The Digital Village Show
Digital Village Network presents The Digital Village Show! Learn about all of the latest business tech trends and news, delivered right to your ear. Meet some of the greatest minds in business driving and leading technology shifts in business and understand how you can utilise technology to benefit your organisation and your customers.
The Digital Village Show
"I get knocked down, but I get up again!" // Fred Schebesta
It may be cliché to say “it’s ok to make mistakes”, but for those willing to understand the logic behind them and not immediately dismiss them as irrelevant, clichés can hold valuable lessons.
Fred Schebesta has faced his fair share of failure but as one of Australia’s most recognisable entrepreneurs can assert that it is in fact ok to make mistakes…
As a co-founder of a half-billion dollar organisation, Finder, and a multitude of other ventures, Fred is a self-proclaimed lover of growing businesses from nothing to make them ‘Go Live’ - the title of his latest book.
In S02EP05 of That Digital Village Show, we sat down with Fred to discuss dealing with failure, building a sustainable business in increments, using the idea of narratives to innovate and whatever else popped into his brilliant mind.
Welcome back to another episode of that digital village show the show about the latest tech trends news impacting business people and planet. In today's episode, we have an exciting guest joining us, launching a book recently titled go live a 10 principles to building a global empire, a founder of the company finder, our familiar host, Luke and pole welcome Fred Shasta, Fred and the digital village team will be diving deep into the topics of success, unlocking the secrets to building and growing a successful digital business and related principles to reach that empirical status. Why you should never give up and even deep dive into the existential realities of doing business in our current environment. So sit back and enjoy.
Speaker 2:Well, welcome back to the TV show or the digital village shows. We now call it of course, cuz we don't want any confusion about that. Um, Luke is back and our special guest, Fred Shasta, the founder of one of the founders because there were two of finder. Um, great to have you with us, Fred, uh, really looking forward to hearing your story and what you are up to right now. Um, thank
Speaker 3:For having me.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So, so
Speaker 3:There's paradise cage, which
Speaker 2:Is kind of like it's a bit weird.
Speaker 3:We're trying to go full we're coming at you Direct's no, no. And no interventions have been place with all this podcast is recording. Correct. Very analog experience.
Speaker 2:Now the, the risk of sounding ages. Do you remember a band called tub thumping,
Speaker 3:Tub thumping.
Speaker 2:They had a single back in 1997. Oh
Speaker 3:I August song. Yeah. Well the song
Speaker 2:Song was called. It was Chumba Womba was the,
Speaker 3:I know Chumba
Speaker 2:Womba that's right. And the, and the song was called tub dumping and the first two lines of it, I get, do I get knocked down, but get up again. You're never gonna knock me down. Yeah. And I only put that in cuz I having read the book go live, which we'll talk about in a minute, that really resonated with me the fact that you've, you've had to persevere and you've gone through, God knows how many startups and you know, um, experiments that didn't turn into anything before you actually became successful. Yeah. Is a great Agram we should really try and dig into that a bit later. Yeah,
Speaker 3:Yeah. Um,
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was fascinating. Nice.
Speaker 3:Sum up.
Speaker 2:Thank you. That was
Speaker 3:Really good. Thank you. And you summed it up with a song,
Speaker 2:A song. What?
Speaker 3:It's a crazy, he's a man of culture,
Speaker 2:Paul.
Speaker 3:Wow.
Speaker 2:Paul,
Speaker 3:We do, by the way through everyone who's listening right now. I know this is not a visual, uh, as much visual, you might be watching this, but just so everyone knows, Luke has incredible handwriting. Now somehow he's an engineer as well. Yes. So that means he must be able to use his left and right brain together. That's a fairly unique individual. Thank you very much,
Speaker 2:Fred. He is an you're shame. Talented really? I mean, you know, well,
Speaker 3:You know, we all love to annoy character Paul. Anyway, we can. So<laugh> you guys are in, if you're listening right now, very creative. Okay.
Speaker 2:So moving on, we wanna learn a little bit about your life experience, Fred, and also try and give some advice to our listeners around what it is that they need to have to be successful. Now you've written a book about it. I'm sure there's a lot more that you wanna share with us as well. Um, but why didn't we start with that? What, what inspired you to write the book in the first place?
