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SPEAKER_07: Hello and welcome to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So 2023 was our first full year of How I Built This Lab. Our weekly highlight of some of the most innovative and inspiring companies and the leaders behind them. This week, we're sharing excerpts from a few of our favorite lab episodes from this past year. And if you want to hear the full stories, just scroll back in your podcast feed to find the full episodes. These are great stories well worth listening to. First up, Pinky Cole. She's the founder of a chain of vegan fast food restaurants called, yes, Slutty Vegan. Pinky's story is a reminder that an innovative idea doesn't have to be super technical or scientific. And Slutty Vegan wasn't Pinky's first attempt in the restaurant business. In 2014, she opened up Pinky's Jamaican in Harlem. Just two years later, that restaurant was destroyed in a fire and Pinky had no choice but to start over.
So Pinky, you pour your heart and soul into this restaurant, Pinky's Jamaican, for two
years, and then in an instant, it literally all goes up in flames.
I can't even imagine how horrible that must have been.
But of course, you are the owner of this restaurant. You can't close your eyes and make it all go away.
So what happened once that fire was out? What did you do?
SPEAKER_04: So there were things at the front that were salvageable, but majority of the items in there, the roof had came in like it was not salvageable.
SPEAKER_04: So I'm like, okay, cool. Fire insurance is going to take care of this. So I called my insurance agent and they were like, no, you don't have fire insurance. And I'm like, what? Like you just have regular basic business insurance. And if you want to be able to get the things that you got back, like we aren't responsible.
SPEAKER_04: We don't have a policy for that.
SPEAKER_04: So that's literally blood, sweat and tears down the drain.
And I don't wish that on my worst enemy.
You lost everything.
I lost everything.
And I make a joke about it, like I almost lost my mind, but I really almost lost my mind. You got to imagine what I've told you so far is I used to throw parties.
SPEAKER_04: I was the girl on campus. I got this job working in TV. Like everything that I've done have always been successful, right?
Like anything I touched her to go, Pinky Cole got the Midas touch, but I didn't have the
Midas touch on this one.
And I felt like the biggest failure at the time.
SPEAKER_04: It didn't feel good to me at all because my pride and my ego wouldn't allow me to be that vulnerable.
So when it happened, it really humbled me in a way that it's never happened in my life.
But I needed that level of humility guy.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
I mean, going into the, as you know, going into the restaurant business is so complicated and the margins are so thin and it's so challenging because I mean, it's a crash course in running
a really complicated business, which I've never done it, but I've just seen people do it. It's hard.
Yeah. Tell me about what you learned doing that.
SPEAKER_04: I wish I could come here and like tell you like it's all rainbows and lilies and like it's not like it's really not.
SPEAKER_04: I walked in so blind.
And when I say blind, I didn't have anybody that has done it before to ask those kinds of questions. So I was in the lake all by myself, but being in a lake, like I really stuck myself out
SPEAKER_04:
there to like do the research. So I'd be on Google all night. I'd be on YouTube.
Like I would, I would go to different restaurants and just look around and like, it was a lot of trial and error. Yeah.
Hell, it still is trial and error.
But when I, what I realized is that creating it the way that it was created, gave me the opportunity to learn every side of the business. Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: I had no choice but to learn accountant.
I had no choice but to learn how to like cook burgers and fries. And I didn't grow up eating burgers and fries. Like I had no choice but to be customer service.
SPEAKER_07: So you lost your restaurant. So that's like not, not a good place to be. I can imagine you were depressed. I mean, what else can you be? I mean, yeah.
SPEAKER_05: Right.
SPEAKER_07:
I mean, but within a week or so you get this call. I think it was from a show that's on the Oprah network, right?
SPEAKER_05: Own?
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. And they offered you a job and you went and you took that job.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
I took that job.
And I don't know why I'm having all these revelations while I'm talking to you guys.
But you ever been in a situation where you like, okay, it's time to move on.
Okay. This is not working.
Yeah. Has that ever happened to you before?
SPEAKER_07: Yeah, totally.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
So that was the moment that I was in when I had the restaurant right before the fire.
And it was so many things happening at that time.
And when it happened, I didn't understand it then, but then I got the opportunity to
go on a show and I'm like, I don't got nothing to lose at this point.
Like I might as well go and be great and fly and start over because one thing about me is I was never afraid to start over.
SPEAKER_04: And when I got to LA to work on the show, it was the best thing that could have happened
to me because it was actually like a healing therapy show. I'm like, go figure healing therapy. Like I'm coming from a depressed space, like great, but I needed it because it allowed
SPEAKER_04: me the opportunity to get the therapy that I needed to heal.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. The show is called Fix My Life. And it was conversations about struggles and challenges.
Right. And exactly. And in this show, they would kind of try to resolve these challenges or just talk through
SPEAKER_07: them.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: It was like a therapy show.
SPEAKER_04: But what I liked about the show is that I got the opportunity to connect with people who were also going through it.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
So you're working for the show in LA, back in LA, right?
SPEAKER_04: Yeah.
SPEAKER_07: And while you are working on the show, you decide because you are a little bit of a masochist
that you want to go back into the restaurant business. Because I'm crazy.
SPEAKER_04: That's why.
SPEAKER_07: And you come up with this idea for a vegan fast food place.
Tell me about how you came up with this concept at first.
SPEAKER_04: So again, I told you that like, I got a couple of screws loose, but it's okay.
So right before I started Slutty Vegan, something just went over me.
I don't know what it is.
But now that I look at the holistic picture, I'm like, it happened on purpose. So when we were on hiatus, you know, when you have hiatus on the show, you got to find ways to supplement your income.
SPEAKER_07: Right. Because usually there's a season you work, it's like four to six months, and then you've got four or five months off.
