Welcome to on the chain. This is chip, I'm here with my best co host ever. And that is Jeff, what's going on tonight. Jeff
is going on, Chip, great to be here tonight, looking forward to the show. Tell you what,
yeah, we got a really good one. And you know, once in a while the project comes together. And it's something we take a look at. And it's just a phenomenal idea. And we have none other than founder and CEO will rush from stack. And you're asking what is stack? Well, if you have kids or you know, people that are 18 and under, and is there a crypto solution for them? There is now we'll get into it a little bit. And we'll he's been with billion dollar companies. It's got an amazing background. We're gonna jump into all that. Jeff, are you ready to kick it off?
I'm ready to go. Let's go. Let's go do it and go.
Welcome to on the chain.
And Chip. Good to be back. Did you say the bell rushes with us?
We'll rush. That's right. And by the way, let's, let's all put our hands together. Let's welcome we'll come on. Hey,
guys,
on the chain, great to be here with you. And like I teased in the open. I mean, let's little here a little bit about your background. Let's dive into the project. Because let's hear about your background. He's obviously spent a little bit time logged a little bit of time with some other organizations out there.
Yeah, appreciate it. No, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Chip. And Jeff. Um, yeah, I'll give some quick context on me. So I've spent the last 13 years in the securities in sort of traditional, like Fiat Banking and Securities world with the Charles Schwab and he trades and TD Ameritrade 's of the world. And in all that time, I think there was sort of like this burning question in my mind. And it was, there's a group of investors that are never going to click a Robin Hood ad or Charles Schwab ad. And every second of every day that they miss out on the stock market, they don't get compound interest, and they immediately fall behind. And so the question that was kind of always burning in the back of my head was how do you get those people involved. And you know, my career took a few sort of turns a I went back to school got a master's degree I worked in in venture for a little bit. And then I'm most recently was working with a teen bank called COPPA. And their solution was a way to teach high schoolers how to graduate with a credit score, and how to save and how to do a lot of really cool stuff. And I helped them on their teen investing products. And there was sort of this kind of clear moment of delineation of running a few A B tests online. And we would literally keep the same image the same words, we would change one word stock in crypto, and we will get five times the engagement on crypto from teens. And it was super clear that there was enough excitement behind you know, this kind of crypto web three worlds, that if you could use it as a way to introduce investing as a concept to young people, and you could teach them and educate them on their finance, you can make a lasting impact. And you could change that group of people that really don't do that first initial layer of just like wanting to open their own investment account by introducing it to them before they're afraid of new things. And so that was really what sac was born out of that idea of just using the excitement of crypto to go teach young people.
Well, it's got a great name to like, everybody knows in crypto, you're stacking bags, right, you're stacking. So I was like, I was like the perfect game to the you're always doing some kind of like I'm stacking dagger this and this and that. And but it's kind of interesting how the evolution happens. We talk about it a lot here. As far as like a lot of people even, you know, got into their 20s or 30s or 40s. Kind of yeah, they had a 401k. But they weren't really investors until really crypto started coming into its own. And so it's it's interesting to see that those A B tests would produce such a higher volume, click through rate than what you would normally be accustomed to, and what I mean, the idea of of having this available, because Jeff and I both have, you know, kids under 18. I think that's your target, right? Yeah. Yeah. Tell us a little tell us a little bit about Slack. And, you know, what about the platform itself? And, you know, in your target everything?
Yeah, so I mean, our platform, it's a mobile app. And it does two things. I mean, one at a very basic level, it allows under 18 year olds to cone an account with their parents. And that's just like, you know, teens want to get their hands on crypto. There's a group that, you know, we would in the very early days, we would go on Reddit a lot and see teens that had hacked their parents coin base account. You know, teens that were on exchanges that didn't ask for their age, which is You know, might be a red flag to maybe not be on that exchange in the first place. And to get authorized to serve under 18 customers and financial products, you have to be really thoughtful about how you do it. You have to go through, obviously a big legal and compliance process. And so that was step one, it was literally just doing, you know, the ability to have 18 year olds under 18 year olds on your platform. Step two, is education. But how do you make education engaging? How do you have them learn hands on because when a 16 year old makes a mistake with $20, they will make that mistake again, when they have $2,000, you know, or $20,000. And so it's really just like fighting through that really early lesson era of your life, that you're kind of forming your habits that are gonna stick with you for the next 25 3040 years. And teaching some of the basics.
That's awesome. Yeah, I'm looking through this. And you know, when chip, you know, brought brought this up, and he said, you get we got to check this out. You know, it's, it's really, it's amazing, because one of the things that chip brought up a little while ago is that we have a lot of individuals in the crypto space right now that crypto was the first time they ever invested. And, you know, you're coming from an interesting background, working with, you know, the mainstream finance, like, like Schwab and some of the others. If you were to take your experience in finance, the ABX testing you did with these individuals that are so passionate about crypto, you know, what, like, what was the one thing that kind of led you to, to say, hey, you know, what I'm done, which was done with traditional finance, it's all about crypto. What was that transition point?
