We hear a lot about Web3 nowadays, usually with some kind of controversy or a debate about the environment, crypto bros, NFT scams, or how it'll revolutionize the entire world. In this episode, Ian Landsman, Founder of HelpSpot and UserScape, talks with us about the *business potential* he sees in web3 technologies--how it can possibly be a useful tool for folks starting new tools or businesses, how it might open up possibilities for investing, and how that interacts with Matt's previous web3 criticisms.
Matt Stauffer:
Hey, and welcome to Things Worth Learning. I'm your host, Matt Stauffer. And this is a show where a curious computer programmer, that's me, interviews fascinating people about their passions. And today my guest is Ian Landsman, the founder of UserScape, which has created an incredible number of things, including helping kickstart Laravel off to the wild success it has today. But one of those things... the main thing they've created is called HelpSpot, which is a help desk software that has been alive for now 17 years, which I know is actually older than some of my listeners. So Ian has been around the block. He's an original software creator. A lot of people call him the godfather of Laravel. If you know about Laravel, you probably heard about it a little bit in this podcast.
Matt Stauffer:
So Ian, can you say hi to the audience and tell them just a little bit about yourself, whether it's your personal or your professional life?
Ian Landsman:
Hey, great to be on. So you covered a lot there, but definitely the kickoff of everything for me was founding HelpSpot 17 years ago basically, and yeah, three kids. So I think we have some connections on that front as well on the kid front and beautiful wife. And so that's kind of it. I'm just living the dream there. I get the house, the kids, the wife, the business. That's sort of what I've been doing for a while now. And before this, I never had a job for more than two and a half years... 17 years working on basically the same thing. So it's been a trip.
Matt Stauffer:
Since we've never talked about it, I'm assuming you don't have ADHD, but I also always think of you as very much this creator, you've always got new ideas type. And it's funny, because I read these books about people with ADHD and a lot of them say we couldn't keep a job somewhere else. So we created a space in which we could be successful. And I know that Dan and me, my business partner, are... we both are yeah, my other jobs haven't been so great and now I've made this thing and I love it. And I hope I stay here forever, so.
Ian Landsman:
Yeah, I'm not officially diagnosed with anything, but I mean, I do think there's an element to that of definitely creating a place where I can go off... and obviously if you have a job where you're, this is your task that you have to do, and you're responsible for this then, I mean, some people love that, right? A lot of people and that's the majority of people. But, I think for me, that would be hard to keep interested. So the ability to just check out once in a while and this is also a huge area where I know you have the same thing, with just a great team of people where sometimes when I get distracted and I wander off, they're there to-
Matt Stauffer:
Just keeps going, right?
Ian Landsman:
Actually do the work to keep us in business. Which is great. And so every once in a while when that happens, I have that freedom to do that. And then I'm able to come back and be reinvigorated, which is actually a lot of what we're doing now with HelpSpot... is I've been poking around other things for a while and now going to come back and we've got a whole bunch of stuff going on with HelpSpot. So it's just really nice to be able to... I don't usually leave leave, but be distracted and then come back. It's really powerful, I think.
Matt Stauffer:
I don't know if I've ever named it that way, but that is one of the big pieces of it is that, when I get really excited about something, I can bend away from my primary responses a little bit. Usually the things that I'm distracted by are things that help the company in the end anyway, nine times out of time. Sometimes I'll make a bet that it doesn't, but most of the time it does. And then there's seasons where I'm no, I'm going to live here for a little bit because it needs me or because this is my... like you said, I'm reinvigorated. So I love that angle of thinking about it.
Ian Landsman:
And sometimes you just have to delay. I found that delay is super powerful and just... we're doing this whole big change with HelpSpot. And this is something I've been trying to do for years and I've kept putting it off, and now is the right time. And it's just all fitting in place super perfectly where when we've tried before it wasn't quite ready. And so just the delay of that, I feel has been useful and I've seen that happen a few times is, subconsciously or something you need to wait.
Matt Stauffer:
And then when you're ready for it, it's time. I love that. Well obviously we can do a podcast about that, but since we're doing it today... it's funny because when Ian and I were talking, which topic are we going to do today? Just like so many of my guests, it's well, we can do this, this, this, that, or the other, but today we have picked one, but before we get there my first question is, do you have any sort of life mantra or phrase or idea that you live your life by?
Ian Landsman:
Yeah, so I don't have one specific one, but I do have this thing where I tend to pull them as I need them from my favorite movies. And I'm super into movies and people who know me know I'm very much just obsessed with movies. And so, The Godfather's obviously a big one. I'm always pulling things out of Godfather. Wall Street is a big one I pull things out of. So I have these handful of movies that whenever I have a life item that I'm huh, what do I think about this? There'll just be something that pops from The Godfather right in my head. Oh yeah, that's it. And I'll just go with that. So that's my way of handling that sort of mantra.
Matt Stauffer:
So I'm going to ask you a question and you can tell me if this is not something you want to do, but I know that there's a list of movies that when somebody joins UserScape you want them to have watched that list in their own free time or whatever. Is that a list that has ever been made public?
Ian Landsman:
Well, I don't think I've actually published it. I should do that. It is an interesting list. I mean a lot of it is. Yeah, no it hasn't. Maybe we'll do that for the show.
Matt Stauffer:
I mean, if it ever goes public, we'll put it in the show notes y'all. So go take a look. Cause I know that for me, I'm slowly making a list of recommendations for my friends and the more someone's obsessed with movies, the more I want to know their top movies.