SPEAKER_04: Yeah. So like, you can have a whole lot of money, and then you could be trying to figure out like how you're gonna pay the next bill.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04: Like, that's how it works. Nobody really talks about that world, but it's the truth.
SPEAKER_07: Right. Because TV work is project based. Exactly. It's not like a salary. You get paid for the project, and you're done.
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah. And then you got to figure it out while you're done until it comes back. So I'm like, okay, all right, let me do DoorDash.
So while I was doing DoorDash, I'm like, all right, let me start working out. Let me start reading a book every day. And I did that. I read a book every day. I was raw vegan. I did DoorDash. And I ran five miles a day consistently.
Like I did that because I was practicing discipline. Can I just pause for a moment? This is just five and a half years ago we're talking about that you were doing this.
SPEAKER_07: It's coming up on five years. Yeah. I mean, because we're gonna talk about where you are today, which is incredible. This is five years ago. You're like, okay, I'm gonna figure out I'm just gonna there was no end goal.
You were just like, I just want to be disciplined. I want to run every day and read a book. It wasn't like and then that will lead me to this. It was just, I'm gonna do this because it's gonna focus me.
SPEAKER_04: Well, you know what my thought process was now that I think about it.
I'm going to do this because discipline breeds rewards.
SPEAKER_04: I know that if I'm disciplined on something, there will be like a cosmic effect that happens
when I display that level of discipline.
And I did that.
And now that I'm thinking about it, I did it all of my life. There was certain levels of discipline and some of it probably was a little bit more extreme than others. But that level of discipline really like opened up my mindset to be able to receive what it
SPEAKER_04: is that the assignment was. And the assignment was to open up, study vegan and build a multimillion dollar brain.
SPEAKER_07: By the way, I hope my mom is listening to this interview because you sound exactly like my mom.
SPEAKER_04: I hope that's a good thing to say to me when I was a kid about discipline and the connection
SPEAKER_07: between discipline and rewards. And my mom always used to say, the busier you are, the more time you have, because you have to be efficient. All right, so you are being disciplined.
SPEAKER_07: And how does this idea of a vegan, fast food, like comfort food kind of fast, casual restaurant comes to your mind?
SPEAKER_04: Okay. So when I was the casting director, because I had gotten promoted within that time, they
SPEAKER_04:
asked me to move to Atlanta temporarily to do the show.
SPEAKER_04: So while I was living in Atlanta, I was in my two bedroom apartment and God, I can only
be transparent. So I'm gonna tell you the honest truth. I don't smoke, right? I'm not a weed smoker. But on this night, I smoked.
And after I smoked, Slutty Vegan literally like hit me like a light bulb. And I gotta be transparent about that story. Because literally, I don't know if I was super relaxed, if my conscience was open, I'm still trying to figure it out.
SPEAKER_04: But when I came up with Slutty Vegan, it was literally like the universe just put it in my hand like, okay, run, fly and be free.
SPEAKER_04: And I called up my best friends. And I asked them like, what y'all think about this idea?
And they're like, Oh, Pinky, that's good. Like, you need to do that. I'm like, all right, cool. You had the idea and the name all on that night.
SPEAKER_07: Yes. All in that time, literally. It was going to be called Slutty Vegan, which is, I mean, it's not Pinky's Vegan.
No. It's not vegan fast food or, you know, vegan burgers. It was, I mean, you picked a provocative name.
SPEAKER_04: Listen, because Slutty and Vegan ain't supposed to go together, right? Like, right? When you think that's like how peanut butter and jelly goes together, like Slutty and Vegan don't go together.
But what it did is it really was the biggest oxymoron. So I'm like, if we all know veganism to be like very rich and wealthy and like clean
SPEAKER_04: and like the person who's vegan works out all the time. No, this ain't that.
SPEAKER_04: But it literally really like took all the politics out of what being vegan was.
So came up with the name, literally started to do the work.
I got all my permits. I did everything that I could all on my own.
And I got the shared kitchen and I asked them, I said, hey, can I, I saw something in LA
when I was working for DoorDash and basically it's a cloud kitchen. So can I do a cloud kitchen here? This was before cloud kitchens got popular, Guy.
SPEAKER_07:
Yeah. This was one of those like, right? These, a lot of people who have like farmer's market stands, they'll use these, they're
commercial kitchens, they're shared kitchens.
SPEAKER_04: Exactly.
SPEAKER_07: And that's what it was. So you rented space in one of these kitchens.
SPEAKER_04: Yep. And so they allowed me to do it.
So I hired two employees and we were making burgers and fries and I came up with the recipe
SPEAKER_04:
for the sauce. It's like a similar to like a, what a McDonald's sauce would be, but not right.
SPEAKER_04: So no egg in the mayonnaise and yeah.
SPEAKER_04: So mind you, I'm not a chef guy.
So I came up with a recipe. Like I was just tasting and putting my finger in like, okay, this is good.
SPEAKER_04: And came up with that, came up with the fry seasoning and I was just like doing as I go and like everything was tasting really good. So we started selling it. How? Online through DoorDash, Postmates, Grubhub, and Uber Eats.
SPEAKER_07: You started literally a ghost kitchen called Slutty Vegan. Yes.
SPEAKER_04: Slutty Vegan was a ghost kitchen before it was anything else.
SPEAKER_07: Wow. Yeah. This is, this is so interesting. There's this famous book by Seth Godin where he talks about the purple cow. The purple cow theory is like, if you're going to start a business, you want to think about a purple cow business. Cause like if you're driving through the countryside and you just see a cow in a field, you're just going to keep driving. But if it was a purple cow in the field, you would jump out of your car and hop in front of that cow and take a selfie with that cow and then put it on Instagram and say, look, I found a purple cow. That was Slutty Vegan. It was a purple cow. Because people are going to say, what a weird name.
SPEAKER_07:
I have to know more about this thing. It's so weird.
