Transcript
Speaker: Hey everybody, welcome to the exit podcast.
Speaker: This is Dr. Bennett joined here by Tyler Redacted.
Speaker: Tyler is the founder of Pluribus, a cancellation insurance product.
Speaker: And we had him on the show a little over a year ago to talk about the concept and what he was working on.
Speaker: And just wanted to check in on his progress so far and see where things stand.
Speaker: So welcome to the show.
Speaker: Hey man, thanks for having me back.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: So when we left you in April of 2022, you were talking through the concept, talking through like why it needs to happen, why, you know, people should care about it.
Speaker: And you had built your team, but it was very much still in the idea stage.
Speaker: So tell me where things stand now.
Speaker: Yeah, so after, you know, it took a little bit longer, and by a little bit, I mean more than that, to actually build the thing.
Speaker: But it's, you know, never been done.
Speaker: We knew that there would be, you know, kind of twists and turns along the way.
Speaker: But as of right now, we're maybe two to three weeks away from releasing the beta, just basically building the
Speaker: the foundational infrastructure and, you know, base level game theory to make sure that all the participants are pretty much on the same page with preparation later for additional updates and everything.
Speaker: But to at least get the baseline down was tricky.
Speaker: I mean, there's a reason why this doesn't exist yet.
Speaker: It's hard to do.
Speaker: But I mean, after a lot of time, we've done it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So tell me, tell me what the product actually is.
Speaker: Yeah, so as far as cancellation insurance, so the important thing to remind, it's the quickest way to communicate the purpose of this because that is, you know, what it is.
Speaker: It's mitigating damage for a future event that you don't want to happen.
Speaker: But it does not work like traditional insurance.
Speaker: You can't really...
Speaker: you know, have an actuary that can look at somebody's statements online and determine what the likelihood is that they say something, you know, on PC or it's it doesn't work like conventional insurance can't work.
Speaker: So the route that we took is to do crowdfunded
Speaker: cancellation insurance.
Speaker: Another reason for that is because creators, influencers, whatever term you want to use, are also the people who are most at risk for cancellation and have the most to gain.
Speaker: They also have the largest network of people on tap to potentially donate to them.
Speaker: So basically, the approach that we used is instead of
Speaker: you know, somebody has something bad happen to them.
Speaker: Like, oh, I broke my leg.
Speaker: I have $80,000 in medical bills.
Speaker: Could you, I need to raise $80,000.
Speaker: Preparing for that eventuality with live donations isn't really a great deal.
Speaker: Like if you asked me, hey, would you donate to me in case I happen to break my arm, which is not really guaranteed.
Speaker: Could you give me five bucks right now?
Speaker: It's not an ideal on my end.
Speaker: an ideal deal for me on my end.
Speaker: So basically what happens is you have a creator, influencer, again, whatever term you want to use, they can define the parameters of what counts as a cancellation for them.
Speaker: Obviously cancellation means different things to different people.
Speaker: For some people it can be, hey, I got, in case I get demonetized from YouTube, I would really want a safety net
Speaker: Or hey, in case I get booted from Patreon, that would completely screw my life up.
Speaker: So I'd like protection against that.
Speaker: So they would state the parameters of what will count as a cancellation for them and then invite their supporters to pledge to donate to them.
Speaker: in case that event comes to pass.
Speaker: So it's not a live donation, it's a pledge, also not just a verbal pledge, we're not just taking people's words for it, they'll take their payment info and everything.
Speaker: So there'll be a whole lot of latent donations on tap that can build over time until that event comes to pass.
Speaker: So,
Speaker: they'll invite their supporters to donate.
Speaker: If I'm a supporter, which I'm a supporter of many people, so I kind of have insight to the viewpoint of that party.
Speaker: And say, Hey, in case this happens to me, would you come through when I most need it?
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I'll pledge you $10 right now.
Speaker: I'm kind of spread financially thin as it is.
Speaker: I can't
Speaker: subscribe to every single person i like and pay out five bucks a month to dozens of people so yeah if you need me here's 20 bucks so a certain amount of time goes by and you know the worst comes to pass they actually do have that thing happened so in the meantime they'll have
Speaker: accumulating these pledges from people.
Speaker: They'll hit the proverbial big red button of hey, you guys, it actually happened.
Speaker: We're I'm in need of actually transferring the pledges that you made to me in the past.
Speaker: They're going to turn into live donations.
Speaker: And then after a or I'll just kind of stick with the baseline now.
Speaker: And then the funds would be transferred as far as the adjudicate adjudication of the legitimacy of the claims.
Speaker: I can go into that later, but that's at least kind of the baseline of how it works.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So my next question would be like when I when I when my car insurance company gives me car insurance, they're not trying to encourage me.
Speaker: to get into car accidents, right?
Speaker: Uh, that it's sort of assumed by both parties that car accidents are an undesirable outcome.
Speaker: And in, in the case of this, uh, product, both parties sort of want to engage in riskier behavior.
Speaker: Like the, the purpose of providing this cancellation insurance is to, is to actually encourage people to speak more freely.