I think the fact that a lot of the UX UI eyes in the FinTech world still look like, you know, traditional finance apps. And no one had created something that was that exciting. I mean, we could use a Robin Hood as an example, right, Robin Hood created a billion dollar business by just reinventing a product to be mobile and somewhat friendly, you know, on a phone to go use and be retail focused. I think it's taking that a layer deeper when you are crypto native. And you know, all of us crypto enthusiasts in the world can appreciate this. It is very unencumbered by not being a Fiat products, when you are when you start as a Fiat product. And then you want to add take Venmo or any of the PayPal, these companies that are adding crypto to a lot of their offerings. And you're adding it to a platform that's natively fer product, right. And so the user experience that you have how you dive in, I always call it like you're steering the cruise ship, you can only go one degree at a time. When you are in this world and you dive in really deep headfirst, you are the two person sailboat, right, you can see or any direction that you want, and you can be native to this kind of web three world that we're living in. So I think just out on its own, is the kind of the Zeitgeist that we're after. And it's taking that excitement again, and it's trying to get people that don't traditionally get invested in financial products to go be part of crypto, naturally, I think and I'm curious to hear your guys's perspective on this, but I feel like crypto has a rebel brands right now, it's kind of like apple in the 80s. You know, it's like fighting the bad Windows universe or something. Still is. I mean, I really think that the crypto world that we're living in has so much opportunity there to just get people excited. And if you get involved with 10 2050 bucks, our our platforms completely agnostic to how much money you have in your account. It's really just a way for you to get hands on. Yeah,
really great. You know, Jeff, you brought this up a lot in terms of, you know, working, you know, with your daughters, and, you know, really trying to figure out, you know, how to move money to them. But then also, you don't want to just move the money, but you want to actually get them invested, you know, so, you know, I think, you know, it's it's so it's so vital, the I talked to my son also about crypto and I've been putting crypto aside for him. But that's his engagement, you know, he doesn't, doesn't get to see it doesn't get to, to, you know, access the app, you know, it doesn't really engage with it. And I'm looking at this, I'm like, This is awesome, you know, not going to give them all this crypto to play around with, like you said, 20 bucks, 30 You know, $100 they start playing around, they get they get this idea of what it really means to invest and to start learning if you can learn at that age, you know, all the different financial you know, needs, you know, to you know, for long term strategy, you know, I think you know, for them, Matt, I wish I had the opportunity, you know, pre 18 Head of investing, and I hear you Yes. I mean, it'd be it would be amazing, it'd be a game changer.
I think part of the funnest part of the reason, you know well is that you know, what you're doing is such a benefit, because there's really not a lot of financial education taught you and at the high school level, just just isn't, I mean, it's, if you go, if you, it hasn't changed a lot, since you know, anybody in the chat or watching us, it's kind of the same thing. So some very basic stuff, but the kids getting set up for this new world, and understanding that, and you know, in, stocks can be emotional, you like, well, I'd like to stock or I love this product. That's why I would invest in it. It gets your mean coins, you know, you get your NF T's there's all kinds of like, kind of an emotional tied away. But then there's like, straight out use case coins where these just have a use case, this is what the round for this, would this, this doesn't have your case is a store value, this one smart contract. So is that some of the education that you're planning on? I guess, you know, with the app and having the having them engage with?
Yeah, so I mean, the educational content, I'll say maybe two things? Well, one is it's Gen Z native. And so it looks more like a tick tock video, you know, than anything else, I think. I mean, you know, firstly, I'm not tick tock user myself, but I'm thankful that members of my team are it you have to start from engagement, right. And if you can't engage a tee, and then why build the platform in the first place. I think there there's a lot of really great educational content out there. And some of these FinTech apps like Robin Hood, and Coinbase have some Coinbase earn is, I think, actually a really great product for what they do is they send you to like a blog where they want you to read and kids just honestly don't want to read these days, they want a 32nd video. And so you have to, I think, start from those questions. I also think that this new generation is so fascinating to learn from, because there's almost micro generations within it. I think like, you take somebody that's 16 years old and 19 years old, for instance. And the way that they use technology is inherently different. The apps, they use the things the social media forums they like. And so just being a listener, actually, in this early stage of the business, I think is the most important thing. We go to a lot of high schools, we just like listen to what kids think about NF T's and crypto and web three, and we learned something every time I think the biggest mistake that you can make with teenagers is infantilize them, they are incredibly smart, they are conscientious, they will shock the heck out of you with their capabilities. And so we're just a tool that tries to give the facts, The Good, the Bad, everything in between of this world and give them access.
That's, that's awesome. You know, I think about you know, my son starting out, and, you know, having his cell phone, he sits there and he can have so many things going on at the same time. You know, it's been that way since he was a baby. Remember him, you know, just couldn't talk yet. And he had two cell phones playing a racing game on both cell phones. Like, what what in the world is going on here? One at a time, you know, but these kids are just so you know, involved in the technology. It's all around it. But you're right. Reading isn't a thing. You know, but looking at these short clip videos definitely is. And they they're playing games. Again. Yesterday, I'm watching them. I'm looking at his phone. And I said, you're watching Dan TDM you haven't watched him for a while. And I'm like, What is he playing? He wasn't playing a game. And so he's got the picture. You know, he's got the YouTube video on his phone playing a game. And if he was sitting in front of his computer, you have another game over there too. Like alright enough, but But it's funny. So I'm checking this out. And ship you'd be surprised to know that if you look at our chat, they've upgraded that chat and they're stars in there now. So you can start Washington just was fantastic. But there's so there's a couple of things here which I think are just real cool as we're going through the list so hands loaded, happens our bus is producing our other channel cutting up and doing some stuff for us on that channel but ons loaded you know, awesome, but it says here well never even thought of the minor niche, you know, so I think and this is this is definitely you know, something that you're definitely onto here with that, like Alchemist kids like changing color, like keep that love it there. But there was something here, here we go. So Doug was saying, Have you thought about integrating Play to earn within the platform and how exactly, you know would you see that working if it is something that you're doing?