SPEAKER_04: Yes. And guess what it did? I love the purple cow theory, by the way. Purple is my favorite color. So it just works all the way around. I got to grab that book. But what I realized is this concept came at a time where people wanted something new and
in wanting something new, if I can make them uncomfortable and ask questions at the same time or laugh or chuckle or be surprised, then I know that I have their attention. And when I have their attention, I can teach and educate them on whatever it is that I want to. So I took the approach to educate people on how veganism could be cool and be fun and not be stuffy and uptight. But you can have a good time and we'll meet you where you are.
SPEAKER_07:
Yeah. So when you started out, right, in a ghost kitchen, which is true, like if you go to DoorDash or Uber Eats today, like a lot of the and I do all the time, I'll order up and like, oh, this looks pretty good. I don't even know if it's a restaurant. I just I'm ordering. I don't know where it's coming from. And it is often coming from one of these ghost kitchens.
You were doing this in 2018. And were you just buying like garden burgers and buns just off the shelf initially at the
beginning just from the grocery store?
SPEAKER_04: No.
You know what I did? There was like a procurement director and she was showing me some new products that
they had. Like there's this newer company called Impossible. And I'm like, oh, let me taste it.
And I tasted it. And I was like, oh, this is good.
SPEAKER_04: And I'm like, I want it. So she got me a delivery of the Impossible patty. And I started from there and I added my little razzle to the already dazzle.
SPEAKER_07: Wow.
SPEAKER_04: And I started growing and building.
SPEAKER_07:
Those are hard to get. I mean, restaurants could get them. But now, of course, Impossible meat is available everywhere. But you were basically turning those into patties and getting vegan cheese again.
Yeah. And basically packaging them up.
SPEAKER_07: And then some driver would pick them up and then that was it.
Well, that's how it started.
SPEAKER_04: How it ended is that I got kicked out of the facility. And I appreciate them for that because they pushed me to get uncomfortable. Why? Because I had too many people coming. Like people started talking about the brand so much that customers started Instagramming us, sending us private messages saying, hey, can I order the one night stand with the fries, ketchup on the side? And I'm like, okay, I'm not going to not take the order.
SPEAKER_04: So I would take the order from Instagram while taking orders from these online platforms. Wow. And it got out of hand, guy. When I tell you like people from everywhere were coming, literally it was like 300 people standing outside to get their food.
SPEAKER_07: From I mean, you're on DoorDash. But if you type in vegan, it'll show you a bunch of restaurants. And usually, you know, they're, you know, I live in the Bay Area.
So I'm not I mean, there's some great ones, but nothing called slutty vegan. If you see that you're going to be like, what is this?
SPEAKER_04: Yes. But people didn't come for the food. The food was good. That was like the cherry on top.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
SPEAKER_04:
But to say that you were a part of this experience that felt cryptic, and you could only get it at a certain time. People love the art of scarcity. Yeah. You know, like the art of scarcity makes you want it more.
So I would only open up for like three hours at a time.
And once I close the block, that's it. Nobody else can order. So like, I put people on a timeframe on when you can get the food, and they complied. And I'm like, wow, people really want to be a part of this movement just to say that they got it.
And when I got put out, they told me that I could use the parking lot like, hey, you
should get a food truck. And you could do it out the parking lot, but you can't do it in here because it's disrupting the other tenants.
SPEAKER_07: Because people were so many delivery drivers were coming to pick up orders there.
SPEAKER_04: Yes. And it was disrupting the business of the other tenants. And everybody was like, what's she doing that I'm doing wrong? How is she getting all this business?
SPEAKER_04:
Yeah. So it was crazy, man.
Listen, when I got that food truck, I went to this place called Mr. V's in Atlanta.
So I went inside and they told me that the food truck would be $45,000.
SPEAKER_04: So I'm like, all right, well, I'm making a lot of money. But like, I don't have $45,000 like in my hand right now. But what I could do is I can pay you $10,000 a week for the next four weeks. So it was it was like 10,000 I think.
SPEAKER_07: And this was the cash flow from your business and maybe also some savings you had from that
SPEAKER_07: that TV show.
SPEAKER_04:
So I never had to tap into my savings.
SPEAKER_07: Wow.
SPEAKER_07: This was just the cash flow from the ghost kitchen business.
SPEAKER_04: Yes. Wow. So when I got the food truck, the owner allowed me to pay every single week.
And I would go on the east side and the west side. And I would post up three hours before and say, hey, the slutty vegan food truck will
be here from four to seven. Those are my hours like four to seven or four to nine. I will post on Instagram. And every time I post on Instagram, I literally had between three to 500 people that would stand outside waiting. Yes. Yes.
SPEAKER_07:
Waiting for a burger.
SPEAKER_04: Wow. And I realized but it wasn't about the food.
SPEAKER_04: People wanted to be a part of the experience.
SPEAKER_07: You're like you're like McDonald's in Moscow in 1989. Just like lines.
Thousands of people. So so you have this food truck. And obviously, you're I mean, you started this. I read that within six months of starting the ghost kitchen, your revenue is $4 million.
It's incredible. I mean, and and this was based on burgers and fries. Yeah, burgers and fries.
SPEAKER_04: And literally hold up, let me not even just burgers and fries. I didn't sell drinks.
I literally only sold burgers and fries. I didn't sell desserts. So you were literally coming for some French fries in a sandwich.
But guess what else you got? You got the cultural capital of being able to have the currency of food and take a picture
with it. And people get excited because they want to hear about your experience to brand. It's a brand. Yeah. And do you know my business is almost five years old. And I still got lines down the block. It's incredible. People still come and support me. But I realized I am the slutty vegan.
I'm raw in the tongue. Plus I'm educated. You know, I move with intention, and I'm intellectual.
Plus I like to have a good time. And I'm real and like I meet you where you are and I'm just a vibe. Slutty vegan is a vibe. And as long as that happens, my business will continue to be successful.