Ian Landsman:
I actually had a list of movies that I required my wife to have watched before we got married. I was like I can't marry someone who hasn't seen these movies.
Matt Stauffer:
Do you remember any of, I mean, I assume Godfather's on there, but-
Ian Landsman:
She'd already seen Godfather, but there was ones I'm sure Wall Street was on there. The Great Escape, which is a movie from the sixties that's of my favorite movies. Really awesome movie. If you haven't seen the Great Escape, everybody can watch Great Escape. So some silly ones, the Blues Brothers. And Strange Brew, which were from my childhood. So things like that.
Matt Stauffer:
That's awesome. Well, I put the Great Escape. Those are other ones. I love all them. But the Great Escape I have not seen. So it's on my list.
Ian Landsman:
Oh it's great. Steve McQueen, really good.
Matt Stauffer:
Oh, okay, cool. Wait, I've seen clips from it, but I've never actually seen the real thing, so cool.
Matt Stauffer:
So we're also not talking about kids today, but one of the things I just came to my mind, because I love the way that you approach parenting. And it involves a lot of joy I think. And so one of the things I thought of that maybe you even taught me, I'm not sure is I'm making a list of all the movies I'm eventually going to have my kids see, but I keep one and I'm like, oh you're not old enough for this. So I was just why do I not just write them down? So I'm now creating a list of how old do you have to be before you see this movie? And, but you're going to see it at some point. So I can feel at some point I've given them those kind of parenting experiences I need via movies.
Ian Landsman:
Yeah, exactly. I definitely have that list. And we've been going through that. It's interesting. The age is tricky. I'll be interested. Maybe you can update me over the coming years. There's age. I think the kids are different. So you have two kids, so the ones ready, the other one might not be ready. And then the younger ones have tends to just catch stuff that the older ones watching anyway. So I feel they get more ready earlier. So there is an interesting dynamic there.
Matt Stauffer:
My younger one seems to be ready for most age appropriateness things earlier than my older one. Because they're four years apart. So maybe halfway in between them is when I think, cause she can be a little bit younger and he, so I'm yeah maybe he has to be 10, but she only has to be eight when they see it. So I'm defining this space.
Matt Stauffer:
So anyway. But you know this podcast is actually about something other than what we've been catching up on, which is one particular topic we're going to talk about today. So you don't have to give me a whole pitch on it, but just tell me high level, what are we talking about? And then I'll get started asking you some questions. What's our topic today?
Ian Landsman:
All right. Our topic is Web3 for bootstrapping a business, founding a business, that type of thing.
Matt Stauffer:
That overlap. So we got a lot of things we got to set the groundwork for before we even get in the topic because a lot of my listeners don't know what either of those phrases are. Let's start with bootstrapping. Cause I think it's a lot simpler. What's the simplest definition of bootstrapping a business.?
Ian Landsman:
So the traditional one, which my take on this will be a little bit off of traditional, but the traditional one is where you self fund of business of any sort. So have your own savings or you might... In my case, we sold one of our cars. And in addition to savings and maxed some credit cards out. And that kind of thing. We didn't go raise money from a venture capitalist or anything that. You might raise some money from friends and family, that sort of gets into this middle ground of, is it fully bootstrapped or not. So you're not going out to outside investors is generally the idea. You're making it work on your own with a limited budget and building up a profitable business as soon as you can, since you don't necessarily have millions of dollars to just wait five years for the business to become profitable, you're focused on profitability much sooner.
Matt Stauffer:
And for those who don't know, bootstrap tends to be something people describe more when they're talking about a product business versus a service business. So my company's a service business, right? So on day one we were making revenue, because on day one, when we were providing a service to people. So bootstrapping and venture capital doesn't really apply as much to service businesses. It's more Hey, we need to take a year to build a product before we actually start making money. And when we start making money, we might have two customers. So the lead time between coming up with the idea and actually making enough money to the idea to match up with the work you're putting in is much, much, much longer with a product business than is with a service business, which is why you have to ask these questions of where's that money to support you during those first 1, 2, 5 years coming from.
Matt Stauffer:
So you said you have a little bit of a different definition. Is it worth going into, is that a nuance?
Ian Landsman:
No, I cover that as we, as we go.
Matt Stauffer:
All right. So tell me about Web3. What does that mean for the uninitiated?
Ian Landsman:
Okay, so Web3, I'm sure everybody has their own takes on this for people who are aware of Web3, but basically it's the idea of cryptocurrency and blockchain technology and how that might be used in lots of ways, but in what we're going to talk about here is in businesses and software and how you might leverage those technologies in new ways. But the idea of Web3 is cryptocurrency and blockchain and the things happening around that on the internet.
Matt Stauffer:
And I don't want to go too far into this, but one tiny last bit of definition. When we talk about cryptocurrency, most people are just aware of it as an alternative money. Bitcoin, some folks have heard of Ethereum, but mainly, usually just Bitcoin is a thing that you can transfer Fiat currency, or just basically American dollars or Canadian dollars, whatever, and you transfer it into Bitcoin. And then now you're just holding Bitcoin. And most people think of that as a thing you do so that you can hope that the Bitcoin increases in value after you buy it. And then you become rich. That's the main thing. So when they hear blockchain, they've ever never heard of it, or it's just the thing that powers Bitcoin.
Matt Stauffer:
So the idea of these things powering software, I think is a really unfamiliar thing. And again, I know we'll probably get in this bit, but is there any real quick intro of how does this have to do with software versus finances?