Speaker: And so I think a huge component of how this product would have to be designed
Speaker: is to give the... So for instance, I'm a content creator and I noticed that my pledges at this point are actually bigger than my YouTube income.
Speaker: And so I like spam the gamer word on YouTube so that I can get demonetized, so that I can get that bag.
Speaker: So tell me a little bit about like,
Speaker: how how you deal with that hazard and and yeah, what the what the what the donors recourse is.
Speaker: Yeah, and that really is the after that immediate explanation, like the number one thing that should and usually does appear in people's minds is, well, what if they do the purposeful game or word like that's kind of the archetypal example of just kind of abusing a policy?
Speaker: So there's two things.
Speaker: So we have to balance the interests of both parties.
Speaker: One, people who pledge to donate obviously don't want to get defrauded.
Speaker: But then you can't, you also can't make it too easy for them to pull their pledge because creators that are in, you know, are good actors and are not deceiving anybody can't have the rug pulled out from under them too easily.
Speaker: So yeah.
Speaker: Leaving it up to a vote kind of seemed a little bit too iffy each time.
Speaker: It almost kind of precedes doubt and mistrust, like there's going to be a future argument.
Speaker: So the middle ground that we arrived at is so they hit the proverbial big red button and the money isn't transferred immediately.
Speaker: There's going to be a seven day period.
Speaker: where if you as an audience member, because if you've supported them, you'll get notified, believe that either the claim, the rationale that they made for activating their claim fell outside of the parameters they set, like it just...
Speaker: maybe something real did happen to them, but it just didn't fit within the context of what you had agreed to earlier.
Speaker: Or if it does fall within what you agreed to, which is, hey, in case I get demonetized from YouTube, oh, look, I got demonetized from YouTube.
Speaker: But as per your example, just it's clearly just somebody, you know, just denying the Holocaust and saying the ad word a bunch of times.
Speaker: That's obviously grounds for people to say, hey, I oppose this claim.
Speaker: So it's not necessarily a vote, although the people's voice can actually get heard that way.
Speaker: So the default expectation or assumption is
Speaker: is that each claim is legitimate unless more than 50% of people go out of their way to oppose it under grounds of those two reasonings, which they will if they feel that they've been taken advantage of.
Speaker: For the most part, if everybody's kind of being more, you know, just normal people and, you know, they'll be self-selected to be on the same team to begin with, there really shouldn't be many issues.
Speaker: And also, I think that
Speaker: you know, the potential risk of a creator taking advantage of, you know, their supporters is a bit overblown.
Speaker: It's not nothing, but I think that, you know, the medium to long term social and financial costs of like, even if you got away with it and like fleeced your followers out of like 20 grand, like, I mean, where are you at now?
Speaker: Is it going to be worth 20 grand?
Speaker: Probably not.
Speaker: But even that said, you still need the perception of everybody to feel, you know, safe and that people aren't going to stab each other in the back.
Speaker: So that is the base layer mechanism for that.
Speaker: So if people think that they're being taken advantage of, they do have recourse to vote it down.
Speaker: So how do you get paid?
Speaker: So the one tricky thing is, you know, we can't take the standard, you know, industry standard 5% platform fee for pledges because you can't take a cut of something that doesn't exist yet.
Speaker: Now, should those policies be exercised, you know, a couple of years down the line and then, you know, all the money gets transferred
Speaker: that we can take a cut of, but that's also not a great business model, just crossing your fingers, hoping that everybody gets canceled and they've raised a bunch of money in the meantime.
Speaker: So on the supporter end, when you make a pledge, again, kind of the whole unique value prop here is that
Speaker: it's not an immediate financial investment for you.
Speaker: And this is more of a supplementary thing that you can do for people who you just don't have the flexibility to necessarily subscribe to.
Speaker: So again, just like making a reservation for a future payment.
Speaker: But when you do that, you do have the option to tip us directly, just kind of the GoFundMe model right now.
Speaker: They used to take a cut of everything.
Speaker: Now they're huge and you can just
Speaker: have a tip on top of donations.
Speaker: So that's one way.
Speaker: And then the other way is that on the creator end of things, to accept pledges will be a $5 a month subscription.
Speaker: Now, with this sort of thing, the value will rise as the network grows.
Speaker: And, you know, obviously, you know, we didn't want to do anything like
Speaker: add a insurance payment or premium or just like anything super annoying.
Speaker: Like, you know, think of how much you pay for your insurance and all these other aspects.
Speaker: So it wasn't ever going to be anything like that.
Speaker: But in the opening days, there is not going to be that large of a network.
Speaker: That's just the way that it works.
Speaker: So started out with pretty much the bare minimum.
Speaker: Hey, everybody pay five bucks.
Speaker: will get data as this thing moves along.
Speaker: And then let's say, you know, a year or two down the road from now, on the other end of things, if, you know, if there's a creator making $1 million a year, then, you know, only charging them five bucks a month for something that's in jeopardy of losing $1 million obviously doesn't make sense.
Speaker: there, it can evolve down the line.
Speaker: But without having any sort of data or feedback, which is, you know, sort of the reason why, you know, we're releasing the beta in a couple of weeks and getting feedback from creators to say, Hey, actually, this thing that you thought would be good sucks, or vice versa, this is actually good, is the approach right now.