SPEAKER_07: That was an excerpt from my conversation with Pinky Cole, founder of Slutty Vegan. To find out how Pinky won over her skeptical neighbors, and how she grew the brand to places beyond Atlanta. Check out the full episode of the show.
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Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. This is our best of end of year show. And last year, I also had a chance to speak with Nosair Yassin. He's a content creator probably best known for creating a brand called NosDaily. Back in 2016, Nosair quit his job as a software engineer and began traveling around the world. And for a thousand straight days, he produced a daily one-minute video documenting his trip. Today, NosDaily has around 40 million followers across its social channels. And Nosair has turned his social media platform into a multi-dimensional media business that helps other people become content creators.
Okay, so you make it through 1,000 days of NosDaily. And at that point, you decide to start a company with a mission of bringing people together.
But I want to talk specifics. What are the products and services, right? Because you've got to sell something.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So first of all, media brings people together. So we decided to build a production house that creates stories and tell stories. This production house helps nonprofits, helps governments, helps big corporations to create content that brings people together, not Coca-Cola ads, but like deep storytelling. And I felt there was money in that. We could charge, you know, 50K to 100K for every video or every campaign. That's a lot of money.
SPEAKER_07: You could do like a brand studio with a mission. Exactly.
SPEAKER_02: And for me, scale is really important. Hundreds of millions of viewers are important because the more people that use your product, the better the world is. And that's what we believe.
So now we need to figure out what scales, right? Technology brings people together, and it scales.
That's why we decided to build a technology company over the last two years and go back to my engineering routes and build Nos.io, which is a community management software. It's basically the infrastructure for communities. It allows you to start a community on the Internet and monetize it and run it very, very easy.
It's everything I've been doing for the last seven years. All the meetups and the communities I've built over the last seven years, I've built the software to enable it.
And we think technology and media both can scale and bring people together.
And that could be a thing for the next 30 years.
SPEAKER_07: So that was this thing that you built, Nos.io, which was sort of like Salesforce. For people who want to build a social media community, like a customer relationship management tool.
SPEAKER_02: Exactly. So we've built monetization features to help you monetize your community. And we take a 10% cut from anything you do in the community. Simple.
SPEAKER_07: And did you bootstrap that? Did you just use the money that you had from Nos. daily, or did you raise money to build that?
SPEAKER_02: So at the beginning, it was self-funded. So seed funding was done by myself. But then I decided that, okay, this is going to get really expensive. I need investor money. So one year in, we went and raised $23 million total to achieve this vision. Got it.
SPEAKER_07: Okay. So you've got that business. Meantime, there's another part of the business called Nos.
Academy, which is like a, we will train you to do what we do.
We will teach you everything soup to nuts about how to make viral videos.
SPEAKER_02: Yeah. So Nos. Academy is the same business as Nos.io. It's just two products. Nos. Academy is basically cohort-based education of how to become a creator.
It runs all on top of the Nos.io software, and it's five months long. And basically, from when you join until five months, we teach you everything that we know. Me and 10 other teachers, every person teaches you their specialty. They're all creators. And then you graduate, and then you go on to get a job in the media space or to become a creator yourself. And what we think is going to happen is that there's going to be a need for digital universities
to complement traditional universities to teach engineering, content creation, and maybe entrepreneurship. Those are the only three things we want to teach. So it is an education arm. It's a profitable business unit, but it's still community-driven. It brings people together.
SPEAKER_07: And having these different arms of the business, can you just kind of break down where your
revenue comes from?
SPEAKER_02:
So last year's revenue for all of Nos. Company is $11 million. $7 million was for the production, the Nos. Daily. Then the $4 million, the majority of it comes from Nos. Academy.
And then now Nos.io is the newest one. It's two months old. So it's still starting, right? But I think by the end of the year, it'll be like a major revenue driver. And the reason why I like Nos.io is it's a scalable model. It's something that could get 10x bigger in a month, which is very different from Nos. Daily and Nos. Academy.
SPEAKER_07: All right. Let me ask you about where you draw the line. Traditional media organizations have very strict rules about how they cover things. And you're right. I think you open up the daily paper and a lot of the news is negative and a lot of the spin is negative for sure. And you are trying to do something different.
When you're working with a government, for example, where do you draw the line?
I mean, you look at a country like Russia, for example, okay?
And Russia has invaded Ukraine and it imprisons dissidents. But it also has a thriving art and fashion scene and an incredible culinary scene. So if the Russian government came to you and they said, hey, we don't want people to think
SPEAKER_07: about us as like the invaders of Ukraine. We want people to think about us as like this incredible, vibrant culture where we have great food and fashion and art. Can you make a video for us or help us make a video that does that? What would you do?
SPEAKER_02: To be clear, we've had people from China, CCTV, tell us to go to Xinjiang and talk about
the culture and the food.
SPEAKER_07: And not to talk about the people who are imprisoned, the Muslim Uyghurs.
SPEAKER_02: Yes. For me, that was a step too far. So I said no. But we've also had people from the State Department tell us, hey, why don't you make videos about China and how bad it is? In my opinion, first of all, we have one rule, which is we don't really discuss politics. We promote tourism, we promote nations, and we promote things that are a little bit not like geopolitical in nature.
Second of all, with Russia, it's a little bit tricky. Don't forget that I'm from Israel. And for at least a billion people on the planet, working with Israel is like a big no-no.
We've never worked with the Israeli government, to be clear. But one thing I've realized is that this whole what's taboo and what's not is very relative. For you, Russia is a big no-no. But for people in Saudi Arabia, they're like, Russia is our friend. Or people in Syria, Russia is our friend. And so for a creator in Syria, they're much more willing to work with Russia. It's all relative to what you think is a no-no and what you think is an acceptable thing. So I have to make my own little sort of compass, what's acceptable and what's not.