Ian Landsman:
So this is the part that interests me. I'm not really interested in the finances at all. I haven't owned much cryptocurrency as speculation or anything like that. So the blockchain is basically the underlying technology. It's essentially a database that is the ledger where transactions are stored. And so initially it was really just about the transactions in terms of the cryptocurrency as currency, where do you log those transactions? So you who owns what? And it tracks the ownership of digital assets. And now it's expanded to be other kinds of digital assets as well could be tracked in this distributed database. That's not owned by one company, it's not run by one country, it's global and no one owns it.
Matt Stauffer:
And that's really helpful. And if you think of ledger, most of y'all, if you've heard the phrase ledger, you think of a bank ledger. So imagine a bank starts with a thousand dollars and the first entry is added a thousand dollars and then they sign up a customer and that customer puts in another $200. So now there's a ledger that says customer one put $200 in. So ledger is literally everything that has ever happened in the history of this bank is there line by line, by line, by line. So we can see the history of customer one's account, customer two's account, also the entire bank's finances, but that bank doesn't make that ledger available to anybody but themselves. And it's only being used for finances.
Matt Stauffer:
As Ian is describing blockchain, it's sort of you have one of those, except everybody in the world can use it, see it write to it, and see the entire history of any individual dollar or sent or thing that's not finances. Cause we're talking more about Bitcoin, but it's not just Bitcoin. It's not just Ethereum. It's also assets that are not financial. Also you can track when they were created, who created them, who transferred, and it's all completely public to the entire world. And so that's what this kind of distributed idea means is it's not owned by Google. It's not owned by Microsoft or Facebook. It is somehow built magically in the it's very technical, but basically it's built in such a way that the entire internet hosts and has access to it basically.
Matt Stauffer:
So you have a little bit of a pitch both about, so it's funny if those who don't know, I just, I dug a whole bunch into Web3 last fall and I got really involved. And I was I think there's some really promising technologies here. And I got really frustrated and burnt out and I put out a tweet about a week ago that just said I'm done with it. I think there was a lot of promising technology and a few wonderful people, Ian being among them. But here's the things I don't about it.
Matt Stauffer:
So it's really interesting timing that literally four, five days after putting out that tweet, Ian and I are talking. But I know that we're not actually super disagreeing on that because that you're really digging into the potential side and you're yeah, I understand the downsides, but I want to talk about the potential. So where do you want to get started? Do you want to talk a little bit about bootstrapping or do you want to talk about the potential of Web3 or what's our angle here?
Ian Landsman:
I think I wouldn't mind just touching on quickly the downsides. I don't want to get too deep in that, but I do think it's worth acknowledging all this is very new, risky. You have all types of people coming in. There's no rules, essentially. There's no government bodies that are protecting consumers or anything that. So it's definitely not for the faint of heart, a lot of this. And so to me, I guess my view on the downside is that it's actually not that much different than the internet as a whole. And that if you look in your spam folder, there's tons of scams in there. It's just that we've built up more architecture around protecting the average person from those internet scams. Cause the internet makes it super cheap to run scams. That is a function of how the internet works of all types, email scams, hacking scams, crypto scams. Whatever, it's super cheap. One person could do it on their own. There's basically no barriers.
Ian Landsman:
And so really then everything we have now from a, from the original internet days is just that we built up a solution to those problems to protect people. So that most of the time you don't have to really think about it and you can just live your daily life and check your email and not have to generally worry about every link you click and things that. Especially if you're just an average person.
Ian Landsman:
That's my take on the downside parts of it that, yes, there's tons of horrible stuff, but also that's true of everything on the internet and somewhat true of humans in general. And again, even in society, we built up these rules and police and all these things to protect us from maybe the people who don't want to play nice with the other people.
Ian Landsman:
So in terms of the potential aspect of it and our main topic, I guess to me, I have this example that I want to walk through in this. People probably heard about NFTs to some degree, the sort of internet pictures, people are selling and buying on the blockchain. Basically if you heard board a yacht club or these things that have been in news. And a lot of it is just absolutely, why is somebody paying $300,000 for a monkey picture? And that end of it is very much just cultural. Why do people buy a Rolex? Why do they buy a Lamborghini? Why do they buy any of these things? Whether it's status or things that is the primary reason they're buying these things. Because my Rolex doesn't tell the time any different than a $20 Timex or whatever. So that's fine. You could be into that or not into that or whatever, but the utility of that is minimal from a business starting perspective and those kind of things. At least on a surface level.
Ian Landsman:
So in terms though, bootstrapping a business, I'm involved in this organization called Third Time and they're a gaming company. And they've started this game, which I've been involved in for the last four or five months. And they've used this Web3 as a way to bootstrap their game. And now this is a thing that also people say they're going to do a lot is create a game. And who knows if they know how to create games or whatever. But in this case, this is a team that are real game developers. They worked at EA, the CEO was the Madden general manager for four or five years. So these are real game people. Some of them have come from DraftKings. So they've got the gambling side and they've had the number one iOS app for horse racing for horse racing games for the past, four years. So this is a real team that makes real stuff. They're US based. You know who they are, you can look them up.
Matt Stauffer:
So for those who don't know, Ian just addressed a lot of the things that are wrong in the majority of the NFT projects and stuff they promise they can't deliver. They're not actually saying who they are, all these things. So for those who know about all the Web3 drama, he just addressed a lot of the concerns about how should we trust these people? The rest of y'all, you don't need to worry about it, but just a note, that's why he said all that.