Oh my gosh, I think that there is an ocean. I think the hardest thing actually as a founder sometimes is to turn your brain off from all the different products. features that you want to add and all the worlds that you want to dive into. So really like just focusing on getting this app live and available in people's hands. But I think integrating Play to earn and even like, if you just think of being a part of this video game universe in general, and you say we have an access point to under 18 year olds and a digital wallet, and were the first people to really have that. I think naturally, video games is the place that you go to and say, like, what did I want to do when I was a teenager? I wanted to go buy video games, you know. And so it makes total sense. I think there absolutely isn't endgame there. I think in general, when I think about the crypto market, moving from an investing product into a banking product, and using it for b2b, smart contracts, using it to buy things in the real world and in the metaverse. I think we're gonna obviously see like that next level of adoption through that. And so naturally, we have to always be thinking about the banking functions of crypto and digital wallets. For right now. It's like how much can we just do some fun education, get people involved? You know, have people have a $20 of lifeguarding money or, you know, waiter money from their summer job and put it in a stack account and go learn with it, integration into play to earn all those other things, I think are inevitable, and they'll definitely be on the long term roadmap. That's awesome.
So that this right here, so the EC 2029 says near future kids download info into their brains. And right into the brain, the old brain right there. So a little bit more about this. So it's mobile based, right? That's it's good to download. I mean, it's getting crazy that but yeah, so in other. So is it a singular wallet? Or is it a multi SIG wallet where you got the parents, so the parent authorizes, like, the kid wants to go sell a bunch of stuff is there like the parent has to get involved?
Yeah, so it's really interesting. So we'll be an exchange. And so what what maybe not as many people know about how centralized exchanges function, and they get a bad rap, I think in this, like decentralized world decentralized exchange, what a decentralized exchange actually offers you is they have what's called an omnibus relationship with the broader ecosystem of crypto. And so it protects users information from basically being in this broader stratosphere. And so when someone goes and buys Bitcoin on stacks platform, it actually shows up as just stack, trying to buy bitcoin to the outer universe, and then matching that with someone that wants to sell their Bitcoin. And so because of that, inherently, I think there's a level of security, you know, that is nice to have. And then like, the second layer is just the access to your account. Now, how many times have sure you guys have heard this all the time, people getting locked out of their accounts, because they lose their digital wallet password. And so a centralized exchange can house you know, all that information and can keep you you know, obviously, like into your account if you get locked out for some reason. So that's what will be, this wallet will be hosted by, by basically a third party relationship that we have, and it'll be hosted as a stack coklat. And so it's sort of like a locked ecosystem within this broader blockchain worlds, that we can serve customers with. And we can create a lot of value on the front end. While you know, we have a really cool, safe partner to go find the other side of your Bitcoin trades, quote, Bitcoin prices, do custody do all those important functions?
And so why don't
we be doing their KYC and AML? With that?
Yeah, exactly. So they're full. I don't know if you guys ever heard of APEX Apex does a huge stock version of this, like they people don't realize when they're a customer of anybody other than like Schwab e trade T, like the biggest five companies, you're actually a customer of APEX most of the time. And that's because they're the ones that facilitate all the back end. And these smaller companies that you're a part of, are actually just like a front end service. And so that's, that's how we operate. Robinhood actually didn't build a back end for like the first like eight or nine years of their existence. So it's how these companies function, especially early on.
It's wild. So slowly, I was gonna ask what kind of so out of the gate like, what kind of how many, how many offerings? Are you going to have as far as crypto is concerned? And it'd be how many, just because that's what like, the question is like, well, what's your potential universe of coins can be invested? I mean, there's like 1000s. But I mean, what is the what are you going to roll out with? Or I mean, just
it's a, it's a very common question that I get. And it's a it's an interesting burden that you bear, right? When you have parents and you have teams because you want to give access and I'm a big believer of giving the tools and letting others decide what they want or don't want. Right at the same time. Of course, you will There's could be a chip or a Jeff for a will coin tomorrow. And it's like, should people be investing in that? Should you give them access to it, we'll start off at a level of like 25 to 30 coins on our platform. And that's just kind of the middle ground of coins that have high volume, you know that people are trading somewhat frequently, but people the ability to buy more than just Bitcoin and Aetherium, right. And so will we adopt more coins down the road, I think probably inevitably, doing so I think there's probably a part of the platform, potentially, where you let people unlock the ability to use more coins, the more education they go through, the more they learn about them, we actually don't let you invest in a coin without watching a 32nd video about it. And so it's really just like that level of knowledge and power before you press the buy button because somebody on your Instagram told you to go by coin
op in the Wall Street bets of, of stack, exactly hanging out and trying to figure things. So here's here's a, I think, an important question, we kind of get a bit serious here with this one. So Andrew Smith is saying how does the tax work? Is the account set up as a trustee? Or you know, exactly, you know, because you have your tax burdens are tied to it. Yeah, who exactly who holds the tax burden? Yeah, so it's just
like a brokerage custodial account, if you're familiar with that. And Charles Schwab, for instance, has had these for, you know, probably 30 years. And it's if you want to go put, you know, some stock aside for your niece, your nephew, your child, whoever it is, you can put it in an account with for them, and you get some tax benefits, as long as it doesn't meet a certain threshold. And then once it meets that threshold, it's called like the kiddie tax, then it starts being subjected to the parent or the Guardians gains and losses. So we'll have the exact same tax, you know, treatment as you would have that custodial banking function. And the only real difference is that it's obviously in digital assets. So when a team user turns 18, depending on the state they're in, there's a few there like 19, and 21, but most ether 18, it'll actually automatically transfer into that teens name.
Oh, as you're going through all of this, is there. So you're saying that there will be a stack coin as well. And as you're looking at all the different.
So there will be a stack coin, but it's not actually a token. It's really more like rewards points. And it's a way to quantify everything that you do on the platform in terms of what you can redeem it for. So every time there's like daily quizzes that you can take, and they're like, really quick, two minute quizzes each time you do one, and you get a right answer, you actually get stack coins, the value of a stack coin is the equivalent where if you were on the platform every single day, take the quiz every day and got those questions correct, you would basically at the platform for free in the amount of crypto that you could redeem for it. And so that's really just about engagement, we think of it as like one of our five important investment pillars, it's long term holding, diversification, periodic savings, engaging with your account. And then lastly, learning. And so those are the five things that we really teach. And we teach them in kind of different ways, depending on what the activity is.