Speaker 3:Well, um, you know, it was, I guess the middle of COVID. I tried to write a book a few times. Yeah. Um, but I, I sort of started and then wrote like headings and then didn't really, it didn't nothing came like, you know, like it didn't arrive. The university was saying, this is not the right time, similar direction or different ideas. I guess I got knocked down. Then I got back up again and then I, Hey<laugh> yeah. Um, I would say at least three to four failed attempts solidly, fully, you know, wrote the chapters names, titles. Yeah. Um, one was on like, you know, emotional growth one was on, um, you know, how to build a business, just, you know, I just didn't feel it. Yeah. But you, you, you end up covering like all of those things really don't you in, in go live. Yeah. I think, I think it was a, an attempt to try and share the varied and yet, you know, pretty personally personal stories of challenge and in some way, hopefully people got inspired from that. And then also another way I was hoping that there was someone out there who wanted to start something and they just did a little nudge. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:So did you have that kind of picture in your head when you're writing it of one person that you were kind of directing this story too, say,
Speaker 3:Hey, I'm gonna, my, my current partner, um, Brenda, who might be listening may probably not listening, but we'll see. Hopefully she does listen. I do, I have to, I publish a lot of content, so it's hard to read everything and listen to everything. But, um, I, I actually remember this story when she was starting out and you know, she, she started up her own law firm. It's called black gold legal mm-hmm<affirmative> and she used to work at, you know, some very, fairly big law firms. And I, I, I remember this experience of like going, Hey, you could just start your own law firm. You're extremely capable. You can do this. Yeah. And the sort of conversations would actually be, I would just start regaling stories of things I did and say, oh, well, you know, I'm not sure if this is gonna work. It's like, well, I can tell you about things that don't work and I've done a lot of them. Mm-hmm<affirmative> and it's okay. Yeah. And you just go again. Yeah. Uh, and, and I just, you know, kept on telling stories and stories and stories and I realized those stories are highly constructive and instructive as well. Yes. Yep. Um, and so, and I noticed myself, I I've over time, I I've I've said these stories a lot. And so I thought, okay, maybe we should put these down somewhere. Mm. And the first thing we did was we press record on zoom. And I, I had an interview, um, with, with an editor and he just interviewed me for like four hours, um, three, three times in a row re recorded the whole entire thing. And unfortunately the end of it, he said, look, Fred, I don't actually know you you've covered so many things. I have no idea what to write this book about.<laugh><laugh> so we, we were kind of back at the start again, unfortunately. Yes. Um, so I got back up again and, um, that should be a name of the book actually get back up, get back up again. Yeah. Um, in, or a song someone should make a song about that. Yeah. Yeah. And then someone who should write a, make a really cool podcast and introduce a guest with that song, with that song. Um, perfect. That's like, that feels like the metaverse. Um, metaverse, what's that,<laugh> what, what I was thinking, um, is, you know, the written word, if, you know, one of the things, a big shifting finder, what I, I sort of brought and really influenced recently, or not recently, I say in the last three years, particularly at the start of 2020 was to, um, really shift towards narratives. So when people create projects, we write narratives. Yeah. So instead of PowerPoints, you know, PowerPoints are still good, but we, we, we write out, you know, narratives and Amazon really led this. And then, you know, there other companies have obviously adopted the similar process. Um, in, in that one of the things I was trying to figure out, why is this process so powerful? And I, one of the things that was, um, I discovered in researching this Amazon, I think Jeff wrote, or, or someone in Amazon said, well, the written word is one of the highest bandwidth tools of humanity. Yeah. Yeah. Like the sh if, if you write something and then you give it out and distribute it, the amount of bandwidth that is packed into that, you know, into a series of words, which are read over and over and over and over again is extraordinarily high. Yep. And so I thought, well, this is, you know, I just forgot that idea, like that idea. And I noticed this as we started writing more and more things down at finder, the amount of context that was shared, the, the level of shared understanding of, you know, why we're doing things where we've come from and you could just go back in time and literally read documents. Yeah. Um, that sort of partially inspired me as well. And so, you know, that's what sort of kickstarted us in 2020 to, to, to start to write it. Cause I thought, Hey, there's probably some valuable things that I could share. Why don't we try and, you know, start to write these down.
Speaker 2:So how much do you think that narrative thing actually influences culture in finder?
Speaker 3:I think now it's assumed if you haven't written it down now and you just propose an idea without, you know, you can propose an idea and then back it up as a potential pitch to then write a narrative, to give the full context of your thinking. But if you are just talking about an idea now that's nowhere has nowhere near as much weight as like, okay, I've written this narrative. It's like, oh, okay. Now you've, you can read it. And then, then people can start, start to debate and discuss. And you know, doesn't necessarily mean the idea is gonna live by the way. No, can, there are many narratives that don't, um, make a pass, but at least you've clarified and purified your thinking. It's like, what did you actually mean about this? Write it down. Yes. And that, that process, so the, so the process of taking something from your mind and the picture you have yes. To actually translating it into words is, is it actually, well for Luke, it's a beautiful process for myself. It's not as beautiful, but it's certainly a clarifying process.
Speaker 2:Yeah. But for a lot of people, writing is quite a challenge. Being able to do that kind of narrative process without any experience or new structure or guidance. Yeah. Um, is doesn't come naturally to everybody. Do you provide them with any guidance on how to construct a narrative? Not,
Speaker 3:Not, not really. And, and I, I think what's interesting about that is, um, there are templates and there are ones you can read. And so you, you get the general idea. Um, the other day, one of our designers and his first language is in English. Mm-hmm<affirmative>, um, his name's kosha and he wrote a narrative, um, about, actually about a data science problem. Right.<laugh> wow. So let's just, just keep context here. Right. So he's on a data scientist and, um, but he had, he's trying solve a, you know, a creative problem, Uhhuh<affirmative> and I said, why don't you write down this problem? He was like, oh, okay. And what I noticed in him writing is the level of inquiry is it's actually a bit shorter, but it's more concentrated and higher bandwidth again, mm-hmm<affirmative> because he didn't have all the waffle. Yeah. You know, he, he he's literally like from a design perspective, he's just gonna write what is needed and exactly no more. Right. And it was like, wow. Like, like, and it was shorter. It was probably, you know, two pages. Yeah. But just that clarifying document, even from, you know, and again, you know, an engineer the other day wrote a, uh, narrative about an NFT. Yeah. And like an NFT is quite an ethereal concept. It's not just a technical thing to create and build. It's got a lot of dimensions to it. And so he really covered that entire space. He's obviously very passionate about it. Mm-hmm<affirmative> but I, I just think it is possible. Um, and, and, and purely just the process is actually what the, the actual really the goal is. Yes. Also then the, the eque of the document.
Speaker 2:So just,
Speaker 4:Sorry, sorry. I was gonna say, yeah. Getting people to you can't do it without thinking hard about what you're writing about. Right. And thinking it through.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Agreed.
Speaker 4:And so, yeah, so that, that really brings a more complete and transferable, I guess, as you say, narrative, everybody, and you can pick it up with some confidence and say, okay, somebody's put a lot of thought and work into this. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So
Speaker 2:Do you think that process actually, um, speeds up the process of innovation? Does it make it easier to kind of filter out things which clearly not gonna make it? I mean, you are kind of man seems to be, you know, fail fast, fail early, um, expect failure because it's gonna have to happen for you to get to the point where you've got something that's actually practical and needed.