Ian Landsman:
And so that part doesn't right, exactly. So the internet and Web3 and web2 and all these things are geared towards anonymity by default in a lot of cases. And so the initial wave of Web3 stuff was very focused on anonymity, and cryptocurrency has had a big focus on anonymity as one of its benefits in terms of having to do with suppression and different things like that. From countries being able to suppress you and things. And not, and being unbound from that. So that it's been that cultural aspect of anonymity, which again is not an area of it I'm particularly interested in. I like the benefits that governments give you and the rules and regulations and things. So I don't necessarily particularly care so much about the anonymity part.
Ian Landsman:
So yeah, this is where, can this technology be used by people who are having a different approach. It's not just an anonymous person who is anywhere promising whatever, but real people you can touch them and feel them. They're verifiable and so on. So what they're doing is creating a crypto based blockchain based horse racing game and on the bootstrapping end of it, they did bootstrapping by releasing NFTs that were basically their fundraising round. And as owners of those NFTs receive coins, basically a special cryptocurrency that give you different rights. Some of it is that you'll share in the proceeds and the profits of the game. And there's other benefits too, which are not really important to this, but the idea being that the really core idea I find most interesting, is this ability to raise money in a way that the current structure doesn't allow in the legal system, which is, or at least not easily.
Ian Landsman:
And so, so they were able to go out to a bunch of people, stake their case, raise money to get this game off the ground. The game just actually went into beta Friday. So it's a real game that exists. They used the money to start the game and they built the game.
Ian Landsman:
Another very interesting side effect to me of this is that... So I've done some investments in companies just startup investments. Angel investments. They'd be called where I'm writing somewhere between a thousand dollars check and a $10,000 check. I've probably done that 15 times. I've literally those checks just go off. I never really hear from these companies again, I mean, occasionally you'll get an update email or whatever, and sometimes they work out and sometimes they don't, but the fundraising aspect is very separate from whatever the company's doing.
Ian Landsman:
The company doesn't really get a lot of benefit out of the people they fundraise from. Other than the money. Which is a huge thing, but they're really just getting the money. And they might occasionally get a few connections or whatever, but really you're primarily just getting the money. Whereas this, another interesting aspect of this is that they've created this huge community and this community is heavily involved. I built this whole website where people can do all this analytics. I'm not going to get into the details of it, but you can do a bunch of analytics around the game. Other people have written all these in depth, analytic articles. This is all before the game, even launched. A huge, excited community that's constantly talking about it, bringing people into the fold on it.
Ian Landsman:
So from someone who bootstrapped the software company, when I did it, I'm in the cave, working, working, working coding, coding, coding. Come out of the cave, and I was just trying to get a couple people to buy. And I had really just a little software community of people who knew me. And that was it. I had no real connections. I had nobody out there advocating for me at all, really in terms of other people doing stuff around the business or things that. So that's also another really fascinating aspect to me is this community that can form when you have such a grassroot interest of people invested financially in it, right from the beginning and a structure that allows them to participate more versus just the structure that is writing checks. And then you go away. Which, I mean, obviously is a lot of people who want to do that too. And that's yeah, that's great.
Matt Stauffer:
Can I pause you and ask what structure about web? So if I were... Imagine two scenarios and you got the exact same company and one of them is going to ask for people to give between one $1000-$10,000 so that they can go write traditional software. And one of them is going to ask for you to buy NFTs that are worth between $1000-$10,000 so they can go right software. What about the NFT one makes the community happen more? Is it just because NFTs and crypto are more exciting? Is it because it's in the blockchain, you have access to the data so you can write software about it more? What actually makes that a more connected experience than traditional fundraising?
Ian Landsman:
First of all, I think that you can have much smaller denominations, so you can have more people. I think the regular fundraising, you're usually not able to, when you're at the $1000-$10,000 level, that's going to be from still a pretty small group of people. And then as you go up, it's even less people. It's just okay, the next level is two or three VC firms, each kick in larger amounts of money. And that's it. So the actual number of people involved is actually quite small. Whereas this, I think they sold initially it was 5,000. So now you have all right, even if it's not actually 5,000 people, maybe it's 3000 people, right. So now you have 3000 people who are invested in this as opposed to 20.
Ian Landsman:
And then also I think the 20, I think you're probably looking at different types of people with different time availability. I've been running this business and I didn't always have a lot of time, when I wrote this $1000 check or $5,000 check. You're probably not going to get a lot more time out of me generally speaking. I mean, I'd always be happy to do a phone call and answer questions or things that. But generally speaking, I think the people writing those kind of checks in the traditional setup are just not going to have a lot of time to give you. And so I think when you can do smaller amounts, because these weren't a thousand dollars initially they were probably a hundred dollars or something that. And so when you're at that level, there's a lot more people who can be involved. And so you just have that broader community. And so you have thousands of people who feel they have an ownership interest on one level or another, and those people are then engaged.
Ian Landsman:
And I do think there is part of the community aspect. There's a cultural aspect to how Web3 is set up right now, where there is more of a community focus than in traditional software where nobody's really building a community pre-launch in software. Occasionally you see it. And I think it's a great idea, but doesn't actually happen very often.