So as the idea then behind stack, it's more geared towards the learning the education, the development, with the with the idea of eventually the kids are going to move off the exchange. And you'll have you'll go from from stack to stack senior. And if the parents are looking at this, maybe there's some adults out there to say, all these other exchanges are way too complex. And maybe there's a stack senior that that's there to help them out. Yeah,
I actually think that when you create a product to teach a teenager about Bitcoin, or Aetherium, or digital assets, you actually create a platform that's for everybody, anybody that's new to the world, they learn in a very similar way. I don't think that the capabilities of a 16 year old and a 30, something like me or anybody else is that different. If you haven't invested before, we will be able from day one to serve over 18 customers. And I actually think the defining moment of the platform is that handoff, it's a handoff of somebody who turns 18. And what a few brands in the space that service under 18 segment of financial products have done is I think they've done a terrific job of being a cool brand to you know, a 1213 1415 year old. But what they see is they see a lot of people leaving their platform once they graduate from high school because they think of it as something they had when they were a kid. And so what we've actually done is we do a little over half our user testing on our app with people that are over 18 And that's because we know how important it is to have it both resonate and be native to this Gen Z group, but also be something that's transferable to a much broader group down the line. So it's that's something that I'm always thinking about, you know, we'll get smarter. I think we get it in the hands of customers and get more.
So I have a question here. This one's from Robert Dermott says sounds like a three sided marketplace that kids, parents and staff, I'd be interested to understand your monetization models. And your forecasted addressable market that you're pursuing
an investor, we got to
know Joey's solid question. So I'll leave that up there for a little bit.
Yeah, so the monetization model is subscription based. And the main reason that it's a subscription platform, is because if you think about Robin Hood, for instance, Robin Hood makes money based on volume every time you buy or sell something. And what that does to their business is it makes them want to encourage things like day trading. I, you mentioned Wall Street bets earlier. And I think that that's a really important thing to have, in the back of your mind, what the world has done a fantastic job of is giving access, you can buy $1 of Amazon stock in a second. And that's a wonderful thing. But what they haven't done a great job of is educating that group. And so naturally, when all these new retail investors got brought to the market, they said, Okay, well, I'm going to use social media and my phone to educate myself on this, which is very natural. But what it also resulted in was a lot of day trading. And it was people thinking that they need to be day traders or hedge fund managers to go make money on the stock market. And so I think getting away from that mentality is really important. And that's why we're a subscription platform. Because we are agnostic to how often you trade, we actually encourage you not to trade too often. And so if we were in a subscription based business that would I think, inherently just be a flaw in the mechanics of how we're trying to teach people. So second question. Sorry, go ahead. Go ahead.
No, just to on that point, before you go on to the second part. are, you know, and this is interesting, because you're bringing up the day trading aspect. So are there going to be specific, you know, regulations within your software, similar to like, with Robin Hood, you know, that you'll get, you'll definitely get triggered on most even, you know, stock, most stock trading platforms will still trigger, you know, if they think that you're day trading, if they're not, you know, if you're not set up, and you haven't gone through the process, so are you going to have some sort of a trigger there, then for the kids say, hey, you've sold too much.
We will so so we actually will have a pricing tier, that's not subscription based. And that's on sells only because we don't care what you buy, we want. And we know kids might get five or $10 of allowance or 20 hours allowance a week. And so if they automatically just put that into their stack account, we want them to be able to do that. And we understand that there's going to be a periodicity to that. What we do care about is selling and selling too often. And so if you do do that more than a certain number of times a month, then you actually do graduate to a tier where you pay per trade. And so that keeps the I think the day trading Zeitgeist a little bit out of out of ecosystem. But again, I mean, you know, like, I don't want to tell people what they should and shouldn't be doing. All I'm going to do is say, this is 100 year of stock market lessons. And if you put your money in the s&p 500 index, you would probably outperform 90% of hedge funds anyway. And sometimes those unsexy vanilla strategies are actually the best ones. And so it's treating this this very mummified tech focus generation about those those things.
Exactly. Right. So EC 29 says, How do we get the kids in our Congress on the app? I think that's a fantastic idea. Because if they, if they could understand it, they watch a 32nd video, they participate. I think this is one of the greatest suggestions ever. We just don't tell them. Like, yeah, well, you're 75 That's cool. You can get in there. We'll play when we like it. And then we have this one. Here's another great YouTuber in the space. James real xOP is a great show, guys. So how will brand ambassadors participate?
Great question. So we have a brand ambassador program. What that program is, we've two marketing avenues that you guys can probably imagine one is tick tock, naturally, that's where all of our users are. We do a lot of affiliate tic tock, we don't do a lot of paid tic tock or paid ads in general. And that's just because Gen Z really likes authenticity. And you know, they respond a lot more when it's appear genuinely reviewing what they think about our app, rather than, you know, us putting together a really cool video about what our platform is. And so that's one strategy. The other is the brand ambassador strategy and that's what Like gorilla boots on the ground marketing, old school, and you can be the rap of your high school, you can basically get a stack sweatshirt sent to you in the mail, you're naturally usually the person in your high school that people come to talk about Bitcoin or Aetherium or crypto with and you what you deal with it is totally self driven. So very low stakes. We know that high schoolers are always looking for ways to build a resume to get some experience before college before other internships, things like that. And the idea behind it is to create this really cool community of crypto focused young adults, that at some point, we'll graduate to like a slacker notion channel as well, and put on monthly events for and have some really cool guest speakers just add value to this demographic of people that, you know, are interested in this world, they probably want to meet thought leaders, they want to hear people are thinking about the space. And they also want a peer community. You know, that's that's thinking about crypto. So that's where we'll go with it very early days still right now. Well, good stuff. Great.