Speaker 3:So maybe I'll just separate two things there. I just wanted to try. And if I can, this is how I think of that, but maybe it, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's the right way. Um, so when I think about innovation, I think about two different things. So there's, I just wanted to unpack that slightly and just clarify, cuz I think your, your question is quite, um, concentrated and I just wanna try and lay out a few, the dimensions to it. So the first way I think of that is you've got incremental innovation. So, you know, mm-hmm,<affirmative> an improvement. And in that CA that sense, I think a lot of context is needed because what happens is if you, in that, when you, when you do an incremental improvement, one of the challenging parts is, is to understand why things the were way they were before. And what are the considerations of other people in making a change? Yeah. Because something's working, you know, it's, or it may not be working the best, but at least something, or there was some reason or thinking that has come before you. And I think it's really important to stand on the shoulders of giants from, from before you, right. And honor that, that a thinking that works. So, so I do think that's really important. I think it speeds it up mm-hmm<affirmative> cause then everyone's on the shared understanding and then you're not like, you know, um, you know, sacrificing things which are actually working because not everyone understood why mm-hmm<affirmative> and, and, and then again, you, then you get to the project and at the end of the project and you're like, oh, why are we doing this in the first place? It's like, oh, well, let's go back to the narrative. Oh, that's the goal. Oh, that's why we were here. Understand. Okay, cool. And if someone new comes into the project again, Hey, here's the narrative for this project again, you've got succession planning, these kinds of things. I think so. Yes. I think that speeds up incremental improve innovation. Right. I think in innovation, which are giant leaps forward, so where you are doing something, which is not been done before. Yeah. Where you like
Speaker 4:Starting from scratch, starting
Speaker 3:From yeah. A blank piece of paper where you are, I'd say you have 3% of the data that you are, you need to make this decision. You have a intuition, a piece of data or a customer conversation or something you're exploring essentially that narrative, I think, um, is a good place to start. Does it, does it solve everything? Is it, is it okay? Let's talk about what does it actually solve there? Well, one is to clarify the, kind of the, why, why we're doing this. And, and I think that works in the same way. The part, which I think is the most important part, but about the narrative in the, in the creative sense of that kind of innovation, I don't think happens on the paper. I think it actually happens outside the paper. So it's, it's it's um, people come together and one idea or one piece of energy is shared and it starts a, another reaction in someone else which opens up their mind serendipitously to another idea, which shares with someone else. And together you get to a place where you didn't think you were gonna be, and no one's ever been before. Mm-hmm<affirmative>, that is now your place where you need to be. And I don't think that happens on the paper unfortunately. Right. So it's more of a catalyst
Speaker 5:In that situation.
Speaker 3:It's not, it's not defining. Yeah. It's an go where yeah, it has to the, that creation and that creativity. And sometimes that happens actually made the work. Um, so you're like, wow, we made this error. Hey, actually, that's pretty good. Yeah. What is that? Let's go with that. And that, that is where I think that happens. So, so I think in this case, the narrative is more, a more like defining an area of initial exploration. Gotcha. Okay. Interesting.
Speaker 4:Yeah, no, it is. And do you think it has to, and that, that communication that happens outside of the writing, like talking to somebody else and then working through those I ideas, do you think that's something that's really critical to that process when we talk about catalyzing? The idea?
Speaker 3:Yeah. I think that, so I, I, I think that maybe I'm old school, but I just think of it like two, two triangles. So it could, I think it's supposed to be a double diamond, or I don't know,
Speaker 4:I've heard of this,
Speaker 3:But all I can think of is two triangles. So in the beginning, you know, really expanding your thinking. Yeah. Throwing out ideas and then with a, with almost a meeting and a purpose where there is no, there's no place you're necessarily going, you're wandering, curious, able to explore, um, you seek horizons, you walk towards places not to get to the horizon, but merely to unlock maybe what are the possibilities that are down there? Yeah. Like when you're looking at idea, let's say we were all right now gonna, you know, we're gonna make, you know, a rocket and this rocket, his intention was to, um, you know, see if we can quickly transport dogs, you know, into space. Well, firstly, we, neither of us probably know that much about rocketry. I don't know if, well, maybe, maybe, maybe I shouldn't. I shouldn't Paul
Speaker 2:Looks no, you're right. You're right. Wouldn't know we don't. No,
Speaker 3:<laugh>,
Speaker 2:I'm an engineer, but I know nothing about rocket
Speaker 3:Actual
Speaker 4:Engineer. Yeah.
Speaker 3:But I mean, you know, we would then need to go learn about rocketry, um, uh, you know, um, escape, velocities, the effects of gravity, um, all sorts of things that we don't really know that much about. And so normally when you are creating something brand new, you're going normally into a space where you may not have the domain knowledge, um, to be able to effectively debate and discuss. So you tend to talk in generics and or yeah. And then once you go down that place or that horizon and you start to learn this new field or this new, you know, let's learn about solidity programming, learn about Ethereum and how does it work? And you're going down to the basement of cryptocurrency. What you start to learn there is, okay. These are maybe actually more spaces we should potentially go and explore again. So it's, it's, it's, it's, it's almost a, and I think honor that honoring that process is hard in companies.
Speaker 4:I was gonna say, yeah, cuz it needs a lot of time undirected activity and something where I think people who are overseeing that activity as well in the organization, they say, what are we gonna get at the end of it? We don't know<laugh>
Speaker 3:<laugh> and why are you doing it?
Speaker 4:It's hard to do supply in many organizations. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Where, where, what is our goal here? Our goal is to find a goal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like, wow, what did that, what is that? You know, I, I was what the other night I was watching and, and, and just learning initially how unity works, like the, the 3d programming language for games and how it interacts with blockchains. And I literally, you know, did an hour tutorial on how that worked. I, I don't think I'm necessarily the best coder or anything like that, but I just wanted to understand what exactly is this thing, you know, what is, how does the blockchain actually work with, um, games? Like how do they connect together? I just wanted to understand, okay. I wanted to go actually look at the fundamentals. And so then I can talk more competently and we can start to innovate.
