I I whenever IUN do that there's a lot this is our kids watch the show hopefully it's a safe to work one but but every once in a while I find a Reddit where uh like I got into 3D rendering and there was Reddit on the Houdini for and it was just like these people are the they're the CGI artists who do the the the horses on Game of Thrones and they're just amazing artists and they just know so much more right and I was just like I need to know everything about this and I'm getting really up to speed even with their memes I learn through osmosis from that and I love when I find a little community that I can just be like Oh I'm not an expert I'm totally tourist but I love that stuff I'm wondering if there's anything that pops up even if it's just like you know nostalgic like I don't know I see you have a microphone there from Teen oh God I got to remember the URL di.

com oh yeah okay there we go that one uh we'll be on there'll be on there I actually have a I have another another question for you um you're a you're like pretty much a pure play consumer internet guy right obviously in the in the in the his in the in the great history of of your investing career you you've invested all over the place but you seem to be somebody who you know when others sort of you know sour you know especially uh you know it almost became a meme of like it uh consumer internet investing is just so hard that a lot of people just give up we it's very obvious now that there's a bunch of you know we've seen this uh with you know one of the players that we have in pmf or die has taking multiple consumer apps to like millions of dollars in Revenue in in super short period of Time how do you think about um you know consumer investing now in the age of AI you're sort of in many ways refounding dig uh but I'm sure you're looking at you know hundreds of deals a month I would imagine um or at least a quarter what's most exciting to you right now now it feels like the the the kind of a moment that that you'd been waiting for similar to crypto but this feels like you know obviously the next wave dude it is consumers definitely gotten exciting again and look I got weird right I I think the the best uh the the greatest gift that I've had with my investing track record is having a certain amount of freedom from LPS uh and and like 10% of our a is is my own money too which which doesn't hurt but like like you got to think 2020 the year I left Reddit one of the First Investments I made was in a women's soccer team called Angel City starting that team up for it cost a million dollars to buy a franchise back then in the same league today uh an expansion fee like literally just the amount paid to start a team was 110 million um so the valuations gone up Angel City is now the most valuable women's professional team in the world at just shy of 300 million and literally five years ago that was the craziest idea and I I tweeted the entire grand plan and just said this is an under valid opportunity it's Venture scalable here we go and and so I love being told I'm going to lose all my money and it's crazy and so I found opportunities to your point in consumer that still you know turns out the business model of a sports team is actually very similar to Reddit but with AI software got exciting again and Shameless plug uh the latest one that we just talked about was called dogee now I am clearly not a fashion but this team figured out how to make AI avatars I mean look at those pants figured out how to make AI avatars with just a few reference photos actually look I mean I could never yeah it's a wild fit this is this is this is going to be and again it all comes back to us your experience right we spent a year or two seeing oh look at that like we blew the Turing test out of the water we're seeing all these dope bells and whistles applications and we're just now we're just now starting to see what people can do with that that Tech and it's going to be fun um and I think we got through the first wave of like getrich quick apps notice respect hustle is gonna hustle I no T no shade but we're now getting into what's what's a consumer app that's not just gonna make you I don't know turn into a piece of cake and get cut in half but what's an app that's going to make a fun social experience and it might just be remixes of old things dig um I know from another old consumer founder that might hear another one of these types of stories in the next couple weeks maybe it's sou by Southwest and I think you're going to get to see this Rebirth of apps that we all knew that can be demonstrably better now because of this technology and then we'll see some new stuff like dogee that just like this try on app there's a version of that that has existed and sucked for decades and what it took was a few technological breakthroughs and a great user experience and voila and so yeah it is a great time for Consumer it's a great time for hard tech um I've done few space tech companies now I obviously love Hardware like it's it has never been more fun to do this job and and again the world does not need more investors so if you hear this and think oh I want to do that when I grow up start a company first it's so much better you'll be so much cooler it's better for society you'll make more money like do that and then come over to the dark side after that's great it we we we see you pop up on uh paparazzi photos on the world tour what's the next big event you're excited for is there anything on the calendar that you're looking forward to in 2025 my wife was like do you want to go to the Vanity Fair party and I was like no of course not um no I that was the last one I guess I missed out on um if you have a plus two I mean we we'll tag along I you gota you got to marry up guys that is the secret that's how I did it uh no I there's there's nothing okay I don't know the yeah I I'll just surprise you in fact if it's a true Paparazzi photo I won't even know that it's happening subscribe to Alam stock photos and you can see the latest of what Alexis is up here's here's a good question I I asked John this yesterday so Starship uh you know uh disintegrated last night uh it's unfortunate but obviously they're iterating quickly how many uh how many successful uh SpaceX you know sort of trips to the Moon you need to see before you're going to get on it yourself John's answer was was three so does JN have kids I know he's got he's got three I have three kids and a very high risk you have three kids now three kids I know congrats holy [ __ ] this come a long way from the soilent days man I know man it's wild wow oh that's nuts no I would not do that I um Stoke Stoke is my horse in that race as an early investor there and I love Andy I love that team I I'd say the same thing SpaceX has changed the world we're all in their debt they've opened so many doors for Humanity civilization but I don't need to be in the first million okay I have no interest I not interested now uh suponic plane I told Blake when I sent the wire I was like bro get me a seat on the boom let's go again I don't need to be the first right let the professionals do that but like that's way more appealing to me because it Spa no I alien and Aliens were my favorite movies as a kid yep and so no good comes from space as far as I'm concerned and that's without even not knowing that Xenomorphs don't really exist no good comes from that that's why there's a pulse rifle on my wall there we go there we go yeah I mean always stay strap at the pulse rifle anybody that has a man cave like yours is is not in any hurry to leave it is H truly truly a work of art well this was fantastic thanks so much for joining the stream we'll have to have you back soon you're always welcome I appreciate it one more Shameless plug I want to say and you guys you got to keep me honest on this what was I the first investor to ask if I could invest in this pod yeah you actually were yeah you were and I think and I think it would have been I think it it would have be a THX yeah uh and uh I'm still here guys I'm still here and you saw you saw the potential you were you were you knew these guys aren't building a podcast they're building Empires an Empire empire the TB vers we appreciate the support for sure You' be you'd be one of our first calls if if we ever did yeah it is so good it's so good for the ecosystem y'all's Vibe is is perfect The Branding is on point like 10 out of 10 taste you've heard enough people say it it is so true though taste in this era is going to be a hundred times more valuable as intelligence thank God is getting democratized in a commodity and so it's it's an amazing time to have great taste and this is the time be better for what you don't here's our vision for it since it's very relevant to you we want to give uh uh you know interesting people that are doing big things all the benefits of having their own big podcast with none of the work right because like you don't you don't want to you know you could work on spend all this time making a podcast and maybe even put sponsors on it make a million dollars a year it's not going to change your life uh what if you could just come on tvpn anytime you had big news because that is what we're setting up the next time you've got news uh I I'd love to