Matt Stauffer:
And for those who don't know, one of the things Web3 tends to do is when someone's coming in with any kind of a project where it's an NFT drop or, or whatever else, they'll usually have a Discord, which is a chat room. And they just have a group of people who just get really excited about their thing. And that might be temporal. That might be something that happens at the beginning of Web3, but in five years if Web3 is still around it won't happen, but it is something that they can take advantage of.
Matt Stauffer:
So one of the things Ian's mentioning here is that when somebody starts a business, there's no cultural expectation or idea around I'm starting a business, please invest. And now of course, you're also going to want to join my Slack or my Discord. And we're all going to talk about it all the time. Whereas just inherently the way the Web3 culture works is that people want to be involved in getting updates. And that's almost not even, I don't know about you, but I doesn't even seem to me to be anything that's inherently better or different about Web3 as a technology. It just happens to be a cultural difference.
Ian Landsman:
I would agree. It's just a cultural difference. And I think that there is an aspect of it that's new and exciting part of that cultural difference. I do think this idea of being able to participate at smaller levels is super important and something that nobody's really addressing. I think a lot of the benefits that I've already talked about and that everything we will talk about really could be done in the existing systems. I think stocks could do what I'm talking about. But they're not allowed to do what I'm talking about right now. And so I think that's the rub, if the laws were changed, I think you could get 95% of these benefits from the traditional financial system, the way it is with some modifications. Nobody is talking about doing those modifications. So I don't know if that's going to happen.
Matt Stauffer:
At first I thought there was a parallel and I realized it's not. So I'm going to tell you, cause I was this is a good counter. And I realized it's not. So I want to say that. So have you ever heard of Honeycomb Credit? So Honeycomb, my assistant, my friend, Danielle, who have y'all listened to the podcast she's been on before she started a company making vegan cookies. And at some point just recently, she did a thing where she said, I'm trying to raise, I don't know what, it's $50,000, a $100,000. She used this company called Honeycomb Credit. But the difference is you can give as much as you want or as little as you want. And she communicates with you about how it's going. But the expectation of Honeycomb is that there's a very strict payoff structure. And so you will be paid back within five years at this percentage unless she defaults here's what default looks like. That's thing.
Matt Stauffer:
So the end result of Honeycomb, while you can give as little or as much as you want, is money back with interest, not some kind of proof of an ownership stake, which is what you're talking about. Stocks are the only really great parallel where you own a particular percentage of the business. And that gives you a particular benefit. And like you said, it's so regulated. You can't get anything other than very specifically named benefits from holding a stock. Whereas with holding an NFT, you can get whatever benefits they want. You can get extra coins in the game. You can get a little gold star next to your name in the game. You can get early access to the game. So versus Honeycomb where you can give as much as, or as little as you want, the only payback there is the money back. With NFTs, similar to stocks, you keep holding it. But unlike stocks, they can be created with more things where stocks are super limited. Is that where you're coming at from that?
Ian Landsman:
I mean the Honeycomb thing basically sounds like a loan essentially. So there's no unlimited upside. The upside is capped, which is, your risk is capped. Your upside's capped. And that all makes sense.
Ian Landsman:
So in this photo finish, for example, if you're a holder of the government tokens, which you get by owning the NFTs, then you don't have a capped upside. If the game becomes gigantic, you're going to receive your percentage of the profits of the game, indefinitely. And so that's the unlimited upside, which is a stock, right? If you own 20% of a company, then that company gets huge. You just own 20% forever and the unlimited upside.
Ian Landsman:
But I think it just drives that to the very early stage where he never wrote me back, but on Twitter Patio11 had a little tweet storm about this. And he was saying how, this is all silly, because you could do the same thing with stocks. And, but I feel for those who don't know, Patio11 is sort of internet, famous guy, friend of mine. I don't know if you know him, Matt, or not. So I've known him forever since before I started UserScape, and he works at Stripe now. And to me Stripe is the perfect example of everything that's wrong. Because Stripe, and for those who don't know, Stripe is this payment processing company, credit card processing for the internet. And it's super huge. It's been a private company now for 11 years or something that. In the old days, it would've gone public many, many years ago, but everybody tries to avoid going public now. So they're still not public.
Ian Landsman:
And so here it's okay. So his point was you can go in when the company IPOs, you can invest in it. And that's the same thing, but it's not at all the same thing because now this is the biggest company on the internet. Everybody loves Stripe. Everybody would love to own a piece of Stripe. You literally can't. Nobody can just have a piece of Stripe. They still haven't gone public. And by the time they do go public, they pushed it off so much and have had so many rounds of investment that you are not buying the upside of Stripe at that point. the upside of Stripe has been already over. Realized by-
Matt Stauffer:
Because this upside is coming from, I have the vision early on that they're going to do well. If you, Ian Landsman 11 years ago saw the potential value of Stripe. What you wanted to be able to do was to buy in 11 years ago when nobody was sure if it was going to take off and then you get paid off because you realized it when they didn't. And that's something that's not possible with Stripe because you never got that chance. And now by the time they were to go public, if they did everybody knows it. And the people who were able to benefit from that realization had been benefiting it from it privately basically. Is that kind of where you're going with that?
Ian Landsman:
I have a literal example. I was the person you're talking about, about Stripe specifically. I was talking about Stripe forever ago. I've told, who knows how many people have Stripe. I mean, I'm involved in, Laravel has this huge Stripe package that everybody uses. Everybody has been pushing Stripe. I myself have definitely generated tens of millions of dollars, not just through my own account, but through people I've onboarded to Stripe over the many years. So my gain from that is nothing. Now I, the service is still in business. So you could say on that high level, right. I help the service grow and stay in business. So I still get to use them. So that's the traditional idea is well, the early adopters, they help it succeed. And what they get is to keep using the service.