Speaker 4:Yeah. Okay. So that's a good example of that then like Fred's gonna go and learn about unity. So it's gonna enable more, I guess, informed conversations elsewhere that I guess become more productive. Yeah.
Speaker 3:And, and, and now coming all the way back. Yeah. That may form part of the narrative that may form part of the appendix. Um, that context, it may be required. Reading required learning, um, it'll inform, um, the type of team, the, the, the, the, um, types of tools we need to find, um, identify partners and companies, um, influences, um, experts, courses that we need to go and refer to look at and consider. Mm. And that's like, you know, if you think about it milit, it's like, these are the logistics and the supply chain that you need to go and fund this exploration mission. Right. Yeah. That's right. So that's, so you keep going,
Speaker 4:That's the foundation of your like roadmap forward.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think that's really hard, you know, that's why, you know, big leaps in thinking big leaps in innovation are hard because it's an, it's an UN, uh, exact science of it's seriously. Yeah. Wandering. Yeah. You're literally wandering around. Yeah. Yep. And I encourage that in our team. So in our, in our S I run the ventures team at finder, which this is what we do. We literally wander, you know, we wander around and we make, we made a game the other day and we haven't launched it. And we, we made, um, a little app that transfers money between people in our finder app. It's on one of our versions. It fully works, you know, it's like, like we just wander. Right. What does this actually feel like? What does it actually mean? What does that yeah. What does it do? What does that say? You know, cause you talk about it, like, Hey, we should send money between people. Cool. And like, that's the end of that. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, that's the end of the idea of that feeling. Whereas now when you go to that horizon, right. So you go to that place, you walk down towards that area. Now you, you sit there and you're like, huh, this is what this place looks like. And that's really interesting. And now what do we see from here?
Speaker 4:Yeah. What does it enable or yeah. What new opportunities does it create?
Speaker 3:And that's a hard process. Right. And that's, that's something I think, you know, as, as a leader or, or anyone who's, you know, a manager at a company, one of the most important roles is to assign capital. Right. So where do you put people's time? Yep. Um, the second one obviously is operational excellence, but those two things are the most important things. And signing capital to that. Inexact science is hard. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It is hard. And I would imagine quite difficult to, um, to distribute in a fair and even way across a, a large team. I mean, how many people are there in finder now
Speaker 3:Must be at least 300
Speaker 2:It's 300 plus
Speaker 3:Three.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Yeah. And how many of them are, are encouraged to, to go down that road that you are describing? Well,
Speaker 3:You know, we, one of the, the, the values of Fonda, the third value is to go live and there is a real exploratory feeling to that value. Right. Of, of going live of getting, putting things out there. And, you know, um, we talk about the idea that, you know, anything on your computer, um, doesn't exist until it's on the internet.
Speaker 2:<laugh> right.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Which is kind of whack, which is kind of true, right. It doesn't, it's on the internet and it didn't happen. Um, we, so I definitely think people are, they do go live and they do experiment, but this, this level of dedicated, assigned time to wandering to places is a, is, is a defined area of finder in the ventures team.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. Okay. And over the, the sort of 22 plus years that find has been in existence, I was really fascinated by the fact that you focus so highly on Australia as a market first, and the second country that you went to was the states, is that right? Um, but that was some 10 years after the company was founded. So just looking at the, kind of, um, that, the history of a lot of innovation in the internet space, that seems like a long period of time from one country to the next, was that deliberate or was that a factor of the market or, you know, was that a decision? The leadership team was taking what, what was kind of the driver behind? Okay. Let's take our time. Let's make sure it works here first. And then we'll start thinking about the next place.
Speaker 3:Mm it's interesting. Um, reflecting back like that. And in the, in the moment, in the time, I think to give context, like Fondo a, was a, you know, a bootstrap company for, you know, only to we had our first, we had, we first ran a funding ever last year.
Speaker 2:Goodness. Just to a new context. Wow. Yeah. Okay. That's, that's impressive.
Speaker 3:So, so, you know, casually funded business, you know, we ran a profitable business. It's not like a, a fast growth business. It's more of a slow, um, slow as right. The word it's, it's more of a, we work fast at finder, but it's just, we don't recklessly grow for growth sake. Um, you know, it's, it's very Warren Buffy in a way really. Yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's, it makes it even more remarkable actually that, that you've, you've managed to, to grow the company that way, because that is not the way that most, you know, dot com companies or that the leading digital companies have actually grown, you know, they've all grown by being fueled by these big capital raises huge increases in, in capital. Yeah. Which have taken the valuation up and given them what they needed to grow. So to do it organically is a phenomenal achievement.
Speaker 4:I know, but also creates expectation.
Speaker 2:Doesn't it? Well, it does.
Speaker 4:We've given you mega bucks now you shall grow.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 4:That's it. And yeah. So do you feel like that you could take, you could take that more considered approach that you were describing to, to growth. Yeah. Because you were, you know, boots, strapped and
Speaker 3:Yeah. I, I think, I think, yeah, it's the same, it, I think it should be the same equation, whether you have big money or not. Yeah, really. Um, it
Speaker 2:Should be, but it is.
Speaker 3:<laugh>
Speaker 2:Very rarely anyway,
Speaker 3:We, you know, I think it depends on the clarity of the growth and the clarity of the business model and the opportunity if it's very clear and obvious, and it's literally, we just need to do more of this and do it in a bigger sense then, you know, there are times when we have grown definitely faster and we knew what we were, what, why we were doing that. And we, we just added on, because we knew this was gonna work cuz we'd done it before then I think it's slightly, that's a different risk return trade. Mm. Um, I think when you are like pot shotting, like you don't really know and there's a lot of money, then you're gonna make a lot of mistakes. Yes. And I think that's what there's not really seen is that there are huge numbers of projects in like Amazon and Google that literally have, you know, tens of millions, if not hundreds of millions and they'd never make it.