Speaker: So yeah, five bucks a month to start out with for creators, and then you can tip us if you want for supporters.
Speaker: I mean, that sounds like a really great deal, to be honest with you.
Speaker: It is a great deal, Bennett.
Speaker: It's a good point.
Speaker: It's a great deal.
Speaker: Legitimately, I mean, I'm thinking in terms of your team, right?
Speaker: Well, let's talk about that real quick.
Speaker: Who's involved with this project?
Speaker: I mean, you don't necessarily have to name names, but you're not a code guy.
Speaker: This took some doing.
Speaker: What kind of skill sets did you go looking for in the group?
Speaker: Yeah, I've never written a line and don't anticipate doing so in the immediate future.
Speaker: I mean, the main reason I joined Exit in the first place was because, I mean, I had been working on this for quite some time.
Speaker: And then I had thought that I had a technical co-founder, let's see, a year and a half ago, or maybe even more than that.
Speaker: Yeah, I joined Exit a year and a half ago, so shortly before that.
Speaker: And then I thought, you know, things were about to take off.
Speaker: And then, you know, because of the pandemic and fallout from that, and for a variety of other reasons, he really wasn't in a place mentally where it would, you know, be wise or practical to, you know, take on a new enterprise like that.
Speaker: So just when I had Ford momentum, like shit,
Speaker: And then that got taken away.
Speaker: But I'd been tracking exit for a while.
Speaker: So I joined just kind of crossing my fingers, having like an image in my head where I just want to join and then say, hey, guys, I'm working on this great project and then have a bunch of technical people volunteer.
Speaker: And not necessarily with the expectation that's the way it would play out, but that's exactly how it played out.
Speaker: It got put together pretty quickly.
Speaker: I basically just creeped on everybody's comments in the intro page.
Speaker: and just saw everybody's skill sets, reached out to them, said, hey, this is what I'm doing, and got a team of a couple of guys in exit to start putting this together and a couple of guys from outside exit as well.
Speaker: But it all congealed and started gaining momentum very quickly after joining.
Speaker: Yeah, and I don't necessarily want to encourage people to like... Ideas are cheap.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Like having a good idea is worth almost nothing.
Speaker: And unless, number one, it has to be a great idea.
Speaker: And number two, you have to have the drive to build the kind of connections and the kind of network.
Speaker: And so like I was just really impressed with the effort that you put in to make this happen and to get the right people together.
Speaker: Um, as far as how, how did you, how did you assess like the, the, the partnership?
Speaker: Like how, how did you decide?
Speaker: Cause you didn't have cash to offer anybody.
Speaker: Like that's, that's a huge obstacle to, to somebody who's got a good idea, but they're not a code person.
Speaker: They're going to have to outsource a lot of things, um, or, or, or find a lot of help.
Speaker: How did you figure out like, Hey, what is this worth to all of us?
Speaker: How do we all feel bought in and, you know, sort of, uh, compensated by this product?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So the short answer is just sweat equity for people who don't know what that is.
Speaker: It's, you know, when you're doing a startup and you don't have cash to pay people with, you say, you know, once this is, you know, becomes an actual company and we're off to the races, you guys get a stake in the company because I can't pay you.
Speaker: So you will own a part of the company.
Speaker: So
Speaker: That's how at least the compensation worked.
Speaker: Although we have had, you know, just a couple of guys who, you know, were just happy and like their careers and just were, you know, happy to like lend a couple of hours a week to the project just on a volunteer basis.
Speaker: But as far as assessing chemistry, suitability, like whatever, I...
Speaker: the only route that I could go was to be as honest as I could with people.
Speaker: Like, I don't really know how startup founders who are just like kind of snake oil salesmen handle the stress of just like pulling like dozens of different threads of lies a day to like keep things spinning.
Speaker: But just like, I basically just said, hey, this is my idea.
Speaker: I genuinely believe in it.
Speaker: I do not code.
Speaker: I need people to actually help me build this thing.
Speaker: We don't know how long this will take.
Speaker: I mean, here's my general estimate, but this is based on zero experience.
Speaker: But everybody has kind of known this also isn't like, I mean, I'm not, I mean, not to, you know, throw shade at the people that do, but I'm also not selling pillows here.
Speaker: Like, I mean, this is, it's a complicated thing.
Speaker: It's a,
Speaker: important thing.
Speaker: And I think that, you know, um,
Speaker: I mean, you can't even if you walk into a diner and strike up a conversation with a stranger, they're going to talk about cancel culture within seven minutes.
Speaker: Like, I mean, everybody is it's it's just kind of been hanging over everybody's head.
Speaker: So that's that played a role.
Speaker: But basically, you know, I said, you know, I don't have experience with this sort of stuff, but I've you know, I've done a lot of research and just like even out of like, you know, self-protection of just like, hey, if somebody else has this
Speaker: has a solution for this on lock, then that's a threat to, you know, if I'm putting all my chips on the table, like I looked around, man, it's not there.
Speaker: I think that this is the best chance that we have, at least as far as, you know, obviously there's various levels to that.
Speaker: This exit plays a tremendous role and so do other organizations and projects.