Ian Landsman:
Which is fine. But I don't know if... It's definitely not commensurate with the work they've put in. It's not fair in any sort of natural common terminology of fairness. I put in all this work, pushing your product. I don't really get anything. I'm still paying fees. I don't even, it's not even free. It's not it's free to be I'm still paying the fees. I pay just everybody else. So I'm paying to use the service that I'm also pushing to lots of software developers who are then using the service and generating more fees for Stripe. And I literally can't invest in it. It's literally impossible. Even now 11 years in, I can't do it. So I think the idea of... I did all that for free. Now imagine if Stripe, if I had even the tiniest little piece of Stripe, that's even potentially more that I could have been involved and things I could have done. And certainly it's more fair.
Ian Landsman:
And so, so I don't know. I don't know that this... I'm not even saying Web3 is the best solution to this. I'm not one of those super Web3 is the answer to every problem in the world. But I do think it shows us that there are problems with the current system and that whether this just becomes the way to address it or the existing system is modified to acknowledge that in the modern world and how the internet works and how people interact with the internet requires something different than was invented in 1560, whatever. When people wanted to go get spices from India, this is the different world. And maybe we need to make some tweaks here to how this works.
Ian Landsman:
I mean, just on a somewhat tangent on the current financial system is I think it's ridiculous how, when I have done these angel investments, I usually use the services that allow you to do it and to do it, you have to be a qualified investor, which means you have to make, I think it used to be over $200,000 a year and now it might be $300,000 a year. But you literally can't do this if you don't already have a lot of money. And so again, okay, you're trying to protect people, but at the same time, I can go buy any random stock. I can go buy penny stocks. I can go by all kinds of stuff I can go buy. That's going to be a horrible financial investment potentially. And it's, and certainly I could buy very risky investments and nobody's there to say, well, have, do you make over $300,000 a year? And guard me like that.
Ian Landsman:
So I don't really get that whole thing. It seems very counter to sort of the American model in general. And just again, I'm not sure what you're protecting people from there since they can go out and make bad investments in all kinds of things whenever they want. So I don't know why, this startup you really believe in and think is amazing. I don't know why you can't, you shouldn't be allowed to invest in that unless you make more than $300,000, but those are the rules.
Matt Stauffer:
And it's interesting because a lot of the criticisms that I think I really want to dig into, not in this podcast, but in general of crypto are the ways real people, especially real people who have not traditionally been given access to financial options have gotten excited about the financial options that they have with Web3, gone in and then gotten burned by scammers or by Solana dropping from 180 to 40 dollars within the span of a month or two or whatever. And so a lot of people say that's an evidence that not only is it not democratizing access to finance and the way that people are pitching, but it's actually hurting the people who had the least access to the old systems because they're... Finally a place I can invest. And then they get scammed. I was going to respond, but I'd rather hear your response.
Ian Landsman:
Well, my response is just that I don't really see that as any different than most anything else in terms of investing in finance. Cause at the same time you've had this whole thing with Web3, the past year you've had the exact same thing in stock market and Robinhood and GameStop and AMC movie theaters and all these stocks that went up. And Airbnb and Modina and all these same things were I bought Modina at 400 and now it's worth 100 or whatever. It's literally the same thing.
Ian Landsman:
And so I think that again, that was something that used to be gatekeeper. You couldn't even buy stock without a broker. You didn't have a broker unless you had a fair amount of money. And so as it's now come down and down, down then, okay, you got Etrade, but still there was fees and it seemed complicated and clunky and you still had to learn about it and be invested in it mentally to figure it out. And now it's well I just download Robinhood from the app store and there's no fees and there's no nothing. And I just throw my money in. It's super easy and it's a game.
Ian Landsman:
And so I don't know that... There's I think it's more of a bigger issue, a financial literacy issue. And I think it's just bigger than oh, it's crypto or, oh, it's a stock or whatever. It's, it happens in a lot of areas now. And I think there's just a lot of volatility around all that. And I don't, I don't know how it's going to work out, but I do think it's broader than just Crypto.
Matt Stauffer:
And that was, that was actually my exact same response was that I've, I've seen similarly, I've seen people who previously didn't have access to investing, get Robinhood, go all in on somebody else's advice and then lose half their life savings within the last year. So that doesn't mean that's a good thing, but it also means this is not a uniquely Web3 thing. We are in places where people who have the ease of investment with no government protection are able to put a whole bunch of money in and lose a whole bunch of money. And that exists in all the systems. Now there's some systems that have some things in place, you said, the certified investor thing, but there's plenty of places for someone to put a whole bunch of money into something, with promise and for it not to pan out.
Matt Stauffer:
So investment at its core requires you to have faith that something is going to work out and take on the risk that it might not. And if it doesn't work out, lose a crap ton of money, right? Web3 is one of them and the cryptocurrencies are one of them. Now that doesn't mean there's not more regulation in traditional financial systems and more potential for scams and a new system that is not as well regulated. But it's not as if... I think one of the things I would respond against here is that a lot of people have looked, have this very, not teetotalling, but whatever. If you have anything positive to say about Web3, you support everything about Web3. And if you have negative things to say.