Speaker 2:Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Um, and, and that's the same thing, right. That's them just trying to start a new business and they fail. It's just actually just a startup
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 3:And funded as well, but they just fund it from their balance sheet. Yeah. Which is the same thing as what we kind of do in a way, um, just in a small scale.
Speaker 2:But to your point, you know, even with, with companies that have got a really good business model, I mean, I'm thinking of Klarner who have just announced, you know, an 85% drop in their valuation based on what's happening on the stock market at the moment, nothing wrong with their business model. You know, people need to borrow money to buy stuff. This is, you know, gone on for millennia, but because they have been funded by these huge capital raises, the valuation went up to what, 450 billion at one point, um, and has dropped, you know, right back down. But it's been inflated because they've had these big cap raises, which have kind of driven the perception of value way in excess of what they were able to, to deliver from a revenue
Speaker 3:Or expected value. Right.
Speaker 2:Or expected value
Speaker 3:That's value they expected to grow into.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Whereas your model, I think is much more, uh, it's got a lot more integrity to it because it's, it's basically saying, you know, we, we have to be able to prove to ourselves that our business has value in of itself and that it grows through our efforts to make it so not somebody else just chucking money at it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And I, I agree with you and I think, um, maybe to wrap that back, so let's go, if you go all the way back, what does that mean? Well, we have to make something valuable to the customer. Yep. We have to find product market fit. Yep. Um, and we've had lots of things that have not, you know, we built a marketplace during COVID and we shut that down after about five months, like a full on marketplace, you could buy and find out you could list products. It was full on. So we thought eCommerce is gonna be massive. Yes. Yeah. And then we kind of like thought, okay, maybe there's a gap here, but we didn't really do enough of what that exact gap was. And we realized that actual sheer depth and, um, moat there is it's, it's like, it's, it's not a moat, like a barrier that stops you in front of you. It's just the sheer length and depth of data, um, people to contact and, um, almost connect connections that you need to build to get to a, a reasonable size of whether enough buyers and sellers to create that network effect. Yeah. The, the amount of, um, activation energy that needs to put in is enormous. It's enormous. Yeah. And you know, when you're really late to the game, like eBay's been around sold, I mean, listed, you know, it's kind of been done. Books have been written about it. I'm pretty sure the guy from trade me in the New Zealand, this has probably a rip off, but he just literally read the eBay book and then copy pasted.<laugh> like, you know, the book was already written. It just, literally there was nothing in New Zealand, you know, like yeah. That sense. It's a good opportunity, right? Yeah. Whereas we're like, okay, eBays here, it's number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 top sellers. And that was probably, you know, a little bit of a, you know, it was a poor, but it wasn't a, it wasn't, it wasn't, it, it, it, it definitely failed, but it taught us to a lot of things. And there are, there are pieces of things that now we have used in other ways, really. Um, so you kind of, yeah. So taking payments, like we never took any payments, no one gave no customer gave finder money. Never. Yeah. Okay. It was like, it's a free service. Right. And we were like, people are willing to give finder money. Like that was a, that, that, that as an idea was not like we were like, you are willing to give us money revolutionary. Yeah. Like to us internally, that's like, everyone else is like, obviously getting money we're like of us. Like, would you give us some money? Are you sure you wanna, like, you've never given us any money before, you know, that, that, that seems, it's kind of like a, if you think of it, it's a, an idea wall that we broke down and then now new nuances were able to be formed. It's like, oh, well, we are, we can take payments now. You know, we subscribe, what, what do you take them for? Well, you know, we started collecting money from customers and so people could list their products on finder. They still can list their products, they list their business bot. So we just slightly changed it. Oh, okay. Excuse me. Um, and that, that just, that just wasn't an idea we would ever do. It just wouldn't happen. Right. No one would, you know, no customer will give finder a credit card. It just, you know, that had improved, obviously our payment terms, cuz you kind of almost go to negative negative terms because someone prepays your, you, you kinda owe their money. Really. Yeah. Mm-hmm<affirmative>, you know, so you going negative, which is really, you know, it's good for the business, you know, to a crew. Yeah. You go the other way around, you know, you get a liability. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I don't know if that's the accounting treatment by the way, but I just, it is never enough. Yeah. A nuance<laugh> um, it is, you know, I think, you know, we also think now, Hey, could, could we build a subscription? Well, people are willing to give us money. That idea can now be, you know, that, that, that barrier is no longer a barrier, you know? And, and so, so let's actually extend that. So people will give us money. Okay. Now we built a wallet in, in, in finder, in the, in the app and it, you know, it has, you know, I don't know, north of tens of millions of dollars in it. And people are willing to buy crypto with, from finder again. Oh, well, people are willing to give finder money. So maybe they're willing to trade with us. I suppose it's a nice leap and not, not too far away. Cool. So, you know, I think, I think that's, I think there's, you know, I think of it, like, you know, you build sort of a, a, a, um, a construction, it kind of like gets taken to this, you know, tip, but the energy and the idea barriers it crossed, come into existence are kind of like, you know, when I think about you, you imagine you got on a ship right now for the very first time, like a wooden ship and you came to Australia and all you saw was Bush. And you know, like, like snakes and insects and birds flying around and some kangaroos, you know, and, and, and, and obviously some, some, some people who originally were here and you are like, whoa, okay. Let's say we wanna walk from that first beach to a stream. No one's ever been well, well, people have been on that route, but I mean, no one has a clear map that's been written to go to that path. Like, we didn't even know if we can get any water in the first place. Okay. So we don't even know if we can survive. Oh, that's a bit of a problem. All right. So imagine that first person going that path, maybe, maybe, maybe two people set off and one person comes back. Okay. That's kind of bad, but like, you know, that path gets formed. Yep. Now, and I think of it like an idea bridge inside an organization. It's, it's like, you know, once you start to be okay with doing something like that, that gives birth to now, that road gets formed and that's, that's normal. So now say that path to the water was established. Okay. So now we need another path and we're thinking, Hey, can we make it from here to the wood, to the forest? Cause we need some wood. Cause we need to build our houses and you know, those kind of things. Yeah. Yes. We're okay with exploring one we're okay. Because we've built a road before two, we've worked out how to survive. You know, these are kinds of things and skills and muscles that you'd start to learn.