I want to get back. Let's go back to So part two of question before I interrupted you. So got the monetization model, and then the forecasted kind of the addressable market?
Yeah. So I think when it comes to market sizing, the way that you can think about this is looking to the other entity under 18 finance products, you can look to you under 18. Banks, and if you guys are familiar with companies like Stapp copper was one of them. Yeah. Current Go ahead. And really, there's there's a, there's a few players there. I think there's room in each of these markets, like whether it be stock products, whether it be banking products, and then probably crypto products, maybe there's some industries in crypto we very early still. But there's probably room for at least three winners in that. And usually those winners, when they hit like sort of the million customer state, they graduate to like what you would classify as a unicorn and a billion dollar company. And so those are the benchmarks that we're always thinking about, I, I afraid of really putting a market value on it, because as you guys can probably appreciate, crypto is such a moving world and adoption changes so dramatically. And the swings change so dramatically. So rather than you know, talk about the market as a whole, I'd rather say, for us to go be a billion dollar company, we have to serve at least a million highschool customers. And then also think about, of course, other demographics like college kids and potentially adults as well. And so that's that's the user base that I'm always thinking about.
That's awesome. So, you know, here's a, there's a couple of nice comments here from one from legendary. So when I, when I was a kid, I did deliver a stack of newspapers to make any money. I don't know that the funniness of that is great. But it's crazy, too, because, you know, I don't think kids are allowed to do that kind of work anymore. You're not gonna ride around on their dirt bike with a whole bunch of newspapers. You know? 6am It's true. I mean,
I think that that we do some stuff like, you know, this can be your side hustle as a teenager. I think that there is a theme in products right now you I mean, we could you could see on LinkedIn or on Google or everywhere. Gen Z is obviously a huge focus of a lot of products. Right now, people are trying to figure out how they can tap into Gen Z, what Gen Z cares about, at some point, it'll be Gen alpha, you know, to. And I think when you when you really lean in to this world, you can understand very quickly that these kids are different. They are different than when I was in high school. I mean, we do some tick tock affiliate posts, and I'll talk to a kid who's in their parents basement, and you know, is charging $1,500 A post? And I think to myself in that moment, what was I doing when I was you know, 1617 years old. So the hustle is different, that also is different. I think, certainly digital assets can be part of the hustle. But I'm here for Gen Z stories. Because I think that they use technology they use, you know, entrepreneurial spirit, all those things in a different way that, you know, high schoolers were when I was at high school, like all you guys do.
That's so true. I mean, my daughter, she's 17 She has three, three jobs. She has three also that she does, so she's, uh, works at a pizza place. And she she does the soccer on the weekends. And she's like, they pay they paid pretty solid money for just being there for a couple hours. And then also then she tutors kids with math and I'm like, Well, how do you get the whole schedule work out? Okay, so these days I'm here. They know I'm open there. I do this and I do that. That tick tock does the whole thing and it's like, it moves really fast. So you know, while you're coming Like spot on. So given the Tick Tock videos, funny thing is a lot of us that aren't really exposed to tick tock, you know, we see those tick tock videos reposted on Twitter, right? So we see it with the Tick Tock logo on the button, the background and stuff. Yeah. And I actually had a former colleague who was really, you know, had amassed 150,000 people on Tik Tok, just doing like live streams and stuff, but not really monetizing yet. But yeah, you're right. I mean, you know, sit in your basement charging 1500 bucks. One time shot. It's insane right
now. Yeah, right. That's what I say every time. So the ones that are out of our price range, I always say Good for you. I'm glad that you're making that much, but we can't afford you.
Come on, kid.
That's great. It's cool. It really is cool. You know, it's it's such a different world. Especially once we start getting more and more into the plate earn. When that simplify like you were saying earlier, these kids live and breathe video games, from their phone to the computer to their console, you know, and they just live and breathe it in. Imagine if you could take all that commitment and effort and time. I think back all the time I spent front of video games as a kid how much money I would have been matched by now it would have been crazy. years. Here's a great comment right here. Veritas acclimatize, semper says, we'll actually listens, this guy's good. He'll make it happen.
That's awesome. Appreciate its work. Great comment. Got a great crew. And then this one here says What will your idea be? Will your idea beats parents giving credit cards and you know, one of the things that I use is green light. I've been using green light for a few years. And it's really nice when kids get the funny part of auto was, you know, you can put your kids photo on there. Like it's like nice wants a nice little fan Oh, photo on my, my photo or some pad or whatever. She's nice, what the regular car like Yeah, but you can customize them for some cool lunch like, No. And you know, it's really easy. It's like, you know, it doesn't settle like, you know, we know, we know, crypto settles very fast. But you know, in the app, I need this, she, you know, she'll text me, I need money. I click click and then sent I load my wallet, I click her wallet, it's there. And I kind of imagined that similar experience with stack where I would load my wallet up, right? It loaded into the kit, you know, her wallet, you know from Fiat, right? You can I'm guessing you get connected bank account, right? Can I get a bank account credit card, some along those lines, you know, via plaid or something like that you connect it. And then you go ahead and load it up. And then it's available for you know, for her to be able to, to look at and invest. And I'm wondering for the parents side of it, because a lot of people are versed in crypto, but there may be some people that just don't know a little bit as parents, the kids are going to be teaching the parents like, hey, I want to get this. I want to get stacked. Every one of my schools got it. It's really cool. I get involved in that. And now we've got a reversal happening where, you know, we already know the kids fix the phones, and I have brought my phone. Yeah, you click this. It's done. Okay, cool. So you kind of envision something where it's going to be that child's teaching in kind of back and forth a little bit.