My compass is very different from an American perspective compass.
SPEAKER_02: And that's what many Americans need to realize is that the world does not center around America and American interests. And then my compass, I just follow that.
SPEAKER_07: In general, I'm wondering how you say you've got your compass.
And I believe that you have a strong compass. But there's still, it's tricky, I guess.
And again, I'm not knocking or criticizing you.
I'm trying to kind of break it down because I think it's really interesting. And I think it's, look, as somebody who was a journalist my whole career, you deal with all kinds of dilemmas as a reporter. But I wonder whether it is necessary to work with governments.
In other words, let's say you decided, I'm not going to work with governments.
But if a Russian tech company or a Saudi business wants me to work with them, great, happy to do it, especially if what they're doing is innovative and interesting. And there you're dealing with a company that might be from a country that is in the middle of a geopolitical conflict, but you're not focused on the government of that country, you're focused on the business in that country and what they're doing. I mean, wouldn't that be a cleaner kind of approach?
SPEAKER_02:
Yeah.
SPEAKER_02: So that is an amazing American dream in which private sector and public sector are separate
entities.
SPEAKER_02: But that doesn't exist in Singapore, in the UAE.
They're so intertwined. Like I have a business in Singapore, we all love Singapore, right?
But the government knows everything about every business and works with every business,
SPEAKER_05: right?
SPEAKER_02: So yes, you can do that separation in America, but you really can't do that separation in
many countries around the world.
Because they're just so intertwined.
Yeah. That business inside Arabia, half of it is state-owned. Now what do you do? Do you work with it or not?
SPEAKER_07: Let me ask you about this world of content creators. I mean, obviously today, it seems like everybody is a content creator and you have this academy that really helps people build out their brands and their platforms and to monetize
it.
But can we have a world where everybody is a content creator and for that world to be productive and harmonious and sustainable? I mean, part of me is like, I kind of worry that so many people want to become YouTubers, so many young people, my kids, you know, they're friends. And again, I might just be like, have the worst, stupidest perspective about this. I concede, but part of me is like, I'm not sure that's sustainable, that we can all become
content creators.
SPEAKER_02: So first of all, we are at 1% of the way there with how many content creators we need, similar to how many software engineers we need. We are at 1% of the way there because monetizing videos has been very, very new. So we're just at the beginning. Okay. We're not at the end. Second of all, when you say content creator, you think a guy with a model on a beach saying, hey guys, I'm here, come to visit this beach with my girlfriend. That is not what a content creator is. For every content creator can be in front of the camera, but there's 10 people that can be behind the camera. A video editor is a content creator, a script writer, a researcher, a producer, right? A Discord community manager, a NASA community manager. Why shouldn't we create those jobs?
The world needs those jobs. I mean, when you say it's not somebody on a beach saying, hey, come check out this awesome
SPEAKER_07: beach and my hot girlfriend, that's not what you're hoping to build, but what do you want those content creators to do? Do you want them to do videos like you did at Nas Daily?
SPEAKER_02: Right.
SPEAKER_02: So when it comes to content creators, I mean, the average person has 11 or 10 different
hobbies, right? You can create content about swimming and how much you love swimming. You can make educational content about running, how much you love running, painting, your country, you can make travel. I mean, here's the thing, for the majority of the internet, media has been created in
Los Angeles and consumed globally, but there is no Nas Daily in Libya.
SPEAKER_02: There is no Nas Daily in Morocco. There's no Mr. Beast in Egypt. There's no Mr. Beast in Denmark. So these are all opportunities for local content to be created. In the future, there is a room for 195 more Hollywoods to be created. The days in which the whole world is watching Will Smith on TV and Tom Cruise for the 55th movie are done.
SPEAKER_02:
That's why we need content creators.
SPEAKER_07: That makes sense to me, but I'm not totally convinced that hundreds of maybe billions
more people can create sustainable livelihoods as walking billboards, right?
Like if essentially what you're saying, hey, I'm really into running in Libya and I'm going
to have a running channel in Libya, and then there can be 50,000 people who do that in Libya. Is there enough advertising to support all of those people, and do we really want to be inundated with that?
SPEAKER_02: No, there isn't enough advertising. An advertising-based content creation is a flawed model, and I would dare say it's a fraudulent model. This is the model that has been working, but it will not work in the future. So I'm a runner.
I start a community for 100 people. I create content for 100 people, and each one of them gives me 10 bucks. I'm already making a thousand bucks a month. So you can create new jobs, and that's where the future is heading, in my opinion.
SPEAKER_07: I'm trying to cut all my subscriptions back. I got Spotify, Netflix, Hulu, Disney.
What else do I have? Peacock. I'm up to my ears in subscriptions. That's just like the fraction of them. Now you want me to pay my friend who's a runner to join his Discord?
SPEAKER_02:
But Guy, these are not communities. These are streaming content software. But are you part of a tech community in San Francisco?
SPEAKER_07: I hear you. I hear you. You're right. There are clubs. You join them. You pay a fee. And so the idea is that you have these self-sustaining communities of people who are building content that's valuable. Yes. Okay. So I know you're about to do another Nas Daily series. You're going to go to a bunch of other countries. I mean, people are still coming for you. Are you still in front of the camera in 5, 10, 15 years?
SPEAKER_02: No. So I'm getting hosts. So now I have different hosts that get in the videos. I'm taking myself out of the video slowly but surely.
My personal ambition is very simple.
I want to do things that are life and death.
That's it. I don't want to be selling Coca-Cola. I don't want to be creating furniture. I want to do things life and death when I'm 50, 60 years old. So what is life and death when you're 50 and 60 years old?
Healthcare, right?
Hospitals, doctors, medicine, government, politics.
That's it.
In my opinion, nothing else is important. So the way I see my life is the next 15, 20 years, I'll be in the private sector.