Matt Stauffer:
So the moment I said, Hey, I'm diving into a little bit of Web3 stuff last fall. I got added to a whole bunch of lists of the sheep, the idiots you think these things are good. And then the moment I said anything negative about Web3 last week instantly. I got a whole bunch of people who followed me because they're... And then I go to their bio and they're anti crypto people. And I'm like hold up. I'm not an anti Web3 person. I'm not a pro Web3 person. I'm just a human being who looks at the good and the bad of every system.
Ian Landsman:
This the ultimate, I mean, this is just how everything has become. Politics, I have lots of... If you just looked at my Twitter profile, you would think I'm the farthest left person you've ever met. I'm out there. I'm totally extremist. But in reality I'm actually have lots of more conservative views on different topics. And I'm definitely middle of the road in a lot of topics. And so Twitter's nature I think to some degree, I think the extreme political climate of certain individuals in politics in the last few years have caused maybe where people only share certain kinds of views and not others. So I do think this all falls in, I don't know who knows how it's going to all shake out. It doesn't seem like it's sustainable.
Matt Stauffer:
Hopefully not the collapse of society.
Ian Landsman:
But it does seem somethings have to shake out there, but I think it's again, bigger than just tech. It's sort of everything right now. I think I'm definitely not one of those people. I'm not, I'm not... There's a person I know who's like you're going to buy your house on the blockchain. And I don't still know, there's all this other stuff that's involved at buying a house. It's not just moving the money. The moving the money is a part of it, but there's all this other stuff involved with my house. I don't know if I could do it with the blockchain. So there's a lot, there is those people out there.
Ian Landsman:
I'm definitely not one of those people, but I do think it's a tool that for a moment in time, if you are a person or company with good intentions, with a real idea, that is potentially an interesting path. Versus what has traditionally been possible, whether it's going to a VC, whether it's, and we're going to be in a phase here where I think some of those things are going to tighten up a little bit. Literally anybody could go to a VC in the past, five years and just get rid of check essentially. I mean, there's just been so much money in the system presumably that might tighten up a little bit. Which is how, when I started my company, it was 2003, 2004. And so it was right after .com bubble, nobody was going to give me money for anything. At all, for sure. And so, so it was okay, well how do I do this without any money? And that was impetus and I could see that happening again.
Ian Landsman:
I don't know if it'll be as extreme as that was or whatever, but you could have snares where okay, I have a great idea. How can I get the money to do the idea? How can I build up a community to help me grow the idea. So I just think it's an interesting thing where I don't want to personally be totally out of it. I want to be in it enough to know what's going on and then we'll see what happens. I totally tell people all the time. All this could go zero. It could all be nothing. Totally possible. But I also think it's possible that's not true. And so I don't want to be in five years, oh, I totally dismissed this thing as useless and oh wow. Actually it wasn't totally useless. And Now I'm five years behind. So yeah, that's my thinking on it.
Matt Stauffer:
But one of the people who responded to my tweet, what I was criticizing Web3, we went back and forth a little bit. It was a very positive interaction in the end. It was just sort of agree to disagree, but he tagged some Twitter bot that says, remind me in three years, I guess that's the name of the Twitter bot or whatever. Oh, right. So he's just basically well, we'll see, which of us are right in three years. And obviously there was a little bit of a snark of I know I'm going to be right then in his mind.
Matt Stauffer:
But I was yeah, very curious to see and I think a lot of people read my criticism to say it will flop in three years. I was no, I don't know what's going to happen in the future. And honestly, in some ways I'm happy to understand the universe of it a lot better than I did before. Cause if I decided to dip back in, I know exactly where I'd go. However, I've also decided that it's not the thing for me right now, you know? And that's my own individual personal decision to make.
Ian Landsman:
And I think the area of what was going on six months ago, when you got involved, that part, doesn't really interest me anymore either. It's you evolve and you see okay, what can I use these different things for or not? And what's interesting and what's not. And so my evolution has definitely been more in this, people doing interesting projects, real teams doing real things. Those are where my focus is. And they're very much limited down. Cause I understand the technology now I get more about what's possible. And we'll see.
Ian Landsman:
And I think one of the things that came up in your thread the other day too, I think is the idea of where three years to me totally is not enough to I think to probably claim rightness. I mean, well, who knows, but I think it could be earlier than that. And it might be 15 years until you see the real oh, this is where it all clicks. And maybe that's a couple of technology bits that have to happen and regulation and whatever. There's a few, the things that are going to fall into place where you really have the connection or maybe that won't happen.
Matt Stauffer:
And you said, one of the benefits of the life you're living is that you're in a place where you can dip into this and this might be the decision that you look back and say, wow, I'm so glad I did that because look at where UserScape is 15 years from now and how it was changed and able to thrive because these decisions are made, and you might look back at it 15 years ago. And you say, I remember that little blip where I did Web3 stuff a little bit. And either way you're good. Cause it's still running every day.
Ian Landsman:
Hopefully that it won't matter. And for me personally, I could totally see either outcome. I would not be shocked by, by either outcome. Right now it's just too early. There's so much technology, obviously everybody can have all the examples of here's these technologies, which we were sure were going to be hits and then they weren't, and here's these technologies, we were sure were going to be hits and they were, and here's the technologies nobody thought anything about. And then it was super important.
Matt Stauffer:
You just don't know.
Ian Landsman:
You just don't know. Exactly. So anything's possible. I just think to me it's something to keep an eye on and also is opening up maybe at the very least some interesting conversations about the way the current system works and what's fair and what's not, and where should we people be protected or not. And all those different kind of things. I do think that's out there. And you've already even seen that out there in other ways crowdfunding and things that, which are trying to make the existing system sort of kind of work in some way for the same type of goals.