I think learning together about this new world and new technology is so natural and symbiotic. And I think it's something that you absolutely have to lean into the difference in the parent and the T and you know, a as winning them as a customer, right? You It's a parent's wallet most of the time. And so you always have to think about that, because a team can love your product, but you still have to have a parent that wants to fund that product, because parents you know, are financially the ones that make all these decisions. And so you have to be thinking about that while also going back to your your green light example. And I love what green light has done. And I think they've done a tremendous job of doing a lot of the parent, you know, like guys, but maybe have some things to do with teens and really leaning into what teens care about and listening to them as a group. And so I think listening to teens and listening to parents at the same time is a key part of our product. The one part of our product that is universal is the learning feature. And so when parents access the app, they don't have awards, they don't have, you know, the Swag Shop and they don't have some of those same features that are that really we think mean a lot to teens, but they do have the learning component. And the idea there is parents and teens can learn together they can learn on this platform. And there are a lot of parents that might be interested because their teen asks them about this crypto app, and then they themselves become part of the crypto community. And so I think there's a really cool story there potentially, of the outcomes that we could generate.
That's a lot of fun, Jeff, I'm gonna miss out on I think I might want some rewards or what to do with that stack when you
get some nagging. We're gonna have Competition she had once it once it launches, we get on there and turn the wind down.
When I look at this, I want to throw the website up there just for people. And I'm going to also toss it in the chat and guys, you're watching this on the rewatch, you can always go down into the description. And go ahead and it's try stack that I Oh, yeah, we're also on the chain.io. So there you go. It's like, but here it is right here, easy crypto investing built for Gen Z. And then if you just click on this little button here, you can join the waitlist, just an email phone number and start with the crypto side hustle, build an empire. And then you know, parents learn more but it really here it is right here. And it's true. I mean, when Jeff and I were looking at this the only crypto platform built specifically for Gen Z and I love the idea. So you know, this is good education right here right here is really the crux starts small. So many people think like, well, a bitcoin is what is it the 40? Some 1000s? I haven't checked, you know, it's like they think they have the I can't buy that that's a $200 coin. Yeah, but you don't have to you can buy a fraction. A lot of people don't realize that start small. I get the idea of you know, diversifying, you know, build a little whale Well, blaze a path. This is good stuff right here.
It's so important. I mean, the start small message is probably the most important message that we have to hammer home. And actually, we you'll see on our app, when it's live, we have something in there that shows that if you just invested $20 Every month, and you did it over a 40 year investment horizon, and you just captured bitcoins average gain rate for the last year. So not when it was doing crazy things when it's sort of matured a little bit. If you could continue to get that back on your crypto investment, you would be a millionaire. And so he really doesn't take much. That's what compound interest does compound interest goes to work for you each and every day. And so that is the biggest thing. Oh, it
doesn't really you have good interest. And that good interest is what you have in crypto, unlike what Gary Gensler, the chair of the SEC, you know, well college kids can, can invest and put their money away in banks that are paying 8%. But he doesn't, he lives in the alternate universe somewhere else. In the crypto space, you know, this is a compound interest. I mean, that's how over over the course of history, that's how so many people have really been able to generate, you know, significant wealth, you know, through that. And it's crypto is going to be even even more amazing. So I mean, you bring it up such a great point.
No, it's it's so important. I mean, we actually as part of our parent user population, we said, can we learn something from current parents and what their habits were when they were young, that had a tremendous effect on their long term net worth. And so we asked them a lot of questions. And we got this very unintended, but really cool output from that survey. And it was parents that were born between 1975 and 1985, that were in the early adoption of the internet. So they were a teenager or a high school college student during that early adoption phase. If they decided to be on that early adopter list, and access the internet before they were 18 years old, they had a 13 times higher net worth by the time they were 45 years old. And it makes sense, right? You can think about maybe they got tech jobs, maybe, you know, I wish I did this, they went to code camp at some point, you know, but they were early adopters of the latest technology. And so if you think of us, in this web three world as very much still in the very early days, it can make the difference, they can make the difference for a kid that's 16 years old, 25 years down the line. And so I think those stories are really what our entire platform is built on.
That's crazy. Talk about that, you know, and I was, you know, looking, you know, Code Camp, starting in those early years. I remember, I don't remember how old I was, but I remember going to code camp, and we're learning for you. Basic. And, you know, the problem was when you came home from coding camp, you didn't have a computer to keep coding on. Yeah, so we all know, now these kids, you know, it's funny, because I talked to my son about that, like, you got to go, it's time for you to start, you got to learn coding, you got to learn, you got to get that figured out at this age, you know, start driving, you know that, and it's so critical. And, and this I'm so excited about this, you know, I think you're really onto something really big. And, you know, if it resonates here with both chip and I, you know, and having the same conversations with our kids, you know, my son has come to me and one of the one of the questions he said he said to me, he said well, you know, you're you're an owner in your business and you know and and as he said mom's also, you know, begun in our company You guys kind of run things. And he goes, so I'm sure that, you know, if I started working for one of you now, or soon, you know, I can start earning money. I was like, Yeah, you know, that's what are you? What are you hinting at? You know, and he said, I want to be able to take that money. And he said, Well, if I take it, and I started investing it, he said, I'm sure I could generate a lot of wealth. If I started investing. I'm like, man, you're on the right track here. Yeah, definitely.