Great. Then I will have no meaning from the private sector. I'll have somebody to run it. Then I'd like to go and join a government, any government, and try to actually create life and death solutions. I think that's amazing. There's a lot of power in that.
There's a lot of influence in that. And that's much better than any YouTube video you can make.
SPEAKER_07: Right. Right. So then tell me about the future vision for the Nas universe, right? I mean, you've got the CRM, you've got the academy, you're still doing brand and government
partnerships, and you now have over 100 employees.
You brought in some investment, right? And your revenue is growing and you have a vision clearly to turn this into a multi-billion dollar brand, I think, because you're ambitious and smart.
Where does it go in 10 or 15 years?
SPEAKER_07: So I'm going to give you a bit of observation.
SPEAKER_02:
I found out that the American way of building companies is very different than the Asian way of building companies. The American way of building companies tells you, build one product, make that product really big, go on IPO and just continue working on that product for the next 10, 20 years. Like Slack. Slack is a one product company until it got acquired. Perfect.
Right? That never made sense to me. So I'm much more inspired by the Asian way of building it, which is build an ecosystem.
SPEAKER_02: Build 20 different companies that all complement and help each other.
That's my vision. I think there's an opportunity for the next Virgin Group because Richard Branson built
an incredible ecosystem of, I'm going to take a boring business and I'm going to make it fun and it's like physical stuff.
My ambition is to build similar to Virgin, but I'm going to build products that bring people together in technology, media, travel.
So the way I envision the next 10 years is NAS daily, NAS hotel, NAS IO, NAS summits, NAS foods, NAS venture, NAS whatever. I want to build a NAS ecosystem where every business line helps the other. That's my 30 year vision. We're not building something to be acquired and put it on the LinkedIn.
I'm building something that I believe has the capacity to live beyond my life.
SPEAKER_07: That's Naseer Yassin, founder of the NAS company.
You've just heard an excerpt of our conversation and to hear more about Naseer's journey from software engineer to social media influencer to tech entrepreneur, listen to the full episode in our podcast feed. You can find it by searching NAS daily and how I built this.
This episode of How I Built This is sponsored by Miro. If you haven't heard of it, Miro is this incredible online workspace. Our team relies on it for a lot of our own brainstorms and processes and I think it's super useful to try out if you want to build something great with your team. One of my favorite features of Miro is called the Miroverse. Sometimes starting work on an online visual workspace can feel overwhelming, but with Miroverse you can select pre-made boards for pretty much any use case. Collecting feedback, running meetings, icebreakers, it saves you the hassle of building from scratch. And what's really cool is that a new template has just been added, this time from me. We partnered with the folks over at Miro to create a How to Build a Podcast Miroverse template to help kickstart your journey to making a podcast. Check it out and let me know what you think. Head on over to Miro.com slash H-I-B-T. That's M-I-R-O dot com slash H-I-B-T to check out our Miroverse template for yourself. Whether you're a small business owner growing your team or an HR director hiring hundreds of people across the nation, you have one of the toughest jobs there is. But what if I were to tell you that there's something that can make your whole hiring process faster and easier? It's ZipRecruiter. And right now you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter dot com slash built. Instead of you doing all the hiring work, ZipRecruiter works for you. Once you post your job on ZipRecruiter, it sends it to more than 100 job sites so you can reach more of the right people. Its powerful technology scans thousands of resumes to identify people whose skills and experience match your job. Hiring heroes? Let ZipRecruiter help make your job easier. Four out of five employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. See for yourself. Go to this exclusive web address to try ZipRecruiter for free. ZipRecruiter dot com slash built. Again, that's ZipRecruiter dot com slash built. ZipRecruiter. The smartest way to hire.
Welcome back to How I Built This Lab. I'm Guy Raz. So for years, listeners have asked us for updates from past guests. So this year we started doing it. And in 2024, we will hear from lots more, including Jim Cook, the creator of Sam Adams Beer, who was on the show for the first time back in the first season of the show.
But earlier this year, I caught up with Whitney Wolf-Heard. She's the founder of Bumble. Whitney was first on the show in 2017. And if you haven't heard that episode, definitely go listen. It's in our podcast queue and it's a great story. Anyway, Whitney came back onto the show a few months ago just before stepping down as Bumble CEO. And one of the main things I wanted to ask her about was what she thinks the future of dating might look like.
You know, I met my wife at a barbecue, right, like 23 years ago. And then, you know, I remember there was like in the 80s, when I was a little kid, I remember like there's matchmaking, right?
And then internet dating really starts in the 90s. And then apps is how young people are connecting today.
What's like the next version of this? How are people going to be connecting in 10 years from now?
SPEAKER_00: So the next version of this, this is going to catch you off guard, but it's meeting at
the barbecue.
But via Bumble.
OK, so I think the next horizon is going online to get offline.
So in the near future, it will not be unimaginable to get on Bumble.
And instead of, you know, swiping yes and no on a bunch of people, you might be swiping
yes or no on things that sound compelling to you in the coming days.
You know, maybe you're in the mood to go to a barbecue that has certain music playing at it on Friday night.
And we know that there's 35 other people going, and you can see that half of them have some level of compatibility to you, but we don't disclose who they are until you get there. And we let Serendipity and Fate kind of do a little bit of its own old-fashioned work
once you arrive.
So I think that is one piece of this. I think the other piece of this is, and I cannot emphasize this enough, it's where I'm
spending 80% of my free time right now.
AI is how we are going to meet people.
SPEAKER_07: It's how we're going to meet people.
SPEAKER_00:
Yes. Right now, when you get onto a dating platform, you are basically sifting through a thousand
options to walk out with a few, right? And then of the few, you might have real compatibility and chemistry with a couple.
And of the couple, maybe one will work out, right? So it's a lot of work. It's a lot of energy. It's a lot of time. It's a lot of letdown.