Speaker 4:That was the new normal, right? Yeah. It goes from, here's the thing we've never done before. Oh, now we do it all the time and river confident to like take the next
Speaker 3:Step. I'll give you the most extreme example. Um, you know, we've, we obviously have this new wallet, business and finder. Yeah. And it's, it's obviously a very small percentage of our revenue. Um, and, and you know, I think some people can see that as like, oh, well, you know, you know, we're spending all this resources and it's only for a small owner revenue. Well, let's go back all the way back in time. And I remember sitting in a, you know, we, we had a, we had a, a boardroom, which was a hexagon. It was kind of interesting cuz no one sat in the middle, which at the head of the table, which was kind of nice. Yeah. Cool. And we had 12 ideas, all written on a four pieces of paper. They were, I'd say max three or four sentences with a title. And they were literally just put it on the paper, on the, on the, on the, on the table. I can still see it now. And we just voted on which ideas we go for. Yeah. And four of them were chosen and one of them just happened to be finder three of them failed<laugh> and literally that's how we began.
Speaker 2:That's start.
Speaker 3:So, so like, you know, yeah. We chose a great idea back then, but that's the nature of it. Right. So we are still trying to choose ideas. Now they just don't look like what Fonda looks like today. It look, they look like, you know, a wallet that, that you know, is making some money, but it's, and, and that's hard, you know, that's a, that's a, that's a hard idea because every see everything, you see all the structures, everything you see around you inside an organization looks like the, what the, what, what, what the organization is today. And it's very hard sometimes to see what it was. Yeah. I can imagine Microsoft was maybe a tiny office with a few, um, people sitting around coding dos and like getting a call from IBM and like quickly better get in the car and drive on over. Yes. You know, like, or get enough, let's look at airplane flights and figure out, maybe there wasn't, you know, let's go and call up a travel agent. Maybe that's how they did. I dunno how they did it back then. But you know, before the internet, before there were hashtags, you know yeah. Before there was to, um, you know, I, I think,
Speaker 2:And mobile phones.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Cell phones, by the way, here's a question for you. I remember. So I used to, when in the beginning I sold websites and I used to drive around all around Sydney. Yeah. For distances to try and win business. And I did a relatively solid, you know, three outta 10 success rate, but I was re I realized we didn't have GPSs then no. And we looked at the, you know, the, the book of
Speaker 2:Maps, you have a Z, did you? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Like, like an, a Z. Um, and, and, and, and what I'm trying to remember is how did we know how long it would take?
Speaker 2:Oh, what an interesting question. I don't think we did. I think,
Speaker 3:How did we know we're gonna be on time?
Speaker 2:I think we just sort of had that cognitive process kinda it's from a, to B, it's gonna take us that long. Yeah. Like how could we
Speaker 3:Possibly know that you
Speaker 2:Wouldn't know?
Speaker 3:And, and obviously, well,
Speaker 2:You'd look at it in terms of, it's this number of kilometers, I'm gonna be doing X number of kilometers per hour. You're gonna take me an hour. Yeah.
Speaker 3:Whatever I agree with you roughly. But I was thinking like, and I agree. And I was like, but I was thinking about it the other day. I was like, I was like, like, have we become worse estimators? Cause we're so precise now
Speaker 2:Completely. I, I
Speaker 4:Would say yes,
Speaker 2:A hundred percent, definitely
Speaker 4:A hundred percent because everything is, I guess, everything is very, it's easy to make loose plans as well, because we're all very contactable. And, but also we're very used to getting precise answers. It'll take 37 minutes to get from here to over there. That's that's fine. And so,
Speaker 2:But when it doesn't take 37 minutes, how, how off do you get? I,
Speaker 4:I know it's so annoying.
Speaker 2:It's like the weather fall comes. I mean, you know, the technology that sits behind the weather forecast is extraordinary. Yeah. But how many times is it wrong? Well, it seems like it's wrong more often than it's. Right. But that's only because we have a very high expectation it's gonna be right.
Speaker 3:One. So I just wanna build on this idea if I can slow. I don't, if I'm taking it too much of a tangent from, so just on this idea, and I think it's a really important idea, um, is to recognize how poor humans are at forecasting, the future. Like we are just average, I'd say below average. Yes. Really rotten, like people,
Speaker 2:Even when we've got data to back it up.
Speaker 3:Yeah. Proper, like what the, like, like a hundred years of data of population growth. And we're trying to predict this number. No, no idea. No
Speaker 2:Outcome of an election. No idea.