Speaker: But all I can say is I'm going to be honest and give it as much effort as I can.
Speaker: And and then also, you know,
Speaker: give you sweat equity at the end of it.
Speaker: And that's all I can promise.
Speaker: And it ended up working out.
Speaker: Yeah, I've been really impressed by the quality of not free work, not volunteer work, but speculative work.
Speaker: The number of smart people who are willing to
Speaker: you know, go to a couple, attend a couple of your calls and, uh, you know, get a sense of what you need and, and, and think through what it would take with you and sort of explore the space with you.
Speaker: Um, I mean, with you on this project in particular, but just in general, in the group, lots of these projects, um, if you've got a halfway decent idea and you seem like a smart guy, um, a lot of these guys are really looking for, uh,
Speaker: an, an interesting project to, to chew on.
Speaker: Um, you know, there, there are guys who, who generate tons of projects and there are guys who sort of consume projects.
Speaker: Like they have these systematizing minds and it's almost like a, uh, it's almost like the way a beaver builds a dam.
Speaker: It's like, they just need, they need to build something.
Speaker: And, um, it's, it's really cool to see those things come together inside the group on the subject of, uh, cancel culture.
Speaker: And the fact that it's just on everybody's lips.
Speaker: Why do you think it is the case?
Speaker: I know you've sort of mentioned in broad strokes that like, hey, I know why this doesn't exist because it's hard.
Speaker: But can you be a little more specific about like what exactly about it is hard?
Speaker: Why hasn't this been done before?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like I was going to say, and I mean,
Speaker: like there's a lot of reasons why I think I'm just like, Hey, I'm perfectly positioned for, uh, addressing this issue.
Speaker: Um, like both to like whatever strengths I have and like, and my own like weaknesses and like,
Speaker: whatever, you know, shitty things have like happened in my life that kind of led me to this point.
Speaker: Like, I feel like I'm perfectly positioned.
Speaker: You know, it's like the most meaningful thing I've ever partaken in.
Speaker: So it's, you know, over the course of three years, I mean, the breakthroughs make it all worth it.
Speaker: But as far as the percentage of the time, it's just...
Speaker: staring at your laptop, like just with a problem with no answer.
Speaker: And just like a series of those, like over the course of like every week, you're just, you come up against another thing where it's like, okay, so now we run into this problem.
Speaker: There is no answer because this doesn't exist.
Speaker: So where there's nobody you can consult really.
Speaker: I mean, you can, you know, just have calls with as, you know, as many smart friends as you can find, which I've done and which was very helpful.
Speaker: But I think,
Speaker: The number one reason is just because the ambiguous nature of social relationships, like I mean, we touched on how can you tell if somebody said something on PC and are being persecuted for it, even though it was their legitimate beliefs and like whatever charges are being leveled against them are bullshit.
Speaker: versus, you know, just somebody saying the gamer word for fun and to cash in.
Speaker: Like, how do you how do you assess authenticity is like a very difficult thing.
Speaker: And, you know, we touched on the, you know, the base layer of how to do it.
Speaker: And I use that term whenever I say it, because
Speaker: Even after that, what you got is, well, what if scenario A happens and what if scenario B happens?
Speaker: And then what if outcome A1 and A2 happen from scenario A and outcome B2, B3?
Speaker: So like it just keeps on branching out.
Speaker: So but just the flip side of that is.
Speaker: you can't prepare for literally every single eventuality because you also don't have the real world data.
Speaker: If like if you over design solutions in a lab and then just introduce them into the wild for something that is as as complex as human relationships, it just shatters from fragility upon, you know, contact with complexity.
Speaker: So basically just mapping out the
Speaker: each intersection of, hey, here's where a problem could arise, and basically mapping out the landscape of here are some options available to us without actually picking them, because it would just be hubris to just be like, and this is the best way to go, just with no real world feedback and just talking about it over Zoom.
Speaker: But just at least have, yeah.
Speaker: I mean, so you're right.
Speaker: You can't commit all of your resources to like your elegant imaginary solution because you're right, it'll be wrong.
Speaker: But the process of gaining that market contact with your idea involves putting some small investment out there.
Speaker: And I think part of the frustration that I...
Speaker: that it sounds like you're describing and that I totally share with what I'm trying to do is when a problem has no solution.
Speaker: And so you have to make significant investments in a bunch of wrong answers.
Speaker: Like you have to put at minimum quite a lot of time into building out a wrong answer and then have it just get
Speaker: you know, ripped apart in the real world.
Speaker: And then you have to not get discouraged and try the next thing and the next thing and the next thing until something clicks.
Speaker: And it's like, I think people have,
Speaker: that vision for like entrepreneurship in general, that like, Oh, lots of entrepreneurs try different business ideas and, and, and, you know, not all of them work, but even within a single business idea that, you know, is a good idea.
Speaker: There's like, just, it feels like thousands of these points where it's, well, it's not this way.
Speaker: It's not this way.
Speaker: It's not this way.
Speaker: And, and, and, and, and all the time you're like, I'm not sure this has an answer.
Speaker: So it's like, you don't necessarily have the confidence of like, oh, I just got to keep trying, keep trying and something will work.