SPEAKER_00: And the issue is that in kind of old era dating apps, which I would say anything before generative
AI, it was very hard to capture signals and dynamic qualities in a person beyond just
their surface level interests, right? I like to go running. I like to eat this. I like to listen to live music.
I like to do this. This is my religion. I want kids. Whatever these different kind of filters are.
But how can we really find out if someone is loyal?
How can we find out if someone is kind? How can we find out if someone is funny? These are signals that technology really mutes, right? And so I think the future is leveraging these machine learning capabilities to actually
bring photos to life, bring people to life on the screen.
And my dream guy is 10 years from now, we will be able to prevent breakups before they
ever happen.
We will be able to prevent bad relationships from ever having a potential of happening. And more importantly, my big dream is we will help people love themselves so that they can
love others. And I think that is our biggest issue in this country right now when it comes to connection
is self-hatred, low confidence.
So if we can reverse engineer that, we're onto something really special.
SPEAKER_07: I absolutely love your optimism around this. I love your energy. I love your passion. But I am going to throw some skepticism because I worry about a future where I don't know.
SPEAKER_07: I mean, I got all these things go through my head, Minority Report, you know, just where we're served the perfect menu of five to seven people that have been chosen for us based on machine learning.
When we know that humans change. You know, I'm a different person today than I was 23 years ago when I met my wife. We've grown and changed together. You know, I remember my grandmother telling me before she died about how when she was a child, most marriages around her in her village were arranged.
And that oftentimes they did not love each other, but they grew to love each other over time and those marriages work. I'm not saying I support arranged marriage. I'm just saying that it still feels to me like there's so many factors, so many just
intangible things about being human and about love that I worry can't fully be captured
by a machine. And I'm an optimist about AI. Do you know what I mean? Do you understand some of that concern? I do.
SPEAKER_00: I do understand that concern. And I think what we're focused on is making sure that we don't build products that hurt us, that as we implement AI further into our business, which I expect our business to be
a real AI business. I'm very anchored on it and I believe in it.
I want to make sure it's done ethically. I want to make sure it's done with real human connection at the helm.
And I think, you know, my concerns with AI are that there are a lot of people out there
that are building products to get people to actually replace humans with AI. And I think as it pertains to love, my big focus is to never, ever, ever replace a real
human dynamic emotion, want, or need with a computer, with a system, with a model, with
a bot. And so what I would like to do is help humans connect better. So what's really fascinating, Guy, is a huge chunk of survey respondents of people that
are single and want to be in a relationship but don't use a dating app yet, they don't
do it because they think they'll be bad at it. They think that they don't know how to date. They think that they're not capable of it.
That, to me, is a remarkable opportunity to create goodness in the world by using AI to
SPEAKER_00: inspire confidence. So we have been hard at work exploring ways to have coaches or matchmakers or friends
in your pocket, whatever you want to call it. You know, basically be that wingwoman, wingman, wingperson in your pocket to really show you
that you've got this and to have your back, give you positive affirmations, and to kind
of guide you along the dating journey.
So if they are scared to chat, right, like they're scared to start a dating chat, for
example, they would then chat with their coach first.
And their coach, which is AI, would coach them through it, give them feedback, would
SPEAKER_00: help them feel ready and prepared for the game. So how can we actually help people show up as better versions of themselves?
And I think it's interesting. We've seen the very first iteration of self-help tech called the head spaces of the world and
the calm.
I would say those are very 1.0 versions. They're not dynamic in the moment when it comes to connecting with others, right? These are things you do kind of on your own, meditations, breathings.
How can you do these things in real time as you're on the quest for friendship or love?
SPEAKER_07: So essentially, it sounds like what you're saying is if AI is used in the right way in this context for love, there is somebody for everybody in theory.
SPEAKER_00: There is somebody for everybody in theory.
You know, obviously, I can't make that promise.
But what I believe is you rarely attract a relationship healthier than your self-esteem.
SPEAKER_00: Instead of us just saying, here's a person and here's a person and here's a person, why
don't we actually focus on self-love first?
How can we help you build your self-esteem? AI can be a great catalyst to this through different mechanisms and tools. I mean, you've seen people learn languages through Duolingo.
Why can't you learn the language of self-esteem and love, right?
And so I think we can be a really powerful tool in helping people feel better about themselves at the get-go. And then, guys, something amazing happens here.
If you have a user base and a supply of people feeling better about themselves with higher
levels of self-esteem, what do you get less of?
Abuse, harassment, toxicity, ghosting.
All the icky stuff that comes with dating will subsequently decline.
SPEAKER_07: I'm wondering what you think about – I mean, there are infinite ways to connect to meat today more so than ever. I mean, you can do it from your bedroom, right? And yet there is an epidemic of loneliness in the United States and even in other countries. Given the fact that there are so many more ways you can connect today than ever, why
do you think that is? What explains that?
SPEAKER_00: So the pandemic did not help.
It completely exacerbated the issue.
But here's the thing.
You started this by saying you can meet people from anywhere now. We're all online. We're all super connected.
The reality is we're all very connected and disconnected at the same time.
SPEAKER_00:
When you are on social media, you are technically, by definition, connected, but you are emotionally
disconnected.
So friendship has moved online, and it has actually killed friendship.
Chatting with your buddies on TikTok and Instagram does not count as relationship.
That is not a soulful, real relationship.
And candidly, it creates more of a voyeuristic fear of missing out dynamic than it does a
real safe, connected environment.
So what you've seen us do with Bumble for Friends, our new standalone friendship app,
is we've said let's use tech to connect, not tech to disconnect.
And there's a real, real gap here.
And there are not enough products in the world that are actually technically engineered to
get you online to then go offline.
In fact, the monetization models on the majority of social media is dependent on you being
on your phone as much as possible because they're ad businesses.