Speaker 3:Yeah.<laugh> um, so, um, what I, what I, what I wanna sort of take that data point. Right. And I, I think what's interesting in coming all the way back to the innovation question is I think in that moment of creation, one of the inputs that you're trying to also encounter and deal with is what is the future gonna look like? Right. So you are not planning when you're innovating for three months, six, probably not even 12. It probably took a good 18 months before the finder app took any shape at all. Robert, we took two years before it started to gain some traction with its wallet and probably two and a half years before we built the earn product. You know, it's like, like, think about, that's a significant, terrible lack of ability to forecast the future, right? Like shocking two and a half years to wait until we've got some P think, okay, let's turn that a round up. Let's submit that. Maybe just, maybe we are just not great at forecast in the future. And if you look on earth, like this is probably a big statement and there might be some thing that I don't realize does as well, but I'd say almost all of biology also is pretty bad at predicting the future. And doesn't really spend that much time doing it. They don't sit around and go, Hmm. Well, you know, I think this is probably gonna be a mass extinction coming. We probably should forecast for that and deal with it. And those kind of things that's not gonna happen. Right. So, so, so in general, what do they do? I think this is interesting, right? Yeah. And I think this is what the, the, the zeitgeist of today is about is I think what they spend their time doing is focusing on their ability to adapt. Yeah. So, so the ability to respond, to change, to move, to, to, to, to, to take new inputs and as quickly as possible, translate them into an output that's relevant. Yeah. Timely and valuable to customers. So given that, I think, you know, this is<inaudible> future forecast. If I was looking at, you know, companies and markets, as you were talking about before, I think if you right now were to index companies on their adaptability, I think you're gonna see the winners in the next two to three years. Mm. And who would you put in that category? Well, you know, for example, I think there are, there are fast followers as well. Like Microsoft does a great job. It's like, and no slight in no hand, you know, Samsung did it for years and still does, but Microsoft, you know, saw hip chat, saw slack and made teams. And I don't think they, you know, I'm not saying like that's good or bad or by them, but they adapt quickly. Yes. You know, they do a good job. Yeah. And they rally teams around it and they, they put engineers and they put a product set around it and it works and it, you know, it builds onto their thing. I think that's a good thing. Um, you know, I don't think necessarily I was the inventor of comparison as an idea that that's an age old idea that's been around forever and it was in print magazines beforehand. We just did a really good job of adapting. And we, we do a good job of adapting and to new things. Right. You know, so during COVID we started, you know, comparing heavily stocks cause stocks are really popular, um, where to buy them cryptocurrencies, face masks, rat tests, you know, these are all massive things that came. Energy's a big deal right now. A price of energy. People are switching their energy massively right now, which they should, by the way, that's small tip, there's lot, a lot of money to be saved and you get a hundred dollars in the, find a wallet. That's a small promotion, shameless<laugh> shame of this promotion. Remember that? Go for it. Yeah. Um, so, you know, I think indexing on that I think is really strong. Yeah. Um, there are things that don't really change that much. You know, bricks, people are still buying bricks. People are still buying steel. Um, they still need iron. You know, there are certain things that I don't think are changed that much. And there have large lengths of persistence. Um, you know, they're gonna take a large period of time to sort of unwind that the car bunk on top of human's behaviors, right. Those are the kind of things you're looking for. It's gonna take a long time to change some of those things. But there are other areas where I think if I was to, you know, other companies that adapting fast, you know, I think teams is, it started out pretty average and it's gotten better. I think, um, you know, LinkedIn keeps, you know, I think moving a little bit. I like LinkedIn. I don't know. I think maybe I'm just the odd one. Um, everyone everyone's hanging out on, on, I don't know, Instagram and TikTok these days and I'm the one on LinkedIn still. I, I like the place, you know, the reason why, you know, why I like it is cuz it's clean and well lit. Yes. You know who you're speaking to. Yes you do.
Speaker 2:But I mean to
Speaker 3:There's some accountability to that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. I, I agree. I, I think it, it, it can be a little bit banal sometimes
Speaker 3:Can be boring. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Uh, and a bit boring and, and uh, you know, you need, you need to be in the right groups to, to get value out of it. But I, I agree with you. I think it, it serve a really useful purpose. The thing that really surprises me about LinkedIn is there is no competitor to it. There is no viable competitor to LinkedIn. That's right. Why hasn't anybody had a go
Speaker 4:As much as people
Speaker 2:Complain, creating something that addresses some of the shortcomings of LinkedIn
Speaker 3:Must be a hard problem.
Speaker 2:It must be a hard problem. Yeah. Yeah. You wouldn't think it would be that right. I mean, you know, a massive market for million news is whatever it is.
Speaker 4:Yeah. But building something to get a network effect from the ground
Speaker 3:Up. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Another company has been around for a long time and survived a lot of things, but, uh, yeah. I'm surprised it hasn't got any viable competitors.
Speaker 3:I think so building on, you know, those other companies, things which are new, but have become slightly less popular, but if they make it through, they'll always still have that moat and that brand from, from, you know, that COVID digitization, we went through. So, you know, I think Zoom's a good example. Right. So what is the difference these days between zoom and Google meetings and teams? Like, it's kind of, not much, maybe, I don't know. Everyone has their preferences, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. Just of a personal preference thing or a company preference thing. And it's like really any kind of logic to
Speaker 3:Now. It's, it's gotten
Speaker 2:Better than another. Yeah. I don't think they're all, it's like your energy
Speaker 3:Company. You don't really care. No. Um, no disrespect to anyone who works in energy, but
Speaker 2:<laugh> no, but I mean, if you're a Microsoft user, it's, it's the go-to product. Right.
Speaker 4:And it's dictated often by, you know, your company, your organization, what sort of infrastructure they're bought into,
Speaker 2:Why would you want to go to zoom if you've got Microsoft 365? I mean, it's, um, you know, one of those things really isn't it. Yeah. And if you're into Google, same thing, it's a platform choice.
Speaker 3:And I think there's cost savings now everyone's quite conscious about, so I think zoom is one of those ones where they need to find that next thing, that next angle. And I bet you, that's what they're talking about all day in their just going, we need another feature or hook or, or
Speaker 2:Pandemic
Speaker 3:To keep.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So because that was the event. Yeah. I mean the pandemic was the event for zoom. If they, if they hadn't had that pandemic, would they be as big as they are now? Probably not because Microsoft and Google would've swallowed up the market.
Speaker 3:Yeah. It's, it's definitely, um, you know, I think, I think we, we were using zoom maybe two or three years before the pandemic and because it was just easier and it was just better. Yeah. But that, I think we were, we were like, everyone else was sending us, you know, WebEx and, and, you know, Google meets and stuff like that. Um, we would send a zoom link and everyone was like, oh, you could actually share your screen. You know? Like it works. Yeah. You know? Um, so, so I guess what, I'm, what I'm trying to submit, but is that's a good example of a company where, you know, if they make it through, they've almost, they've got a verb, you know, zoom me, you've got a great position. You've gotta play great place. If they just need to stabilize, they need to show that they can adapt and be resilient through this. And then great. Fortunes will be on the other side.