Speaker: It's like, maybe I'll keep trying, keep trying and then nothing will work.
Speaker: And I'll just be screwed and I'll just waste it all this time.
Speaker: And you have to go back down the tree and try to find a branch with some workable solutions.
Speaker: But the fact is,
Speaker: If you're visualizing this tree and you've exhausted all the options on this node, it's totally possible that you find some blind alley down this decision tree that leads you all the way back to the core of your idea.
Speaker: And you go, oh man, this whole thing is screwed.
Speaker: Like the terror of like how much of your sort of weaving you might have to undo at any point is intense.
Speaker: But anyway, yeah.
Speaker: So on the subject of ordinary people having these conversations, I've actually found that like the number of guys who come to exit because they're actually like,
Speaker: they're actually saying things online and they're at risk is quite low.
Speaker: Um, most of the guys who come to exit are not really shit posters.
Speaker: It's the, you know, maybe it's the VAX mandate or maybe they just like hate their, their job.
Speaker: They just hate these kinds of jobs, um, which I totally, uh, respect and, and, uh, and agree with.
Speaker: But, um,
Speaker: do you have any i i know that i know it's so you you're sort of in this situation where it is easier to meet the needs of a content creator because they have a ready-made audience that you can uh invite to make pledges do you have any uh plans or any models for how you might help somebody who's
Speaker: just a regular guy trying not to get canceled, say, you know, in the workplace or like, you know, these people who are like ordinary people and they make the news because that lady argued with the guy over a bike or, you know, just sort of these random confrontations.
Speaker: Yes, but not right away, but only because that's, or at least it appears to me to be pretty impossible.
Speaker: Just like the only way that I see to go about it.
Speaker: Sorry, you're trying to stay minimum viable.
Speaker: You're trying to stay like, what's the smallest bite I can take?
Speaker: I totally understand that.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, I like creators, but it's not like I have such special affinity for them.
Speaker: I want to help them out more than normal people.
Speaker: I mean, a lot of there's pretty much the model is that there's a certain...
Speaker: It can over time as the network scales, like wider and wider concentric circles of people who can take advantage of this, you know, pretty much qualify or become feasible.
Speaker: So, you know, you start with, you know, larger to midsize creators and then an update that we've talked about before that we can go to later if you want, can go to like midsize to smaller creators.
Speaker: And then that kind of expands over time to like, you know, professionals in hospital environments, which is basically an environment nowadays, but just like you can think of academics or like doctors talking about, you know, going against the narrative or anything like that.
Speaker: And then over time, it pretty much should be able to broaden to everybody.
Speaker: But that's another one of the benefits of starting with the creators because the whole zero to one issue of like, how do you bootstrap
Speaker: If the majority of people that you eventually want to help require a certain amount of numbers on this platform, how the hell do you bootstrap that?
Speaker: And the answer is that you start with creators because they bring their audiences and they're also self-selected to be pretty motivated towards the
Speaker: cause, issue, whatever you want to call it.
Speaker: And that's as good a foundational building block as any.
Speaker: And then you pretty much build it out from there.
Speaker: So I would really hope and again, this is like, there's so many different variables, it's I don't want to, you know, confidently give a firm date.
Speaker: But the idea is after you know, a year or two, this really broadens beyond, hey, this is cancellation insurance for creators.
Speaker: And then we have both the numbers and the finances at this time to be like, okay, we can really get creative and help out more normal people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And not to commit you to anything, but this is just an idea, a thought.
Speaker: It seems to me that you could almost...
Speaker: engage a group like Exit or a group like New Founding or one of these sort of vetted affinity groups.
Speaker: And your customer would be the group itself and the leadership of that group.
Speaker: But sort of what they would be offering to their, you'd be like a value add to their thing.
Speaker: where they would say, hey, if you lose a revenue stream, we've worked it out with Pluribus that we have some pledge reserve for just this purpose.
Speaker: And our audience and our donors are trusting us to do the work of vetting you in case you lose your job.
Speaker: Like that, that seems like maybe a way that this reaches normal people.
Speaker: Yeah, I think, yeah, that's a thought that I had as well beyond the, you know, the whatever professionals in hospital industries, like the same model that I had in mind, I call it DAOs, but it's DAU, like decentralized autonomous unions.
Speaker: So the,
Speaker: The difference of that versus some other ideas that we've had, like, you know, creator guilds, where they get to pool resources from all of their followers.
Speaker: Those are from those are four people that have followers.
Speaker: But what if you have a group of
Speaker: 12, 25, 50, 150 people who don't have followers.
Speaker: So you could do a sort of mutual aid fund deal where everybody pays into a pot and then there's an adjudication amongst themselves.
Speaker: And, you know, that doesn't work with if you just take 150 people off the street because they don't trust each other.
Speaker: like you said, these self-selected natures of these communities that for the same reason that I was able to get a team on board so quickly.
Speaker: And there's just a base level of like cultural and moral alignment.
Speaker: And also, you know, the communities are small enough to where, again, if you just scam everybody that you know in your online community, it's not going to work out well.
Speaker: But the, yeah, the mutual aid fund model is a way to build off of that.