SPEAKER_00: We are not an advertising business. Sure, we have some advertisement, but we are a subscription model because we don't care
if you sit and use our product for two hours or two minutes. In fact, everything we are working on from a product prioritization standpoint right
now is to shorten the duration that you're using our product on at any given time because we want you to go online to get offline.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah. You know, I'm curious about the AI model though. If you are, I mean, to some extent, your business depends on customers coming back again and
again and again, people going on hundreds of dates, right, because they're paying subscribers. But if this AI model works like better than you expect and all of a sudden like you're
matching people perfectly and like they're going on the first date and boom, they're
engaged, they're done as Bumble customers. I mean, what are the implications of that?
You make the algorithm better and then you actually have fewer repeat visitors.
SPEAKER_00: Every single Saturday, and I mean it, it's like clockwork, I get at least one text message
from someone in my network that they're at a Bumble wedding and that Bumble was just mentioned
either in the vows, in a groomsman speech, in a bridesmaid speech, or it was on the menu
SPEAKER_00: or it was in the photo booth and it had been integrated some way somehow.
Why do I mention this?
A success story is worth more than 200 failed dates.
Let's just say we have 50 forever relationships.
Those 50 forever relationships have now left Bumble app, the dating app, but they have
throughout their dinners and lunches and gym and professional lives, they have told countless
people. They have pollinated the product.
They have been brand ambassadors for us in such a way that those 50 success stories become
a flywheel of growth.
50 success stories is worth more than thousands of failed dates because those failed dates turn into the reverse flywheel of negative feedback. We're actually absolutely aligned with the customer finding success because their success
is our success and we're in this to help them find healthy and equitable relationships. You know, I was thinking about what you're saying about using AI to coach people and
SPEAKER_07: I think that's very real. It's going to be happening more and more. The potentially logical extension of that is could it solve loneliness? I'm not saying this is a good thing, but there's that movie Her many years ago, a few years
ago. It was a beautiful film and Scarlett Johansson was a voice inside of Joaquin Phoenix's ear and he was in love with her. He was in love with an AI voice and it was very plausible. It seemed very real.
It's not implausible to imagine that with where AI is going. I mean, obviously humans, you know, we believe we need human connection, but is there a world
where, you know, Bumble has a product that is basically a virtual romance?
No, not under my leadership at least.
SPEAKER_00:
Listen, that's not what we are here to do.
We are definitely not in the business of trying to wipe out humanity and trying to get people to fall in love with, you know, fake iterations of humans.
I don't want to use AI that way.
I think…
SPEAKER_07: I mean, it will be used that way. You know that.
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but you know what? It will be. If that's really what happens, then we've got bigger problems than the future of Bumble.
SPEAKER_00: Basically it's what happens to the future of humanity, right? If we kill love human to human and we replace it with human to AI, we only have another
generation left, right?
It'll all be over if that's really the case.
For me, it's how do we actually use AI to make relationships human to human, I mean,
better, stronger, healthier, more respectful, more equal, more empowering, more inspiring,
how do we actually help end loneliness through getting people to really form and forge real
friendships with one another instead of stay locked away on their phones and their bedrooms
or on wherever they are for the rest of their lives? How do we get people to look each other in the eyes and not just through a screen?
And so that's really what we're focused on.
The horror movies, you know, five years ago seemed really sci-fi, but you're right.
I'm sure some people will be doing that, but my job will be to convince them to meet a real person.
SPEAKER_07: Yeah.
So, Whitney, you've been at this for a long time now, but you're still just young. I mean, you have a lot of life ahead of you.
What do you see yourself doing in 10 years from now? Do you see yourself running Bumble? I mean, who knows? Your public company, your board can always throw you out if they want to.
SPEAKER_07: But I mean, what's your sort of vision of where you'll be?
SPEAKER_00: So I think I will always be focused on the core mission of Bumble.
I think it is my life calling. It is my purpose, which is to help the world have healthier relationships.
Some people dedicate their lives to the research of rare diseases when it's claimed the life
of a loved one.
Some people dedicate their lives to solving problems that have directly impacted them,
right?
That is, I believe that problems and pain and devastation happens to inspire a body
of people to go and fix those problems for others.
And so it's my sincere belief that I will be working towards healthier love, healthier
relationships and helping people love themselves.
That's the why.
I think the how will manifest. But I am absolutely focused on Bumble for as long as I can see out.
There's no road in front of me that is excluding Bumble from my life.
I do believe that my time will be better used in thinking three, five, 10 years ahead versus
just two quarters ahead. But that'll manifest as it's meant to.
And I will say that I am absolutely fascinated, committed to, and on the track of integrating
AI into love and connection and friendship and relationships.
That is my obsession at the moment. And it is going to be until I really land the plane on it.
And I really want us to be part of positive AI.
I really want to make sure that we course correct from the mistakes that were made with
the explosion of the quote unquote old internet by leaving women out of the equation, by not
thinking of the ethical options. And so I really hope that we can be a part of the more ethical path forward.
SPEAKER_07: That was an excerpt from my conversation with Whitney Wolf Hurd, the founder of Bumble. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week.
There were so many amazing guests on how I built this this year. And if you liked this episode, I hope you'll go back and listen to the full interviews or maybe listen to another episode you might have missed. And from everyone here on the how I built this team, we hope you have a great holiday and Happy New Year. This episode was produced by Chris Messini with music composed by Ramtin Arablui. It was edited by John Isabella. Our production staff also includes Alex Chung, Carla Estevez, Casey Herman, Jacey Howard, Katherine Seifer, Kerry Thompson, Malia Agudelo, Neva Grant and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to how I built this lab.
If you like how I built this, you can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple podcasts. Prime members can listen ad free on Amazon Music. Before you go, tell us about yourself by filling out a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey.
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