Matt Stauffer:
We didn't mention that earlier, but of course, when I thought of Honeycomb Credit, the first thing I thought of was crowdfunding. So there's definitely some parallels there, but again, crowdfunding seems to tend to be much more around an initial benefit versus an ongoing ownership.
Ian Landsman:
You just kick some money in and that's sort of it.
Matt Stauffer:
And you do feel really connected, right? You're getting all these updates. Maybe not as much of a two way street, but you at least are invested thinking about it. Maybe getting feedback at times. But again, usually with crowd funding, there's a payoff. At some point you get your payoff, which is the thing ships to you. And then that's it. Versus this, which is no, there's an ongoing involvement, investment, and also potential profit from it. So it's sort of a combination of stocks and Kickstarter maybe. Plus a whole new set of things as well.
Ian Landsman:
And there are crowdfunding platforms and tools that let you invest as a stock owner, but usually it's like you're aggregated into a fund and it's really the fund that's investing and you own part of the fund and there's fees all the way in between all those things. So now you're multiple steps removed and everybody gets their piece in those steps along the way. So how much is your $500 really? In there it's kind of, not that much by the time everybody takes their cut in the middle. So some of that stuff, I think a lot of that stuff has the veneer of respectability and protection that isn't actually true. That's another, it's the stocks with Robinhood. It's a stock market and it's safe.
Ian Landsman:
I think that a lot of that stuff is the same exact way where it's well, here's this here's AngelList and we'll take care of everything and it'll all be fine. And just you can use it and it's all safe. And it's safe in that it's probably not going to be just straight up stolen, but that's pretty much the limits of its safety. This could just be any random person with any random idea who's just raising some money. You have no idea what happens to the money. I've never really been explained when I've done those type of ones where who's responsible for anything is the fund organizer. Do they know the founders? It could be its own scam right there of just... There's all kinds of stuff that to me is shady at all that potentially.
Ian Landsman:
So I've only done those type really when I've known the person and they're just using this, that's the vehicle they want to use, because it's easier legally to do it. But So I think that if you just go on AngelList and look through there, I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if 20, 30, 40% of them are not the realest of companies. They're sort of real, but is this person just going to bail? And who knows what happens to the money? There's no feedback mechanisms to the person who put in 500 bucks. It's one day they just say they're out of business. And you just get a thing that says they're out of business.
Matt Stauffer:
That's it. Sorry. It didn't work out and see ya.
Ian Landsman:
Exactly. Who knows if they paid themselves all the money. That's all those kind of stuff.
Matt Stauffer:
That's a good point. We're running late, but I wanted to make sure you had a chance to cover everything you wanted to cover. So is there anything before I get to the last question, is there anything other aspect of this that you wanted to make sure we got to today?
Ian Landsman:
No. I mean, I think we hit the core stuff. I think that's a good place to leave it. Otherwise we have to go down deeper and I don't think it's going to be too long.
Matt Stauffer:
I was going to say plenty of questions to ask you, but they're not going to keep us under an hour. So the last question of today is what insight or support did you either receive or need when you were younger that you hope more people will give to others?
Ian Landsman:
Definitely the big turning point in my career was I had two things, which was, I went to college for accounting and I didn't really want to be an accountant. So I got a job at this startup thing. And this is in the .com era. And so the first was just giving me that shot. So that was cool. Even though I didn't know anything about technology and I was going to have this managerial role, it wasn't really pure technology. But the more important thing was that then I showed this interest in learning the program, just the tiniest bit. And I had a guy take me under his wing and just foster that let me deploy to production and break stuff. It's that whole thing. And that's just what made everything else possible. Otherwise I just would've been on this whole different path.
Ian Landsman:
And so yeah, just that idea of taking, I mean the guy put in tons of time, but it was just that little bit of time here and there to guide me once in a while was just literally invaluable. It's amazing the power of just 20 minutes here or there can have on somebody's life.
Matt Stauffer:
I love that. Mentorship and just that level of support is really is a big part of my life. Sometimes there have been people who sought me out. Mostly it's somebody I sought out, but if they weren't there to be sought out, if they weren't able to put that time and energy in it still would've had a really big shift in my life. So that's a great note.
Matt Stauffer:
All right. To wrap it up, if somebody thinks you're amazing, wants to learn more about you, about UserScape, or even about the racing thingy that you're talking about. Finish Photo Finish. How do we follow you? How do we support you? What does getting more Ian Lansman in our life look like?
Ian Landsman:
Ian Lansman on Twitter is the main, all these things will cross over in the air for sure. Probably the main helpspot.com is the main product. And Photo Finish. If you search Photo Finish Live, you'll get a website that talks about the horse racing game and goes over the major details of that. If you're interested in sort of Web3 and NTFs and a use case, that's more than monkey pictures and things that don't really have any revenue or company ideas behind them. If you want to got a little more meat to it, then I would check that out.
Matt Stauffer:
Awesome. And dude, I cannot thank you enough for spending time to talk to us. Obviously you got to come back at some point so we can talk about how many of the other ideas we had, but for this particular one, thank you. I really had a great time having you.
Ian Landsman:
All right. Thank you so much for having me. This was awesome.
Matt Stauffer:
Love it. To the rest of you all, we will see you next time and until then be good to each other.