Speaker: There's also some interesting instruments that can be layered on top of that, but I don't want to, you know, throw out every sort of, you know, speculative thing, no matter how shiny it is.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah, no, I hear that.
Speaker: And for you, I want to talk about why this matters to you because you, you know, as far as I know, use your real name, if that is your real name.
Speaker: Are you what made this the thing for you that was important to to get involved in and work on?
Speaker: Yeah, I sort of asked myself this question, or at least, you know, nobody's a fan.
Speaker: I mean, some people are, but like no real person is a fan of cancel culture.
Speaker: Everybody's pissed off and it irritates them.
Speaker: So I was wondering what
Speaker: motivated me to go like to like a sort of extreme with it.
Speaker: And it can probably be, you know, traced down to the, you know, 2017, 2019 period with a bunch of the prominent cancellations of there was, okay, yeah, here are the core ones.
Speaker: So, um,
Speaker: There was the cancellation of Brett Weinstein at the whole evergreen scandal thing.
Speaker: There was a canceling of Louis CK for, you know, doing what he did.
Speaker: And there was also, you know, when Jordan Peterson first got on the scene and doing all he was doing, and just seeing how he was treated from the media and everything like that.
Speaker: And, you know, we don't have to go into like,
Speaker: necessarily like the recent developments of like, of anybody, but just again, that sort of, that sort of phase 2017 2019.
Speaker: So what that represented to me was, I mean, so there's an evolutionary biologist, a comedian, and then like, you know, those videos I was watching back then of just, you know,
Speaker: Peterson's like talking through parents of like their daughter committed suicide and like they need advice to, you know, get through it.
Speaker: And I saw all of those things being attacked.
Speaker: And I'm like, the only thing I really care about in life, I like learning.
Speaker: I like learning.
Speaker: comedy and I like, you know, basic decent.
Speaker: I mean, I mean, you know, just be a decent person.
Speaker: That phrase is, you know, obviously been ruined like many good things have been ruined lately.
Speaker: But like, I mean, just this is a guy talking like parents through their daughter's suicide.
Speaker: So I saw all these things getting attacked and I'm like, yeah, this is, you know, I think there's a lot of people who they have,
Speaker: their own sort of origin story of like whenever the line was crossed to them.
Speaker: And, you know, there's been, it's been years since then.
Speaker: And I had to track down, okay, like what's the force behind this, these events and you know, what the hell is going on here?
Speaker: But like, after those sorts of things happened, it kind of coalesced in my mind of just like, yeah, I hate this and I'm going to do everything in my power to end it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: On the one hand, it's this crusade, this ideological thing.
Speaker: But on the other hand, it's like you're just a founder who saw a need.
Speaker: Like you saw a value that was not being created.
Speaker: Yeah, another thing that I guess helped thinking about it now is like, again, I'm flipping through all these, you know, videos in that time period.
Speaker: And then there's Peterson doing his just like you need purpose in your life.
Speaker: Young man, I'm like in my mid to like late 20s and like not doing great myself.
Speaker: It's like you need something to motivate you and do whatever.
Speaker: And then I see what happened to Brett, and then I see Peterson get shit on, and then fucking I see a bunch of unfunny comics just talking about how Louis C.K.
Speaker: sucks.
Speaker: What a coincidence that the worst comic sucks.
Speaker: You definitely aren't trying to advance yourself.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, and that kind of helped coalesce my mind.
Speaker: I'm like, oh, I think I found my thing.
Speaker: Thank you for your assistance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Yeah, man.
Speaker: I have had this thought occasionally that –
Speaker: at least in my case, I had a, I had a partnership with the people who doxed me.
Speaker: Um, I definitely, you, you mentioned like, oh, thank you.
Speaker: Thank you for your help.
Speaker: Like, that's exactly how I feel about getting docs.
Speaker: It's like, I was in a situation and maybe we can talk about how this sort of the psychology of your potential customer
Speaker: But like I hated every minute that I spent in my job.
Speaker: And I was constantly, constantly on Twitter because I was running away from like the reality of my situation.
Speaker: It was the only way that I could escape.
Speaker: And I
Speaker: I started to take these risks and I knew what I was doing.
Speaker: I started to take these risks because it was increasingly, you know, I would, I would go home and I would, and I would have the love of my family.
Speaker: And, and that was, uh, that was deeply meaningful, but, but the, but the, the, the portion of my life dedicated to economics, uh,
Speaker: was incredibly, just completely meaningless to me.
Speaker: And so taking these risks with what I was saying and what I was reading and who I was following, first of all, it felt like I wasn't risking anything that I actually cared about because I couldn't justify to myself
Speaker: keeping my mouth shut so that I could stay a finance analyst forever.
Speaker: And then also it was like, this is the only thing that I'm doing that maybe means something because people would reach out to me like every month or so.
Speaker: And they'd be like, Hey, you wrote this thing about, um, dating, or you wrote this thing about religion or, and, and I, I, uh, you know,
Speaker: I went and asked a girl out or, or I'm getting engaged or I started going to church again or stuff like that.
Speaker: And those little DMS, uh, you know, one of those meant more than, than five years, um, at the defense contractor.