He's got it. He's got it. He said, too far from the tree. That's what they say. So it was an apple analogy, but it's just a truth is what happens as a false really far away from the truth. And you're like, Whoa, that's why we have a different story. But guys, I would just say anybody out there like, I mean, give it give it a shot. I mean, if you're in it's like, it's it's, if you have kids, yeah. Okay. But you have a niece or nephew, or, you know, you maybe, you know, maybe you have a little you know, a sibling that's, you know, not not of age yet, and you're in a crypto, you're in your 20s. And they're still in their teens. I mean, it's a really great opportunity. And I was like, you know, it's so crazy. Nobody thought of this, but what else been all over? Well, you know, he's one that sort of came up with it. And, you know, as long as we look at stuff here, too, and I'll be honest with you, I absolutely just love this logo, I just think it's fantastic. It almost reminds me of those all the record, players just have a little clip you put inside there, the it's just right, and you know, everything, everything on the website, just spectacular. And if it's any indication of what the apps gonna look like, a user friendly, you know, I love this bright colors, you know, the purples, the, you know, the beautiful, you know, you know, the the blends and all that stuff's really cool stuff, you know, gradients, you know, good stuff. So it'd be interesting to see. Yeah, at some point, before you go in before it comes out, or something, or we get on that we get on the beta list, you know, Jeff, and I'd like to be beta customers to do some feedback. But yeah, it's really cool to hear kids into it. And like I said, you know, the, there's been all like, copper, there's, in you know, green light, there's always like, these little things, but this one right here, I think, is going to be exciting for kids, you know, and, and they're going to get into what they're not. Now, here's another question, Would you would you think at some time in the future, that you might start adding because, you know, NF T's are crazy right now. You think that that's something that, you know, kids can make their own FTS, you know, maybe have something where they can, you know, create an NF t then posted that. So you have now you have somebody investing, but then you're building these little entrepreneurs as well.
That's awesome. I think that it's only natural that at some point, we dive into an FTS, I think that there's some other concepts that I want to add. And I want there to be like a graduation level almost where if you do some of the foundational behavior, and you get to certain tiers, then we start to teach things like dollar cost averaging, we start to teach about staking, we start to teach about some of these other parts of this world that are pretty essential, you know, to understand and to use, but probably aren't like day one stuff. And so I think NF T's probably fall into that, too. Yeah, I'm very, very optimistic on the empty worlds. I think there's, I think there's of course, a very polarizing view there as much as there is crypto. But I think there's some really exciting use cases there that could go a lot of places.
Yes, this is great. I mean, Chip really brought out, you know, a critical point, because we've looked at a lot of projects. And sometimes it's just what you, your first, your first visual of the project, you know, there's many projects out there that are solutions, and they're always in search of the problem. And they can ever find that problem. And those companies will probably fade away at some point. And we talk about it a lot, because we're always looking for the one that trying to solve a problem. I mean, you're right on. The problem is kids not investing or needing to learn how to invest. That's the, your solution outstanding, and then the way it's presented. And Chip really hid just on the website. So I'm kind of excited to see how the app is but the colors, the simplicity of it, just, it's easy to understand, right off the bat, the big lettering, the color scheme, you know, it dry brings the kids in, I think, you know, they can definitely gravitate to something like this. So the website is enough to where kids can be, you know, excited about seeing it, looking through the different levels, you know, from starting small to blazing a path, you know, and then building wealth. I think that's something you know, the kids want to be able to do. I like the idea that you have that brand ambassador, getting that engagement because that's kids like that, that concept. And then you get to the bottom one, you know, choose which coins to buy. I think that's more that's like the adult side of it. Kids are gonna get stuck on Welcome to stack, you know, big picture. And then the adults keep going invest, get rewarded cash in. And that's where the adult starts, you know, they want to learn and start driving down. That's kind of how I visualize this. But this is really outstanding. And it's funny, because got apex, he said, most adults are terrible with money. And they're also wanting to learn, they also need to figure things out, which is great. I think we heard that before. Here's another question from Rob McDermott, MVP, alpha beta. And you mentioned, you know, soon in a beta test, what resources support does your team need right now, to move this project forward?
Yeah, so we are tracking to live in April. And so that's sort of the the date that you have in the back of your head. What we're doing right now to get this is how, what are what features are absolutely essential, right, like think we need to be able to allow a team to go buy and sell our coins, they need to be able to offer ramp and off on ramp from a fiat system, a bank account a credit card, and then we'll do some learning features early on. Like I said, there's so many thoughts swimming in my head, that keeps me up late at night, that I have to sort of put in the backlog. You know, I think about things like social investing, this generation is very willing to share information. They like to talk to each other about what they're doing. And so I think there's naturally something there that will probably add, I think there's also like a gamification that will dial up. It'll be there initially. But we'll get dialed up much further. And probably like the 2.0 and 3.0 versions. But yeah, so everybody on the waitlist, right now will get the earliest access to the app. And if you're a parent, if you're a teen if you're an over 18 year old, so you're a college kid, anybody can join the waitlist right now. There will be access from day one for all of those users. And yeah, I'm super excited. We already have a little over 1500 people on the waitlist right now. And it grows each and every day. And I think that is just so exciting.
Oh, it really is. And it's a again, it's time Yeah, honestly, I mean, even for adults, something that's a little bit more simplistic. Sometimes you get on one of these exchanges, and it loses people. And I think that it slows down the adoption rate, just because it doesn't even matter if you're 20 or not, but like Robin Hood made it easy. Click, click, click, you're done. It's just a really easy app and even made some you know, even though they were dead cribs for longest time they started onboarding couple of them even give you the one to look at other ones we don't have here's the chart, you can see what's going on. And just sort of the engagement part of it. EC 29 says last one for on the chain. And we'll Why go to MIT get stack if you go like Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, you know, teaching this financial, the financial education acumen, like really early is a really valuable thing. And it's like, you know, it's, it's funny, when, when this whole thing happened, and kids were coming home, I was getting to audit, you know, I'm working on mode. So it's like, getting to audit your kid in like, brings the laptop into the kitchen, eating food. I'm hearing the lessons. This isn't something as a parent you get to listen to and I'm like, and I could see like, Okay, what teachers that okay, what do you guys learning? What about that? It was real easy to tell by the style. And how the information was presented, the ones that were really engaged, because one time there were there was like a six hour jam session going on. For like advanced math. It was like so advanced calculus to stuff. And everybody in the class was there because the teacher instructor was like, really present made it fun goofed around a little bit. And that presentation style. And I'm like, wait a minute, you're in math class on a Saturday, how many hours? So you get to see that the engagements there. If the if the expressions there in kids get to learn and express themselves, bump into some things, make some mistakes. Look, this is all how we learn. You know, everybody knows somebody in the crypto space. Stefan Tom Tomas who lost I don't know, two 300 million because he forgot his passcode I mean, happens, you know, there's a brilliant guy, you know, brilliant co founder of coil. And look, it happens. And this is the kind of thing where there is an element of having that on your phone or having some sort of a instead of centralized type of thing because I can't imagine the pain. Somebody's losing their, you know, their keys. It's tough.