Speaker 2:Fair enough. Can I talk about crypto?
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 2:What's happening.
Speaker 3:It's all happening.<laugh>
Speaker 2:<laugh> is it, is it gonna recover? I mean, I, it's been a really brutal couple of months. Um, and I know that you've, you've invested in that, that area itself. What, what would you say to people who are thinking of investing crypto?
Speaker 3:So, you know, I always think start starts more start with the amount of money you're willing to just lose start there.
Speaker 2:So, because most of us have yeah. Lost<laugh>
Speaker 3:In. Well, it depends, you know, if you bought, if even if you bought the all time high in 2018, 2019, I think you'd at least break, even if not slightly up right now, mm-hmm,<affirmative> just, you know, to give gut context. So, you know, if you bought any time before 2018, you are up like that's. Yeah. So, and the new high, you know, what, 64,000 it's pretty high 60, I think it might be 68 when I touched. Um, so, and if you just zoom back, let's go back further. Um, in 2013, Bitcoin crossed, I think it was a thousand dollars for the first time, and then it crashed down to$150. So you're down 85%. That'd be a pretty big loss. Right. But that it hit a thousand dollars was a remarkable thing. Now imagine if Bitcoin went to a thousand dollars, how much would you buy? Like as much as you could possibly load up probably. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So, so think of that perception and zoom back in time. And now what's hard is to say actually, maybe right now we're at the$150 mark, potentially mm-hmm<affirmative> like, I'm not, I'm not, this is not financial advice. No, no, but yeah, we that's, right. Yeah.<laugh> not expecting every market gets to this point where it goes through these, you know, exorbitant, exuberance, and then fear and, you know, um, hopelessness. Yeah. Hope, you know, um, capitulation, um, anger, um, despair and, and, and normally, and, and depends on you. You've got obviously gotta back a company or a, a crypto that is gonna survive and is gonna, you know, continue on. And if you do that during those times, that's when you tend to actually make your money, you buy in those times when those extreme fear, um, you know, despair, um, and those kinds of beliefs. So, so right now, I think is the time where I personally am adding. So I'm, I see this as like, I believe mm-hmm,<affirmative>, I'm a believer in what crypto's doing. I think it's just the beginning of like, just at the, at the beginning of the internet, it's only just started and there are more engineers and developers and designers and accountants and smart business people going into it. It's not like, it's not like people are leaving. It's like people are going in, more people are going in more courses are being taught like more, um, like kids now talk about their NFTs and their cryptocurrencies than they do, you know, talk about their, um, you know, their baseball cards or their, um, online gaming or stocks. Yeah. But like, you know, your young kids that know how to do technical analysis, you know, for stock trading mm-hmm or, or, or, or crypto trading. And they're learning that as such a young age, imagine what they're gonna be like in 20 years time. I think it's an incredible education. Yes. It's like a, like a, yeah, they might have lost some money. They might have made some money as well. I know a lot of people who have made very good money and have helped their family and, you know, put their kids through school. Um, I know single moms that have, you know, just, just collective, like consistently invested throughout time. And now, you know, they take care of their, their, their child. You know, there's all sorts of different stories, right? Selling is the hard part, obviously with all these things, cuz you get really exuberant and, but this is a time I think where I believe, and I'm not going anywhere now. I'll, I'm here to here to keep, um, building. And um, I think this is another one of those lows. Talk about it again. Like I remember 2017, 2018, when we hit$3,800, Bitcoin hit 3,800 from a high of 20 grand. I remember the day I was sitting there, I was watching the chart and I saw it capitulate and everyone thought it was dead. It was like, oh this is over. People were leaving. They like left, you know, I'm just like, and I just stayed. I was like, ah, quite right. You've gotta have been here for the long term. Haven't you really that's the thing. Yeah. Amazon stock just after the.com crash, you know, that hit like ridiculous prices. And there are people who write letters to Jeff Bezos thinking him for putting their kids through college. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Like, but that's, that's what it is. Right? That's that's, that's, that's, that's the creation of wealth. That's where you believe where you understand where you've got someone and a group of, of other people, right. Coming together to create wealth, to bring wealth. And there are other people who take the risk and invest with those managers, invest with those people to create something great. And they deserve those gains. Cause they took the risk. And also the people who did the work, they deserve the gains because they did the work to go and get that. And so the, the whole system works. And so I think this is one of those times where people's belief in crypto are questioned. And you know, if you don't believe in Bitcoin anymore, look, I'm happy to put my Bitcoin address at the bottom of this podcast. You, everyone can send me there.<laugh> Bitcoin. It's fine. I get it. You're over it. Totally understand. I'll hold onto it, you know, for you probably won't, you know, if, if you're not into it, that's fine. I'll hold.
Speaker 2:Okay. So I think we're going to do that, and we'll also put a link into your book and to find the, uh, and if anybody obviously wants to send you money, I'm sure you'll say yes as well.<laugh> Fred, Fred. Thank you so much for joining us and great conversation. Really good to have you here and, uh, best of luck in whatever you're gonna do next. We're gonna be keeping an eye out for that too. Um, but thank you very much, indeed.
Speaker 3:Really amazing conversation. Ands, really looking forward to seeing what's coming next. I, I I'm, I'm sure it won't be what you expect.<laugh> thanks a lot. All the better there. Cheers.
Speaker 1:Hope you enjoy today's episode. Feel free to check our other episodes out on any of the major podcast channels and@digitalvillage.network. If you enjoyed what you heard today, we'd love a subscribe follow, or even a share. It really helps us out, but on that note, stay safe and I look forward to catching you on the next episode of that digital village show.