Speaker: And so it was like,
Speaker: I was sort of magnetized toward purpose, toward impact.
Speaker: And so, yeah, the people who doxed me, I'm boundlessly grateful for that.
Speaker: And maybe that, you know, I know we want to stay in this, like, friend-enemy distinction territory with these guys.
Speaker: And, like, obviously, they should not be doing what they're doing.
Speaker: But what I want to create and what I think you're trying to create too is a situation where you can undergo that transformation and that shedding of these things that are not of value without being destroyed.
Speaker: Like I needed to get fired.
Speaker: I absolutely needed to get fired.
Speaker: But I also was very lucky in terms of like how that shook out in the long run.
Speaker: And I want everybody to have the kind of opportunities that I had, uh, and, and the kind of soft landing that I had.
Speaker: There's the famous, uh, Teal quote of, you know, we live in a world in which courage is in shorter supply than genius.
Speaker: And you can, you know, you can swap out courage for, you know, a whole bunch of different, uh, virtues and.
Speaker: one of the, if not the primary reason, is that there's tremendous cost associated with doing pro-social things.
Speaker: And that's what is inhibiting a lot of good things from happening.
Speaker: A lot of people could end up in better situations, but...
Speaker: You know, if you and that's part of the reason why we wanted to do like, you know, preemptive measures so early.
Speaker: Like, I mean, even setting aside for the fact that like, you know, GoFund, even if GoFundMe didn't take controversial funds down, what you could say is that, hey, if I'm big enough and I get canceled, I could just start.
Speaker: you know, a GoFundMe to restore my lost income.
Speaker: Like that's, that's easy to say to other people in theory, but that doesn't like, you can't just be like, Hey, your life is going to be miserable, but eventually it's going to be okay.
Speaker: Like you need something beforehand to know that whatever shitty event you might
Speaker: go through in the future, it's not going to be that bad.
Speaker: And then you can sort of pass through the membrane of the fake and gay world and then into wherever it
Speaker: you're meant to be basically.
Speaker: And I think that's at least since there's, there's, it's a very complex problem and it's not even one problem.
Speaker: It's a whole bunch of interlocked things, which means that there's a whole bunch of interlocked solutions.
Speaker: And what I'm doing is only a small piece of that, but mitigating that pain to go from where you shouldn't be to where you should be is really the role that I would hope to play here.
Speaker: Yeah, and you're going to have an opportunity.
Speaker: I mean, there will be a community that's built around this.
Speaker: And, you know, I guess that's maybe a little cliche these days.
Speaker: Everybody's starting communities.
Speaker: But it matters a great deal to have people around you who have gone through it and who can tell you that it's going to be okay and tell you how it's going to be okay.
Speaker: I owe a lot to my friend Tanner Guzzi, who he had almost like a Me Too style cancellation.
Speaker: And this was like in the teens, the 2010s, where cancel culture was not really understood as a thing.
Speaker: It had started happening, but we didn't really have a label for it.
Speaker: And it wasn't necessarily understood as a bad thing.
Speaker: And so he kind of got canceled in the bad old days where people would hear stories about you and they would really just assume that it was true.
Speaker: There weren't these mimetic antibodies against it where people go, it's probably nonsense.
Speaker: It's probably motivated.
Speaker: But when I got fired, man, he was on the phone with me and he was talking to me about like,
Speaker: what I could do.
Speaker: I mean, really, in large part, the concept for exit was a result of conversations with him.
Speaker: And yeah, having somebody who can chart a course with you like that is tremendously valuable.
Speaker: And also just talk you through like
Speaker: hey, you probably feel like dog shit physically right now.
Speaker: And it's probably because you're not eating or sleeping.
Speaker: And like, here's how it's like, here's how getting canceled feels like in your tummy, like in your guts and your head.
Speaker: And so that's incredibly powerful.
Speaker: And you're gonna draw people like that to you.
Speaker: that I think it's going to be it's going to be incredibly powerful.
Speaker: Actually, if you don't mind a brief spurg out on this sort of stuff.
Speaker: So yeah, as far as the initial stuff that I just laid out, that's all great.
Speaker: But like you said, it's not just a monetary thing.
Speaker: It's psychological, it's social, obviously, like all intertwined.
Speaker: If you lose your job, you probably lose your social circle and your paycheck.
Speaker: So
Speaker: So like one pushback I've gotten is just like, yeah, but it's not just money.
Speaker: It's these other things that doesn't really solve it.
Speaker: It's like, yeah, but a great way to get people to cooperate is money.
Speaker: And all of a sudden you have a bunch of people in the same network who are sharing money and you are in great position to start sharing the, or start solving the social aspects.
Speaker: And it's very easy to layer in these sorts of, you know, social support structures.
Speaker: um that you kind of mentioned like uh even like and again this is just uh something that's just on the docket that will not be difficult to layer in but we can fast forward like a year from now or whatever one thing that we wanted to do is like have a sort of like mass shaming alert i haven't figured out the branding for it yet but it's just like to almost act as like a digital flare for anybody that's like under active attack because
Speaker: you know, if we're not wired, and this is one of the reasons why it's hold this power as you know, the chimpanzees that we are, we're not wired to have 1000s of people hate us at the same time, like our amygdalas can't handle it.