So true. I mean, the level that there's so much that we need to educate onto, I mean, you can go to things like security, the stock market, the typical financial products, investing crypto and FTS, the metaverse. I mean, there's so many things, I actually think our biggest backlog right now is just creating the educational content, you know, and how quickly we can create it, and how many resources we can push, you know, to really get it going. Because there's so much to do. And there's things that I learned about this world every single day, you know. And so I don't even think that there's a point in which that you if you, you know, enjoy crypto and you enjoy this webinar universe, that you stop educating, you know, because it is always changing, it is dynamic every second of every day. So, that is exciting in itself.
Yeah, that's great. And believe it or not, I mean, we're almost through, we're almost through the hour here. So we're getting into the wrap up time here. So I think I think there's one thing that we might have left out or something just like in a closing sort of statement, as we get out of here. What are your thoughts? What do we miss? Or is there something else you'd like the the audience to know, that maybe wasn't expressed about the product?
Or time you know, I mean, I always share that whether it is stack, or it is any other platform out there, get invested, go get involved. I think it is inevitable that crypto will be in every portfolio in the world at some point. And so getting involved early at any dollar value, no matter what age you are, no matter what technology experience you have, I think that is the Northstar that I'll always operate under. And again, I think, you know, stack is a really cool part to be that story for young people and potentially Beyonds. But there are a lot of other great platforms out there. And there are a million ways to get involved. So that's what I'll leave you with,
like it will said and you know that that's when you're rooting for the whole ecosystem, you know, rising tide floats, all boats, there's enough for everybody, and everybody wins. You know, that's a win win sort of attitude. That's one of the things we've appreciated having you on here. Elegantly, can speak about the product, but just in general, and I said, Jeff, and I are like, you know, just, I want I want a beta test. I'm serious about that. I mean, it's I think it's a cool product, can we get our hands on it and start looking at it. And guys, I've dropped that in there in the chat right there. But it's tri stack.io. And you guys click on that get on the waitlist pretty easy. Put your email and your phone number in there. And then as I guess you start opening it up well, as you get closer to the launch date, you know, mid April, at towards the end of April, you start onboarding some people and and yeah, it'd be something fun to watch. Jeff, you have anything?
Well, is one question. Is this gonna drop on both Android and iOS?
Yeah, so our intention is to drop in both 90% of our user base does have an iPhone. So I will, I will throw that out there that
says 90 90%, Jeff
90% might be a controversial topic in this room. But
no, no, no, no. You're launching an Android to because like, I mean, it's, it's it's one of the that's one of the flavors. And regardless of that, it's great. Because a lot of times, I do think that Android stuff suffers a little bit sometimes like yeah, because yeah, it does, it will do this one first, the fact you're releasing on both of them makes a lot of sense. And it's good business sense as well.
Yeah. And I just wrap through a few additional comments here. Rob McDermott. Great interview guys had not heard of stack before very compelling, which is awesome. Shawn Thompson. Jeff, thanks for to stack for being on the show. It's great. And then Veritas. We'll have to have stack back in a few months, please. Yes, please. Come back. Are you back on report in, give us the update post rollout, maybe after the first quarter of full active users and get that'd be really interesting to see what that experience is like for you. If you're not just buried in, in work overload at that point. Right. That'd be outstanding. But definitely want to say thank you for coming on here on the chain. Really appreciate you. And we're definitely going to keep watching the project. I think it's, you're on to big things.
Yeah, exactly. We love founders who are doing something big out there. And really, like, you know, like Jeff was saying, bringing something that and again, how do we get so far into this thing? We're like 12 years in this experiment, from Bitcoin to 2020. How did this happen? And nobody's done this. So you know, kudos to you for building it and deploying it, get it out there. And I really excited about it. I think it's gonna be a it's a really cool project. We'll we'll keep tabs on it. And again, looking forward to getting on board on the product. And we'll go from there.
That sounds great. Thank you, Chet. Jeff, so much for having me. It was awesome to be here. I feel I could talk to you guys for hours about this. Yeah, we come back on at some point you will be beta testers. Absolutely. I will get that's awesome.
That's pretty cool. I love it. I will sing the praises of it and will to get my kid on it. But um, that's it guys. That's all we have back And tomorrow night eight o'clock pm and also thanks for coming on live to because sometimes you know it's a you know it's the whole live aspect but lives will be like because that's how we can get the questions and people can react to the product and and the project so that's all I have it well hang on for a second because we're gonna after we go through this we'll come back we'll circle up we'll have a little close out in our green room camera and the group's looks exactly like it looks now guys will be in our green room out to the sounds sounds cool right? It sounds very like before the guests goes off like they'll be in the green room but otherwise just take them off the screen there it is. Now use a short time but anyway guys hanging out and we will see you guys later. So from will chip jet we are out of here and we'll see you on the next one hang out. Take care. Hey guys.
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