Speaker: It's fucking terrifying.
Speaker: So but like, like you said, like only a couple of kind words like, oh, those 1000s of people that tell you your piece of shit, it doesn't take many people to be like, Oh, actually, you're not don't worry, hey, you can reach me here.
Speaker: Like, so there's, so yes, the cancellation insurance, which again is not quite literally insurance, is de facto insurance through crowdfunding.
Speaker: But that also provides a good hook to get people in the same network to solve some other coordination problems where some other support is available.
Speaker: So Spurgout, over, sorry.
Speaker: Yeah, and I mean, I think honestly, a lot of us that are working in this sphere can work together on a lot of that stuff.
Speaker: One of the problems with, and I've had this experience, and I know many of our guys on Twitter have had this experience.
Speaker: You see someone who's getting put through the ringer, and you want to support, but you don't want to signal boost the problem itself.
Speaker: Um, I rarely, I rarely talk publicly about people who've been doxxed precisely for that reason, because I don't want to make their problems any worse.
Speaker: Um, and I definitely had people.
Speaker: reach out to me when I was in the process of getting fired, be like, oh man, let's all talk about this.
Speaker: And this is such crap what's happening to him.
Speaker: It's not fair.
Speaker: And being like, just shut up.
Speaker: Please just shut up for a second.
Speaker: Let me handle this with my employer for 48 hours.
Speaker: And then we can all be mad about it.
Speaker: And I think one of the things that we can do with these kind of vetted closed door networks is provide some of that coordination in a way that doesn't make things worse.
Speaker: So yeah, it's a huge problem.
Speaker: And I'm really proud to know you and to have been part of
Speaker: of this story of building this thing, man.
Speaker: So you're saying you go live in a matter of a couple of weeks.
Speaker: How do people learn more about what you're doing?
Speaker: Okay, so you can go to becomepluribus.com.
Speaker: So by the time this comes out, we might already be live with the beta and you'll be able to sign up.
Speaker: But if not, there's a email at the bottom, sign up for the waitlist and it will be out shortly.
Speaker: You can also follow us on at become pluribus.
Speaker: Oh, I'll go into the name real quick.
Speaker: So the reason why it's pluribus, obviously not to e pluribus unum, but also just like the kind of direct translation is more pluribus.
Speaker: or many Latin kind of gets ambiguous, but I mean, there, there's, it's very odd that an overwhelming majority of people can be oppressed by a very small minority like this.
Speaker: It's very, it's a very bizarre phenomenon.
Speaker: So the idea is that, you know, there's always going to be a
Speaker: you know, not that many people who are willing to stand up and be courageous and do some other things, but there are a shitload of people as, and by shitload, I mean, in the tens of millions who would be willing to subsidize the risks of those people on their behalf.
Speaker: And I, that is my best idea of how to have the many reassert their will on
Speaker: over what the hell happens to the society that they live in and dominate numerically, but just are dominated by in reality.
Speaker: So anyway, so that's the name, but Twitter at become pluribus.
Speaker: And then you can also follow me at Tyson Berg.
Speaker: It's Harry Bergeron is the name.
Speaker: I wasn't sure which self aggrandizing fictional character I wanted to choose.
Speaker: It was going to be Heisenberg.
Speaker: Then I picked the other thing.
Speaker: But a couple quick things that I don't want to overconfirm, but this is pretty safe to say.
Speaker: Because now I know about this project.
Speaker: I know how much work has gone into it.
Speaker: I'm very confident that it will succeed.
Speaker: I have all the confidence in the world about it, but most people aren't me.
Speaker: Everybody except one person isn't me.
Speaker: So I think that joining, being an early adopter of this, when the odds do seem very low that this will actually work or be successful, I wanted to find out, you know, some way to recognize the people willing to, you know, show the courage to, you know, jump on board before this, you know, becomes obvious to everybody.
Speaker: So, you know, whether it's I'm not sure if we're going to break it down by ten, a hundred or a thousand.
Speaker: But, you know, the first people who join will have, you know, gold, silver or, you know, bronze ring around their profile permanently to show, you know, again, fast forward five years from now.
Speaker: I'm a millionaire.
Speaker: Everybody's doing great.
Speaker: Cancel culture is over.
Speaker: But that collar will be there of just, hey, I'm one of the first people that did this.
Speaker: And I think that that's important.
Speaker: There will also be a referral program for if you get people to sign up, you receive a portion of the revenue that is ultimately collected from their supporters.
Speaker: So those plugs were a bit messy, but it's the first time I've given them.
Speaker: So I guess we'll call that okay.
Speaker: But yeah, that's how they can reach us.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: Awesome.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: Well, it's great to talk to you, man.
Speaker: And best of luck.
Speaker: And we will be continuing to follow up with you as this thing progresses.
Speaker: Thanks a lot, man.
Speaker: I appreciate it.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: And so if you want to learn more about what we do here at Exit, you can check us out at exitgroup.us.
Speaker: Follow us on Twitter at exit underscore org.
Speaker: Thanks, everybody.
